Emilio Spedicato
formerly at Mathematics Department, University of Bergamo
Release 2, February 2017
Foreword
A previous version of this paper, one of the very first written by this author outside the mathematical field, was published in 1997 as a report of the Mathematics Department of the University of Bergamo. The following year it appeared as the article Tunguska-type impacts over the Pacific basin around the year 1178 AD, in the British journal Chronology and Catastrophism Review , 1, 8-13. This paper adds more cases to those considered at that time, and a hypothesis on the origin of the body that in fragmented state first impacted Moon and then the Pacific area.
- Introduction
As related by Clube and Napier (1990) in their monograph The Cosmic Winter, in the year 1178 AD four wise men of Canterbury were sitting outside on a clear and calm June 18th night, a half Moon looming in the starry sky. Suddenly they noticed a flame jutting out of a horn of the Moon. Then they saw the Moon tremble and its colour change slowly from light brilliant to a darker reddish tone. Such a colour remained for all the time the Moon was visible during that phase. This story is found in a manuscript of Canterbury annals; it is attributed to the cleric Gervase. It was shown to Clube by a medieval English history specialist.
When the hidden face of the Moon was first photographed during a lunar mission, a large and apparently recently produced crater was visible near the lunar north polar region. It was named as Giordano Bruno crater. Its recent origin is shown by the absence of secondary superimposed craters. The crater is considered to have been produced by a comet or meteoritic impact with a body of 2-3 km size, implying an energy in the range of hundred of million of megatons. The year of the impact might well be 1178 AD, thereby explaining the observations recorded in the Canterbury annals, as first proposed to our knowledge by Hartung (1976).
Now it is known that comet or meteoritic impacts do not occur on a purely stochastic way, and that almost simultaneous multiple impacts are a rather common event. This follows from the fact that the impacting bodies are often part of a stream of objects (comets, Apollos,…) produced by the disintegration of an initially larger body, by causes like internal instability or disrupting tidal forces by planets near which the object has passed. While the stream tends with time to expand and dissolve, its existence may nonetheless lead to multiplicity of impacts. Notice also that catastrophic effects may arise not only from the body actually hitting Earth surface, but by its explosion in the atmosphere. This event defines a Tunguska-type explosion, see Rubtsov (2009). Such explosions are now considered to be more frequent and even more dangerous than actual impacts, see Boslough and Crawford (2008).
We recall the important work by the Vienna University geologists Alexander and his wife the palaeontologist Edith Tollmann (1993). They gave arguments for seven impacts occurring over Earth’s oceans and continents, about 7000 BC. An explanation for such impacts is now available in Spedicato, see (2016), within the VAS (Velikovsky-Ackerman-Spedicato) paradigm for the recent evolution of solar system, developed in several academic papers. Such paradigm assumes, inter alia, that a large body, mass some ten times Earth’s mass, entered solar system about 9500 BC. Its origin was probably from Kuiper belt (a similar body is now expected to enter inner solar system in about 2000 years…). The body can be related to some important ancient gods: Metis for Greeks, Vritra for Arian Hindus, Bali for Dravidian Hindus, Nibiru for Sumerian, Tiamat for Akkadian, Ohrmazd for Iranians, Pachacamac for Incas and Chimu …. It interacted with Earth, ending last Ice Age and the Atlantis civilization, if Plato’s story is valid…., see Spedicato (2014). Then for some 2500 years it revolved within the inner Solar System, with a period of 20 years, encrypted to 3600 by Sumerians for their god Nibiru. It ended its existence impacting Jupiter about 7000 BC, the Red Spot being the marker of the large impact crater, see Ackerman (1999, 2015, 2016). The impact expelled from Jupiter a large mass. Jupiter core has been reduced to less than the core of Saturn, one of the most remarkable recent findings by space probes. The expelled mass explains the seven impacts on earth studied in Tolmann. Jupiter changed its orbit, before lying in the present asteroid belt. For a time it expanded in the sky as a white hot body, with angular size possibly greater than Sun’s; the expanded very hot Jupiter may be the origin of the Cosmic Egg theogony.
According to our theory, the passage of Metis near Earth resulted also in the capture by Earth of a satellite of Metis, that became our Moon, see Spedicato (2010). Mars was before and since unknown time our satellite. It revolved at a distance of about one million km, with water and probably life, facts of which evidence is now growing from exploration of that planet. Mars, being hit by Jovian mass in the 7000 BC event, lost its gravitational tie with Earth. For celestial mechanics reasons, it continued to pass close to Earth for some 5500 years at intervals of 56 and then 54 years. It lost much of its water in the 7000 BC event, and finally almost all of it in a passage about 3150 BC close to Earth, that led to the Noachian Flood (Fountains form the below and from the high), see Spedicato (2017).
In this paper we will argue that Metis lost also a smaller satellite, that went in independent orbit between Sun and Earth, with a period of 260 days. That body may have ended its life in 1178 AD, impacting Moon and Pacific Ocean, some debris interacting with Earth also for some following years.
In next sections we consider events on Earth that can be dated at 1178 AD, and related to fragments from the body that formed the Giordano Bruno Lunar crater.
We actually propose multiple impacts over the Pacific basin, with dramatic consequences for people living in that area and some, albeit delayed, dramatic consequences also for the Mediterranean region.
- Evidence of the crossing celestial bodies in the year 1178 A.D.
There are at least two pieces of information that indicate that Earth crossed a stream of bodies during the late 11th and the 12th century, with a peak around the half of the 12th century.
The first information comes from European history. Frequent and scaring appearances of large comets were indeed a main factor that contributed to the special psychological climate that led to the Crusades, which were often seen, at least at the popular level, as a means for atonement of sins, the divine wrath expressing itself through the menacing comets. A great comet appeared during a meeting of bishops, where a decision had to be taken for starting the first Crusade, and was a final argument in favour of the Crusade.
The second piece comes from Chinese astronomers, who routinely recorded comets and fireballs, see Clube [4]. The recordings show a peak of sightings around the middle of the 12th century, the peak being over ten times higher than the average background. It is interesting to notice that a similar peak is also present at about half the 6th century, a time when, according to several Byzanthine historians quoted by Gibbon [5], e. g. Malala, Procopius and Theophanes, many scaring comets appeared in the sky. That was also the time of the great Justinian plague, which decimated the population of the Mediterranean region, killing up to 90% of the population according to some estimates (this depopulation contributed to the Arabs’ expansion some three generations later). For further indication of a severe climatic crisis around year 540 A.D., due possibly to cometary effects, see the dendro-chronological Irish record, Baillie [25].
- Arguments from New Zealand Maori legends
From New Zealand there are two arguments. First the Maori legends stating that, several centuries before present, fire came from the sky, burned most of the forest and killed the Moa birds. Notice that the Maori reject the western scholars opinion that overhunting was the reason for the Moa disappearance. Secondly there is the recent finding of a number of shallow and very recent impact craters, named the Tapanui craters, in the South Island. Additionally, layers of soot, datable at the cratering time, have been detected in several places. The Tapanui craters and the presence of soot appear as a confirmation that “fire” came from the sky, burned the forests and killed the Moa, as the Maori legends state.
The time of the event has been estimated at about 800 years ago, therefore falling at our proposed date. For more information see Steel and Snow [6] and Pajak [7,8].
- Arguments from Polynesia
It is known, see Heyerdahl [9] and Fornander [10], that at the end of the 12th century there were severe disruptions throughout the archipelagos in Polynesia, leading to discontinuities in the local dynasties and to widespread migrations, mainly from North America to the Hawaiis and the other islands. Heyerdahl writes (see quoted monograph, pp. 169,170):
- Fornander, a notable early Polynesian genealogist, after a life-long study of Polynesian tribe history claimed that about 30 generations reckoned from the end of the last century bring us back to a period when the aristocracy in almost all groups took, so to say, a new departure. From then on, during a period of a few generations, all royal lines were interrupted and substituted by new ones. A migratory wave swept the island world of the Pacific, embracing in its vortex all the principal groups, and probably all the smaller. Its traces were deep and indelible. It modified the ancient customs, creed and polity. It even affected the speech of the people…. new tutelar gods succeeded the earlier deities, new place names replaced old ones… the construction of the pyramidal stone platforms also seems to have ceased during this period…traditional narratives tell that an early people were found in Hawaii, Cook Islands and New Zealand by the later Polynesians. The later immigrants conquered their predecessors, who were not exterminated but absorbed.
The events can be dated between 1100 and 1200, see also the Polynesian genealogist, Percy Smith [11], an interval which brackets our proposed date 1178.
To this time it is also possible to relate the migration that, according again to Heyerdahl [12,13], brought a community of Melanesian people to Easter Island. This island at that time was inhabited by a completely different type of people (high stature, reddish hair, Europoid features) and a more advanced culture, being specialized in the construction of the famous giant statues. For several centuries the Melanesian people lived as slaves of the original people and worked in the quarries to build the statues. Then, probably in 1670, they rebelled and killed most of their masters; apparently only one adult male was left alive, some of the present inhabitants descending from him.
Additional indications of a crisis around the considered time come from the Hawaii. There a temple complex known as the Waha’ula was built around 1200 by the priest Pa’ou, who had come from Tahiti. In the temple human sacrifices were made a sign in many ancient civilizations of periods of stress. The temple is named Hinakai Mouliawa, meaning “discolouring the Moon with a dark mist“, a name reflecting the change of colour of the Moon testified in the Canterbury annals. This name was also adopted by Hawaii chiefs.
- Arguments from South America
In South America, in Peru especially, we observe, at the considered time, the rather sudden demise of the great coastal civilizations (Mochicas, Chimus,…), that, inter alia, built huge pyramids along the coast, as the Tucume pyramids, near the northern Peru town of Lambayeque. The largest of them has a square basis with a side of about 800 meters; while only about 70 meters high, its total volume was about 30% greater than that of the great Cheops pyramid. They also developed a complex system of canals for irrigation, since the region where they lived had almost no rain, available in rivers from the Andes. The demise of the Peruvian civilizations was sudden and without recovery. There was substantial ruin of the pyramids, eroded by heavy rain, being built with compacted soil, rather unexpected in a region that is the driest in the world.
Secondly, we observe that immediately following the demise of the coastal civilization, we have the rise, in the high Andes range, of the new Incas civilization. The Incas, in the course of three centuries, till their collapse under the Spanish aggression, probably benefited of the knowledge and construction techniques developed by the coastal people, founded a great empire. It extended from Ecuador to Chile, well connected by an efficient road system. The Inca royal family claimed a very ancient origin. It separated itself from the general people by the use of a special language (the royal Quechua). According to a recently found manuscript, dated to 1611 and attributed to Blas Valera, see Laurencich Minelli et al. [14), a Jesuit son of a Spaniard and of a woman of the royal Inca family, the Inca royal family traced its origin to the 6th century, a time of great comet activity and of the Justinian plague. At that time two groups of migrating people according to Valera reached South America. One came from the West (Tartaria) and one from the East, these last people being called Viracochas , and being dressed with white clothes. They fought when they met and most of the Viracochas were killed. The royal Inca family descended from intermarriages between the people from the West and the surviving Viracochas (we can suppose these being mostly pretty women).
That after the collapse of the coastal civilization, another civilization, mainly located on the mountains, can be explained if the coastal civilization was destroyed by a natural catastrophe, like a great tsunami, due to the impacts over the Pacific ocean, which scared enormously the survivors and the neighbouring people. The coastal area was abandoned and the civilization restarted on higher, and considered safer, land. Effects of weather changes, e.g. drier conditions along the coast, may also have contributed to this geographic displacement.
Thirdly, analysis of past El Niño behaviour indicates unusual conditions at the considered time. Information on past intensity of El Niño can be obtained by analysis of the oceanic sediments, particularly by the relative abundances of certain shellfish which develop only when the water temperature rises above a certain level (the current along the Peruvian coast is normally cold, but the water warms up with the El Niño, hence a strong El Niño wipes out most of that shellfish). Recent analysis, see Heyerdahl [11], has shown that El Niño activity dramatically peaked around the middle of the 12th century. An unusually strong El Niño not only would disrupt the normal local Pacific life, but would lead to strong torrential rains over the dry Peruvian coastal region. This may be the cause of the strong erosion of the Tucume pyramids and a factor for disruption of the irrigation system. To the demise of the coastal civilization must also have contributed a very great tsunami wave.
- Arguments from Central America
The fifth argument comes from Central America. It relates to the origin of the Aztec civilization, and to some extent it explains the Aztec obsession with human sacrifice.
When Cortes reached central Mexico, he met the stronghold of the Aztects, who were living in a rather small region west of the great Popocatepl-Ixtacihuatl volcanic range. It was a bowl shaped region of some 2.000 square km, completely surrounded by mountains. The local rivers sent their waters not to the ocean but to a marshy lake at the centre of that area, lake Texcoco, now almost completely dried up. In the middle of the lake, on a number of small islets, there was the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. It had at Cortes time possibly over one million people. In one of his letters to the Spanish emperor Carlos V, Cortes, see [16], claimed that over 400.000 persons in the city had died of the smallpox, brought by the Spaniards. Possibly more people died of wounds in the fighting; several thousand survived.
Geography shows that the Aztects had chosen as a place to live and to build their capital, a region whose main feature, from the point of view of our scenario, was to be well protected, thanks to its elevation and the surrounding mountain, against a possible rise of the ocean, say a possible great tsunami wave. Notice that tsunami waves reaching 300 m elevation are known from mountain sides falls in the west coast of Canada, a bigger one up to 600 meters is expected to arise from the fall into the Atlantic of the west side of the steep 20 km long coast of island La Palma, one of the Canary Islands!
Now it is known from several sources, particularly from one of the few surviving codices, the codex Ramirez, see [17], that the Aztecs were not native of central Mexico, but had reached that region only a few centuries before Cortes’s arrival. Their original place, named Aztlan, was located on the Pacific coast, probably near the present city of Mazatlan, some 300 km north-west of Guadalajara. According to studies by Vaillant [18] and Brundage [19], their migration started around the middle of the 12th century, Brundage proposing, as estimate, the date 1168, which is amazingly close to the date 1178 we are considering.
Why did the Aztecs move from a coastal region to a high land? We conjecture that, similarly to what happened to the coastal region of Peru, also the Pacific coast of Mexico was affected by a huge tsunami. The surviving people were immensely scared and took refuge as a safe place up to the Mexican plateau in the marshes of Lake Texcoco. Probably they interpreted the catastrophe in religious terms as a gods punishment for not being sufficiently pious. Thus they adopted a policy of strong piety, which for them meant human sacrifices. The Spaniards considered them devilish, but the roots of such sacrifices can probably be traced in past catastrophes.
It is well known that Moctezuma accepted Cortes in friendly terms, thinking that he was the returning Quetzalcoatl. In a forthcoming paper we will give an explanation of the Quetzalcoatl story, never before considered, and set some twenty years after the 1178 event, just at the beginning of the Aztec power in central Mexico.
Finally, it is worth recalling that the Toltec civilization, which controlled central Mexico till the 12th century, went into a crisis. The last king took his life, as a result of signs and wonders in the sky, which he probably interpreted as presaging the end of his dynasty, see Clapham [26].
- Arguments from Japan
Around 1178 there is an important political discontinuity in Japanese history. The political power, after a period of intense fighting, passes from the southern Taira dynasty (with capital Miako, now Kyoto), to the northern Minamoto dynasty (with capital Kamakura; near Edo, now Tokyo). Fighting ends around the year 1182. This political event may certainly be a chance event in our context, save for some signs of unusual meteorological conditions. A major event of the war was the unexpected destruction of the southern fleet by a very violent typhoon. This too could be a chance event, but a similar event appears not many years later. The Chinese-Mongolian fleet sent by Khubilai Khan to conquer Japan, was destroyed by a typhoon, as related by Marco Polo. This suggests unusual irregular and strong typhoons in the north-west quadrant of the Pacific basin, parallelizing the unusual behaviour of El Niño at that time around the coasts of Peru.
- Arguments from northern China
The 12th century is a critical time in northern China. From a political point of view the corrupt and decaying regime of the late Song dynasty leads to social unrest and widely spread rebellions, so graphically described in the great Chinese classic novel The Water Margins (probably written later; there is no consensus on either the author or the time of writing). Northern China was occupied by the Juchen tribes from Manchuria in the second half of that century. Additionally natural disasters at unprecedented level affected the region, among them the flood of the Huang He (the Yellow River). So catastrophic was this flood that the previous northern Song capital, the great city of Kaifeng, was almost completely destroyed. Moreoverin 1194 the river changed its exit into the sea, from a location north of the Shandong peninsula to one south of it, hundreds of km away; it returned to its previous exit in 1852 after another severe flood. Whether the natural disasters at this time are correlated with the other observed events, in particular with a possible modification of the typhoon regime and the strong increase of El Niño, is a question that deserves further study.
- Arguments from Mongolia
In the annals of Khubilai Khan, the Yuan dynasty emperor of the second generation after Gengis Khan, well known as the host of Marco Polo, it is written that “my great ancestor Gengis Khan saw a sign of change in the sky …and arose in the North”. See the annals translation made by the Eastern Cultures curator of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and available in the library of that museum. Now Gengis Khan, born as Temujin, was probably born in 1165, hence in 1178 he would have been 13 years old. He might have observed one of the great fireballs or a falling comet or asteroid, that were recorded with high frequency at that time by Chinese astronomers.
The conquest of the greater part of Asia and even part of Europe by the Mongolian horsemen in the space of a generation is one of the great events of history. The extraordinary personality of Gengis Khan, a man with enormous intelligence, will, long range planning and shamanic powers, was certainly a main factor behind the Mongolian expansion. In the Secret History of the Mongols, see [20], the Mongolian drive tends to be explained in terms of avenging wrongs. These include the destruction of the family of Gengis Khan (he survived by hiding himself in the waters of a river) and the wrongs that his tribe suffered by the nearby (Nestorian Christian) Tayichud and Kereit tribes. The attack of the Mongolians against Persia, then a huge empire, under a Selgiuchid sultan, that stretched from Anatolia to Central Asia, with parts of Afghanistan and of India, led to some of the worst massacres in history. Central Asia was so much devastated that it has not yet recovered. The attack is similarly explained as a vengeance against the sultan Jalal-ad-Din, who had ordered the murder of peaceful Mongolian merchants, see Ata Malik Al Juvaini [21]. However behind these personal and very classical motivations there may be other reasons that made it almost necessary for the Mongols to leave their original land (a high plateau with continental climate and very cold winters, particularly where Gengis Khan was born, the Altai in north-western Mongolia) for other lands with a better climate. Here we suggest that the main reason was indeed an unexpected and dramatic change of climate, with winters much colder and snowier than usual, the snow cover probably not melting during the summer, making the normal pastoral life almost impossible. An indication that such was the case, and that the deteriorated weather conditions lasted for about two generations, can be found in the quoted work of Ata Malik al Juvaini. This Persian author, born in a Khorasan family, became governor of Persia after the conquest by the Mongols. He wrote a monumental history of the Mongolian conquest, around 1260, after the Alamut fortress, the stronghold of the Ismaelites (in the West called the Assassins), was taken, in 1256. That fortress had one of the greatest libraries of medieval times; most books were burnt, but Al Juvaini personally selected a number to be saved. Which ones…..?
In his history Al Juvaini states that when Alamut was taken, it had again become possible to grow apple trees in Mongolia, a fact, he explicitly notes, which had not
been possible for two generations. This is a definitive indication of a very severe weather deterioration in the Mongolian plateau starting from about our date 1178. Apple trees are indeed resistant to very cold temperature; Asia may be the original place of cultivated apples. Some of the best quality grow in the very fertile Fergana valley, Fergana meaning fertile garden; there the city Alma Ata is located, meaning Mother of apples. In 1979 a cold wave swept throughout Russia, temperatures dropping to -50° in Moscow; there water pipes in the Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences froze and exploded; thus no water was available for sanitation…. I had arrived at the beginning of May, temperature in one week passed from freezing to over 40°…. In Kirov, some 600 km. north-east of Moscow, temperature dropped to -55. Apple trees survived in the Moscow region, but were killed in the Kirov region.
If a severe weather problem was behind the Mongolian expansion, a similar reason may explazin other great migrations and wars involving some pastoral people, e.g. the Huns and the Scythians. In particular there are arguments that this may have been the case concerning the great Scythian invasion of Middle East and Egypt, referred to by Diodorus. Elsewhere [27] I have argued that the Hyksos who invaded Egypt at the time of Dudimose (Tutimaios in Manetho), just after the Hebrew escaped under Moses in 1447 B.C., as Velikovsky claimed, see [22], and Rohl [23] confirmed, were Scythians, as wild and destructive as the Mongolians at the time of Gengis Khan. Moreover I argued that Hyksos means the horsemen. Hyksos was the name given to them by the invaded people; their original name was Amu, and it can be argued that they came from Turan, the region of the Amu Darya river.
- Arguments from Europe
Apparently there are no particular discontinuities in Europe in the second half of the 12th century, a time of the intensive economic and demographic growth that characterizes the European Middle Ages from the 10th century. This fact indicates that, if a catastrophe hit the Pacific basin, it did not affect directly the opposite hemisphere. However there are some indications that the negative demographic and economic phenomena characterizing the following centuries may have their roots in the suggested catastrophic event at the end of the 12th century.
First, indications of climatic deterioration appear in the Irish dendrochronological record. Indeed Baillie [28] has found a series of low growth tree rings corresponding to the period 1163-1189, representing a series of cold summers. That food production in this period dropped leading to social unrest may have been an additional reason why many people wanted to enroll in the Crusades. It may have been an important cofactor behind the Robin Hood semi-legendary events, see Clapham [26] for in depth discussion of this topic. And finally, exactly in the year 1178, the Irish annals record the drying up of the (estuary of) the river Galway in Ireland, a phenomenon which might be related to the collapse of a volcanic caldera in the not too far away volcanic Iceland. An eruption in Iceland may well have been triggered by the shock waves arriving from Pacific.
Second, at the beginning of the 14th century Europe, is affected by the great Black Death epidemics, usually attributed to the bacterium of plague (bacillus pestis), which, albeit certainly not as destructive as the Justinian plague, still killed an estimated 30% of the total population (this percentage varying from place to place, Bohemia quite intriguingly escaped almost completely). The plague almost certainly started in Mongolia, and was a main factor for the fall of the Yuan dynasty.It reached Europe via the Mediterranean ports, involved in trade with the East, and via the caravan roads from central Asia. The plague took time to spread, Iceland got it only in 1402, see [29]. While Hoyle and Wickramasinghe [24] have suggested that
the plague in Europe was caused by bacterial material from the sky, brought by comets (and that was a time of intense comet activity….) the general consensus is that it came from Mongolia, where bacillus pestis is a common host in a variety of rats. In our proposed scenario of a severe weather disruption in the Mongolian region, it may be surmised that the bacteria became more virulent or had easier access to a population weakened by famine and other problems. Or, and here we take the Hoyle et al. suggestion, the bodies impacting in the Pacific region, including the northern China and Mongolian region, brought a fresh resupply of bacterial material, possibly characterized by mutations. Such bacteria may have entered rats, and attacked more easily a population weakened by climate changes, famine and war, and not yet immunized against the new mutation.
- Arguments from the Middle East
In the Middle East we observe, for the period under consideration, a general resurgence of religiosity and acts of atonement. We quote two episodes:
- in Alamut, the stronghold of the Ismailites, see Daftary (2003), Jelal-ad-Din got the power in 1177 after poisoning his father. He then reversed the traditional policy of the Ismailites, making peace with the Baghdad califf and sending his whole harem in pilgrimage to the Meccah. He was called New Muslim. See [30].
- the Kurdish Fatimide emir Salah-ad-Din, better known as the Saladin, appointed vizier of Egypt in 1170, believed that he had a special calling and the mission to liberate Jerusalem from the Christians, a feat that he accomplished. Quoting from [26], “as a result of his illumination he lived frugally and his general life became very religious… he had witnessed a heavenly sign that he interpreted on personal terms”.
It is intriguing to note that both the Saladin and the Ismailite movement had their roots in Kurdistan, a region of the Persian empire where the Magian religion, with its special emphasis on celestial events, was probably born; some elements survive among the Yezidis. The Saladin family may have kept secret knowledge of the ancient Magian wisdom; secrecy on the core of their religious beliefs still characterizes several sects in Kurdistan and in the Lebanese Bekah valley, a centre of the Druse religion, which has relations with that of the Ismailites). A leader of the Ismailites movement, Abdallah, was a Persian Kurd, originally educated in the
Magian religion, see [30].
- Final conclusions
We have given a number of arguments supporting the hypothesis that around the year 1178 the Pacific basin was subject to catastrophic events, of possible extraterrestrial origin:
- political discontinuities (in Peru, Mexico, north-east Asia, Polynesia, Easter Island)
- abundance of unusually strong “signs in the sky “, in the Maori legends, the Chinese astronomers records, the Mongolian annals
- unusual weather conditions, very strong El Niño, irregular behaviour of the typhoons near Japan, catastrophic flooding in Northern China, unusually severe cold in Mongolia.
The above evidence has not been collected by full study of the people of the Pacific region at that time. It has come via rather casual readings, hence a more complete survey is of interest. For instance, the rather sudden and puzzling disappearance of many of the pueblo people in the southwest of northern America, which can be traced back to that time, might be associated with the catastrophe that apparently affected the Pacific region.
- Appendix: events in Cambodia and the possible origin of the body that created the Giordano Bruno crater and the events in the Pacific area
- Acknowledgments
The author is deeply indebted, for stimulating discussions and the provided information, to the great sea explorer. Thor Heyerdahl, visited in his beautiful homes in Laigueglia, Liguria, and Guimar, Tenerife; to the astronomer. Victor Clube, visited in Oxford; to the mathematician prof. Dixon, to whom he is indebted for scientific and career contributions. Also thanks to scholar Philip Clapham for comments and information and sending his unpublished manuscript on Robin Hood.
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