Köfels impact event
|Style over substance|
The Köfels landslide was a huge mountain rockslide (a Sturzstrom[wp]) that occurred in the Austrian Alps about 9800 years ago. Some of its features mystified geologists for quite some time. One hypothesis was that it had been caused by an asteroid impact - a Köfels impact event - but more recent research has rejected the idea. This didn't stop a pair of British engineers from publishing a book that claims that a) it was an asteroid impact, b) it inspired a lot of myths, and c) it was recorded on an ancient Sumerian clay tablet.
The reason for the original impact hypothesis was the presence of fused rock. At the time, the only processes known to be able to do this were either volcanism or meteor impacts. Later research found that it can be also produced by friction and similar fused rock has been found in other large rockslides.
In 2008, two British engineers, Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell, published a book, A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event. They claim that an ancient Sumerian clay tablet documents an asteroid impact on 29 June 3123 BCE that was the root of many myths, including the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Greek myth of Phaeton[wp] (the son of the sun god Helios who took his father's fiery sun chariot for a joyride and crashed it).
There are many problems with their claims, but perhaps the most major one is the wrong chronology. The Köfels site has been dated with radiocarbon dating of wood buried by the landslide to about 9800±100 BP (Before Present), which is about 4000 years earlier than Bond and Hempsell's date.
- A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event, Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell, 2008, ISBN 978-1904623649
 See also
- See the Wikipedia article on Umhausen#Landslide.
- Cuneiform clay tablet translated for the first time, 31 March 2008, Physorg.com (being bitches again and re-publishing the press release from the University of Bristol)
- Researchers: Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Fox News.com, 1 April 2008
- Fire in the Sky, a review of the book by Jeff Medkeff (of the Blue Collar Scientist blog) and Martin Rundkvist (of Aardvarchaeology) in the eSkeptic newsletter, 4 February 2009
- A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact? Almost Certainly Not…, Jeff Medkeff, 1 April 2008 (a Wayback Machine copy, because the blog's domain was usurped soon after Medkeff's untimely death)
- A Response to Mark Hempsell, Jeff Medkeff, 16 April 2008 (Hempsell had left comments on the previous post)
- Tablet K8538 details on the British Museum website
- Astronomical Artifacts and Portraits: 9: Late Babylonian (Neo-Assyrian) planisphere, a page on the tablet that has more pictures and criticism of Bond and Hempsell's claims
- News to Note, April 5, 2008, Answers in Genesis
- Köfels Impact Eventimg, article in Conservapedia (revision from 21 November 2008, last revision as of writing this page)
- A post on a meteorite mailing list