PLEASE NOTE:
*
Date sent: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:52:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Benny J Peiser <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Meteorite! magazine
To: cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Priority: NORMAL
A member of the network asked for subscription details of
METEORITE!
MAGAZINE. Here they are:
Subscriptions to Meteorite! are $US 27 for four issues per year
at
approx. 40 pages per issue. Postage is by 2nd Class Airmail.
Payment
can be made by VISA/MasterCard, or personal check, and for the
equivalent if other than US currency. Payment can be made to:
Pallasite Press
P.O. Box 33-1218
Takapuna, Auckland
New Zealand
*
From: Leroy Ellenberger <cle@imr-stl.com>
To: Benny J Peiser <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk>,
cambridge-conference <cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: ARCHAEOSEISMOLOGY
Date sent: Tue, 13 May 1997 09:03:34 -0500
I would like to clarify my recent remarks on the role of
earthquakes at Bronze Age destruction sites. I did not
mean to say earthquake played no role, only that it is
very possible that earthquake did not play the only role.
I way trying to point out that it is easy to overlook a
cosmic/cometary vector whose effect can easily be
ascribed to volcanic or earthquake because a cosmic/
cometary alternative was never even considered. Clearly
earthquakes occur in the Near and Middle East. However,
given the fact that the Revelstoke aerial blast in 1965 in
British Columbia registered on the seismic network in the
area, what is to say that some super-Tunguska event in
the second millennium BCE, say, did not TRIGGER an
earthquake, as some have suggested one triggered the
Minoan eruption of Thera. This may not be as self-serving
as it may at first appear for actual events tend not to have
a single cause, but are the result of a confluence of factors,
no one of which could have produced the end result.
Below I reproduce my Jul/Aug 1991 letter in THE SCIENCES,
written in response to Kevin Pang's aritcle in the Jan/Feb 1991
issue, "Volcano Weather" in which Pang related the
evidence
from Chinese sources for climatic effects which he ascribed to
certain famous eruptions--some of which also were accompanied
by astronomical omens, etc. I contacted Pang, then at JPL, and
he encouraged me to send in a letter which he would comment
on. In the event, my letter was printed, but the editor did not
send it to Pang for his remarks, as he did the two other letters
in the issue bearing on his article.
"Kevin Pang does a fascinating job of as-
sociating major volcanic eruptions with
ancient texts. The legacies of atmospher-
ic and climatic effects he collects, howev-
er, are not unique to major eruptions; they
might also be the result of large injections
of cosmic dust and vapor into the upper
atmosphere.
"Archaeologists have unearthed many
middle-Bronze Age sites in the Near East
whose destrucitons cannot plausibly be
connected with the contemporary erup-
tion of Thera, an earthquake or a siege.
Those sites are often distinguished by
vitreous flash glazing, and their destruc-
tion could be e xplained by a train of ex-
plosioins along a track 2,500 kilometers
long, each similar to the blast that accom-
panied the imipact of the Tunguaks me-
teorite in Siberia in 1908.
"This idea fits well into the work of the
British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill
Napier. They have proposed that terres-
trial affairs in the second and third mil-
lennia B.C. were dominated by the inter-
action of the earth with what was at the
time a dense stream of meteors and
comets (the Taurids) active in late June
and early November. Evidence from the
Greenland ice sheet seems to confirm
their proposal. Two of the three acidity
signals for w hich Thera is a reasonable
culprit turn out to be nitric acid, which
would be produced by cosmic sources,
and only one is sulfuric acid, characteris-
tic of vocanoes.
"If Mr. Pang's survey has omitted ac-
counts of supposedly "indicental" astro-
nomical events--comets, fireballs, mete-
or showers, celestial dragons and the
like--there may yet be evidence in his
ancient sources that supports Clube and
Napier.
"C. LEROY ELLENBERGER
"Saint Louis, Missouri"
In retrospect, the second paragraph may be
more wishful thinking than fact since its
content was hearsay I gleaned from correspondence
and conversations with members of the S.I.S.
Their point was that Cl. Schaeffer ascribed his
destructions to earthquake because he considered
no other comparable alternative, such as aerial
blasts from Tunguska-like detonations. But, I have
always known to myself that such speculations
must be tested against the evidence on the ground
once that evidence has been sought--which heretofore
it has not.
I trust the foregoing clarifies my point of view. I thank
those who asked to see my letter above for their
interest.
Cheers, Leroy
--C. Leroy Ellenberger, "vivere est vincere"
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html
ftp://ftp.primenet.com/pub/lippard/; 9 cle-files
cle@imr-stl.com
P.S.: I hasten to point out that the Klimasturz in the A.D. 540s
which has been studied by Mike Baillie would readily be ascribed
to some eruption, except for the fact that there is no evidence
for such an eruption or series of eruptions at that epoch. With
this situation, Baillie has been favorably disposed to the
possibilities
presented by Clube & Napier's model, especially with all the
meteor shower imagery and lore in Celtic and Chinese sources
from that era. CLE