[meteorite-list] Finding meteorite impacts in Aboriginal oral tradition

From: Shawn Alan <shawnalan_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2015 17:53:52 -0700
Message-ID: <20150305175352.e8713c95af9984a493c5db01816d4c10.ec32118cea.wbe_at_email22.secureserver.net>

Hello Listers,

Heres a good read :)

Enjoy

Shawn Alan
IMCA 1633
ebay store http://www.ebay.com/sch/imca1633ny/m.html
Website http://meteoritefalls.com


Finding meteorite impacts in Aboriginal oral tradition

IMAGINE going about your normal day when a brilliant light races across
the sky. It explodes, showering the ground with small stones and sending
a shock wave across the land. The accompanying boom is deafening and
leaves people running and screaming.

This was the description of an incident that occurred over the skies of
Chelyabinsk, Russia on February 15, 2013, one of the best recorded
meteoritic events in history. This airburst was photographed and videoed
by many people so we have a good record of what occurred, which helped
explain the nature of the event.

But how do we find out about much older events when modern recordings
were not available?

A century before Chelyabinsk, a similar event occurred on July 30, 1908,
over the remote Siberian forest near Tunguska.

That explosion was even more powerful, flattening 80 million trees over
an area of 2,000 square kilometres and sending a shock wave around the
Earth - twice. It was 19 years before scientists reached the Tunguska
site to study the effects of the blast.

The apparent lack of a meteorite fuelled speculation about how it
formed, from sober suggestions of an exploding comet to more outlandish
claims of mini-black holes and crashed alien spacecraft (research
confirms it was an exploding meteorite).

Meteoric events in Indigenous oral tradition

In 1926, the ethnographer Innokenty Suslov interviewed the local
Indigenous Evenk people, who still vividly remembered the Tunguska
airburst.

At the time, a great feud persisted among Evenki clans. One clan called
upon a shaman named Magankan to destroy their enemy. On the morning of
July 30th, 1908, Magankan sent Agdy, the god of thunder, to demonstrate
his power.

Many Indigenous cultures attribute meteoritic events to the power of sky
beings. The Wardaman people of northern Australia tell of Utdjungon, a
being who lives in the Coalsack nebula by the Southern Cross.

He will cast a fiery star to the Earth if laws and traditions are not
followed. The falling star will cause the earth to shake and the trees
to topple.

Like the Evenki, it seems the Wardaman have faced Utdjungon's wrath
before.

The Luritja people of Central Australia also tell of an object that fell
to Earth as punishment for breaking sacred law. And we can still see the
scars of this event today.

source:
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/finding-meteorite-impacts-aboriginal-oral-traditio/2563028/
Received on Thu 05 Mar 2015 07:53:52 PM PST