Diamonds tell story of comet that killed the cave men

I have to say this would be a great thing and put a damper on all the end of the world if something hits movement. If early humans were able to deal with that and still come out of it the way we have. I imagine a great portion of humans would be able to survive with the technology and food storage practices we have now.

Great article though

This is an Interesting Theory.

It seems we have progressed due to relative calm on earth the last 10,000 years. One event like this could stall humanity, or set it back for hundreds if not thousands of years.

75,000 years ago a volcano nearly wiped out humanity, now we read there may have been a Meteor that brought the northern hemisphere to its knees only 12,000 years ago....we live on the edge of a Razor.

The genetics don't match the theory.

While it's interesting, there's not much else that supports the idea.

The human population didn't "crash" then (it had two other times when it crashed, though...but that wasn't one of them) and there's no worldwide charcoal layer or other indications.

I'm predicting that this theory will get a hearing and then will die because it's not confirmed and the evidence runs contrary to the idea.

Just saw something last night on the "Tunguska Event"...History channel I think...
Very interesting stuff, and more than one theory attached too, which adds to the mystery and make you think.

Couple of points here...first, that I heard about this on the CBC the other day and the science sounded good. I'll look for further info to post.

Secondly, and more importantly, the post heading is wrong. We are not talking about 'cave men' here. We are talking about anatomically modern humans, dubbed 'paleoindians' by those who research them. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers and are pretty much identified by the location of their campsites (often found on the shorelines of archaic lakes such as Lake Iroquois...post glacial precursor of Lake Ontario), and by the design of their stone tools. Their projectile points (arrowheads) are known for their distinctive lanceolate shape with fluted sides. They were the mammoth hunters.

They were not wiped out either, as they are recognised as the precursers of the modern-day Anishnaabe people.

[edit on 21-5-2007 by JohnnyCanuck]

If it was intentional we wouldn't be here to talk about it, we'd be hunting and gathering fruit...

Originally posted by ShiftTrio
I have to say this would be a great thing and put a damper on all the end of the world if something hits movement.

Not exactly, this is one of those cases where size (and velocity) matters.

Using the Earth Impact Effects Program you can see that a 10Km meteor (not a comet) can do some real damage.

And one thing that we usually forget is what the meteor/comet brings. What could be the effect of comet made of a combustible gas exploding in the atmosphere? Or a radioactive meteor?

OK, I promised to deliver the science on this one, and here are abstracts of the papers to be delivered to the American Geophysical Union in December. This is all still in question, and you can bet there will be some serious peer review, but the abstracts look strong. It will definitely be interesting to see this one play out in the journals. Several more abstracts are available on the same site, which provide further support for the proposal. And while it didn't 'kill the cave men', it may well have had a significant effect on human settlement in the early Holocene.

New Insights Into Extraterrestrial Impacts, Younger Dryas Cooling, Mass Extinction, and the Clovis People I
Evidence for a Massive Extraterrestrial Airburst over North America 12.9 ka Ago

A carbon-rich black layer commonly referred to as a black mat, with a basal age of approximately 12.9 ka, has been identified at over 50 sites across North America1. The age of the base of the black mat coincides with the abrupt onset of Younger Dryas cooling and megafaunal extinctions in North America. In situ bones of extinct mammals, including mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, horses, camels, many smaller mammals and birds, and Clovis tool assemblages occur below the black mat but not within or above it. In this paper, we provide evidence for an ejecta layer at the base of the black mat from an extraterrestrial impact event 12.9 ka ago. ...This layer also extends throughout the rims of at least fifteen Carolina Bays, unique, elliptical, oriented lakes and wetlands scattered across the Atlantic Coastal Plain whose major axes point towards the Great Lakes and Canada.
www.agu.org...

Anyone who has ever read my posts knows that I am a believer in Atlantis and now reading that there is possibly another catastrophic event happening around the same timeline that Atlantis sunk into the ocean, well that is more than just a coincidence don’t you think?

They found microscopic diamonds in several locations ranging from Europe, Canada and North America. What is to say that one of these fragments didn’t hit the ocean and was big enough to send a massive tsunami hurling right at Atlantis? Sending Atlantis to it’s watery death.

I know that there are a lot of people here that do not believe in Atlantis, but I just had to put my 2 cents in.

Thanks for reading this.

I will be following this new find, very interesting indeed!

Originally posted by stumason
Round about the same time as the end of the last Ice Age......

Hmm... the mind boggles.

That's exactly what i was thinking.

It would be very strange that this event would happen at almost the same time that the Ice Age ended.

The problem is that after the initial blast, such a comet would have blanketed the entire Earth with dust, hence hushering the Earth into a new Ice Age, yet it did the oposite?....

I would take this theory with a grain of salt for now.

The problem is that after the initial blast, such a comet would have blanketed the entire Earth with dust, hence hushering the Earth into a new Ice Age, yet it did the oposite?....

umm, you did read the article right?

Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia.