THE
BIBLICAL flood, a central tenet of three of the world’s
great religions, was nothing to do with divine wrath: the real
cause was a giant comet that hit Earth, according to new research.
In
the same way as Jupiter was rocked two years ago by the million-megaton
impact of the comet Shoemaker-Levy, so Earth was bombarded 12,000
years ago by the fragments of a similar celestial visitor. It
caused tidal waves, the mass extinction of many prehistoric
species such as the mammoth and sabre-toothed tiger, and turned
the world dark for months.
Professor
Alexander Tollmann, the author of the study and an internationally
renowned geologist, said: “The consequence of the impact
explosions appears to have included a chain of up to a dozen
individual catastrophes, including earthquakes, geological deformation,
a vapour of plume and tidal waves.”
His
findings have caused controversy. More than a dozen other geologists
have written to Terra Nova, a geoscientific journal sponsored
by the Council of Europe, denouncing him as a fantasist. However,
he has had a warmer reception in Britain where Victor Clube,
an astrophysicist at Oxford University, has made similar claims
for the influence of comets on human history.
Tollmann,
a professor in the institute of geology at University of Vienna,
compared the numerous myths of a great flood, recorded in almost
every prehistoric civilisation, with the geological evidence
for a comet impact at about the same time. He used the two sources
of information to date the flood very precisely, to around the
year 9,600BC.
Two
discoveries are central to his claim. One is the distribution
of the splinters of molten rock thrown up by the impacts, known
as tektites. There was, he said, a huge concentration of them
in sediments laid down about 10,000BC. Variations in the amounts
in different parts of the world suggested Earth was hit by seven
large fragments and many smaller ones.
The
other is the apparent sudden increase in radioactive carbon-14
found in fossilised trees dating back to the same era. This,
said Tollmann, was due to the destruction of the ozone layer
by comet, an event that exposed the atmosphere to higher levels
of radiation and increased carbon-14 production.
Tollmann
backs his theory with folk myths gathered from the Middle East,
China, India and the Americas. He said that even though all
had been written long after the event, and must therefore have
been handed down orally through many generations, they still
showed extraordinary similarities, including descriptions of
the Earth being first threatened by seven burning suns and then
overwhelmed by a deluge and other disasters.
Such
theories overturn the idea, held by scientists for more than
150 years, that the world only changes slowly. Many now believe
the Earth has suffered many random catastrophes, especially
bombardment by comets and their debris, that have changed the
course of history.
Tollmann’s
findings are supported in principle by Clube. He has just published
the results of 20 years research into comets and the way their
paths through space intersect with the Earth’s. He concludes
that many of the big events in history were a result of collisions
with comets or their debris.
“The
last big one was about 1,500 years ago and the climate changes
it caused are what plunged us into the Dark Ages,” he said.
“In another 1,000 years we will hit the debris of that
same comet and it will happen again.”
The
evidence for collisions with comets and meteorites is widely
accepted by scientists. The last great collision happened in
1908, when a huge object exploded over Tunguska, in Siberia,
with a force of up to 30 megatons, devastating an area of 50
square miles. A far larger impact, 65m years ago, is thought
to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The idea that such a collision
caused the biblical flood is not, however, so widely accepted.
Some scientists point out hat low-lying areas the world over
would have been beset by floods at that time. The worst would
have been caused by the shrinking of the ice caps at the end
of the Ice Age. Water released from the ice caps increased sea
levels by 300ft between 18,000BC and 30,000BC.
The
flood is central to early Jewish and Islamic writings, as well
as Christianity, where Bible records that it rained for 40 days
and 40 nights. The waters, ridden by Noah in his ark, subsided
after 150 days.
