TALE OF ARTHUR POINTS TO COMET CATASTROPHE
The story of the death of King Arthur and its references to a wasteland
may have been inspired by the apocalyptic effects of a giant comet
bombarding the Earth in AD540, leading to the Dark Ages, a British
scientist said yesterday. The impacts filled the atmosphere with dust
and debris; a long winter began. Crops failed, and there was famine, Dr
Mike Baillie of Queen's University, Belfast, told the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. There was now overwhelming
evidence from studies of tree rings of a catastrophic climate change at
that time, he said.
Dr Baillie, who is based at the university's school of archaeology and
palaeoecology, said studies of Irish oaks showed that the climate
suddenly became inhospitable around AD540. Other researchers had
discovered the same narrow rings on trees in places such as Germany,
Scandinavia, Siberia, North America and China. "For all these trees to
show the same rings at the same time means it must have been a
profoundly unpleasant event, a catastrophic environmental downturn, in
AD540, which is in or at the beginning of the Dark Ages."
The tightly bound rings are consistent with fierce frosts that would
have devastated agriculture and made a malnourished population more
vulnerable to the plague of 542, which killed millions. Plague-carrying
rats and pests would have been looking for sustenance, thus hastening
the spread of the disease. Dr Baillie said that there were several
theories as to the explanation. One was that a vast volcano had erupted
and pumped huge amounts of dust into the atmosphere. Yet such a volcano
"would have been out of all proportion to ones we see in recent times",
he said, adding that the geological records bore no trace of it.
The other theory, he said, was that huge fragments from a giant comet
had hit the Earth, causing violent explosions and a dramatic cooling of
the planet. "My view is that we had a cometary bombardment - not a
full-blown comet, or we would not be here, but parts of a comet." Dr
Baillie said the hypothesis was supported by studies by astronomers and
astrophysicists including Mark Bailey, of the Armagh Observatory, Victor
Clube, of Oxford University, and Bill Napier, formerly of the Royal
Observatory in Edinburgh. They had calculated that there was a strong
likelihood that the Earth suffered a cometary bombardment between 400
and 600, based on records of high meteor shower activity. They had
linked it with the break-up of the comet Biela.
It was hoped that scientists in Greenland would analyze ice cores for
signs of cometary dust. They were soon to carry out chemical analysis
for tree rings for similar clues. Dr Baillie urged historians to examine
the records for writings that may record the events. "You can read about
the Justinian plague in conventional history books but you cannot read
about the cometary bombardment. The trees single out an episode which
can be best described as catastrophic, and it isn't there in written
history."
There was, however, some support buried in mythological writings and
other works. Roger of Wendover had referred in 540 or 541 to a "comet in
Gaul so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire. In the same year there
dropped real blood from the clouds . . . and a dreadful mortality
ensued".
Dr Baillie also cited the death of King Arthur, which is dated to 537,
539 and 542 in various works, as establishing possible links with fire
from the sky and destruction. Dr Baillie said that Arthur was linked in
old Irish with CuChulainn, the sky god, who in turn was linked with the
Celtic bright sky god Lugh variously described as "bright as the setting
sun, comes up in the west, and of the mighty blows". "The Arthurian
stories with their Celtic antecedents of bright sky gods and 'wasteland'
come with traditional dates for Arthur's death." Dr Baillie said that
the myths hinted strongly at a bombardment as the causes of an
environmental downturn. (The London Times)
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