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CCNet SPECIAL Collapse of Early Bronze Age Civilizations: Has the Smoking Gun Been Found?
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"Scientists have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago. Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs. Today's crater lies on what would have been shallow sea 4,000 years ago, and any impact would have caused devastating fires and flooding. The catastrophic effect of these could explain the mystery of why so many early cultures went into sudden decline around 2300 BC."
-- Robert Matthews, The Sunday Telegraph, 4 November 2001

"Hundreds of years after the event, a cuneiform collection of "prodigies," omen predictions of the collapse of Akkad, preserved the record that "many stars were falling from the sky" (Bjorkman 1973:106). Closer to the event, perhaps as early as 2100 BC, the author of the Curse of Akkad alluded to 'flaming potsherds raining from the sky' (Attinger 1984). Davis (1996) has reminded us of Clube and Napier's impact theory, and asked "Where is the archaeological and geological evidence for the role of their 'Taurid Demons' in human history?" The abrupt climate change at 2200 BC, regardless of an improbable impact explanation, situates hemispheric and social collapse in a global, but ultimately cosmic, context."
-- Harvey Weiss, Late Third Millennium Abrupt Climate Change and Social Collapse in West Asia and Egypt, 1997, p. 720



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1. COLLAPSE OF EARLY BRONZE AGE CIVILISATIONS: HAS THE SMOKING GUN BEEN FOUND . . . ?
Benny J Peiser

• METEOR CLUE TO END OF MIDDLE EAST CIVILISATIONS . . .
The Sunday Telegraph, 4 November 2001

• THE AL' AMARAH STRUCTURE . . .
Claudio Elidoro

• METEOR SHOWERS BLOTTED OUT MAN'S FIRST CIVILISATIONS . . .
The Sunday Times, 14 December 1997

• CLUES TO BRONZE AGE COMET STRIKE . . .
BBC Online News, 25 May 1998

• BRONZE AGE CITIES MAY HAVE BEEN DESTROYED BY COMET . . .
The Times, 8 March 1997

• NEW EVIDENCE FOR GLOBAL CLIMATE DISASTER IN 3rd MILLENNIUM BC . . .
SCIENCE, Volume 279, Number 5349, 16 January 1998, pp.325-326

• CATCH A FALLING STAR . . .
Jewish Chronicle, 6 March 1998

...And, Finally:

• NATURAL DISASTER AROUND 2300BC DUE TO COSMIC IMPACT . . . ?
Benny J Peiser

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