[meteorite-list] Re: hunting

From: colin wade <ceweed_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:44:40 2004
Message-ID: <005901c0afd8$f3968aa0$02000003_at_colinwad>

HI Kelly
I knew I could rely on you to crunch the numbers for me
& thanks for raising some interesting points

The predictions encourage further searching ,,, the dog runs for cover now
if I reach for the metal detector & GPS !

>From what Ive seen , the whole country was sea bed , the hills we have
resulting from folds in the sandstone & chalk deposits .
There are reported finds of shark teeth & flint arrowheads in the area (
others have shown how easy it is to make a fresh arrow head & scatter them
about ) But if people hunted here , presumably the wildlife would have had
to survive without water tankers , & would require a food chain fron
vegeterian to carnivore .
The ground is remarkably fertile given a sprinkling of water ,& when wet the
clay content swells & holds the moisture for ages , is the clay a sign of
previous vegetation ?
We had one year when the rain persisted so much , the local children were
using inflatable dingies in the middle of the country , at the Shahania
camel metropolis .The wild barley fruited twice that year .
Since the loss of the vegetation the wind & sandstorms seem to be the force
for geographic change , Ive even found a Rolls Royce with the paint
sandblasted off one side ... so the chance of finding a good fusion crust is
probably lottery numbers .

The mention of Dilmun brings to mind our only visit to continental europe ,
whilst in spain we met a lovely old lady & forgive me but the name has gone
.... her brother did the illustrations for " in search of dilmun " , which i
think was Bibby's work .She was quite thrilled that someone had heard of
Dilmun , we had stayed at the hotel of the same name whilst in Baharain &
they are keen on unearthing the ancient history .

Thanks again for the info
I'm off to bed to nurse my second cold of 2001 .( puttin a lump o'meteorit
under the pillow to see if it cures it )
all the best
col
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kelly Webb" <kelly_at_bhil.com>
To: "colin wade" <ceweed_at_qatar.net.qa>
Cc: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2001 12:51 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Re: hunting


> colin wade wrote:
> "Here's one for Kelly to work out .... typical distance run per hash
> ~6km, 2.2m width 90% probability of detection , 1m either side say 50% ,
> total area searched 3 X 400 X6k m^2 , 7.2km^2, length run 2400km"
>
> Dear Colin,
> Assuming that higher fall rate I personally believe in, 7.2 square
> kilometers would receive one piece of a fall every 1000 to 1200 years
> (instead of the 3000 to 4000 years the MORP rate would predict).
> Since this is a desert environment, a stone would persist for a long
> time if undisturbed and not transported. The Moroccan stones (NWA's)
> seem to have ages of 5000 to 40,000 years, for example. So, Qatar could
> have an average of 3 to 8 stones every square kilometer (depending on
> which rate of fall you use) if they have accumulated for 40,000 years.
> I'll chicken out on two points, though. Statistics is, well,
> statistical; it assumes the distribution of meteorites is random, but of
> course in reality, they fragment and fall in clusters (the strewn
> fields). If your 7.2 square kilometers was the ellipse of a strewn
> field, it could have 20 stones on it (or 200 or 2000). So, where you
> find one, you should look for others.
> The other chicken-out point is geological change. Has Qatar been a
> desert environment for 40,000 years? As recently as 10,000 to 12,000
> years ago, most of what is now the Sahara was a well-watered grassland
> with scattered forest patches and lakes, supporting a rich game
> population, which in turn supported a happy population of
> hunter-gatherers. Even 2000 years ago, North Africa was a breadbasket
> for the Romans. How much wheat do they grow in Libya today?
> There was at least one British archeologist (Bibby) who thought that
> Bahrain was the location of Dilmun, the unidentified seat of a
> mercantile empire that traded with Sumer and the Harappan cities of the
> Indus valley 6000 to 8000 years ago. If so, it's hard to imagine that it
> was then the same hard baked brick of a land that it is today. Ur was a
> much nicer neighborhood back then, too, as I hear tell...
> Sorry, but this is a sore point with me. I know I can't convince my
> Illinois farm neighbors that if they had lived here 12,000 years ago,
> their house would have a half-mile thick stab of ice for a roof, but it
> annoys me that even archeologists seem to ignore the geology of their
> own digs. There's a famous cluster of them working the Illinois River
> valley down to the 12,000-year+ level (that's one really deep hole!)
> where, they insist, humans suddenly appear culturally full-blown, which
> they interpret to mean they have dated the first arrival of humans.
> I can't seem to get across to them that all they have dated is the
> sudden appearance of the Illinois River! Before glaciation, all the
> midwest US rivers, even the mighty Mississippi, didn't exist; the entire
> central US drained slowly and sluggishly to the north by now vanished
> rivers which emptied into Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean. When the ice
> melted, the land rebounded, and now everything runs south like crazy.
> So, I'd have to ask, how long do we know Qatar has been an arid
> environment?
>
> Kelly Webb
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
> http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Received on Sun 18 Mar 2001 01:24:35 PM PST