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New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection by dendrochronologist Mike Baillie of Queen’s University, Belfast, Ireland. Book Review by Laura Knight-Jadczyk I just finished reading this one and all I can say is: Wow! This was an intense book! Not a long one, either – just 208 pages including appendices. It’s tight and economical with no wasted words or idle rambling around. Every example and temporary diversion is crucial to the central argument which is – brace yourself for this one – Mike Baillie (yeah, a real scientist and not a crackpot), is saying that the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history, said to have killed possibly two thirds of the entire population of Europe, not to mention millions all over the planet, probably wasn’t Bubonic Plague but was rather Death By Comet(s)! Oh yeah! That’s far out, isn’t it? Maybe not. Baillie has the scientific evidence to support his theory and his evidence actually supports – and is supported by – what the people of the time were saying: earthquakes, comets, rains of death and fire, corrupted atmosphere, and death on a scale that is almost unimaginable. Most people nowadays are not really aware of what happened just 660 years ago. (Hmmm… the inquiring mind immediately wonders what might happen when we hit 666 years after?! That would be 2012…) Anyway, China, where the Black Death is said to have originated, lost around half of its entire population (going from around 123 million to around 65 million). Recent research into European death tolls also suggest a figure of 45% to 50% of the total European population dying during a four-year period though the figure fluctuated from place to place (which is a problem as we will see). In Mediterranean Europe and Italy, the South of France and Spain, where the plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 70% to 75% of the total population. (In the USA today, that would be equivalent to reducing the population from its current 300 million total to 75 million in less than four years. That would also amount to having to bury or dispose of around 225 million corpses!) In Germany and England it was probably closer to 20%. Northeastern Germany, Bohemia, Poland and Hungary are believed to have suffered less for some reason (and there are a few theories which are not entirely satisfactory). There are no estimates available for Russia or the Balkans so it seems that they may have suffered little, if at all. Africa lost approximately 1/8th of its population (from around 80 million to 70 million). (These figures actually highlight one of the problems that Baillie brings up: the variability of death rates according to location.) Whatever the death rate in any given location, the bottom line is that the Black Death produced the largest death toll from any known pandemic in recorded history and, as Baillie points out, nobody really knows what it was! Oh, of course, for a very long time everybody just “knew” it was Bubonic plague, so how is it that Baillie questions this well-established fact? He’s not the only one. In 1984, Graham Twigg published The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal, where he argued that the climate and ecology of Europe and particularly England made it nearly impossible for rats and fleas to have transmitted bubonic plague and that it would have been nearly impossible for Yersinia pestis to have been the causative agent of the plague, let alone its explosive spread across Europe during the 14th century. Twigg also demolishes the common theory of entirely pneumonic spread. He proposes, based on his examination of the evidence and symptoms, that the Black Death may actually have been an epidemic of pulmonary anthrax caused by Bacillus anthracis. Another unhappy camper in the standard model is Gunnar Karlsson who, in 2000, pointed out that the Black Death killed between half and two-thirds of the population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this time. (The History of Iceland by Gunnar Karlsson) Baillie sums up the problem as follows: The Black Death of 1347 was believed to be the third great outbreak of bubonic plague; a plague that is traditionally spread by rats and fleas. The previous instances were the Plague of Athens in 430 BC and the plague at the time of Justinian which arrived into Constantinople in AD 542. The Plague of Athens was described by Thucydides, while the Justinian plague was described by Procopius, among others. The plague is supposed to have originated in Central Asia, or somewhere in Africa, where plague is endemic in some rodent populations. It is assumed that some environmental stimulus caused infected rodents to leave their normal habitats and infect rat populations, and ultimately human populations, in areas where there was no natural immunity. The mechanism of transfer is believed to have been infected fleas leaving the bodies of dead rats and moving to human hosts who were in turn infected by the feeding fleas. It is believed that trade routes brought the disease to the Black Sea region and from there to the central Mediterranean by late 1347. It was then introduced into Europe through northern Italy and southern France. It immediately started killing people in large numbers spreading overland at about 1.5 km per day. Between January and the summer to autumn of 1348 it had spread as far as the British Isles, and by 1350 to Scandinavia and eventually even Iceland. The spread seems to have curled up through France, across Belgium into Germany and on into central southern Europe. This first wave burned itself out by 1351, though there was a second wave in 1361. It is generally believed that the plague hit an already weakened population in Europe. At its most basic, the problem is with those rats and fleas. For the conventional wisdom to work there have to be hosts of infected rats and they have to be moving at alarming speed – you would almost have to imagine infected rats scuttling every onward (mostly northward) delivering, as they died, loads of infected fleas. The snags with this scenario are legion. For example, there are no descriptions of dead rats lying everywhere (this is explained by suggesting that either the rats were indoors, or people were so used to dead rats that they were not worth mentioning; though if they were indoors how did they travel so fast?) It did not seem to matter whether you were a rural shepherd or cleric or a town dweller, both were infected. Yet strangely with this very infectious disease some cities across Europe were spared. Moreover, these rats must have been happy to move to cool northern areas even though bubonic plague is a disease that requires relatively warm temperatures. Then, when there are water barriers, these rats board ships to keep the momentum going. (Baillie) Benedictow, an advocate of the rats and fleas scenarios quoted by Baillie, tells us about these amazing critters: The Black Death’s strategic genius made also another masterstroke that greatly increased the pace of its conquest of the Iberian peninsula. Shortly after its multiple invasions of important urban centres along the coast of the Kingdom of Aragon, it performed a remarkable metastatic leap and arrived triumphantly in the town of Santiago de Compostela in the very opposite, north-westernmost corner of the Iberian Peninsula. (Benedictow, O. J. 2004 The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History. The Boydell press, Woodbridge.) In 2001, epidemiologists Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan from Liverpool University proposed the theory that the Black Death might have been caused by an Ebola-like virus, not a bacterium. Their research and findings are thoroughly documented in Biology of Plagues. More recently the researchers have published computer modeling demonstrating how the Black Death has made around 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV. (Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer by Susan Scott, Christopher Duncan and Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations by Susan Scott, Christopher J. Duncan) In a similar vein, historian Norman F. Cantor, in his 2001 book In the Wake of the Plague, suggests the Black Death might have been a combination of pandemics including a form of anthrax and a cattle murrain. He cites many forms of evidence including: reported disease symptoms not in keeping with the known effects of either bubonic or pneumonic plague, the discovery of anthrax spores in a plague pit in Scotland, and the fact that meat from infected cattle was known to have been sold in many rural English areas prior to the onset of the plague. Samuel K. Cohn, quoted extensively by Baillie also rebutted the theory (and that’s really all it is, and a weak theory at that!) that the Black Death was bubonic plague. In the Encyclopedia of Population, he points to five major weaknesses in this theory: - very different transmission speeds – the Black Death was reported to have spread 385 km in 91 days in 664, compared to 12-15 km a year for the modern Bubonic Plague, which has the assistance of trains and cars – difficulties with the attempt to explain the rapid spread of the Black Death by arguing that it was spread by the rare pneumonic form of the disease – in fact this form killed less than 0.3% of the infected population in its worst outbreak in Manchuria in 1911 – different seasonality – the modern plague can only be sustained at temperatures between 50 and 78 °F (10 and 26 °C) and requires high humidity, while the Black Death occurred even in Norway in the middle of the winter and in the Mediterranean in the middle of hot dry summers – very different death rates – in several places (including Florence in 1348) over 75% of the population appears to have died; in contrast the highest mortality for the modern Bubonic Plague was 3% in Mumbai in 1903 – the cycles and trends of infection were very different between the diseases – humans did not develop resistance to the modern disease, but resistance to the Black Death rose sharply, so that eventually it became mainly a childhood disease Cohn also points out that while the identification of the disease as having buboes relies on the account of Boccaccio and others, they described buboes, abscesses, rashes and carbuncles occurring all over the body, while the modern disease rarely has more than one bubo, most commonly in the groin, and is not characterized by abscesses, rashes and carbuncles which is what Boccaccio described! The gist of Cohn’s argument is that whatever caused the Black Death, it was not bubonic plague. (See also: Samuel K. Cohn 2002, “The Black Death: End of the Paradigm.” and The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (European History Series) by David Herlihy and Samuel K., Jr. Cohn) When one begins to dig into the subject, we find that there was one study that claimed that tooth pulp tissue from a fourteenth-century plague cemetery in Montpellier tested positive for molecules associated with Y. pestis (bubonic plague). Similar findings were reported in a 2007 study, but other studies have not supported these results. In fact, in September of 2003, a team of researchers from Oxford University tested 121 teeth from sixty-six skeletons found in fourteenth-century mass graves. The remains showed no genetic trace of Y. pestis, and the researchers suspect that the Montpellier study was flawed[ What these studies do not address is the problem that the apparent means of infection or transmission varied widely, from human-to-human contact as in Iceland (rare for plague and cutaneous Bacillus anthracis) to infection in the absence of living or recently-dead humans, as in Sicily (which speaks against most viruses). To all the problems with the Bubonic Plague theory cited above, we have to add what the contemporary writers recorded. Philip Ziegler collected many of these items in his book The Black Death, though he dismisses them as “metaphor”. We’ll be looking at some of them in just a moment. Mike Baillie didn’t start out to write a book about cometary impacts being implicated in the great Pandemics of the past; he had just noticed some strange tree ring patterns that happened to coincide with this historical catastrophe and thought that, perhaps, there was some sort of environmental downturn that weakened the human population, making humanity susceptible to bacterial or viral death on a large scale. But, what he found was a dangling thread that, once he began to pull on it, unraveled the “accepted wisdom” about the Black Death and sent him off on a search that led to completely astonishing conclusions. As mentioned, the first clue was tree rings – that’s natural since Baillie is a dendrochronologist. He compared these tree rings to dated ice-core samples that had been analyzed and discovered a very strange thing: ammonium. There are, as it happens, four occasions in the last 1500 years where scientists can confidently link dated layers of ammonium in Greenland ice to high-energy atmospheric interactions with objects coming from space: 539, 626, 1014, and 1908 – the Tunguska event. In short, there is a connection between ammonium in the ice cores and extra-terrestrial bombardment of the surface of the earth. Now notice that the above statement is that there are four events that can be definitively linked with high-energy interactions; Baillie presents the research in this book showing that the exact same signature is present at the time of the Black Death in both the tree rings and in the ice cores, AND at other times of so-called “plague and pandemic”. As it happens, the ammonium signal in the ice-cores is directly connected to an earthquake that occurred on January 25th, 1348 – and Baillie discovers that there was a 14th century writer who wrote that the plague was a “corruption of the atmosphere” that came from this earthquake! How could a plague come from an earthquake, you ask? Baillie points out that we don’t always know if earthquakes are caused by tectonic movements; they could be cause by cometary explosions in the atmosphere or even impacts on the surface of the earth. In Rain of Iron and Ice by John Lewis, Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Co-director of the NASA/University of Arizona Space Engineering Research Center, and Commissioner of the Arizona State Space Commission, tells us that the earth is regularly hit by extraterrestrial objects and many of the impacting bodies explode in the atmosphere as happened in Tunguska, leaving no craters or long-lasting visible evidence of a body from space. But just because there is no long-lasting evidence doesn’t mean there is no significant effect on the planet and/or its inhabitants! These impacts or atmospheric explosions may produce earthquakes or tsunamis without any witnesses being aware of the cause. After all, the earth is 75% water and any eye-witness to such an event would very likely be fried and never tell about it, so we really have no way of knowing if all the earthquakes on our planet are tectonic in nature or not. Lewis points out: In an average year there is one atmospheric explosion with a yield of 100 kilotons or more. The large majority occur in such remote areas, or so high in the atmosphere, that they are not observed. Even if observed, the witnesses may see only a flash of light in the distance, or hear the ‘rumble of distant thunder’ coming from the open oceans. Thus even those that are observed are often not recognized. (Lewis, Rain of Iron and Ice) As Baillie points out, Lewis is talking about a “typical” year and it is obvious, from other studies, that not all years are equal – some are less typical than others! Baillie writes: As Lewis pointed out, we know from many strands of evidence broadly what the impact rate should be over time. The fact that impacts are not in the historical record [or not admitted or discussed by historians or archaeologists] is not because none happened. After all, there are those well-attested crater fields that were formed in the last few millennia in Estonia, Poland, Germany and Italy – which were not recorded historically; their existence was deduced from holes in the ground. So we know the recording mechanism is flawed! What needs to be added … is one key piece of intuitive thinking. Here is a quote from Lewis’ Scenario D: (In this scenario) In 1946 a 25,000-metric-ton achondritic fireball explodes at 4:00 AM local time at a height of 11km above Fergana, Uzbekistan. The 1-megaton blast damages buildings over an area several kilometers in diameter, searing the area with intense heat and setting thousands of fires. The fires burn out of control, killing 4,146. Over 20,000 residents are awakened by the brilliant flash of light and heat to find their city in flames. An ‘earthquake’ is reported by the survivors. Several metric tons of meteorite fragments are mixed in with the debris of 2000 burned-out and collapsed buildings, where they are indistinguishable from scorched and blackened fragments of structural brick and rock. (Lewis quoted by Baillie) The point of this is that there is almost no way to monitor whether or not any given disaster/catastrophe is definitively an impact as opposed to a violent earthquake. The result is that centuries could be passing, with numerous cometary impacts happening all the time, and no one suspecting the true hazards from space! As Baillie points out: there are many earthquakes recorded in history, but NO impacts! And yet, there is the evidence that the impacts HAVE happened – on the ground, and in the ice cores. And there is Tunguska. Reports of the Tunguska event tell us that the ground shook around the impact/explosion zone for a radius of about 900km. At the time of any larger impact event, the earthquake would be proportionally more severe. Any survivors of such an event who are far enough away to survive, would only have seen a flash, felt a tremor, and heard a loud rumbling noise. If they were too far away to see the flash, or were indoors, they would only report an earthquake. In short, what the work of Lewis brings to the table is the idea that some well-known historical earthquakes could very well have been impact events. Baillie mentions that one obvious prospect is the great Antioch earthquake of AD 526 which was described by John Malalas: …those caught in the earth beneath the buildings were incinerated and sparks of fire appeared out of the air and burned everyone they struck like lightning. The surface of the earth boiled and foundations of buildings were struck by thunderbolts thrown up by the earthquakes and were burned to ashes by fire… it was a tremendous and incredible marvel with fire belching out rain, rain falling from tremendous furnaces, flames dissolving into showers … as a result Antioch became desolate … in this terror up to 250,000 people perished. (Jeffreys, E., Jeffreys, M. and Scott, R. 1986, The Chronicle of John Malalas, Byzantina Australiensia, Australian Assoc. Byzantine Studies 4, Melbourne.) Baillie also points out that a series of such impacts/overhead explosions, would more adequately explain the longstanding problem of the end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 12th century BC. At that time, many – uncountable – major sites were destroyed and totally burned and it has all been blamed on those supernatural “Sea Peoples.” If that was the case, if it was invasion and conquest, there ought to at least be some evidence for that, like dead warriors or signs of warfare… but for the most part, that is not the case. There were almost no bodies found, and no precious objects except those that were hidden away as though someone expected to return for them, or didn’t have time to retrieve them. The people who fled (extra-terrestrial events often have precursor activities and warnings because a comet can be observed approaching for some time) were probably also killed in the act of fleeing and the result was total abandonment and total destruction of the cities in question. And the onset of Dark Ages. So, the possibility that many destructions of the past could have been related to impact events has never been taken seriously or tested and this could be a perilous error. The question that Baillie asks, but never really answers is: What was it that so successfully stopped people asking why there is a traditional and deeply ingrained fear of comets in the psyche of humanity? He points out that, yes, there are people outside of mainstream academia who ask these questions. But why, against all good common sense is this subject so widely and systematically ignored, marginalized and ridiculed? The odd thing is that, even though Baillie points out that many high-level scientists and government agencies are taking these things seriously (Lewis, for example), it is still ignored, marginalized and ridiculed to the general public via the mainstream media! Baillie writes: In case readers think this is simply rhetoric, this is as good a place as any to mention a forthcoming event. On 13 April 2029 an asteroid named Apophis will pass by the earth at a distance of less than 50,000km. If you’re alive at the time, and it is not cloudy, you’ll be able to see it pass with the naked eye. Apophis is more than 300m in diameter. If, as it passed the earth, it just happens to pass through a certain narrow window in space, then, in 2036 it will return and hit the earth (this narrow window is a point where the earth’s gravity would deflect the orbit of Apophis just enough to ensure an impact in 2036). If Apophis hits the earth the impact will be in the 3000-megaton class. It is entirely reasonable to state that such an impact, taking place anywhere on the planet, would collapse our current civilization and return the survivors, metaphorically speaking, to the Dark Ages (it is believed that in such an event globalised institutions, such as the financial and insurance markets would collapse, bringing down the entire interconnected monetary, trade and transport systems). Impacts from space are not fiction, and it seems highly likely that quite a number have taken place in the last few millennia (over and above the small crater-forming examples already mentioned). It is just that, for some reason, most people who study the past have chosen to avoid, or ignore, the issue. (Baillie) Along with the science, Baillie cites contemporary evidence – some of this evidence has been relegated to “myth” – from around the globe that indicate that the earth was, indeed, subjected to bombardment from space during the 14th century and that this may very well have been not only the cause of the 25 January 1348 earthquake, but also the cause of the Black Death. Baillie quotes a great selection of material from contemporary accounts including the work of Ziegler cited above: Droughts, floods, earthquakes, locusts, subterranean thunder, unheard of tempests, lightning, sheets of fire, hail stones of marvelous size, fire from heaven, stinking smoke, corrupted atmosphere, a vast rain of fire, masses of smoke. (Ziegler) Ziegler discounts entirely reports of a black comet seen before the arrival of the epidemic but records: heavy mists and clouds, falling stars, blasts of hot wind, a column of fire, a ball of fire, a violent earth tremor, in Italy a crescendo of calamity involving earthquakes, following which, the plague arrived. (Baillie) As it happens, in the 1340s there was a veritable rash of earthquakes. In Rosemary Horrox’s book, The Black Death, quoted by Baillie, we find that a contemporary writer in Padua reported that not only was there a great earthquake on 25 January 1348, but it was at the twenty-third hour. In the thirty-first year of Emperoro Lewis, around the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (25 January) there was an earthquake throughout Carinthia and Carniola which was so severe that everyone feared for their lives. There were repeated shocks, and on one night the earth shook 20 times. Sixteen cities were destroyed and their inhabitants killed…. Thirty-six mountain fortresses and their in habitants were destroyed and it was calculated that more than 40,000 men were swallowed up or overwhelmed. (The author goes on to say that he received information from “a letter of the house of Friesach to the provincial prior of Germany): It says in the same letter that in this year [1348] fire falling from heaven consumed the land of the Turks for 16 days; that for a few days it rained toads and snakes, by which many men were killed: that a pestilence has gathered strength in many parts of the world. (Horrox) From Samuel Cohn’s book: … a dragon at Jerusalem like that of Saint George that devoured all that crossed its path …. A city of 40,000 … totally demolished by the fall from heaven of a great quantity of worms, big as a fist with eight legs, which killed all by their stench and poisonous vapours. (Cohn) A story by the Dominican friar Bartolomeo: … massive rains of worms and serpents in parts of China, which devoured large numbers of people. Also in those parts fire rained from Heaven in the form of snow (ash), which burnt mountains, the land, and men. And from this fire arose a pestilential smoke that killed all who smelt it within twelve hours, as well as those who only saw the poison of that pestilential smoke. (Cohn) Cohn writes: Nor were such stories merely the introductory grist of naïve merchants and possibly crazed friars … [even] … Petrarch’s closes friend, Louis Sanctus, before embarking on his careful reporting of the plague… claimed that in September floods of frogs and serpents throughout India had presaged the coming to Europe in January of the three pestilential Genoese galleys… [even] … the English chronicler Henry Knighton … [reported how] … at Naples the whole city was destroyed by earthquake and tempest. Numerous chroniclers reported earthquakes around the world, which prefigured the unprecedented plague. Most narrowed the event to Vespers, 25 January 1348. Of these earthquakes that “destroyed many cities, towns, churches, monasteries, towers, along with their people and beasts of burden, the worst hit was Villach in southern Austria. Chroniclers in Italy, Germany, Austria, Slavonia, and Poland said it was totally submerged by the quake with one in 10 surviving. (Cohn) A continental text dated Sunday 27 April 1348 states: They say that in the three months from 25 January [1348] to the present day, a total of 62,000 bodies were buried in Avignon. (Horrox) A German treatise unearthed by Horrox says: Insofar as the mortality arose from natural causes its immediate cause was a corrupt and poisonous earthy exhalation, which infected the air in various parts of the world… I say it was the vapour and corrupted air which has been vented – or so to speak purged – in the earthquake that occurred on St. Paul’s day [1348], along with the corrupted air vented in other earthquakes and eruptions, which has infected the air above the earth and killed people in various parts of the world. (Horrox) As Baillie notes, if this oft-cited earthquake was, in reality, the result of cometary impacts then the corrupted air could be from one or two causes: high-energy chemical transformations in the atmosphere or outgassings from the earth itself. The German Historian, Hecker, informs us: On the island of Cyprus, the plague from the East had already broken out; when an earthquake shook the foundations of the island, and was accompanied by so frightful a hurricane, that the inhabitants… fled in dismay… The sea overflowed… Before the earthquake, a pestiferous wind spread so poisonous an odour that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies. … and as at that time natural occurrences were transformed into miracles, it was reported that a fiery meteor, which descended on the earth far in the East, had destroyed everything within a circumference of more than a hundred leagues, infecting the air far and wide. (Cohn) Jon Arrizabalaga compiled a selection of writings in an attempt to understand what educated people were saying about the Black Death while it was happening. Regarding the terms used by doctors and other medical people in 1348 to describe the plague, he writes: One… Jacme d’Agramaont, discussed it in terms of an “epidemic or pestilence and mortalities of people” which threatened Lerida from “some parts and regions neighbouring to us” … Agramont said nothing concerning the term epidemia, but he extensively developed what he meant by pestilencia. He gave this latter term a very peculiar etymology, in accordance with a from of knowledge established by Isidore of Seville (570=636) in his Etymologiae, which came to be widely accepted throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. He split the term pestilencia up into three syllables, each having a particular meaning: pes = tempesta: ‘storm, tempest'; te = ‘temps, time’, lencia = clardat: ‘brightness, light'; hence, he concluded, the pestilencia was ‘the time of tempest caused by light from the stars.’ As it happens, Isidore of Seville lived not long after another period of cometary bombardment over Europe which is also evident in the tree ring and ice core studies. On August 17, 1999, the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau published an article by Robert S. Boyd entitled: Comets may have caused Earth’s great empires to fall which included the following: Analysis of tree rings shows that at in 540 AD in different parts of the world the climate changed. Temperatures dropped enough to hinder the growth of trees as widely dispersed as northern Europe, Siberia, western North America, and southern South America. A search of historical records and mythical stories pointed to a disastrous visitation from the sky during the same period, it is claimed. There was one reference to a “comet in Gaul so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire” in 540-41. According to legend, King Arthur died around this time, and Celtic myths associated with Arthur hinted at bright sky Gods and bolts of fire. In the 530s, an unusual meteor shower was recorded by both Mediterranean and Chinese observers. Meteors are caused by the fine dust from comets burning up in the atmosphere. Furthermore, a team of astronomers from Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland published research in 1990 which said the Earth would have been at risk from cometary bombardment between the years 400 and 600 AD. Famine followed the crop failures, and hard on its heels bubonic plague that swept across Europe in the mid-6th century. At this time, the Roman emperor Justinian was attempting to regenerate the decaying Roman empire. But the plan failed in 540 and was followed by the Dark Ages and the rise of Islam. There is a large body of material from that period which consistently points to a “corrupted atmosphere,” breathe the air and you die”, and somehow, the ocean was involved as well as earthquakes and comets and fireballs in the sky. A report of the Medical Faculty of Paris prepared in October 1348 says: Another possible cause of corruption, which needs to be borne in mind, is the escape of the rottenness trapped in the center of the earth as a result of earthquakes – something that has indeed recently occurred. (quoted by Baillie) In short, the French were aware of a series of earthquakes at the time that may have been caused by cometary impacts. One report of that period says that an earthquake lasted for six days and another claimed the period was ten days. Such events could also produce outgassing of all sorts of unpleasant chemicals which could kill. Consider the following: The Lake NYOS Gas Explosion, Cameroon 1986 Although a sudden outgassing of CO2 had occurred at Lake Monoun in 1984, killing 37 local residents, a similar threat from Lake Nyos was not anticipated. However, on August 21, 1986, a limnic eruption occurred at Lake Nyos which triggered the sudden release of about 1.6 million tonnes of CO2. The gas rushed down two nearby valleys, displacing all the air and suffocating up to 1,800 people within 20 km of the lake, mostly rural villagers, as well as 3,500 livestock. About 4,000 inhabitants fled the area, and many of these developed respiratory problems, burns, and paralysis as a result of the gases. It is not known what triggered the catastrophic outgassing. Most geologists suspect a landslide, but some believe that a small volcanic eruption may have occurred on the bed of the lake. It is believed that up to a cubic kilometre of gas was released. Because CO2 is denser than air, the gas flowed off the mountainous flank in which Lake Nyos rests and down two adjoining valleys in a layer tens of metres deep, displacing the air and suffocating all the people and animals before it could dissipate. The normally blue waters of the lake turned a deep red after the outgassing, due to iron-rich water from the deep rising to the surface and being oxidised by the air. The level of the lake dropped by about a metre, representing the volume of gas released. The outgassing probably also caused an overflow of the waters of the lake. Trees near the lake were knocked down. Hmmm… one wonders if similar events could be triggered by cometary impacts and if outgassing from oceans could be as dangerous and deadly? One also wonders, considering the fact that trees were “knocked down,” if this outgassing might not have been an impact event? Baillie takes us through the science with hard numbers and graphs and shows us how these things were spoken about plainly by those who experienced the Black Death but, for some reason, modern historians all think these remarks about rains of fire and death and air that could kill were all just metaphors for a horrible disease. In the end, it is the science that must win on this one because totally independent workers studying comets, tsunami, carbon dioxide, ice cores and tree rings all observe in their data something very strange happening globally around the time that the Black Death decimated the human population of the Earth. Baillie notes in his closing remarks, worth repeating here: It is increasingly evident that intellectually the world is divided into two. There are those who study the past, in the fields of history and archaeology, and see no evidence for any human populations ever having been affected by impacts from space. In diametric opposition to this stance there are those who study the objects that come close to, and sometimes collide with, this planet. Some serious members of this latter group have no doubt whatsoever that there must have been numerous devastating impacts in the last five millennia; the period of human civilization. And yet, nobody talks about it. There really is quite sufficient data presented in Baillie’s book to support the theory that the Black Death was due to an impact by Comet Debris – similar to the impacts on Jupiter by the fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy back in 1994. As to exactly how these deaths occurred, there are a number of possibilities: earthquakes, floods (tsunami), rains of fire, chemicals released by the high-energy explosions in the atmosphere, including ammonium and hydrogen cyanide, and possibly even comet born disease pathogens. If it has happened as often as Baillie suggests, it can happen again. And if, as we suspect, the Earth is slated for a bombardment in the not too distant future, it seems that there are more ways to die in such an event than just getting hit by a comet fragment. Dr Mike Baillie is a Professor Emeritus of Palaeoecology in the School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology at Queen’s University of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Baillie is a leading expert in dendrochronology, or dating by means of tree-rings. In the 1980s, he was instrumental in building a year-by-year chronology of tree-ring growth reaching 7,400 years into the past. Continue to Part Two: The Hazard to Civilization From Fireballs and Comets Related Articles: Posted in Catastrophism, Comets and Catastrophes, History, Science
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Novi pogled na Crnu Smrt: kozmička veza Recenzija knjige New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection, autora Mike Bailliea, dendrokronologa sa Sveučilišta Queen’s u Belfastu, Irska, od Laure Knight-Jadczyk. Upravo sam završila s čitanjem ove knjige i sve što mogu reći je: Vau! Ovo je bila intenzivna knjiga! Također nije duga – samo 208 stranica uključujući priloge. Sažeta i ekonomična bez suvišnih riječi ili lutanja uokolo. Svaki primjer i privremeno skretanje je od ključne važnosti za središnji argument koji – pripremite se za ovo – Mike Baillie (da, pravi znanstvenik i nije luđak), kaže da Crna Smrt, jedna od najsmrtonosnijih pandemija u ljudskoj povijesti, za koju se tvrdi da je moguće ubila dvije trećine od cijele populacije Europe, da ne spominjem milijune širom planeta, vjerojatno nije bila bubonska kuga nego prije Smrt Od Kometa! O da! To je izvan okvira, zar ne? Možda i nije. Baillie ima znanstveni dokaz kojim podupire svoju teoriju i njegov dokaz zapravo podržava – i podržan je – od onog što su ljudi tog vremena govorili: potresi, kometi, kiše smrti i vatre, zagađena atmosfera i smrt gotovo nezamislivih razmjera. Većina ljudi današnjice nisu zaista svjesni što se dogodilo prije samo 660 godina. (Hmmm… istraživački um se istog trenutka pita što bi se moglo dogoditi 666 godina kasnije?! To bi bila 2012…) Kako god, Kina, odakle je Crna Smrt navodno potekla, je izgubila oko pola svog ukupnog stanovništva (od oko 123 milijuna na oko 65 milijuna). Nedavno istraživanje o europskim smrtnim gubicima također predlaže brojku od 45% do 50% ukupnog stanovništva Europe koje umire tijekom četverogodišnjeg perioda, iako brojka varira od mjesta do mjesta (što je problem kao što ćemo vidjeti). U mediteranskoj Europi i Italiji, jugu Francuske i Španjolskoj, gdje se kuga kretala oko četiri godine u nizu, bilo je vjerojatno blizu 70% do 75% gubitaka od ukupnog stanovništva. (U SAD-u danas, to bi bilo ekvivalentno smanjivanju stanovništva od trenutnih 300 milijuna ukupno na 75 milijuna u manje od četiri godine. To bi također dovelo do toga da bi se moralo pokopati ili odložiti oko 225 milijuna leševa!) U Njemačkoj i Engleskoj bilo je vjerojatno blizu 20%. Za sjevernoistočnu Njemačku, Bohemiju (današnja Češka, op. prev.), Poljsku i Mađarsku se vjeruje da su pretrpjele manje zbog nekog razloga (i tu ima nekoliko teorija koje nisu potpuno zadovoljavajuće). Nema dostupnih procjena za Rusiju ili Balkan, tako da se čini da su možda pretrpjele malo, ako uopće išta. Afrika je izgubila približno osminu svog stanovništva (od oko 80 milijuna palo je na 70 milijuna). (Ove brojke zapravo osvjetljavaju jedan od problema koje Baillie iznosi: varijabilnost razmjera smrti prema lokaciji.) Koji god da je razmjer smrti u bilo kojoj danoj lokaciji, glavna poanta jest da je Crna Smrt proizvela najveći smrtni gubitak od bilo koje znane pandemije u zabilježenoj povijesti, tekao što Billie ističe, nitko zapravo ne zna što je ona bila! Oh, naravno, vrlo dugo vremena svi su jednostavno “znali” da je to bila bubonska kuga, pa kako to da Baillie propituje ovu dobro utvrđenu činjenicu? On nije jedini. 1984. godine, Graham Twigg je objavio The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal, gdje je argumentirao da su klima i ekologija Europe, i posebno Engleske, učinile gotovo da je bilo nemoguće da štakori i buhe prenose bubonsku kugu, i da bi bilo gotovo nemoguće za Yersiniu pestis da bude uzročnik kuge, a kamoli njezinog eksplozivnog širenja preko Europe tijekom 14. stoljeća. Twigg također uništava uobičajenu teoriju o potpuno plućnom širenju. On predlaže, utemeljeno na njegovom pregledu dokaza i simptoma, da je Crna Smrt mogla zapravo biti epidemija plućnog antraksa, uzrokovanog preko Bacillus anthracisa. Još jedan nezadovoljan kamper u standardnom modelu je Gunnar Karlsson, koji je u 2000. godine istaknuo da je Crna Smrt ubila između pola i dvije trećine stanovništva Islanda, iako nije bilo štakora u Islandu u to vrijeme. (The History of Iceland Gunnara Karlssona). Baillie sažima problem kako slijedi: Za Crnu Smrt 1347. godine se vjerovalo da je bila treće veliko izbijanje bubonske kuge; kuge koja se tradicionalno širi preko štakora i buha. Prijašnji slučajevi bile su atenska kuga, 430. godine pr. Kr., i kuga u vrijeme Justinijana koja je stigla u Konstantinopol 542. godine. Atensku kugu je opisao Thucydides, dok je Justinijansku kugu opisao Procopius, između ostalih. Kuga je navodno nastala u centralnoj Aziji ili negdje u Africi, gdje je kuga endemična u nekim populacijama glodavaca. Pretpostavlja se da je neki okolišni poticaj uzrokovao da zaraženi glodavci napuste svoja normalna staništa i zaraze populacije štakora, te na kraju ljudsko stanovništvo u područjima gdje nije bilo prirodnog imuniteta. Mehanizam prijenosa, vjeruje se, bile su zaražene buhe koje napuštaju tijela mrtvih štakora i kreću se prema ljudskim domaćinima koji su naizmjence zaraženi preko hranjenja buha. Vjeruje se da su trgovački pravci donijeli bolest u regiju Crnog mora, a od tamo do centralnog Mediterana u kasnijem dijelu 1347. godine. Tada je bila uvedena u Europu kroz sjevernu Italiju i južnu Francusku. Odmah je počela ubijati ljude u velikim brojevima, šireći se preko zemlje brzinom od oko 1.5 km na dan. Između siječnja i ljeta, pa do jeseni 1348. godine, proširila se daleko sve do britanskog otočja, a do 1350. godine, do Skandinavije, i na kraju čak i do Islanda. Čini se da se širenje sklupčalo kroz Francusku, preko Belgije u Njemačku i dalje u centralnu južnu Europu. Ovaj prvi val je istrošio sam sebe do 1351. godine, iako je tamo bio i drugi val 1361. godine. Općenito se vjeruje da je kuga pogodila već oslabljeno stanovništvo Europe. U samom temelju, problem je u tim štakorima i buhama. Da bi konvencionalna mudrost funkcionirala tu mora biti mnoštvo zaraženih štakora i oni se moraju kretati alarmantnom brzinom – skoro pa bi morali zamisliti zaražene štakore kako jure naprijed (većinom prema sjeveru) dostavljajući, nakon njihove smrti, hrpe zaraženih buha. Mnoštvo je prepreka s ovim scenarijem. Na primjer, nema opisa mrtvih štakora koji leže posvuda (ovo je objašnjeno prijedlogom – ili su štakori bili u zatvorenom prostoru, ili su se ljudi toliko navikli na mrtve štakore da nisu bili vrijedni spomena; međutim ako su bili u zatvorenom kako su onda putovali tako brzo?). Nije se činilo bitnim jesi li seoski pastir ili svećenik ili građanin, svi su bili zaraženi. Ipak, začuđujuće, s ovom jako zaraznom bolesti neki gradovi diljem Europe su bili pošteđeni. Osim toga, ti štakori su morali biti sretni da se presele u hladna sjeverna područja jer je bubonska kuga bolest koja zahtijeva relativno tople temperature. Tada, kada naiđu na vodene prepreke, ti štakori se ukrcaju na brodove da održe brzinu kretanja. (Baillie) Benedictow, zagovornik scenarija štakora i buha, citiran od Bailliea, nam govori o ovim nevjerojatnim stvorenjima: Strateški genij Crne Smrti je također učinio još jedan majstorski potez koji je uvelike pojačao brzinu njezinog osvajanja pirenejskog poluotoka. Ubrzo nakon njezine višestruke invazije na važne gradske centre uzduž obale Kraljevstva Aragonije, izvršila je izvanredan metastatski skok i stigla trijumfalno u grad Santiago de Compostela u prilično suprotan, najsjeverozapadniji kut pirenejskog poluotoka. (Benedictow, O.J., The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2004.) 2001. godine, epidemiolozi Susan Scott i Christopher Duncan sa Sveučilišta Liverpool su predložili teoriju da je Crnu Smrt mogao uzrokovati virus nalik Eboli, a ne bakterija. Njihovo istraživanje i pronalasci su temeljito dokumentirani u knjizi Biologija pošasti. U novije vrijeme, istraživači su objavili računalno modeliranje koje demonstrira kako je Crna Smrt učinila oko 10% Europljana otpornima na HIV. (Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer autora Susan Scott i Christophera Duncana, te Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations autora Susan Scott i Christophera J. Duncana) Na sličan način, povjesničar Norman F. Cantor, u svojoj knjizi iz 2001. godine, In the Wake of the Plague, predlaže da je Crna Smrt možda bila kombinacija pandemija, uključujući oblik antraksa i goveđe kuge. On citira mnoge oblike dokaza uključujući: prijavljeni simptomi bolesti nisu u skladu s poznatim učincima bilo bubonske ili plućne kuge, otkriće spora antraksa u kužnoj jami u Škotskoj i činjenica da je bilo znano da je meso zaražene stoke bilo prodavano u mnogim ruralnim engleskim područjima prije nastupanja kuge. Samuel K. Cohn, citiran ekstenzivno od Bailliea je također pobio teoriju (a to je zaista sve što i je, i još k tome slaba teorija!) da je Crna Smrt bila bubonska kuga. U Encyclopedia of Population, on ukazuje na pet velikih slabosti u ovoj teoriji: - vrlo različite brzine prijenosa – za Crnu Smrt je izviješteno da se proširila 385 km u 91 dan 664. godine, u usporedbi s 12-15 km godišnje za modernu bubonsku kugu, koja ima asistenciju vlakova i automobila - teškoće s pokušajem objašnjavanja brzog širenja Crne Smrti s uvjeravanjem da se proširila preko rijetkog plućnog oblika bolesti – u stvari ovaj oblik je ubio manje od 0.3% zaraženog stanovništva u svojem najgorem izbijanju u Mandžuriji 1911. godine - različita sezonalnost – moderna kuga jedino može biti održana pri temperaturama između 50 i 78 °F (10 i 26 °C) i zahtijeva visoku vlažnost, dok se Crna Smrt dogodila čak i u Norveškoj usred zime, te na Mediteranu usred vrućih, suhih ljeta - vrlo različite stope smrtnosti – u nekoliko mjesta (uključujući Firencu 1348. godine) čini se da je više od 75% stanovništva umrlo; što je u suprotnosti s najvećom smrtnosti za modernu bubonsku kugu, koja je bila 3% u Mumbaiu 1903. godine - ciklusi i trendovi zaraze su vrlo različiti među bolestima – ljudi nisu razvili otpornost prema modernoj bolesti, ali otpornost na Crnu Smrt je naglo porasla, tako da je na kraju postala uglavnom bolest iz djetinjstva Cohn također ističe da, dok se identifikacija bolesti kao imati bubone oslanja na iskaz Boccaccia i drugih, oni su opisali bubone, apscese, osipe i čireve koji se pojavljuju po cijelom tijelu, dok moderna bolest rijetko ima više od jednog bubona, najčešće u preponi, i nije okarakterizirana po apscesima, osipima i čirevima kako je Boccaccio opisao! Suština Cohnovog argumenta jest da što god je uzrokovalo Crnu Smrt, to nije bila bubonska kuga. (Vidi također: Samuel K. Cohn, The Black Death: End of the Paradigm, 2002., i The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (European History Series) Davida Herlihya i Samuela K., Jr. Cohna) Kada se počne kopati po temi, pronalazimo da je tu bila jedna studija koja je tvrdila da je tkivo zubne pulpe iz kužnog groblja, iz četrnaestog stoljeća u Montpellieru, testirano pozitivno na molekule povezane s Y. pestis (bubonska kuga). Slični pronalasci su objavljeni u studiji iz 2007. godine, ali druge studije nisu podržale ove rezultate. U stvari, u rujnu 2003. godine, tim istraživača sa Sveučilišta Oxford je testirao 121 zub sa 66 kostura pronađenih u masovnim grobnicama iz četrnaestog stoljeća. Ostaci nisu pokazali genetske tragove Y. pestis, a istraživači sumnjaju da je montpellierska studija bila pogrešna. Na što ove studije ne upućuju je problem što su očigledni načini zaraze ili prijenosa varirali naširoko, preko kontakta između ljudi kao u Islandu (što je rijetko za kugu i kožni Bacillus anthracis), pa do zaraze u odsutnosti živućih ili nedavno umrlih ljudi, kao u Siciliji (što govori protiv većine virusa). Svim problemima s teorijom bubonske kuge koji su iznad citirani, moramo dodati ono što su tadašnji pisci zabilježili. Philip Ziegler je skupio mnogo tih podataka u knjizi The Black Death, premda ih on odbacuje kao “metaforu”. Pogledat ćemo u neke od njih za koji trenutak. Mike Baillie nije započeo s pisanjem knjige o udarima kometa kao da su oni upleteni u velike pandemije prošlosti; on je samo uočio neke čudne uzorke u godovima drveća, koji su se podudarali s tom povijesnom katastrofom, i pomislio da se tamo možda dogodila neka vrsta okolišnog pada koji je oslabio ljudsko stanovništvo, čineći čovječanstvo podložnim bakterijskoj i virusnoj smrti u velikim razmjerima. No, ono što je pronašao je bila nit koja, jednom kad ju je počeo povlačiti, je rasplela “prihvaćenu mudrost” o Crnoj Smrti i poslala ga u potragu koja ga je dovela do potpuno zadivljujućih zaključaka. Kao što je spomenuto, prvi trag su bili godovi drveća – što je prirodno jer je Baillie dendrokronolog. Usporedio je te godove s datiranim uzorcima jezgre leda, koji su bili analizirani, i otkrio vrlo čudnu stvar: amonijak. Tu su, kao što se dogodilo, četiri slučaja u zadnjih 1500 godina gdje znanstvenici mogu pouzdano povezati datirane naslage amonijaka u grenlandskom ledu s visoko-energetskim atmosferskim interakcijama s nadolazećim objektima iz svemira: 539., 626., 1014. i 1908. godine – Tunguska događaj. Ukratko, postoji poveznica između amonijaka u jezgrama leda i izvanzemaljskih bombardiranja površine Zemlje. Sada primijetite da se gore tvrdi da postoje četiri slučaja koja se definitivno mogu povezati s visoko-energetskim interakcijama; Baillie predstavlja istraživanje u ovoj knjizi prikazujući da je potpuno ista oznaka prisutna, u vrijeme Crne Smrti, u godovima drveća kao i u jezgrama leda, a TAKOĐER i u drugim vremenima takozvane “kuge i pandemije”. Dogodilo se da je signal amonijaka u jezgrama leda direktno povezan s potresom koji se dogodio 25. siječnja 1348. godine – i Baillie otkriva da je postojao pisac iz 14. stoljeća, koji je napisao da je kuga bila “zagađenje atmosfere” koje je došlo iz tog potresa! Kako bi kuga mogla doći iz potresa, pitate se? Baillie ističe da ne možemo uvijek znati jesu li potresi uzrokovani pomicanjem tektonskih ploča; oni bi mogli biti uzrokovani eksplozijama kometa u atmosferi ili čak udarima u površinu Zemlje. U knjizi Rain of Iron and Ice Johna Lewisa, profesora planetarnih znanosti u Lunarnom i Planetarnom Laboratoriju, jednog od direktora u Istraživačkom centru za svemirski inženjering NASA-e i Sveučilišta Arizona, te povjerenika državnog povjerenstva za svemir države Arizona, nam govori da je Zemlja redovito udarana izvanzemaljskim objektima i da mnoga nailazeća tijela eksplodiraju u atmosferi kao što se dogodilo u Tunguskoj, ne ostavljajući kratere ili dugotrajno vidljive dokaze o tijelu iz svemira. Ali samo zato što ne postoje dugotrajni dokazi ne znači da nema značajnog utjecaja na planet i/ili njegove stanovnike! Ovi udari ili atmosferske eksplozije mogu proizvesti potrese ili tsunamije bez ikakvih svjedoka koji bi bili svjesni uzroka. Uostalom, 75% Zemljine površine zauzima voda i bilo koji očevidac takvog događaja bi vrlo vjerojatno bio spržen i nikad ne bi progovorio o tome, tako da zaista nemamo saznanje o tome jesu li potresi na našem planetu tektonske prirode ili ne. Lewis ističe: U prosječnoj godini se događa jedna atmosferska eksplozija jačine 100 kilotona ili više. Velika većina se dogodi u tako udaljenim područjima ili toliko visoko u atmosferi da one nisu vidljive. Čak i ako su vidljive, svjedoci mogu vidjeti samo bljesak svjetla u daljini ili čuti ‘tutnjavu udaljenog groma’ koja dolazi s otvorenih oceana. Stoga, čak i te koje su vidljive, često nisu prepoznate. (Lewis, Rain of Iron and Ice) Kao što Baillie ističe, Lewis govori o “tipičnoj” godini i očito je, iz drugih studija, da nisu sve godine jednake – neke su manje tipične od drugih! Baillie piše: Kao što je Lewis istaknuo, općenito znamo iz mnogih struktura dokaza kakva bi učestalost udara trebala biti tijekom vremena. Činjenica da udari nisu u povijesnom zapisu [ili nisu priznati, ili se o njima ne raspravlja od strane povjesničara i arheologa] nije zbog toga što se nisu dogodili. Uostalom, postoje dobro provjerena polja kratera koja su se formirala u zadnjih nekoliko tisućljeća u Estoniji, Poljskoj, Njemačkoj i Italiji – koja nisu povijesno zabilježena; njihovo postojanje je utvrđeno iz rupa u tlu. Zato znamo da je mehanizam bilježenja pogrešan! Ono što treba dodati … je jedan ključni dio intuitivnog razmišljanja. Ovdje je citat iz Lewisovog Scenarija D: (U ovom scenariju) 1946. godine, 25000 metričkih tona teška akondritska vatrena kugla je eksplodirala u 04:00 sata po lokalnom vremenu na visini od 11 km iznad Fergane u Uzbekistanu. Eksplozija jačine 1 megaton je oštetila zgrade u području promjera nekoliko kilometara, sagorijevajući područje žestokom vrućinom i uzrokujući tisuće požara. Požari su izmaknuli kontroli, ubivši 4146 ljudi. Više od 20000 stanovnika je probudio blistavi bljesaksvjetlosti i vrućina te su zatekli svoj grad u plamenu. Preživjeli su izvijestili o ‘potresu’. Nekoliko metričkih tona fragmenata meteorita je pomiješano s ostacima 2000 izgorenih i urušenih zgrada, gdje se ne mogu raspoznati od spaljenih i pocrnjenih krhotina strukturne cigle i kamena. (Baillie citira Lewisa) Svrha ovoga je da gotovo ne postoji način nadziranja kojim bi se konačno zaključilo jest ili nije bilo koja dana nesreća/katastrofa udar ili, u suprotnom, nasilan potres. Rezultat je da stoljeća mogu proći, s brojnim udarima kometa koji se događaju cijelo vrijeme, a da nitko ne posumnja na istinske opasnosti iz svemira! Baillie ističe: postoje mnogi potresi koji su zabilježeni u povijesti, ali NE i udari! Ali ipak, postoje dokazi da se udari JESU dogodili – u tlu i u jezgrama leda. A tu je i Tunguska. Izvještaji o događaju u Tunguskoj nam govore da se tlo treslo oko zone udara/eksplozije u radijusu od oko 900 km. U trenutku bilo kojeg većeg udara, potres bi bio proporcionalno jači. Bilo koji preživjeli u takvom događaju, koji su dovoljno daleko udaljeni da prežive, bi samo vidjeli bljesak, osjetili podrhtavanje i čuli glasan tutnjajući zvuk. Ako su bili predaleko da vide bljesak, ili u zatvorenom prostoru, oni bi samo izvijestili o potresu. Ukratko, ono što Lewisov rad iznosi na vidjelo je ideja da su neki dobro poznati povijesni potresi mogli vrlo lako biti događaji udara. Baillie spominje da je jedan očiti primjer veliki potres u Antiohiji 526. godine, koji je opisao John Malalas: … oni koji su zarobljeni u zemlji pod zgradama su bili spaljeni i iskre vatre su se pojavile iz zraka i spalile sve koje su pogodile poput munje. Površina zemlje je kuhala, temelji zgrada su pogođeni udarima munja izbačenih iz potresa i vatrom su spaljeni do pepela… bilo je to strašno i nevjerojatno čudo s vatrenom kišom, kišom koja pada iz ogromnih peći, plamenovima koji se pretvaraju u pljuskove… što je za posljedicu Antiohiju učinilo opustošenom… u ovom užasu je do 250000 ljudi iščezlo. (Jeffreys, E., Jeffreys, M. i Scott, R., The Chronicle of John Malalas, Byzantina Australiensia, Australian Assoc. Byzantine Studies 4, Melbourne, 1986.) Baillie također naglašava da bi niz takvih udara/nadzemnih eksplozija kvalitetnije objasnio dugotrajni problem kraja brončanog doba na istočnom Mediteranu u 12. st. pr. U to vrijeme, mnogo -nebrojeno- većih lokacija je uništeno i potpuno spaljeno, i sva krivnja je prebačena na one natprirodne “Morske ljude”. Ako je to bio slučaj, ako je to bila invazija i osvajanje, tada bi trebalo biti barem nekakvih dokaza o tome, poput mrtvih ratnika ili znakova ratovanja… ali najvećim dijelom, to nije slučaj. Gotovo da nijedno tijelo tamo nije pronađeno, a ni vrijedni predmeti, osim onih koji su bili tako skriveni kao da je netko očekivao vratiti se po njih ili nije imao vremena uzeti ih natrag k sebi. Ljudi koji su pobjegli (izvanzemaljski događaji često imaju aktivnosti i upozorenja koje im prethode jer se neko vrijeme komet može promatrati dok se približava) su vjerojatno također bili ubijeni u činu bježanja, a rezultat je bio potpuno napuštanje i potpuno uništavanje dotičnih gradova. I nastupanje Mračnog doba. Dakle, mogućnost da su mnoga uništavanja u prošlosti mogla biti povezana s događajima udara nikada nisu bila uzeta ozbiljno, ili testirana, i ovo bi mogla biti opasna greška. Pitanje koje Baillie postavlja, ali nikada zaista ne odgovara je: Što je to bilo da je tako uspješno zaustavilo ljude da se pitaju zašto postoji tradicionalan i duboko ukorijenjen strah od kometa u psihi čovječanstva? Da, on naglašava da postoje ljudi izvan glavne struje u akademskoj zajednici koji postavljaju ova pitanja. Ali zašto je, protivno svakom zdravom razumu, ova tema tako naširoko i sustavno ignorirana, ograničavana i ismijavana? Neobična stvar je da, iako Baillie ističe da mnogi visokopozicionirani znanstvenici i vladine agencije doista uzimaju ove stvari ozbiljno (Lewis, na primjer), i dalje je ignorirano, ograničavano i ismijavano pred općom javnosti preko glavno-strujaških medija! Baillie piše: U slučaju da čitaoci misle da je ovo samo retorika, ovo je dobro mjesto kao i bilo koje drugo za spominjanje predstojećeg događaja. 13. travnja 2029. godine, asteroid nazvan Apophis će proći pored Zemlje na udaljenosti manjoj od 50000 km. Ako ste živi u to vrijeme i nije oblačno, bit ćete u mogućnosti vidjeti ga u prolasku golim okom. Apophis je promjera većeg od 300 m. Ako se nakon prolaska pored Zemlje jednostavno dogodi da prođe kroz određeni uski prozor u prostoru, tada će se u 2036. godini vratiti i udariti Zemlju (ovaj uski prozor je točka gdje bi Zemljina gravitacija skrenula orbitu Apophisa taman dovoljno da bi osigurala udar u 2036. godini). Ako Apophis pogodi Zemlju, udar će biti u klasi 3000 megatona. Potpuno je razumno tvrditi da bi takav udar, da se dogodi bilo gdje na planetu, srušio našu sadašnju civilizaciju i vratio preživjele, metaforički govoreći, u Mračno doba (vjeruje se da bi u takvom slučaju svjetske institucije poput financijskih i osiguravateljskih tržišta propale, rušeći cijele međusobno povezane monetarne, trgovinske i prijevozničke sustave). Udari iz svemira nisu fikcija i čini se vrlo vjerojatno da ih se priličan broj dogodio u zadnjih nekoliko tisućljeća (u tekstu već spomenuti mali primjeri formiranja kratera). Samo što, iz nekog razloga, većina ljudi koji proučavaju prošlost odabiru izbjegavati ili ignorirati ovaj problem. (Baillie) Uz znanost, Baillie citira dokaze današnjice – neki od ovih dokaza su degradirani u “mit” – iz svijeta koji upućuju da je Zemlja, zaista, bila podvrgnuta bombardiranju iz svemira tijekom 14. stoljeća i da je ovo vrlo lako moguće bio ne samo uzrok potresa 25. siječnja 1348. godine., nego također i uzrok Crne Smrti. Baillie citira veliku selekciju materijala iz suvremenih izvještaja uključujući i rad Zieglera: Suše, poplave, potresi, skakavci, podzemna grmljavina, nepoznate nepogode, munje, zavjese vatre, tuča kamenja čudesnih veličina, vatra s neba, smrdljivi dim, zagađena atmosfera, prostranstvo vatrene kiše, masovna količina dima. (Ziegler) Ziegler potpuno odbacuje izvještaje o crnom kometu viđenom prije dolaska epidemije, ali bilježi: guste magle i oblaci, padajuće zvijezde, udari vrućeg vjetra, stup vatre, vatrena kugla, žestoko podrhtavanje zemlje, u Italiji sve intenzivniji niz nesreća uključujući potrese, nakon čega je stigla kuga. (Baillie) 1340-ih godina dogodilo se pravo izbijanje potresa. U knjizi autorice Rosemary Horrox, The Black Death, citirane od Bailliea, pronalazimo da je tadašnji pisac u Padovi izvijestio da, ne samo da se dogodio veliki potres 25. siječnja 1348. godine, nego i da se dogodio u 23 sata. U trideset i prvoj godini cara Ludovika, u vrijeme oko gozbe Obraćenja sv. Pavla (25. siječnja) dogodio se potres širom Koruške i Kranjske, koji je bio toliko snažan da su se svi bojali za svoje živote. Dogodili su se i naknadni potresi, a jedne noći zemlja se zatresla 20 puta. Šesnaest gradova je uništeno zajedno s svojim stanovnicima…. Trideset i šest planinskih utvrda i njihovih stanovnika je uništeno, i izračunalo se da je više od 40000 ljudi progutano ili zatrpano. (Autor dalje navodi da je primio informaciju iz “pisma kojeg je kuća Friesach” uputila pokrajinskom poglavaru Njemačke”): U istom pismu se kaže da je u ovoj godini [1348.] vatra padala s neba, te pustošila zemlju Turaka 16 dana; da je nekoliko dana padala kiša žaba i zmija od koje je mnogo ljudi poginulo; da je zarazna pošast ojačala u mnogim dijelovima svijeta. (Horrox) Iz knjige Samuela Cohna: … zmaj nad Jeruzalemom poput onog sv. Jurja koji je proždro sve koji su se našli na njegovom putu… Grad od 40000 ljudi… potpuno uništen nakon što je s neba pala velika količina crvi, velikih kao šaka i s osam nogu, koji su sve ubijali svojim smradom i otrovnim parama. (Cohn) Priča dominikanskog redovnika Bartolomea: … obilne kiše crva i zmija u dijelovima Kine koji su proždrli veliki broj ljudi. Također je u tim dijelovima s Neba padala vatra u obliku snijega (pepela) koja je palila planine, zemlju i ljude. A iz ove vatre se uzdigao zarazan dim koji je ubio, unutar dvanaest sati, sve one koji su ga udahnuli, kao i one koji su samo vidjeli otrov tog zaraznog dima. (Cohn) Cohn piše: Niti su takve priče tek blebetanje naivnih trgovaca i moguće izluđenih redovnika … [čak i] … Petrarchin najbliži prijatelj, Louis Sanctus, prije nego što se bacio na pažljivo izvještavanje o kugi… je tvrdio da su rujanske poplave žaba i zmija diljem Indije nagovijestile dolazak tri zaražene Genovske galije u Europu… [čak je i]… Engleski kroničar Henry Knighton … [izvijestio kako je]… kod Napulja cijeli grad uništen potresima i olujom. Brojni kroničari su izvijestili o potresima diljem svijeta koji su prethodili neviđenoj pošasti. Većina je svela događaj na večernju molitvu, 25. siječnja 1348. Od ovih potresa koji su “uništili” mnoge velike gradove, gradiće, crkve, samostane, tvrđave, zajedno s njihovim ljudima i teretnim životinjama, najgore je pogođen Villach u južnoj Austriji. Kroničari u Italiji, Njemačkoj, Austriji, Slavoniji i Poljskoj su rekli da je potpuno zatrpan potresima, s jednim preživjelim na deset ljudi. (Cohn) Kontinentalni tekst datiran na nedjelju 27. travnja 1348. godine tvrdi: Kažu da je u tri mjeseca, od 25. siječnja [1348.] do današnjeg dana, ukupno 62000 tijela zakopano u Avignonu. (Horrox) Njemački traktat kojeg je Horrox “iskopao” kaže: U mjeri u kojoj je smrtnost porasla zbog prirodnih uzroka – njezin izravni uzročnik je bilo zagađeno i otrovno izdisanje zemlje koje je inficiralo zrak u raznim dijelovima svijeta… Ja kažem da je to bila para i zagađen zrak koji se ispuštao – ili da tako kažem pročišćavao – u potresu koji se dogodio na dan sv. Pavla [1348.], zajedno sa zagađenim zrakom ispuštenim u drugim potresima i erupcijama, što je inficiralo zrak nad zemljom i ubilo ljude u raznim dijelovima svijeta. (Horrox) Kako Baillie bilježi, ako je ovaj često citiran potres u stvarnosti bio rezultat udara kometa, tada bi zagađen zrak mogao doći zbog jednog ili dva uzroka: visoko-energetske kemijske transformacije u atmosferi ili ispuštanja plinova iz same zemlje. Njemački povjesničar Hecker nas informira: Na otoku Cipru, kuga s istoka je već izbila; kada je potres uzdrmao temelje otoka, u društvu tako zastrašujućeg uragana da su stanovnici… pobjegli zaprepašteni… More je preplavilo… Prije potresa, nesnosan vjetar je širio tako otrovan smrad da su mnogi, njime nadvladani, odjednom pali dolje i izdahnuli u strašnim mukama. … u tom vremenu prirodna događanja su transformirana u čuda, prijavljeno je da je strašni meteor, koji se spustio na zemlju daleko na istoku, uništio sve u opsegu većem od 550 kilometara, inficirajući zrak nadaleko i naširoko. (Cohn) Jon Arrizabalaga je sastavio izabrane tekstove u pokušaju razumijevanja što su obrazovani ljudi govorili o Crnoj Smrti dok se ona odvijala. Što se tiče pojmova koje su liječnici i drugi zdravstvenici koristili 1348. godine da bi opisali kugu, on piše: Jedan… Jacme d’Agramaont je raspravljao o tome u pojmovima “epidemija ili pošast i smrtnost ljudi” koji su zaprijetili Leridi iz “nekih susjednih dijelova i regija” … Agramaont nije rekao ništa u vezi pojma epidemije, ali je obimno razvio što je mislio pod pojmom pošast (kuga). Ovom zadnjem pojmu je dao vrlo neobičnu etimologiju, u skladu sa znanjem ustanovljenim od Izidora Seviljskog (570.-636.) u njegovoj Etymologiae, koja je široko prihvaćena diljem Europe tijekom Srednjeg vijeka. On je podijelio pojam pestilencia (pošast/kuga) u tri sloga, od kojih svaki ima određeno značenje: pes = tempesta – ‘oluja, nevrijeme’; te = temps – ‘vrijeme’; lencia = clardat – ‘sjaj, svijetlo’; prema tome, zaključio je da je pestilencia bila ‘vrijeme oluje uzrokovano svjetlošću sa zvijezda’. Dogodilo se da Izidor Seviljski nije živio dugo poslije još jednog razdoblja bombardiranja kometa nad Europom što se također očituje u studijama godova drveća i jezgri leda. 17. kolovoza 1999. godine, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau je objavio članak Roberta S. Boyda nazvan: Comets may have caused Earth’s great empires to fall koji uključuje sljedeće: Analize godova drveća pokazuju da se 540. godine, u različitim dijelovima svijeta klima promijenila. Temperature su se spustile dovoljno da ometu rast drveća široko rasprostranjeno od sjeverne Europe, Sibira, pa do zapadne sjeverne Amerike i južnog dijela južne Amerike. Pretraga povijesnih arhiva i mitoloških priča pokazala je na katastrofalan posjet s neba tijekom istog perioda, tvrdi se. Postoji jedna referenca o “kometu u Galiji toliko prostranom da se cijelo nebo činilo zapaljeno” u 540.-541. godini. Prema legendi, kralj Artur je umro oko ovog vremena i keltski mitovi povezani s Arturom su ukazali na blještave nebeske Bogove i vatrene munje. U 530-im godinama, neuobičajena kiša meteora je zabilježena od mediteranskih i kineskih promatrača. Meteori nastaju od fine prašine s kometa koji izgaraju u atmosferi. Štoviše, tim astronoma s promatračnice Armagh u Sjevernoj Irskoj je objavio istraživanje 1990. godine, koje kaže da je Zemlja bila u opasnosti od bombardiranja kometa između 400. i 600. godine. Glad je uslijedila nakon propalih usjeva, a nemilosrdna bubonska kuga je pomela Europu sredinom 6. stoljeća. U ovo vrijeme, rimski car Justinijan je pokušavao obnoviti propadajuće Rimsko carstvo. Ali plan je propao 540. godine. i uslijedilo je Mračno doba i uspon Islama. Postoji mnogo materijala iz tog razdoblja koji dosljedno upućuje na “zagađenu atmosferu”, “udahni zrak i umrijet ćeš”, i nekako, ocean je bio umiješan kao i potresi, kometi i vatrene kugle na nebu. Izvještaj pariškog Medicinskog fakulteta pripremljen u listopadu 1348. godine govori: Još jedan mogući uzrok zagađenja, koji treba biti na umu, je bijeg truleža zarobljenog u centru Zemlje kao rezultat potresa – nešto što se zaista i dogodilo nedavno. (Baillie) Ukratko, Francuzi su bili svjesni niza potresa u to vrijeme koji su mogli biti uzrokovani udarima kometa. Jedan izvještaj tog razdoblja kaže da je potres trajao šest dana, a drugi tvrdi da je trajao deset dana. Takvi događaji također mogu proizvesti ispuštanje plinova svih vrsta neugodnih kemikalija koje mogu ubiti. Razmotrite sljedeće: Eksplozija plina na jezeru NYOS, Kamerun, 1986. Iako se iznenadno ispuštanje plina CO2 dogodilo na jezeru Monoun 1984. godine, ubivši 37 lokalnih stanovnika, slična prijetnja s jezera Nyos nije bila očekivana. Međutim, 21. kolovoza 1986., limnička erupcija se dogodila na jezeru Nyos koja je pokrenula iznenadno otpuštanje oko 1.6 milijuna tona CO2. Plin se obrušio na dvije obližnje doline, istisnuo sav zrak i ugušio do 1800 ljudi unutar 20 km od jezera, većinom ruralne seljake, kao i 3500 grla stoke. Oko 4000 stanovnika je pobjeglo iz tog područja i mnogi od njih su imali dišne probleme, opekotine i paralizu kao rezultat djelovanja plinova. Nije poznato što je pokrenulo katastrofalno ispuštanje plina. Većina geologa sumnja na odron zemlje, ali neki vjeruju da se mala vulkanska erupcija možda dogodila na koritu jezera. Vjeruje se da je ispušteno do jednog kubičnog kilometra plina. CO2 je teži od zraka i zato se plin spustio niz planinsku stranu u kojoj jezero Nyos leži i dolje na dvije susjedne doline u sloju dubokom na desetke metara, istiskujući zrak i gušeći sve ljude i životinje prije nego što se mogao raspršiti. Uobičajeno plava boja jezera je postala tamno crvenom poslije ispuštanja plina zbog vode bogate željezom koje se iz dubine uzdiže na površinu i oksidira u kontaktu sa zrakom. Nivo jezera se spustio za oko jedan metar, predstavljajući obujam otpuštenog plina. Ispuštanje plina je vjerojatno također uzrokovalo preplavljivanje vode jezera. Drveća blizu jezera su bila srušena. Hmmm… čovjek se zapita da li bi slični događaji mogli biti pokrenuti udarima kometa i da li bi ispuštanje plina iz oceana moglo biti jednako opasno i smrtonosno? Čovjek se također pita, s obzirom na činjenicu da su drveća bila srušena, da li je ovo ispuštanje plina možda bio događaj udara? Baillie nas vodi kroz znanost čvrstim brojkama i grafikonima, te pokazuje kako su o ovim stvarima jasno govorili oni koji su iskusili Crnu Smrt, ali iz nekog razloga, svi suvremeni povjesničari misle da su ova zapažanja o kiši vatre i smrti, i zraku koji može ubiti, samo metafore za užasnu bolest. Na kraju, znanost je ta koja mora pobijediti u ovome, jer svi potpuno neovisni radnici koji proučavaju komete, tsunamije, ugljični dioksid, jezgre leda i godove drveća opažaju u svojim podacima da se nešto vrlo čudno događalo u svijetu oko vremena kad je Crna Smrt desetkovala ljudsku populaciju Zemlje. Baillie bilježi u svojem završnom komentaru, a što je vrijedno ponavljanja ovdje: Sve je više jasno da je svijet intelektualno podijeljen na dva dijela. Postoje oni koji proučavaju prošlost u poljima povijesti i arheologije, a ne vide dokaz da je bilo koje ljudsko stanovništvo ikada bilo pod utjecajem udara iz svemira. Dijametralno suprotno ovom stavu postoje oni koji proučavaju objekte koji dođu blizu i ponekad se sudare s ovim planetom. Neki ozbiljni članovi ove druge grupe nemaju nikakve sumnje da su postojali brojni razarajući udari u zadnjih pet tisućljeća; u periodu ljudske civilizacije. Ipak, nitko ne govori o tome. Zaista postoji sasvim dovoljno podataka predstavljenih u Baillievoj knjizi da bi se podržala teorija da se Crna Smrt dogodila zbog udara krhotina kometa – slično udarima krhotina kometa Shoemaker-Levy u Jupiter, koji su se dogodili 1994. godine. Postoji niz mogućnosti kako su se točno te smrti dogodile: potresi, poplave (tsunamiji), kiše vatre, oslobođene kemikalije preko visoko-energetskih eksplozija u atmosferi, uključujući amonijak i cijanovodik, a moguće čak i patogeni uzročnici bolesti nošeni kometom. Ako se to događalo tako često kako Baillie predlaže, može se dogoditi ponovo. I ako, kao što nam se čini, Zemlju očekuje bombardiranje u ne tako dalekoj budućnosti, čini se da postoji više načina za umrijeti u takvom događaju nego samim udarom krhotine kometa. Mike Baillie je umirovljeni profesor (emeritus) paleoekologije u Školi arheologije i paleoekologije na Sveučilištu Queen’s u Belfastu, Sjeverna Irska. Baillie je vodeći stručnjak u dendrokronologiji, tj. datiranju pomoću godova drveća. 1980-ih je imao glavnu ulogu u građenju godinu-po-godinu kronologije rasta godova drveća koja seže 7400 godina u prošlost. Related Articles: Posted in Kometi i katastrofe, Povijest, Znanost