[meteorite-list] A Metallic Asteroid May Have Coincided With The Fall Of Rome

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:18:26 2004
Message-ID: <3E46CEB7.AD528BC5_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Pierre, and List,

    Pierre said: "These people were educated, they knew about comets and
eclipses, they were used to natural disasters, frequent floods and
earthquakes, volcanic eruption (remember Pompeii!)."
    Pierre, your faith in history, astronomical and conventional, is
touching but mis-placed. For example, in all the recovered chronicles of
astronomical events in all cultures, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Middle
Eastern, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc., there are none that cover or
mention any event between 402 AD and 419 AD, no comets, no meteors, no
eclipses. This period (403 to 418 AD) is a hole in all the records.
    Even when there is a record, it's chaotic to our eyes. The report of a
14 month period of virtually total darkness in southern China mentioned by
Mark Ferguson was only discovered a few years ago because it's buried in a
footnote in an appendix to the official histories. Official histories are
only concerned with the "really important" things like the plots of
eunuchs, the intrigues of princelings, civil wars, religious disputes, and
so forth.
    In Rome, there is only one Roman historian who wrote about and lived
at this time (400 - 410 AD). His name was Zosimus. It is a strange history
of Rome that he writes. For example, the first Roman emperor, the divine
Augustus, gets three sentences in Zosimus' history or Rome (that he ruled
with moderation, that he listened to the advice of Athenodorus the Stoic,
and that a new dance craze was introduced to Rome during his reign). If
that's all you have to say about Augustus, the conclusion would have to be
that you don't know any Roman history. For comparison, picture a history
of the U.S. that says of George Washington only that he was the first
President, he listened to Alexander Hamilton, and that he was a good
dancer.
    Zosimus seems to think that Tiberius was exiled to an island because
he was a "bad" emperor (if you're not up on Roman history, Tiberius lived
in his palaces on the Isle of Capri because he was afraid of assassination
attempts, and he let his secret police run the Empire, just a little
paranoid there).
    I'd be willing to bet they'd forgotten all about Pompeii, too.
    It is clear that Zosimus, the greatest (and only) Roman historian of
410 AD, and by implication all Romans, had forgotten or lost their own
history by 410 AD. His book is a hodge-podge of ignorance, superstition,
folk-tales, and tabloid whackiness. The only portion of his history that
makes any sense is the last 50 years or so of it, that is, the part that
he or other living persons would have witnessed (and a sorry spectacle it
is, too). This suggests that recorded history is largely ignored or mostly
lost.
    More important for this question is that Zosimus' history ends
abruptly in mid-sentence in the summer of 410 AD, before Alaric's siege of
Rome and before this (supposed) impart event's supposed date. Since there
are no Roman histories after Zosimus, the impact would have missed the
cutoff date, so to speak.
    Rome, of course, had been and would be besieged and captured by dozens
of foreign and domestic armies; it was a standard ploy of the politics of
the day. The notion of "barbarians" at the gate is movie nonsense. These
"ethnic groups" for the most part had been settled in Roman territory for
centuries. All Alaric wanted was to be named head of the army and the
Emperor Honorius had signed a treaty to that effect.
    The story is that the reason that Alaric's 410 AD siege of Rome is so
often called the Fall of Rome is that Alaric was, well, royally pissed at
the "old" Romans for later reneging on this treaty. So he took the city
and for six days concentrated on stomping it flat with special emphasis on
historic sites. After that, he left Rome (which he never wanted anyway)
and headed south, having decided to go instead to North Africa, but he
died suddenly before he could leave Italy and his troops buried him in a
river bed to discourage the Romans from disturbing the grave.
    It occurs to me that Alaric was always a pretty unpopular fellow. Do
you suppose that extensive physical damage to Rome from a combination of
causes (panicked rioting from an impact event, secondary impacts,
earthquakes, and Alaric's siege.) could have been blamed entirely on the
conveniently dead Alaric? After all, one would hardly want to admit that
the ancient (more than 1100 years!) seat of the Empire and Christianity
had been laid waste by a heavenly (divine) act!
    In this context, it is interesting that the so-called Fall of Rome was
the inspiration next year for St. Augustine's book, "The City of God," in
which he argues that God has allowed or permitted the destruction of Rome
because the invisible and non-material City of God (Christianity itself)
is more accessible and more easily achieved in the absence of a real,
secular City of Man, i.e., Rome. Whether Alaric did all the dirty work or
not, you still have to come up with a reason why God would permit it. I
sounds to me like Augustine may have been back filling.
    Hey, Pierre, you may be right. It may only be a cow wallow. Only
geology will tell. But if there was an impact, a 2500 meter mountain range
would hardly have blocked the view of a 200 kiloton impact. The mushroom
cloud would have been 15,000 to 20,000 meters high. They'd have noticed,
weather permitting. They certainly would have heard it, loud and clear.
    You suggest that no geophysical anomalies are present, but the
original press release details one: "The crater has been dated through
radiocarbon analysis of a drill core cut down through the bank. The
uppermost material, having been thrown out of the cavity, contains organic
matter older than the impact. At the original ground level the radiocarbon
ages minimize, and then deeper down the material is older again." This
implies excavation. Do cows excavate?
    I'm a little bothered myself by this impact suggestion enabling the
"Fall" of Rome myth. Rome didn't fall. It slid. Slowly, inch by inch, for
centuries. The government got less and less functional. The economy
faltered and faltered. Prices went up and up. Education got poorer and
poorer. Knowledge was slowly eroded away. Skills were lost one by one.
People spent more and more time just hanging on and less and less time
building a future. Civil affairs got more and more chaotic and political
violence was more common every year, every decade. The price of gasoline
went up and up -- no, wait, wrong civilization. Sorry about that.


Sterling
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

rochette wrote:

> >http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/science/story/0,12450,889308,00.html
> >
> >A metallic asteroid may have coincided with the fall of Rome, says
> >Duncan Steel
> >
> >The Guardian (United Kingdom)
> >February 6, 2003
> >
> >......
> >
> >No matter what the trajectory of the asteroid entry, it would have
> >been a phenomenal sight from Rome, and scarier still for those closer
> >to ground zero.
> ......
>
> dear list
>
> sorry to be asteroid skeptic again but this newspaper article goes
> really beyond acceptable journalistic extrapolation.
>
> The Sirente "crater" lies about 60 km E of Roma and they are various
> moutain ridges up to 2500 m in between the two places. Roma is near
> sea level and the first mountain range eastward is only 15 km away.
> So if the trajectory was westward, no way that " it would have been a
> phenomenal sight from Rome".
>
> even if the trajectory was in sight, can fear trigger the fall of
> Rome? These people were educated, they knew about comets and
> eclipses, they were used to natural disasters, frequent floods and
> earthquakes, volcanic eruption (remember Pompei!). A 100 m crater has
> negligible climatic effect.
>
> If the event was so phenomenal how come that there is no historical
> record (again compare to Pompei)??? We are not talking about a remote
> place in Homeric time.
> All this scenario is mere nonsense in terms of history.
>
> But the biggest trouble is that the Sirente "crater" lacks to fulfill
> any of the criteria for asteroid impact, despite careful search by
> Ormo et al: no evidence of shock or fused material, not a single
> extraterrestrial crumb found (just Ni free "rust"), no real ejecta
> layer (just a 10 m wide 1-2 m high rim of reworked soil and sediment,
> which is quite small for a 100 m wide crater!), no geophysical
> anomaly, no nothing, just a circular pond and a bunch of meter sized
> depressions... A reasonable explanation for all these structures,
> knowing that the place has been frequented for many centuries by
> millions of cattle looking for water, rare in these calcareous
> ranges, is that the shepherds simply dig them as a reservoir or wells.
> --
> Pierre
>
Received on Sun 09 Feb 2003 04:57:12 PM PST