$17.

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The cosmic serpent was a giant comet that
terrorized mankind in prehistoric times.
As a fiery dragon and hurler of thunder-
bolts, it wrought destruction and disaster
upon the Earth.
SEP LIBRARY MATERIALS

Comets have been the objects of supersti-

tion and fascination since cavemen looked
up at the night sky and saw "shooting
RARY MATERIALS IS THE
stars." In the intervening millennia, much OF THE .BORROWING PATRON.
information about comets has been DID NOT BE USED TO RE-
MATERIALS ABUSED BY
gathered, but even today we do not properly FEE SCHEDULE HAS BEEN
understand these cosmic phenomena. THE TO THE LIBRARY
In THE COSMIC SERPENT, two interna-
D MATERIALS.
tionally respected astronomers propose
radical new theories about the origins and SELECTED AS AN INTEGRAL
RARY COLLECTION, AND
future of the Earth, focusing on worlds ALL PATRONS. IF A BOOK
shaped by catastrophe. They claim that , THE SUBJECT AREA WILL
impacts from comets, asteroids, and E RESTORED DUE TO THE
ERIAL.
meteoric bombardments caused devasta-
tion on a global scale and brought on ARGED AS FOLLOWS:

massive evolutionary changes, including

the demise of the dinosaurs. And, they say,
these cosmic events gave rise to ancient KAGE (WATER, COFFEE,
WHICH REDUCES LIFE
myths, inspired prophets and philosophers, L Bin STILL CAM CIR-
and affected the creation of astrological $2.00
sciences and ancient calendars.
JIRING
Warning that "there is something here to 5AND, PENCIL MARKS,
outrage everyone," Clube and Napier • < > *•••t.I..11.....■$3.00
present impressive and persuasive argu- JIRING THE BOOK BE
ments that challenge established scientific ..$6.00
thought, mythological and Biblical interpre-
tation, and historical, archaeological, and
anthropological evidence. Hardly an area of COST OF THE MATERIAL

modern knowledge remains unaffected, r PLUS A $ 2.00

UTDLING FEE.
directly or indirectly, by the ideas put forth
in this book. ITSELF CANNOT BE
rHE PRICE WE PAID WILL
Astronomers will find many orthodox A $ 2.00
PROCESSING
theories questioned: the evolution of spiral l FOR A NEW BOOK.
arms in galaxies, the origins of comets, and 10,00
OF $ WILL BE
THE LOSS TO THE
how the solar system "captures" comets, for
example. The authors suggest, too, that as-
:-VOLUME COST OF A BOOK
teroids were a major force in shaping the
evolution of the biosphere, and that comet-
ary impacts were responsible for causing

(Continued on back flap)

09175082
(Continued from front flap)

sea-level changes, ice ages, mountain build-

ing, and earth plate and crust movement.
Perhaps most provocative of all are
assertions concerning both the Old and
Mew Testaments Here Clube and Mapier
reveal that cometary collisions with the
Earth were responsible for the Great Flood
of Moah's time as well as the parting of the
Red Sea during the Israelites' Exodus from
Egypt. They also offer a new interpretation
of the Revelations of St. John the Divine, in
which descriptions of cometary impacts can
be derived from the symbolism.
The authors make clear that, frightening
as it may seem, there is always the possibil-
ity of a comet's colliding with the Earth.
Even now, about 500 meteorites with
minimal-impact energies enter the Earth's
atmosphere each year, most of them falling
into the seas. But within any human lifetime
there is a 1% or 2% chance that a cometary
impact will take place somewhere on Earth
with energies 20 times greater than the
force of the 1980 eruption of Mount
St. Helens.
Controversial, highly entertaining, yet
based on solid scientific evidence, THE
COSMIC SERPEMT is a book not just for the
professional astronomer but for all Vel-
ikovsky and Sagan fans as well. Its amazing
ideas are sure to generate controversy for
years to come.

THE AUTHORS: Victor Clube and Bill Mapier,

astronomers at the Royal Observatory, Edin-
burgh, have published articles in many scientific
periodicals, including nature.

Jacket design by bay Douglas

UMIVERSE BOORS
381 Park Avenue South
Mew York, M.Y. 10016

ISBM 0-87663-379-3
'■».
The Cosmic Serpent
Dis (evil) aster (star) [A nineteenth-century French caricature]
The Cosmic Serpent
A catastrophist view of Earth History

VICTOR CLUBEand BILL NAPIER

Published in the United States of America in 1982
by Universe Books
381 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016
Copyright © 1982 by Victor Clube and Bill Napier

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior permission of the publishers.

82 83 84 85 86/10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in Great Britain

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Clube, Victor.
The cosmic serpent.
Bibliography: p.
1. Historical geology. I. Napier, Bill.
II. Title.
QE28.3.C58 551.7 81-19699
ISBN 0-87663-379-3 AACR2

\
v
We dedicate this book to our Other Halves
Moira Clube and Nancy Napier
without whose perpetual encouragement
The Cosmic Serpent might never have uncoiled itself.
*
 Contents

List of illustrations and tables page 9

Prologue 11
1 Universe to galaxy:
the cosmic framework 14
2 Galaxy to comet:
the interstellar connection 42
3 Comet to asteroid:
solar system debris 60
4 Asteroid to crater:
the anatomy of impact 72
5 Crater to catastrophe:
the aftermath of impact 92
6 The mystery of the short-period comets 131
7 Prehistoric encounters? 138
8 Comets and gods 157
9 Zeus and Typhon 190
10 1369 BC 224
Epilogue 273
Acknowledgements and Bibliographic notes 275
References 286
Index 294
'
Illustrations and tables

Plates

Dis (evil) aster (star) frontispiece

page
1 Cluster of galaxies in Pavo 17
2 Alignments of QSOs 22
3 Edge-on galaxy 25
4 Face-on galaxy 27
5‘ Globules 37
6 ‘Interstellar comets’ 38
7 Halley’s comet 43
8 Ikeya-Seki comet 45
9 Three asteroids 61
10 Saturn 71
11 Copernicus crater 77
12 Craters on Mars 79
13 Meteorite trail 87
14 Serra da Cangalha 93
15 Lake Manicougan crater 97
16 Comet West 134
17 Tunguska forest 139
18 Sikhote-Alin meteorite 141
19 Leonids 147
20 Han tomb paintings of comets 155
21 Broadsheet 1744 159
22 Illustrations from Cometographia, 1688 176
23 Major comets of AD 1000 and 1180 191
24 Apollo and Python 193
25 Typhon and Zeus 195
26 Marduk and Tiamat 201
27 Egyptian Sun-god 203
28 1479 comet 204
29 Ramasseum month list 231
30 The comet at Traprain Law 263

Figures
page
1 Spiral arms and Gould Belt 19
2 Radial velocities of globular clusters 26
3 Comet orbit through inner planetary system 29
4 Survival probability of comet orbits 36
5 Semi-major axis distribution of comets 37
6 Impact cratering rate ns. time 41
10 Illustrations and tables

page
7 Meteoroid deposition rate vs. time 43
8 Short-period comet orbits 52
9 Eccentricities and inclinations of asteroid orbits 54
10 Impact explosions: energies and rates 85
11 Wind speed and air temperature with distance
from a billion-megaton explosion 98
12 Species extinction rates during Phanerozoic 104
13 Iridium deposition at Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary 114
14 Proliferation of the families of birds 119
15 Incidence of microtektites at close of Eocene 122
16 Regression and transgression of sea level 125
17 Fireball-meteorite data 142
18 Simulation of bombardment episodes during
5,000-year period 145
19 Lunar meteor storms 149
20 Egyptian chronology and Carbon 14 dates 245

Tables
page
1 Periodicity of geophysical processes 34
2 Short-lived or recent solar system phenomena 70
3 Crater diameters and impact energies and rates 82
4 Geological ages 109
5 Recent terrestrial impact craters 121
6 Low energy impact rates 138
7 Orbital elements of Encke’s comet, Hephaistos and
Taurids 153
8 Revised Egyptian chronology 236
Prologue

'If the doors of perception were cleansed,

everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.’

William Blake,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

In this book we bring together hitherto unconnected strands in

astronomy, biology and geology, and in the early history and
mythology of man.
The unifying theme is the comet, currently thought of as a minor
actor in the cosmic drama. We shall propose that it grows out of the
cold, dense nebulae found in interstellar space; is captured into the
solar system during a close encounter; and if not flung out again, is
thrown either into the space between Mars and Jupiter where it
becomes an asteroid, or into an orbit which will bring it eventually, in
the form of an asteroid, into collision with a planet.
If the planet is the Earth and the asteroid of modest dimensions, the
impact destroys life on a global scale and may initiate an ice age. Such
visitations are not uncommon on geological timescales and we shall
argue that they have played an important and yet unrecognized part
in the evolution of life and the history of the Earth. Smaller collisions,
catastrophic over say the area of a small nation, are much more
common and bring us into the timescale of human existence. We
propose that these have occurred in prehistoric and early historic
times, and we interpret Biblical and mythological narrative as faithful
records of past catastrophes. In this sense a catastrophist view is
taken inter alia of biological evolution, geological phenomena, and
the ancient history of at least the Mediterranean and Near Eastern
peoples.
Of course nothing is really new and the belief that, for instance,
comets might sometimes crash on to the Earth took root in the minds
of scientific people almost 300 years ago. Thomas Wright wrote
around 1755: That comets are capable of distroying such worlds as
may chance to fall in their way is, from their vast magnitude, velocity,
firey substance, not at all to be doubted.’ Fifty years later Laplace
thought that The seas would abandon their ancient positions, in
order to precipitate themselves towards the new equator; a great
portion of the human race and the animals would be drowned in the
12 Prologue

universal deluge, or destroyed by the violent shock imparted to the

terrestrial globe; entire species would be annihilatedand so on.
With the data available in the nineteenth century, these ideas could
only be speculation, and they were soon lost, submerged by the bold
concepts of uniformity and evolution. But the great explosion of
astronomical and other knowledge of the past few years has enabled
us to put such early speculations on a scientific footing, and in the
pages which follow our debt to scientists and scholars in many fields
will be in no doubt.
But this explosion has brought with it a severe problem. No one
individual has the breadth of knowledge to analyse, in full scholarly
depth, more than a fraction of the evidence which can be brought to
bear on the theme. On the other hand ever-increasing specialization
of knowledge is a recipe for sterility and error: sterility because the
comprehensive picture may go unrecognized, and even if it does not,
error because the specialist will tend to over-emphasize the
significance -of this or that datum in his own field. The specialist is
right to attach importance to details; but one does not judge the
theory of evolution simply by its application to the flying squirrels of
Eastern Asia.
We offer no solution to this problem. Certainly we do not urge the
reader to agree with everything we have written, as inevitably any
attempt to deal with such a wide range of material, most of it outside
our own specializations, will have many shortcomings: the important
thing is the overall view. We do urge the reader to assess the evidence
in its totality, however, and to be wary of any ‘consensus’ of opinion
which, often as not, seems to be based on little more than historical
inertia: the primordial cloud of comets around the Sun, and the
standard Egyptian chronology, may be cases in point. We urge the
reader because, if he will bear with us, he will see in the end that we
deal not just with esoteric theories and a world light years away, but
with events in human history and facts that might materially affect
the way we perceive our future on this planet. Crystal-ball gazing is
not our business however; it is simply to expose the past and its
rationale. That critical analysis of this rationale has become a matter
of urgency will, we hope, speak for itself. But we do not take it for
granted: even the guardians of knowledge, we are aware, sometimes
take facts as mere words or statistics to be woven in whatever pattern
they please. And if what is observed, namely catastrophism, disturbs
the peace of mind, there can be a tendency to reject reality itself. The
history of human thought shows that false patterns can survive for
 Prologue 13

centuries while new discoveries, instead of correcting the errors,

merely heap complexity upon complexity. If man becomes baffled by
the convolutions of thought thus entailed, there tends to emerge a
deepening conviction that forces for ever beyond his ken are
controlling an essentially mysterious universe. Indeed, it is even
possible to be so preoccupied with the logical niceties of an abstruse,
fictitious paradise that one can lose sight altogether of the slings and
arrows of the real world. So we urge the reader to keep in mind that
there were mistaken defenders of Ptolemy’s epicycles in days gone by.
Let us not forget that it is often only by ex cathedra statement that
things like epicycles acquire a permanence and a reality that they might
otherwise not have. By such means, black can become white and, more
relevant to our theme, a disproof of Velikovskian logic can deprive
ancient legends of their catastrophic message.
If then, in part, it is the thought of catastrophism that disturbs, we
feel bound to remind the reader that the real, objective world is not in
the end a matter of taste; it works only one way and no amount of
wishful thinking can alter the reality. The aim of the scientific analyst,
be he astronomer, geologist, archaeologist, historian or whatever, is
simply to sift the evidence and search for that reality, establishing it
all the while as fact with ever-increasing probability. His methods
may or may not be the reader’s, but the truth in the end transcends
them both. So, in urging the reader to bear with us, we hope he will
recognize that there are greater things at stake than merely his
bewilderment or our failings in the use of words.
The Cosmic Serpent, then, is a reconstruction of knowledge in
several fields, an adventure in paradigm. There is something here to
outrage everyone.
1 • Universe to galaxy:
the cosmic framework

We start with a brief review of cosmology and galactic astronomy. It is

all too easy to picture our terrestrial base as virtually isolated from the
remainder of the universe, so our aim in this first chapter is to see how the
average galaxy works and then establish a connection between our
Galaxy and the solar system. We shall look at the modern theory of
galaxies with the wary eye of a sceptic, but in due course concentrate the
reader’s attention on the problem of spiral arms. Spiral structure is an
important part of galactic machinery and we discuss two possible ways
in which it might be formed. We draw particular attention to interstellar
comets as constituents of spiral arms: it seems very likely that
aggregations of interstellar comets are the precursors of star formation.
We recognize the periodic capture of comets by the solar system as it
circulates through the spiral arms in our Galaxy as a process of
fundamental importance.

1.1 The universe: facts and fancies

Not so long ago, most people lived their entire lives in the vicinity of
the town or village where they were born. Transport was by horse or
on foot: one might have waited a decade or more for the explorer of
distant lands to return. The Earth, then, must have seemed
unimaginably vast; probably only the sailor or the desert nomad had
even a partial grasp of terrestrial distances. But now we measure an
Atlantic crossing for instance in hours. The aeroplane has done much
to put our base in perspective. The size has not changed; but custom
and usage have enabled us better to grasp the dimensions. So it is with
the universe. Familiarity with the building blocks soon overcomes the
otherwise impossibly huge scale of things. So let us start with a brief
look at the modern astronomer’s cosmic laboratory, and learn our
way around.
Although the terrestrial globe is nearly 13,000 km across, it
dwindles to a mere point against the distance at which it circles the
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 15
Sun. This distance is not far short of 150 million km, or 8 light
minutes, but even this is only a small fraction of the distance to the
outermost planet of the solar system. At around 6 billion km, light
takes nearly 44 hours to reach Pluto. But we have hardly begun: the
stars nearest to the Sun are still several light years away.
On such a scale of things, the Sun becomes but a tiny speck,
notwithstanding its mass and volume exceeding those of the Earth by
nearly a million-fold. The Sun is, of course, the dominant source of
gravity in the solar system and effectively controls the planetary
orbits. The planets, as it happens, all circulate in the same direction,
and from our vantage point they are also seen to be confined to a
rather narrow band in the sky called the zodiac. But why the solar
system should rotate like this and be so flat is not immediately
obvious. After all, the gravity field is spherical in structure and we can
easily imagine planetary orbits randomly distributed in space going
in all directions. Here then, we have significant facts which we might
expect to explain only by understanding the origin and history of the
solar system. In no time at all, we are in the realm of astrophysics
how do we suppose stars are made, and where do the planets come
from? It is to questions like these that we shall turn first of all. And
even though there is no definite answer, there is no doubt that the
modern astronomer has a great deal to tell.
From radioactive dating of meteorites and the oldest rocks on
Earth, we are aware that the solar system is of great age: it was
formed something like 4.5 billion years ago. During this time, life has
evolved on Earth, and the Sun has burned up quite a bit of its
hydrogen content, producing radiation all the while. But all this
happens in what is but a microcosm in the midst of a great galaxy of
stars. Among these stars, our Sun turns out to be neither particularly
distinguished nor particularly venerable. Thus, most of the stars that
make up the Galaxy are two or three times older than the solar system,
whilst the very brightest stars—which can be a million times more
luminous than the Sun—are only a few million years old. In a short
time, galactically speaking, these bright stars will burn up and some
more will be formed. Quite simply then, we are in a solar system that
somehow evolves, and the solar system is itself immersed in an ever-
changing galaxy.
It is difficult to picture the great size of our Galaxy. The distance
from star to star is on average a few light years, or in astronomer’s
units, about a parsec (3.3 light years). The stars we see with the naked
eye, of which there are about 5,000, he mostly within a few hundred
16 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

parsecs of the Sun. But by far the great majority, 100 billion or so,
are very much further off and in the Milky Way. It is substantially this
band of light that is our Galaxy: a vast rotating disc of stars carrying
with it also a certain amount of gas and dust, the whole system being
20 kiloparsecs or so in diameter. And then, almost as if this were not
enough to overcome any lingering sense of our self-importance, there
is beyond the Galaxy, and dwarfing it to complete insignificance, a
universe of seemingly limitless proportions, containing million upon
million of galaxies like our own. In any direction these galaxies
extend for as far as the telescope can reach, certainly beyond a billion
parsecs. They are apparently spread around in a more or less random
way but even they would have a feeling of isolation if they were
capable of thought since they occupy only a millionth or so of the
available space. As one looks at photographs of this scene (Plate 1), it
is all too easy to imagine these galaxies hang for ever in empty space
just as we observe them, but that is simply an illusion created by
distance and time. In fact, the whole display is a maelstrom of
motion, each galaxy speeding along a path mapped out for it by the
ever-changing but unseen gravity field of its surroundings. Just as we
are tied to the Earth, so is the Earth to the Sun, the Sun to the Galaxy,
and the galaxies to one another. Everything in the universe, then, is
controlled by the all-pervasive hand of gravity.
In the space between the galaxies there are many smaller systems of
various kinds, such as intergalactic clusters, minor galaxies, streams
of gas and the like. But these are mostly invisible except as
companions to the very nearest galaxies, and can be safely neglected
in the following discussion. Despite the overall randomness, there is
also an obvious tendency for galaxies to group together in clusters or
cells of up to several thousand at a time. Our own Galaxy for example
is a member of the so-called ‘local group1 and is an offshoot of the
huge Virgo cluster. If our large motion with respect to the cluster is
anything to go by, the system appears to be collapsing. But why
galaxies should group, and possibly un-group, themselves like this
rather than, say, just fill space uniformly is not yet understood.
However, to the limit of observability, looking back through 1 or 2

1. (Opposite) The cluster of galaxies in Pavo. The round images of differing

brightness are mostly foreground stars belonging to our own galaxy. They are just a
few hundred parsecs away whereas the cluster is exceedingly remote, at a distance of
100 megaparsecs. Note the presence of spiral arms in Tace-on’ galaxies and the disc-
like structure of "edge-on' galaxies.
18 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework
billion light years, the clusters and their contents 'there and then’ look
very much the same as those ‘here and now’. On this evidence and this
scale at least, one might be led to believe the universe is more or less
uniform in space and time, possibly of infinite extent and infinite age.
Such uniformity inspires the so-called perfect cosmological principle,
the belief that the universe presents the same general appearance to an
observer in any place at any time.
However the light from galaxies is also found to be systematically
shifted towards the red end of the spectrum by amounts that are
proportional to their distances. This important fact has been known
for nearly fifty years and has been generally interpreted as a doppler
effect, that is as due to a velocity of recession: astronomers have come
to accept that the universe is expanding uniformly in all directions. In
that case, unless there is continuous creation of matter compensating
the dilution with time—and this idea is not now widely favoured—the
universe is evolving and there can be no question of complete
uniformity in space and time. This apparent and very immediate
conflict between the simplest cosmological facts is the source of some
quite fundamental difficulties in modern astronomy. Where in a
stationary universe one might perhaps expect to see constancy and
conservation on the largest conceivable scales, and fluctuation and
deviation from the norm at smaller levels, the world view which most
astronomers now tend towards is one in which there is unending
change on the largest scale and a fair degree of permanence on the
smaller one. Whether this topsy-turvy consensus will stand the test of
time is still, in our view, an open question. Thus, where astronomers
favouring an expanding universe tend to see all galaxies at the present
epoch as mostly rather steady tranquil affairs with perhaps a more
active phase discernible near the observational limit of our telescopes
and confined to early on in the life of the universe, the observations,
as we shall see, allow an alternative non-expanding view of the
universe in which both nearby and remote galaxies periodically
deviate from quiet to brief energetic states, being in this case much the
same on average today as they were many aeons ago.
It is as well to remember for example that the idea of an infinite and
basically non-evolving universe had begun to take root long before
the above observations of uniformity had become available. This was
at a time when it was thought the universe must go on working for
ever like some huge and powerful perpetual motion machine.
Towards the end of the last century, however, this idea had run into
difficulties with the empirical second law of thermodynamics. Thus it
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 19
had become increasingly clear that it was a natural and inevitable
property of all the machines we could study in the terrestrial
laboratory that their energy eventually became randomized or
degraded into heat. Bit by bit, the energy capable of doing productive
work wasted away. The ultimate fate of the world seemed therefore to
be to suffer a Teat death’. Physicists were forced to accept what is called
the law of increase of entropy (ie. the irreversible dissipation of energy)
on the largest scale and they became accustomed to the idea of an
evolving universe. The ground was thus well prepared for the
discovery of cosmic expansion. It follows then that if the large-scale
uniformity referred to above, in space and time, were truly a
fundamental fact, we might have to abandon the doppler inter-
pretation of cosmological redshifts and the entropy problem could
still be with us. The suspicion would be reinforced that, contrary to
local thermodynamic laws, there exist places in the universe where
entropy is reduced rather than increased, where dissipated heat energy
is somehow collected and converted back into organized motion.
In this respect, one of the interesting surprises of modern radio
astronomy is the quite extreme coldness of much material in the
Galaxy and elsewhere. In optical astronomy, we have until quite
recently been mostly conscious of only the hot parts like stars, and we
have tended not to think about any colder stuff. Increasingly now
however, astronomers are obliged to take note of matter that is very
cold indeed—only a few degrees of absolute temperature at most. The
question is how does it get so cold? For the most part, astrophysicists
presume straightforward cooling by radiation, not a particularly
non-random process. But it is interesting to speculate whether heat
energy could somehow be fuelling organized motion. More and more
now, astronomers are finding highly condensed stars in states
approaching ultimate gravitational collapse. Many show signs of
extremely rapid rotation. There is a suspicion that superstars of
similar character may be formed in galactic nuclei. If these objects
condense, gravity coupled with the conservation of angular
momentum could be forcing heat energy back into rotational energy.
Thus, although it is widely presumed at the moment that gravi-
tationally collapsed objects always disappear into mysterious ‘black
holes’, it is conceivable that, instead, this rapidly rotating material is
thrown back into the universe in an extremely cold, condensed form
perhaps as oppositely directed jets. Unfortunately, with the end-point
of gravitational collapse as yet undecided, the complete pattern of
evolution in the universe cannot be resolved. It seems that we cannot
20 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework
avoid a paradox. If the universe is evolving and starts with a ‘big bang’,
then some singular initial state, unamenable to scientific enquiry, is
implied. If it is non-evolving, then thermodynamic laws are not
applicable on very large scales. Obviously there are big and important
mysteries here but the main point we wish to make is that it would be a
mistake to suppose modern astronomers have necessarily arrived at a
final and accurate picture of how the complete universe works. We
must continue to face facts keeping our minds and options as open as
possible.
This of course is not to advocate openness of mind to the point of
absurdity. The universe does have a unique explanation and it is
certainly not our intention here to suggest that almost any
explanation can be made to fit the available observations. There is a
definite requirement on scientists to seek the most probable
explanation in the light of all the data; it is this that the consensus of
scientific opinion normally represents, and it is this that the reader
would expect to see described. However, cosmology is an all-
embracing science and any single erroneous assumption at this level
can have far-reaching consequences throughout science. At this
particular level therefore, the responsible scientist has a special duty
to keep a wary eye on the possibilities that emerge if important
unsubstantiated assumptions are changed. In cosmology, there can be
no question that the single most important unsubstantiated
assumption is the velocity interpretation of cosmological redshifts,
and in this chapter, we shall be making a particular point of balancing
the standard paradigm against at least one alternative scenario that
could emerge if this assumption eventually proves to be erroneous. So
much for the widest arena in which we find ourselves—let us now
consider the character of the inmates.

1.2 Galaxies: gentle giants or temperamental monsters?

Although it is unfashionable, let us pursue, for the moment, the
possibility that cosmological redshifts are not a velocity effect but due
to some as yet unidentified influence on light as it journeys towards
us, in which case the expansion would not exist—the so-called ‘tired
light’ hypothesis. That the oldest stars have an age very roughly equal
to the expansion age of the universe has sometimes been taken to
mean there really was a big bang, but neither the distance scale nor
the theories of stellar nucleosynthesis have been well enough
established to make this line of argument secure. The kind of
observation that may settle the issue is a measurement of the light
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 21
received from supernovae (exploding stars) in distant galaxies. If the
universe were not expanding we would expect to see supernova
explosions developing in distant galaxies at the same rate as those
developing nearby. In an expanding universe on the other hand, the
frequency of arrival of light waves would be diminished and the
explosions would appear to be developing more slowly. But such
information is not yet available, so most astronomers will for the time
being probably hold on to the idea of expansion. And in these
circumstances, they may well see it as confirmed by other kinds of
observation. For example, it is now known that we are bathed in a
uniform background radiation of very low temperature (3° absolute)
coming from all over the sky at microwave frequencies. It has so far
proved impossible to associate this very cold nearly ‘thermal’
radiation with any known material source and, since space is
otherwise supposed to be empty—a very far-reaching assumption! -
the microwave background has come to be accepted as a faint ‘echo'
of the big bang which is presumed also to have given rise to the
general expansion. This is certainly a permissible speculation but it
does not yet constitute a proof of expansion.
Another piece of evidence persuading modern astronomers that
the universe is expanding and evolving relates to quasars. These
objects are also far from being properly understood, but it is thought
likely that most of them are exceedingly bright, highly energetic
galactic nuclei, the parent galaxy usually being invisible. The
quasars have very large redshifts, and inferring ‘doppler' distances
for them, astronomers place these objects at very large look-back
times', so that they are supposedly now being seen as they were early
on in the life of the universe. We can thus estimate their number
density and brightness evolution with time far beyond the observable
limit of ordinary galaxies. This way, the properties of the relatively
few galaxies containing quasars can appear to be evolving. The
argument would obviously cease to impress if the quasar redshifts were
also due to some other cause like gravity. This is still an unsettled
question in modern astronomy and is highlighted by observations of
high redshift quasi-stellar objects (of which the quasars are a special
category). Some QSOs for example are apparently associated with
nearby, low redshift, galaxies. If there truly were physical con-
nections then QSOs would not all be galactic nuclei and redshifts
would not be a measure of distance: QSOs could not then be used as
probes of remote regions of the universe. It is possible then that QSOs
are evidence of the break-up of short-lived rapidly rotating
22 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

2. Six quasi-stellar objects in a small area of the sky less than a degree square.
These are the brightest objects of their kind in the field but are nevertheless still very
faint and at least as far from us as the furthest visible galaxies. Note the surprisingly
accurate alignment of each triplet and the similar sequence of redshifts in each case.
The redshifts are considered unlikely arrangements to occur by chance. The central
object in each triplet may be a galactic nucleus at the distance indicated by its
redshift whilst the aligned companions could be oppositely directed ejecta
possessing large redshifts of unknown origin.2 * * * 6
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 23

gravitationally collapsed nuclei recently or periodically formed in

relatively nearby galaxies. The American astronomer Arp takes this
view and attributes the excess redshift to special conditions in QSOs
in which certain atomic constants are altered. He in fact still accepts
expansion as the explanation of the underlying cosmological redshift,
but speculates that the special conditions emerge in objects whose
evolution has not got going until long after the big bang. It would
probably be less upsetting to atomic physics however to think of
QSOs as temporary very massive objects with excess redshifts created
by the strong gravitational held. In this case, there is really no
evidence from QSOs that we are dealing with an evolutionary
universe, and the possibility that cosmological redshifts are not a
velocity effect remains. The point again is that although a particular
cosmological scenario may at this time have widespread support (ie.
an expanding universe of finite age with quasars all very old, no longer
present in nearby galaxies), it is still only a hypothesis. The
observational and theoretical foundations are not so secure that one
can yet rule out alternative models (e.g. a stationary universe in which
nearby galaxies can still produce temporary quasars in their nuclei).
We have to be careful therefore that any preconceptions we may have
about the universe at large do not force on us a particular view of the
nature of galaxies that the observations do not exclusively support.
The reader may find such ambiguities tiresome but they are common
in sciences like astrophysics. Again, we must seek to avoid total
commitment to a particular scenario and try to build our under-
standing of galaxies on the more unassailable facts.
We have said enough, however, to show that quasars are a crucial
enigma in the modern universe. If the universe is expanding, quasars
are evidence of a single blazing nucleus early on in the life of a galaxy.
On this picture, each galaxy is thought to become comparatively tame
thereafter. On the other hand, if the universe is in a steady state and
not expanding, quasars can be interpreted as evidence of rather
temperamental behaviour in nearby as well as remote galactic nuclei.
Most of the while the galaxies are quiet but every 100 million years or
so, the nucleus apparently flares up and destroys itself in a huge
violent explosion lasting only a few million years. The choice then for
the astronomer is between galaxies that are 'gentle giants' or
'temperamental monsters’.
All these problems simply set the scene however. They can be
largely left to one side in these chapters. For our present purpose, it is
sufficient to know that within certain limits, there is plenty of
24 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

evidence that most galaxies have retained more or less the same
general appearance for several billion years. Furthermore, whether
or not cosmic expansion is real, the effects are certainly small enough
to make very little difference to the virtual isolation of many
individual galaxies during this period of time. To a good working
approximation then, every galaxy appears to be in a 'steady state’
uninfluenced in the main by any external effects—it is, in essence, a
virtually unchanging island in a sea of emptiness! Thus, although a
careful look at the nearest galaxies, including our own, does reveal
considerable movement and turmoil within, and there is the
possibility of a periodically violent nucleus, we can deduce from
cosmology that there is nonetheless a long-lasting regularity and
order in all this motion. One of the principal aims of modern
astronomy must then be to describe how this clockwork-like galactic
mechanism functions.

1.3 Galactic machinery

The first fact of importance is that galaxies are composed mainly of
stars. They also contain a significant fraction of gas and dust as well
as a central nucleus. Their visual appearance however happens to
depend to a large extent on the properties and evolutionary state of
these secondary components. Indeed, whether or not it is detectable
as a radio galaxy depends very much on its nucleus or its gaseous
component. The underlying internal dynamics of galaxies are
basically similar nevertheless, and are dominated by the stellar
component which concentrates strongly towards the centre of a
galaxy. The stars are for the most part bound to the system in a
flattened spheroidal distribution, each one moving continuously in a
large orbit under the control of the system’s overall gravity. Some of
the stars and most of the gas and dust make up a very flat disc which
tends to project out of the spheroid.
Most galaxies are on the whole very like our own, that is of much
the same mass and much the same size. But why galaxies should have
their particular masses of a 100 billion suns and sizes of around 20
kiloparsecs is not yet known. The theoretical situation for galaxies
thus contrasts very markedly with that for stars: for the most part, we
can understand why stars have their particular masses and sizes. So,
in describing the physical behaviour of galaxies, we have to accept
rather severe boundaries to our knowledge at the present time. We
can assemble into a composite picture only those properties that seem
to have a coherent physical pattern. This is perhaps not entirely
 3. Typical galactic disc observed ‘edge-on’. Its catalogue number is NGC 5170. The
surrounding stars are, as usual, foreground objects in our own galaxy. Note how the
disc and its dust lane appear to project out of a central spheroidal component.
Spheroidal components are mostly composed of old (‘red’) stars whilst the discs
include spiral arms containing very young (‘blue’) stars.

satisfactory but it is the best that can be done in the circumstances. It

seems the very bright nuclei of some galaxies, and the quasars, are
merely the latest conundrum in a very old puzzle.
How are we to comprehend the presence of gas and dust in
galaxies? Essentially it seems, they are part of the clockwork
mechanism. We believe stars are somehow formed out of gas and
dust, and many stars, we know, end their lives in explosions scattering
their contents into the void. We thus imagine a cycle in which gas and
dust go to stars and thence back to the interstellar medium. There is
certainly a rough and ready agreement between the amount of gas and
the starlight we observe, the latter being related to the rate at which
stars evolve and die. But a problem is that astronomers have not
yet really worked out how stars are formed. For this reason, we do
not quite understand those somewhat less common galaxies, perhaps
20 or 30 per cent of the total, which have very little gas and dust.
These are the so-called elliptical galaxies. Are they so old that most of
26 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

the stars, being less massive, are producing only a little gas? Is the gas
perhaps being blown away by a strong wind from the nucleus? Or are
the galaxies so young that they have not yet formed very much gas? It
is difficult to be certain, especially when so many of these galaxies are
apparently associated with quasars and huge double radio sources
which have been shot out of their nuclei. On the one hand, the
presence of such quasars might imply youth as their profligate
spending of energy cannot last; but on the other hand the colours of
the stars tell us most of them are red giants which are known to be
comparatively old. Thus although astronomers have arrived at a
working model that goes much of the way towards explaining the
presence of gas and dust and stars in a good many galaxies, the overall
evolution remains unknown and there are too many loose ends for
comfort.
Since the random velocities of stars and gas clouds are observed to
be mostly around 10 km per second, the process we have described is
essentially one in which gas, dust and stars rotate more or less
together around the centre of the galaxy. We appear to be picturing a
continuous cycle of material through gas and stars which spreads
locally evolved products, such as high atomic weight elements formed
in the centres of stars, only very slowly throughout the galaxy. This
‘local’ hypothesis is however as speculative as the very process of star
formation itself. We have to keep in mind the possibility that much of
the gas, especially in the central parts of the galaxy, may not stay
where it is. It may be more inclined to gravitate towards the middle of
the galaxy where it can build a giant nucleus. Since massive nuclei will
evolve quite rapidly, perhaps they end their lives by blowing up and
scattering the products of their evolution throughout the galaxy:
perhaps it is mostly these products that are then responsible for
triggering star formation. If this picture is correct, new stars may not
be produced simply from local condensations of gas. It is conceivable
that galactic nuclei and spiral arms are an integral part of the gigantic
clockwork mechanism.

1.4 Spiral structure: density wave or nuclear explosion?

Spiral structure is in fact a very common property of galaxies, and it is
generally present in the 60 or 70 per cent containing gas and dust. It
usually takes the form of a pair of arms stretching one or two
revolutions around the system with reflection symmetry through the
centre. Spectroscopic measurements indicate that the arms are
commonly rotating around the centre with velocities of nearly
4. Typical galactic disc observed ‘face-on’. Its catalogue number is NGC 1365.
Although there is a central concentration of stars corresponding to the spheroidal
component, the nucleus, as is the case in most galaxies, is not particularly
conspicuous. Note the overall "grand design’ of the spiral and the ragged fine
structure: both these and the immense variety of spiral structures observed in the
universe suggest such patterns may last for only 100 or 200 million years.
28 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework
300 km per second. The revolution periods are thus a few hundred
million years, considerably less than the average ages of stars. These
are more like a few billion years. At first sight then, it seems the arms
have lasted for ten or a hundred revolutions since they were formed.
If such were the case, one would probably be envisaging the arms as
the locus of a large spiral wave running through the galactic disc in
which the local excess pressure continually compresses gas into
forming new stars. This is because, if a wave of this kind were not
involved, the observed differential rotation would very soon tear the
arms to shreds. The situation may well not be as simple as this
however. One problem is that the density waves seem to be incapable of
compressing diffuse gas into the cold dense clouds actually observed in
spiral arms. For such reasons, some astronomers question whether the
density wave picture is correct.
Usually the trailing and leading ends of the spiral arms are ill-
defined and the system as a whole simply describes a kind of ring or
flattened doughnut several kiloparsecs broad. And sometimes, there
are signs of additional sets of arms in galaxies. A galaxy may for
example possess a very large outer ring of gas and dust, or it may have
a small central pair of spiral arms which seem almost to connect to the
galactic centre. The spiral structure tends therefore to be extremely
varied and complex. Instead of imagining it as a uniform pattern
going round and round, it is more in accord with the variety of
appearances to suppose that it is formed and reformed again and
again, each time spreading out from the nucleus and being rapidly
destroyed by shearing forces caused by the rotation. Sometimes a new
set of arms seems to be created even before the existing ones have died
away. With this scenario, we are no longer obliged to think of spiral
arms as density waves. They simply emerge from the nucleus at
intervals in the form of cold, dense clouds, and then break up under
the influence of differential rotation.
Although the main spiral arms are very conspicuous, it turns out
they are not a particularly massive part of a galaxy. In fact, they make
up only a few per cent of the total mass, and the main reason why they
are so obvious is that they represent the principal location of recent
star formation. The arms happen to delineate great concentrations of
gas and dust even within the galactic plane where most of this
material lies, and it is in these narrow concentrations that we
evidently see the newest stars being created. Since, in general, stars
are formed in a range of masses and the largest stars, perhaps up to a
hundred solar masses, are especially luminous and short-lived, it is
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 29
these relatively few new stars that render the spiral arms so
conspicuous. Elsewhere in the galaxy all the really massive stars have
long since died out.
Another remarkable property of spiral galaxies is the extreme
flatness of the dust and gas plane containing the arms. Thus, although
the central star system possesses an 'oblate spheroidal’ structure, the
disc and the arms, as we have remarked already, seem to project out
of this in an exceedingly thin plane. Its thickness is at most only about
one-hundredth of its diameter. This property reminiscent of the solar
system, has been none too easy to explain theoretically. Why should
so many stars be confined to a flat disc when the natural shape of a
collection of these objects is the spheroidal distribution we observe
nearer the centre of the galaxy? One rather popular idea is that every
galaxy starts off as a rotating cloud of gas. This collapses under its
own gravity, until balanced by rotation at a certain size; the inelastic
collisions between gas clouds are then supposed to be frequent
enough to dissipate the random motions and cause the gas to settle
into a very flat rotating disc. A few 'halo’ stars are supposed to form
while this is going on but most of the stars do not start appearing
until after the gaseous disc is first constructed. One problem with this
scheme is that it does not provide us with a very satisfactory sequence
of star ages in relation to the actual observations. Another is that we
have not yet discovered any proto-galactic gas clouds. If the universe
is evolving, they could be out of sight and this might not then be such
a worry, but if it is not, the theory is much more suspect. For this
reason, the flatness of the disc may have to be regarded as a feature of
galaxies imposed by some other mode of star formation. A possibility
is that the arms are thin because they are ejected from very flat
rotating objects. The narrowness of the plane would then be evidence
that successive sets of arms result from objects which are themselves
derived from material with a common rotation axis, that is just
typical material of the galaxy itself. The natural place to look for such
objects, possibly in a state of violent disruption, would obviously be
in the centre of the galaxy. We have noted already there is a small
percentage of galaxies in whose centres very violent things are going
on. Most of these nuclei have properties very like those of quasars.
To summarize, we have now drawn attention to two possible,
perhaps extreme, but unproven scenarios consistent with modern
observations of galaxies. One of them, currently enjoying the support
of most astronomers, would have quasars at large look-back times, as
once-and-for-all bright nuclei formed fairly early on in the lifetime of
30 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

a galaxy, and the spiral arms visible in nearer galaxies as waves

circulating through the disc of gas, the pressure enhancement being
responsible for triggering star formation..The other scenario would
have a universe in which high redshift quasars are not so remote,
being indicators of recurrent activity associated with successive
gravitationally collapsed superstars in the nuclei of relatively nearby
galaxies. According to this picture the active spells are short-lived and
may result in the ejection of cold spiral arms, each set of which
survives for a few hundred million years. If this latter theory is correct
the concentrations of gas and dust in the arms are the natural end
products of the evolution of supermassive stars in galactic nuclei, and
it is gravitational instability in this material that gives rise to star
formation. A great deal of observational work with large telescopes is
being undertaken and hopefully it will be possible to discriminate
between these—and other—possibilities within a decade. In the
meantime, until such hard evidence is forthcoming, we would again
be wise to keep open and sceptical minds on these theoretical
exercises.

1.5 Our Galaxy: the spiral arms and the solar neighbourhood
The trail we follow really begins with the arms of our own Galaxy,
which seems to be a typical two-armed spiral, and we shall now look
at this spiral structure in a little more detail. The Sun happens to be
quite close to the central plane and the Milky Way’s brightness and
structure are simply due to the distribution of clumps of recently
formed bright stars and the ever prevalent dust clouds in the nearest
spiral arms. By the 1930s, optical astronomers had disentangled this
structure and we were aware that the centre of our Galaxy was in the
direction of the constellation of Sagittarius but generally obscured by
great clouds of dust. By 1950, they were also aware of the so-called
Sagittarius arm spreading along the Milky Way roughly per-
pendicular to the line of sight towards the galactic centre. They also
knew about the so-called Orion arm perpendicular to the opposite
direction which is, rather obviously, designated the galactic anti-
centre. When we peer through the Orion arm, it is possible to see signs
of another arm further out in the Galaxy. This is known as the Perseus
arm. If the spiral structure in our Galaxy is at all similar to that in the
other galaxies, and there is no reason to question this at the moment,
then it would be reasonable to suppose the Perseus arm is an
extension of the Sagittarius arm. Although each of these arms is no
more than a kiloparsec or two from us, it is important to appreciate
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 31

Fig. 1. Schematic perspective view of the galactic plane containing sections of the
nearby spiral arms as perceived with the aid of optical telescopes. The scale is such
that the Sun is approximately 7 kiloparsecs from the galactic centre, whilst Gould’s
Belt is a linear feature whose longest dimension is somewhat less than a kiloparsec.
The spheroid and the disc (not shown) generally contain middle-aged stars, the arms
contain young stars and much gas and dust besides, whilst the whole is immersed in
a large but not very dense ‘halo’ containing the oldest stars in the Galaxy.

that the Sun is not really part of them. The arms are young and the
Sun is old! They may be quite near in galactic terms but we do not
belong to them in the same sense as the Earth belongs to the solar
system, for example.
In the 1950s and later, radio astronomers placed the spiral
character of our Galaxy beyond any further doubt. The radio
emission from the Milky Way is mainly from gas which is very cold,
ranging in temperature from a few degrees above absolute zero up to
one or two hundred degrees absolute. Since gas is one of the principal
components of the spiral arms and radio waves are relatively
unobscured by the dust, we are able to see to vastly greater distances
than before throughout the galactic disc. Though it is difficult to be sure
of the precise distance of a gas cloud giving rise to any particular radio
emission along any one line of sight, it is at least possible to separate out
the different features, and continuity of features over considerable
stretches of the Milky Way soon made it clear that we were observing
long narrow spiral arms. The very nearby arms first observed by optical
astronomers were extremely prominent, but unfortunately, the lack of
detailed knowledge of the pattern of velocities in the Galaxy has made
32 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

for difficulty in disentangling the rest of the structure. Nevertheless, in

the anti-centre direction beyond the Sun’s distance from the galactic
centre, there are clear signs of further windings of several rather weak
arms and close to the galactic centre, within a radius of about 3
kiloparsecs, there is an obvious inner system of arms possessing very
strong outward velocities of expansion. All these fact were originally
derived from observations of the so-called 21-cm line which was the
first studied by radio astronomers. This spectrum line emitting at the
radio wavelength of 21 cm comes from the neutral hydrogen gas in the
arms, but in more recent years searches have been extended to other
lines, particularly those originating from very cold molecular radicals.
All tell substantially the same story, but the molecular lines have made
particularly clear the zone between radii of about 4 and 8 kiloparsecs
containing the strongest spiral arms. These are the ones in which the
Sun is ‘immersed’. They have also shown up a strong concentration of
very cold material right at the galactic centre, suggesting that whatever
spiral arms are composed of is also to be found in a very condensed
form near the galactic nucleus. Taking a broad view it looks as if our
Galaxy might have as many as three sets of spiral arms, one set of which
is especially conspicuous. Of course on the nuclear ejection hypothesis
this would imply three nuclear explosions within the last few hundred
million years. The most recent of these, responsible for the innermost
system, would have taken place about 30 million years ago, while the
ejecta from the oldest are now far out in the Galaxy and falling back
towards the centre.
It would be a mistake however to suppose from this simplified
account that all this structure is nice and tidy—it is not. Spiral arms
may look fairly smooth from a great distance, but when examined in
detail, they have a ragged and clumpy appearance indicative of really
quite rapid if not violent evolutionary processes. Thus, although the
gaseous arms display large-scale continuity over tens of kiloparsecs,
they are nevertheless broken into individual bits and pieces which
may be only tens of parsecs in dimensions. Some of these pieces may
be particularly concentrated and it is these that are often most
associated with current star formation. The solar neighbourhood in
particular has long been recognized as being rather close to a major
irregularity in the nearest spiral arm. Thus, the very brightest massive
stars visible to the naked eye define a broad strip across the sky which
is inclined to the Milky Way at about 20°. At one end in the southern
hemisphere we observe the Scorpio-Centaurus association, a large
cluster of young, blue stars, which is ‘above’ the galactic plane. At the
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 33
other end, 180° away "beneath' the galactic plane, we observe the
Pleiades cluster which is not so far from the massive gas clouds in
Orion. The whole of this strip, full of young stars, gas and dust, some
500 parsecs long and 100 parsecs distant from the Sun, is known as
Gould’s Belt and evidently relates to some kind of disturbance in the
Orion arm—perhaps 30 million years ago. Gould’s Belt looks rather
like a finger projecting inwards from the Orion arm.
Obviously, then, the Sun lies in the vicinity of particular local
events which are typical of what may be some kind of rapidly evolving
grand design in the Galaxy. What is perhaps a little difficult to
appreciate at first glance is that the behaviour of our Sun, and indeed
any fairly old star, can be discussed, at least to a first approximation,
almost independently of the underlying spiral structure. Because
spiral arms are generally not all that massive and other stars are
usually a long way off, it happens that the major gravitational
influence controlling the orbit of a star like the Sun is that of the
Galaxy as a whole.
We can think of the Sun moving in a circular or elliptical orbit,
tracing its way through successive spiral arms at a rate dictated by the
relative velocity of the Sun and this underlying structure. In fact, the
Sun’s orbit is an "osculating ellipse’, describing a kind of rosette,
moving at such a speed relative to the nearby spiral arms that it is
bound to cross them at intervals of about 50 million years. Not only
that, it is moving in such a direction that it must have passed through
Gould’s Belt only 10 million years ago. The rough periodicity in
many geophysical processes is so similar to these intervals that it has
long been recognized that terrestrial processes themselves might be
triggered in some way by our passage through spiral arms (Table 1).
The problem has been to identify the mechanism giving rise to the
geophysical effects.
Some investigators have drawn attention to the fact that each
spiral arm crossing might bring the Earth in close proximity to a
supernova—a star that explodes—and they have placed great
emphasis on the radiation blast that might then be suffered together
with its possible biological consequences. Others have preferred a
somewhat quieter scenario in which the Sun passes through dense
interstellar gas clouds leading to the slow onset of ice ages. No
investigator has previously considered the view we shall develop in
subsequent chapters. This is that the spiral arms of the Galaxy contain
large solid bodies; that the solar system, acting as a large
gravitational scoop, captures billions of such bodies when it crosses
34 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

Table 1. Periodicity of geophysical processes

Dates of major geological boundaries

during Phanerozoic period Interval between dates

QUATERNARY 0 Myr b.p.

TERTIARY 65 65 Myr
CRETACEOUS 135 70
JURASSIC 190 55
TRIASSIC 225 35
PERMIAN 280 55
CARBONIFEROUS 345 65
DEVONIAN 395 50
SILURIAN 435 45
ORDOVICIAN 500 65
CAMBRIAN 570 70

Periods of intense igneous or Interval between

metamorphic activity on a world- periods
wide scale

65
335
400
600
1000
400
1400
300
1700
400
2100
500
2600

Note: Myr b.p. = Million years before present

Principal ice ages Interval

0-1
250-350
250-350
100-200
450
200
650
100
750
200
950
2250
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 35

spiral arms; and that in consequence episodes of planetary

bombardment occur, with profound biological and other con-
sequences. The bodies we shall consider will generally be of sub-
planetary dimensions and the term "planetesimaf was coined for
these many years ago. There is not enough information to specify the
types, but we envisage them as cold material of ice or possibly rock, or
icy conglomerates, and we shall interpret the comets of the solar
system as captured planetesimals. Comets are conglomerates of ice
and dust, perhaps with larger boulders, perhaps with a rocky core.
The ices vaporize as the Sun is approached and a comet may appear
with a long spectacular tail. There could be captured rocky bodies in
comet-like orbits, and these could be just as common, but their
chance of discovery is very much smaller.
Astronomers have not until recently considered planetesimals as a
likely constituent of spiral arms. In one sense this is reasonable
because cold planetesimals would be difficult to detect and confirm,
and astronomers are rightly cautious about postulating the presence
of something they cannot see. On the other hand, as we have noted,
there is plenty of dust and cold molecular gas in spiral arms, and there
is no a priori reason why this material should not be considered a
natural component of a population of very cold icy conglomerates.
Indeed much independent evidence favours the origin of the solar
system itself from essentially cold solid material and the cratering
history discussed in a later chapter shows that the planets were very
early on immersed in a vast dense cloud of planetesimals which has
since been thrown into interstellar space. Thus, the presence of
planetesimals in spiral arms seems well nigh inescapable if the
formation of the Sun was not fundamentally different from that of
other similar stars. And to suppose otherwise would be to take a
remarkably heliocentric view.

1.6 Spiral arms and planetesimals: the source of comets

These arguments lead then to the possibility that star formation itself
may be a process involving the accumulation of cold, solid material.
The traditional view has been that stars are made by the collapse of
huge, relatively hot masses of gas under their own weight. Of course a
gas, as it contracts, heats up, and a heated gas wants to expand, and
collapse would quickly be brought to a halt. However it could be that
the density is by then so high that individual regions of the cloud are
able to collapse separately, until they themselves fragment and so
on, down to the point where the gas is so dense and opaque that
36 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

further contraction initiates nuclear fusion, and stars are born.

This concept, as we have indicated already, is facing severe
difficulties. The collapse of a large cloud has recently been simulated
on computers and the hierarchy of fragmentations essential to the
picture does not take place: a cloud will collapse moderately and no
more. There is the vexatious problem, never quite overcome, of the
spin-up of a collapsing cloud. Even a small rotation is so magnified by
collapse from nebular to stellar dimensions that the final object could
not hold itself together. Then there are observational difficulties. The
theory predicts that the final assembly of stars will be a dense,
concentrated cluster with a smoothed-out density of about 100
million atoms per cubic centimetre. The observed star clusters have
mean densitites about a millionth of this.
The traditional concept of star formation has its roots in a period
before the radio astronomers had discovered the ubiquity and
importance of cold, dense clouds in the spiral arms of the Galaxy, and
it is tempting to speculate that these clouds, with their hypothesized
constituent planetesimals and dust, provide us with a hitherto
missing ingredient, and that the true mechanism of star and planet
formation involves not simply the collapse of gas clouds but also the
aggregation of already cold planetesimals. Not only would this fit in
better with the planetesimal population known to have existed in the
early solar system, but there are some indications now that proto-
stellar objects composed of planetesimal material do in fact exist.
They occur in spiral arms in the form of cold dusty objects of solar
mass or greater, known as globules. Concentrations of these objects
abound in regions of intense star formation such as IC 2499. In the
vicinity of two well-studied and exceedingly active stellar associ-
ations, namely the so-called Gum nebula and the Orion nebula, there
are also observed what appear to be gigantic interstellar comets.
These are obviously much more massive than the solar system
examples; they are just globules with huge long tails very like their
smaller counterparts. The tails are not only pointing away from the
centre of the parent association where most of the local radiation
originates, but the heads seem to be in highly eccentric orbits moving
away from the central source. We thus have an indication that we
may be dealing with large, loose aggregates of cometary material
which are either about to be or are in the process of forming new
stars.
Further evidence for the existence of interstellar comets comes
from chemical abundance arguments. In the first place, it has been
5. A family of ‘globules’ in the young cluster IC 2499. The cluster is a concentration
or association of spiral arm stars immersed in the general field. Note how the cluster
lies within a diffuse, glowing mass of gas in front of which are several cold, dense
absorbing clouds which are about a parsec across. These are the globules, short-
lived progenitors of new stars.
6. A few of the huge ‘interstellar comets’ observed in the vicinity of the so-called
Gum Nebula (an association of young stars in the Carina extension of the
Sagittarius spiral arm). The tails are attached to globules which are apparently
fleeing away from the central association. Though not evident in these pictures, the
heads point towards the centre of the association just as solar system comets point
towards the Sun. The tails are not therefore trailing in the paths of motion but
 '-.'■'T'tyK

mm
mm !
wmmA
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appear to be the result of a powerful stellar wind. It has to be emphasized that these
giant interstellar comets are detectable only on photographs taken with the most
powerful optical telescopes and then only when care is taken to bring up the
contrast. They are vast compared to solar system examples, the tails being up to a
million times longer. It is supposed the heads may comprise huge assemblages of
true interstellar comets or planetesimals of the kind captured by the solar system.
40 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework
known for some time that, apart from hydrogen, the interstellar
material has quite similar chemical composition to that of the comets.
Further, if the steady state model of galaxies is correct, the under-
abundance of metals in the interstellar gas relative to stars indicates
that these atomic species must be locked up in something fairly
invisible like faint comets. Thus, although the question cannot be
regarded as finally settled, the galactic evidence favours spiral arms
containing planetesimals or comets in all their variety of forms. It is
inevitable then that the solar system interacts with such material as it
passes through the spiral arms. And each passage will result in a
capture episode leading to a flood of comets into the inner solar
system.
As far as we can see therefore, planetesimals as constituents of
spiral arms are a fact we may have to live with. But with the genesis of
spiral arms still uncertain, we run into theoretical difficulties. If the
spiral arms are density waves running through the underlying disc, it is
still not at all clear how they can make stars and planetesimals out of
initially warm gas and dust. If, on the other hand, they are ejected
fragments from an evolved nucleus, it is necessary to have a
dynamical explanation of how this ejection works. Almost inevitably
this brings us in conflict with the modern explanation of gravity
implicit in the general theory of relativity. This is because the
tangential velocity of ejecta is inversely proportional to their distance
from the point of ejection, and so typical spiral arm material in the
solar neighbourhood must have had relativistic velocities when close
to the nucleus. It is true that some quasars are seen to have small
components moving apart at such speeds, and more extended double
radio sources have apparently been ejected at relativistic speeds from
galactic nuclei. The requirement of velocities in excess of say
250,000 km/sec is not therefore particularly awkward from an
observational point of view. But from the theoretical viewpoint, there
is the very awkward fact that such velocities are greatly in excess of
the normal escape velocity from a galaxy and the ejecta could not
normally remain bound to the system. The difficulty can be overcome
only by "new physics’. If the ejecta which will form spiral arms come
from a temporarily hypermassive nucleus the necessary gravitational
restraint can be applied to them. Such new physics, if valid, would
have ramifications throughout astrophysics. For instance light
emitted from a hypermassive nucleus would be strongly redshifted,
and this might account for the high redshift of quasars; the brief
"switching on’ of such gravity would have the effect of squeezing in a
 Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework 41

+ 200

x
-M

'o
_o
a>>

TJ
rt

-200

J I l_
10 20
distance

Fig. 2. Line-of-sight velocities (in kilometres per second) of globular

clusters seen in the general direction of the galactic centre. These are
plotted against their distances from the Sun (in kiloparsec) projected
on to the solar galacto-centric line. The distance to the centre of the
Galaxy is marked by the dotted line. Note the trend which is one of
velocities that generally approach us on the near side of the galactic
centre, and that tend to recede on the far side. These systematic
"expanding’ motions seem to indicate that our Galaxy is in a recently
disturbed state, but if so, the enormous force responsible for the effect
has not yet been properly identified.28

galaxy prior to a subsequent rapid expansion and this could explain

the large radial velocities of globular clusters observed, for example,
in the halo of our own Galaxy; black holes would not exist; and so on.
Whether the current difficulties of astrophysics do indeed require
new physics for their resolution is a matter of controversy: we may be
facing either a failure of physics or a failure of imagination.
Fortunately we do not here need to choose: it will be enough to assess
the evidence that capture of interstellar planetesimals takes place and
to pursue the consequences. But our starting point is on the fringe of
these problems, and the possibility exists that discriminating evidence
will be found, not simply in remote and exotic regions of the universe,
but in a sample of deep-sea sediment, or in a meteorite somewhere in
the world’s museums.
2 • Galaxy to comet:
the interstellar connection

The currently prevailing view is that comets derive from a huge

primordial cloud attached to the solar system. We believe this idea to be
at best only partially correct and that many comets are captured from
interstellar space. Where conditions outside the solar system were once
considered unsuitable for the growth of comets, modern observations,
especially with radio telescopes, have now uncovered cold dense clouds
where the conditions are entirely suitable. In this chapter, we discuss the
mechanism whereby each capture episode, as the solar system passes
through a spiral arm, gives rise to a temporary flux of comet ary bodies
in orbit around the Sun. Lunar soil analyses are shown to support a
scenario of episodic bombardments controlled by the Galaxy.

2.1 Solar system comets: the basic facts

There was not a cloud in the sky, but looking due east one saw the
tail of the Comet stretching upwards, nearly to the zenith, and
spreading with a slight curve. Not a breath stirred, the sky was a
dark blue almost to the horizon. The scene was impressive in its
solemnity and grandeur. As the Comet rose, the widened
extremity of its tail extended past the zenith and seemed to
overhang the world. When dawn came, the dark blue of the sky
near the point of sunrise began to change into a rich yellow, then
gradually came a stronger light, and over the mountain and among
the yellow, an ill-defined mass of golden glory rose, in surround-
ings of indescribable beauty. This was the nucleus of the Comet. A
few minutes after, the sun appeared, but the Comet seemed in no
way dimmed in brightness, and although in full sunlight the
greater part of the tail disappeared, the Comet itself remained
through the day easily visible to the naked eye; with a tail about as
long as the moon is broad.’

Not all comets are as spectacular as that of 1882, here described by

the Cape astronomer Gill. In fact, although four or five long-period
comets approach the inner planetary system each year, most go
unnoticed, requiring at least binoculars to be seen. Every few years a
comet may be widely observed with the naked eye, but only a few
times per century will one approach the grandeur of, say, the 1882
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 43

7. Successive photographs
of Halley’s comet during its
1910 return. Note the
elongation of star images as
the telescope follows the
comet. Observe also the
motion contrary to the
apparent direction of the
tail and the changing
appearance of the tail as a
fragment detaches itself
from the main body.

comet, or Halley’s comet, due to return in 1986. They can arrive from
any part of the sky, in elongated elliptical orbits whose major axes
may be up to about 50,000 astronomical units. It is convenient here
to measure distance in astronomical units, or a.u. An astronomical
unit is the mean distance between Earth and Sun; there are about
200,000 a.u. to a parsec, the unit of the previous chapter.
A great comet is made up of a bright, star-like nucleus surrounded
by a hazy coma, streaming away from which is a tail which may be
tens of millions of kilometres in length. There has been much
controversy over the nature of the central regions of a comet and
probably only the close fly-by of a probe will finally satisfy all parties.
Evidence has accumulated, however, in favour of the dirty snowball
44 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection

model developed by the American astronomer Whipple, in which the

nucleus is seen as a lightly packed ball of ices including ammonia,
methane, carbon dioxide but about 50 per cent water ice. Imbedded
in the ice are solid particles about 0.01 per cent of a millimetre in
diameter, that is about the size of interstellar grains. There is evidence
also for grains of sub-millimetre dimensions. One school of thought
regards the nucleus as an icy gravel-like conglomerate of this sort
throughout; another that the ice overlies a solid rocky core. The
characteristic diameter of a nucleus is taken to be only a few
kilometres, much too small for telescopic resolution. Typically the
tail may have only a thousandth of the mass of the nucleus.

Fig. 3. Schematic perspective view of the inner planetary system

including the asteroid belt. A typical path of a comet in a highly
eccentric orbit is shown together with an illustration of the relative
size and orientation of the tail (S = Sun, M = Mercury, V = Venus,
E = Earth, M1 —Mars).

At a great distance from the Sun a comet will normally appear star-
like, but a coma and tail will begin to grow as the Sun is approached
and solar heating takes effect, evaporating the ices: normally within 3
or 4 a.u. of the Sun there is evidence of activity although sometimes
this is seen at greater distances. The brightness grows much more
rapidly as the comet approaches than is consistent with mere
reflection of sunlight by a solid body, and there are erratic outbursts
as if pockets of material were being thrown out. The tail itself may
comprise gas and fine dust and will stream away from the Sun, the
whole thing giving the impression of being caught up in the tenuous
wind that blows out from the Sun at 400-600 km/sec. Sometimes the
tail is immensely long and straight, sometimes it extends in an arc.
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 45

8. Predawn photograph of the bright Ikeya-Seki comet during October 1965. Note
the very small nucleus and the huge tail which is nearly one astronomical unit in
length. In spite of their sizes, comet tails contain very little matter.

sometimes there is more than one tail, a very curved anomalous tail of
large dust particles streaming off separately. Usually there is a very
fine structure, little understood, within the tail (Plate 8). Close to the
Sun, the gas will fluoresce with a bluish-white light. The far end of the
tail of a great comet may be a deep red, because of selective
absorption of sunlight by the dust in the tail.
The orbital periods of long-period comets are of the order of 4
million years, so generally we see them only once. Their enormous
distances of arrival indicate that they are only just gravitationally
bound to the Sun: a slight perturbation would throw them into open
(hyperbolic) orbits and they would escape into interstellar space.
These simple facts alone can lead to far-reaching consequences. For if
four or five long-period comets come close to the Sun each year, and if
orbital periods averaging a million years are involved, there must be
at least several million comets currently associated with the solar
system. And if say 10 or 20 per cent of incoming comets are ejected by
46 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection
the gravitational action of the major planets then a solar system age
of 4.5 billion years implies a loss of several billion comets at least. One
may well be thinking of a huge cloud of comets around the solar
system, reaching almost halfway to the stars. But it is important to
know whether the cloud is as old as the solar system or whether it is a
recent acquisition.
In Chapter 1 we have seen how the solar system may capture
interstellar debris sporadically as it crosses and recrosses spiral arms.
On a simple view of solar and galactic motion this would happen at
50-million year intervals although vagaries of orbit and arms make
this no more than a characteristic figure. With the emergence of the
Sun from the Gould Belt extension of the Orion spiral arm about 10
million years ago, the last capture episode may have come to an end.
In the picture we shall be developing, each passage gives rise to a
temporary cloud of comets in the solar system which then decays,
either by expulsion into interstellar space, or by conversion into
short-period orbits followed by rapid dissipation under the influence
of solar radiation, or by collision with planets. The present comet
population on this hypothesis is thus a recent acquisition and in a
declining phase.

2.2 The interstellar medium

We outlined the evidence for interstellar planetesimals in the previous
chapter but the idea that kilometre-sized bodies like comets may
inhabit interstellar space goes back at least to Laplace in 1806; it was
then based on the enormous distances from which these objects are
seen to arrive. Around the turn of the century, however, the idea of
interstellar comets began to wane in popularity because none was
seen to fly through the solar system in open orbits as might be
expected. It was then that the concept of a primordial cloud of comets
attached to the solar system gradually came into favour. Indeed it
strengthened as the low density of the interstellar medium came to be
appreciated since the calculated growth times of comets by random
accretion of atoms and dust were found to be incredibly long. If all
interstellar gas atoms heavier than hydrogen or helium accrete on
collision with a body, then in a typical region of the interstellar
medium, containing say 1 atom per cubic centimetre, it would have
taken 100 million years for it to acquire a coating of frost 0.1 per cent of
a millimetre thick! So if a capture mechanism is now to be preferred,
this problem still remains: how are we to grow comets out of the
interstellar dust and gas? How indeed do we know they are to be
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 47
assembled from the dust and gas ? Whatever the mechanism there must
of course also be sufficient heavy element material in the Galaxy to
match the observed numbers of comets. Let us start with the question
of heavy elements.
On the conventional picture of galactic chemical evolution, one
begins with metal-poor stars and an environment largely comprising
hydrogen and primordial helium. Hydrogen burning proceeds in
stellar interiors, being converted into helium, and a helium core is
formed. If the star is sufficiently massive the temperature and
pressure in the central regions will increase to the point where helium
itself becomes the fuel, the helium burning producing a further core
of nitrogen, carbon and oxygen. This further core will itself, above a
certain temperature, become a fuel, and so heavier elements are
progressively built up. If the star’s mass exceeds that of the Sun by
more than 40 per cent or so, it will build heavier elements up to iron,
but beyond that stage, the iron reverts to hydrogen. The energy
expended in burning hydrogen to iron is now repaid and the star
becomes a supernova, imploding violently, the rebound scattering
metal-rich debris into interstellar space. What remains should be a
highly condensed star. The theories of stellar evolution and
nucleosynthesis have been calculated in considerable detail and this
picture must certainly tell a good part of the truth. Thus, a few
galactic supernovae have been recorded over the centuries and at
least two of them have left a rapidly rotating neutron star as a
remnant.
Inevitably, then, with this picture, the interstellar medium is
steadily enriched by heavy elements produced in supernova
explosions. This may not be the whole story however. The medium
may, as we have seen, also be processed through supermassive stars in
the galactic nucleus. Such objects achieve much higher central
temperatures than ordinary disc stars and the heavier elements would
tend then to break down. As a result of this, there could be a balance
and relatively little enrichment of the Galaxy with the passage of time.
In practice, the mean metal abundance of stars shows very little
actual increase with decreasing age, perhaps favouring the second
alternative. But whichever scheme is correct since, as we remarked in
Chapter 1, the interstellar gas is deficient compared to the
atmospheres of the youngest stars in a whole range of elements
heavier than helium, much more than can be identified in the
interstellar dust, much of the interstellar material could be concealed
in less visible bodies. To account for the deficiencies of heavy
48 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection
elements such as metals, several hundred million solar masses would
have to be locked up in such bodies. This is about 10 per cent of the
mass of the interstellar medium and would imply a population of
about a billion billion billion comets. The remark of Kepler
(1571-1630) that there are "more comets in the sky than there are fishes
in the sea’ would be literally true! One thing seems to be certain, then.
Even without the evidence of Plate 6, interstellar comets would be a
sensible hypothesis, but they would have to be easily made. The
question is how?
The realization in recent years that extremely cold, dense and dusty
nebulae are a major constituent of spiral arms—to the extent that a
typical interstellar gas atom may spend half its lifetime within one
has put an entirely different perspective on the problem of growing
interstellar comets. For there are forces at work within such clouds
tending to segregate grains from gas. Gravity, radiation pressure,
vortex motion and so on, all may act in a cloud so as to cause
moderate enhancements of the dust to gas ratio, Normally these
would be smeared out by internal motions, but if a cloud has a density
of more than 1,000 atoms per cubic centimetre, these enhancements
probably collapse. Two neighbouring stationary dust grains for
example will partially shield each other from the surrounding
radiation field. Starlight will not then arrive on each grain uniformly
because of this mutual shadowing. Since ultraviolet light is energetic
enough to knock atoms off the underlying substrate and there is a
rocket effect as the atoms fly away, the grains are pushed together. As
the grains approach, the effect is further magnified and the end result
is they stick together. Now, if the local dust enhancement is too small,
the collapse rate will not offset the random motion of the grains and it
will disperse. If the enhancement is too large, the aggregation into
comets will not be complete within the gravitational collapse time of
the nebula, that is, a huge star is created before the much smaller
comets can form. In practice, something between these two extremes
takes place and the bodies formed have the characteristic dimensions
of comet nuclei. Its constituent atoms and molecules obviously reflect
the temperature of the medium in which coagulation occurs and
although the clouds are cold (10° absolute), they are generally warm
enough for hydrogen, the most volatile of elements, to be gaseous.
Apart from hydrogen then, each body will be a conglomerate of ice
and dust whose chemical composition will reflect interstellar
conditions. The striking resemblance between the chemical com-
position of comets and the interstellar medium need not be surprising
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 49

therefore, even though it has gone unexplained for some years.

Thus the chief objection to an interstellar capture view of comets,
namely the problem of growing them in interstellar space, seems to
have been overcome: at least one mechanism will coagulate icy
conglomerates out of the spiral arms of the Galaxy, and there may well
be others. Of course the origin of the dense, very cold clouds from
which the planetesimals condense remains problematic, as we have
already seen: they might be formed by compression and cooling of
nebulae as density waves sweep round the Galaxy, or they might be
fragments of giant nuclear explosions, and no doubt other
possibilities can be conceived. But the overall picture is of spiral arms
in which the interstellar medium is quite inhomogeneous. Embedded
in a hot, tenuous background are cold, dense clouds of gas, dust and
comets. Close encounters between the Sun and such nebulae, say to
within a few light years, have probably occurred more than fifty times
during the lifetime of the solar system. Actual penetration has
probably occurred more than a dozen times, several such involving
passage of the Sun to within about a light year of the cloud
centre. Let us now take a look at the problem of capturing comets
from the nebulae.

2.3 The capture mechanism

In general, a comet approaching the Sun from infinity with a finite
velocity would simply continue past, receding to infinity: capture of
an interstellar comet by the Sun is thus theoretically impossible in a
strictly Two body regime’, in the absence of dissipative or other
forces. The capture of bodies from interstellar space, therefore, must
always involve at least a third body. In the mechanism under
discussion the cold dense nebula may itself be the third body. A
typical mass is tens of thousands of times that of the Sun, and the
escape velocity from the surface may be several kilometres per
second. During a close encounter, solar gravity will predominate over
nebular gravity only within about 50 thousand astronomical units of the
Sun. There is a sphere of influence of this radius within which a comet’s
motion is controlled by solar gravity. If the motion of the Sun relative
to the nebula is modest and the velocity dispersion in the
neighbourhood of Sun and nebula is not too large, then say 1 per cent
or less of comets entering the sphere of influence during the close
encounter will be captured. If a tenth of the mass of the nebula is in
the form of comets then it turns out that a mass 100-1,000 times that
of the asteroid system will be captured into the solar system during
50 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection
each such close encounter. Of course the interstellar medium is
irregular and the solar system, passing through a spiral arm, will be
buffeted by tidal forces of various magnitudes and durations. But
calculations indicate that enough bodies are likely to be captured
during each encounter to reproduce the observed input rate of long-
period comets. The implication is that there may be a rough balance
between supply and loss of comets in the solar system.
Another capture mechanism might involve Jupiter as a third body.
The problem here is that Jupiter’s sphere of influence is only about
1 a.u. in diameter and with this small target only a minute fraction of
the required capture rate is possible, unless by chance the Sun were to
encounter a very dense swarm of interstellar comets.
But there is another, even more stringent, requirement to be
satisfied by the interstellar capture theory. We have to account for the
fact that the great majority of long-period comets arrive at
perihelion from distances of several tens of thousands of astronomi-
cal units, halfway to the nearest stars. These enormous distances
indicate, as we have seen, that comets are only just bound to the solar
system. Small perturbations induced by the planets may thus have a
large effect on the orbits. For example a comet whose orbital period
was 10,000 years on entering the planetary system may have a period
between 5,000 and 15,000 years on leaving it. The system of comets is
therefore in a state of rapid evolution. A statistical examination of
this problem is possible since the periods of the planets are so short
(Jupiter less than twelve years, Saturn less than thirty years) that their
positions are more or less random when a comet arrives from a great
distance. Random walk analyses of this problem have been carried
out recently by the Japanese astronomer Yabushita.
Assume that comets approach from any direction in space. As we
are concerned only with those that become visible we need consider
only those comets approaching to within a few astronomical units of
the Sun. Following their evolution by a random sampling of the
energy perturbations to which they are subject, one finds that 90 per
cent are expelled from the solar system after 3 million years, 99
per cent vanish within 300 million years and so on. In general the
proportion of comets surviving N returns to the planetary system,
without expulsion to interstellar space, varies as 1/^/N (Figure 4).
The agitation of orbits by the planets has greatest effect on those
comets of shorter period since in a given time interval their numbers
of returns are greater. There is therefore a progressive clearing of
comets from the inner regions of the solar system outwards. It is this
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 51
probability
survival

Fig. 4. Probability that a typical long-period comet has of

making more than a given number of returns to perihelion. Apart
from the risk of being thrown out of the solar system altogether
by planet encounters, comets may be lost also by collisions or by
perturbation into orbits with perihelia of a few astronomical units,
whence rapid outgassing will occur causing them to evolve into
asteroidal bodies.

Fig. 5. Graph showing the relative

numbers of long-period comets
corresponding to given values of the semi-
major axis of their elliptical orbits. Since
smaller values of the semi-major axis
number of comets

correspond to shorter periods, such

comets return to perihelion relatively
more often. They thus experience many
more encounters and suffer most from
solar radiation. As a consequence the
inner solar system clears rapidly and the
comets that remain are in highly eccentric
orbits and spend most of their time far
from the Sun.

semi-major axis (in thousands of A.U.)

52 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection

which gives the preponderance of long-period comets which we

observe. Thus the visible long-period comets are a rapidly evolving
system, so much so that after a few million years, not only have 90 per
cent of comets escaped but there is no trace of the initial distribution
of orbits: the surviving comets have virtually ‘lost their memory’ of
their initial orbits and are almost all in very elongated orbits with
semi-major axes greater than 20,000 a.u. By matching the semi-major
axis distribution with that observed it is possible to determine the
epoch at which the last capture event ended. Yabushita finds that the
observations are reproduced if there was a capture event ending
somewhere between 3.6 and 9 million years ago. It must be seen as a
very satisfactory confirmation of the interstellar capture hypothesis
that the solar system completed its passage through Gould’s Belt
within the last 10 million years. In another 40 million years, on this
hypothesis, the number of comets attached to the solar system will be
about half the present. But by this time we may be re-entering another
spiral arm and a new episode of capture will begin. Currently, then,
the arrival rate of long-period comets is within a factor of two or three
of the mean arrival rate, averaged over very long periods of time.
There is then no great problem in explaining the solar system comets
in terms of capture from interstellar space. It is therefore rather
remarkable that astronomers today usually dissent from this picture.
As it happens this is not so much because of any active opposition to
the capture hypothesis as such, but because most have become
accustomed to another way of looking at things.

2.4 Problems with the primordial cloud

As we have seen, the great distance from which the long-period
comets arrive is commonly interpreted in terms of a vast, primordial
cloud of comets bound to the solar system. This view was quantified
by the Dutch astronomer Oort in 1950. Although proposed by him
only as a working model, the hypothesis has in the course of modern
time acquired the status of an axiom. That this ‘cloud’ exists follows
directly from the observed semi-major axis distribution. That the
cloud is ‘primordial’ follows not at all from these observations, and
tacit adoption of this premiss has led to a good deal of cosmogonic
obfuscation.
One such obfuscation arises in imagining how to form the
enormous primordial mass of comets implied by the hypothesis. Over
a long period of time the primordial Oort cloud will have been
traversed by many stars. Gentle perturbations by these interlopers
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 53
would continually randomize the motions of the comets on a
timescale of perhaps 100 million years. Thus the comets we see, with
eccentricities 0.9999 or more, can be only a minute sub-set of the
total. Seen from 50,000 a.u. the radius of the Earth’s orbit is only 4"
and the angular area it sweeps out is at the most one part in 100,000
million of the whole sky. In the case of randomized orbits therefore,
for every comet that is diverted into an orbit directed towards this
small target there are about 100,000 million which are not. To
reproduce the observed rate of arrival of comets from a primordial
Oort cloud the total number in the cloud has to be 100 or 200,000
millions. As usually envisaged the Oort cloud was formed through
the expulsion, say by Jupiter, of comets from a primordial solar
nebula, the size of the planetary system. Random expulsion, it is
recognized, is an inefficient process, over 99 per cent of expellees being
ejected to infinity. The original numbers expelled must have been in
excess of 20 trillion! With a mean comet diameter of 1 or 2 km, the
original mass ejected is about thirty times that of the Earth. This, the
argument goes, the large planets could cope with.
But, as we shall demonstrate shortly, many of the missiles which
currently produce craters on the Moon and planets are ultimately
long-period comets or rather their corpses in the form of Apollo
asteroids (see Chapter 3), and the mass distribution inferred from
craters is such that the bulk of the mass resides in the small proportion
of larger bodies. In fact this is just what we observe for comets and the
main belt asteroids directly: half the total mass of the asteroid system is
concentrated in the largest body (Ceres). If this mass distribution holds
up to Copernicus- or Tycho-producing missiles, then the average mass
of a comet really is forty times that adopted in the above calculation.
The mass to be expelled now becomes an impossible 1,000 Earth
masses: in expelling this quantity of material, the outer planets would
spiral into the Sun. There is a fallacy then in arguments basing the
characteristic comet mass on that of the majority of comets.
A conceivable possibility is that the comets condensed in the outer
regions of the planetary system, perhapsjust beyond Neptune. But the
disturbances created by the outer planets are small and computer trials
have shown that such comets could not possibly be the main source of
the Oort cloud. In any case a nearby comet belt of more than about an
Earth mass would by now have been detected through its disturbance
of the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.
The concept of the Oort cloud as primordial and permanent is
further weakened when interstellar perturbers are examined. For the
54 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection

very forces which cause planetesimals to be captured can, with the

same efficacy, cause them to escape. Numerical studies have been
carried out in which a close encounter with a massive nebula was
simulated, and it has been found that even a single encounter can, with
a typical fly-by velocity, deplete the outer regions of the Oort cloud by
30-90 per cent of its comets. But over the last 4 billion years the solar
system has probably passed within 10 light years or less of about twenty
such clouds. It follows that a primordial Oort cloud has been subject to
strong interstellar disrupting forces, and its original mass, if
unreplenished, would have had to be many thousands of times greater
again.
So long as it is thought that the present comets have to grow along
with planets in the dense regions around the early Sun then an
ejection into the observed cloud has to be postulated with the
resulting absurdities. But if we see star formation as co-eval with (or
consequent on) the formation of comets throughout an extended
globule, these problems disappear because in that case the primordial
comet cloud is formed in situ. We envisage the stars formed in the
globule dispersing, each carrying with it an attendant cloud of
comets. As time passes the comets are thrown into interstellar space
by the planets or passing nebulae and the population declines.
Eventually there comes an equilibrium, when the sporadic capture of
interstellar comets balances on average the losses. Thus as time goes
on the primordial population is gradually replaced by a captured one.
Some indication that the cloud may have reached a state of
equilibrium between capture and ejection comes from the cratering
history of the Moon. The lunar highlands in particular reveal that the
cratering flux over 3 billion years ago was 1,000 - 10,000 times the
present value. This dropped off rapidly until, to within the
uncertainties, it reached a steady state about 3 billion years ago,
which rate it has maintained since. There is evidence also in the
cratering record of brief recurring episodes of bombardment of
uncertain magnitude and duration, but the time resolution is very
poor (Figure 6). Episodic bombardments of this sort are expected on
a picture of sporadic capture and temporary replenishment of the
reservoir of comets from spiral arms. A close encounter between solar
system and massive nebula or star complex would in any case perturb
the comet cloud, primordial or not, and temporarily flood the inner
solar system, leading to a brief episode of bombardments.
Further evidence of an interstellar connection has come from
studies of the distribution over the sky of the major axes of long-
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 55

period comets. It has been found that these are not distributed
randomly over the sky but rather lie in a preferred plane inclined at
about 20° to the Milky Way. Furthermore, they also cluster around
the solar apex. This is the point on the sky to which the Sun is moving
relative to our local galactic environment. The actual distribution of
long-period comets therefore relates in a quite significant way to the
Sun’s motion—as one would expect if interstellar perturbations or
capture were involved.

Fig. 6. Impact cratering rate (on a

logarithmic scale) during lifetime
of the solar system. This is a
schematic diagram derived from
1000-
the work of Hartmann67: it shows
0)
•M
a rapid decline from high rates in
5 the early stages of solar system
c 100 formation, settling down to a
o steady average rate during at least
o the last 3 billion years (see text).
3
*U
o There is evidence nevertheless that
Q- 10 the cratering rate is episodic but
L. the data are too sparse to give
at
-M
n accurate measures of either the
us_ peak to trough ratio or the
intervals between peaks. The start
of the geologic period known as
the Phanerozoic is marked and it is
during this period that
3 2 1 multicellular life on Earth has
billions of years B.P shown its greatest development.

Thus, the primordial assumption leads to several difficulties, which

the capture mechanism seems to avoid. One might then ask why, in that
case, the primordial cloud concept is such a firmly entrenched part of
the prevailing wisdom, often being taken as axiomatic in university
courses, textbooks and so on. The original objection to interstellar
comets was that we should see them moving through the solar system
at speeds greatly in excess of escape velocity, whereas (apart from
marginal cases) the comets we see are bound to the system. But of
course with a capture episode ending 10 million years ago this is not a
valid point. Then it was held that the concentration of comets at large
distances was ‘explained’ by such a cloud. So it is, but a capture
episode equally ‘explains’ this. However, probably the main difficulty
was that a comet-growing mechanism has not until now been
available: the primordial cloud was assumed fifteen years before the
widespread existence of cold dense nebulae was known from radio
56 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection
astronomy. Had their existence been known then, along with the
coagulation mechanism, it is unlikely that we would now be devoting
so much space to its refutation. The current dominance of the
primordial Oort cloud concept in astronomical thinking then is
probably nothing more than historical accident.

2.5 Episodic capture: the evidence on the Moon

As we have seen, theoretical calculations of the rate of decay of the
temporarily captured population show their total numbers to decline
smoothly between capture episodes, the peak to trough ratio being
perhaps 3 or 4 to 1. However material in a spiral arm is lumpy and
irregularly distributed; dense clouds may occur in complexes rather
than at random; the drift velocity of the Sun relative to the ambient
medium is likely to fluctuate appreciably, and so on. The supply end
of the chain linking long-period comets to impact craters is likely to
be an erratic one.
That the input is indeed erratic is indicated by a study, carried out
by Lindsay and Srnka in 1975, on a core sample of lunar soil brought
back by the Apollo 15 astronauts. The Moon and inner planets are
being continually bombarded by microscopic particles. These sub-
millimetre-sized bodies, impacting on lunar soil at say 25 km/sec, will
generate enough heat to melt and fuse together a volume of soil. The
size of the fused agglutinate is a measure of the kinetic energy and
hence mass of the microscopic particle which impacted.
Lindsay and Srnka sampled the core at 0.5 cm intervals over a
depth of 120-240 cm, measuring the size distribution of the
microscopic particles and correlating the soil depth with age, the
sample covering the range 900-1,700 million years ago. From 900 to
1,300 million years ago the micro-meteoroid flux shows three broad
cycles with periods of 100—200 million years and comparable durations
(Figure 7). At its peak, the flux of these microscopic particles was about
three times the modern value. From 1,300 to 1,600 million years before
the present, an interval of 300 million years, the character of the flux
changes. The departures from background form a series of ‘spikes1,
two of which correspond to flux enhancements of about fifteen times
the modern value. In fact one spike appears to be part of a complex
enhancement of duration about 50 million years. Overall, the sporadic
component of this flux is at least equal to the background flux. But
within this general trend are short intervals of high bombardment
rates. Almost certainly, the microscopic particles whose impacts are
being measured.do not arise from the asteroid belt. Several pioneer
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 57

Fig. 7. Meteoroid deposition rate

on the lunar surface derived from
the work of Lindsay and Srnka
(1975). The episodic variation is
interpreted as due to major
variations in the cometary flux in
the inner parts of the solar system
over the period 1,000 1,600
i i i i million years ago.
1600 1400 1200 1000
- time before present
(millions of years)

spacecraft have passed through the asteroid belt equipped with cosmic
dust sensor apparatus. These experiments have shown that the asteroid
belt is not at present a source of microscopic dust particles. The
remaining possible sources are interstellar dust, or comets.
The particles observed from the reddening of starlight to be
imbedded in the interstellar gas have diameters of about a ten-
thousandth of a millimetre whereas those impacting on lunar soil are
probably 1,000 times as large. If 1 per cent of the mass of a cloud were
in the form of these larger micrometeoroids, then the solar system,
passing through a dense cloud (say with more than 1,000 atoms per cc)
at 20 km/sec, would experience a flux enhancement about three times
the modern value. But passing through such a cloud is an event
occurring once in several hundred million years and enduring perhaps
100,000 years, and is therefore quite incapable of giving the
prolonged enhancements we observe. Less dense clouds are more
common but supply a correspondingly decreased flux of particles.
Unless there is an extreme concentration of heavy elements in grit-
sized particles, then, direct passage through interstellar dust clouds
cannot supply them.
On the other hand the strongly curved tails which sometimes arch
out of the nuclei of active comets comprise dust particles in the sub-
millimetre range. The particles detected by Lindsay and Srnka must
therefore come from active comets. The presence of a single large
comet in Earth-crossing space would appreciably increase the small
particle flux on to the lunar surface. This recent study of the lunar soil
therefore supports the theory of Galaxy-controlled bombardments.
58 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection

2.6 Comets and stars: a scenario

The supposed primordial reservoir of comets is widely seen as having

been created from a primordial solar nebula, a disc-shaped region the
extent of the planetary system from which not only the comets but
also the asteroids, planets and Sun condensed; this solar nebula
concept has been with us from the time of Laplace or earlier.
Sometimes it has been seen as a hot gas, ejected from the proto-Sun,
from which the planets condensed, sometimes as a thin disc of dust
which coagulated into progressively larger bodies, icy in the outer
regions, rocky in the inner. There are in fact over forty theories of the
origin of the solar system, about half of which involve this concept in
some form or another.
Of course solar system formation has to be seen in the context of
star formation as a whole; and stars are formed, it is observed, not
usually in isolation but in clusters ranging from a handful to large
groups of up to 1,000. That so many stars are now single is attributed
to the eventual break-up of these clusters. And it is natural to see the
cold dense nebulae we have discussed as precursors of star formation.
However, as we have tried to demonstrate, these nebulae may also
be the sites of comet formation. We have therefore been led to a
scenario in which stars and planets are formed in concentrations in
the midst of a great mass of dust, gas and planetesimals comprising
such a nebula. These are identical with the globules and heads of
cometary globules referred to in Chapter 1. As the nebula evolves and
breaks up, its contents—comets, stars and so on—will disperse into
interstellar space. But with the view now arrived at, as the stars
separate they will each carry with them a retinue of planetesimals and
dust, these debris forming an extensive cloud. Subsequent gravi-
tational buffeting will, as we have seen, disperse the comets in the
outer cloud, but there will probably be an intermediate region, a few
thousand a.u. in radius in the case of the Sun, which remains
relatively stable, with comets bound to the star for its lifetime. Thus,
orbiting into the planetary system there will generally be a mixture of
primordial material and captured interstellar material. Our under-
standing of what we see in the inner solar system should therefore be
qualified: there are probably primordial bodies as well as recent
captures.
It is usual to see the small body populations of the solar system-
the satellites and asteroids to be discussed as having grown within a
few a.u. of the Sun, in the conditions peculiar to the solar nebula. But
 Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection 59

if most observed comets are interstellar the picture we arrive at may

be quite different. For we now envisage an interstellar connection; in
the first place many of these small bodies have grown, perhaps light
years apart, in the conditions of a dense nebula, prior to capture;
secondly, capture events may continue throughout the lifetime of the
solar system. We might hope eventually to discriminate between
these pictures by dynamics. For in one scenario we expect stability
and quiescence in the solar system over a timescale of 4.5 billion
years; in the other we might expect to see rapid orbital evolution and
other evanescent phenomena, arising from a temporary immigrant
population of small bodies. We shall take a closer look at these small
bodies. *
3 • Comet to asteroid:
solar system debris

Comets entering the planetary system may undergo close encounters

with the major planets. Most are perturbed out of the solar system
again, but a very few are captured into more or less stable orbits. We
consider that some of these become asteroids or satellites: an
interstellar origin for some asteroids is thus implied. Others become
short-period rapidly decaying comets, and evolve into asteroids in
Earth-crossing orbits.

3.1 The asteroid belt

By and large, the planetary distances from the Sun increase smoothly
from Mercury outwards. There is an exception to this regularity in
the form of a large gap between Mars (1.5 a.u. from the Sun) and
Jupiter (5.2 a.u.) where intuitively a planet might be expected. From
the mid-eighteenth century onwards it had been suspected that a
planet might exist undetected in this gap, and in 1796 a corps of
'celestial police1 was organized by von Zach to search for this
hypothetical planet. As it happened they were forestalled by an
Italian monk, Giuseppi Piazzi, observing from Palermo in Sicily.
Checking the accuracy of a star catalogue on 1 January 1801, Piazzi
recorded the positions of several stars in the constellation Taurus. On
the following night he was surprised to see that one of the stars had
moved. On the third night it had moved again. Assuming that he had
discovered a peculiar comet, Piazzi sent his findings to other
astronomers. But in those days communications were slow, and
before others had detected the object it had wandered into the
twilight sky and been lost.
By this time it was believed that Piazzi’s star was the missing planet,
and it became a matter of great urgency to find some mathematical
technique for calculating the body’s orbit and forecasting its position.
The young mathematician Gauss applied himself to the problem,
solved it, and on 31 December 1801 the body was relocated. It turned
out that Piazzi’s star was indeed a little planet moving in the gap
between Mars and Jupiter. Piazzi named it Ceres after the titular
goddess of Sicily.
In March 1802 a second star-like body was discovered in Virgo by
the German amateur astronomer Olbers. This was named Pallas, and
9. Three members of the asteroid belt photographed during a 60-minute exposure
against a background of stars followed by the telescope. Unlike the stars, the
asteroids shine by reflected sunlight and it is their orbital motion in the solar system
that results in trails across the photograph.

Gauss found that it too had an orbit that lay between Mars and
Jupiter, although with large inclination and eccentricity. Olbers
speculated that a major planet had once orbited between Mars and
Jupiter and had somehow been destroyed, a view still maintained by
some. Other fragments, he predicted, would be found in the gap, and
soon two more bodies were discovered, Juno in 1804 and Vesta in
1807. Forty years were to pass before a fifth minor planet was
discovered, in 1845, followed by two more in 1847, another in 1848
and so on. The introduction of photography in 1891 by Wolf of
Fleidelberg revolutionized the discovery of these minor planets, or
asteroids. A time exposure of a few hours guided on the stars will
reveal an asteroid as a streak on the photographic plate as it moves
relative to the stellar background. Currently over 2,000 asteroids are
known, mostly orbiting in the large gap between Mars and Jupiter,
and about 100 are added to the list annually.
The structure of the main asteroid belt is rather like a napkin ring,
or a doughnut stretched along its axis. There is a hole or deformation
in the outer region of this doughnut, the hole following Jupiter as it
orbits the Sun. In essence the asteroid orbits are such that close
approaches to Jupiter are avoided, the planet being surrounded by a
62 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris

zone of avoidance of radius more than an astronomical unit. This can

be explained as a sort of selection effect: anything which approached
too closely to Jupiter would be perturbed, possibly out of the solar
system altogether. There are other asteroid groupings outside the
main belt. These are the Trojans, bodies in roughly the Jovian orbit
but 60° on either side of the planet. They are held in these apparently
stable configurations by a combination of solar and Jovian gravity.
Most asteroids are seen as no more than points of light in a
telescope. The light received often varies cyclically over periods of a
few hours, indicating that a spinning, irregularly shaped body is being
observed. To determine the dimensions, however, indirect techniques
must be used. One approach is to observe the eclipse of a star as the
asteroid drifts in front of it, the duration of eclipse (usually a few
seconds) being a measure of the angular extent of the occluding body.
For example teams of observers have been situated along the shadow
path of Eros during its eclipse of a star. The occultation timings were
used to show that Eros is shaped like an ellipsoid or brick measuring
about 30 x 19 x 7 km.
The absolute size of an asteroid may also be calculated if the
reflecting power of its surface rock is known: for a given brightness in
the telescope, a dark asteroid must be larger than a bright one.
However the darker the surface the more sunlight is absorbed and re-
radiated in the infrared and the less sunlight the surface reflects.
Measures of both infrared and reflected (visible) brightness therefore
give the reflectivity and so the dimensions of the asteroid.
Light reflected from a surface is generally polarized, and the degree
of polarization can be measured. Laboratory experiments have
shown that the darker a rock is, the more polarized is light reflected
from its surface. Measurements of an asteroid’s polarization, as the
angles of viewing and illumination change, give a measure of the
reflectivity of the asteroidal rock and hence, again, the diameter. It turns
out that the known asteroids range from almost 1,000 km (Ceres) to
probably 1 km (e.g. Hermes) or less across.
There is fine structure within the asteroid belt, but overall their
numbers increase enormously towards the small end of the scale, only
the difficulty of discovery causing them seemingly to peter out. There
may be about 400,000 asteroids more than 1 km in diameter. In spite
of this enormous preponderance towards the small end, the mass of
the system is concentrated in the few largest bodies, probably about
half the total residing in Ceres alone. The entire mass of the system
may be a thousandth that of the Earth.
 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris 63
3.2 The origin of the asteroids

Many opinions have been held as to why there are thousands of small
irregular bodies, instead of a planet, between Mars and Jupiter. They
have been seen as fragments of an exploded planet; but the problems
involved in exploding a planet seem to be insuperable. They have
been seen as an incipient planet, their accretion not yet complete; but
with collision velocities of about 5 km/sec they form a decidedly
fragmenting system. And they have been seen as collisional fragments
of an initial handful of large planetesimals, of which Ceres is an
unbroken fragment; this is the view largely held now. At any rate the
belief is* all but universally held that they are indigenous to the
system, having grown from a flat primitive disc of gas around the
Sun—the primordial solar nebula. This seems a reasonable view: the
existence of planets implies an accretion phase and hence planete-
simals en route, and the very high cratering rate in the early solar
system testifies to their past existence at least.
But at the end of Chapter 2 we described a hypothesis in which not
only are there interstellar planetesimals in the early stages of solar
system formation but there is capture during the later voyage through
the Galaxy. A reappraisal of the canonical view is therefore called for,
and to this end we shall examine the relationships between comets and
asteroids.
An influx of rocky bodies from a capture episode could not
populate strictly stable orbits as the main belt asteroids seem to be in.
It is a fact of celestial mechanics that between stable and unstable
orbits there is a barrier, and so long as gravity is the only force
operating this barrier cannot be crossed: an unstable orbit will always
remain so. But the barrier can be crossed with the aid of non-
gravitational forces, and it happens that many comets are subject to
precisely such forces.
This was first demonstrated for a faint telescopic comet studied by
Encke in 1818. There are many remarkable features about the orbit of
comet Encke and it will feature prominently in our tale in due course.
It has the shortest known period of any active comet (3.3 years), a low
inclination (12°) and a high eccentricity (0.847). Encke found that the
comet’s period was shortening by the intolerable amount of 0.1 days
per orbital revolution, far more than could be explained by planetary
perturbations. Over the subsequent 150 years the force has varied
enormously. The great majority of short-period comets studied since
then have been found either to accelerate or to brake in their orbits.
64 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris
v A 'rocket effect’ is implied. It arises from the fact that there is a time
lag between the heating of an area of comet and the subsequent
vaporization of the ices. Generally the nucleus is rotating and the ice
will be hottest (and evaporation strongest) not at local noon on the
comet but some time in the afternoon. This asymmetry of ejection will
accelerate or retard the comet depending on the direction of rotation
and the time lag. These non-gravitational forces may sometimes be
very much stronger than the gravitational perturbations caused by
the planets, and they may operate systematically rather than
randomly. Large meanderings of orbit are sometimes possible.
Inevitably the barrier between stable and unstable orbits must be
crossed from time to time by active comets, and if the comet happens
to become inactive when in a stable orbit, it will be dynamically
indistinguishable from an asteroid.

N Neujmin H
P Pons-winnecke
J Jupiter
E Encke
S Schaumasse
B Biela
A Arend

1 A.U.

Fig. 8. Plan view of the inner solar system showing the terrestrial and jovian orbits
together with the mildly eccentric orbits of several well-known short-period comets.
Most of these objects are relatively weak compared to the longer-period comets
which, being for most of the time very far from the Sun, tend to have suffered much
less outgassing and are thus considerably brighter during perihelion passage. Encke’s
comet is a principal actor in the present drama, and its orbit is in the general
direction of the vernal equinox. In fact, it appears out of the Taurus constellation
which gives its name to the Taurid meteor stream associated with this comet. The
period of the orbit is approximately 3.30 years.

There are probably many ways in which a comet could jet itself
into an asteroidal orbit. One route would involve perturbation, by
Jupiter, of a short-period comet into an orbit of even shorter period,
with passages close to the Sun so that strong outgassing developed.
If the rotation of the nucleus were retrograde so that a braking effect
 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris 65
were exerted, the orbit would tend to circularize and this could
happen rapidly enough for further close encounters with Jupiter to be
avoided. The degassed nucleus would then have joined the asteroids.
Now the fundamental dynamical difference between comets and
asteroids is that comet orbits are unstable, while those of asteroids
are apparently stable. We have already noted that the asteroids
avoid close approaches to Jupiter whereas comets do not. The
transition probability from cometary to asteroidal orbit may be small
but this might be offset by the large comet flux in the neighbourhood
of Jupiter: an injection rate of one comet in 5,000 years would be
adequate to account for the entire asteroid system. While such a
process must occur, its rate of occurrence is at present an unsolved
theoretical problem. If it is significant, however, one might expect to
see transitional objects, lying ambiguously between the cometary and
asteroidal camps. As it happens such objects have come to light.
Orbitally there are now known to be comets in asteroidal orbits and
asteroids in cometary orbits. For example there is a group of six
comets moving in near circular orbits very similar to those of some
asteroids (the Hilda group) in the outer regions of the belt; in fact the
comets and asteroids intermingle. Temporary capture into such
orbits therefore seems to be quite a common occurrence, and
although these comet orbits are not quite stable, their proximity to
those of the (presumed stable) Hilda asteroids indicates that the
relatively small non-gravitational effects, operating over some
revolutions, may on occasion push such comets across the barrier
into an absolutely stable regime. Further, Neujmin I and Arend-
Rigaux, comets with practically asteroidal appearance, are in quasi-
asteroidal relatively stable orbits which avoid close passages to
Jupiter: it has already been suggested by Marsden that these may be
transitional objects. And at least two large ‘asteroids1, Hidalgo and
Chiron, are in unstable comet-like orbits.
In the next chapter we shall study asteroids whose orbits bring
them into the inner regions of the solar system, within the orbits of
Mars or the Earth. There are strong grounds for considering that most
of these are degassed comets. In part the arguments are dynamical.
Additionally one of these asteroids (Hephaistos) has an orbit
sufficiently like that of comet Encke to imply both are fragments of one
disintegrated object and that the asteroid is therefore a dead fragment
of a comet. Another of these asteroids, 1979 VA, has the unstable orbit
of a short-period comet, with an aphelion which brings it close to
Jupiter. The reflectivities of these little objects correspond to those of
66 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris

the main-belt asteroids, the outer ones in particular. Here then is

evidence that degassed comets cannot be distinguished from many of
the main-belt asteroids at least so far as surface mineralogy goes.
The size distribution of comets has also been determined
recently, although there are severe problems of interpretation and
observation—the nucleus cannot even be seen—and the errors are
large. Within these errors the size distribution is that of the asteroids,
with a great preponderance of small bodies, giant comets being
comparatively rare. Long-period comets seem to occur down to
about 1 km diameter. The maximum possible size is a matter for
speculation; but if Chiron and Hidalgo are truly inactive comets,
then comets can have the dimensions of the larger asteroids.
We seem then to be approaching the view that in comets and
asteroids we are not dealing with fundamentally different objects at
all, that perhaps an asteroid is an inactive comet, and that perhaps
also the asteroid belt is an ancient reservoir, containing not only truly
primordial bodies but also an admixture of interstellar ones.

3.3 Problems with asteroids

We can further examine this question of interstellar asteroids by
looking more closely at the structure of the belt. Figure 9 shows the
distribution of eccentricity of the main-belt asteroids. Jovian
perturbations would introduce mean eccentricities of only 0.03 and

Fig. 9. Graphs showing the fairly broad distribution of eccentricities and

inclinations of orbits in the asteroid belt. These characteristics are
highlighted in this chapter since they are difficult to explain in terms of
the conventional flat nebula theory of the origin of the solar system. Thus
the eccentricities of main-belt asteroids, if induced by Jupiter, should lie
to the left of the vertical line shown. They are more easily explained
however if the asteroids were formed over a wider region of space, as in a
cometary globule, and indeed if some of the asteroids have been captured
as comets from interstellar space.
 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris 67
maximum eccentricities of 0.06. This difficulty applies equally to the
asteroidal inclinations. It has been known for some time, for
example, that Jupiter cannot have perturbed Pallas from the plane of
the solar system to its current orbit, inclined at 35°. But how, then,
can such a large solid body (the second largest asteroid) have grown
in such a steeply inclined orbit? Given the simple picture of growth
from a primitive solar nebula, which was flat, a collision might have
deflected Pallas. But the colliding body would have had to be
extremely large; collisions are very inelastic; and in any case the net
effect of internal collisions is to take energy out of the system, i.e.
flatten it.
The essential point is that the asteroid system ought to look like the
rings of Saturn rather than a doughnut. It has too much internal
energy, and ad hoc mechanisms have to be added to the conventional
picture to puff the system up. One such proposed mechanism is the
gravitational stirring of asteroids by massive planetesimals which
were once scattered into the belt, but which have since vanished. Even
a grazing fly-by of the Moon at 10 km/sec would only perturb an
asteroid by about 0.3 km/sec. A passage at 0.1 a.u. would disturb the
asteroid by 6 cm/sec. To reach the internal velocities of 5 km/sec,
either a very large number of massive bodies or long residence time in
the asteroid belt would be required. With the mass distributions one
expects of growing bodies these invaders would be accompanied by a
host of secondary bodies which would be quite enough to destroy the
asteroids by collisions. One could of course make the further
postulate that only massive unaccompanied planetesimals were
injected, and one must further assume that, having stirred the system
up, they are then ejected. While one can probably find a range of
properties which would inject energy into the asteroids without
destroying them, one has to ask about the plausibility of the
circumstances, keeping in mind that the mechanism is ad hoc in the
first place. While this is a matter of subjective judgement, it seems to
us that on the flat primordial nebula cosmogony there is a second
problem: the asteroid belt has too much internal energy. On the other
hand, this particular difficulty would not assume so much importance
if asteroids were formed in a primordial solar globule or captured
from interstellar space.
Another manifestation of this problem is that accretion from a
quiescent state would grow only to the point where the bodies begin
to deflect each other in orbit, the collision velocities are enhanced,
and they begin to break up. Evolution should only proceed to a state of
68 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris
equilibrium between accretion and fragmentation. That the asteroid
belt is not in this state but rather is fragmentation-dominated, is also
obvious from the internal random velocities of about 5 km/sec which
ensure destruction on impact.
The asteroids seem to occupy every available stable or quasi-stable
orbital niche. This is qualitatively expected if they are regarded as
degassed short-period comets subject to appreciable random walk
due to the rocket effect. The Trojans lie beyond the normal
outgassing distance of comets. Whether they represent a difficulty
with the capture mechanism remains to be seen. They might be part of
a class of body with surfaces more volatile than water ice; but there is
no evidence to say whether they are in truly stable orbits, numerical
work having shown, for example, that bodies in chaotic orbits leading
to ejection from the solar system may linger in the Trojan region for
long periods of time.
The scenario we have described then leads to the rather startling
conclusion that some asteroids may have grown in interstellar
conditions, and that indeed many may in fact be comparatively recent
captures from the spiral arms of the Galaxy. From the observational
point of view it seems that one cannot yet discriminate between this
hypothesis and the standard paradigm, although the puffed-up
structure of the belt and the existence of apparently transitional types
are suggestive. Until quantitative work is done on the orbital transfer
problem, the idea that many or most asteroids derive from interstellar
capture or primordial globule or both will remain a shot in the dark.
But the usual picture of asteroids as entirely primordial is equally a
shot in the dark, even if hallowed by familiarity and not recognized as
such. In astrophysics, where experiment is not usually possible, there
is a danger of uncontrolled theoretical speculation untested against
predictions. Paradoxically this can be a case for more speculation
rather than less. Bandwagons can fall over cliffs, and the forensic
fitting of data in ever greater detail on to some prescribed ‘wisdom’
can give the illusion of progress: it is the unrecognized speculation
which is the real danger. In our view there are many hints that all may
not be well with current views on solar system cosmogony: there is
the ad hoc nature of the usual planetesimal growth theories; the
increasingly vague distinction between comets and asteroids; the (as
we shall see) failure to identify most meteorites with anything in the
asteroid belt from which they are supposed to have come; and so on.
Special explanations can and have been devised for all these
problems; but it is prudent to range more widely, to see whether
 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris 69
radically different interpretations of the data might not be more
satisfactory than perturbations on received views.

3.4 Short-period phenomena in the solar system:

an interstellar connection?
One interesting hidden assumption is that the solar system was set up
4.5 billion years ago and has been running smoothly ever since. It is
true that the near-circularity of the orbits of the major planets, and
their more or less regular spacing, are in harmony with this view, but
the situation is less clear for the smaller bodies of the solar system.
This is exemplified by theories of the rings of Saturn. The classical
assumption has been that the ring system was formed along with the
planet, and in studies of the origin of the ring it has been quite
common to reject this or that model on the grounds that it would
make the rings younger than the planet.
The ring system seems to be 1-3 km thick and in fact comprises
many hundreds of rings. It was thought to lie wholly within the so-
called Roche limit, within which tidal forces would break up a weak
satellite to form a ring system, but the Pioneer 11 and Voyager 1 fly-
bys showed that they extend well beyond the limit, that is to regions
where tidal effects cannot have broken up a larger body. Radio and
radar observations are best fitted by supposing the bulk of the ring
comprises icy particles 4—30 cm in diameter. Bodies of this size
however are disrupted by inelastic collisions, and this should have
shrunk the ring system to 100-200 metres thick. The current thickness
is more consistent with an age of only 10-100 million years.
Erosive forces due to ultraviolet radiation and micrometeorite
bombardment on icy particles must be at work also, and the latter in
particular could destroy the ring system within a million years.
There are in any case observations of the ring system extending
back to 1610. Many of these are strongly suggestive of variability
within the rings, and even possibly spreading of the inner ring, ring C,
towards the surface of the planet on a remarkably short timescale.
The C ring itself was not discovered as such until 1850 so that what
the earlier observers were measuring is open to question, but 1850
onwards was the era of the micrometer men. the accuracy of whose
measurements can hardly be surpassed now, and there are no evident
systematic effects over the last 100 years to produce a spurious drift. If
the measurements are taken at face value a very recent evolution or
origin for the Saturnian ring system is implied. Similar remarks can
be made for the Jovian ring system discovered in 1979 by Voyager 1:
 70 Comet to asteroid: solar system debris

the ring particles seem to be of microscopic dimensions and must be

resupplied on a timescale of 100 years or so. A primordial origin for
these systems would now seem to be a risky assumption!
Other short-lived phenomena (Table 2) are to be found among the
smaller bodies of the solar system, ranging from the well-established
to the conjectural. The object Chiron which orbits between Saturn
and Uranus and whose brightness corresponds to that of the larger
asteroids, is in an unstable orbit and will most probably be ejected
from the solar system in a few hundred thousand years. If it is an
escaped satellite or a refugee from the main belt, then we are
observing a very rare event. Another ‘asteroid’ in this category is
Hidalgo, in a Jupiter-crossing orbit. Its probability of ejection at each
crossing is about 1 in 100,000 and it is unlikely to remain in the solar
system for more than another 1 or 2 million years. Amongst the
satellites also there are short-lived objects. For example Phobos, the
innermost satellite of Mars, is spiralling in under the action of

Table 2. Short-lived or recent solar system phenomena

Characteristic
Object Phenomenon Probability Comments
timescale (years)

Ejection from 1
CHIRON 50,000
solar system 100,000

Ejection from 1
HIDALGO 1,000,000 5,000
solar system

Spiralling in 1 1 Largest satellite (diameter

TRITON 10-100 million
towards planet 1,000 100 about 3,700 km); retrograde
orbit indicative of capture.

Spiralling in 1
PHOBOS 60 million
towards planet 100

Faint inner ring apparently

Spreading in 1
RINGS OF SATURN 500-10,000 spreading inwards since
towards planet? 100,000
discovery in 1850.

MIMAS/TETHYS 1 Satellites of Saturn whose

Evolving 200 million
resonance 25 orbital periods are in a 2:3
resonance, which was formed
ENCELADUS/DIONE 1 or disturbed only a few
Evolving 400 million
resonance 10 hundred million years ago.

OUTER RETROGRADE Possible temporary ? ? Orbits retrograde, indicative

JOVIAN SATEt.LiTES capture of capture, and unstable.

Various short-lived or recent solar system phenomena. The spreading of the inner
ring of Saturn, if real, implies evolution on a timescale of millennia, and Voyager
observations have placed the active state of the rings beyond doubt. The
probabilities (column 4) are simply the relevant timescales of the phenomena
divided by the age of the solar system (4.5 billion years). An active rather than
quiescent small body population seems to be implied, and if so episodes of capture
of bodies into the solar system are indicated.
10. The planet Saturn photographed during the Voyager I fly-by November, 1980.

tidal forces and will crash on to the Martian surface in about 60

million years if it is not first broken up into a ring system. Triton, the
largest satellite of the solar system, is in a retrograde orbit about
Neptune and appears to be spiralling in towards the planet on a
timescale of 10-100 million years. Should it reach the surface the
angular momenturm transferred will be sufficient to reverse the
direction of rotation of the planet, but not before it has transformed
Neptune into an incandescent ball of vapour!
In all there are fewer than fifty known satellites, ring systems or
Chiron-sized bodies in the solar system, and five or ten of these
appear to be short-lived on timescales characteristically 1-100
million years. It is hard to see this situation as consistent with the
classical quiescent picture. One is inevitably led to enquire whether
the sporadic capture mechanism might produce these phenomena.
However the mechanics of satellite capture and ring formation are
currently unsolved problems, and any proposal of this sort must
remain for the moment speculative. Nevertheless the intermittent
capture hypothesis does provide a single, simple explanation of
diverse phenomena which have so far required a whole variety of ad
hoc theories in so far as they have been discussed at all, and the
possibility that bodies from the spiral arms of the Galaxy are in orbit
around the planets seems to deserve further investigation.
4 • Asteroid to crater:
the anatomy of impact

The inner planets are studded with craters caused by the impacts of
asteroids and comets. Modern studies reveal a history in which the bulk
of the craters were formed early in the life of the solar system.
Subsequently, however, the impacts have been dominated by Apollo
asteroids which are, we suggest, periodically repopulated by bursts of
interstellar comets and steadily depopulated by planetary encounters.
According to this picture, the meteorites are ultimate fragmentation
products of the original solar globule and on the whole are less massive
than comets. During capture episodes they are simultaneously
perturbed into Apollo orbits: they predominantly sample the primordial
solar system.
•/

4.1 Comets as the source of Apollo asteroids

That some asteroids may approach the neighbourhood of the Earth
was appreciated by 1898, with the discovery of Eros, which is capable
of approaching to within 22 million km, that is about sixty times the
distance of the Moon. Its orbit, however, does not cross that of the
Earth. The first asteroid in a true Earth-crossing orbit, and therefore
a potential collision hazard, was discovered by Reinmuth of
Heidelberg in 1932. It was named Apollo after the Greek god of the
sun. In the same year a second asteroid. Amor, was discovered with
an orbit marginally outside that of the Earth, its point of closest
approach to the Sun being 1.08 a.u. These bodies have given their
names to two classes of asteroids: those in Earth-crossing orbits are
the Apollo asteroids, those with orbits which cross that of Mars but
not the Earth are the Amor asteroids.
A second Earth-crosser, Adonis, was found in 1936. Hermes, a
third, was discovered by Reinmuth in 1937. It approached to within
800,000 km, twice the distance of the Moon, moving at up to 5° an hour,
and completely crossing the sky in nine days. The effect was "much like
that obtained by standing near the railroad track when the evening
express roars past’. Hermes has since been lost. With the use in recent
years of wide-angled telescopes for sky surveys, and the systematic
search programme carried out by the Americans Shoemaker and
Helin, the list is now being added to at a rate of about four a year.
Discovery of Apollo asteroids is a haphazard affair and the forty-odd
 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 73
now known are probably only a few percent of the total. All are points
of light even in the largest telescopes and their sizes cannot be directly
measured. However the indirect techniques already described are
applicable, and it turns out the size distribution of the known Apollos is
similar to that of main belt asteroids.
Obviously the discovery of these objects is strikingly incomplete.
For example Hephaistos, the largest known asteroid of the group with
a diameter of 10 km, was discovered only in 1978. However
calculations of true abundance can be made by estimating the
completeness of telescopic search. The estimated numbers of Earth-
crossers, in the size range 1 km upwards, have increased dramatically
in recent years. Opik in 1963 thought there might be as many as forty; in
1973 Whipple thought there might be up to a hundred; Shoemaker and
his colleagues, a few years later, put the number at 750 + 250; and with
the discovery of ‘Aten’ objects whose orbits lie mostly within the
Earth’s it is now appreciated that there may be over 1,300 Earth-
crossing asteroids.
An Apollo asteroid may collide with Venus or the Earth, or less
probably with the Moon, Mercury or Mars, or it may be
gravitationally perturbed out of the solar system altogether. The
mean life expectancy is about 50 million years, which for a population
of say 1,300 asteroids more than a kilometre across means that one
asteroid is lost from the system every 40,000 years. If the Apollo
asteroids are the tail end of a decaying population, then 3 billion years
ago their numbers would have been many times greater. Since Apollo
asteroids are a prime source of craters on the inner planets, the
cratering rate would have been correspondingly higher. In fact, the
cratering rate has been roughly constant on average over the past 3
billion years and so the Apollo asteroids must be continually
replenished from some other small body population.
Only two such populations are known, the main-belt asteroids and
the system of comets. Unfortunately it is not generally possible to
calculate past and future orbits in great detail, small uncertainties
magnifying rapidly. Most calculations involving three or more solar
system bodies are unreliable beyond a few hundred years. Some
general statements can be made, however. If Apollo asteroids evolve
from the main belt by the random accumulation of many small
perturbing forces, then there should be a great preponderance of
asteroids in Mars-crossing orbits, and this is not observed.
The only other possibility is that certain critical orbits are very
unstable. Such orbits have been found, in the main belt, in which
74 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact

Jupiter ‘pumps up’ the eccentricity in a resonant interaction, to the

point where an asteroid is perturbed into an Earth- or Mars-crossing
orbit and brought under the control of either of these planets. Of
course asteroids would be quickly depleted from these critical orbits.
To keep the supply going, collisions between asteroids are envisaged.
An asteroid orbiting at the edge of a resonance zone would have to be
bumped at about 0.2 km/sec in the right direction to enter it.
However, the theoreticians find that only 7-10 per cent of Apollo
asteroids may be supplied from the main belt in this way and we must
look elsewhere for the major source.
The only other known small-body population capable of supplying
the Apollo system are the comets or, to be precise, those comets which
have orbital periods of only a few years. It is true that most comets
have enormously long periods of orbit around the Sun. We have seen
in Figure 5 that there is remarkable concentration of semi-major axes
around 25,000 astronomical units, and this leads to revolution
periods of about 4 million years. Of the 600 comet orbits which have
been computed, however, about 100 have revolution periods of less
than a century. Unlike the long-period comets, these form a flattened
system, mostly co-rotating with the planets, with a mean inclination
of about 15°, not very different from the mean of the Apollo system.
The first known of these so-called periodic comets was discovered by
Halley, who found that the bright comets of 1531,1607 and 1682 were
almost identical in orbit, being highly inclined and moving in a
retrograde sense. He deduced that they were the same comet. Having
last passed its perihelion in 1910 and aphelion in 1948, at which point
it was further away than Neptune, Halley’s comet will re-appear in
early 1986 passing within the Earth’s orbit on its way once more to
perihelion. It is doubtful however whether it will be as spectacular a
sight as it has been on earlier visits.
Although comets as a whole seem to have little resemblance to
asteroids, developing comae and tails whenever they approach to
within 3 or 4 a. u. of the Sun, we have seen in Chapter 3 that the
distinction between comets and asteroids at greater distances is
nowadays becoming increasingly blurred. Indeed they could
represent an evolutionary sequence, and it is perhaps the frequent
changes in the appearance of comets that provide the clue as to what
is going on. They can transform before our eyes as they lose mass and
energy and must therefore have finite lifetimes. Indeed within the last
200 years several short-period comets have vanished. Probably a
typical lifetime for a short-period comet is between 100 and 1,000
 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 75
years, although of course a large one might persist for millennia. The
Estonian astronomer Opik has suggested that mass loss through
evaporation of volatiles shrinks the diameter of a comet by 1 /(250x/q)
kilometres for every perihelion passage, q being the perihelion
distance in a. u. Thus, if a typical periodic comet is about 1 km in
diameter, it would have a lifetime of only 500 years. It is then a
question of whether a comet evaporates completely, or leaves a solid
residue, thereby becoming an Apollo asteroid. It may be that a
definitive answer will require a space mission, but certainly the
activity of a comet decays with time, suggesting that either the porous
surface structure becomes overlaid by more compact, less easily
evaporated material, or that there is a non-volatile material, dust or
rock, below the surface. For example Encke’s comet is now very weak
and, it has been estimated, will become an Apollo asteroid some time in
the 21st century.
At present Encke’s is the only known active comet in the inner solar
system. Wetherill has followed the evolution of such comets in the
inner solar system, assuming they become asteroids, by a computer
simulation of gravitational perturbation from the inner planets and
Jupiter. Test objects were injected initially into the orbit of comet
Encke, and random walks of their semi-major axes and eccentricities
followed. Soon after injection the orbits are close to that of Encke,
but beginning to drift. After about 5 million years a few Amor
asteroids have appeared, after about 30 million years the whole inner
region is homogeneously filled, with about equal numbers of Apollo
and Amor asteroids, and after about 100 million years an
approximate equilibrium is reached in which there are twice as many
Amors as Apollos.
The existence of transitional objects provides further evidence for
this evolutionary sequence. One Apollo asteroid, 1979 VA, has an
orbit like that of a short-period comet; with aphelion close to Jupiter
it is probably in a very unstable orbit. And in addition to comet Encke
we have met in the previous chapter the two periodic comets, Arend-
Rigaux and Neujmin I, which have been virtually asteroidal in recent
years. It seems from these studies that comets in short-period orbits
must decay into objects which, in appearance and orbit, are
indistinguishable from Apollo or Amor asteroids.
It only remains to be seen whether long-period comets can produce
short-period comets at a sufficient rate to account for the present
population of Apollo asteroids. Once again, computer simulations
come to our aid. Everhart has shown that long-period comets can
76 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact

occasionally be deflected by Jupiter encounters eventually into

Apollo-type orbits, and with the present density of comets in the
inner solar system, this would result in an object of the appropriate
size, diameter exceeding 1 km, once every 10,000 years or so. This is
considerably more rapid than the Apollo depletion rate, and the
present stock of around 1,000 is thus easily explained if the comet flux
has been maintained through something like the last 10 million years.
Such a timescale coincides very nicely with the solar system passage
through Gould’s Belt.
It follows that if the interstellar comet theory is correct, the Earth-
crossing asteroids must also in large part be interstellar in origin.
There may, in addition to this sporadic component, be a slowly
declining ‘primordial’ population leaking into the Apollo system out
of extremely long-lived orbits. But amongst the kilometre-sized
objects this background is not likely to be dominant. Even if the
asteroid belt were entirely composed of primordial material it could
not contribute with present estimates more than 10 per cent to the
Apollo population.

4.2 Encounters with Apollo asteroids: impact craters

A capture episode, then, gives rise to a decaying deluge of bodies in
the planetary system, most bodies being rapidly ejected, others
finding more or less temporary orbital niches and lasting longer, and
yet others striking the planets. But episodic capture implies episodic
bombardment, and with the data we have now assembled the impact
energies and current collision frequencies can be calculated.
It turns out that if the current population is typical, an Apollo
asteroid of at least 1 km diameter will collide with the Earth every
250,000 years or so. If such an asteroid has the density of water ice, its
mass is 4 billion tons and for a mean impact velocity of 25 km/sec the
impact energy is 3 million megatons. For a rocky constitution the
energy will approach 10 million megatons. The unit of energy
employed here is the ‘megaton equivalent of TNT’, one megaton
corresponding to the explosion of a million tons of TNT. The
Hiroshima explosion had an energy of about a fiftieth of a megaton; a
sizeable hydrogen bomb will release 1-10 megatons of energy; the
Krakatoa eruption of August 1883 was about 50 megatons; and a
major earthquake may involve the release of over 100 megatons.
From the size distribution of Apollo asteroids, again if the current
population is typical, then since Precambrian times (say within the
last 600 million years) the Earth has probably been struck about ten
11. Montage of aerial photographs from the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft V of an area
to the north-east of the Copernicus crater (approximately 80 km diameter). Note the
shadow produced by the raised rim and the large amount of displaced material
dumped beyond the periphery. Observe also the radial lines of secondary craters.

times by missiles with impact energies in excess of 150 million

megatons, and once or twice with energies in excess of 3 billion
megatons. These are colossal impacts, occurring within timescales of
biological and geological significance. According to the argument
which has unfolded, they occur, not randomly, but with a galactic
modulation, the impact rate at some epochs being several times
higher than at others. Such collisions cannot fail to have catastrophic
global consequences, and these we shall examine in the next chapter.
Firstly, however, we shall look at the evidence on the ground, in the
form of craters.

In the spring of 1610, in a little book entitled The Sidereal

Messenger, Galileo announced that the Milky Way was composed of
myriads of stars, that four satellites orbit the planet Jupiter, and that
the Moon is covered with craters. The three domains explored in this
book galaxy, solar system and planetary surface—were also the
first astronomical targets of the telescope.
Galileo described the craters as ka great quantity of small blackish
spots sprinkled everywhere over the area illuminated by the sun . . .
the said small spots always having their dark parts towards the sun’s
position, and on the side away from the sun they have brighter
78 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact

boundaries as if they were crowned with shining summits.’ He

recognized the small blackish spots as shadows thrown by rings of
mountains, or craters.
For 350 years following Galileo’s discoveries, only the Moon and
Earth were known to possess craters, and only the Moon in abundance.
Then in 1965 the spacecraft Mariner 4 sent back the first close-up
photographs of Mars. In spite of only 1 per cent photographic
coverage and a large dust storm, several craters were detected on the
planet. In 1971 Mariner 9 photographed the little Martian satellites
Phobos and Deimos, revealing densely cratered surfaces. In 1972
mapping of the entire Martian surface was completed, revealing a
planet in which one hemisphere was heavily cratered, the other lightly
so. Also in 1972 scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena penetrated the clouds of Venus by radar, revealing, again, a
cratered surface. And in 1975 Mariner 10 passed close to Mercury
and transmitted photographs showing a surface hardly distinguish-
able from that of the Moon.
Details of the cratering vary from body to body. Mercury shows a
slight relative deficiency of very small craters and overall is not quite
as saturated as the Moon. Craters of the order of 100 km across are as
common on Venus as on the older surfaces of Mars but the planet is
strikingly deficient in smaller craters. On the Moon and Mars, the
crater density is patchy, ancient volcanic activity having covered 15
per cent and 50 per cent of the surfaces respectively, no doubt
obliterating earlier craters. It is likely that the crater production
history of all these bodies has been similar but that the crater
obliteration history has varied, depending on the extent and duration
of vulcanism on the body. Craters are therefore ubiquitous and must
be symptomatic of some process occurring, now or in the past,
throughout the solar system.
In 1667 Robert Hooke had dropped bullets into a stiff clay,
creating little impact craters. However, he had also boiled a mixture of
powered alabaster and water, and the bursting bubbles had also
formed craters. A lively controversy over crater cosmogony,
engendered by these simple experiments, has swung back and forth
for 300 years, and only within the last decade or so has something
like a consensus been reached.
Some craters are produced by internal processes. Apart from
terrestrial examples there is Olympus Mons, an edifice about 1,000
km in diameter rising about 27 km above the Martian ‘ground level’.
The summit caldera is pitted with subsidence craters and the whole
 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 79

12. Impact craters on the planet Mars. Note the dry valleys indicative of extensive
water erosion which is not yet explained. It is believed that these canyons were
gouged out in the space of a few days. Catastrophic flooding events would probably
be precipitated by the impact of ice-bound comets of a few kilometres diameter.

structure is plainly volcanic. In 1979 Voyager 2 encountered the four

Galilean satellites of Jupiter. Io, the innermost, was found to possess
craters whose volcanic nature is indisputable: several were erupting.
Hooke himself had dismissed the impact hypothesis as he could not
conceive of a source of projectiles. But in spite of these counter-
examples there is now little doubt that the great majority of craters
are caused by impacts. No internal mechanism could account for
their range of sizes, from microscopic to global, and the fact that they
are found on the most diverse bodies including small moons with no
sources of internal heat. In any case, geological studies of ancient
terrestrial craters often reveal shattered bedrock and meteoritic iron,
putting an impact origin beyond reasonable doubt in the minds of
most, although not all, geologists.
Impact craters are therefore a record of collision events which may
have been very remote in time, and they play the same part in the
study of solar system history as do fossils in phylogeny. In-
80 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact

terpretation of this fossil record may be complicated: on the lunar

highlands there are craters within craters, craters on craters, craters
overlapping craters and near-submerged craters. On the other hand,
a single large crater has a simplifying effect: it obliterates everything
below it. It can therefore act as a recorder of younger, smaller craters
formed within it. Thus, in conjunction with absolute dating of lunar
rock samples, has history been reconstructed.
The lunar maria—dark patches visible to the naked eye—provide a
suitable background for crater counting. Galileo himself had
remarked on the sparseness of craters on these darker areas. Lunar
rock samples indicate that the maria are seas of lava which solidified
about 3.5 billion years ago. Lunar cratering history from then to the
present time is therefore easier to disentangle.
To study the crater production rate in the remotest eras we have, as
mentioned in Chapter 2, to go to the lunar highlands. These are
probably the oldest surfaces in the solar system, more than 4 billion
years old. The crater density in these regions is several hundred times
greater than in the maria. That is, hundreds of times as many craters
fell in the interval 4—3.5 billion years ago, as have fallen in the interval
3.5 billion years ago to the present. Furthermore, the crater
production rate seems to have fallen to something like its modern
value by 3-3.5 billion years ago, maintaining a steady average rate to
this day. Making up this mean trend is an underlying flux interspersed
with spikes in the crater production rate, that is, brief periods of
enhanced bombardment superimposed on a weaker background.
Only so much information can be extracted from crater counts,
unfortunately, and the intensity and duration of these bombard-
ment episodes, and their separation in time, are not well known. The
results are summarized schematically in Figure 6. Broadly speaking,
we may interpret the early rapid decline in terms of the mopping-up
of the primordial solar nebula—or globule. This process would
continue indefinitely in principle, but there evidently came a time
when a non-declining source of impacting bodies began to dominate.
Though certainly constant in rate if averaged over a long enough
time, it is essentially a fluctuating source, the peaks occurring at
intervals of perhaps 100 million years or so—again, the characteristic
galactic modulation which we have predicted.
It remains to be seen whether the size distribution and number of
craters are consistent with Apollo asteroids as the prime missiles. On
the Moon, for every crater 100 km or more across there are 100
10 km or more across and 400 in excess of 5 km across. Lunar craters
 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 81
smaller than these are more often secondary, derived from a shower
of lumps thrown out from a larger primary impact, and so tell
us less about the impacting missiles. Small craters are much more
abundant than large ones, and this is true of Apollo asteroids. To see
whether these size distributions are compatible we have to look at the
mechanics of impact.
Coming in at 20-30 km/sec an asteroid will be brought to a halt in a
distance about equal to its own diameter, being literally turned inside
out in the process. Pressures of several million atmospheres and
shock temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees are immediately
generated. At these extremes the material of the asteroid and crust
around it are transformed into a ball of hot gas and the ground behaves
like a fluid. A shock wave spreads beyond the fireball, dissipating
energy and momentum. Below a million atmospheres, large volumes
of rock are melted. In the later stages of shock the pressure drops to
below 100,000 atmospheres and the strength of the crustal material
becomes important, although its properties are unfamiliar: boulders,
for example, may deform and bounce like rubber. Below about
10,000 atmospheres, rock strength and gravity become dominant,
crater walls are formed and the process is brought to a halt. The
formation of a large crater may take a few minutes.
Dust, boulders, and melted rock and vapour are thrown out. A rim
of debris, kilometres high in a large impact, is formed round the hole,
but beyond this a blanket of ejecta is hurled. The largest fragments
may have about a third of the diameter of the original missile. In this
way chains of secondary craters may sometimes be formed. Such
chains, one 100 km long with craters up to 5 km across, are seen
radiating from Copernicus (Plate 11). For a terrestrial land impact,
dust and nitric oxides are thrown high into the atmosphere. If the
crater is sufficiently large the melted rock will fall back into it and the
crater will flood with lava: about 90 per cent of the affected rock is
crushed, rather more than half the remainder being vaporized, and
the rest melted. In fact the larger collision structures on Earth are
covered with thick sheets of rock once melted by impact.
For very small craters the volume of material excavated is
proportional to the impact energy. If the volume of a crater scales as
the cube of its diameter D, then so also will the energy: EocD3. For
very large craters, the hole excavated may be kilometres deep and the
crater rim kilometres high: the collision has transported large masses
over large vertical distances. An additional factor proportional to the
linear dimensions of the crater and local gravity is therefore
82 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact

introduced and so the energy scales as the fourth power of the

diameter: EocgD4 on this simple model, where g is the acceleration
due to gravity.
Through geological studies coupled with theoretical calculations
of this sort based on the physics of collision, impact energies as a
function of crater diameter have been derived. It turns out that the
impact energy represents a compromise between these theoretical
extremes: measuring D in kilometres and E in megatons it is found
that E = 2.4 D34. This relation holds also for many chemical and
nuclear explosion craters formed in the desert alluvium of Nevada,
although of course the scale is entirely different. Very roughly, for the
larger impacts, an asteroid will excavate a crater about twenty times
its own diameter. Knowing how asteroid size relates to energy of
impact, and energy of impact relates to crater diameter, we are now in a
position to relate Apollo asteroid size distribution to crater size
distribution. It turns out that agreement is excellent, consistent with
Apollos being a prime source of missiles.

Table 3. Crater diameters and impact energies and rates

D St E d
(km) (million years) (megatons) (km)

80 9.2 7.1 million 3.9

100 14 15 million 5.0
200 58 160 million 10.9
500 360 3600 million 30.8

Phenomenon E
(megatons)

Hurricane 500
Major earthquake 100
Krakatoa eruption 50
Tunguska event 40-100

The typical interval <5t between impacts of planetesimals of diameter at least d

whose impact energies are at least E and which produce craters of diameter at least
D.125 The energies associated with several violent terrestrial phenomena are included
for comparison.
 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 83
Active comets must also collide with the Earth from time to time.
At present a major impact will most probably be asteroidal, but
during a capture episode it is possible that collisions with long-period
comets will be competitive or even dominant: the information is not
yet available to be more precise. The size distribution of comets is
similar to that of their presumed degassed remnants the Apollo
asteroids and so yields the same crater size distribution, within the
errors.

4.3 Galactic modulation of the cratering rate

If the missile supply is erratic then we should not expect a precise
matching between the average lunar cratering taken over a long period
and the rate one would infer from the current missile numbers. With a
capture event ending 10 million years ago and the depletion rate of
Apollos, a mismatch by a factor of two or three is feasible. Because
terrestrial craters can be dated, one should also look at the cratering
rate on Earth in geological times to see whether discrepancies
ascribable to galactic modulation exist.
Impact craters on the Earth have gone unrecognized until recent
times. Undoubtedly the rapid erosion and deposition on top of a
terrestrial crater accounts for their rarity. A crater 1 km across may
typically have a lifetime of 1 million years, one 0.1 km perhaps 10,000
years. The Arizona crater, about 1 km in diameter, was discovered in
1870, but its impact origin was widely doubted for some time.
Geological studies, which included the discovery of about 30 tons of
meteoric iron in the vicinity, have settled the matter. In 1928 a crater
160 metres across was found at Odessa, Texas, also surrounded by
meteoric debris. In 1930 thirteen craters were found in Henbury in
central Australia, ranging from 1 metre to 200 metres in diameter.
Again many iron meteorites were found around these craters.
By 1950 only about a dozen terrestrial impact craters had been
discovered, mostly by accident. With the advent of systematic
searches, however, this number has been increasing by about four a
year, and at present about ninety terrestrial impact structures are
known. Their distribution over the surface of the Earth is very
irregular. This may reflect in part those areas where searches have
been carried out, but in addition the Canadian and Baltic shields and
their surrounds provide the geologically stable surfaces on which
ancient craters may be recognized. They date from about 450 million
years before the present and the record of impacts on Earth cannot be
reliably traced earlier than this.
84 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact
On the Moon and Mercury, with little erosion and no atmosphere,
the dominance of impacts on all scales is obvious. Some of these
impact structures are very large: the Mare Imbrium is 700 km in
diameter, and the Mare Caloris on Mercury is 1,300 km across. But
the impact histories of Earth and Moon must have been very similar.
Thus in spite of the effectiveness of the erosion and sedimentation in
general, terraforming on this very large scale would be difficult to
obliterate. Hudson’s Bay and the Gulf of Mexico may be ancient
impact structures, and many more such features are beginning to
come to light. One of the first to review this possibility seriously was
the amateur geologist Gallant in 1964. The geologist Norman in 1977
claimed to have detected many large circular structures, often more
than 1,000 km across, and suggested that any large-scale crustal
feature with an arcuate outline deserves scrutiny. Faint, almost
perfectly circular patterns were also detected by Saul in 1978, over
1,000 being detected by him on topographic maps. These were
characterized by high rims and a wide range of sizes (up to 700 km),
with fracturing along part of their rims. Saul found that these
structures placed extraordinary control over local geology in general
and ore mineralogy in particular. It seems that on all scales from the
local to the very large, topographic features due to impact can be
discerned—this is no more than one would expect on astronomical
grounds—but are very difficult to detect and have generally gone
unrecognized.
At any rate, arguing from well-defined and recognizable craters
formed on Earth over the last 500 million years, one finds that the
current Apollo population alone would give twice as many craters as
are observed: there are too many Apollos. The situation is even more
extreme for the Moon: the current Apollo population would give
five times as many lunar craters as are observed.
These results are considered to be statistically significant. Of course
terrestrial craters have been produced over the last 500 million years,
lunar craters over the past 3,500 million years. The cratering rate has
therefore been higher in ‘recent’ times. This cannot be understood as
a mechanism arising within the solar system, and the implication is
that there has been some change in the galactic environment over the
last 500 million years. Another result, of marginal significance, is that
the observed ratio of Apollo to Amor asteroids is not an equilibrium
one. The observed numbers fit better a capture event which ended 30
million years ago. The sample of bodies is too small for this figure to
be reliable, however.
 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 85
We have now discussed five tests for episodicity of bombardment.
These are the lunar soil micrometeoroid data, the evidence of
irregularity in the lunar cratering history, the matching of the current
Apollo population with terrestrial craters, likewise with lunar craters,
and finally the observed minus calculated equilibrium numbers of
Earth- and Mars-crossing asteroids. Some of these standing alone,
give information of only marginal significance, but cumulatively the
evidence appears to support a sporadic rather than a steady supply of
missiles.

4.4 Problems with meteorites

We have now traced the path of planetesimals from their growth in
the spiral arms of the Galaxy, to collision with the Earth. We have seen
that within geologically significant timescales there have been
impacts on Earth of several hundred million, and probably several
billion, megatons. In the next chapter, we shall turn to the terrestrial
consequences of such devastating collisions, but first we must
examine rather more carefully that remaining class of solar system
missile—the meteorites.
Shooting stars, points of light which move swiftly and silently
through the constellations, can be seen on any clear dark night. Very
occasionally one can see a fireball, a brilliant orange or bluish flare
brighter than Venus. The occasion of the fall of a meteorite is outside
the experience of the great majority of people. In the course of a few
seconds a fireball as bright as day comes down from the sky,
accompanied by hissing and thunderclaps culminating in a bang. A
trail of dust marks its flight and can remain suspended for hours in the
sky. These terrifying apparitions have been known from earliest times
and were given names such as ‘fiery serpent’, ‘dragon’ and so on.
Records of meteorite falls have been found on Egyptian papyrus
dating from 2000 BC on the conventional chronology. Chunks of
material may reach the ground: these are the meteorites.
Probably about 500 meteorites enter the Earth’s atmosphere each
year, most of them falling into the sea. There are about 2,000
meteorites preserved in museums, a third of which were ‘falls’, that is
they were seen to fall from the sky, the others being ‘finds’. Between
ten and thirty new meteorites are found each year. They are broadly
divided into irons and stones with a small intermediate group of stony
irons. Stones outnumber irons by about ten to one immediately after
a fall, but the number of finds is more or less evenly balanced between
the two main types. This is partly because a meteorite, if stony, is less
86 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact

easily recognized as such; and in addition stones erode more quickly.

There are numerous sub-divisions of these main groups, stones in
particular being divided broadly into chondrites and achondrites. By
far the largest group of stony meteorites are the chondrites, so-called
because they contain grains or chondrules varying from microscopic
to centimetre-sized. The strength and composition of these chond-
rules varies enormously from quasi-volcanic to crystalline. They are
not found in terrestrial rocks.
The mineralogy and petrology of meteorites is a vast, complex and
controversial topic, no single model fitting all the data. Meteorites
generally have been seen as cooled from a molten phase, the
solidification age being derived by radioactive dating. Many have
apparently been part of a regolith, that is the fractured outer layers of
a planetesimal; most show signs of exposure to cosmic rays and the
solar wind. In many cases, the exposure age is much less than the
solidification age, indicative of later fragmentation. It is considered
likely that most meteorites were once part of larger bodies, probably
asteroid-sized. Comets of this size that get deflected into short-period
orbits steadily disintegrate into objects which are, as we have noted,
indistinguishable in appearance and orbit from Apollo asteroids.
Some are associated with meteor streams. The exposure ages of
meteorites are often strikingly similar to the orbital lifetimes of
short-period comets. It is thus intuitively attractive to consider
comets as the prime source of meteorites. In this picture, one has to
regard the comets as the result of cold accretion even though the
meteoritic component originates from an earlier hot regime.
The ages of meteorites confront us with an immediate difficulty
however. These indicate that the meteorites cannot be predominantly
recent captures from interstellar space. Ages are measured in terms of
isotope ratios, the products of specific radioactive decays following
solidification. Some radiometric ‘clocks’ measure gas retention ages
and can be ‘reset’ rather easily by collision, that is, impact causes the

13. (Opposite) (a) Dust trail of a meteorite fall observed over Chukotka, 19 October
1941. (Photograph by D. Debabov reproduced from Principles of Meteoritics by
E. L. Krinov) (b) The same trail after some time, distorted by air currents. Note the
characteristically wavy structure often associated in the past with the appearance of
serpents. *
Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 87
88 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact

material to lose the gas. The rubidium/strontium clock, however, is

insensitive to such processes and can be reset only by very intense
metamorphism. It is therefore a good measure of the real age of a
meteorite. Among the achondrites and irons, only a few such ages
have been determined, though there are many more among the more
prevalent chondritic meteorites. Most of the ages cluster around
4.5 billion years, indicating a contemporaneous origin and pre-
sumably measuring the epoch when the material formed in the
primordial solar nebula or globule. Such ages indicate the meteorites
cannot be predominantly recent captures from interstellar space.
So long as the asteroid belt is regarded as indigenous to the solar
system and of the same age, it will be natural also to attempt to
identify meteorite types with particular asteroids and to suppose that
the composition and structure of meteorites provides information
about the belt. The meteorites are seen as debris thrown off asteroids
during a collision. This alternative view, although widely accepted,
also presents difficulties.
Spectrophotometric measurements in the near infrared are
available for several hundred asteroids and it has been found that the
belt is a very heterogeneous place. Over eighty spectral signatures are
recognized, and hardly any two asteroids are completely identical. In
spite of this diversity, they are divided into a few distinctive groups.
Seventy-five per cent are extremely dark and neutral in colour and are
designated the C-group; the S-group are objects of moderate
reflectivity and red in colour. Correcting for bias of discovery due to
the different reflectivities, one finds similar size distributions for the
two types, but the distribution through the asteroid belt is markedly
different. The S-type asteroids prefer the inner part of the belt and the
numbers decrease smoothly from the inner edge at 2 a.u. from the
Sun. The C-type inhabit the outer regions. Thus the percentage of S-
types to all others drops smoothly from about 60 per cent at 2.2 a.u.
to 10 per cent at 3 a.u. and less than 3 per cent at 3.4 a.u. The two main
types may indicate progressive surface degradation or different modes
of origin and thus different ages. It would be helpful if there were any
dynamical calculations to give any credence or otherwise to the latter
hypothesis but unfortunately, the assumption that asteroids provide
most meteorites and are therefore of the same age has tended to
discourage investigations of this kind. Now, many meteorites have
infrared spectra resembling those of the asteroids. The assumption
that similarity of composition implies parenthood is however less
secure. For example, a meteorite that fell near Kapoeta has a reflection
 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 89

spectrum very similar to that of the large asteroid Vesta but there seems
to be no plausible dynamical way of transferring a fragment of Vesta to
the Sudan. For transfer to be possible, the fragment must be injected
into an unstable orbit, with resonant perturbations by Jupiter building
up until the meteorite orbit intersects that of the Earth. Vesta, however,
is far from any such resonant orbit. In general, it has not proved
possible to explain dynamically how meteorites could be generated
from the asteroid belt. Another difficulty is that whatever the merits of
particular identifications, over 85 per cent of the meteorites entering
the Earth’s atmosphere are chondritic and these cannot be certainly
identified with anything in the asteroid belt.
We seem to have arrived at an impasse therefore, both rival
theories running into difficulties: on the one hand there seems to be
no adequate dynamical means of extracting most meteorites from the
asteroid belt and there are severe identification problems; on the
other hand we have excluded the present comets on the grounds of
age. The problem may well arise from trying to identify meteorite
parents with things we can now see. Another possibility is that
meteorites originate from ancient planetesimals. We have seen
(Figure 6) that the planetesimal flux about 4 billion years ago,
deduced from cratering on the lunar highlands, was about 1,000 or
10,000 times the modern value. With such an impact rate the local
meteorite production rate must have been prodigious. Of course,
prior to the formation of the lunar surface the planetesimal collision
rate must have been many orders higher. It is then inevitable that a
swarm of meteoritic parent bodies formed early in solar system
history and was flung by planets or their nuclei into intermediate sized
orbits, beyond the planetary system, which are not affected by
encounters with massive nebulae. Inevitably such material must be
continually perturbed into short-period orbits by Jupiter. It is
therefore reasonable to see the present-day meteorites as the much
fragmented and considerably diminished vestiges of this original
huge cloud of boulders.
Some meteorites do have distinctly anomalous ages. The impli-
cation of the Nakhla meteorite for example is that igneous formation
was taking place only 1.24 billion years ago (an independent
technique gives 1.39 billion years). The crystalline structure is that of
a body which was once part of a large, slowly cooling volume of
molten rock. Similar conclusions have been reached for the Shergotty
meteorite which is 1.1 billion years old and must have been part of a
large volume of melt at that time. Even with a large asteroid impact
90 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact
on Earth, only a small percentage of rock is melted, and at the low
strengths and retaining gravities of the asteroid belt it is not to be
expected that a collision could produce a large volume of very slowly
cooling molten rock. It seems that meteorites such as Nakhla and
Shergotty do not fit into the standard pattern—ages close to 4.5
billion years—and that an interstellar capture hypothesis for these
bodies is at least as likely as any other. It is of course a firm prediction
of the capture hypothesis that a certain proportion of meteorites will
have anomalous ages: the measurement of a rubidium/strontium age
greater than that of the solar system would put an interstellar origin
beyond doubt.
The great heterogeneity of both asteroids and meteorites also
seems to argue against their having been produced in a narrow strip
of solar nebula, the properties of which would presumably be
restricted. For example the abundance patterns of trace elements in
iron meteorites have been examined by the metallurgist Sears and
compared with thermodynamic models of the hypothetical solar
nebula. It turns out that the iron meteorite groups have formed over a
very wide range of pressures, covering 10,000 to one. Sears
proposes that these meteorites were formed in widely separated
regions of the solar nebula and brought together in the asteroid belt
by some unspecified mechanism before transfer to Earth. It is of
course not necessary to have so complicated a history. Once more,
what we are probably looking at in the meteorites are not primarily
ejecta from the asteroid belt but primordial material arriving from a
much wider region of the solar system.
We have now arrived at a view of meteorite origins quite different
from that usually envisaged, which view should be testable by
chemical and mineralogical studies. Of course meteorite data are
generally interpreted in terms of condensation from the supposed
hot, gaseous solar nebula, and it might be considered absurd to
suppose that this huge body of data could be fitted into the vastly
different conditions of a cold dense globule.
As it happens, however, the meteoriticist Clayton has recently
proposed a radical model for meteorite origins, which he considers to
solve many old chemical anomalies, not least the ubiquitous presence
of the chondrules. He points out that interstellar grains, accumulated
into larger bodies within a cold dense nebula, contain a large store of
chemical energy, which energy can be released very rapidly when the
accumulates are warmed to say 100°C. The explosive release of this
heat is sufficientTo create a molten droplet of centimetre dimensions
 Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact 91

which, on recooling, is identified as a chondrule. The creation of these

very abundant, once-melted inclusions in meteorites is a very old
problem. The important feature of this argument of Clayton’s is that
it removes the need for any hot, primordial solar nebula and places
meteorite and planetesimal growth generally in the wider domain of
the cold interstellar medium; the conclusion we have already arrived
at from a quite independent route. If Clayton’s model is correct, it is
still necessary to envisage prior aggregation and differentiation in
bodies of sub-planetary size which subsequently fragment. This is
certainly possible if the initial state of the solar system material was a
cold dense material of the kind that is observed to exist deep within
giant molecular clouds. Before this, however, we are in the realm of
uncertainties discussed in Chapter 1.
The conclusion at the end of this brief foray into the field of
meteoritics is as follows. The most conspicuous craters and their
history of formation are a record of planetesimal impacts both in the
primordial solar globule and from subsequent captures. With the
passage of time, however, the families to which the earliest missiles
belonged have fragmented and dissipated leaving a plentiful
population of relatively inconspicuous smaller objects. Each crossing
of a spiral arm by the solar system captures a new cloud of relatively
large planetesimals, the comets, into highly eccentric orbits. At the
same time, there is perturbed into similar orbits a flood of relatively
smaller planetesimals, mostly remnants of the original solar globule.
There should therefore be a population of interplanetary boulders, in
orbits like those of the short-period comets and Apollos. The
meteorites will derive from this collision-dominated population and
their age distribution will to a large extent mirror the integrated
planetesimal flux throughout the lifetime of the solar system. The
meteorite population is thus largely composed of objects as old as 4.5
billion years.
5 • Crater to catastrophe:
the aftermath of impact

Collisions of asteroids and comets with the Earth have been generally
neglected by Earth scientists. In fact the rate of bombardment is very
much higher than was realized until recently, and we explore here some
of the probable consequences. We are led to propose that great impacts,
occurring within bombardment episodes as the solar system moves
through spiral arms, have been a major controlling factor in the
evolution of life, being responsible for catastrophic mass extinctions of
species. Fundamental geological phenomena such as frequent sea-level
changes, the occurrence of ice ages and plate tectonic episodes,
including mountain building, may also have been triggered by impacts.
We therefore put forward a neo-catastrophist view of Earth history.

5.1 The significance of impacts

That the occasional impact of a cosmic body may have dramatic
global consequences, including the extinction of species, is a very old
speculation: we have quoted the Marquis de Laplace (writing in
1806) to that effect in the prologue. Occasional papers on the subject
are to be found scattered throughout the scientific literature of
subsequent years. In 1956 the palaeontologist de Laubenfels
suggested that hot winds from a giant meteorite impact may have
caused the famous dinosaur extinction. Opik in 1958 pointed out that
hot ash from an asteroid collision would spread far from the site of
impact, destroying life below by heat. McLaren, in his presidential
address to the palaeontological society of America in 1970, suggested
that a giant meteorite impacting in the palaeozoic Pacific might have
caused turbidity in the shallow seas of that era and choked filter-
feeding creatures.
On the whole, such ideas have not been taken seriously, the
influence of impacts on Earth history being generally overlooked;
one can open almost any text book on palaeontology or geology to
find the evolution of the Earth discussed as if the planet existed in
isolation. The view we take here is that, on the contrary, far from being
negligible, collisions are a major determinant of Earth history, to the
extent that geological periods may be initiated by the occasional very
large impact. It is therefore worth briefly enquiring why, if this is so.
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 93

14. Serra da Cangalha, a meteorite crater of 12 km diameter, in a remote part of

central Brazil. First discovered by an airline pilot (Guilherme Winter) in the 1950s,
it was later identified on Landsat satellite photographs. It is believed to have been
formed 220 million years ago, though most impact craters of this size on Earth are
much obscured by subsequent erosion.

the catastrophic effects of large impacts have generally gone

unrecognized.
One reason, very likely, is what must have seemed to be the
speculative nature of the proposition. The tendency has been to look
for internal phenomena as causing, say, mass extinctions or
continental drift. With this view an impact or other extra-terrestrial
hypothesis would be seen as a last resort, something one could do
without. In any case until recently very few impact craters had been
recognized on Earth—only a handful, mostly insignificant, were
known until the middle 1960s. This is of course a consequence of the
rapid erosion of terrestrial craters—most are less than 300 million
years old and only three craters are Precambrian. In, say, the middle
1960s there was a widespread belief that lunar craters were volcanic,
and there were no quantitative data on impact rates. This, coupled
with a lack of cross-fertilization between say astronomer and
94 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

palaeontologist, probably contributed to the neglect. Finally, the

atmospheric consequences of a large impact have even yet not been
fully studied, and their truly devastating nature has still to be
generally appreciated. A great deal of analysis has still to be done and
the processes involved can still be described only in qualitative way.
This is true also of ocean impacts.
Another reason may lie in conservatism; in evaluating hypotheses
one is tempted to prefer the mundane over the spectacular. The
Canadian palaeontologist Russell has described this as ‘the principle
of minimum astonishment’. To this one can only reply that an
incoming Apollo asteroid is indifferent to the psychological
predilections of the creatures below!
A deeper reason for bias against catastrophism may lie in the
circumstances of history. Around the time of Laplace’s speculation,
Baron Cuvier, the founder of palaeontology, was proposing on the
basis of fossil evidence that six great catastrophes—mass extinctions
of species—had occurred in the history of the world. Construction
work in Paris had turned up the fossil remains of sharks, reindeer,
turtles, mammoths, crocodiles and so on, in superimposed layers. He
concluded that the fauna had changed suddenly at different times, the
final catastrophe in particular (the mammoth extinctions) indicating
that a sudden dramatic freezing on a continental scale had taken
place within a few minutes. The six extinction events were equated
with the six days of creation, new species having appeared after each
extinction. The catastrophists’ views were popular in the early part of
the nineteenth century. Against this was the uniformitarian approach
of the Edinburgh geologist Hutton, apparently substantiated by
Lyell: on this view the physical and biological features of the Earth in
the past were produced by the action of the same forces which operate
at the present time. The uniformitarian view gradually prevailed so
that by the middle of the nineteenth century catastrophism was dead
in scientific circles. Of course the advent of Darwinism was
apparently the final blow.
The principle of uniformity pervades geology in particular at the
present time. The irony is that, seen astronomically, large and -
devastating impacts are common within geological timescales:
catastrophism is uniformitarianism. We can take this view because in
recent years many terrestrial craters have been discovered, largely by
the Landsat satellite; the cratering history of the Moon has been
determined with the help of lunar soil samples; and the Apollo
asteroid population has been investigated with wide-angled Schmidt
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 95
telescopes. With these new data the cratering history of the Earth can
now be determined with some degree of confidence.
There is in fact no reason to expect a detailed equivalence between
the current Apollo asteroid population and the cratering rate, and
indeed we have seen that the observations seem to indicate an
overabundance of current Apollos by a factor of two or three. The
impact rate deduced from terrestrial craters will, however, represent
an average of the past 500 million years, covering the period of
evolution of multi-celled life. A head-on collision between the Earth
and a body in a parabolic retrograde orbit would produce a
72 km/sec impact. In practice the system of Apollos is a somewhat
flattened, co-rotating system and the mean impact velocity is
25 km/sec. Adopting this mean value, the impact energies and rates
shown in Figure 10 are easily found. They are uncertain to within a

>< Fig. 10. Graph comparing the energy of

tx>
k. i/)c 10000
impact explosion (in millions of megatons
<u
c o
<D ra
of TNT equivalent) with average interval
o 0)u> 1000
(in millions of years) between arrivals of
03 E missiles corresponding to at least the
a
E o given energy. Major geological
100 boundaries at intervals of approximately
E IS)
c
3 0 200-million-year intervals may be
E
c 1 associated with billion-megaton events
E 10 which cause physical and biological
disruption over at least a terrestrial
hemisphere.

10 100 1000
mean recurrence time

(millions of years)

factor of two or more. Within the past 500 million years, then, there
been about fifty collisions of energy more than 7 million megatons,
ten of more than 100 million megatons, and one or two of energy in
excess of 3 or 4 billion megatons. These energies are listed in Table 3
along with those of various documented phenomena for comparison.
So we begin with the question: what are the likely effects of a
billion-megaton impact, of the sort expected to have occurred a few
times in the last 500 million years and equivalent in energy to the
detonation of a hydrogen bomb on each square kilometre of the
Earth’s surface?
96 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

5.2 The effect of a large land impact

The lethal effects of a land impact are partly due to drastic
atmospheric disturbances. At present detailed numerical work on
these disturbances has still to be carried out, and the partitioning of
energy between the various factors, and indeed the proportion of the
total going into atmospheric effects, is not well known. Our
description is therefore necessarily qualitative.
The comet or asteroid will enter the atmosphere at hypersonic
speed and a shock wave will hug its forward hemisphere and extend
backwards as a long cylinder. Essentially it punches a hole in the
atmosphere, the displaced air being thrust sideways from the
cylinder at about the speed of the missile, creating a blast wave of
about 10 million megatons. The great bulk of the kinetic energy of the
asteroid therefore reaches the ground, and the crater develops in the
manner already described. Much of the energy is expended in the
fragmentation and shifting of the rock, a few per cent going into the
creation of a high-temperature ball of vapour. A crater of about
200 km diameter is formed within a few minutes, ejecta being raised
through several kilometres and deposited in part in a rim. The
atmosphere around the crater will be violently disturbed by these
rapid ground motions and by the expansion of the fireball. Further,
the passage of ejecta ranging from kilometre-sized lumps to hot ash is
expected and strong interaction will occur between these ejecta and
the atmosphere. The proportion of energy ultimately deposited in the
atmosphere is difficult to assess with precision. Certainly in an
explosion, a considerable percentage of the original energy ends up as
blast wave. A figure of 10 per cent is adopted below.
Complicated though the atmospheric disturbances must be in the
region of the crater, the* situation will have simplified within a few
crater diameters, a few minutes after the explosion. Beyond
1,000 km, say, from the epicentre, a shock wave will have formed and
be moving rapidly outwards. The situation may be characterized by a
cylindrical shock front behind which the atmosphere has piled up
into a dense, high-pressure hot shell. The shell snowploughs into the
as yet undisturbed atmosphere ahead of it, gathering it up. If say 10
per cent of the impact energy is deposited as blast motion into the
atmosphere within 500 km of the epicentre, then at 2,000 km distance
a wind velocity of 2,400 km/hr of characteristic duration 0.4 hr is
expected. If there is no back pressure behind the blast, that is if it is
impelled forwards simply by its own momentum, then at 5,000 km
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 97

15. Satellite photograph of Lake Manicougan in Canada. This is a heavily eroded

impact crater discovered in the 1960s. It is of much the same size as the Copernicus
crater on the Moon.

the wind velocity has dropped to 400 km/hr, enduring for 0.8 hr,
and at 10,000 km from the epicentre, that is 90° away, the wind speed
is down to 100 km/hr and blows for 14 hr.
In addition to the dynamic pressure caused by the blast of air there
is an instantaneous pressure and temperature rise due to the
compression of gas immediately behind the shock front. The shock
and blast inevitably deposit energy into the atmosphere, and this
appears ultimately as heat. At 2,000 km the overpressure is 8.5
atmospheres and the air temperature is 480°C; at 5,000 km the figures
are 0.6 atm and 60°C, dropping to 0.1 atm and 30°C at 10,000 km. This
intense heating expands the atmosphere behind the front, which rises
to create a hot, low-density regime: the blast wave is thus followed by
a partial vacuum, a rarefaction wave, of somewhat longer duration.
If all the nominal 100 million megatons of energy deposited in the
atmosphere were manifested as wind motions, a mean wind velocity of
1,500 km/hr would be expected globally. If deposited as heat, then a
global rise in air temperature of 43°C would be expected (Figure 11).
The heat-deposition problem is somewhat complicated by the fact
that vaporized and melted rock, hot ash and so on will be flung out of
98 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

distance from site of impact (km) distance from site of impact (km)

Fig. 11. Rough calculations of wind speed and air temperature at various distances
from the source of a billion-megaton event. The shaded areas indicate the distance
out to which immediate destruction might be considered total: not only would all
trees be uprooted and blown over, but the temperature would be lethal to living
creatures.

the crater, the vapour and small particles especially streaming along
with the current. This represents an additional source of heat, but the
consequences are difficult to assess. Strewn fields of tektites
(centimetre-sized pieces of fused rock which are most likely solidified
ejecta from past cratering events) are found at several localities
around the world. The Australites, for example, are found over the
whole of southern Australia. Some tektite fields have been associated
with known terrestrial craters. For example the Moldavites, found in
Czechoslovakia, are associated with the Nordlinger Ries crater in
Germany. The ages of both have been determined as 14.7 million
years. The widespread occurrence of the tektites indicates that small
ejecta may sometimes be thrown over great distances. However
probably much more lethal are the ash and vapour borne along by the
blast. An optically thick layer of such material, passing overhead at
the condensation temperature of 2500°, would be quite lethal
to anything below it. Opik examined this effect and concluded
that the lethality would extend over continental if not hemispheric
dimensions.
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 99

About 100,000 cubic km of material is ejected by the impact, much

of it in the form of fine dust which is carried along by the violent
motions of the atmosphere. Even in an undisturbed stratosphere, fine
dust quickly spreads globally: measurements of radioactive carbon
deposition produced by past nuclear explosions show that there is a
mixing of stratospheric material between northern and southern
hemispheres on timescale of a few months.
The falling speed of a particle ten-millionths of a centimetre across
in the normal, undisturbed atmosphere is about 1 mm/sec at 50 km
altitude, about 0.1 mm/sec at 30 km, and about 0.01 mm/sec at
15 km. At the latter speed a falling time of five years is implied. Very
roughly a particle a tenth as large has a tenth this falling speed and the
converse. Sub-millimetre-sized particles would fall out within about a
month.
The experience gained from volcanic explosions is invaluable here
as showing the characteristic size of dust injected into the
stratosphere from a great explosion to be about ten-millionths of a
centimetre. In the final report of the Krakatoa committee of the
Royal Society (1884—1980) it is stated that particles of this size were
suspended in the atmosphere for three years; this is broadly
consistent with the theoretical figures above. Dust particles from the
1980 eruption of the Mt St Helens volcano in Washington State were
similarly sized. Several eruptions of Mt Agung in Bali, the first on 17
March 1963, are of interest because a slight fading of starlight was
detected at several observatories around the world. By about a month
after the eruption, reddening of the sky at dusk was noticeable in
Australia and South Africa. At the Cerro Tololo observatory in
Chile, the normally small extinction in visible light (about 12 per cent)
showed a sudden spike at the end of April followed by a gradual rise
to about three times the normal value in September, followed by a
slow decline. A similar phenomenon was noticed at the Radcliffe
observatory in South Africa. By September or October 1963 the ash
had diffused into the northern hemisphere and astronomers there
were detecting absorption of starlight. This phenomenon was again
characteristic of a few cubic kilometres of fine dust injected into the
stratosphere.
In the case of the Krakatoa explosion, about 20 per cent of the
ejected material was in the form of fine dust, amounting to about 6
cubic km (km3) in all. This was sufficient to reduce sunlight reaching
the ground by about 10 per cent over a two- to three-year period, and
this may have decreased the average global temperature by some
100 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

tenths of a degree. A similar proportion of 100,000 km3 would result

in a blockage of sunlight with an 'overkill’ factor of over 10,000!
Thus, if this simple picture of dust suspension were valid, total
blackness would be expected for two to three years after the impact,
followed by a rather sudden clearing of the sky.
A drastic change in the chemistry of the atmosphere, probably of
most consequence in the stratosphere, is also likely. Above about
2000° nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere combine to give nitric
oxide. Each megaton injected into the atmosphere will produce
between 1,000 and 5,000 tons of nitric oxide and this will be carried
into the stratosphere. An injection of 100 million megatons therefore
implies the creation of several hundred thousand million tons of NO.
Between 15 and 40 km altitude, ozone (03) filters out biologically
damaging ultraviolet solar radiation. The mass of ozone in the
atmosphere is comparable with the injected mass of NO. The latter,
however, destroys ozone by a catalytic reaction in which 1 g of NO
removes 100-200 g of ozone. The result of the impact would therefore
be a complete removal of the ozone. While this hardly matters when
sunlight is blocked by dust in any case, the question would become
important if, by the time the dust clears, the ozone were still depleted.
The timescale for the replenishment of ozone is twenty to thirty years.
Apart from these atmospheric effects, mention should also be
made of a ground effect which may be of consequence well beyond the
crater. The energy carried by the shock, penetrating the ground,
shatters and heats the rock, expelling some of it to form a crater. But
a small residue of this energy will spread beyond the rock-
fragmenting region: once the tensile strength of the rock is greater
than the shock pressure, the rock no longer fragments and the energy
is transported by vibration. Probably 1 per cent or so of the total
energy is thus carried away by seismic waves. For the impact being
discussed, about 10 million megatons will go into these vibrations
much of it as surface waves— earthquakes. The Rayleigh (corkscrew)
and Love (to and fro) waves which comprise earthquake motions
damp slowly with distance, the amplitude at 5,000 km still being a
third of that near the epicentre; and at 90° from the impact point the
energy/km2 in the ground motions will still exceed 10 per cent of that
around the crater. A mean global value of about 0.01 megaton/km2 is
implied. This is at the extreme top end of earthquake intensity scales,
and corresponds to great catastrophe with for example earth layers
being overturned, clefts appearing in the ground and free-standing
objects and creatures being thrown in the air.
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 101

To sum up, the immediate global effects are a violent scorching

wind, the ejection of incandescent material, severe earthquake,
possibly a prolonged obscuration of sunlight, and exposure to
ultraviolet radiation of germicidal intensity when the sky clears.

5.3 The effect of a large oceanic impact

Of course most impacting bodies will have crashed into seas or
oceans. The consequences of ocean impact have been little studied
and are not well understood, and in the description that follows one
cannot even be sure that all the main features of the phenomenon
have been included.
Experiments on crater formation in sand show that the sizes of
craters in loosely bound material may be up to ten times those of the
corresponding craters formed in rock. A very large, shallow crater,
perhaps 500-1,000 km across, would be formed by the impact of a
10 km diameter asteroid, the crater ‘walls’ being formed of water. The
whole structure, because of the great dimensions, would take over an
hour to form. Of course the ocean whose depth will be less than the
diameter of the asteroid, is quite unable to absorb the impact
momentum and a true crater will be formed in the sea bed, breaking
the crust and exposing the underlying hot mantle material. The
shattering of the ocean bed material will not be greatly affected by the
overlying water but its excavation will be: in effect some of the
ballistic energy of excavation will be transferred into water wave
motion. Lifting and displacement of the underlying rock may be a
prime input to the oceanic disturbance.
The filling in of the water crater will create a rebounding column of
water mixed with solids, the whole reaching several kilometres in
height. Because in the latter stages the inrushing water is flowing over
lava some energy transfer is expected. It might be considered that a
square centimetre column of water several kilometres deep will not be
significantly affected by heating through contact with lava at one
end; however the possibility exists that some of the heat energy is
expended in overturning the lava, in which case a rapid convective
mixing of the lava is possible. The heating then becomes a volume
rather than a surface phenomenon and may be quite significant. The
energy contained in a 100-metre depth of lava at 2000°C, in a crater of
radius 100 km, is about equal to the initial impact energy, and this
must complicate the subsequent flow of the displaced water. We
neglect the effect here.
The crater expert Gault and his colleagues carried out a calculation
102 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

in which a 1.4 km diameter asteroid struck the ocean at 25 km/sec.

They found that 92 per cent of the impact energy went into splash,
shock heating and wave formation. The ocean was evacuated to a
depth of 6 km over a radial dimension of 15 km. Neglecting
turbulent dissipation of the wave energy, they found that the ‘ripples’
spreading outwards had an amplitude of 1 km at 100 km distance
from the epicentre, dropping off in proportion to distance so that, for
example, the wave amplitude was 50 metres at a distance of 1,000 km.
Approaching a shoreline, a wave slows down and increases in
amplitude as it enters shallow water. There is a piling up of water as
the forward part of the wave slows down. An increase in wave height
by a factor of ten as the coastline is reached is expected so that the 50-
metre wave would become 0.5 km in height.
The important question however, is the stability of these impact-
generated waves. Development of the wave structure is a complicated
technical problem and work carried out by Strelitz suggests that the
waves may break up and dissipate in the ocean. The reason is that the
waves are steep, not sinusoidal. Piling on to each other they evolve
into a hydraulic bore—an almost vertical wall of water in an extreme
case—which cannot maintain its shape and therefore breaks up in the
open sea.
The steepness of the waves, in turn, comes from the small
dimension over which the energy has been deposited: thus in the
Gault calculation one has energy greater than that of any
earthquake-induced tsunami dumped into a mere 200 km2 of ocean.
A normal tsunami may be induced by a sub-oceanic earthquake
covering an area of 30,000 km2. The waves generated are of great
length and are very shallow: on a ship at sea one would scarcely notice
the swell. These long wavelengths tend not to be destroyed by passage
into shallow water and can therefore deposit their energy right on a
coastline, with devastating effects. It is probably significant that an
earthquake in Chile in 1960 produced damaging tsunamis at Hilo in
Hawaii and on the Japanese coast, the latter 16,000 km away,
whereas the catastrophic tsunami effects of the Krakatoa underwater
explosion were felt somewhat locally. The implication, then, is that
the huge waves generated by a modest Apollo asteroid may be safely
dissipated in the ocean.
The situation may be quite different with an asteroid of 10 km
diameter, for in that case the collision energy is a thousand times as
great and the submarine crater has an area comparable to that
covered by a large earthquake. Thus the ground motions which will
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 103

couple into the overlying water will generate waves of length

comparable to that generated by a normal earthquake. Of course the
energy transported implies a much greater wave amplitude: 1,000 km
from the epicentre, the wave would be on the order of 0.5 km in height.
For a wavelength of say 100 km this still represents quite a shallow
wave; pending detailed calculations or observations in the field, it
seems likely that this wave energy can be transported over global
distances at least until it reaches a continental shelf or a coastline or a
shallow sea, where it will rear up and transform into a breaker
kilometres high. A run-up on to land would create a hydraulic bore of
awesome dimensions, and a deep and catastrophic inundation of the
land.

5.4 The fossil record: biological extinctions

In evaluating the significance of impacts, the approach we adopt here
is essentially deductive. That is, it is taken as established from the
astronomy that such impacts take place, and we enquire what the
likely biological and geological consequences might be and whether
evidence can be found in the geological and fossil record. For it
would be extraordinary if events of this sort were to leave no trace.
First we shall consider the biological effects.
It is the fate of most (or all) species to become extinct and the fossil
record shows a continuing turnover of life forms from the earliest
times. But from Cuvier onwards it has been known that the record
reveals not a smooth proliferation of life from simple to complex as
one might expect on a ‘naive Darwinian’ view. In fact, contrary to a
widespread view, the fossil record is hardly Darwinian at all but
rather seems to reveal an erratic process, in which evolution is
punctuated by many episodes when great numbers of species, in all
evolutionary stages, seem to have vanished more or less simul-
taneously. The palaeontologist Newell describes the situation thus:

‘The stratigraphic record is punctuated not by orogenic rhythms

but by numerous brief episodes of mass extinction of organisms
followed by invasions of new forms into vacated ecological zones.
These events vary from local to worldwide. . . . The most
conspicuous palaeontological breaks lie at the top of the
Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous systems (see Table 4).
These and many lesser palaeontological boundaries coincide with
obscure paraconformities. This relationship suggests a universal
physical control, such as eustatic changes in sea level.’
104 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

The situation is illustrated in Figure 12, due to Cutbill and Funnell.

This represents the rate of turnover in numbers of taxa throughout
the Phanerozoic (the period of multi-celled life) and was derived by
assembling and correlating stratigraphic records throughout the
world. The resulting data have been smoothed to bring out the main
features. Evidently there have been many rapid extinctions of groups,
the episodes varying from minor to catastrophic, followed by more or
less rapid proliferation of species. Of course smoothing of data
implies a loss of information and to determine whether, for example,
an extinction episode was instantaneous as might be required by the
big impact hypothesis one must look at the original information.

Fig. 12. Variations in the species extinction rate during the Phanerozoic
period. The graph which is schematic is derived from data due to Cutbill &
Funnell (1967). There is a strong correlation of major extinctions with the
principal geological boundaries, suggesting a common or associated cause of
short duration, Each intervening period reveals a proliferation and
increasing dominance of particular species characteristic of natural selection
based on survival of the fittest. Such data constitute the palaeontological
evidence for catastrophism in Earth history.

Unfortunately, the problem is complicated by the fact that correlation

of stratigraphic sequences between different parts of the world is
sometimes ambiguous and, indeed, no general consensus exists
about stratigraphic classification at a detailed level. The time
resolution of many of the extinctions is not therefore very precise.
Some of the lesser extinctions may have been caused by the
removal of barriers between different fauna, resulting in competition
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 105

eliminating species. The immediate cause of some others is

apparently due to some prolonged environmental stress, however
induced. At the end of the Ordovician for example, 435 million years
ago, when over 60 per cent of taxa became extinct, there was
widespread continental glaciation, and the sea withdrew from vast
reaches of the continental platforms. For other mass extinctions,
however, including the greatest, it has been suspected that catas-
trophic circumstances must be invoked to explain their suddenness,
ubiquity and intensity.
One of these is the late Devonian extinction of 355 million years
ago, which was an extinction of the dominant creatures of that
period, the bottom-dwellers of the shallow seas. These seas covered
much of what is now the northern hemisphere, from Alaska to New
York, thence to Europe, from south-west Spain and England across
to Siberia, down to south-east Asia and across to western Australia
and New Zealand. The extinctions likewise are recorded over this
great area.
Many of the life forms which disappeared lived in reef environ-
ments, and included the corals: thus the fossil record is one of great
coral reef development which came to an abrupt end. Other bottom-
dwellers became extinct also, such as many groups of trilobites and
filter-feeding brachiopods. Whatever caused the extinction left
deeper corals unharmed; and molluscs and brachiopods adapted to
rocky bottoms survived. Fish and plankton were unaffected, and
there was no sudden change in land plants or animals. The chief
characteristic of the event, then, is that there was a catastrophic
extinction of animal life living on sandy bottoms of shallow seas
which covered much of the globe. Other life was unaffected, including
individuals of the same groups which happened to live at deeper
levels.
Other marine extinctions of the same general character have
occurred and may have the same explanation. Of these, the most
dramatic was that at the end of the Permian, 230 million years ago,
when probably 96 per cent of all marine species died out. Of the
survivors, some lingered on and disappeared, others diversified. This
diversification of the post-catastrophe species is consistent with
chance effects, some less deserving groups faring well simply because
more powerful competition had been eliminated. The creatures which
were destroyed were at all stages of evolutionary development. For
example the trilobites, which went back to the early Cambrian 570
million years ago and had already suffered in the late Devonian, were
106 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

already a declining group. On the other hand the brachiopods, found

on all the continents, were at the peak of their development. Likewise
the fusulinids (small, shell-bearing plankton) were a successful group,
all 500 species of which disappeared. Most sponges and echinoderms
(starfish, sea lilies, etc.) vanished also. The most spectacular
extinctions were those of the corals. Thousands of species are found
in the Permian but these simply disappeared at the end. Some must
have survived as they begin to appear again 20-30 million years later.
Unlike the late Devonian catastrophe, that at the end of the
Permian was not confined to the sea. Reptiles were the dominant
animal life on land, and these suffered about 80 per cent extinction at
the family level. Amphibians suffered likewise. However, other fauna
seem to be continuous across the Permo-Triassic boundary, the flora
were apparently unaffected, and rocks show a continuity of
deposition. Throughout this period there was a steady regression of
the sea and the emergence of continents.
The best-known catastrophic extinction took place 65 million
years ago. This great event marks the end of the Cretaceous period
and the Mesozoic era. After existing for about 170 million years, the
dinosaurs and other large reptiles suddenly disappeared, other land
and sea groups vanishing with them. The finer the taxonomic
resolution, the more severe the disturbance is seen to be. For example
no basic phyla became extinct, but according to Russell over 75 per
cent of all species of organisms living at the end of the Cretaceous
were gone at the beginning of the Tertiary. The dinosaur age
produced such prodigies as diplodocus and brontosaurus attaining
about 50 tons weight (and whose children were the size of African
elephants), not to mention such interesting carnivores as the Jurassic
allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex of the Cretaceous, whose skull was
over a metre long. And yet, according to Russell, no land vertebrate
over 25 kg weight is known to have survived into the Tertiary.
However it should be noted that there were also in existence very
small dinosaurs and these too died out. Also on land, the pterosaurs
became extinct. Land survivors included the lizards, snakes, birds
and of course mammals. The forests of those days were similar to
those of present-day Malaysia. Tropical plant life was relatively
unaffected by the event, but most species in Alaska, Canada and
Siberia disappeared.
In the oceans the ammonites, with a history of about 400 million
years and which had therefore survived such previous holocausts as
the two already described, disappeared along with several carni-
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 107
vorous fish-like reptile groups, especially the successful ichthyosaurs
and plesiosaurs. Tortoises and turtles survived. There is a pattern to
ocean extinction, in the sense that more severe extinctions took place
higher up in the food chain.
There is a good record of fossilized plankton, and for these the
situation is somewhat complicated. Some types such as diatoms and
radiolarians were unaffected but the position was different for other
groups, especially the foraminifera. The foraminifera are shelled
amoeba-like creatures of numerous types. The shells are calcareous
and from them are built up massive limestone formations, often
hundreds of metres thick, which cover an appreciable part of the
Earth’s crust. They arose in the Ordovician; reached their peak of
development during the Cretaceous—the word Cretaceous means
chalky—and yet were almost exterminated at the end of that period.
The end of the period was also the end of an era, the Mesozoic,
which had endured for 160 million years. In fact the end of the era is
its most remarkable geological feature (this might also be said of the
Palaeozoic era which preceded it and was terminated by the Permo-
Triassic event). From Mexico to Pakistan, from the Arctic to South
America, there are abrupt and clear changes in the pattern of
sedimentation of the rocks above the fossil boundary. Often there is
an increase in the kinetic energy of the water from which the overlying
Tertiary sediments were deposited, as well as colour changes which
according to Russell suggest more intensive submarine erosion. If
impacts were responsible for these vast extinctions, then they must
also have somehow triggered climatic and other changes of very long
duration.

5.5 Large impacts on land and the mechanics of extinction

There is no doubt about the fate of any living thing within a few
thousand kilometres of a big land impact. The blast, overpressure
and temperature separately make survival impossible: even under-
ground creatures would be exterminated and seeds would be burned.
It is doubtful if even deep roots would survive as the blast would
uproot trees.
At say 5,000 km survival is becoming marginally possible for
creatures in particular niches. The blast wave arrives instantaneously,
that is for the impact studied, there is a sudden wind of 400 km/hr and
temperature about 60°C which blows for characteristically an hour,
and there is an overpressure of about 0.6 atm. The prospects of
survival of creatures exposed to such a wind are a matter for some
108 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

speculation. But the high temperature would undoubtedly be lethal

to all exposed animals. At a steady wind speed of 210-220 km/hr
about 90 per cent of modern trees are blown down, the remainder being
denuded of branches and leaves. While roots and seeds would
regenerate the denudation of the environment would itself be
catastrophic.
At 10,000 km from the impact site the atmospheric effects no
longer produce mass extinction. The direct effect of blast, then, is
to produce mass extinction of life on a hemispherical scale. Whether
this would destroy say 75 per cent of all species as in the
Cretaceous-Tertiary event depends on accident of geography and
impact location. For example an impact on the African continent at
the present time would remove all large creatures, birds and so on
over most of the land surface of the Earth. One would then have to
envisage repopulation of the globe from underground and burrowing
creatures, and from organisms in the Pacific islands and the polar
regions. The scale of the extinction would therefore match that of the
dinosaur event.
At the periphery of the zone of blast destruction cataclysmic
earthquake will have shortly preceded the passage of the blast. This is
liable to kill large creatures preferentially simply because of their
lower strength to weight ratio: a small animal may survive being
hurled into the air, a large one will not. More speculatively, the
ecological upset may be biased against larger creatures. For in a
devastated area, with much of the vegetation gone, there might be
enough food/km2 for some small creatures with small individual food
requirements to survive, but not enough food/km2 to maintain large
eaters. At a sufficiently low population density the mean distance
between surviving large creatures would interfere with mate-finding
and continuation of the species.
It is evident from lunar craters such as Copernicus (Plate 11) and
Tycho that a blanket of ejecta is formed lying several radii beyond the
rim of a crater, at least in the absence of an atmosphere. Indeed the
streaks which radiate from Tycho extend over most of the visible
lunar hemisphere. On Earth, as we have seen, strewn fields of tektites
are also found over great areas, the bediasites for example stretching
from the Indian Ocean across the Pacific to the Caribbean. Ballistic
studies of the formation of such ejecta blankets indicate that debris
must be thrown out at appreciable angles to the horizontal. Now the
terrestrial atmosphere is very thin in comparison with the dimensions
of the crater being formed; hence the indication is that an appreciable
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 109
proportion of this material will reach high altitudes, and some will be
thrown into orbit. The asteroid will typically excavate a hundred to a
thousand times its own volume of material, several percent of which is
thrown beyond the rim. The proportion of this material ending up as
very fine particles with a settling time of years (that is with dimensions
in the order of 0.01 per cent of a millimetre) is difficult to estimate. It
will depend on the degree of shattering of the rock and this in turn
depends critically on the speed of impact. Other factors, such as the
recondensation of vapour into smoke, might be more important than
shattering. Although this aspect of the argument is very qualitative, it
seems very likely that adequate material will be injected to block out
sunlight as only a few cubic kilometres of fine dust is required.
Evidently the cutting off of photosynthesis for more than a year or
two would have a devastating effect on food chains. In the event
suspended dust particles might coagulate and fall out rapidly, and
there would be only a few months of blackness; so whether food chains
would collapse wholesale is not absolutely certain.
The effects of ozone depletion on modern organisms, let alone
prehistoric life, are not well understood. Many modern species on
land and in sea are already living close to their tolerance of ultraviolet
radiation, so that even a small increase in exposure would be lethal.
This might affect tropical plankton in particular, and it has been
suggested that vitamin D production in exposed vertebrates might
rise to toxic levels. Creatures which burrow, or can find shade, or
living in polar zones, would not be affected. A great increase in the
mutation rate of pathogenic viruses would be expected. It therefore
seems likely that in the years following the clearing of the sky
ultraviolet irradiation would be devastating.
The indications are, then, that widespread and immediate
biological destruction will generally follow in the wake of a large
impact. There may have been half a dozen or so such impacts over the
last 600 million years occurring, not randomly, but within episodes of
bombardment with a separation in time appropriate to galactic
mechanisms. But over the same period there has been a similar
number of global mass extinction events. It is tempting therefore to
suggest that these events are the aftermath of impact; but it remains
to be seen whether their pattern of destruction is compatible with
such havoc from the sky.
H
(U
CJ

ccj
X
_aJ
O
o
_o
ccj
CCj
<D
C/5

CJQ

'5b
Table of principal geological ages. Time before present is measured in units of a billion years in the left-hand column, 100 million years in
the centre column, and 10 million years in the right-hand column. Assuming the boundaries in successive columns are due to extra-
terrestrial impacts, bodies of say 30-50 km, 10-30 km and 5-10 km diameter respectively may have been involved. (l = Ice ages).
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 111

5.6 The Cretaceous -Tertiary extinction

Of all the major and minor evolutionary hiatuses, that at the

Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary has been the most widely studied.
Criteria suggestive of impact—suddenness of onset, synchronicity of
land and sea extinctions and so on—can thus be analysed in some
detail for this event.
De Laubenfels in 1956 argued that just such creatures became
extinct as one would expect from a brief, high-temperature episode.
Vegetation would survive a brief incinerating rise in air temperature
through regeneration of roots or seeds. Aquatic animals would
likewise survive. Turtles can hold their breath for hours at a time
under water, likewise possibly crocodiles, whereas the air-breathing
plesiosaurs vanished. Pterosaurs and dinosaurs, presumably unable
to shelter from great heat, perished. Pterosaurs, which had great
wingspans and which were able to soar in a 25 km/hr breeze, would
presumably in any case be destroyed by the huge wind speeds of the
blast. Lizards survived, which de Laubenfels suggested was because
they could crawl into cracks or fissures. Likewise the serpents, some
of which were burrowing; others, boa-type, surviving in tree
hollows—although as we have seen if the temperature is high enough
to be lethal then the wind is strong enough to knock over trees. Birds
and mammals survived, de Laubenfels ingeniously suggested,
because they can live in snow-covered high latitudes. Thus, "Even
boiling hot air, blowing over miles of snow, would cool down to a
breathable degree.' Certainly although there were apparently no
polar caps 65 million years ago, there is fossil plankton evidence that
northern seas froze over during the winter. Mobile creatures, tolerant
to a wide range of environmental conditions and globally distributed,
would inherit the Earth, and so in the Tertiary would follow the great
expansion of birds and mammals into vacated ecological niches.
Certainly also the archetypal "big impact1 we have studied would
create lethal air temperatures over almost hemispheric dimensions,
and for an equatorial collision cooling is likely to be more rapid with
increasing latitude than with longitude. One can thus conceive of an
impact large enough to destroy most life in equatorial and temperate
zones, while preserving life at the antipodes or polar regions. Hence
within the uncertainties the land extinctions might be due to the heat
trailing in the wake of the blast wave. The blast wave itself, coupled
with the earthquake, would produce land extinctions with the
characteristics observed: large creatures, if not directly killed by
112 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

incineration, blast or earthquake, would certainly die as a con-

sequence of the stripping of leaves from trees and the subsequent
collapse of the food chain, as we shall discuss. Aquatic, small and
burrowing creatures would survive as before. The scale of extinction
would again be hemispheric for the blast considered. It seems likely
then that an impact can broadly account for the land extinctions and
survivals at the end of the Cretaceous by blast and heat.
In the seas the extinctions are broadly consistent with a collapse of
the food chain, whether caused by irradiation or darkness, although
there are some puzzling features amongst some of the plankton.
Some groups of these could survive a crisis by encysting, the
dinoflagellates, for example, surviving for months or years on the sea
bed at a few hundred metres depth before resurfacing. The geologist
Hsu suggested that an active comet, falling in the ocean, might
produce the extinctions through cyanide poisoning. Certainly there is
enough hydrogen cyanide in a comet to do this, but the intense shock
heating generated when a comet is brought to a halt would dissociate
chemical compounds. It remains to be seen whether poisonous
compounds might regenerate as the material expanded and cooled.
Poisonous elements might exist, such as arsenic and zinc, which if
concentrated in surface currents after an impact might be lethal to
small organisms.
Twilight conditions are insufficient to produce the extinctions.
However, a complete shut-off of sunlight for many months would kill
plants, particularly trees and grasses which are fodder for large
herbivores, which would die of starvation. The great carnivores
would follow although no doubt smaller scavengers would do well at
least for a few months. Small creatures such as mammals would be
able to survive on seeds, nuts, roots, insects and so on for a year or so
although in ever dwindling numbers. Freshwater fish and other
creatures would continue to survive as the base of their food chain is
decaying vegetation which would continue to be washed into streams
and lakes. These fish would be fodder for turtles and crocodiles which
can in any case hibernate for some months.
Plant life would probably continue across the boundary through
the survival of roots and seeds. It is curious at first sight that tropical
plant life was (or so it seems) relatively unaffected, as it is adapted to
uniform conditions and is therefore least able to tolerate great
environmental stress, whereas high-latitude plants and their seeds
have dormancy mechanisms and could coast through months of cold
or dark. The actual pattern of survival was the reverse. However the
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 113
clearing of dust from low latitudes would, if the present atmosphere is
a guide, be quite rapid, the temperate and polar regions sustaining a
dense blanket for longer periods. Depending on the season of impact,
this might affect the pattern of survival. Clearly, however, it is
dangerous to extrapolate from the undisturbed atmosphere now to a
violently disturbed one 65 million years ago. O’Keefe has even thought
that a temporary ring system (see Chapter 3) might form from debris
hurled into orbit: this could create intolerably cold winters in
temperate latitudes. The indications are that nothing in the plant
record requires a catastrophic event, and in fact the plant extinctions
seem to have been modest and to have followed some tens of thousands
of years after the dinosaur extinction: the highest dinosaur bones are
found in the ground metres below the level at which the plant changes
occur.
A plausible case can be made, then, that the pattern of extinctions
of animals is that of an immediate killing following a great impact.
Incinerating heat and blast, the blockage of light or its excess in the
ultraviolet, or even poisoning of the oceans, could in some
combinations exact the toll of life implicit in the end Cretaceous fossil
record. As we shall see, the possibilities of extinction through climatic
and geological action are even wider. But the uncertainties are clear
enough. We do not know the proportion of impact energy which
actually goes into blast, or the site of the hypothesized impact. We do
not know whether the atmospheric disturbance creates currents
which quickly clear out dust particles from the stratosphere; the
ecological effects of massive worldwide earthquake have not been
studied; and so on.
The greatest uncertainty, from the palaeontological point of view,
is whether the dinosaur extinctions were instantaneous at all. This has
for some time been a controversial question amongst palaeonto-
logists, the bias or consensus being distinctly uniformitarian. The
uncertainty arises mainly from the fragmentary nature of the fossil
record and the difficulty of precisely comparing geological times at
different sites. Some authors have maintained that the giant reptiles
were already in a declining phase, being gradually overrun by a
mammalian community, and died out over perhaps a million years.
Others such as Russell argue that, on the contrary, the dinosaurs
comprised a thriving and complex community, that there is no
evidence of a terminal Cretaceous decline, and that they must have
been overwhelmed by a global catastrophe.
Strong evidence for a catastrophe has come from recent studies of
 114 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact
plankton fossils across the boundary at several localities. This can be
illustrated by a section studied near Caravaca in south-east Spain.
According to the geologists Smit and Hertogen there are marls here
over 100 metres thick containing tropical fossilized plankton such as
foraminifera, showing no significant change up to the last few
millimetres; and then they disappear within 0-5 mm. The sedimen-
tation rate is such that the extinction must have taken place within a few
centuries and may have been instantaneous.
Overlying this extinction boundary is a layer of clay about 10 cm
thick, and on top of this again the new Tertiary plankton suddenly
appear, rapidly diversifying within the next half metre until a mature
evolutionary state is reached, with only gradual evolutionary
changes.

Iridium
P.P.b
30 Fig. 13. Concentration of iridium
deposition in a clay layer at the
Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. The
graph is derived from data due to
1
Smit & Hertogen (1980). The iridium
concentration is abnormal for
new species
terrestrial crustal material and may be
■ U'"'

surviving species indicative of an interplanetary or

extinct species
U-'
interstellar origin. It is inexplicable in
!
lx terms of a past supernova in the
vicinity of the solar system (if only
because the isotope ratios do not fit),
marl clay marl limestone
and is perhaps evidence of a major
i 1 L_ 1 ►
-20 0 20 40 60 terrestrial impact 65 million years ago.
distance from Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (cm)

Smit and Hertogen carried out a trace element analysis on 100

samples of material around the extinction level. Approaching the
level from below, no trends of any sort appear. But immediately
above the level there are enormous overabundances of several
elements, chief of which are iridium (450 times normal), osmium (250
times) and arsenic (110 times). These are measured in relation to the
abundances usually found in the terrestrial crust. The significance of
the iridium and osmium anomaly is that these elements are strongly
depleted in the Earth’s crust, having been concentrated, probably, in
the core. Such platinum, iridium and osmium as occur in the crust
probably come from an extraterrestrial source such as comets,
meteorites or meteorite dust. A chondritic meteorite may have 10,000
times the crustal concentration of these elements, an iron meteorite a
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 115

few times more again. The sudden spike (Figure 13), only a few
centimetres deep, has therefore to be seen as strong evidence for an
extra-terrestrial cause. Similar overabundances in iridium and
osmium have now been detected at many sites around the world. The
first of these anomalies was found by Alvarez and his colleagues near
Gubbio in central Italy, where an overabundance of iridium by a
factor of twenty-five was found in a clay seam sandwiched between
limestones. This discovery was widely publicized as the first geological
confirmation of the impact theory, but others regarded this as
premature: a local clay seam may have a higher trace element content
than surrounding limestones simply because clay is generally
deposited more slowly and so contains a higher proportion of iridium-
bearing meteoric dust. It is the accumulation of evidence that an
iridium-rich layer is associated world-wide with the boundary that
provides some of the best evidence for an extra-terrestrial event; and in
any case the iridium concentration is so high at several localities that no
ordinary deposition process is adequate.
The existence of zinc and arsenic at these levels may support the
sea-poisoning mechanism suggested by Hsu as these elements are
found in surprising abundance. They are scarce in ordinary
meteorites and this suggests that, as anticipated from the astronomi-
cal scenario, a comet (active or degassed) was most likely involved, in
which case we might expect an interstellar signature of some sort.
However, the iridium and osmium isotope ratios measured at the
boundary have values very close to those of solar system meteorites,
and we need to ask whether the missile was nevertheless by chance a
peculiar ‘local' one. According to nuclear theory the creation of these
elements took place in extremely dense environments at temperatures
of up to 100 million °C. Where were these environments? Possibly
these elements were created in the centres of supernovae or red giant
stars before being flung into interstellar space. The missile might have
condensed from an interstellar cloud contaminated by only a few
such local factories, and if so, variations from star to star in element
production would imply that some non-solar system isotope ratio
would be brought in by the missile. But if the interstellar cloud
incorporated the output of 100 million such factories, as is possible,
local variations would be smoothed out and the isotope ratios should
be constant everywhere in the Galaxy. These elements may even have
formed in a pre-galactic phase, from supermassive bodies no longer
in existence, so that the entire Galaxy would once again be a uniform
mix. We are touching then on the mysterious realms discussed in
116 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

Chapter 1 and it would be unsafe as yet to draw positive conclusions

on the origin of the missile from theoretical preconceptions about
these nuclear furnaces. However, the magni-tude of the geochemical
anomalies is consistent with an interstellar missile of more than 10 km
diameter excavating a few hundred times its own volume. A crater of
100-200 km diameter is implied; none such has been discovered as yet
but it could exist, undiscovered, beneath the ocean. A few craters, from
3 to 65 km in diameter, have been discovered and dated at 65 million
years. They are much too small to represent the missile we seek but may
indicate that the body came in, not in isolation, but as part of a
prolonged barrage.
These geochemical discoveries seem to indicate some connection
between a cosmic missile and the dinosaur extinctions. But there are
disconcerting features. One of these is the lack of controlling
measurements at other levels. Thus from the astronomical point of
view the Earth is continually bombarded by comets and asteroids of
various sizes and one expects, not just a peak at a few great extinction
boundaries, but a more continuous deposition varying at all levels.
One is left wondering just how significant the signal is. It is also
disconcerting that iridium levels have been found in similar
concentrations in ocean-floor sediments 2.3 million years old in
Antarctica, and yet there were no significant extinctions at that time.
It is clear then that much more work needs to be done; a complete
theory will require more geochemical information, more complete
fossil data, much numerical work on the many consequences of
impact, and a better knowledge of the chemistry of cosmic bodies and
the interstellar medium, and of variations in the impact rates.
The Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary has evidently been rather
thoroughly studied at several sites and it has therefore been possible
for us to evaluate the impact hypothesis in some detail. Unfor-
tunately data are not available to nearly the same extent for other
extinction boundaries, impact criteria cannot be tested, and so a
degree of speculativeness is inevitable at the moment. Nevertheless
from the point of view of the astronomical model if not aesthetics one
should look for a single underlying cause of extinctions rather than,
as has been customary, attempt to explain the events by separate and
unrelated phenomena. Regarding, for example, the late Devonian
event, McLaren has made a very strong case that a world-wide
catastrophic extinction affecting many marine groups took place,
simultaneous to within current stratigraphic resolution, suddenly,
and affecting successful and dying groups equally. He remarks that
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 117
"this is not merely a taxonomic extinction. It represents a disap-
pearance of animals on a colossal scale/ We have seen that it was
characterized by the disappearance of animals living on a sandy or
muddy environment, or on or around reefs. Fresh or turbid waters
are both fatal to the organisms which became extinct. There seems to
be no mechanism whereby large volumes of fresh water could be
simultaneously dumped into shallow seas around the world, and so
McLaren was led to the suggestion that a "giant meteorite’ might have
created turbidity in the seas. We have seen that the energy from a
small Apollo asteroid will dissipate itself harmlessly in the open
ocean, but that a very large impact, say from a 10 km diameter
asteroid crashing into the ocean, would create precisely the intense
turbidity in shallow connecting seas that McLaren requires. Since the
Palaeozoic Pacific covered more than half the surface of the globe
then on probability grounds an impact of the required type is
expected. Thus two missing ingredients from the McLaren hypothesis
have been supplied: the turbidity would probably occur, and the
impact is a probable event. Although not a proof it seems at least
plausible that this event and others like it should be seen in the
catastrophism context. On this view for example the great
Permo-Triassic event would be seen as a sea impact of such
magnitude that blast and dust caused land extinctions in addition to
the turbidity-induced sea extinction.
The dinosaur extinction has been a rich held for armchair
speculation in the past. The main extra-terrestrial possibilities
discussed have been that the Earth was irradiated by a nearby
supernova, or that a giant solar hare coincided with a magnetic held
reversal thereby exposing the Earth to cosmic rays. Internal
mechanisms proposed have been generally gradualistic, such as
changes in vegetation which dinosaurs could not adapt to. All such
explanations are too specihc, that is, they fail to account for all the
major features; and in any case the internal explanations do not
account for the wide range of evolutionary development of the
creatures which became extinct. There is evidence that a major
lowering of sea level took place from the late Cretaceous onwards,
and this has been quoted as the cause. One can imagine this for a
marine extinction but it is less easy to envisage a drop in sea level
having a drastic effect on inland dinosaurs. In any case the increase of
land area might have helped the propagation of dinosaurs; similar
sea regressions are known to have taken place without mass
extinction; and of course this would not account for the iridium and
118 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

other anomalies. Superimposed on this was a brief but dramatic drop

in sea level of about 100 metres, occurring at the time of the
extinction. We shall argue that such rapid regressions of the sea may
be caused by impacts.

5.7 Lesser impacts and the evolution of life

We have so far argued that great collisions must have occurred
several times within the Phanerozoic (we see the missiles in the sky
and the holes in the ground); that the global consequences must be
profound; and that on these grounds alone, quite independently of
any geological evidence, one should expect mass extinctions to have
occurred several times in the past. That the recorded extinctions have
the qualitative characteristics of the expected type must be seen as a
satisfactory confirmation of this catastrophist theory. But what of
the much more numerous smaller impacts? Blast wave arguments of
the sort already developed indicate that the immediately lethal area of
a 7 million megaton land blast (expected on average once in 10
million years) extends for 600 km; but of course it is to be expected that
great disruption, through hurling of ejecta and possibly through
earthquake, will extend well beyond this.
The effect can be studied by first considering the diversification of a
few species introduced into a favourable environment with no external
forces causing extinction. The rate of creation of species will depend
both on the evolutionary potential, that is the rate of creation of
mutants, and on the environmental receptivity, that is the rate at which
they are ‘accepted’ by the environment. The rate of creation of
mutants is determined by the proportion of mutants created in a
population, by the total population size and by the interval between
generations).
In this perfect setting evolution would proceed rapidly at first and
then, as the major ecological niches became filled, competition within
these niches would become more severe and more refined evolution
would take place: for survival, a finer adjustment would thus be
required, species developing traits suited to specialized niches.
Diversification would still occur but now more slowly: a mature
population mix would arise with completion producing continuous
marginal adjustments. The situation is analogous to research or
discovery in a newly opened area; the initial advances are easily made
but as more and more details are filled in it becomes more difficult to
make big advances. The fossil evidence of the post-catastrophe
periods of extinction shows a rapid diversification of species
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 119

(Figure 14) entirely consistent with this picture of small groups of

biota re-establishing a devastated world; and this evidence indicates
that timescales of 10-30 million years have been involved in the re-
creation of a mature population.
But this timescale is comparable with the mean interval, allowing
for sea impacts, between collisions of more than 5 or 10 million
megatons which are devastating over continental areas. It will often
happen that migration into a devastated zone from less affected areas

Fig. 14. Diagram due to Russell (1976) illustrating the proliferation of the families
of birds during the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. Notice in particular the
generally slow growth during most of the Cretaceous, contrasting with the sudden
enhancement of rate after the event of 65 million years ago.
120 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

will follow but there will sometimes be zonal and sea barriers. For
example if an impact destroyed much life in polar regions diffusion
would have to come from temperate latitude creatures not yet adapted
to colder climes.
It is of course the nature of the extermination that is important.
Selective killing, whether between or within species, promotes
evolution by eliminating the weak. Large impacts have probably also
been an important factor in promoting evolution by sweeping aside
bottlenecks (e.g. See Figure 14). Random killing by medium-sized
impacts however seems to delay evolution by repeatedly setting the
clock back and requiring a re-run of the struggle for existence. The
overall result of mini-catastrophes is then to slow down the
evolutionary process. The break-even point will occur when the
recuperation and destruction times are comparable. On these
arguments there ought to have been (or be) immature populations at
certain latitudes or on certain isolated continents, with the fossil record
showing an erratic evolution, and populations frequently in an
immature state. These ‘local’ effects are over and above the global
extinctions and immaturities induced by big impacts. Coincident with
many of these smaller breaks in the record there should occur
nonconformities, intrusions in the strata, corresponding simply to
debris thrown beyond craters. One is reminded of Newell’s general
description of the palaeontological record; in any case the hypothesis
can in principle be tested via the fossil record.
Of course, direct correlation of a minor evolutionary hiatus with a
medium or small crater will virtually be impossible over much of the
Phanerozoic, due to the thoroughness with which such craters are
eroded. However for the more recent past, with finer resolution of
the fossil record, such a correlation may be possible; and it happens
that this can be done.
The end of the Eocene 35 million years ago saw a drastic cooling
of the Earth. Botanic evidence indicates that summer temperatures
were unaffected but that winter temperatures became very severe, the
mean temperature decreasing by about 20°C in comparison with
previous winter temperatures. Close to or coincident with the end of
the Eocene was the production of the bediasites (tektites distributed
halfway round the Earth having ages of 34.7 ±2 million years). The
Popigai crater in the USSR is 100 km across and has an age of 38 +9
million years (Table 5). A 5 km diameter asteroid is implied: impacts
of at least this magnitude should occur at a mean interval of 14
million years. Ithas been shown by Glass and Zwart from sea-bottom
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 121

Table 5. Recent terrestrial impact craters

Biostratigraphic Age at Tektite/

interval beginning crater age Tektite/Crater
( Mvr) (Mvr )

PLEISTOCENE 1 0.77 + 0.10 Australites

0.88 + 0.13 Ivory Coast

PLIOCENE 13 14.7 + 0.7 Moldavites

MIOCENE 25 28.6 + 2 Libyan desert glass

OLIGOCENE 35 34.7 + 2 Bediasites

38 + 9 Popigai, USSR
(100 km)

EOCENE 58 57 Kara, USSR

(50 km)

PALAEOCENE 65 ? 7

CRETACEOUS 135 7 7

JURASSIC 181 183 ±3 Puchezh-Katunki,

USSR (80 km)

TRIASSIC 230 210 + 4 Manicougan,

Canada (70 km)

PERMIAN 280 7 7

CARBONIFEROUS 345 365 + 7 Siljan, Sweden

(52 km)

DEVONIAN 405 7 7

Ages of geological boundaries compared with those of tektites and all known
Phanerozoic craters over 50 km in diameter.
122 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

cores that an extinction of radiolaria (plankton with shells composed

of silicates) took place at virtually or exactly the time at which the
tektites were laid down. About two-thirds of the radiolarian
population disappeared. Figure 15 shows this phenomenon for a
Caribbean core: the occurrence of microtektites and microfossils in
the same core allows an accurate relative dating, and the coincidence
is found to be within a few tens of thousands of years. We see evidence
Thyrsocyrtis bromia

T tetracantha
Fig. 15. Concentration of microtektite
T triacantha particles corresponding to a biological
hiatus at the close of the Eocene period
T finalis 35 million years ago. Diagram derived
E Calocyclas turris from data due to Glass & Zwart (1977).
05
k_
OJO The horizontal bars illustrate abundances
a)
of certain radiolarian species which
o. 003 clearly diminish simultaneously as the
i/> tektites are deposited. This is even more
05
002 direct evidence than the iridium
0)
*->
concentration of an association of extra-
o 0-01
terrestrial bodies with events responsible
o for biological extinctions.
E 0
depth in metres

then that not only can a medium-sized impact produce an extinction,

but also that somehow a climatic change lasting millions of years may
be induced.
5.8 Geological evolution: sea-level variations, glaciation
and plate tectonics
But not only were there rapid planktonic extinctions at the end of the
Eocene along with the tektite deposition, there was, simultaneously, a
rapid interchange of the north and south magnetic poles of the Earth,
the turnover time being less than a thousand years. Somehow, it
appears that whatever created the tektites and exterminated the
plankton also reversed the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field and
induced a prolonged climatic change. Other tektite falls have been
found to be likewise correlated with rapid polarity reversals, to within
the accuracy of measurement. Further, we have seen that not only
was there a prolonged change in the sedimentation patterns of rock
beginning 65 million years ago, there was a brief but rapid drop of
about 100 metres in sea level. These extraordinary correlations lead
inevitably to the question of the part played by impacts in the physics
of the Earth.
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 123
Following the incident at the end of the Eocene the mean
temperature of the Earth’s surface returned to its normal level—a level
significantly higher than the one that we enjoy at present. Then,
towards the close of the Tertiary, in the Miocene age, a more per-
manent climatic decline set in. This deterioration has continued into
the Quaternary and the present era. During the last two million years
in fact, there has been a rather well-documented cycle of glaciations
with periodicities ranging between 10,000 and 100,000 years. There are
corresponding variations in oxygen isotope measurements of deep-
sea sediments reaching back to the Miocene; these measure ocean
temperatures. The implied mini ice ages interspersed with inter-
glacials, all comprising a major glaciation, are in part random with
time. But some of the small changes in mean temparature also
correlate rather well with terrestrial precession and variations in
orbital eccentricity. The fluctuations in mean temperatures thus
almost certainly reflect the Earth’s position and aspect relative to the
Sun. The impression is of an atmosphere and ocean that have
somehow achieved a mean temperature that is sensitive to the
modulating effect of the Earth’s orbital behaviour. Certainly neither
major glaciation nor variations of this kind seem to be present early
in the Tertiary, but about 20 million years ago as the solar system came
through the core of Gould’s Belt, the climate seriously deteriorated.
The supposition must be that there was some additional cause of the
lowering of the temperature at around this time.
Could impacts achieve this? A good deal of theoretical work over
the past few years has shown that the terrestrial climate is currently
only marginally stable, and it is possible that a small perturbation
could cause a drastic change. The so-called ice-albedo feedback in
particular has the potential for strongly unstable behaviour. The
theory is that if for some reason there was exceptional snow cover
over a hemisphere, the enhanced reflectivity of the Earth would
decrease solar heating, so leading to a further snow deposition,
reflecting more sunlight and so on until a full-scale glaciation had
taken hold. Obviously there must be some stability against such a
disaster as otherwise any small effect would plunge us into an ice age.
It has been suspected that a reduction of sunlight by more than about
3 per cent for a year or so would lead to an unstable growth of the ice
caps. We have seen that the impact of a large body would produce
enough dust in the stratosphere to block out sunlight several
thousand times over. In fact the saturation point, at which the dust
veil blocks out say over half the incident sunlight, is probably
124 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

attained at intervals of less than a million years through impact of

missiles of about a kilometre diameter. This is not a small
disturbance. The growth time of large continental ice sheets has
usually been taken as 1,000-10,000 years but there is recent evidence
that this may not always be so. Strong and almost instantaneous ice
growth took place in the northern hemisphere about 115,000 and
75,000 years ago. A possible reason for this lies in the mechanism
proposed by Hoyle and his colleagues. During the weeks following
obscuration of sunlight there would be a rapid fall in the temperature
over land, but the sea, with its greater capacity for heat retention,
would maintain a higher temperature. Strong landward gales would be
driven by the difference and there would be large-scale precipitation
of water vapour, mostly as snow. What is in effect an atmospheric
heat engine would draw upon the heat reservoir of the oceans,
sufficient to evaporate 1-10 trillion tons of sea water. This is enough
to lower sea level by about 100 metres, in good agreement with the
actual size of variations of sea level in the geological record. It is likely
that by the time the dust has cleared from middle and high latitudes
(say one to three years), a glaciation, all else being equal, would be
under way.
But the very instability of the system might lead to the decline of the
glaciation in no more than the time taken for an ice sheet in a mild
atmosphere to melt, say in 1,000-10,000 years. However, the dust
injected by an impact of a few thousand megatons energy may
produce a climatic cooling of a few degrees and this, if such impacts
occur in less than the melting time of an ice sheet, could maintain the
glaciation. Generally this would be a marginal situation, but
following a capture episode such an impact rate would be easily
maintained. A glaciation, the magnitude of which would probably
depend on astronomical and other factors, would be maintained
indefinitely until by chance there was an absence of small impacts, the
ice melted and the glaciation ended almost as suddenly as it had
begun. Calculations show that a medium-sized impact of the type
expected at 100,000-year intervals after a capture episode will induce
glaciations which terminate randomly within 0.01-1 million years.
Geographical factors are likely to be important in creating the
unstable climatic conditions necessary for such triggering to be
effective. It is often supposed that a continent at one or other pole is
required, so as to cool the oceans through iceberg calving and the like.
Such conditions may be necessary but they seem not to be sufficient in
themselves: North Africa was at high latitudes from about 530 to 480
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 125
million years ago although there was no ice age; the glaciers vanished
from Australia in the Permian period although the continent was
then at a high latitude. It seems that some other factors are at work. If
high impact rates are necessary to initiate and maintain a glaciation,
then ice ages proper—comprising a whole series, perhaps hundreds,
of short-lived glaciations—should occur at 100-200-million-year
intervals corresponding to major capture events, and should endure
for 30-100 million years corresponding to the retention time of the
captured bodies. Considering the crudeness of the estimates these
figures agree surprisingly well with the observed behaviour of ice ages
(Table 1) and suggest that the impact mechanism, with galactic
control, deserves to be taken seriously.
Corresponding to the rapid creation of thick continental ice sheets
must be an equally rapid lowering of sea level. Geologists have now
discovered that, throughout the 160 million years of the Mesozoic
(including the Permo-Triassic and Cretaceous-Tertiary events which
bound it) there was a stochastic sequence of ocean regressions and
transgressions (five of each) involving inter alia salinity crises and
minor extinction events with an erratic time interval of the order of
15 million years. More recent data from 65 million years ago to the
present are shown in Figure 16. One remarkable feature is the
apparently increased frequency of sea-level drops over the past 30
million years. Another is the abruptness with which the sea level
seems to drop. This is proving difficult to account for on conventional

Paleocene Eocene Oligocene Miocene

e 1 L ““e 1 m I i e 1 i ~e I m | L

_
60 50 40 30 20 10
time before present in million years b.p.

Fig. 16. Global sea-level changes according to Vail and other researchers at the
Exxon Research and Production Company.89 The large precipitous drops (50-100
metres) have been the subject of controversy largely because of the difficulty of
finding a suitable mechanism. However, an ocean impact, cutting off sunlight and
flooding land, might trigger a land/sea heat engine which would very quickly
transfer ocean water to the polar caps or high-altitude regions (see text).
126 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

scenarios, and it is very tempting to correlate the impact mechanism

with these global variations, particularly as a major sea regression seems
to have coincided with both the Permo-Triassic and dinosaur
extinctions. A test for this model would be to see whether rapid
glaciations coincide with such drops. The evidence of correlated
glaciation is at the moment very sparse. One problem is that ice does
not always leave a signature.
So far, we have examined only the energetic consequences of an
impact. But perhaps even more profound than the input of energy is
that of momentum. The energy of a collision dissipates itself largely
in the surface layers of the Earth or the atmosphere above; there is
virtually none available to affect the deep interior of the planet.
Momentum, however, is distributed throughout. The magnetic field
of the Earth is created in the liquid core of the planet, and any impact
mechanism which can cause the field to reverse must somehow be
based on the momentum of the collision.
The nature of the force powering the dynamo within the Earth is
uncertain, long-term gravitational settling and heat convection being
two proposals. Whatever mechanism operates, the geomagnetic
dynamo is apparently very unstable and this is supposed to give rise
to spontaneous field reversals. The liquid core has about half the
dimensions of the Earth, and extremely slow circulation currents
(about 10 metres/year) are required to generate the field, which is
about 5 gauss at the surface of the core. Suppose now that the Earth
were struck by a comet or asteroid, moving at some random angle, at
say 25 km/sec. Because the crust and mantle are very rigid they will
respond as a whole, and within the global travel time of earthquakes
(say less than an hour) they will have acquired a new velocity and axis
ot rotation. The change in both will be minute: a 2-km asteroid,
impacting once every 10 million years, will create a velocity change
of only 0.0001 cm/sec, corresponding to 10 metres/year, at the
core/mantle interface. However the core, being liquid, will at first
carry on rotating in the old sense. This modest impact is therefore
enough to spin the overlying mantle, creating friction at the boundary
of core and mantle so lorcing a completely new velocity pattern on to
the circulation currents at the top of the core. The time taken for the
core to accelerate to matching speed with the mantle is about the
circulation time of its material, say about 1,000 years. There is
therefore, over this period, a major redistribution of velocities within
the core, and since as we have seen the geomagnetic dynamo is very
unstable, one expects that the magnetic field will be strongly
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 127

perturbed and may rapidly flip over.

Thus even modest impacts occurring at intervals of 1-10 million
years constitute a major perturbation of the velocity field of the core.
The actual frequency of reversal is about 0.1-1 million years, and
given the supposed sensitivity of the dynamo to disturbance it seems
that impacts may be a prime cause, if not the cause, of the reversals.
Certainly the observed coincidence of tektite falls with the reversals
supports the hypothesis. It seems then that a record of past impacts,
otherwise beyond detection, may exist frozen in the rocks in the form
of field reversals. If this argument is correct then one can test the
proposition that there have been episodes of high bombardment rate
during passages through spiral arms: they should produce periods of
high reversal rate, coincident with whatever other phenomena are
induced by impacts. In fact such periods, the so-called mixed
magnetic intervals, exist and recur at characteristic intervals of about
100 million years.
There are striking coincidences in time between these periods of
high reversal frequency and tectonic episodes. Also, it is remarkable
that the Permo-Triassic and Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctions of 225
and 65 million years ago occurred within mixed magnetic intervals
230-204 and 70-50 million years ago. In other words, on each
occasion the Earth knew the big asteroid was coming! This is of
course inexplicable in terms of random solar system impact and
further indicates that an episode of bombardment was involved, with
one or more large asteroids or comets coming in as part of a prolonged
barrage.
Coincident with the dinosaur extinction was the greatest vulcanism
in geological history. From 65 to 60 million years ago, lava flooded
wide areas of the Arctic, Scotland and Ireland, and Southern India.
The vulcanism in India created, over 5 million years, the Deccan
traps, about a million square kilometres of basalt up to a thousand
metres thick. Simultaneously there was a world-wide creation of
hotspots generally regarded as created by plumes of molten
material penetrating into the crust from the mantle below. A
remarkable aspect of Earth history is that such plate tectonic events
seem to occur in episodic bursts. Throughout the last 550 million
years as well as pre-Cambrian times, brief and presumably violent
periods of orogeny have taken place at intervals of around 50-100
million years. Even larger episodes involving vast outpourings of lava
have taken place at perhaps 200-400-million-year intervals (Table 1).
Over the last fifteen years or so the theory of continental drift has
128 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact
become well established, collisions of the plates on which the
continents sit creating the forces necessary for such activity. The
unification of geology and geophysics achieved by the theory of plate
tectonics is impressive. But there is one area where plate tectonics has
not so far succeeded, namely in accounting for the episodicity which
is frequently claimed for the phenomena which it otherwise explains.
The plates are driven by extremely slow currents within the mantle: it
has taken 65 million years for the Atlantic to open from a rather
narrow channel to its present width, a rate of less than 10 cm/year.
The depth of these currents is controversial, some maintaining that
only the hot, weak rock immediately under the crust is involved (that
is the aesthenosphere), others that the whole mantle takes part in the
circulation. It is likely that horizontal temperature gradients within
the mantle or aesthenosphere drive these motions.
Now consider the momentum transferred by a body, not 1 or 2 km
in diameter, but 10 or 20 km. The momentum is 1,000 times greater
than we have so far considered and so are the velocities induced
within the Earth. At the core/mantle interface these amount to
0.1-1 cm/sec, say 10,000 times the normal core circulation velocities
and 10-100 million times the normal rate of continental drift. By the
usual undisturbed standards, the mantle is set spinning at an
enormous speed relative to the core, and correspondingly enormous
stresses are involved within the mantle in accelerating the core to
matching speed. The mantle, which behaves like a rigid body in
response to a sharp blow, responds to a prolonged stress by flowing.
The viscosity of flow is very large by ordinary standards and may vary
by 100,000 to 1 from base to top, but it is this viscosity which permits
continental drift to occur at all. The break-even point seems to be a
few years, that is any stress of more than a few years duration will
result in flow of the mantle material. Therefore if 1,000 years are
involved in accelerating the core, flow velocities of say 1 cm/sec will
persist for that time, resulting in a relative drift of material at the base
of mantle or aesthenosphere of thousands of kilometres, implying a
complete redistribution of temperature inhomogeneities within the
Earth. At the surface, extensive opening of lithospheric cracks by
10-100 km are expected within a few thousand years. The picture
then is one of episodes of rapid continental drift, with all the associated
worldwide sea-floor spreading, mountain building, vulcanism and so
on, immediately after an impact, followed by a gradual decline of
activity as the disturbed Earth settles into a new pattern of movement
with more gradual splitting or colliding of continents.
 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact 129

If these ideas are correct, large impacts will thus set in motion a
complex chain of interacting phenomena—sea-level changes,
climatic excursions, violent tectonic episodes, magnetic-field re-
versals and, of course, mass extinctions. Some of these phenomena
will appear suddenly, virtually as pulses in the record, and these will
be superimposed on the same phenomena appearing as responses to
longer acting forces. The evolution of land creatures, carried around
on giant colliding rafts, may therefore be affected not just directly
through impact, but also indirectly through more prolonged climatic
effects and the opening or closing of sea barriers leading to mixing or
isolation of populations. Catastrophism then merges into the
widening horizons of biogeography and the general effects of plate
tectonics on evolution. The distentangling of cause and effect in this
complicated situation, at even one boundary, will be a long and
arduous task, one which as astronomers we can leave with relief to
our terrestrial colleagues. As Milankovitch, speaking of the cause of
ice ages, said in 1941:

‘These causes ... lie far beyond the vision of the descriptive natural
sciences. It is therefore the task of the exact natural sciences to
outline this scheme, by means of its laws ruling the universe and by
its developed mathematical tools. It is left, however, to the
descriptive natural sciences to establish an agreement between this
scheme and geological experience.’

We need for the present to go no further. Towards the end of the

chapter we have ventured, very precariously, towards an overall view
of geophysical science that involves conflict with the somewhat
gentler prevailing scenarios. Our proposal is that the modern
astronomical setting in which we now find ourselves may have
profound consequences for our understanding of Earth history.
Biological evolution must now proceed in an environment which
suffers drastic, sudden and irreversible upheaval from time to time: in
the fight for survival, adapting rapidly to each new set of conditions, it
is probably reasonable to expect the existence of a species to be a series
of‘punctuated equilibria’. It follows that the theory of discontinuous
evolution by ‘successive creations’ espoused by Cuvier at the beginning
of the last century, and the theory of gradual evolution advocated later
by Darwin and Wallace, are but extreme versions of two processes that
go on side by side. The idea that Earth history has been dominated only
by familiar processes, directly experienced over the last few centuries, is
then a fallacy. Such a timescale is wholly irrelevant to the scale of events
130 Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact
in the astronomical setting.
Indeed, more than this, for if the Earth’s more remote past carries
the record of a long series of huge impacts, we must also take account
of the far more frequent encounters with smaller but nevertheless
significant bodies in Earth-crossing orbits. Our interest is thus drawn
towards bodies which are able to produce explosions of say 10,000
megatons or so, capable of devastating areas of about a million
square kilometres. It is to impacts of this class in the recent history of
the Earth that we now turn. Our starting point is not so much the
barely visible Apollos, it is with those other tantalizing creatures, the
short-period comets.
6 • The mystery of the
short-period comets

Short-period comets have characteristic lifetimes of between a few

hundred and a few thousand years. Not only do they break up, they also
get driven away by planetary encounters. There are at present
approximately one hundred times too many short-period comets
relative to the rate at which long-period comets are captured by Jupiter
and fed into the observed stock of Apollo asteroids. The present number
is probably due to a burst of new short-period comets formed several
thousand years ago as a result of a single large comet fragmenting
during Jovian capture or perihelion passage.

6.1 The over-abundance of short-period comets

One of the vital links in the picture so far is the family of Apollo
asteroids. In Chapter 4, we saw how there were likely to be over 1,000
of them with diameters greater than 1 km. Although their number is
being slowly reduced by planetary collisions and hyperbolic ejections,
the current stock is easily enough explained in terms of encounters of
long-period comets with Jupiter during the last 30 million years or so.
The idea is that these comets are deflected into orbits of considerably
shorter period and then over a relatively short time, 1,000 years or so,
the volatile elements boil away leaving the Apollos as defunct comets.
The number of long-period comets we observe fits very well with this
scheme and all would be well if we also observed an appropriate or
corresponding number of short-period comets on their way to
becoming Apollos. The process of transition from long to short
periods takes place through the gravitational perturbations acting on
the comets. Jupiter, much the most massive planet (over 300 Earth
masses), is by far the dominant source of perturbation.
Everhart has used a high-speed computer to simulate the orbital
evolution of comets fired into the inner regions of the solar system.
Firing comets into the neighbourhood of Jupiter, from all angles, he
found that 90 per cent of all 'captures’ into short-period orbits took
place from orbits with a narrow range of characteristics. These had
inclinations less than 9°, perihelia between 4 and 6 a.u., that is
straddling Jupiter’s distance of 5.2 a.u. from the Sun, and they moved
in a direct sense. The implication is that for capture to be possible,
there must be an overtaking of the planet, that is the comet must
132 The mystery of the short-period comets

approach from behind Jupiter and more or less parallel to its

direction of motion. Of course Jupiter may not be there when the comet
arrives at its perihelion, and Everhart found that only one in 130
comets with these par ameters was actually captured into short-period
orbits. Capture tended not to take place in one dramatic orbit change,
but rather by the accumulation of many smaller perturbations.
Enormous variety was discovered, the process of capturing taking a
few dozen to over a thousand returns, the orbits themselves
fluctuating in period. Comets will not generally be discovered unless
their perihelia drop below about 3 a.u. and when that happens their
periods are usually short. The distribution of periods and the low
inclinations of Everhart’s theoretical comets agree with those of the
known short-period comets. These results are a strong indication that
the flattened, co-rotating system of short-period comets is derived by
selective capture from the randomly inclined intermediate or long-
period comets.
Kresak has studied the orbits of the known active comets with
periods more than 200 years and finds that over the inner few a.u. of
the solar system there is a constant number density of comets, that
is, a snapshot would reveal one such comet per 11 cubic a.u. The
extrapolation of this density out to Jupiter and beyond is admittedly
less certain, being based on the evidence of a few large comets.
Nevertheless with this figure and a random distribution of in-
clinations, one comet per eleven years would enter the capture zone
and so the number captured in a year would be only 1/11 x 1/130, or
one in 1,430 years. But with say 100 comets in short-period orbits,
each being visible for say 500 years, a comet would have to be fed into
the system every five years or so to keep the population stable.
We may also suspect that Apollo asteroids are being created more
rapidly than they are being depleted, perhaps once every few centuries
rather than the equilibrium rate of one in about 40,000 years. This
latter suspicion rests on the existence of a single active comet, Encke,
in an Apollo orbit: according to Sekanina, it will become an asteroid
of kilometre dimensions by around AD 2030. Already the comet is
telescopically very faint. Both discrepancies lead to the same
conclusion: with the observational and celestial mechanical infor-
mation available, there is a current overabundance of short-period
comets by a factor of about 150.
There are indications that the short-term comets are smaller than
the average long-period comet that is, the populations are not
strictly comparable—but there is no positive evidence that a significant
 The mystery of the short-period comets 133

underestimate is being made of the low mass end of the long-period

population. In any case, the smaller average size is precisely what one
would expect with rapid evolution of the short-period comets.

6.2 Jovian encounter and tidal fragmentation

We have therefore arrived at a quandary. The overall picture, of a
weeding out of long-period comets by Jupiter and throwing them into
short-period orbits, of the spreading of some of these orbits into the
space between the inner planets, of the decay of these comets into
Apollo and Amor asteroids, and of their final impacting on to the
planets-, seems persuasively established by a whole range of numerical
calculations and observational data, not to mention a lack of
alternatives. But the transfer rates do not fit: there appear to be far
too many short-period comets. There is obviously a mystery here
requiring an explanation.
In 1826 a comet was discovered by Biela and found to have a period
of 6.6 years. It was observed in 1832 and again in 1846, in which year it
was seen to divide in two. In 1852, the components were again seen as
two well-separated comets; they have not been observed since. Only
about twenty comets have been observed to split since that time, the
fragments becoming individual comets. The drift apart is gentle and
is probably caused simply by differential solar gravity rather than any
internal forces. There is a group of about a dozen comets, with
periods ranging from about 500 to 1,000 years, but whose orbits are
otherwise very similar, and which pass quite close to the surface of the
Sun, some passing within 500,000 km of its surface. These are bright
comets; some have even been visible in daylight close to the Sun.
Tracing back these orbits, it appears that they were once a single
gigantic object, 10 or 20,000 years ago, which underwent a hierarchy
of disintegrations. There is little doubt that the tidal strain induced by
the close passage to the Sun has split the parent comet into fragments.
This is the key to the resolution of the paradox. If one bright
comet can become a dozen (and indeed more since one of the
fragments, Comet 1882 II, sub-fragmented into four more comets),
what are the prospects that one large comet might become a hundred,
or a thousand, smaller ones?
The process of converting a long-period comet into a short-period
one involves successive passages within Jupiter’s sphere of influence.
During each passage there is a small but finite probability that the
comet will pass close to the surface of the planet itself. The tidal force
exerted on a Jupiter-grazing comet is similar to that on a Sun-grazing
 134 The mystery of the short-period comets
comet. Two comets, Lexell’s comet of 1770 and Brook’s comet of
1889, are known to have passed through the satellite systems of
Jupiter, the latter comet almost grazing the planet’s surface and
subsequently splitting in two. The discovery probability of a small
comet at Jupiter’s distance is very small and so it is likely that such
close passages occur frequently, perhaps annually, going un-
discovered.
Fragmentation occurs when the solar or Jovian tidal force is
greater than the internal cohesive strength of the cometary material.
The tidal force is calculable, and it turns out that, for a given internal
strength, there is a critical diameter above which the comet cannot
hold itself together. The tensile strength of a comet can be estimated
from the known force exerted on comet Brook, and from such events
as the spontaneous splitting of comet West in 1975. The few examples
available indicate tensile strengths of about 1-10 g wt/cm2, that is, one

8 MAR 76 12 MAR 78 14 MAR 78 18 MAR 76 24 MAR 76

16. {above and opposite) Comet West photographed in 1976. The above sequence of
short-exposure photographs reveals fragmentation of the nucleus into four parts.
The tensile strength of cometary material is often only just enough to withstand the
effects of solar heating and tidal pressure.

square centimetre column of comet material could be pulled apart by

a few grams weight of force: it is the weakest known solid material.
It can be shown that a comet 1 km or less in diameter might survive
a close encounter with Jupiter: anything larger must split into
fragments. But if, once a year say, a comet more than 1 km across has
a close passage to Jupiter, then from the size distribution of comets
inferred directly and indirectly, once every 1,000 years on average a
comet more than 30 km diameter will pass close to Jupiter, and this will
split into about 10,000 kilometre-sized fragments.
It one long-period comet enters the capture region in a decade, then
only once in 100,000 years will such a comet have a close encounter
in the above sense. But the process of capture into a short-period
orbit involves, as the Everhart calculations show, hundreds of
136 The mystery of the short-period comets

thousands of passages near Jupiter. The comets which annually (we

infer) have grazing encounters with Jupiter already belong to the
short or intermediate period set. Thus the pre-encounter orbital
periods of comets Lexell and Brook were respectively 11.4 years and
31.4 years.
The replenishment of the short-period population, rather than a
smooth one-at-a-time process, is likely to be an affair of bursts, in
which the occasional tidal disruption of a large comet, already on an
intermediate or short-period orbit, showers the inner regions of the
solar system with hundreds of thousands of fragments each of which
is itself a comet. Such tidal disruption of a large comet will probably
occur only once in several centuries, and injection of the debris into the
inner solar system, where it would volatilize and become spectacularly
visible, will probably occur only once in a few millennia.
But recorded history goes back 5,000 years, and the roots of
mythology may extend even further back. Consider an event of this
sort observed by men in, say pre-biblical times. In the weeks
following the break-up of a 20 or 30 km diameter comet, the only
change in the appearance of Jupiter would be a brightening of the
planet. As the fragments streamed away, spreading outwards, they
would reflect more and more solar radiation, the myriads of dust
particles contributing the greater part of the reflected light. After a
month or so, the brightness would resolve itself into a jet which night
after night, would be seen to detach itself from the planet. The jet
would grow and spread out, temporarily outshining Jupiter, itself a
brilliant object in the night sky for much of the year. As the debris
spread the display would fade from sight within a few weeks. But in
the case of a major break-up some proportion of the debris could be
thrown into unstable orbits taking the fragments into the inner
regions of the planetary system. In that case, a few years after the
shattering of a large comet the debris would begin to approach
perihelia, outgas, and so become active comets. What would actually
be observed depends on the characteristics of the break-up. Another
possibility for example, if the fragmentation happens to occur during
perihelion passage—not unlikely if the comet has been previously
weakened during Jovian encounter—is that a vast meteor stream is
created in orbit around the Sun. Not only then would the night sky be,
for some centuries, spectacularly filled with comets ranging from the
very faint to the brilliant, probably in their hundreds, but the ecliptic
would become a vivid band of light, even visible perhaps around the
Sun during twilight. This appearance would of course be only
 The mystery of the short-period comets 137

temporary but even out of sight, the evidence would remain: thus there
are today other quite striking indications of an exceptional recent
comet history. There is an overabundance of fireballs impinging on the
Earth and as Kresak has shown, the stock of interplanetary dust is ten
to a hundred times what is expected with the currently observed flux of
comets. The fact also that some 25 per cent of the known meteor
streams are in relatively stable Apollo orbits is difficult to understand
except in terms of recent activity. Whatever the exact course of recent
events, the chance of a close encounter with the Earth will under these
circumstances be significantly increased, and whatever the average
rate of low-mass impacts implicit in the overall flux of long-period
comets, this rate might temporarily rise to very high levels. We shall
examine this problem further.
7 • Prehistoric encounters?

Not only were short-period comets on occasion very conspicuous in the

prehistoric sky hut one or two of them may periodically have come very
close to the Earth. The effect would have been spectacular, and impacts
from cometary and other debris have probably occurred from time to
time with devastating consequences. The Halley and Encke comets in
particular were very likely terrifying sights several thousand years ago.

7.1 The frequency of small-scale impacts

We have seen that the collision-hazard population of asteroids more
than 1 km across may be close to 1,000 and that their numbers
increase rapidly towards the lower masses. The smallest observed to
date (and since lost) had a diameter of only 100 metres and, on
collision, would have struck the Earth at 16 km/sec. The impact
energy would have been about 50 megatons and, assuming it was not
broken up in the atmosphere, a land collision would have produced a
crater about 2 km across. The calculated impact energy is for a rocky
constitution. Elowever, the missiles, as we have seen, are of several
types and have compositions ranging from iron to ice, and this
introduces a range of uncertainty into the calculated figures. It is likely
that the Apollo asteroid mass distribution, which is seen to extend from
10 km to 1 or 2 km, may continue down to at least such 100-metre-sized
objects. Extrapolating from the known Apollos, the implication is that
about 100,000 bodies of this size or greater are potential collision
hazards; with impacts down to the 50-500 megaton energy range. If the
orbits of the known bodies are typical, impact rates and energies can be
calculated as in Table 6. The collision velocities range upwards from 15
km/sec or thereabouts, and average 25 km/sec.

Table 6. Low energy impact rates

St (years) E (megatons)

50 50
300 500
1900 5000

The typical interval St between impacts of ‘small’ planetesimals of impact energy at

least E. Based on extrapolation of fireball data, with uncertainties as discussed in text.
 Prehistoric encounters? 139

17. The Tunguska explosion of 30 June 1908. A region of forest 8 km from the
epicentre photographed many years later. Approximately 10,000 square km of
forest were destroyed in this way.

But these calculations lead to an extraordinary conclusion. For we

find that within the last 5,000 years, that is within a timescale of
interest to the archaeologist, the historian and the mythologist, there
must have been about fifty impacts in the energy range 1-100
megatons, about five in the range 100-1,000 megatons with an even
chance that there has been an impact in the range 1,000-10,000
megatons. This conclusion is most secure at the highest energies where
one is dealing with bodies of about 0.3 km diameter, close to the
regime where telescopic discovery rates are well known, while the
uncertainties become progressively larger towards smaller energies,
say in the 10 megaton range.
It is true that about three-quarters of all impacts will occur over the
oceans and go unrecorded; and that most of the land area of the
Earth has been, and is, sparsely populated. But civilization originated
some 5,000 years ago, with the union of the peoples of the Upper and
Lower Nile. Cuneiform writing first appeared in 3000 BC in Sumeria,
to be adopted by the Babylonians and the Assyrians. In India, a well-
ordered government was established in the Indus valley before
140 Prehistoric encounters?

2000 BC, while Chinese civilization was then spreading along the
Yellow River valley. By 1500 BC or earlier, hieroglyphic writing on
papyrus had been adopted in Egypt, a linear script had been invented
and adopted by the Aegean civilization and the Chinese had
developed a complicated character writing. There has therefore been
a period of 4 or 5,000 years when several per cent of the surface area of
the globe has been inhabited by peoples capable of recording events,
and there is an expectation that several devastating impacts have
occurred in inhabited areas.
To say that impacts in these energy ranges would be dramatic is not
to do them justice; this may be illustrated by the case of the Tunguska
meteorite. In the early morning of 30 June 1908, an object entered the
atmosphere over western China, on a long sloping trajectory which
took it to a remote part of the Siberian taiga, where it disintegrated,
close to the Tunguska River. Partly because of the remoteness of the
region it was not until 1927 that an expedition, under the Russian
astronomer Kulik, reached the site. A picture of the impact has been
built up from eyewitness accounts and on-site examination. Entering
the atmosphere at 30 km/sec, the missile penetrated to a height of
6 km, being seen as a blinding ball of fire which darkened the Sun and
trailed a thick cloud of dust. It was accompanied by intense
thunderclaps which culminated in a stupendous bang: the noise was
heard over 1,000 km away. A column of fire 1,500 metres wide
appeared to rise from the ground to a height of 20 km and could be
seen from 400 km. The blast flattened the forest around the epicentre
out to 70 km, charring the barks of many trees on the inward-facing
sides; singed the clothes of people out to a similar distance; knocked
people unconscious at up to 100 km; blew over men and horses at
distances of up to 250 km; and at a distance of 600 km an engine
driver on the Trans-Siberian Railway was forced to halt his train
because of the commotion. The fall was seen over a huge area, almost
1,500 km across, and ground tremors were felt over a similar area. A
gigantic column of smoke remained suspended along the track, and
throughout Asia and Europe in the days that followed the night sky
was strangely bright. No crater has been found.
The Tunguska event may have been caused by a small fragment
Irom a comet. From radiation and blast damage it appears that its
impact energy was 40-100 megatons. During the present century,
there is known at least one further impact of similar character. In this
case however, it was on a lesser scale, that is, in the range of 1-5
megatons. This object, the Sikhote-Alin meteorite (Plate 18), also fell
 Prehistoric encounters ? 141

18. The fall of the Sikhote-

Alin meteorite on 12 February
1947. A painting by P. I.
Medvedjev at the offices of the
Meteorite Committee of the
Academy of Sciences of the
USSR in Moscow.

on Russian soil and there have been physical studies of the spot where
it landed as well as many eye-witness accounts. Where the Tunguska
event is attributable to a cometary fragment exploding just before
impact, the Sikhote-Alin event has more the character of a meteorite
that broke up during its passage through the atmosphere.
A land impact of 100-10,000 megatons, in a civilized area, would
of course completely overshadow these events, with severe blast and
radiation damage occurring over an area up to almost a million
square kilometres. The implications of these collisions are evidently so
remarkable that it is as well to check the evidence from as many angles
as possible. Thus the likelihood of such impacts can also be assessed by
considering the smallest of missiles: we enter the realm of small
meteorites, fireballs and shooting stars. Data from this regime are
summarized in Figure 17 and a simple extrapolation of the meteorite
distribution into the range of higher energies clearly leads to impact
rates similar to those inferred from the Apollos, although again with
similar uncertainties. Fortunately one meteorite event with an energy
in the ‘gap’ has been dated and this provides a test of the extrapolated
142 Prehistoric encounters?

collision frequency. The Barringer crater at Canyon Diablo, Arizona,

was caused by the impact of an iron body of perhaps 25 metres diameter
and a mass of 100,000 tons, entering the atmosphere at about
15 km/sec. The impact energy was 4 or 5 megatons, and the crater is
about 22,000 years old. About 5 per cent of meteorites are irons, and
these are the only missiles in this energy range to produce a single
explosion crater, stones normally breaking in flight to produce
showers. Thus the totality of meteoritic land collisions in this energy

0001 0-1 10 1000 100000

impact energy w

megatons

Fig. 17. Mean interval between impacts, of more than a given energy, due to
various types of body in circum-terrestrial space adapted from Kresak.94 There is a
gap (100-100,000 megatons) within which bodies are too small to be seen
telescopically, and their impacts are too rare for documentation in modern times to
be expected. It is precisely in this gap, however, that collisions of great human
consequence may have occurred within historic timescales. Most such impacts will
be due to fireballs. These, although of cometary constitution, are much too
numerous to be the disintegration products of observed short-period comets; they
may indicate however that the comet population was recently very high or that
there has been a giant comet in near-Earth space in the recent past.

range must be about one in 1,000 years. Inclusion of sea impacts gives a
recurrence time of about 300 years, agreeing remarkably well with the
expectations.
The data are much too uncertain to say whether the meteorites are
a straightforward continuation of the Apollo asteroids. If the
hypothesis developed in Chapter 4 is correct then a progressive
decline in the proportion of interstellar bodies is expected towards the
smaller masses, and because of these different modes of origin the
 Prehistoric encounters? 143
distributions need not match. Nevertheless it is again satisfactory
that an extrapolation into the gap from the extreme low-energy end
ol the scale leads to impact rates similar to those already deduced. It
seems that there may be several types of objects in Earth-crossing
orbits capable of yielding multi-megaton impacts within historic
timescales.
Finally, within the past few years sufficient data on small lunar and
terrestrial craters have become available, and these directly bear on
the energy gap. The situation is complicated for terrestrial craters by
the shielding effect of the atmosphere and for lunar craters because of
secondary cratering. The terrestrial crater data indicate that an
impact in the range 10-1,000 megatons is expected once in 2,500
years, with a 25 per cent probability that the energy will exceed 100
megatons; but again 95 per cent of meteorite impacts in this range
leave no craters at all, weaker missiles unloading their energy into the
atmosphere. The lunar cratering data seem to indicate that, to
within a factor of three or four, the Apollo impact rate holds down
to the 10,000 megaton range or less. The cratering data of course
refer to time averaged rather than to recent impact rates.

7.2 Fireballs
There is one further, and very significant, class of missile.
Occasionally a meteor is so bright that it lights up the landscape.
Most probably this will belong to the class of objects known as
fireballs. A large body of data on these objects has been accumulated
through research programs such as the Prairie, Canadian and
European networks, using all-sky cameras to record meteoric events.
Operation of these networks began around 1964 with a search area of
about 2 million square km. From their atmospheric deceleration and
fragmentation it is possible to deduce the physical properties of the
fireballs, which normally have end heights of 50-60 km. It turns out
that these objects are very fragile and of low density, indicative of
cometary material. Some have had high entry velocities and appear to
have come from beyond Jupiter or even to have been in retrograde
orbits before collision. The largest Prairie Network fireball recorded
had a mass of about 3.5 tons; the Sumava fireball recorded in
December 1974 by the European Network had a mass of about 200
tons. Mass for mass, the arrival rate of fireballs is about a hundred
times as great as that of meteorites (Figure 17). They are much too
abundant to be a low-mass extension of the active comets in the Earth’s
neighbourhood.
144 Prehistoric encounters?

The Earth is thus encountering a considerable population of

interplanetary boulders, quite distinct from stony or iron bodies, and
which cannot be directly related to the telescopic asteroids or comets.
This population is dominant amongst the smaller projectiles entering
the atmosphere, and the question arises: what is the frequency of
larger masses amongst them? For somewhere in the range of 1 ton
(from the larger Prairie Network fireballs) and 10 billion tons (from
the telescopic missiles) there must occur a turnover in their mass
distribution, as otherwise one would predict far more kilometre-sized
bodies in circum-terrestrial space than are observed. Once again,
information in the ‘gap’ is provided by a single exceptional collision.
The Tunguska object may have had a mass of500,000-1,000,000 tons
(diameter about 100 metres) and an impact speed of about 30 km/sec.
These figures have been reconstructed from the topography of the
flattened and burned forest, and from the accounts of dozens of
eyewitnesses, most of whom were hundreds of kilometres from the
impact site. The occurrence of this 40-100 megaton event as recently
as 1908 is consistent neither with its being a small asteroid nor with its
being a small active comet. Extrapolation of the known fireball mass
distribution indicates that Tunguska-like land impacts should occur
as often as once in fifty years, and this is entirely consistent with
observation of one such event in the twentieth century. Indeed
fireballs intermediate between Tunguska and the Prairie Network
objects have been recorded. The Sumava fireball of 1974 has been
mentioned. One over Holland in 1958, with an end height of 45 km,
appeared almost as bright as the Sun. The Montana fireball of
August 1972 grazed the Earth’s atmosphere and escaped into space
again. The frequencies of these occasional events are consistent with
an extension of the Prairie Network fireballs into the Tunguska
range, and so the mass distribution appears to hold at least as far as
million-ton objects. But somewhere between 0.1 km and 1 km
diameter there must be a cut-off in these large numbers of fireballs.
The corresponding uncertainty in impact energies is very large
somewhere between 100 and 100,000 megatons. In Figure 18 we have
somewhat arbitrarily supposed that there is a cut-off at 4,000
megatons, erring probably on the conservative side. This figure
illustrates a number of simulations in which collisions were randomly
generated over 5,000-year intervals, extrapolating the meteorite,
Apollo and fireball populations in accordance with our discussion.
To sum up, there are acts of faith involved in estimating impact
rates in the 10-1,000 megaton range. The missiles are too small to be
 Prehistoric encounters? 145
directly seen in space; and the impacts are too rare for modern
documentation to be possible. But all the lines of evidence—the
impact rates extrapolated from both ends of the energy gap as well as
the very fragmentary cratering data within it—point in the same
direction: a few dozen sporadic impacts in the tens of megatons, and
a few in the 100-1,000 megaton range, must have occurred within the
past 5,000 years.

impact energy
megatons

3000

Fig. 18. Four simulations of a

random impact history over a 5,000-
2000 year period, based on the data of
Figure 17. Collisions have been placed
at regular intervals for clarity, and
impacts of less than 50 megatons or
1000
more than 4,000 megatons have been
neglected. It can be seen that
appreciably different histories are
li-l i i 1 possible because of the random nature
2 3 4 5 of the impacts. This and the previous
3000 figure are based on the probable
current flux of near-Earth bodies;
temporal fluctuations such as might
arise from the break-up of a large
2000
comet or a temporarily large comet
population have been neglected but
they might very well be as important if
1000 not more so.

M 111 , i

0 1 2 3 4 5

time
thousands of years

7.3 Meteor storms

But a smooth extrapolation from existing data is not the whole story:
at best this describes averaged impact rates over some time interval or
other. From the galactic scale downwards, the importance of
fluctuations has become clear. Thus the erratic structure of the galactic
gravitational field has a dominating effect on the dissipation and
capture of an Oort cloud to the extent that the smoothed out field
146 Prehistoric encounters?
usually employed gives a totally misleading answer. The supply of
short-period comets is likely to have been very erratic over historic
timescales, and for this reason the flux of comets into Earth-crossing
orbits will be likewise erratic. As we have tried to show in the previous
chapter, the recent incidence of short-period comets may have been
vastly greater than average.
A collision with a comet is unlikely over the timescale under
consideration, even if there were such a temporarily enhanced comet
flux. The significant feature is not collision with comets themselves
but with their debris. For comets spread dust and rocks along their
orbits; and as we have seen already, they are often observed to split
and sometimes disintegrate. We shall be led to propose that, over and
above the sporadic impacts already discussed, there may have been
brief periods, within historic times, of greatly increased Tunguska-
like bombardment.
An enhanced impact rate might come about in two ways. Firstly,
an increase in the comet flux of the sort described in Chapter 6 would
correspondingly increase the amount of cometary debris in circum-
terrestrial space. The existence of an abundant population of fireball-
producing missiles is itself evidence that the missile supply is erratic.
For the majority of fireballs have a cometary constitution and it is
natural to see them as the disintegration products of comet nuclei.
A second scenario arises from the expectation that on occasion the
Earth will find itself in the wake of a large, active, disintegrating
comet. With this picture the comet—or the comet and its dissociating
fragments—would be spectacularly visible in the sky, and the
connection between the comet and the concurrent fireballs would
surely be obvious to an observer. We shall explore this interesting
possibility with such data as are available, beginning with cometary
dust.
The Earth, in its orbit, intersects over fifty meteor streams of
which a dozen or so are strong. Passing through swarms of tiny
particles, shooting stars seem to emanate from a small area of sky.
The Geminids, for example, appear between 7 and 15 December each
year, with a maximum hourly rate of one shooting star a minute on
14 December; the Feonids appear around 17 November with a
maximum rate of appearance of only five shooting stars an hour; and
so on. On rare occasions on the annual return of a shower, intense
and short-lived bombardment has occurred, indicating a bunching of
particles at one part of their track. About half of these meteor streams
follow similar orbits to known comets. Evidently as a comet decays it
 Prehistoric encounters? 147

19. An artist’s conception of

the Leonid meteor shower
of 14 November 1867.

leaves solid bodies which, although initially bunched, gradually

spread around the orbit. Eroding forces which act on fine dust
particles in the inner solar system would destroy meteor streams
within 1 or 2,000 years, unless they were replenished.
Storms of meteors have occurred a few times over the past two
centuries. These have arrived more or less unexpectedly; recurrence
cannot be reliably predicted, and most information on them has come
from eyewitness accounts. One such storm occurred on 11 November
1799. From a description by the explorer von Humboldt it has been
estimated that shooting stars appeared at a rate of about 300 per
second, or close to a million an hour. On 12 November 1833 the shower
was repeated with ’meteors as thick as snowflakes’ streaming from a
point in the constellation Leo: it must have been an amazing sight. The
connection of the Leonids with a comet was established in 1866, with
the discovery of a faint comet by William Tempel and the realization
that it had the same orbit as the Leonid swarm. The swarm was not seen
again until 1966, Jovian perturbation having shifted the meteors from
intersection with the Earth’s orbit until recently.
148 Prehistoric encounters ?

Only three meteor swarms (two associated with Giacobini’s comet)

have been detected during the present century. In 1933 a swarm lasted
for half an hour with a peak hourly rate of 19,000 or about five
meteors a second. In 1946 the swarm again appeared and on this
occasion cameras and radar were deployed to study it. Precise orbits
were obtained and evidence was found of fine structure within the
swarm. The whole swarm had a thickness of 9,000 km, less than the
diameter of the Earth. Certain inferences can be drawn from meteor
streams and swarms. More than one epoch of debris-creation seems to
be involved. For example in addition to an even spread of meteors
around the orbit of comet Tempel there is an intense concentration of
particles, perhaps a million times as dense, just behind the comet.
These observations from the recent past are therefore an indication
that in the wake of a comet there is a great deal of dust, erratically
distributed, and that brief episodes of intense dust bombardment are
not uncommon. The existence of fine structure within the Giacobini
swarm and within other meteor streams such as the Taurids is an
indication that not only may fragments break away from comets but
also that there may be sub-fragmentation.

7.4 Fireball storms

These observations cannot tell us whether bodies larger than dust
particles are found within a meteor stream. Fortunately there is
another source of data, namely the seismic stations left at five sites on
the Moon by the Apollo astronauts. One failed, but the remaining
four have operated since April 1974, and can detect miniscule lunar
surface vibrations. An impacting meteorite creates a distinctive
signal, quite different from that of a moonquake, and boulders of a
few kilograms can be detected landing anywhere on the Moon. The
largest boulder so far may have had a mass of a few hundred
kilograms. Unfortunately, in spite of efforts to calibrate using the
precisely calculable impacts of Saturn 3 boosters, there is great
uncertainty in going from amplitude of vibration to impact energy;
and estimates of the absolute collision rate have varied by a factor of
100 over the past few years. Variations in the collision rates, however,
can be found, and these are shown in Figure 19. The boulder impact
rate is clearly non-random, and the seasonal peaks can be associated
with known meteor streams. The outstanding peak occurs in June,
when the Earth-Moon system runs through the ^-Taurids, a meteor
stream associated with comet Encke. There are boulders, therefore,
along the track of a comet.
 Prehistoric encounters? 149
The association of the Leonids with Tempel has been men-
tioned. This body is about as inactive as it is possible to be and still
be recognized as a comet, and yet we have seen that an immense
meteor flux may occasionally happen when the Earth passes through
its neighbourhood. The three-fold summer increase in boulder flux,
clearly showing that large meteoroids or iceballs he along the track, is
likewise associated with Encke, a comet which is almost defunct. In
fact all the current comets which can be associated with meteor
streams are small and feeble objects.

Fig. 19. Graph showing the smoothed flux of meteoroids on the lunar surface
versus day of the year. The curve is derived from data due to Doumas et at.,34 which
are based on measurements obtained with three seismic sensors placed on the
Moon. The most significant impacts are those associated with the /?Taurid meteor
stream which is in similar orbit to that of Encke’s comet. The size of this feature
and its age of 5,000 years or so argue in favour of an exceptionally large progenitor.

If the picture of boulder ejection, possibly with a hierarchy of

fragmentation, is correct, then one might expect that from time to
time there have been fireball storms, analogous to the meteor storms.
Modern records are all but non-existent, although one interesting
event was recorded in 1913. A procession of bright fireballs passed
slowly in a long arc over Canada and the United States, moving over
New York and out to sea. Two marine observations extend the path
to 9,000 km, or about a quarter of the circumference of the Earth. The
fireballs passed over with a noise like thunder, and from eyewitness
accounts along the track there was evidently a hierarchy of
disintegrations taking place in the atmosphere.
Records of what appear to be fireball storms are to be found
amongst ancient Chinese records of meteor showers. These have been
compiled from many sources including local gazetteers by the
Chinese astronomer Tian-shan, and amongst them are found some
remarkable events. Out of 147 showers sufficiently unusual to have
150 Prehistoric encounters ?

been recorded, over a dozen seem to have been fireball storms. Five of
the showers, for example, were seen in daylight. Thus entry 39 in
Tian-shan’s compilation reads:

‘Dynasty Han, Reign Yuan-yan, Year 1, Month4, DayDing-you[i.e.

22 May, 12 BC!]. At the hour of n/h [3-5 p.m.], the sky was cloudless.
There was a rumbling like thunder. A meteor with a head as big as a
fou [an earthenware pot], and a length of some ten-odd zhang [a
zhang is 12 degrees] colour bright red and white, went southeastward
from below the Sun. In all directions, meteors, some as large as
basins, others as large as hens’ eggs, brilliantly rained down. This
only ceased at evening twilight.’

Tian-shan considers that this event was associated with the present-
day Perseid meteor stream. If so, the parent body is again a faint
telescopic object, Comet 1862 III, whose aphelion is almost 50 a.u.
from the Sun, about the distance of Pluto. It is interesting that what
appear to be the Leonids are recorded as having fallen with noise, or
great noise, on several occasions. This is characteristic of fireballs, and
happened in 1798, 1666, 1602, 1566, 1533, and 1002. Reading these
early accounts, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in the past, the
known meteor streams were very much more spectacular, and have
been declining ever since.

7.5 Close encounters with active comets

The historic records then show that on occasion quite spectacular
celestial phenomena have followed from the interception of debris
from faint comets. But what is the probability that, within historic
times, the Earth has found itself in the wake of a young and active
comet, or even a giant one? And if so, what consequences might we
expect?
Because of the likely erratic nature of the comet supply statistical
predictions of the close encounter frequency are probably not
relevant. Flowever meteor streams are fossil evidence of past
intersections with comet orbits and indicate that over the past
1,000-2,000 years, the typical lifetime of a stream, about fifty comets
have found themselves in roughly Earth-crossing orbits, usually
unstable ones.
Ancient Chinese and Korean records show that the major streams
are of great antiquity. The Leonids, Perseids, Geminids and
Andromedids are over 1,000 years old, the Orionids and Aquarids
over 1,500 years, and records of the Lyrids go back over 2,000 years.
 Prehistoric encounters ? 151
There is therefore a concentration of ages of more than 1,000 years,
all the more remarkable if the streams only last 1 or 2,000 years. This
and the recorded history of the streams seems to confirm that the
present meteor streams are the declining remnants of a burst of
comets into circum-terrestrial space a few thousand years ago; at the
very least it seems that a few hundred active comets have been in
Earth-crossing orbits within the past 5,000 years. Random sampling
then shows that a few Earth-crossers of say 5-10 km diameter are a
reasonable expectation: the occasional close encounter with a large,
active comet is therefore to be expected.
Direct evidence of past close encounters comes from a complex of
debris which includes comet Encke, the Taurid meteor stream and
probably the Apollo asteroid Hephaistos. There is a multiplicity of fine
structure within the Taurid stream, as determined from detailed
studies of individual meteor orbits. Some of these were studied by
Whipple in 1940. One set of meteor orbits was indicative of a violent
ejection of debris from comet Encke 4,700 years ago, another set
seemed to arise by ejection from an undiscovered companion to
comet Encke. The orbital elements of Encke, Hephaistos and the
Taurid meteor stream are shown in Table 7.
From the close similarities of these elements it seems very likely
that they are disintegration products of an erstwhile large comet,
certainly in excess of 10 km diameter. This conclusion is strengthened
by the boulder evidence within the Taurids, and by the fact that the
Tunguska object had an orbit very similar to that of Encke and was
probably therefore a fragment. The still active nature of Encke and
the ephemeral nature of the Taurids indicates that the large body was
probably active a few thousand years ago.
The small inclination of comet Encke, currently at 12°, enhances
the probability of a close encounter, but slight perturbations by
Jupiter cause the inclination to vary down to 6°. A more important
effect is the slow 'wobble’ of the orbital plane of Encke, analogous to
the precession of a gyroscope. This has a period, according to
Whipple, of 7,000 years, and would ensure a series of extremely close
passages of Encke and the Earth at 3,500-year intervals. The actual
encounter distance is probably unknowable because of the past
action of non-gravitational forces but may be of the order of the
Earth-Moon distance. The evidence thus seems to indicate that a
remarkably large comet was injected into a low-inclination, short-
period orbit within historic times, and has been subject to a hierarchy
of disintegrations since then. The size of the body, its low inclination
152 Prehistoric encounters?
and short period, and the orbital precession ensure that at intervals a
series of very impressive close encounters with the Earth must have
taken place. The process of spiralling in of this body to a stable orbit
may have taken some thousands of years during which time it would
have been a spectacular object in the sky.
Comet Encke was discovered only in 1796. It was then just below
naked-eye visibility and has been declining in brightness ever since
Why then has it not been a brilliant object in mediaeval or classical
skies? The answer seems to be that a recent change in the axis of
rotation has exposed fresh volatile material, so that the activity of the
past two centuries is a temporary resurgence. It is likely that Encke
was seen as a brilliant comet in remote antiquity, quite possibly
during the time of the Chaldeans or Babylonians, and probably in
prehistory.
As to the consequences of periodic close encounters with an object
such as the Encke/Hephaistos/Taurid progenitor, this owes more to
speculation than quantitative evidence. That disintegrations or
ejections of large fragments from comets commonly take place seems
well established. Plate 7 shows such a fragment in the act of detaching
itself from Halley’s comet during the 1910 apparition. Fragments of
this sort pursue an independent existence for days or months before
fading or passing beyond the observer’s ken. They are expelled from
the nucleus at speeds usually less than 2m/sec, as if some internal
force within the comet from time to time throws out chunks of
material. Hydrodynamic calculations based on the Whipple icy
nucleus model have been carried out and these suggest that out-
gassing of water vapour due to heating by sunlight may create the
necessary acceleration, a throwing out from the nucleus of pieces as
large as 0.1 km being possible. This is about the inferred size of these
fragments and corresponds to an impact energy of the order of
several hundred megatons.
Apart from the detaching of small fragments, we have seen also
that a comet may split. The exceptionally large comet Wirtanen,
discovered in 1957, split into two parts, the smaller piece having
about 10 per cent of the mass of the primary. Each part, essentially a
comet, was followed for over two years. The fate of comet West in
1975 is illustrated in Plate 16: it is shown in the act of disintegrating
into four parts. One fragment faded from sight within a few weeks but
the main comet and its surviving companions were followed for
months thereafter.
A simple-minded model of a bombardment episode would then be
 Prehistoric encounters ? 153
to imagine the Earth running into a swarm, say with the volume of the
Giacobini meteor swarm, containing a mass equal to a 0.1 km
diameter fragment and some plausible size distribution of boulders.
Studies of fragments such as volcanic debris, cratering fragments.

Table 7. Orbital elements of Encke’s Comet, Hephaistos and Taurids

Object P a e q i

ENCKE’S COMET 3.30 2.217 0.847 0.339 334.2 12.0

HEPHAISTOS 3.10 2.126 0.834 0.36 50°.2 11.9
DAYTIME TAURIDS 3.26 2.2 0.85 0.34 276°.4 6.0
The ‘elements’ describe the present elliptical orbits of Encke’s comet, the
Apollo asteroid Hephaistos and the daytime Taurids (P = orbital period in years,
a = semi-major axis in a.u., e = eccentricity, q = perihelion distance, in a.u.,
E>= longitude of the ascending node, and i = inclination of orbit to the Earth’s
orbital plane). Note the general similarity of the orbital characteristics except for Q.
This latter measures the orientations of the orbits in space, and since the orbits
‘wobble’, small differences in the rate of wobble may accumulate to produce large
differences in E>. It is unlikely that the orbital similarities are coincidental, and so
the break-up of a massive comet some millennia ago seems to be indicated.

broken rocks and so on have shown that in spite of the wide variety of
circumstances of formation, the mass distribution of the debris does
not vary greatly, being similar to that of say the Apollo asteroids.
Then in the course of encountering a swarm of this sort, the Earth
would, within half an hour, be subject to about thirty impacts in
the range 10-100 megatons with perhaps one or two in excess of this!

7.6 Prehistoric encounters

The situations we have now described are: the short-period comet
population is replenished erratically and there may have been
intervals within historic or late prehistoric times when the sky was
temporarily filled with comets; at least one exceptional, probably
brilliant, disintegrating comet has been in an Earth-crossing orbit,
and there have been epochs when a series of close encounters might
have had dramatic consequences in the sky and on the ground in the
form of impacts; and from time to time sporadic impacts in the
Tunguska or super-Tunguska class are expected.
It is hard for us to imagine the effect such phenomena would have
had on pre-scientific peoples not least because few modern people
have seen the night sky as it was, say, to a desert dweller of 3,000 years
ago. There are now very few places on the globe, none in Europe for
example, which are free from light pollution or haze and it may be
154 Prehistoric encounters ?

difficult to appreciate what an awesome thing the night sky can be.
But to our hypothetical desert dweller the panorama which appeared
above him as the sun set was the home of the gods, and the signs and
omens which appeared there were very relevant to life below.
The earliest recorded appearance of comet Halley is found in a
Chinese military book and dates from the time when 'King Wu
marched on Zhou of Yin’, probably 1058 BC. The comet then had a
magnitude — 7.7 on the usual astronomical brightness scale (0 for the
brightest stars, +5 for the faintest seen with the naked eye; Venus
may attain magnitude —4.4, when it is an outstanding object in the
evening or morning sky). Halley’s comet was therefore then a
dominant object in the night sky and undoubtedly plainly visible by
day. From its rate of fading, it is likely that in 2000 BC it reached
magnitude — 10, about a hundred times the luminosity of Venus.
The progenitor of comet Encke and the Taurids, supposing it to
have been about 20 km in diameter, would at its closest approaches to
the Earth have attained a magnitude — 12, approaching that of the
Moon and sufficient to throw shadows at night. It would have
appeared as an intense yellow spot of light surrounded by a circular
coma probably larger than the full Moon, with a tail stretching across
a large part of the sky at suitable configurations, graduating from
bluish white near the nucleus to a deep red in colour, the whole being
finely structured. If the disintegration history revealed by the current
debris took place within the sight of men then there would have been
occasions when subsidiary comets, perhaps even an array, would
have been observed. For the few centuries during which precession
caused the terrestrial and comet orbits to intersect, there would
probably (as already discussed) have been greatly enhanced seasonal
fireball activity, rising to enormous levels at periodic intervals
corresponding to a strong commensurability between the orbital
periods of Earth and Encke; and the risk of Tunguska-like impacts
would then have been greatest. In a periodic orbit the close
approaches would obviously have been predictable. Indeed if, at
these close approaches, the Earth ran into debris of the sort we have
discussed, prediction would have been a matter of urgency. We have
to sympathize with our hypothetical desert dweller, trying to
formulate a sensible view of the world, faced with this terrible
phenomenon; we can be sure that it would have dominated his
theorizing.
These conclusions cannot be regarded as proven; but they do seem
to be reasonable expectations from the available data. However they
 Prehistoric encounters? 155
present us with a paradox. For if such overwhelming celestial events
have taken place, where are they depicted in the artefacts or
petroglyphs carved by neolithic man? And where are they in the
ancient literatures or mythologies of the world ? Where is the record of
a brilliant comet undergoing a history of disintegrations in the sky?
For turning to the literature and mythology of antiquity, one is struck
by the quite extraordinary absence of the comets described as such;

20. Illustrations from twenty-nine comet charts among silk paintings very recently
unearthed from the Han tomb No. 3, dated 168 BC, at Mawangtui, Changsha.
Although comets were regarded as grounds for prophecy and divination in ancient
times, the charts show that the Chinese people also had rather scientific concepts of
them. Thus, the paintings clearly display both tails and heads, some of them even
with smaller dots and circles indicating that nuclei could be detected in the comas.
Several of them also indicate some degree of inspiration by likenesses to antlers,
trees, beetles or candelabra, and it seems associations of this kind could well have
been suggested by comets over two thousand years ago.
156 Prehistoric encounters?

there are very few in Egyptian and Babylonian records. And yet such
comparatively mundane objects as planets came to have deities
associated with them.
Some hint of the resolution of this paradox comes from two
biblical passages which seem to describe comets. The author of
Genesis (15:17) wrote: "When the sun went down, and it was dark,
behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp. . . .’ The description
appears to be that of a comet; but its representation is that of a vision
of God to Abraham. Or again, in I Chronicles (21:16): "And David
lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord standing between the
earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out
over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders of Israel, who were
clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.’ Once more the object is
seen as a divine being, an "angel of the Lord’, and a religious
interpretation is placed on a natural phenomenon.
Another hint is provided by the ubiquity of Flood myths amongst
ancient legends. For if there existed a dense meteor stream of the kind
we have discussed, a passage one year through the wake of the
progenitor comet could well have been a devastating event
precipitating both rain and flood on such a disastrous scale that it
would not have been forgotten. Indeed, if such were to have happened,
the fear of repetition would have been natural and man would have
been especially fearful of those later passages when the approaching
comet, the source of the stream, was so placed as to darken the Sun. Our
ancestors are known to have been peculiarly fearful of eclipses, the
work of dragons and devils, and it might be that they established a
perfectly logical association with comets.
We are thus led to the possibility that, indeed, the comets are there
in the record, not in the objective, materialistic form appropriate to a
scientific age, but as divine creatures of the sky. It is to this question
that we now turn.
8 • Comets and gods

The ancient religions ofprehistoric man were unmistakably polytheistic

and astronomical in character. This raises questions concerning the
basic nature of the gods that were worshipped. If comets were included
among the principal deities, their erratic motion and changing
appearance could well have inspired a ready acceptance of the fickle
character of ancient gods. In this chapter, we begin by looking back
through mediaeval times to the classical period and note that many
Greek and Roman philosophers were, amongst other things, greatly
concerned to explain comets in materialistic terms and rid them of any
supernatural qualities. In as much as the heads and tails of comets
appeared often to take on a human form or that of animals, the aim
seems to have been to prove that these were illusions created by
perfectly natural causes. By such means it may be they expected to
divest comets of their supernatural qualities. In practice, however, belief
in the gods was so entrenched that the arguments seem merely to have
served to convince that the gods were invisible. To illustrate some of
these developments, we give particular attention to the writings of the
poet Lucretius. According to our hypothesis, the rise of materialism in
classical times came with the passing away of some very important
prehistoric gods which were comets in the sky. Many of the legends of
mythology can thus be interpreted as highly embellished accounts of the
evolution of one, or perhaps a few, very large comets during the last
2.000 years of prehistory.
The subject matter of this and the following chapters has at the outset
to be recognized as a simple attempt to see our past through different
eyes. On its own, ancient textual evidence does not constitute proof: we
deal therefore with the compatibility of ideas and measure their strength
when woven together by the extent to which they follow the predictions
of the earlier chapters.

8.1 Theories about comets: how they have evolved

Unlike previous returns of Halley's comet, that of 1758 was
predicted. There is nothing like a successful prediction to convert
non-believers, and in this case, the occasion was greatly to favour
Newton's law of gravitation. The lawr has of course continued to
dominate our understanding of the universe, and it is all too easy for
us now to see the event of 1758 as relevant only to this new-found
158 Comets and gods

mastery over nature’s secrets. We tend perhaps to overlook the

transformation which the event also produced in popular attitudes to
comets had seemed to he guided -solely by ■caprice—
where previously there was none. Until Newton’s time, the mysterious
comets had seemed to be guided solely by caprice.
Then as now, comets appeared in the heavens in the most diverse
forms. There was no part of the sky, no constellation or region which
was not liable to occasional visits. There was no season of the year, no
hour of the day or night when comets might not be seen above the
horizon. In like manner, the size and aspect of the comets were of
every character, from the dim spot just visible to the eye perhaps
fortified by the telescope, up to a gigantic brilliant object, with a tail
stretching across the heavens from horizon to zenith. So also the
direction of the tail of the comet seemed at first to admit of every
possible position: it might stand straight up in the sky as if the comet
were about to plunge below the horizon; it might stream down from
the head of the comet as if the body had been shot up from below; it
might slope to the right or to the left. It is no wonder that very little
order was at first to be detected among the comets. We need only
remind ourselves they were once thought more worthy of the Earth’s
changing atmosphere than of the orderly heavens. Whereas the stars
generally inspired a sense of constancy and permanence, the comets
appeared to be the jokers in the pack. Comets and chaos went hand in
hand. So, if anything, it was the complete unpredictability of comets
rather than the reverse that impressed itself upon the average viewer.
A viewer can of course contemplate unpredictability in a butterfly
with rather greater equanimity than in an elephant on the rampage.
The latter undoubtedly provides the better parallel in this case. Right
up to mediaeval times, comets were a source not just of confusion but
of terror. They seem to have engendered a feeling of virtual
helplessness as if in the presence of superhuman forces. Indeed, they
were widely regarded as omens of quite terrible import: wars,
earthquakes, epidemics and the like were all among their forebod-
ings. It is likely that more direct assaults, straightforward impacts on
the Earth were also anticipated. Newton himself was well aware of
this possibility. The appearance of Halley’s comet in AD 66 for
example was a warning to the Jews of the coming destruction of
Jerusalem, and when it appeared in 1066, it presaged the conquest of
England by the Normans. The apparition of 1453 was associated in
the popular mind with the fall of Constantinople. The effects,
imagined or otherwise, were, to say the least, on a very generous scale.
 Comets and gods 159

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21. Multiple-tailed comet of 1744 announced on a broadsheet printed in Augsburg.

Such announcements were commonplace in mediaeval times and bear witness to the
great concern such spectacles aroused.

Now, we may have come to see in this dread of comets the

unreasoning response of elementary and superstitious minds; we may
have assumed that people were forever imagining unproven associ-
ations between the heavens above and the Earth below; and we may
see in our knowledge of their attitudes proof of an ancient belief in the
power of magical forces. But the logic supporting this viewpoint does
leave a little to be desired. True, it is possible that in seeking the causes
for certain effects, there may have been an element of fantasy in our
ancestors’ explanations. But that does not mean we should always
credit them with inventing puerile connections: the widespread
belief that comets portended disaster (literally, 'evil star’) is in truth
just as likely to have its origin in real evidence that a comet actually
did cause disaster as in any wild imaginings of men in the remote past.
That being the case, any possible evidence of this kind probably
would have involved disaster and catastrophe on a scale not normally
conceived since the memory of it, however mutilated by the ravages
of time, succeeded in surviving in the popular mind down through
many centuries. But the choice between the alternatives, real or
160 Comets and gods

imagined catastrophes, is no longer purely a matter of guesswork. As

we have seen in the previous chapters, comet-induced catastrophes
within near historic times are a reasonable possibility. It seems that if
we know what we are looking for, the positive evidence in historical
records may be there to be found.
As good a starting point as any for a search is the superb history of
the 1577 comet by Heilman. This is a most thorough and useful
enquiry into the evolution of ideas about comets during the
Renaissance period. The ferment of theories was obviously consider-
able. But the development was not haphazard. Each step in
understanding, forward or back, had its basis in rational thought,
and Heilman brings out particularly well the way in which the ideas of
the mediaeval philosophers developed naturally from those of their
classical counterparts. Indeed, only a very casual reading of the
classical authors is required to reveal that they also were very greatly
occupied with providing rational explanations for the behaviour of
comets. If we were not already aware of the fear comets generated, we
might well wonder what it was in these objects that so captured their
imagination. Were the natural philosophers of ancient Greece and
Rome perhaps a little closer in time to a comet-induced catastrophe?
Were they perhaps trying to persuade readers that comets were not
divine or satanic beings given to hurling thunderbolts at a wayward
mankind? We might expect to test such a speculation by paying close
attention to the detail of their arguments.
One of the earliest philosophers of whom we have knowledge was
Thales of Miletus 625-545 BC. It is thought that he was a merchant
who travelled to Egypt where he obtained an understanding of
geometry, and to Mesopotamia where he studied astronomy. He is
said to have predicted a solar eclipse, possibly that of 585 BC, using
the Babylonian saronic cycle. Thales doubtless came across the
creation stories of the Babylonians and the Egyptians, in both of
which water featured as part of the primaeval chaos, for he supposed
that all things came from water at the beginning. The Earth, he
thought, was a disc with waters below, on which it floated, and with
waters above from which the rains came. By reason of these
inheritances of Sumerian doctrine, we tend to see Thales primarily as
a link in a chain of diffusion of knowledge from the east, but this is
probably an oversimplification. There is an equally ancient and
independent mythology and cosmology in Greek history. No doubt
Thales was able to reflect on the similarities and differences in
lormulating his philosophy. For the first time perhaps, we detect the
 Comets and gods 161
signs of a dialectical mode of thought, a distillation of something new
from the comparison of conflicting theories.
In Thales’ philosophy and that of the Ionian Greeks generally,
nature did indeed become for the first time very much more
impersonal than it was in all the Bronze Age cosmologies. It seems the
pre-Socratic Greek philosophers were concerned above all to banish
the gods from nature. They supposed in particular that the heavenly
bodies were solid material objects, not powerful personalized beings.
The Latin word for stars (sidera) and the Greek word for iron
(,sideros) have a common root, so the new view must have been
pressed with some success. But one wonders whether the later
interpreters have fully appreciated the significance of this radical
step? It is obviously a little too glib to credit the Greeks with a far-
seeing knowledge of the constitution of the stars and planets. As it has
turned out, they were not wrong in their supposition, but the
association then can only have been a guess and would have been
quite unconvincing unless the material attributes were for the Greeks
linked in some very direct way with heavenly objects. As we are now
well aware, the association of iron is most naturally with meteoritic
phenomena, and there is no reason why falls should not have been
known to the early classical philosophers. Indeed, they bracketed
together a whole range of things like comets, shooting stars,
thunderbolts, meteorites and the like. The idea that they all originate
in some way from the home of stars, the aether above, is hardly a
discordant one. It is safe to assume these early thinkers knew from
experience, or at least thought they knew, that comets had material
attributes.
We can easily overlook this fact however because later classical
philosophers developed new conceptions of the universe which were
subsequently taken up and greatly elaborated by mediaeval astro-
nomers. According to them, the moving planets were supported in
the heavens by invisible crystal spheres. This later theory made it
quite reasonable to cast doubt on comets as part of the astronomical
framework, how was it possible for solid objects to penetrate the
heavenly spheres? It is interesting to reflect on the consequences of
this logic. Aristotle, 384-322 BC, had provided one of the best early
theories of the origin of comets: he supposed fiery phenomena were
generated in the interface between the air and the aethereal zone
beyond. As the latter rotated, friction between it and the stationary
air produced ‘sparks’. Although Aristotle may originally have
envisaged some of these sparks being the cause of stars, it seems the
162 Comets and gods

existence of crystal spheres would eventually have argued against the

notion. So it was inevitable that comets should be treated merely as
meteorological phenomena, thereby separating them from the
celestial sphere containing the stars. Whatever eminence the comets
may have enjoyed originally as part of the astronomical scene,
academic logic appeared to make them no more important than
clouds or lightning. Admittedly they could still be frightening but no
more so, it might have been reasoned, than a violent thunderstorm. It
is no wonder that later interpreters completely lost sight of the
significance of comets to those early philosophers who presumably
saw in their material attributes the proof that heavenly bodies were
not heavenly: a proof, we must remember, that was so convincing to
at least the more rational contemporaries that materialism took root
in Greek philosophy and became the foundation of scientific thought.
We are so conditioned nowadays by the comparative unimportance
of comets that it may come as a surprise to realize that comets could
have been among those heavenly bodies or powerful personalized
beings that these early philosophers were seeking to treat like
ordinary objects. But if this were so comets could have been among
the principal deities of pre-classical times. The significance of this
interesting possibility has not previously been appreciated as far as
we are aware, and it is evidently of crucial importance.

8.2 Pre-classical association with deities in the sky

Although the word comet is derived from the Greek Kometes ('hairy
one’), it was almost certainly the Egyptians who first used the
description ‘a hairy star’. The Egyptians are reported alluding to the
analogy of long female tresses in connection with the appearance of a
spectacular comet. There has also been a tentative identification of
the hieroglyph for a comet with a nameless hieroglyph ideogram
which was many years ago vaguely interpreted as ‘woman with
dishevelled hair’. This hieroglyph is almost a replica of the well-
known Sky goddess Nut, except for the addition of the long-flowing
hair tresses. That comets were exalted as gods may therefore be
susceptible to direct proof—in the meantime, we review some of the
circumstantial evidence pointing this way.
One of our later informants concerning classical theories of the
nature of comets is Seneca (4 BC-AD 65). It is known that he conducted
an unsuccessful search for early physical theories of their origin
amongst Egyptian and Babylonian records. This failure coupled with
the trend towards seeing comets as atmospheric rather than
 Comets and gods 163

astronomical phenomena may well have led later students to

conclude comets must have been so unimpressive as to be of little
importance to these earlier civilizations. Thus could seemingly
impeccable logic lead to a conclusion diametrically opposed to reality
as it must have been—the reality we have uncovered in previous
chapters. If comets were among the gods of pre-classical times, the
fact that the Egyptian and Babylonian astronomers had no theory of
comets may be because a presumption of divinity stifled any
speculation as to their physical origin. It is remarkable indeed how
few are the recognizable references to comets as such in Babylonian
and Egyptian records. This cannot be because they did not exist, so it
must be because they were generally described as something else. If
we accept this picture of comets as divine figures in the sky, we are
obliged to see them as being among the most important and
fundamental elements of the ancient sky. We need hardly emphasize
how natural this picture would have been if the sky contained short-
period comets perhaps with one or more sometimes an outstanding
celestial spectacle during close passages. The Hellenic philosophers
were thus responsible for a really quite major revolution in human
thought: they were the first to describe comets in particular much as
they appear to us, the first to make rational attempts to explain their
origin in terms that we recognize as scientific.
The fact that these attempts eventually led the Greeks to treat
comets as atmospheric can mislead us into thinking this was the view
of their predecessors also. However there can be little doubt that the
Babylonians before them considered comets to be astronomical in
character, wanderers amongst the stars. Both the fixed stars and the
comets were together associated with omens; omens that were not in
the early days however concerned with the fate of individuals. The
records show that it was the well-being of the country that was at
stake: weather and harvest, drought and famine, war and peace, and
the fate of kings. Typical of these is an omen which, according to
Schaumberger, may well go back to the Dynasty of Akkad (circa
2300 BC) : ‘If Ishtar appears in the East in the month of Airu and the
Great and Small Twins surround her, all four of them, and she is
dark, then will the king of Elam fall sick and not remain alive.1
The experts have not yet provided an explanation of the frequently
referred to Twins but Ishtar was one of the great trilogy of
Babylonian gods which included Shamash (the Sun) and Sin (the
Moon). There are obvious reasons why the latter two should be
regarded as influencing affairs on Earth but the grounds tor such
164 Comets and gods

associations with the planet Venus, with which the goddess Ishtar was
later identified, remain obscure. Indeed, if the association is correct,
the phrase ‘she is dark’ is curious, to say the least. As it happens, there
are several indications of a transference of name in the past, for
example, in middle Persian texts, this member of the trilogy is known
as Anahit, also later identified with Venus, and is, according to
Nyberg, best likened to a river and interpreted as the Milky Way. At
the same time, he describes the great celestial god as one that might
‘leave the region of the stars’ and approach the Earth. Mighty and
splendid are the epithets employed with descriptions on a scale
difficult to associate with a point of light, for example, the phrase: ‘a
height of a thousand men’. It has been suggested that these
descriptions do not fit the Milky Way but that they will serve for
Venus. Neither in fact is all that convincing but it could be argued
that, as descriptions of a vast meteor stream, they serve rather well. The
possible implication is that the god Ishtar may in the past have
been associated with one particularly conspicuous periodic comet
in Earth-crossing orbit. The reasons for associating it with omens to
do with survival of the state thus become rather obvious.
Some words by an expert in comparative religion concerning the
beings harboured by the ancient heavens, but with no conception of
the association we are now discussing, might serve to illustrate
something of the situation as it was:

‘Anyone who has visited (let us say) the British Museum, or the
archaeological galleries of the Louvre, or the Musee Guimet
cannot fail to be impressed by the ease with which the great nations
of antiquity accepted the supposition that the world in which they
lived was dominated by a plurality of beings of human or even
bestial character, framed on a scale larger than normal. . . . Why
was it that ancient Sumerians for example could credit the
existence of deities who, though terrifying, were yet human beings
writ large? How could Egyptians for a period equal in length to
that which separates us from the reign of Alexander the Great
(nearly 2,500 years) have been to all intents and purposes perfectly
satisfied with a view of the universe which made it rather like a
colossal game of chess, with no players, but only pieces of varying
magnitudes, moving about of their own initiative, and treating
humanity as pawns?’

We have to ask what conceivable objects could have given rise to

such ideas. Possibly the Sun and Moon might just have been credited
 Comets and gods 165
with great size, or the stars with sufficient numbers but the bestial
character and disposition to disorderly motion hardly ring true.
Comets on the other hand do seem to fit the bill more satisfactorily.
Admittedly, we cannot claim it yet as an established fact but we
believe there are grounds for supposing comets really were among the
principal deities of primitive man.
It may be no coincidence that just at the time the Greeks were learning
to dissociate comets from gods, so their contemporaries Amos the
Hebrew, Zoroaster the Persian and Buddha the Indian all separated
their gods from nature. These religious reformers all minimized the
roles assigned to the gods in earlier civilizations such as rainmaking
and providing a good harvest, such as producing plagues and causing
thunderbolts. To what common factor could these reformers
perhaps appeal that would allow them then successfully to persuade
some of their listeners of the correctness of their radical views? If, as
previous chapters have shown, the stock of short-period comets was
rapidly dwindling, the terror they evoked would have been
correspondingly diminished. Perhaps some time soon after the start
of the first millennium BC, some particularly significant comet or god
got diverted out of the solar system never to be seen again? Or
perhaps the fuel for its tail simply came to an end? Only when comets
had sufficiently died away and man was learning not necessarily to
associate terrestrial effects with celestial causes, could he begin to
contemplate other kinds of supernatural influence. Nowadays, we
may be taught to believe that a manifold of gods is a natural product
of primitive minds and that the advance towards a single less tangible
god a natural consequence of inevitable anthropological forces. But
we need not subscribe totally to such a theory here. The pagan beliefs
were very plausibly supported by an appeal to quite visible celestial
forces. As the sky cleared of comets then, so the old gods became
more abstract and less real, and the world of the ancients became
more impersonal and material. Thus, we might suppose, were made
the first tentative steps towards modern science and modern religion.
At the root of both apparently lies the understanding that comets
were truly of material origin. The supreme irony is that religion in
throwing away its multiplicity of gods may have caused astronomy to
lose sight of its multiplicity of comets.

8.3 Illustration of classical ideas through the works of Lucretius

Historical analysis is fraught with difficulties and conclusions are
liable to be sterile if not adequately supported by reference to original
166 Comets and gods

sources. In this case, it is not to be expected that we shall easily find

direct proof among such sources of the decline in the significance of
comets. After all, the works in question have been raked over by
analysts and translators right up to modern times, and throughout
this process they have increasingly adopted a view of the world in
which comets did not have a major role. A present-day analyst for
example would until now have been considered irrational to extract
from his translation anything but a twentieth-century picture of
comets as they now appear. It is to be expected then that the
translation and the logic of the past philosopher’s case will be broadly
consistent with a picture in which comets were not of major
importance to classical man. If this were not the case, modern
scholarship would already have foundered. So, even if evidence of the
kind we are seeking were there in the first place, it will of necessity
have been submerged and distorted by the passage of time. The best
we can hope for in a cursory analysis are ambiguities in the evidence or
revelations of a contrary argument consistent with the picture we are
now describing.
With this in mind, it may be that a look at some extracts from the
writings of one of the greatest of Roman philosophers, Lucretius, will
serve to illustrate the thesis we are developing. To justify this choice
of authority, we will not write our own eulogy on Lucretius: we will
turn to a modern translator, Latham. Lucretius was in fact a
representative of the Epicurean school, but apart from his great poem
‘The Nature of the Universe’, he is scarcely more than a name. He
must have been born soon after 100 BC on the eve of the murderous
civil war between the autocrat Sulla and the popular leader Marius.
He was probably already dead when his poem was given to the world
around 55 BC during that uneasy lull that preceded the recrudescence
of civil war under Pompey and Caesar. He thus lived at a time when
Greek and Roman thought had already evolved through 500 years or
so. Suppose we simply discount the European dark ages, and
consider Lucretius as part of the Renaissance springboard, which
indeed he was, then he is a philosopher who sits conveniently halfway
between modern science and early classical thinking. His arguments
are thus rather well placed for a judgement of the starting point from
which modern science has evolved.
Latham says:
L
under the Roman Empire there were many avowed Epicureans;
but they were [mostly] interested in the Master’s tolerant and easy-
going morality rather than in its scientific and philosophic
 Comets and gods 167
foundations. To the Christians the whole system was of course
anathema, though some of the Fathers found Lucretius a useful
arsenal of ammunition against the Pagan gods. From the collapse
of Classical civilization only one battered manuscript of [his] poem
was preserved to form the basis of all existing copies. In the
Renaissance Lucretius was rediscovered as a poet; but it is only
since the seventeenth century, when the rationalizing French priest
Gassendi advanced an atomic theory based on his teaching, that
Epicureanism has been treated with respect as a serious attempt
to explain the physical universe.. . . Today, for better or for worse,
the atom has been well and truly split, and it looks as though much
of the mechanical materialism of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries has been shattered with it. But this change, which may not
be permanent, in the content of current scientific theories does not
lessen the value of Lucretius’ poem as a poet’s exposition of the
scientific outlook—or at least of an outlook which has inspired
much of the most fruitful work in the field of the natural sciences.
Lucretius was one of the relatively small number who have
accepted the evidence of the senses at its face value—have
dismissed metaphysical abstractions. Divine Providence and the
immortal soul as vain illusions—and at the same time have found
ample grounds for wonder and joy in the perceptible universe and
the omnipotent and omnipresent working of natural law.
Tn essence Epicureanism is the simplest of all philosophies—so
simple that it is hard to find words for it in a language that teems
with names for objects which Epicurus believed to be non-existent.
He believed that all knowledge is derived from the senses. Things
are exactly as they appear to be to our senses, or rather as they
would appear to be if our senses were slightly more acute. Material
objects are perceived. Therefore they exist. When the wind blows
through the tree tops, we perceive that the branches toss; but the
wind itself is not perceived. Must we then suppose that it is
something different in kind from the things we do perceive? Not at
all. We can imagine it [i.e. form an image of it] as a stream of
material particles, like motes in a sunbeam but even smaller,
knocking against the boughs. By similar reasoning, Epicurus
sought to explain everything we perceive without positing the
existence of anything other than material objects and the space in
which they move. . . . We are all wrong when we delude ourselves
with dreams, or torment ourselves with nightmares, of invisible
powers interfering to upset the regular and determinate working of
168 Comets and gods

the perceptible universe.

‘Most of the Epicurean dogmas, however startling they may
appear at first sight, can be readily grasped as attempts to apply
this central principle in the absence of microscopes or other aids to
sense-perception and of any technique for testing hypotheses by
practical experiment. As expounded by Lucretius, they fit easily
into place with no more explanation than he himself supplies. Of
course every dogma has a history. The historically minded reader
will be intrigued to catch the echoes of forgotten controversies. . . .
He will trace the debt of Epicurus to the fifth-century atomists,
Leucippus and Democritus, and speculate how far these in their
turn were trying to reconcile the individualist tendencies of the
Ionians with the totalitarianism of the Western Greeks. But it is
possible to know nothing of these things and still to understand
and enjoy Lucretius. Lor these problems lie below the surface; and
Epicurus was consistently and deliberately superficial. He believed
that truth was not at the bottom of a well, but near to the surface,
scarcely veiled in the outward appearance of things. Lor this reason
his language was pictorial, and in the hands of a poet easily became
picturesque. Lor the same reason he was remarkably free from the
tyranny of words and the disguised assumptions implied in them.
He was less inclined than most philosophers to regard the common
beliefs of his contemporaries as universal truths. Plato and
Aristotle were doubtless far more profound thinkers; but they were
unmistakably dated as fourth-century Greeks, thinking in terms of
Hellene and Barbarian, citizen and alien, free man and slave. Lor
Epicurus, these distinctions which eluded the senses were not part
of the essence of man, but mere accidents.’
But Latham tells us that in one notable particular, Epicurus failed
to escape the limitations of his age.

‘He accepted the word ‘god’ in the Classical, not the Christian,
sense as the name of an object. He could not believe that those
stately figures that caught his eye at every street corner, that were
stamped on every coin and painted on every jar, were images that
had formed themselves in the mind atoms of the original artists
without pressure from without. They must correspond to some
external object. So he found a home for the blessed Olympians far
away from human affairs in the interspaces between the worlds,
and worshipped them as models of felicity in the happy assurance
that they were impotent as they were indifferent.’ [Our italics.]
 Comets and gods 169
In the hands of Lucretius, quite determinedly materialist and
seeking to explain all action in terms of substance and motion, these
ideas had clearly developed to the stage where the gods were outwith
the visible world and nothing more than the invention of men in
whom ‘the balance of their minds is upset by fear’. Invisible gods that
were neither in the world nor taking part in it would hardly appear to
have been a necessary part of Lucretian philosophy: we must suppose
they were retained because it would have gone too far against the
spirit of the times to reject them altogether. Lucretius was thus
writing for an age that was adapting to the idea that gods were only in
the mind. Two hundred years earlier, such ideas would have been
unacceptable, the gods were still much more real. Indeed, it is not
credible that contemporary admirers of Epicurean philosophy and all
that it stood for could have tolerated implications that the gods were
intangible or invisible. Certainly it was not part of the materialist
view of Epicurus that his sky-gods should have been exercising
remote control over the minds and lives of men. But inescapably,
Epicurus would have been dealing with what were imagined by him
and his readers to be real objects. Whether we refer to the early
Romans and Greeks themselves, or look further afield to the Indians,
the Sumerians or the Celts, they all were basically agreed that many of
the gods were in some sense located in the sky. Today, it might seem
the gods must have been aethereal beings or, like constellations,
merely patterns among the stars, but this could not have served at all
for Epicurus and his contemporaries. His philosophy was unmis-
takably at one with the presence of real material bodies in the sky
which the community saw as gods. By the time we come to Lucretius
however, the gods are being banished from the thinking man’s visible
world and we are left with a purely materialistic vision of how it all
works. Where and when exactly the shift of paradigm took place
need not concern us; almost certainly it was a drawn-out process and
had already occurred in previous generations. All that matters for our
present purpose is our confidence in Lucretius as an apostle of
materialistic doctrine, one who was given to seeking explanations of
phenomena in terms which we would now recognize as scientific.
The climate of opinion in which Lucretius spoke forth was however
still one in which the gods were material bodies and endowed with
considerable powers. By providing ordinary mechanistic explanations
of various natural phenomena often attributed to the gods, Lucretius
reckoned on the one hand to dissuade readers of the need for divine
powers. On the other hand, he was at pains to demonstrate that
170 Comets and gods

divine existence was but an illusion read into material bodies. In an

important passage that illustrates this, Lucretius insisted that his
readers abandon the idea that astronomical and earthly bodies were
thinking or purposeful gods. His case was based on an earlier
demonstration that the capacity for thought could arise only in living
things. Astronomical bodies were obviously without sinews and
blood and therefore possessed no life. And among the astronomical
bodies, he seemed without doubt to include comets. Maybe we
should let the words of Lucretius convey something of this line of
argument:

‘Before I attempt to utter oracles on this theme, with more sanctity

and far surer reason than those the Delphic prophetess pro-
nounces, drugged by the laurel fumes from Apollo’s tripod, I will
first set your mind at rest with words of wisdom. Do not imagine,
under the spell of superstition, that lands and sun and sky, sea,
stars and moon, must endure for ever because they are endowed
with a divine body. Do not for that reason think it right that
punishment appropriate to a monstrous crime should be imposed,
as on the rebellious Titans, on all those who by their reasoning [i.e.
according to the Epicurean’s reasoning] breach the ramparts of the
world and seek to darken heaven’s brightest luminary, the sun,
belittling with mortal speech immortal beings. In fact, these objects
are so far from divinity, so unworthy of a place among the gods, that
they may rather serve to impress upon us the type of the lifeless and
the insensible. Obviously, it is only with certain bodies that mind
and intelligence can coexist. A tree cannot exist in the ether, or
clouds in the salt sea, as fishes cannot live in the fields or blood flow
in wood or sap in stones. There is a determined and allotted place
for the growth and presence of everything. So mind cannot rise alone
without body or apart from sinews and blood. If it could do this,
then surely it could much more readily function in head or
shoulders or the tips of heels or be born in any other part, so long as
it was held in the same container, that is to say, in the same man.
Since, however, even in the human body we see a determined and
alloted place set aside for the growth and presence of spirit and
mind, we have even stronger grounds for denying that they can
survive apart from all body or animal form in the crumbling clods
of earth or the fire of the sun or in water or on the high borderland
of ether. These objects, therefore, are not endowed with divine
consciousness, since they cannot even possess living spirits.’
 Comets and gods 171
In this paragraph. Lucretius evidently decries any idea that parts of
the universe possess divine power. He ridicules the habit of visiting
human practices on lifeless beings as if they had minds: thus it is
wrong to suppose punishment is imposed on objects like Titans for
breaking through the celestial framework and obscuring the Sun. But
to what objects does he refer? The references can but put one in mind
of the much-favoured cometary theory of Aristotle. This, as we have
seen, had these objects formed in the borderland between air and
aether, then breaking away into the air below or the aether above. It
seems that Lucretius' argument can make reasonable sense only if
comets.were among the gods and the Titans were a special group of
comets which could somehow, on occasion, dim the Sun.
For this to be thought possible the knowledge that some very large
comet indeed had at some time appeared must have been available. In
recent centuries, no such large comet capable of dimming the Sun has
ever been observed. However this cannot be raised against the
possibility as an exceptional comet strongly outgassing, with its tail
along the line of sight to the Sun, could perceptibly dim sunlight
during transit. In like manner, one cannot casually reject the claim by
Diodorus of Sicily that the Chaldeans for example knew about the
regular return of periodic comets, a fact of present-day knowledge
that we now presume originated only with Halley. Such claims were
even linked with the occurrence of solar eclipses. The picturesque
association of eclipses with an act of swallowing by a dragon is a very-
common theme in the ancient world, and such a description might
easily be associated also with huge visible comets.
Moreover, that the comets were not simply benign visions in the
sky was also well known to Lucretius. Later on in his poem, he tells of
historical events which could easily relate to an encounter of a comet
with Earth. He is expounding his view, a popular one in classical
philosophy, that life on Earth comes in cycles: 'this world is newly
made: its origin is a recent event, not one of remote antiquity.' The
theory is one of balance most of the time between opposing forces,
fire and water, either of which can gain the upper hand and bring an
age to a close. Lucretius begins with a reference to 'maxima mundi
membra’, an interesting phrase which has often been taken to mean
the four basic elements of the world: earth, water, air and fire. The
interpretation due to Giussam may not be entirely correct however,
especially as Lucretius did not subscribe to Empedocles’ basic
elements. Perhaps the phrase relates to those mighty gods battling it
out in the sky. Latham’s translation appears to catch the flavour:
172 Comets and gods

‘Since civil strife rages among the world’s warring elements on so

vast a scale, it may be that their long battle will some day be
decided. Perhaps the sun and heat will overpower the rivers and
drink their waters dry. They are struggling to do this now, but have
not yet accomplished their aim: the rivers maintain such ample
resources and threaten on their side to deluge everything from the
deep reservoir of the ocean. They, too, are thwarted: their ranks
are thinned by the ocean-scouring winds and the hery sun’s
dissolvent rays, confident of their power to dry up every drop
before the water can achieve the goal of its enterprise. So these
opposing forces maintain their heated conflict, contending on
equal terms for gigantic issues. But legend tells of one occasion
when fire got the upper hand and once when water lorded it over
the land.
‘The victory of fire, when earth felt its withering blast, occurred
when the galloping steeds that draw the chariot of the sun swept
Phaethon from the true course, right out of the zone of ether and
far over all the lands. Then the Father Almighty, in a fierce gust of
anger, struck down the aspiring Phaethon with a sudden stroke of
his thunderbolt, down out of the chariot to the earth. But the sun
intercepted the everlasting torch of the firmament in its fall,
brought the trembling steeds back to the yoke from their stampede
and, guiding them along their proper course, restored the universe
to order. Such is the story as recited by the ancient bards of Greece,
a story utterly rejected by true doctrine. What may really lead to
the triumph of fire is an increase in the accumulation of its particles
out of infinite space. Then comes the crisis: either its forces for
some reason suffer a setback, or the world shrivels in its parching
blasts and comes to an end.
‘Another legend tells how water likewise once massed its forces
and began to prevail, till many cities of men were drowned beneath
its floods. Then, when there came some diversion and withdrawal
of the reinforcements mustered out of the infinite, the rains halted
and the rivers checked their flow.’

The elements of the Phaethon tale are taken up in the next chapter,
but note how the object is described as ‘the everlasting torch of the
firmament’ and how it is guided on its proper course by the Sun. The
phrase ‘aeternam ... lampada mundi ’juxtaposes a sense of perpetuity
with a word that was commonly used to describe a meteor resembling
a flaming torch: only a regularly recurring comet meets such a
 Comets and gods 173
description. There are further grounds, as we shall see, for supposing
the head of the comet is the Father Almighty and Phaethon a
fragment in its tail, but the claim that their actions are inspired by
divine intent is renounced or ‘utterly rejected by true doctrine’ since
Lucretius attributes them all to ‘an increase in the accumulation of its
particles out of infinite space’, precisely the mechanism Aristotle
invented to explain comets. If Lucretius is the objective analyst
modern opinion claims him to be, accepting the world around him
more or less at face value, then there is no escape. The Earth was
indeed reputed to have been struck in earlier times, presumably more
than once, by fragments of an ‘everlasting’ comet. On one or more
occasions, a large piece impacting on the sea may have been sufficient
also to cause a general flood. Surprisingly, however, the ‘ocean’ is
probably not the sea but the meteor stream in the sky.
One other aspect of the climate of opinion in which Lucretius was
seeking to establish his ideas deserves attention: we consider
meteorological phenomena. In earlier classical times, phenomena
like lightning and thunderbolts, the most powerful effects of
‘meteorology’, were, as the very name implies, quite confidently held
to originate in forces in the aether above. Thunderbolts or -stones
were unmistakably thought to be real physical objects (see Plates 23
and 24) and were often attributed to gods who hurled them from the
sky. As we have seen already, any appreciation of the material aspects
of the stars themselves must have originated in such knowledge. Such
ideas were evidently still at large in the popular mind at the time of
Lucretius, but he also belonged to a generation of philosophers who
were now inclining to the view that thunderbolts were nothing more
than the visible consequences of lightning. There are indeed sufficient
similarities in his descriptions of both lightning and thunderbolts,
such as the massing of clouds, their tendency towards seasonal
occurrence and their capacity to liquefy metals, for later interpreters
to see in them but different aspects of the same phenomenon, namely
lightning. In subsequent times, of course, the view gamed ground that
lightning was a truly atmospheric phenomenon and, armed with
arguments of the kind used by Lucretius, men would naturally have
become convinced that thunderbolts never originated beyond the
atmosphere: indeed, as missiles of the gods, they were figments of the
imagination. So it came about that men of learning, versed in classical
knowledge, were absolutely certain that stones never fell from the
sky. It is hard for us now to envisage the extraordinary depth of this
conviction which, until just short of only 200 years ago, led the
174 Comets and gods

learned to dismiss such ideas as complete and utter nonsense. But

dismiss them they did and one can only suppose that prior to the
modern facts asserting themselves, the late classical arguments must
have carried far greater weight than they deserved—or deserve! It
behoves us therefore to be very cautious considering Lucretius’
arguments on these questions. Indeed, there are fairly strong
indications that Lucretius’ thunderbolts do not always have the
character of lightning that a modern observer would be inclined to
describe. Thus, although he claims: ‘such is the ominous night of
cloud-rack that gathers overhead, out of whose gloom the visage of
black dread looms down upon us, when the storm is making ready to
launch its bolts. . . .’ he continues: ‘With the thunderbolt’s [sic] heavy
freight of fire and wind, it trails in its wake a murky tempest big with
levin-bolt and blast.’ He goes on to describe a fiery object piercing its
way through the sky, shedding lumps as its goes: ‘it is in much the
same way that a leaden sling-bolt often grows hot in its flight through
dropping many petrifactive particles and picking up fire in the air.’
The picture Lucretius describes, not unlike a meteorite fall, seems to
be one of a barrage of rocket-like missiles, each carrying in its wake
a huge murky vapour trail, each perhaps miniature versions of the
Sikhote-Alin spectacle (see Plate 18). ‘There follows that shattering
roar that sounds as though the celestial vault had burst asunder and
were crashing down upon our heads. A tremor lays violent hold upon
the earth, and tumult rumbles through the depth of heaven. . . .’
Now, one cannot prove an extra-terrestrial origin of thunderbolts
from this ambiguous account, but one should nevertheless be aware
of events like the giant meteorite of 1296 described as a ‘stony swarm’
falling on the forests near Velikii Usting in Russia: ‘. . . there
appeared over the town a dark cloud, and it was dark as the night.
. . .lightning kept flashing ceaselessly. And it thundered over the town
so strongly and horribly that it was impossible to hear people talk.
Even the ground seemed to shake and sway continuously as if terrified
by the horror. And clouds of fire arose and collided with one another,
great heat coming from the lightning and thunder.’ Grounds
evidently exist for questioning the hypothesis that Lucretius describes
mere lightning. Lucretius argues for a non-astronomical origin
however and makes a great deal out of the seasonal character of the
phenomenon, claiming it to occur mostly in autumn and to some
extent in spring, the times of conflict between warm and cold air, the
source of clouds. But some doubt hangs over this logic. Certainly
thunderbolts were not so common as to make the regularity obvious.
 Comets and gods 175
and Seneca reporting this same phenomenon was inclined to place it
in midsummer, not the most common time for thunderstorms in the
Mediterranean area. Indeed both Seneca and Pliny, slightly later than
Lucretius, were convinced there were two kinds of thunderbolt, one
atmospheric, the other astronomical. Lucretius’ meteorological
mechanism though plausible is thus not totally convincing. If there
were a disintegrating comet in eccentric Earth-crossing orbit, barely
visible in the first millennium BC, part of a then declining meteor
stream, the annual or biannual events which the classical authors
describe are just those one would expect. The Taurids are intercepted
twice a year, once in midsummer and once in the autumn. It is
evidently possible that Lucretius was recording for us the past
behaviour of an object whose only remnant of distinction could now
be Encke’s comet. That Lucretius was attempting to press his theory
against an established view of a contrary kind can hardly be doubted:

fit is a fruitless task to unroll the Tuscan scrolls, seeking some

revelation of the gods’ hidden purpose. That is no way to study
from which quarter the darting fire has come or into which other it
has passed. ... If it is really Jupiter and the other gods who rock
the flashing frame of heaven with this appalling din and hurl their
fire whenever they have a mind, why do they not see to it that those
who have perpetrated some abominable outrage are struck by
lightning and exhale its flames from a breast transfixed, for a dire
warning to mortals? Why, instead, is some man with a conscience
clear of any sin shrouded unmeriting in a sheet of flame, trapped
and tangled without warning in the fiery storm from heaven? Why
do the throwers waste their strength on deserts? . . . Why does he
launch them into the sea? . . . Lastly, why does he demolish the
holy shrines of the gods and his own splendid abodes with a
devastating bolt?’

There is logic enough here for Lucretius to hoist his contemporary

opposition by its own petard. But that is no reason for it now to mislead
us. We have seen that there is very real doubt that Lucretius’
thunderbolts were atmospheric, so the prevailing wisdom that they
were astronomical and linked with the god was probably correct. It
would not be the first time a theorist has unwittingly used false logic to
deny a phenomenon that seems to undermine his cause.
Thus, although the force of Lucretius’ argument may have
persuaded his followers towards the currently accepted inter-
pretation, the then prevailing climate of opinion was evidently one
176 Comets and gods

22. Illustrations of notable comets of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries taken from Cometographia by Hevelius. 1688.

that tended to see a natural link between stars, comets and

thunderbolts. Indeed, the association must presumably have been the
very one that earlier convinced the majority that the stars and the
gods had material attributes.
A very recent survey of classical and mediaeval literature by
dalFOlmo came up with a huge list of the different terms and
expressions which have been used in the past to describe comets,
meteors and meteor showers. This illustrates perfectly the very real
difficulties modern compilers have had in their attempts to identify
cometary events and determine their nature. The problems for the
analyst are therefore undoubtedly present and we would not expect
 Comets and gods 177

- j*rr~mst*r t~vCu*lx:/«v

It is interesting to note the short narrow tails and round

heads so characteristic of the Neolithic carvings (see Plate 30).
to see the thesis of this chapter established without a good deal more
work. Nevertheless, the hints that modern interpreters may have
missed the significance of parts of pre-Socratic thinking are strong
enough to suggest the viewpoint expressed here may not be far from
the truth. It is interesting that dalfOlmo finds that many of the verbal
expressions used to describe comets that were used in classical times
do not appear at all in the mediaeval documentation. It is as if the real
phenomena of classical times did not really impinge upon the
consciousness of the later writers in quite the same way. In the classical
era for example, the word signum was commonly used by writers and
historians when speaking of different kinds of light in the sky, mostly
178 Comets and gods

comets and sporadic meteors. The term included trades (boards),

globi (globes), faces (torches) and ardores (blazes), all apparently
describing different tail structures. The study of these phenomena
was justified by Seneca who saw, with others, the need to establish
whether there is a fixed succession for all events, that is whether ‘what
has happened before is a cause or an indicator [signum] of what
follows. We will see whether human affairs are any concern to the
gods; whether the sequence of events tells by definite concrete signs
what is going to happen.’
By the time of the Middle Ages however, this rather open-minded
approach had deteriorated significantly. The Christian writers
maintained and emphasized all the most portentous connotations of
signa, imagined or otherwise. People either invented fanciful
connections with human affairs or lost sight of rational links
altogether. It seems the Renaissance may have again set us on the
road to modern science, but only by turning a blind eye towards the
comets, the gods they inspired and the missiles they hurled.

8.4 Mythology as a history of comets

In giving special attention to some writings of Lucretius, we reiterate
that it is not our intention to suggest any very special status for
Lucretius in the history of human thought. His is simply a reasonably
transparent philosophy which is conveniently well placed in time. If,
as we suggest, his writings truly reveal signs of these arguments that
eventually led man to think of gods as invisible beings where before
they had been active, visible creatures in the sky, then our analysis must
be seen as bringing the gods of mythology to life. For the first time, we
begin to see the rationale behind many of their characteristics, the
celestial environment of their adventures for example. We may also
see their many animal forms as merged and stylized representations
of the heads and tails of comets. In fact animal forms were still
explicitly used to describe comets in classical times, the hippeus
(horse-star) and hirci (goat-comets) being mentioned by dall’Olmo. It
is interesting that the sixth-century Byzantine astrologer Lydus also
includes in his classification of comets a type which is god-like. Thus
in his De Ostentis he states: There is also a shining white comet with
silver ‘hair’, shining in such a way that it can scarcely be looked at,
and of human appearance, showing in itself the form of a god.’
Of course, if the gods were comets, it is not to be expected that
many comets could have been continuously followed down the years.
Almost certainly, if the theory is to be believed, we need only suppose
 Comets and gods 179
there were a few specially conspicuous comets in regular recognizable
orbits. It is these objects that would have become the principal gods.
Now, for the first time perhaps, we can begin to understand the
meaning behind their genealogy. It is in essence a record of
fragmentation and fading: a breaking-up that sometimes seems to be
unattended by any visible agency, variously described as virgin birth
or as children devouring a parent. In different countries, we can trace
back through a number of generations to their principal progenitor:
Zeus or Kronos in Greek mythology, Tiamat in Babylonian, and
Atum or Ptah in Egyptian. A time was certainly envisaged when the
founder was alone in the cosmos, sometimes in the form of a ‘cosmic
egg’ but then there emerged offspring which themselves were the
source of further offspring and so on. With the passing of the years,
different versions of the tale were merged and there is a tendency in
unravelling the tale for generations to become overlaid, giving rise to
some quite natural confusion. Certainly one should not look for a
precise history in the accounts. But the main features are nevertheless
fairly clear.
The Egyptians in particular were inclined to simplify and formalize
the pattern and reduce each generation to a single pair. They did in
fact perceive a kind of duality in phenomena generally, but no doubt
this is partly rationalization that came along with the establishment
of national gods. Thus, where there was at first a plurality of gods,
and many local cults devoted to the worship of particular objects,
unification of the state brought with it a tendency to combine in single
gods the functions of the different local divinities. The supreme
primaeval figure, represented by the Djed Column, comprised both a
lotus tree and a cosmic serpent, symbol of light and motion. It both
blossomed in sunlight and, as Apepi, sought to darken the sun!
According to the Memphis tradition the cosmic god Ptah spewed
from his mouth the two deities Nunet and Nun. A similar tradition in
the Hermopolitan story had Atum giving rise to corresponding
figures, Shu and Tefenet. These were the principal gods of the Old
Kingdom, Nunet having particular associations with the air or sky
while Nun was identified with water and primaeval flood. There are
close similarities here to Noah’s flood, but Nun was generally
understood to be a beneficent god who guarded and kept in check the
demonic power of chaos represented by many giant dragon-snakes.
In some accounts. Nun was also the progenitor of Atum, who
emerged standing upon a hill. This primaeval hill had a variety of
forms and was no doubt associated with the Egyptian glorification of
180 Comets and gods

pyramids. We can see in this common identity of Atum with a person

arising from the flood on a hill and a god in the sky, the very earliest
association between Egyptian kings and supernatural powers from
heaven.
A variation on the same theme had Shu produce Nut and Geb but
in the later cosmology things became more elaborate. Nut gave birth
to Osiris and Isis, Seth and Nephthys all of whom together became
important deities in the Egyptian pantheon. Osiris was a supreme and
majestically portrayed sky-god, seemingly dominant throughout the
Old and Middle Kingdoms, and bearing many similarities to the Zeus
and Jupiter of Greek and Roman mythologies. Isis was both sister
and wife to Osiris and bore him a son, Horus, the counterpart of
Apollo in classical mythology. Horus, it seems, reigned in his father’s
place after the beginning of the New Kingdom period when Osiris
descended to the underworld to become judge of the dead. The long
reign of Osiris was not without incident however: for the most part,
events were governed by ma’at, a kind of guiding principle
maintaining harmony in the heavens, but the Egyptians also
recognized propensities for chaos and the whole of their religion
reduced ritual and prayer (‘hike’) to a kind of magic, aimed at
combatting threats from above that were exceedingly real. These
threats were mostly personified by Osiris’ wicked brother Seth who
twice succeeded in killing Osiris. On the first occasion, Osiris drifted
out of sight but was brought back to life by Isis; on the second
occasion, significantly, parts of Osiris’ body were broken off and
deposited in the ground in different places all over Egypt. Once again,
Isis brought Osiris back to life but subsequently he lost his former
glory becoming more and more a god of death. It was left to Horus,
now grown up, to avenge his father’s death by defeating Seth in a
further mighty battle. The subduing of Seth (or Satan), the god of
storms, was an important achievement and from henceforth,
disgraced, the Egyptian mythology placed him on the prow of the
solar barque, watching out for that other great enemy of Ra, the Sun-
god, namely Apepi, the god of darkness. Apepi was not apparently of
Nut’s family but was pictured independently as a snake or dragon,
one of its roles being to eclipse the Sun. However he did this, he does
not seem to have been related to the moon-god, Thoth.
We might venture to paraphrase the mythology as follows: first of
all, there is Ptah, perhaps either the planet Jupiter spewing forth
comets as a result of a close encounter, or simply a large comet
splitting in two; then there is the universal flood followed by a period
 Comets and gods 181
dominated by the sky-god Nunet; this god either produces or is
identical to the god Osiris. The genealogy makes reasonable sense if
the events describe successive phases in the life of a huge comet in
periodic Earth-crossing orbit, but after further break-up and decay,
the main component ceases to be visible and presumably becomes an
Apollo asteroid. Although not part of the principal family of gods,
Apepi may have been another mighty comet periodically dominating
the sky: we can only speculate here but it is not impossible that Halley’s
comet may have been recognized (see later).
An important underlying theme of Egyptian cosmology is belief in
the actual presence of gods’ representatives on earth: thus the
pharaoh seems to have been identified with Horus during the New
Kingdom period. Such beliefs were part of the very fabric of society
itself. In fact, this idea was so much an integral part of the centralized
state control and it survived for such an enormous timespan that we
can safely assume that it was accepted with a conviction tantamount
to certainty. We need have no doubt therefore that minds would have
been turned away completely from any kind of rational explanation
of the sky-gods. The Greek civilization on the other hand was not
subdued to the same degree, at least as far as one can tell. It was still
fearful of gods and very conscious of disasters, but the Greeks
behaved more like disinterested observers of a heavenly pageant
unfolding before their eyes. The situation was to them more like one
in which the earth, an innocent bystander, sometimes takes a badly
aimed custard pie full in the face as a result of overenthusiastic
horseplay amongst the gods. Their mythology has become part of the
common heritage of western civilization, and is amongst the best
known. It is highly complex and has been subjected to any amount of
analysis and critical interpretation on psychological and sociological
lines both in modern times and in the days of classical antiquity. With
so many alternative explanations available, no unique astronomical
interpretation can possibly be claimed. Nevertheless it is possible to
discern some underlying patterns that are not at all unlike those
recorded by the Egyptians.
Among the principal sources of Greek mythology are the Iliad and
the Odyssey by Homer, circa 800 BC. Of the same period, there are
writings by Hesiod and his school, and then in the fifth century BC,
Pindar is another source. The Greeks themselves also systematized a
mass of local and particular mythology that had developed
independently in communities isolated by geography, to form a
mythological prehistory leading up to the large-scale Dorian invasion
182 Comets and gods

and settlement of the Peloponnese around 1000 BC, the time also of
the return of the Heraclids to Mycenae. It is now known that the
latter once was the home of a mature civilization during the preceding
millennia and it reached some kind of high spot in Crete before
disaster overtook it around 1400 BC (see Chapter 10). Prior to this
time, the Greeks saw back to a Golden Age when man was basically
at peace in a bountiful world. This was then followed by a Silver Age,
described at first as a time of immense hardships when man was
obliged to construct houses and work hard, when he became
degenerate, mentally weak and impious. In the period that followed,
the Bronze Age, men became stronger but were apparently bent on
mutual destruction; thus we arrive at a time of strife and violence in
prehistory that eventually merged with the events of history.
All the while as life proceeded on Earth, the cosmic gods were
fighting it out in the heavens. It seems that Cronus and Gaea presided
over the Golden Age, but in due course they gave birth to an
abundant new dynasty of gods: the Cyclopes and the Titans are
particularly memorable. The youngest of the Titans was named Zeus.
The names Jupiter and Zeus are identical, being cognate with the
Sanskrit dyaus-piter meaning sky-father, but it may be in keeping
with the ideas we have developed if we think of Zeus as of Jovian
descent. He is one of the common stock of Indo-European gods since
Greek, Latin and Sanskrit are descended from a common Indo-
European language; thus although the earliest literary references to
Zeus are found in Homer, the god is of much greater antiquity. Both
Jupiter and Zeus were worshipped on the summits of hills or
mountains. Jupiter was associated with a sacred tree on the
Capitoline Hill; and there are many myths of the bestial transfor-
mation of Zeus, the use of aegis, the goatskin, as a battle-charm
deriving from this. However, there is no question that Zeus became
the principal figure of the Silver Age. He appears to have had a
retinue of hangers-on, Hera and Leto for example to name but two,
and had strong links with gods of the sea and the underworld,
Poseidon and Hades respectively. All of this is in keeping with a sky-
god, attended by two principal companions, who regularly disap-
peared over the maritime horizon and re-emerged the next night after
traversing the underworld. While Zeus in particular commanded the
skies, the Titans were producing an immense offspring of separate
gods, many of whom were eventually confined to Tartarus, the lower
depths of the underworld. Zeus himself was also the bearer of
considerable progeny but, according to the principal sources of
 Comets and gods 183
information, it was Leto amongst his hangers-on who gave birth to
Apollo and Artemis. This is not quite the same as the Phaethon tale
which has, in one interpretation, Phaethon coming from Apollo who
was himself the offspring of Zeus, but the underlying themes are not
dissimilar once they are recognized as derived from different
eyewitness accounts of a comet breaking up. Whatever the detail,
Apollo seems to have supplanted Zeus and become a major new
figure in the family of gods.
In Hesiod’s Theogony, written around 800 BC, is a quite marvellous
account of the evolution of the gods in their heavenly setting. He
speaks of Olympus, the home of the gods, and Zeus, one of the sons of
Cronus who also gave birth to the Titans. Seen at first through
approving eyes, Olympus had assembled around it the nine daughters
of Zeus; one may envisage a huge disintegrating comet attended by so
many subsidiary ones.

'And at their birth they went with Olympus, exulting in their

beautiful voice, in their immortal song, and around them, as they
sang, dark earth was re-echoing, and a winsome sound arose from
their feet as they went. But he [Jove or Zeus] reigns in Olympus,
having at his own disposal the thunder and the glowing bolt, since
he had conquered by force his father Cronus.

We seem to be picturing Olympus in motion, the home of the gods

with Zeus at the head. In due course however, the clash in the heavens
gave rise to a more fearful view of the gods:

'On that day all of them, male and female, the Titan gods and all
who were born of Cronus and those terrible mighty ones with their
insolent strength whom Zeus brought up to the light from beneath
the ground from Erebus, stirred up the sad battle. A hundred
hands shot from the shoulders of all of them alike and fifty heads
on stout limbs grew on the shoulders of each one of them. Then
with high rocks in their stout hands they fought against the Titans
in a mournful battle. On the other side the Titans strengthened
their ranks zealously and both sides simultaneously displayed the
works of hands and strength [i.e. their strong hands]. The
boundless sea rang terribly around, the earth crashed loudly, broad
heaven quaked and groaned, and high Olympus shook from its
base. . . . The heavy shaking, the noise on high of feet in ceaseless
pursuit and of mighty blows reached murky Tartarus; so then they
threw at each other their grievous bolts.’
184 Comets and gods

The picture of a huge body disintegrating into a vast shower of

comets, with the Earth sometimes running into a stream of debris,
seems to suggest itself. As time went on, the meteor stream, 'Ocean’ as it
was called, gave rise to even more spectacular events:

Then Zeus no longer held back his ferocity but now immediately
his mind was filled with fury and he showed forth all his strength; at
the same time, continually hurling his lightning, he came from
heaven and Olympus. Thick and fast, the thunderbolts, with
thunder and lightning, flew from his stout hand and they made a
holy flame roll along, as they came in quick succession. The life-
giving earth blazed and crashed all around, and all around
immense woods crackled loudly in the fire. The whole land,
Ocean’s streams, and the unfruitful sea seethed; the hot blast
surrounded the earthborn Titans and an immense flame reached
the shining upper air. The gleaming brilliance of the thunderbolt
and lightning blinded their eyes, strong though they were. An awful
heat seized Chaos; to look at it straight on with the eyes or hear the
sound of it with the ears, it seemed just as if earth and broad heaven
threatened to meet above us; and so great was the din which arose
from the former collapsing in ruins and from the latter dashing her
down from above; so great was the din when the gods met in
conflict. Together with this the winds stirred up earthquakes,
dust, thunder, lightning and smoky thunderbolts, the arrows of
great Zeus, and carried shouts and war-cries into the midst of both
sides. . . .

But this is not the end of the tale: years pass by until ‘when Zeus
had driven the Titans from heaven the huge Earth gave birth to her
youngest child, Typhoeus, by intercourse with Tartarus.’ We may
picture them one night, Zeus and his new offspring, rising up over the
horizon presumably trailing its huge tail. This combination then
threatened the Earth perhaps for many years, until there came yet
another assault:

‘But he thundered harshly and strongly, and all around the earth,
the broad heaven above, the sea, Ocean’s streams and the lowest
parts of the Earth resounded terribly.. . . Through the two of them,
heat seized the purple sea, from the thunder and lightning, the fire
from the monster, the hurricane winds and the blazing thunder-
bolts. The whole earth, sky and sea seethed; and moreover long
waves raged around and around about the shores. ... So when
 Comets and gods 185
Zeus had raised up his strength, he chose his weapons, thunder,
lightning and the smoky thunderbolt. He leapt from Olympus and
struck him and burned about the awful heads of the terrible
monster. But when he had tamed him and lashed him with blows,
he was thrown down lame and the huge earth groaned. The flame
from the thunderstruck lord shot out in the unseen rocky glens of
the mountains, when he was struck. Much of the vast earth caught
fire as a result of the awful blast and melted just as tin melts. . . .
Grieving at heart, he cast him down into broad Tartarus.’

Hesiod’s war of the gods, then, is between two factions in the sky,
in the course of which one group is dashed down from above. The
description seems to be that of a shower of comets emerging to do
battle with pre-existing ones, with the Earth sometimes running into a
stream of debris, the events culminating in the close passage of a late
fragment, Typhoeus, with destructive consequences. Some aspects of
the account bear a striking resemblance both to that of the Tunguska
event and the Velikii Usting fall of AD 1296. It is notable that the
thunderbolts of Zeus are clearly distinguished from thunder and
lightning, that they rained down thick and fast, were blinding in their
intensity, setting the Earth alight, while blast, heat, earthquake and
tremendous noise accompanied the battle and an immense flame
reached the upper atmosphere. It seems therefore that Hesiod’s
account is a rather literal description, based on sources now lost, of a
series of impact events which may be recognized as associated with
comet disintegration; indeed, as we shall see, there are other grounds
for associating Typhoeus or Typhon with a comet. But we need take
this discussion of Hesiod no further; enough has been said to show
that both Greek and Egyptian mythology contain important
elements which are at least consistent with a course of events like that
implied by the present distribution of short-period comets in the
inner solar system.
According to our theory then, comets were not known as such
before this time because people saw them as something else, as greater
than life, as supernatural beings. Sometimes the comets stayed aloft
and seemed relatively benign: perhaps these were the angels. Others
however came down to threaten life on earth: these were gods of a
more belligerent kind, qualifying as dragons in the sky or as devils.
As we shall see in the next chapter, references to fire-breathing
dragons careering across the sky were widespread in the prehistoric
world, and it is remarkable that Chinese legends handed down to us
186 Comets and gods

what seems a perfect reflection of the development of comets in short-

period orbits. According to these legends, dragons usually hatched
out in the form of small water-snakes or lizards, but rapidly and
visibly began to grow towards maturity. Although the speed of
growth was marked, the process of evolution took time: 'A water-
snake after five hundred years changes into a kiao, a kiao after a
thousand years into a lung, a lung after five hundred years into kioh-
lung (horned dragon) and after a further thousand years into yuing-
lung (winged dragon).’ If, as it seems, the dragons were short-period
comets, the Chinese must have pondered then with extraordinary
care.
Turning to the myths and gods of northern Europe, the earliest
recorded legends belong mostly to the second millennium AD and are
heavily overlaid with fanciful embellishment, but somehow there
nevertheless emerges a definite cosmological framework. The
dominant concept of Norse cosmology is the World Tree, Yggdrasil.
It was said to spread its limbs over every land and was visualized as a
kind of ladder stretching up to heaven and downwards to the
underworld. The World Tree marked the centre of the universe and
was a symbol of the constant regeneration of its parts. The Tree was
the realm of the gods and from which they seemed to grow and spread
throughout the world. No such analogy has previously been drawn
but it is not at all unreasonable to see Yggdrasil as a giant comet, the
dragon of other mythologies, to which the rest of the world is
subordinate. In several myths the dragon of chaos is also represented
by or associated with a World Tree or Tree of Life: this is seen for
instance in Genesis 1 where serpent and dragon are identical. This
dragon/Tree equation is rather strange on its own but makes sense if
both were descriptions, ultimately merged, of a comet. In classical
times Seneca used the term cyparissia (Cyprus tree) to describe comets.
So huge was the Norse World Tree that its branches stretched out
over heaven and earth. It apparently had three main roots and daily
reappeared with all the other gods, galloping over the Bifrost that some
have identified as the Milky Way, a rainbow bridge that glowed with
fire. We wonder whether it was really a meteor stream in the ecliptic.
As it grew and flourished, the tree was continually threatened by the
living creatures that preyed upon it. On the topmost branch sat an eagle
of whom it is said the flapping of its wings caused the winds in the world
of men. At the root of the tree lay a great serpent with many scores of
lesser snakes and these gnawed continuously at Yggdrasil. The serpent
was at war with the eagle and a squirrel ran up and down the tree,
 Comets and gods 187
carrying insults from the branches and tender shoots of the tree,
leaping at it from every side. We cannot prove this magnificent imagery
refers to comets, but the celestial aspect, e.g. the diurnal reappearance,
is clear, and the vision of a vast ever-changing complex of cometary
bodies hurtling together around the sky seems to emerge without much
difficulty. Once again, we detect a hierarchy of genealogy among the
gods: first the Tree of Life gives birth to Loki who may be the same as
the wolf Fenrir. This interesting character has jaws which brush heaven
and earth, while fire spurts from eyes and nostrils. The counterpart in
Greek myth is apparently Olympus, the home of the gods, with Zeus
emerging as the head of the family. Loki (Zeus ?) seems in due course to
be the progenitor of Surt, who may also be Balder due one day to return
from the dead. Surt is thus the Apollo of Greek mythology and Thoth
(later Osiris) of Egyptian mythology. Ellis Davidson has given a superb
account of the northern myths and we refer the reader to her book for
details. Perhaps the following extract dealing with Ragnarok, the end
of the world, reveals clearly enough the history of comets as we now
understand it.

‘There Loki must lie until Ragnarok, the time of the destruction of
the gods. This fearful time will be ushered in by many portents.
First there will be great wars through the world, and a time of strife
and hatred between men. The bonds of kinship will hold them no
longer, and they will commit appalling deeds of murder and incest.
There will also be a period of bitter cold, when a terrible pursuing
wolf catches the sun and devours her; the moon too is swallowed
up, and the stars will fall from the sky. The mountains will crash
into fragments as the whole earth shakes and trembles, and the
World Tree quivers in the tumult. Now all fettered monsters break
loose. The wolf Fenrir advances, his great gaping jaws filling the
gap between earth and sky, while the serpent emerges from the sea,
blowing out poison. The sea rises to engulf the land, and on the
flood the ship Naglfar is launched, a vessel made from the nails of
dead men. It carries a crew of giants, with Loki as their steersman.
From the fiery realm of Muspell [the south?], Surt and his following
ride out with shining swords, and the bridge Bifrost is shattered
beneath their weight. His forces join the frost-giants on the plain of
Vigrid, and there the last battle will be fought between this mighty
host and the gods.
‘. . . Thor meets the World Serpent, and Freyr fights against
Surt.... All the gods must fall, and the monsters be destroyed with
188 Comets and gods

them. Thor kills the serpent, and then falls dead overcome by its
venom.. . . Only Surt remains to the last, to fling fire over the whole
world, so that the race of men perishes with the gods, and all are
finally engulfed in the overwhelming sea;
The sun becomes dark. Earth sinks in the sea
The shining stars slip out of the sky
Vapour and fire rage fiercely together,
Till the leaping flame licks heaven itself.

Yet this is not the end. Earth will rise again from the waves, fertile,
green, and fair as never before, cleansed of all its sufferings and evil.
The sons of the great gods still remain alive, and Balder will return
from the dead to reign with them. They will rule a new universe,
cleansed and, regenerated, while two living creatures who have
sheltered from destruction in the World Tree will come out to
repeople the world with men and women. A new sun, outshining
her mother in beauty, will journey across the heavens.’

It is impossible here, in dealing with this vast domain, to go through

the myths of the world in a systematic way indicating the associations
with the comet scenarios already developed. Suffice to say, the theme
that we have developed is commonplace. A more or less random
example from the New World, for example, is the return of
Quetzlcoatl, the 'feathered serpent’, which was probably presaged by
the great comet of 1490. Only a short time later, the Aztecs took
Cortez and his brigands as a sign that the legendary rain-spirit god
from across the ocean had returned. Quetzlcoatl, a complex and
ambiguous figure of great age, sometimes represents the Sun and
sometimes, with his twin Xolotl, the planet Venus. But it seems also
that Quetzlcoatl, a white and bearded god, symbolized by the plumed
serpent, was, in the eyes of the pre-Columbus central American ethnic
groups, very often associated with apparitions of spectacular comets
in the morning sky.
The mythologist Fauconnet, in his study of the mythology of the
two Americas, makes the point that there are many similarities
between these myths and classic mythology, as well as with Hebrew
tradition. He asks:

'Does this mean that Humanity was once upon a time reduced to a
little group of individuals who later spread over the earth, bringing
with them their legends which they altered through the centuries in
 Comets and gods 189

accordance with new climates and new habits? Or, as seems more
probable, are all these legends a confused account of great events
on a planetary scale which were beheld in terror simultaneously by
the men scattered everywhere over the world?’

Coming from a mythologist with no inkling of the astronomical

picture we have developed, this is a remarkably perceptive comment.
The picture then, is of a prehistoric sky which on occasion was filled
with comets. Very probably, at least one of them was an exceptionally
large, active and disintegrating body, in an orbit which at certain
epochs resulted in a series of close passages to the Earth. In the
present chapter we have revealed that much of the imagery of many
world myths corresponds to such phenomena. We have also pointed
out what appears to have been a shift of paradigm during the classical
era as the sky cleared and the danger passed. Our comments in this
chapter should of course be seen as indicative rather than definitive
but there can be little doubt that, for all the multiple interpretations
and layers of symbolism which have already been read into myth, a
major re-analysis is called for. The conclusion, then, is that comets
were originally amongst man’s principal deities. And of these, there
lingers the memory of two which surpassed them all: Zeus and
Typhon.
9 • Zeus and Typhon

Several myths of the world are interpreted as allegorical descriptions of

the break-up of a large comet in an Earth-intersecting orbit. Some
fragments struck the Earth during the second and third millennia BC. A
number of biblical episodes, in particular the Exodus event and the
Flood, describe the consequences of one or more powerful impacts.

9.1 Mythology: fairy tale or history ?

Any attempt to look for real astronomical events described in
mythical form presupposes that myth can be evaluated as a source of
historical information.
Such a concept of myth would have been largely denied in the last
century. The myth, it was considered, was mere fairy tale, the product
of irrational and superstitious primitive minds which had not yet
aspired to the philosophical and thence scholastic planes. This some-
what ingenuous thinking seems to have been essentially a product of
Comte’s positivism, a refusal to look beyond the immediately
verifiable or measurable. There were occasional dissenters. Von
Schelling in 1856, for example, considered that some myths relate to
actual experience, that is historical events and real-life forces,
concealed in allegorical form and poetic language.
It is now appreciated that myths have many facets. They have what
Grimal calls a ‘spiritual quality’, that is they provide a moral
framework governing the day-to-day attitudes and actions of the
believer. They have the purpose also of influencing the world,
through personification of inanimate things such as wind and trees,
sun and stars, opening the door to persuasion by prayer. And they
give a description and explanation of the world, the view pioneered
by von Schelling and vindicated in modern times by for example
Walter Otto. It is this latter attribute, that historical truths may exist
concealed in mythical language, that enables us to look for the real
objects and events behind the gods and their adventures.
Here we may be helped rather than hindered by the existence of
several versions of the same story, because the invariant component in
these stories will represent the underlying event, the varying
component, representing a superstructure of personification and
moral, being the additions of individual poets. For Greek myth
especially confirmations of the historical basis of many legends have
 Zeus and Typhon 191

23. Illustrations of two important historical comets taken from Lubienietski’s

Universal History of All Comets, 1681. The AD 1000 illustration shows a blazing
thunderbolt with a ‘long drawn out tail landing in open space’, having ‘fallen from a
dragon-like comet with a horrendous tail’. The AD 1180 comet was viewed with
horror since it had the appearance of a winding serpent with gaping jaws.

come from archaeological excavations. The foundations of Troy and

Mycenae were unearthed by Schliemann on the basis of passages in
Homer; and excavations of the palace of Knossos by Evans showed
that many Cretan legends likewise had a historical basis.
It would not be the first time that astronomy and the literature of
192 Zeus and Typhon

antiquity have benefited from mutual illumination. In the early

nineteenth century for example Chladni assembled reports dating
from the remote past of stones falling from the sky, found that the
descriptions were consistent with one another and deduced in the face
of great scepticism that real events—meteorite falls—were being
recorded.
Having said all this one should be aware of the dangers of over-
interpretation, and of reading too much into the accounts: one must
proceed with sensible caution. Roman ‘historic’ myths, for example,
which mostly come from the Augustan period (first century BC), are
to some extent myths taken from elsewhere and presented in pseudo-
historic form. We shall not be concerned with Roman mythology.
This concept of myth, as being rooted in reality, is consistent with
and reinforces our proposal that the sky deities represented real
things in the sky, and hence comets. The question arises: Can we
establish among the myths of the world astronomical connections of
the sort we have discussed?
The earliest recorded myths are those of combat, between a god or
hero and a dragon. The dragon was a familiar figure in Greece, Egypt,
Mesopotamia, Babylon, India, China, North America, and else-
where. Usually, he has the form of a winged serpent. He is a gigantic
monster; he spouts fire and smoke; bellows and hisses; he throws
rocks, and is the creator of terrible destruction; and his home is in the
sky. The dragon or winged serpent seems as good a starting point as
any in our study of myth.

9.2 Combat myths: Zeus and Typhon

There were two main combat myths in ancient Greece, that of Apollo
vs Python and that of Typhon vs Zeus. The earliest known record of
Apollo’s combat with a dragon is contained in the Homeric Hymn to
Apollo. The story therefore dates at least as far back as 1200-850 BC.
Soon after his birth, Apollo crossed the sea and travelled over the
mainland of Greece in search of a place to establish a temple. On
Parnassos, on the site of Delphi, he laid the foundations of his
oracular shrine, and on these foundations the temple was laid by
tribes of men. In the course of this work, or just after its completion,
he encountered a she-dragon. The dragoness was huge, savage and
violent against men and their flocks; it was a devastating creature and
to meet it meant death. Homer tells us that nevertheless the creature
was killed by an arrow from Apollo’s bow. Apollo goes on his way
 Zeus and Typhon 193
and his further exploits need not concern us for the moment. Plainly in
this story, Apollo was the survivor. The question we raise is whether
he was the surviving fragment of a disintegrating comet; whether on
one passage or other as he rose over the maritime horizon and
travelled over Greece, he was observed to shed a stone which became
the foundation of the Delphic temple. Is a bow, one wonders, the
natural image conjured up by the crescent head of a huge comet?
Were the intoxicating vapours provided by the Delphic ‘priests’
regarded as essential for adding verisimilitude to their pronounce-

24. Fifth-century BC representation of the Apollo-Python combat. It

illustrates the infant Apollo in Leto’s arms shooting his arrows at a
serpent of many coils.

ments because the foundation stone from heaven was originally

recognized as a source of noxious fumes?
Homer supplies us with an interesting genealogy for the dragoness.
She had been the nurse of Typhon, the child of Hera, the Queen of
Heaven. Typhon itself was a monstrous creature, unlike god or man.
Hera had produced the child in anger at her husband Zeus, because
he had given birth to a daughter Athena, without involving Hera, by
producing the child from his head (see Plate 7). In the tale as recounted
by Simonides, the dragoness had become male and acquired a name:
Python. In this version, which seems to have become more popular
after about 300 BC, Apollo comes to Delphi while Ge still rules the
shrine. Python opposes Apollo, there is a battle, and the dragon is
finally killed by many arrows from Apollo’s bow. Python seems again
to have been a terrifying creature in this second version; Ovid, in his
Metamorphoses, states that Lpopulisque novis terror eras'—you were a
terror to new peoples. It was its huge size that struck terror into men.
194 Zeus and Typhon

The monstrous size of the creature is mentioned by Lucan (maxima

serpens—an enormous snake), by Hyginus (draco ingens—a huge
dragon) and many others. Ovid also refers to pestifero ventre, which
may imply an ill-smelling or noxious interior, although pestifer more
generally means ‘that bringing destruction'.
There are later versions. Hera sends the dragon against the
pregnant Leto (wife of Ge, the god of the Earth) in order to kill her
children. When the twins are nevertheless born, Python attacks them
but is killed by the infant Apollo. Plate 24 shows one such
representation, found in Neapolis-Samaria in Palestine, in which
Leto holds the infants Apollo and Artemis in her arms while Python,
in the form of a snake, attacks. There are other minor stories in which
Apollo fights and overcomes enemies. He had to overcome a giant,
Tityos, a brigand Phorbas, and Phlegyas, and the Phlegyans. Apollo
destroyed the latter with many thunderbolts and mighty earthquakes,
finishing the job by sending plague on the survivors. Fontenrose has
carried out a rigorous study of these and other Delphic myths and has
shown that they ultimately derive from a common source, the snake-
like nature of the creature Python and its huge size being common to
many of the tales. There can be no doubt that Python, as a winged
serpent, is a larger-than-life, terrifying character. But as a dragoness
or Queen of Heaven in the earliest version he was, we have seen, also
nurse or foster mother to another fearful creature, Typhon. Typhon
appears again in Greek mythology as a principal character in the
other combat theme, Zeus vs Typhon (Plate 25), in which he displays
some revealing characteristics. To what extent we deal with the same
story or a separate one may be rather difficult to tell but versions of
this combat are given, inter alia, by Hesiod and Apollodorus.
Hesiod's version is given in his Theogony, written around 800 BC,
and was referred to in the previous chapter. Typhon was the youngest
son of Ge and Tartarus. He was a huge monster, whose head reached
the stars; in place of fingers he had a hundred serpents’ heads, while
from the waist down he was nothing but vipers; and fire flashed from
his eyes. When he threatened Olympus, the home of the gods,
hurling flaming stones and belching fire from his mouth, the gods fled
to Egypt disguised as animals. Zeus alone remained, first throwing
thunderbolts from heaven, and then coming to Earth to strike the
creature. The Apollodorus version is more complex and involves the
near-defeat of Zeus, but the end result in any case is the destruction of
Typhon, who fell aflame in mountain glens and was hurled down to
Tartaros, under Etna. The burying of Typhon under Etna might be
 Zeus and Typhon 195
seen as indicating that Typhon is an underworld creature, a
personification of vulcanism. However it is much more likely that the
Etna connection is no more than a local addition to a much older
myth occurring over much of the Old World, from Greece at least as
far east as India (and possibly further), south to Egypt, and possibly
north to Scandinavia. In the version given by Pindar, Typhon’s body
is buried under a mountain in Boeotia, from which there were
exhalations of fire. There are no volcanoes in Boeotia. There is,
however, a mountain there which in classical times was known as

25. Fifth-century BC representations of the Zeus-Typhon combat.

It shows Zeus hurling thunderbolts at a giant-winged creature which
is serpentine below the waist.

Typhaonion. Boeotia was the country of the Phlegyans, whom Apollo

fought.
One could, at this stage of discussion, take a 'fairy tale’ view of
these myths. However, as we have seen, there are significant hints of a
cosmic connection. Typhon after all, spans the sky, hurls rocks,
spouts fire and smoke, makes a terrible hissing and roaring, and after
defeat crashes in flames into mountain glens. The whole thing is
reminiscent of a large meteorite fall. Even more suggestive is the
serpentine nature of the dragons. For the trail of dust left by an
impacting fireball, after it has become windblown, takes on just such
an appearance (Plate 13) and is often so described, especially in the
mediaeval literature. DalFOlmo has investigated Latin terminology
relating to astonomical phenomena (see also Chapter 8), and finds
that terms like serpens and draco are frequently used to describe
meteor falls. He remarks that 'the smoky remnants of a big sporadic
196 Zeus and Typhon

meteor may take the twisted shape of a snake or of a dragon, due to the
currents in the upper atmosphere. (In 1956 I observed such an event
which lasted about half an hour. The meteor crossed the whole sky
and lighted everything as if it were daytime, and even the luminous
fragmented particles which fell vertically left behind smoke and some
vapour, and the whole figure was in the shape of an immense
monster.)’ Or again, from the monastic chronicles of Helinandus of
December AD 999, referred to by dall’Olmo: ‘a comet appeared on 13
December at about 3 p.m. splitting the sky as if it were a fiery torch.
It fell on the ground after a long trajectory. Its splendour was so great
that not only the people working on the fields, but even the people in
the houses were struck by its light. While the split in the sky was
gradually vanishing, its shape became the figure of the head of a
snake with deep-blue feet’ (see Plate 23). Krinov quotes from the
Lavrent’evka chronicles referring to an event in AD 1091: ‘Ves-
evolod . . . saw a large serpent falling from the sky. All this time the
earth was rattling.’
There is etymological evidence also to support an astronomical
association for Typhon. This can be seen first by noting that
meteoritic iron has been in use from the earliest times and that a
celestial connection was recognized. The Sumerian name for iron was
an-bar, meaning ‘fire from heaven’; the Hittite ku-an meant the same.
In Egypt the name was bia-en-pet. According to Rickard, bia
probably means thunderbolt, and pet stands for heaven. It has
already been mentioned that the Greek word for iron sideros is
genetically connected to the Latin sidus. Precisely such a connection
can be made for Typhon; it is found in Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris.
Plutarch, who once visited Egypt, probably derived the material for
his treatises from books and priests, and is an important secondary
Egyptological source. On Typhon, he remarks: "Moreover, they call
the lodestone the bone of Horus, and iron the bone of Typhon, as
Manetho records.’ It has been suggested that the word ‘Typhon’ may
derive from the Egyptian tephit meaning ‘cave’ or ‘hole in the
ground’. At any rate the duality between Typhon as a sky creature
and Typhon as an underworld creature has been met already in
Hesiod’s Theogony and is characteristic of the dragon in mythology.
Incidentally the Hebrew for iron ore, nechoshet, literally means ‘the
droppings of the serpent’. Given the above iron/meteorite association,
this unmistakably means a cosmic serpent.
But Typhon is also one of the gods. With the arguments already
deployed this implies that we should think of him as a comet. These
 Zeus and Typhon 197
arguments, connected up, make sense if the fireball was associated
with the comet, perhaps, indeed, if the two were not distinguished.
This, of course, is likely only if the comet were large and active and
perhaps disintegrating. These deductions could be considered
tendentious were it not that there did exist a comet called Typhon.
Typhon, in Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon, has three meanings: it
is the monster we have already met; it is ‘a kind of comet’; and it is a
donkey. The best evidence that Typhon was something remarkable in
the sky comes from authors such as Pliny. In his Natural History he
states: UA terrible comet was seen by the people of Ethiopia and
Egypt, do which Typhon, the king of that period, gave his name; it
had a fiery appearance and was twisted like a coil, and it was very
grim to behold: it was not really a star so much as what might be
called a ball of fire.’ Lydus, in the astrological treatise De Ostentis,
states that:
They say that the sixth comet is called ‘Typhon’ after the name of
king Typhon, seeing that it was once seen in Egypt and which is
said to be not of a fiery but a blood-red colour. Its globe is said to be
modest and swollen and it is said that its ‘hair’ appears with a thin
light and is said to have been for some time in the north. The
Ethiopians and Persians are said to have seen this and to have
endured the necessities of all evils and famine.

Elsewhere Lydus, classifying comets, introduces a Typhon type,

stating that:

‘This happens as a result of a reverberation of the air; it is sickle-

shaped, white, smoky, and sullen. Wherever it looks, there are
general evils. Grave foreign and civil wars, public disturbances and
lack of necessities. Glorious leaders will be taken away in wars and
especially if it appears for three or four days. If it appears for more,
it threatens the destruction and overthrow of everything and no
end to evils anywhere’.

In summary then, it looks as if the Zeus vs Typhon and Python vs

Apollo myths could be describing successive stages in the break-up of
a huge comet, Zeus. Of course, one cannot expect a precise historical
account and it is possible the myths are basically the same tale. So
whether a single episode lies at the root of these myths or whether
fragments of Typhon struck the Earth as he battled with Zeus, and a
subsequent fragmentation left us with Python challenging Apollo is
not easily discerned. Moreover, the meteoritic and cometary elements
198 Zeus and Typhon

are so merged in these stories that they may be for ever inseparable.
Nevertheless, we conclude that Typhon was a major participant in a
conflict relating to the break-up of a huge comet, and that the name
Apollos, adopted for the family of Earth-crossing asteroids, seems
now in retrospect to have been a peculiarly happy choice.

9.3 The dragon pair

Enough has perhaps been said to indicate that, at least as a working
hypothesis, the dragon of the combat myths can be seen as a
description of a comet which, in a near-Earth orbit, produced
impacts or fireballs. The literal interpretation of the dragons as
comets seems to have been made at least once before, in mediaeval
times. Bellamy quotes the Italian astronomer Donolo (AD 940),
drawing on mythological sources now lost, as saying: ‘when God
created the two lights, the five stars, and the twelve signs, he also
created the fiery dragon, that it might connect them all together,
moving about like a weaver with his shuttle.’ Certainly this view of
the combat stories fits well with modern belief that myth is
rooted in reality, that the early stories were descriptions of real things.
But it also accounts for the fact that the stories were world-wide and
endured for centuries. Fontenrose, for example, states that ‘If it is true
that a particular myth pattern was diffused over a great part of the
Old World, from Greece to India and south to Egypt, if not farther,
and manifested in many national variants, then it must have had an
unusual significance to the peoples who told it and adopted it.’ He
contends: ‘No doubt the combat theme was suggested by actual
struggles that men, as herdsmen or as hunters, had with ferocious
beasts and dreadful reptiles and sea creatures.’ Perhaps; but this
‘local’ theory does not explain why there is a common pattern of myth
rather than an uncountable number of disconnected themes, nor does
it explain their persistence nor their unusual significance.
Fauconnet’s comments on ‘a confused account of great events on a
planetary scale’ are apposite here. Given the celestial framework of
these tales and the astronomical scenarios we have developed,
catastrophic events induced by the god in the sky are surely a more
plausible explanation.
With the insights we have gained into the nature of the dragons, we
can now look again at the Delphic combat stories. It will be sufficient to
summarize those conclusions reached by Fontenrose which may have
astronomical connotations:
 Zeus and Typhon 199
The champion fought not a single enemy, as we assumed at the outset
but two great enemies, male and female, of whom the latter was even
more terrible.

Later in the Homeric Hymn, for example, Apollo settles an account

with a deceitful spring nymph Telphusa by burying her spring under a
shower of stones. Tracing the connection of Telphusa with other
myths, Fontenrose is able to conclude that she is herself a
representation of the dragoness of the Hymn, part snake or horse,
and that the Hymn is a fusion of two local myths of Apollo’s
encounter with a dragon pair.
Dragon pairs occur explicitly in many other combat stories. In
Babylonian mythology Marduk has to overcome first Apsu and then
Tiamat; in Indian mythology, Indra has to fight Vritra and then
Danu; in Germanic mythology, Beowulf is in conflict with Grendel
and his mother. Frequently the monsters are of vast size, fiery and
snake-like. Further they are often related, mother and son or child
and nurse. In Mordecai’s dream (additions to the Book of Esther, 6:3
and 5): There was noise and turmoil, thunder, earthquake, and
terror on Earth. And, lo, two great dragons appeared, either ready to
give battle, and they made a great noise. ... It was a day of darkness
and of gloom, of trouble, oppression, distress, and terror on Earth.’
A detailed study suggests the duality has its origins in the
fragmentation of a primary body which produces a meteor stream and
a huge comet, the latter circulating around the former. These elements
are treated as male and female respectively. But in due course, the great
comet breaks up further: one of its components, Marduk of
Babylonian mythology or Zeus of Greek mythology, engages in battle
with its principal progenitors and emerges the dominant figure.
However, in the earliest versions, the conflict is not simply between a
god (Zeus or an analogue) and a dragon pair. The theme is actually one
of celestial war, in which the monsters were accompanied by hosts of
lesser demons. Tiamat, the chaos demoness found in the Babylonian
creation epic Enuma Elish, heads an alliance of the rebellious gods and
a fearful assortment of snakes, vipers, scorpion men, storm demons
and so on. This is a not unexpected consequence of the astronomical
model. The fireball seasonality of the near-defunct Encke has been
remarked on (Figure 19). A large, active cometary fragment would
very likely be accompanied by swarms of minor icy boulders which, on
passing by the Earth, would create intense fireball storms—or demons.
200 Zeus and Typhon

The combat myth is a myth of beginnings, a tale of conflict between

order and disorder, chaos and cosmos. It is also a myth of the recurring
attacks of the forces of chaos upon the forces of order.

This view of recurring attacks on the forces of order fits well with the
idea of a periodicity of passage of a comet. That is, we see the comet as
a short-period one in an Apollo-type orbit, as indeed we would
expect. Coupled with the duality of the dragons, a literal inter-
pretation of the combat myth is that a large comet in an Earth-
crossing orbit fragmented and that the two fragments were
recurrently responsible for catastrophes on Earth below. Although
one might suppose fairly frequent and regular interaction as the Earth
passed through the debris stream, a close encounter with the comet
heads would have been much less likely. Presumably the latter would
have been linked only with the major catastrophes out of which a
new world was to emerge. Overall, the picture is of a peaceful period—
the Golden Age—which succumbed to chaos. But in due course, order
was imposed on this chaos—the Silver Age—with Zeus recognized as
the one in control.

The gigantomachies and theomachies of Greek and oriental mytho-

logies belong to the combat myth.

Mother Earth (Gaea) and Father Heaven (Uranus) were monsters,

'somewhat like men and yet unhumaff to quote the mythologist
Edith Hamilton. They produced three huge strange beasts each with a
hundred hands and fifty heads, three Cyclopes, each with an eye as
big as a wheel, and a dozen Titans (Hamilton makes the interesting
comment: 'But it is extremely odd that they [the offspring] were also
the children of Heaven. However, that is what the Greeks said. . . .’).
Zeus, son of one of the Titans, rebelled against his father Cronus: the
battle was in fact between Zeus and his five brothers and sisters on the
one hand, and Cronus and the Titans on the other. Zeus won, with the
help of the hundred-handed monsters, but his victory was not yet
complete. Earth gave birth to her last and most frightful offspring,
Typhon. But by now Zeus had possession of thunderbolts, forged for
him by the Cyclopes, and we have seen the results of this new
weaponry. (The forging itself indicates that iron thunderbolts are
referred to by the poet and is further evidence that the conflict
between the gods is a description of some astronomical cataclysm.)
This theme is broadly consistent with the picture of comet Typhon as a
late remnant of the sort of progressive disintegration of a great comet
 Zeus and Typhon 201

26. Marduk attacking his mother Tiamat, with thunderbolts and sickle. According
to the Babylonian creation epic, Apsu was the universal god representing order and
goodness, Tiamat was a dragon-god representing chaos. Their union gave rise to the
first gods of the universe but Apsu found them disrespectful and ordered Taimat to
get rid of them; anticipating the plan, the gods overpowered and murdered Apsu.
Tiamat, determined to avenge her husband’s death, now gave birth to a brood of
monsters: giant serpents, roaring dragons, lion-demons and the like. They challenge
the gods to battle, but instead, Marduk comes to face Tiamat in single combat.
After an epic struggle, Tiamat is slain and Marduk becomes supreme lord of the
universe. He raises dry land above water, puts the other gods in their place and
appoints the Moon keeper of time.

in a near Earth-crossing orbit that we consider has probably occurred.

Our brief examination of the Delphic dragon stories is leading
towards a surprisingly specific astronomical model. An exceptionally
large and active comet entered an Apollo orbit. At some stage orbital
precession took the comet into an orbit which involved a series of
relatively close passages to the Earth. The comet split, and there was
perhaps a hierarchy of subsequent disintegration. As the fragments
moved along their respective orbits, and merged, it may be they
appeared to be in conflict, one with another. Passing through the
neighbourhood of the debris, there were intervals of incredibly
202 Zeus and Typhon

intense meteoric and fireball bombardment. In places these episodes

included impacts near ground level, and a few of these might have
been Tunguska-like or greater. The span of time need not have been
long but the events must have been profoundly impressive, sufficient
to trigger the ubiquitous and enduring myths. As time passed the
comets decayed and faded from memory. The sky gods became
abstractions and the significance of their celestial adventures became
lost. That there is good evidence in the twentieth-century sky
(Chapter 7) of the past existence of an exceptional body, in the orbit
and with the disintegration history required, must be seen as strongly
supporting this astronomical interpretation.

9.4 The cosmic serpent: further insights

The hypothesis can be further examined by looking more widely at
the properties of the dragons and their combats. The nature of the
combat, for example, is often one in which the Sun is obscured. Thus
in the Egyptian combat myth between Horus and Seth, Horus loses an
eye identified as the Sun. By the fifth century or earlier, the Greeks
had identified Horus with Apollo, and Seth with Typhon. Horus, Lord
of the Sky, was by this time often associated with and even identified
as the Sun. In the Edfu Text (discussed by Fairman) Ra and Horus
were sailing in Ra’s boat when they caught sight of Ra’s enemies in
the form of crocodiles and hippopotami who opened their mouths to
attack the boat. Horus flew up into the sky in the form of a great
winged disc and attacked the enemy (the celestial combat theme).
Later, the enemy reappeared (the recurrence theme) under the
leadership of Seth, and Horus, in Ra’s boat, had to meet them in
several places and inflict defeat on them. At one point in the combat
Seth took the form of a roaring snake and disappeared into the ground.
Around this central combat their respective companions also battled.
In one scene Seth’s companions are represented, predictably by now,
as snakes.
Seth was identified with several animals and could take the form of
any at will. It was in the form of a black pig that he threw a jet of fire
on to Horus, making him lose an eye. The conflict in this case, then,
would be between the dragon and the Sun, and the dragon is
attempting to block the Sun out. The giant snake Vritra of the Hindu
pantheon attempts to swallow the Sun, as Chinese dragons do during
an eclipse. It will be recalled that the Titans were described by
Lucretius as gods which obscured the Sun; and Typhon is described
by Plutarch in Isis and Osiris, not only as a comet, but also as a demon of
 Zeus and Typhon 203

27. According to an Egyptian legend, the Sun-god Ra sails daily across the sky
from east to west. Ra as periodically threatened by the mighty dragon Apepi who
attempted to eclipse it. The defender of Ra was another fearsome monster, the
enigmatic god Seth. Eventually, in one devastating encounter, Seth attacked and
dismembered Apepi but then himself became the very incarnation of evil. As god of
storms, of thunder, of earthquakes and of death, he continued to terrify mankind.
The practice of representing gods in human form has of course persisted into
modern times.

eclipses. Normal eclipses are not being described here. In order to dim
sunlight appreciably over a large area, one possibility is the
interposition of a great, dense comet tail between Sun and Earth.
Another is the injection of dust or water into the air by an impact at least
in the Tunguska class. Note however that the Sun is not involved in the
Zeus/Typhon conflict, and indeed it is debatable whether Apollo
represented the Sun as early as the date of the Homeric Hymn. But a
blinding light, a fiery serpent crossing the sky, and the sound of hissing
and thunder followed by a bang, may be simply described as a god
hurling thunderbolts at a serpent, which crashes to its death.
The use of a sickle as a weapon is a very widespread theme in these
combat myths. The anthropologist Huxley, in interpreting the
conflict between Cronus and his Father, notes that the sickle was a
weapon and remarks that we can conclude that he [Cronus] is the
new moon, for there is no other sickle-shaped body visible in the sky
to make this legend comprehensible’. But either the windswept head
or outflung tail of a comet may be sickle-shaped; Lydus, as men-
204 Zeus and Typhon

28. Mediaeval representation of the comet of

1479 apparently observed through clouds. Note
the appearance of a sickle representing the
comet’s tail.

tioned already, describes comets of Typhon type as ‘sickle-shaped,

white, smoky, and sullen’.
More generally the numerous forms taken by the gods (or even
their changing form, their occasional absence of form, or their
multiple-headedness) are suggestive of comet shapes much more
often than one would expect by chance. This can be seen, for example,
in the alliance of snakes, vipers and scorpion men of the Babylonian
Enuma Elish. The reference to snakes is understandable in the light of
the above discussion. ‘Scorpion men’ may refer to the tail of a small
fragment before entry into the atmosphere, which would appear as a
faint comet. In one of the few descriptions of a comet per se found in
Babylonian records, one dated 1140 BC reads ‘. . . a comet arose
whose body was bright like the day, while from its luminous body a
tail extended, like the sting of a scorpion'. We have seen that animal
forms were recognized in comets in classical times, amongst them the
horse and the goat. According to Fontenrose, ‘Seth as donkey recalls
the horse-shaped demons of night, sleep and death.’ We recall that
donkey was the third meaning assigned to Typhon; and our word
‘nightmare’ is no doubt a faint echo of these same horse-shaped
demons of night. Amongst the numerous donkeys, scarabs,
scorpions, lions, hippopotami and so on which appear on the heads
 Zeus and Typhon 205
of Egyptian divinities, there is a strange dragonish beast repre-
sentative of Seth which cannot be identified and is often called the
‘Typhonian animal’.
Comet morphology can be seen rather more clearly amongst the
dragons of the East. Unlike Western dragons, these are generally
more benevolent creatures. The Chinese dragon holds a pearl under
its chin, and there has been much discussion of the meaning of this
gem. It has been seen as a symbol of thunder, of the Sun, of the Moon
and even of an egg, as well as other stranger objects. It may be red,
gold or bluish-white. It is often associated with lightning-like
symbols. Nearly always it has a tail-like appendage. The colours are
those of great comets. For example Tycho, describing the great comet
of 1577, states that this was "a comet with a very long tail and a head
of white light not like that of a fixed star but somewhat darkish, much
like Saturn. The tail was very long, somewhat bent in the middle, of a
burning dark red colour, like a flame penetrating through smoke.’
Whatever his form, the Egyptian Seth was nearly always depicted as
red. Close to the head of a comet the colour is bluish white; and the
golden colour of some comets is illustrated for example in Gill’s
description of the comet of 1882 (Chapter 2). The lightning-like
symbols and tail-like extension are almost self-explanatory, and the
fact that Chinese dragons are afraid of iron might possibly be
connected with the fact that Typhon was destroyed by the iron
thunderbolts of Zeus.
A striking and universal property of the dragons of mythology is
their connection with both underworld and water. With the
cosmologies extant in the distant past, such associations seem also to
be astronomically inspired. Again and again, the marauders would
have been seen plunging 'into the sea’ on their way to the underworld.
What happened there would have been a rich field for speculation. It
has been mentioned that Seth as a roaring snake disappeared into the
ground during his conflict with Horus. Likewise Strabo’s Typhon
ploughed the channel of the river Orontes with his coils as he
desperately sought to escape underground from the thunderbolts of
Zeus; indeed the Syrian Typhon became the source of the Orontes.
This duality of sky and underworld is ubiquitous in mythology and
dates back to the earliest times. It can be seen clearly, for example, in
the great Hurrite myth Royalty in the Skies, the fragmentary texts of
which seem to date from about 1300 BC. In this myth there were the
ancient gods who were dethroned from the sky once the younger gods
had appeared, and were cast into the underworld. Thus, although
206 Zeus and Typhon
again it should be emphasized that we are dealing with compatibility
rather than proof, the astronomical hypothesis seems to provide a
surprisingly clear framework for the interpretation of many aspects
of myth.
Because the dragon holds back the water lying beyond the celestial
sphere—again a water connection—it has to be propitiated lest it
sends, not rain, but a flood; even the friendly Chinese dragon has this
quality. One is thus irresistibly drawn from the general to the specific,
that is from a flood to the Flood. Flood myths are found world-wide,
and in many of them can be detected evidence of a cosmic connection.
We shall illustrate this by studying the Phaethon myth.

9.5 The Phaethon myth

The story of Phaethon, son of Helios, who fell from the sky, does not
appear in the earliest records of Greek mythology. It was discussed by
Hesiod but only fragments of his work have been found. Two
extensive and incompatible fragments of the story are found in the
Fabulae of Hyginus of the second century AD, but Euripides’
Phaethon is better preserved and has recently been studied by Diggle.
There are accounts in the poems of Ovid and, 450 years later, Nonnos
(fourth century AD).
What happened to Phaethon took place in the domain of the stars;
his name means ‘the shining one’, and he was the son of the Sun-god
Helios. He was therefore one of the gods. There are other Greek cults
and myths containing figures called Phaethon and also belonging to
the stars. Hence the Phaethon story is about a divine being who
belonged to the stars and whose adventures, as we shall see, affected
the Earth. This event was incorporated into the already existing
world of Greek myth. That Phaethon’s fall may describe some
exceptional event was recognized by Goethe in 1821 and Kugler in
1927. The meteorite hypothesis proposed by these investigators has
been revived and extended recently by the meteorite expert
Engelhardt and we follow his interpretation closely. He uses the
‘invariant component’ view already expressed here to discard the
poetic additions and get at the core. He takes the features common to
Ovid and Nonnos. This basic core is described below.
The story begins with Phaethon climbing into the Sun-chariot
belonging to his father and starting to cross the sky in its daily
course. At first the Sun rises as usual, but soon Phaethon loses control
of the four horses drawing the chariot. According to Ovid this is
because the horses sense the lesser weight of the charioteer, the
 Zeus and Typhon 207
chariot leaps into the air, the horses abandon their usual track,
Phaethon becomes disoriented not knowing where to direct the
horses. Then he is seized with horror as he sees, at the highest point of
the track, the countries of the Earth lying far below him. He finds
himself surrounded by the giant animals of the constellations,
particularly the scorpion with its tail and pincers, and he lets go of the
reins in senseless fear. In Nonnos’ version the journey starts well, and
Phaethon is seized not by fear but by arrogance. Under the goad of
their cruel driver the horses run out over the limits of their usual
course. So far off is the Sun-chariot driven that it approaches the
Earth closely, causing fires to break out, and then climbs high again.
The greatest disorder reigns in the heavens and on Earth, the axis of
the celestial sphere being tilted in the process.
Ovid goes into detail over the fires and drought of Earth:

‘Then Phaethon sees the Earth in flames on all sides, and he cannot
stand such great heat. He breathes in with his mouth glowing air as
from a deep furnace and he feels his chariot begin to glow. Soon he
cannot bear the ashes and glowing dust that are thrown out and he
is enveloped on all sides in hot smoke. Where he is going or where
he is, he does not know; he is covered in pitch-black darkness and is
born along on the caprice of the flying horses’.

So far the catastrophes—confusion in heaven and devastating fire

and heat on Earth—have been caused by the wandering of Phaethon
in the sky. And now he falls to Earth. According to Ovid, Tellus the
Earth goddess turns to Zeus to complain, whereupon Zeus destroys
Phaethon with a thunderbolt:

‘He thunders and sends from his right ear a shaft of lightning on to
the charioteer. He thrusts him out of life down from the chariot
and tames the raging fire with raging fires. The horses become
dismayed and leaping backwards tear their necks out of the yoke,
releasing the torn reins. Here the bridle lies, there the axle torn from
the shaft and yonder the spokes of the broken wheels. The remains
of the ruined chariot are scattered far and wide’.

Zeus’ thunderbolt is definitely cosmic here, and the destruction of

Phaethon is reminiscent of that of Typhon by the thunderbolts of
Zeus. Phaethon fell into the mouth of the river Eridanus. Apollon
Rhodios reports that as a consequence the waters of the estuary ‘emit
strong oppressive fumes from the burnt wound’.
In the Mirabilia ascribed to Aristotle there is a description of a lake
208 Zeus and Typhon
near the river Eridanus ‘with warm water that exuded a heavy,
unbearable smell that no animal could drink from it. Not even a bird
could fly over it as it would otherwise fall down and die. The lake had
a circumference of 200 Stadia [37 km]. . . . The inhabitants recounted
the legend that Phaethon, when struck by the lightning, had fallen
into this lake.’ One is reminded of the pestifero ventre of Python.
The locality of the fall has been mentioned as Ethiopia but most
sources give the mouth of the Eridanus. Aeschylus places the
Eridanus in Spain, but all later authors identify it with the present
river Po which flows into the Adriatic. Engelhardt favours the latter
but this is speculative. Because the myth was probably mentioned by
Hesiod it must at least go back to the eighth century BC, but how
much further is again a matter for speculation.
Of the post-fall events, the restoration of order in the sky and the
flood which follows are significant. Ovid reports: ‘For in pitiable
mourning his father hides his covered face and if we believe what is
told, a day went by without a sun. Fires bestowed light and thus some
good came from this mischief.’ Moreover there was a flood, which
was brief but devastating according to Lucretius (cf. p. 172): ‘The
water, as the legend goes, started to rise above every mountain when
it had covered many cities of man. When then for some reason the
might of the water that had suddenly burst forth had receded, the
torrential rain stopped and the rivers diminished their strength.’ In
Ovid’s version Jupiter intends first to destroy man through lightning,
but then decides on a deluge, as he fears that all the heavens could
catch fire. Nonnos had Zeus bring about a world conflagration
through the lightning which is being hurled at the Titans, and the
flood known as the Flood of Deucalion follows.
It seems very unlikely that this story is based on nothing. When the
‘poetic’ component is discarded the core of the myth is essentially the
same for all authors, and is a clear description of an impact. Certainly
the shifting of the stars in their courses is unlikely to be physical and
represents an attempt to explain simply chaos in heaven. But the
other physical aspects are real. The Tunguska meteorite appeared
brighter than the Sun to eyewitnesses; a larger one would be quite
blinding and might be seen by survivors as the Sun-chariot crashing
to Earth. The thunderous noise of a meteorite fall over a very wide
area has been remarked on.
The features which make the Phaethon impact something
extraordinary, however, and quite likely in the super-Tunguska
class, are the partial obscuration of the Sun, the ravages of fire, and.
 Zeus and Typhon 209
perhaps, the flood which follows. Engelhardt gives strong reasons for
supposing that these are again references to reality. For dramatic
reasons Helios should have vanished and logically the world should
have been plunged into Stygian darkness, especially as the Sun-
chariot lay wrecked on the ground; but Helios merely had a veil
drawn over his face, and had a dirty appearance (Ovid). A day later
the Sun appeared as normal, Jupiter finding that all is as it was before.
The linking of the world conflagration and the deluge has proven
particularly vexatious for the classicists because it makes no dramatic
sense and they have seen no causal connection between the
phenomena. The mythologist Knaack supposed that the linking of
the two motifs must have been the invention of a later compiler, and
remarked that ‘Mention of the rivers that Zeus unleashed gave the
later reviser the idea of the deluge. . . However, quite different
sources adhere to this sequence of events, and in fact the association
of fire and flood is a very old one. Englehardt comments that:

The very fact that several sources report on a link between

Phaethon’s destruction and the deucalionic flood, or more
generally, between catastrophes of fire and water, in spite of
difficulty in rational explanation, favours the fact that it is not a
matter of later constructions but that here, via mythological
hypotheses, a part of stubborn reality comes to light from under a
veil. Therefore we shall have to conclude from the sources that the
fiery catastrophe that was interpreted as Phaethon’s fall was really
followed by a short-lived but extensive inundation which ended the
lives of so many men that one could talk of a destruction of
mankind’.

The impact, then, is related to the myth of a catastrophic flood, the

flood of Deucalion.

9.6 The Flood

Not far below the level of the first royal tombs at Ur, probably
constructed around 2500 BC, archaeologists have discovered material
evidence for a vast flood. It has been confirmed that there exists
throughout the extent of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, a clay deposit
several metres thick. Though it is not proven, it has long been
suspected that the event giving rise to this feature was the source of
local flood myths. The relationship between the Bible flood story and
those of Babylonia, Assyria and Sumer is an unsettled question.
210 Zeus and Typhon

There seem to have been many very ancient flood myths in the near
East region (and indeed world-wide) and the stories were persistent
and often apparently independent. It seems probable that one or
more real events were being described; indeed the description of the
event on the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh appears quite
unembellished and straightforward. For example: ‘When the seventh
day dawned the storm from the south subsided, the sea grew calm, the
flood was stilled; I looked at the face of the world and there was
silence, all mankind was turned to clay. The surface of the sea
stretched as flat as a roof-top.
The prior weather conditions described are characteristic of an
unusual atmospheric disturbance. The appearance of black clouds
and a roaring noise, sudden darkness in broad daylight, the howling
of the southern gale as it drives the water in front of it, all have the
making of a vast hurricane. Equally they are not unlike the vivid
accounts we have from Lucretius of the violence and turbulence in the
sky as thunderbolts strike.
Prior to the flood, the Anunnaki, the judges of the underworld,
raised their torches, either lighting the land or setting it ablaze
depending on the translator. This has been seen as a description of
lightning. But the Anunnaki, the noisy descendants of Anu the god of
heaven, were like the Titans once heavenly creatures prior to their
banishment underground. Anything bright, making a noise, and
passing from Heaven to Earth would fit, and without further
information one could not discriminate between lightning and a
storm of fireballs. However the biblical account gives some
indication that an unusual cosmic phenomenon, prior to the Flood,
may have been involved. There is a tantalizingly brief statement
(Genesis 6:4) that the Nephilim were on Earth at that time and even
afterwards: these were seen as semi-divine creatures and correspond
to the Titans. The pre-Flood disturbance is also described in Psalms
18: 7-15:

‘Then the Earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the
hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. There went up
a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals
were kindled by it.. . . And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea,
he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret
place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick
clouds of the skies. At the brightness that was before him his thick
clouds passed, hail stones and coals of fire.. . . Then the channels of
 Zeus and Typhon 211
waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered
at the rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

Thus although the tangible evidence for the Flood is often

presumed to be due to an excessive cyclone in the Persian Gulf, these
accounts of the event have cosmic overtones, and it remains a unique
stratigraphic feature. This area did undoubtedly suffer a quite
exceptionally huge inundation from the .ocean, and since flood myths
are not peculiar to this part of the world, the possibility of a fairly
world-wide phenomenon certainly cannot be ruled out. particularly if
a possible cause with world-wide consequences can be identified. As
well as the written record and the physical evidence on the ground,
there are also certain indications of a deterioration in general climatic
conditions around 2500 BC. SO, with the benefit of hindsight and
modern astronomical knowledge, it seems that we might reasonably
propose one or more cometary fragments impinging on the ocean at
this epoch. It is possible also that encounter with a very dense meteor
stream is a direct and immediate cause of large-scale precipitation:
excessive rainfall is frequently mentioned. The very nature of the flood
myths, involving as they do the construction of boats and the seeking of
raised ground, would if taken literally indicate that there was clear
warning of the impending disaster and its nature. Once again there is at
least consistency with our conclusion that a mighty comet in an Earth-
crossing orbit did indeed break into smaller pieces that filled the sky for
centuries after, each leading the life of a decaying comet. One of these
fragments, all the while disintegrating, ran perilously close to the
Earth, sufficient to preserve our ancestors in a state of constant fear,
and near enough to cause at least two large-scale catastrophes, one in
the third millennium BC and the other perhaps 1,000 years later (see
Chapter 10).
The question of the universality and chronology of the biblical
Flood (or floods) is one for the archaeologist and prehistorian rather
than the astronomer, and our objectives at this point are limited.
These are firstly to recognize that there do exist astronomical
mechanisms, eg sea impact, whereby massive floods might be gen-
erated, especially in the Near East where almost closed seas do not
allow dissipation of wave energy into the open oceans; secondly to
show that there are cosmic overtones to the myths which are
suggestive of impact; and thirdly to show the Phaethon myth
especially provides a link between a large impact, and a great
conflagration followed by a great flood.
212 Zeus and Typhon

9.7 The apocalyptic literature of the Bible

To what extent the Bible can be used as a source of history has been a
subject of controversy for over a century, and scholarly opinion is still
divided, particularly among the literary analysts. At one extreme is
the view, taken for example by Noth in his History of Israel, that the
early Old Testament events are based on tradition and that whatever
historical basis these traditions may have cannot be found out from
the literary accounts. On the other hand Bright in his History of Israel
a few years later, concluded that the events of the early Old Testament
were an accurate reflection of historical occurrences. It has been
suggested that these differences arise from specialization. Literary
analysis of biblical narrative has led some to the conclusion that so
long has been the span of time between the handing down of oral or
written traditions, with presumably a random walk of elimination or
insertion en route, any historical content can no longer be extracted.
Others have been struck by the parallels which have accumulated
between extra-biblical and biblical documents. According to
Freedman, for example, ‘archaeology has tended to support the
historical validity of the biblical narrative. The broad chronological
outline from the patriarchs to New Testament times correlates with
archaeological data. Allowing for occasional anachronisms and other
lapses, the biblical writers correctly describe the cultural patterns and
mores of the period to which they refer.’
The apocalyptic literature of the Bible stands on its own. It is highly
symbolic, every detail having a meaning. Translating the symbols
into the reality or the concept is not always a unique procedure, if
only because a symbol may have more than one association, and of
course the game is a treacherous one to play. Nevertheless this sort of
literature is rich in allusions to what we can only see as astronomical
events of the sort we have described.
This type of writing became popular in the two centuries before
Christ. It represents a rejection of history as the medium in which
religious truth found its expression. Flistory was seen by the Jews
merely as a vehicle to convey religious ideas. The descent into Egypt,
the Exodus, the wanderings in the desert, the conquest and so on were
interpreted as interventions of Yahweh in the affairs of the tribes. For
example Frost has seen in the conflicts between Yahweh and the
enemies of Israel (such as Egypt, subjected to ten plagues) an
expression of the idea of combat of Marduk and Tiamat. But when
this divine intervention view became hard to believe, as a con-
 Zeus and Typhon 213
sequence in part of the Babylonian attack on Israel in the sixth
century BC, the apocalyptic movement returned to myth as a vehicle
for the expression of religious thought. There was a tendency, as
Frost has said, ‘on the one hand to historicize myth and on the other
to mythologize history’. So if there are important myths with a real
astronomical foundation we might expect to see the astronomy in the
apocalyptic literature.
The Revelations of St John the Divine are not therefore another
confirmatory tradition providing independent evidence on our
theme. By the time they were written, Greek culture pervaded
Palestine and any fairly literate person would have known the myths.
An important component of Christianity is that it borrowed from
existing religions and cults in the Roman Empire to make itself more
acceptable. Changing water into wine and virgin birth, for example,
are both found in Mithraism: it was in Zoroastrianism that it was
asked ‘Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?’ So, in considering the
following extracts from Revelations 8-12, we are not so much
appealing to independent evidence as remarking on the clarity of the
astronomical associations.

Chapter 8: The seventh seal

The Lamb then broke the seventh seal, and there was silence in
heaven for about half an hour.

The prayers of the saints bring the coming of the Great Day nearer.

Next I saw seven trumpets being given to the seven angels who
stand in the presence of God. Another angel, who had a golden
censer, came and stood at the altar. A large quantity of incense was
given to him to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden
altar that stood in front of the throne; and so from the angel’s hand
the smoke of the incense went up in the presence of God and with it
the prayers of the saints. Then the angel took the censer and filled it
with fire from the altar, which he then threw down on to the earth;
immediately there came peals of thunder and flashes of lightning
and the earth shook.

The first four trumpets

The seven angels that had the seven trumpets now made ready to
sound them. The first blew his trumpet and, with that, hail and fire,
mixed up with blood, were dropped on the earth; a third of the
earth was burnt up, and a third of all trees, and every blade of grass
214 Zeus and Typhon

was burnt. The second angel blew his trumpet, and it was as though
a great mountain, all on fire had been dropped into the sea: a third
of the sea turned into blood, a third of all the living things in the sea
were killed, and a third of all ships were destroyed. The third angel
blew his trumpet, and a huge star fell from the sky, burning like a
ball of fire, and it fell on a third of all rivers and springs; this was the
star called Wormwood, and a third of all water turned to bitter
wormwood, so that many people died from drinking it. The fourth
angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun and a third of the
moon and a third of the stars were blasted, so that the light went
out of a third of them and for a third of the day there was no
illumination and the same with the night.
In my vision, I heard an eagle, calling aloud as it flew high
overhead ‘Trouble, trouble, trouble, for all the people on earth at
the sound of the other three trumpets which the three angels are
going to blow.’

Chapter 9: The fifth trumpet

Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had
fallen from heaven on to the earth, and he was given the key to the
shaft leading down to the Abyss. When he unlocked the shaft of the
Abyss, smoke poured up out of the Abyss like the smoke from a
huge furnace so that the sun and the sky were darkened by it. And
out of the smoke dropped locusts which were given the powers that
scorpions have on the earth: they were forbidden to harm any fields
or trees and told only to attack any men who were without God's
seal on their foreheads. They were not to kill them, but to give them
pain for five months, and the pain was to be the pain of a scorpion's
sting. When this happens, men will long for death and not find it
anywhere; they will want to die and death will evade them.
To look at, these locusts were like horses armoured for battle;
they had things that looked like gold crowns on their heads, and
faces that seemed human, and hair like women's hair, and teeth like
lions' teeth. They had body-armour like iron breastplates, and the
noise of their wings sounded like a great charge of horses and
chariots into battle. Their tails were like scorpions’, with stings and
it was with them that they were able to injure people for five
months. As their leader they had their emperor, the angel of the
Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, or Apollyon in Greek.
That was the first of the troubles; there are still two more to
come.
 Zeus and Typhon 215
The sixth trumpet

The sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice come out of
the four horns of the golden altar in front of God. It spoke to the
sixth angel with the trumpet, and said, 'Release the four angels that
are chained up at the great river Euphrates.' These four angels had
been put there ready for this hour of this day of this month of this
year, and now they were released to destroy a third of the human
race. I learnt how many there were in their army: twice ten
thousand times ten thousand mounted men. In my vision I saw the
horses, and the riders with their breastplates of flame colour,
hyacinth-blue and sulphur-yellow; the horses had lions’ heads, and
fire, smoke and sulphur were coming out of their mouths. It was by
these three plagues, the fire, the smoke and the sulphur coming out
of their mouths, that the one third of the human race was killed. All
the horses' power was in their mouths and their tails were like
snakes, and had heads that were able to wound.

Chapter 11: The seventh trumpet

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and voices could be heard
shouting in heaven, calling The kingdom of the world has become
the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he will reign for ever
and ever.’ The twenty-four elders, enthroned in the presence of
God, prostrated themselves and touched the ground with their
foreheads worshipping God with these words, ‘We give thanks to
you. Almighty Lord God, He-Is-and-He-Was, for using your great
power and beginning your reign. The nations were seething with
rage and now the time has come for your own anger, and for the
dead to be judged, and for your servants the prophets, for the saints
and for all who worship you, small or great, to be rewarded. The
time has come to destroy those who are destroying the earth.'
Then the sanctuary of God in heaven opened, and the ark of the
covenant could be seen inside it. Then came flashes of lightning,
peals of thunder and an earthquake, and violent hail.

Chapter 12: The vision of the woman and the dragon

Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman, adorned with the

sun, standing on the moon, and with the twelve stars on her head
for a crown. She was pregnant, and in labour, crying aloud in the
pangs of childbirth. Then a second sign appeared in the sky, a huge
red dragon which had seven heads and ten horns, and each of the
216 Zeus and Typhon

seven heads crowned with a coronet. Its tail dragged a third of the
stars from the sky and dropped them to the earth, and the dragon
stopped in front of the woman as she was having the child, so that
he could eat it as soon as it was born from its mother. The woman
brought a male child into the world, the son who was to rule all the
nations with an iron sceptre, and the child was taken straight up to
God and to his throne, while the woman escaped into the desert,
where God had made a place of safety ready, for her to be looked
after in the twelve hundred and sixty days.
And now war broke out in heaven when Michael with his angels
attacked the dragon. The dragon fought back with his angels, but
they were defeated and driven out of heaven. The great dragon, the
primeval serpent, known as the devil or Satan, who had deceived
all the world, was hurled down to the earth and his angels were
hurled down with him.

Of course, so far as the author of Revelations was concerned the

symbolism was incidental to the theme. The woman is reputedly an
image of Israel as the mother of the Messiah, and the dragon
represents Satan. But the point to be made here is that the symbolism
is that of our astronomical scenario. The relevant items are:

1 Hail and fire dropped to Earth, burning up trees and grass;

2 A burning mountain thrown into the sea;
3 A huge star falling from the sky, burning like a ball of fire and
poisoning water;
4 The darkening of sun, moon and stars;
5 A star fallen from heaven opening the abyss, from which smoke
pours sufficient to darken sun and sky;
6 Stinging locusts emerging from the abyss, like horses with
scorpions’ or snakes’ tails, and with fire, smoke and sulphur issuing
from their mouths;
7 A huge red multiple-headed dragon in the sky (the heads with
comae), its tail dragging stars from the sky and dropping them to
Earth;
8 A cosmic battle between Michael and Satan, with the latter. The
great dragon, the primeval serpent’, hurled down to Earth with his
companions.

It is clear that the sources on which the author of Revelations drew

were steeped in the myth of the dragon, the war of the angels or gods
 Zeus and Typhon 217
in heaven, and of the terrible consequences on Earth below. But
Revelations takes us considerably further because these terrestrial
consequences are now seen quite explicitly. Items 1 to 6 are impact-
inspired; and it is difficult to see an ordinary meteorite fall described
here, particularly with the crater formation, secondary ejection, and
Phaethon-like darkening of the sky. Items 7 and 8 are not consistent
with an ordinary meteorite nor an ordinary comet: the inspiration
appears to be a comet/fireball complex, the comet multiple-headed.
Certainly if the whole passage is pure invention one would have to
congratulate the author on his clairvoyance; but it seems more likely
that there is an underlying reality, and that dragons, gods and angels
really did exist. Thus this text strongly suggests that the coming of the
Great Day is here being described in terms of an earlier great day,
when a huge red dragon—the Hebrew author would not subscribe to
a god—created destruction through impact on the Earth below.
We now begin to appreciate the rationale behind the ancient dread
of comets. Of course in time any calamity worth its salt would come
to be allegedly presaged by the appearance of a comet and this
inevitably complicates the problem of discriminating between fact
and fiction. Some mediaeval historians held that a comet appeared in
the sky at the time of the Deluge, and another at the time of Exodus,
but it is now assumed that these were attempts to give an
astronomical colouring to scriptural events. However if the calamaties
being described correspond to an impact or series of impacts, then
not only would the association with a great comet become worthy of
serious consideration, but this would strengthen the historicity of the
event.
A connection has also been made between the events of Exodus
and the Phaethon story. The fifteenth-century Christian pro-
pagandist Orosius in his history of the world from the creation to AD
416, described the plagues sent on Egypt including the burning of the
Earth, and remarked that to explain these events 'those who do not
believe in the power of God, using rather simple and foolish
arguments, derived the silly story of Phaethon’. Of course Phaethon
cannot simultaneously refer to the Flood and the Exodus; the point
to be made here is simply that what we see as an impact myth has in
the past been associated with the biblical story. In fact there is no
need for us to investigate the authenticity of these mediaeval sources.
As we shall now attempt to show the biblical account of Exodus itsell
amounts to a description of an impact associated with a terrible
comet.
218 Zeus and Typhon

9.8 The Exodus

The epic events of the Exodus, the journey of God’s people through
the desert to the Promised Land, is of course a story of fundamental
biblical and religious significance. At the centre of these events are
the plagues sent on Egypt, the pillar of fire which guided the fleeing
people, and the parting of the Red Sea. Once more one is faced with
extremely fragmentary information, much of it textual; there may in
fact have been more than one exodus from Egypt by more than one
route. The biblical account has it that Egypt suffered a series of
catastrophes in consequence of which the Israelites were allowed to
leave. What we shall try to do here is show that the catastrophes are
cosmic in nature, with many close resemblances to an impact event,
and that there is a clear description of a great comet in the account.
The most straightforward conclusion is then to assume that the
astronomical catastrophe took place as described. Whether it caused
the Exodus, was contemporaneous with it, or was spuriously
associated with it by a later writer, is then a matter of judgement or,
preferably, deeper historical analysis.
Ten plagues were visited on Egypt because of the refusal of
Pharaoh to ‘let the people go’. A variety of religious traditions has
been read into these plagues, but, apart from the killing of the
firstborn, they can be divided into two groups. One group is
obviously a reflection of natural phenomena common in Egypt. The
plagues of frogs, locusts and gadflies, and the deadly plague which
destroys livestock, are in this category. But a second group of
phenomena intersperse the first, phenomena with no obvious local
explanation. These are:

Moses and Aaron did as Yahweh commanded. He raised his staff

and in the sight of Pharaoh and his court he struck the waters of
the river and all the water in the river changed to blood. The fish in
the river died, and the river smelt so foul that the Egyptians found
it impossible to drink its water. Through the land of Egypt there
was blood. [Exodus 7:20-1]

Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Take handfuls of soot from the
kiln, and before the eyes of Pharaoh let Moses throw it into the air.
It shall spread like fine dust over the whole land of Egypt and bring
out boils that break into sores of man and beast all over the land of
Egypt.’ So they took soot from the kiln and stood in front of
 Zeus and Typhon 219
Pharaoh, and Moses threw it in the air. And on man and beast it
brought out boils breaking into sores. [Exodus 9:8-10]

Moses stretched out his staff towards heaven, and Yahweh

thundered and rained down hail. Lightning struck the earth.
Yahweh rained down hail on the land of Egypt. The hail fell, and
lightning flashing in the midst of it, a greater storm of hail then had
ever been known in Egypt since it first became a nation.
Throughout the land of Egypt the hail struck down everything in
the fields, man and beast. It struck all the crops in the fields, and it
shattered every tree in the fields. [Exodus 9:23-25]

The hail fell, and lightning flashing in the midst of it’ is an uncertain
translation. An alternative is ‘hail, and fire in the midst of the hail’.
The anomalous nature of the hail is frequently emphasized in other
sources. In Rev. 16:20-21 it is stated that ‘Every island vanished and
the mountains disappeared; and hail, with great hailstones weighing
a talent each [about 50 kg], fell from the sky on the people.’
A non-biblical account is given by Philo Judaeus, who was head of
the Jewish community in Alexandria in the first century AD. His main
sources were Hellenic and Jewish. He describes:
‘. . . . constant thunderbolts. These last provided a most marvellous
spectacle, for they ran through the hail, their natural antagonist,
and yet did not melt it nor were quenched by it. . . . they thought
. . . that divine wrath had brought about these novel happenings;
that the air in a way unknown before had conspired to ruin and
destroy the trees and fruits, while at the same time many animals
perished, some through excessive cold, others stoned to death, as it
were, through the weight of the falling hail, others consumed by fire,
while some survived half-burnt and bore the marks of the wounds
inflicted by the thunderbolts as a warning to the beholders.'

Philo goes on to describe a violent scorching wind which then

appeared, gaining force and intensity throughout the day and the
night.
Then Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand towards
heaven, and let darkness, darkness so thick that it can be felt, cover
the land of Egypt.’ So Moses stretched out his hand towards heaven,
and for three days there was deep darkness over the whole land of
Egypt. [Exodus 10:21-2]

The anomalous phenomena, then, are the foul-smelling and

220 Zeus and Typhon
poisonous water we have encountered in Revelations and the
Phaethon story; soot spreading over the whole of Egypt which, like
the locusts from the abyss of Revelations, brings out boils and sores;
devastating hail and fire; a violent scorching wind; and darkness for
three days. These events are by now so obviously cosmogonic that we
need not labour the point, but simply refer also to an apparently
miraculous event which took place during the subsequent wander-
ings: They spoke against God and against Moses. ... At this God
sent fiery serpents among the people; their bite brought death to
many in Israel’ (Num. 21:5—6). Fiery here translates seraph which is
used also for a dragon or a winged serpent; the word ‘seraphim1 is
from the same root. Events of this sort are found scattered through
the Old Testament.
We have seen that there are occasional scattered extra-biblical
references to a comet. One by the seventeenth-century scholar
Rockenbach is interesting because he specifically refers to comet
Typhon. In his De cometis tractatus novus methodicus (1602) he
writes, claiming to use only the most trustworthy and earliest writers:
‘In the year of the world two thousand four hundred and fifty three
as many trustworthy authors, on the basis of many conjectures,
have determined—a comet appeared which Pliny also mentioned
in his second book. It was fiery, of irregular circular form, with a
wrapped head; it was in the shape of a globe and was of terrible
aspect. It is said that King Typhon ruled at that time in Egypt. . . .
Certain [authorities] assert that the comet was seen in Syria,
Babylonia, India, in the sign of Capricorn, in the form of a disc, at
the time when the children of Israel advanced from Egypt towards
the Promised Land, led on their way by the pillar of cloud during
the day and by the pillar of fire at night.’

Unfortunately Rockenbach’s sources are lost and the merging of

Exodus and Typhon might still be apocryphal: since plagues were
associated with the Typhon myths of ancient Greece and plagues
were associated with the Exodus, then perhaps somewhere en route
the two accounts became merged, perhaps by hypothetical mediaeval
monks. The argument fails because, it seems to us, the Exodus
account itself contains an accurate description of an outstandingly
brilliant comet, presumably Typhon, which we identify as the
probable progenitor of Encke.
The coma and gaseous component of the tail of a comet close to the
Sun are self-luminous, fluorescing with a bluish-white light. An
 Zeus and Typhon 221

exceptionally large comet close to the Sun, of the sort met with
perhaps once in centuries or millennia, would, as we have seen
described, also have a long, deep red tail, broader than the white
gaseous tail and extending further from the nucleus. Such a comet
would be visible by day, with the nucleus, coma and the brilliant
white gaseous tail, or at least that part of it not too far from the
nucleus, visible. At night the broader, fainter red tail would be
dominant in the sky, the nucleus and inner tail being low or more
probably below the horizon.
Now the direction of movement of the people in the traditional
account was generally east or south-east, which at the latitude
concerned (30° North) is towards the rising Sun to a crude
approximation:

‘When Pharaoh had let the people go, God did not let them take the
road to the land of the Philistines, although that was the nearest
way. God thought that the prospect of fighting would make the
people lose heart and turn back to Egypt. Instead, God led the
people by the roundabout way of the wilderness to the sea of
Reeds.’ [Exodus 13:17-18]

A truly exceptional comet of the sort we are discussing, visible by day,

would appear in the pre-dawn sky as a red band of light, its nucleus
below the horizon. Should the comet lie anywhere near the ecliptic
plane as does Encke, then with the anti-solar streaming of the tail and
at the latitude concerned, the tail would appear to rise vertically up;
the people would be moving towards the pillar of fire during the
night. After sunrise, the white inner tail would dominate and there
would be a pillar of cloud:

‘Yahweh went before them, by day in the form of a pillar of cloud

to show them the way, and by night in the form of a pillar of fire to
give them light: thus they could continue their march by day and by
night. The pillar of cloud never failed to go before the people
during the day, nor the pillar of fire during the night.’ [Exodus
13:21-2]

The pillar of fire would be visible only in the second half of the night
and the pillar of cloud would be best seen in the early part of the day
before the sun rose too high. This situation could not last, however. It
the comet were in a direct orbit, then on passing perihelion the tail,
still pointing anti-sunwards, would now turn ‘upside down' as seen by
the observer. What had been a morning phenomenon would now
222 Zeus and Typhon

become an evening one. The pillar of fire would be seen soon after
dark, but it would now appear in the sky behind the direction of
travel:

Then the angel of God, who marched at the front of the army of
Israel, changed station and moved to their rear. The pillar of cloud
changed station from the front to the rear of them and remained
there.’ [Exodus 14:18-19]

The account goes on to say: Tt came between the camp of the

Egyptians and the camp of Israel.’ However it is quite common for
the inexpert to describe a sporadic meteor as falling behind a house or
over a mountain, and the pillar being between the camps might be, if
not an embellishment, merely a perspective effect.
We have then a plain description of an exceptional comet in a direct
orbit of low inclination and small perihelion distance. As with the
apocalyptic account in Revelations, if the passage is pure invention
one would again have to congratulate the author on his powers of
clairvoyance. Thus a reasonable interpretation of the Exodus
account is that it took place much as described and the events seen
until now as miraculous simply describe an impact with a fragment
from a great comet during a close encounter. The progenitor of comet
Encke satisfies all the orbital criteria and so once again we have a
quite independent argument to associate that great comet with a
terrestrial catastrophe.

It is recorded in Plato’s Timaeus that his uncle Critias told of‘a story,
strange but perfectly true’ which he had learned from Solon. Solon
(639-559 BC) was a Greek merchant and student of noble descent,
generally respected by his contemporaries, who had spent some years
in Egypt on a sort of extended sabbatical, during which time he had
visited a number of priestly colleges. He had been told by one of the
priests:
The Greeks would always be children because they possessed no
conceptions based on tradition and none of the knowledge of an
old man. The basis for this lay in the many and manifold
destructions of generations that had occurred and will continue to
occur. The most violent were caused by fire and water, lesser ones
in a thousand other ways. The report that Phaethon, the son of
Helios, once put horses to his father’s carriage but was unable to
keep it on his father’s course, with the result that he set everything
 Zeus and Typhon 223

on Earth on fire and, having been struck by lightning himself,

perished, is related as if it were a fairytale. What is true is the
occurrence of a shifting of the bodies in the sky which move around
the Earth and destruction after long intervals of everything on
Earth by violent fire.’

This statement is 2,600 years old. As a description of the

consequences of a large, active comet entering a precessing Apollo
orbit, we can hardly better it now. Whether one sees in this ancient,
fourth-hand account an intangible memory of recurrent catastrophe,
or mere gossip, is a matter of judgement. Inevitably at some stage of
any enquiry of this sort one will be tempted to go beyond the
evidence. But it seems that at least we may have resolved the paradox
raised at the end of Chapter 7: the expected events have occurred, and
are recorded, but in the absence of the astronomical paradigm have
gone unrecognized. At least one impact event so devastated an area
that it was recorded as loosening the hold of the Egyptian oppressors
over their Hebrew vassals, and at least one catastrophic deluge seems
to have been caused by such an impact. But the enduring effect was
the influence on modes of thought. It is only now, with our recently
acquired knowledge of the environment of the Earth, that we can
begin to understand, in a very imperfect way and 3,000 years later, the
reality behind the gods and their miracles.
 10 • 1369 BC

The comet Zeus was observed world-wide during at least the second and
third millennia BC. We propose a revision of Egyptian chronology which
permits synchronization with Hebrew and uncorrected radiocarbon
dates. As a result, the Zeus I Typhon combat and the Exodus are reckoned
to have taken place in 1369 BC, with consequent revision of early Middle
Eastern history. If these deductions are valid, it is likely that megalithic
temple-observatories were set up with Zeus in mind, while the Flood of
earlier biblical times was due to an encounter round 2500 BC of the
Earth with a swarm of meteors and comets which included Zeus.

10.1 Comet encounters and the framework of prehistory

That there have been catastrophic impacts within historic or
prehistoric times is, we have seen, not only expected from the
astronomy but also seems to be borne out by our analysis of ancient
texts. Disasters such as the one described in Exodus have not been
taken at face value, however, and this must in the main be due to later
interpreters. With no comparable events in their own times to guide
them, these later interpreters have tended to play down their
significance and even write them off altogether as eschatological
embellishment. It has been natural to see the miraculous destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding plain, for example, by
the raining down of fire from heaven, as fiction. Maybe—but as Kulik
first pointed out, had the Tunguska object fallen four hours later it
would have destroyed St Petersburg (Leningrad). We believe
therefore, it is not now reasonable to assume, without further study,
that a biblical story of this kind has no foundation, especially as it
tells of forewarning of the disasters given to Lot by two angels—the
dragon pair.
Indeed it must be counted a scholarly .error of extraordinary
dimensions that the past history of short-period comets should have
been so disguised in the form of mythology that their awesome
consequences have been overlooked and have so far found no place at
all in conventional prehistory. Standard interpretations of archae-
ological facts for example take no account at all of comets striking or
threatening the Earth. It is of course possible that the omission is
simply rectified without damage to our present understanding of the
 1369 BC 225
course of prehistory. On the other hand, it is also possible that
previous interpreters have, in their ignorance, so missed the
significance of certain facts that the very framework of our present
knowledge is seriously undermined.
It would of course be natural for historians to resist any demands
by astronomers that they now re-examine the fundamentals of their
subject. After all, a great deal of time and effort has been invested in
arriving at our current picture and one would have to be very sure of
one's ground if there were a need to go back and unscramble the
analysis. Any extended resistance would in our view have to be
counted as unreasonable however. The effects of cometary impacts
like Tunguska, especially over an inhabited area, indicate that most
of our earliest knowledge of an impact event would, by its very
nature, reach us only by word of mouth through survivors whom it is
unfair to credit with anything like our present understanding of
astronomy. So, in the presence of words that might seem obscure or
ambiguous, it is inevitable that the historian’s picture will have been
tinged by the later preconceptions. It seems to us therefore that a new
study of the past is now mandatory. In such a study, the actual
occasion of any great impact would have to be regarded as one of the
most crucial issues.
As we saw in the previous chapter, there are grounds for
associating the Typhon event with the Exodus from Egypt. This tells
us some time before the first millennium BC is probably involved, well
over 3,000 years ago. Unfortunately, this comes in a period of rather
uncertain chronology. A decade or two back, many archaeologists
might not have readily conceded this fact but the appearance on the
scene of new techniques like carbon dating and dendrochronology
has greatly upset the more conventional dating methods and the subject
is now in a state of considerable flux. Even the documentary evidence
is not beyond reappraisal. Admittedly the long-standing chronology
of ancient Egypt, derived from what appear to be incontrovertible
astronomical facts, is currently taken to be in broad agreement with
the ages of artefacts derived by radiocarbon dating and corrected by
tree ring counts using the bristlecone pine from California (see
Section 10.4); and this does seem to provide modern investigators
with some sense of security. However as we shall presently indicate
derived radiocarbon dates may be subject to errors due to the very
event or events we are seeking to analyse. Thus, a cometary impact
could seriously disturb the stratospheric radiocarbon content and
there might also be important low-level variations. The discrepancies
226 1369 BC
between radiocarbon and tree ring ages seem to be at their greatest in
the second and third millennia BC, with signs of less discord as we
advance or go further back in time. The facts therefore require us to
be cautious. Chronology is of course fundamental to the whole
science of archaeology and is frequently and intensively examined by
experts. If we are to undertake any re-examination here in securing a
date for the Typhon/Exodus catastrophe, there is little that we can do
but scratch the surface of what is an intricate and complex subject.

10.2 Egyptian chronology

In ideal circumstances, it should be possible to set up independent
systems of dates for each of the nations of the ancient world using
internal evidence alone. That the arguments deployed are in the end
fundamentally sound can then in principle be confirmed by a study of
contemporary artefacts traded between the nations and events like
battles in which two or more peoples participated. Unfortunately, the
internal evidence is often not good enough to establish independent
chronologies of sufficiently tolerable quality. As a result, there is still
a tendency in practice for much of the approved dating of the
prehistoric world, especially prior to the first millennium BC, to be
correlated with and ultimately derived from just one single internal
scale, namely that of the Egyptian civilization. It is natural that this
should be so since it is of the Egyptian civilization that we have the
longest, the most continuous and the best-preserved remains. But if
one has any reservations about this scale on grounds of principle, an
examination of its actual basis can only add to them. Quite simply,
the confidence with which conventional Egyptian chronology is
upheld by modern experts seems out of all proportion to the certainty
with which it has been established. If we are to obtain a good date for
the Typhon event, the fundamental timescale itself will certainly bear
further scrutiny.
At first sight, this conclusion might appear pretentious. After all,
most of the great museums of the world base their collections on
Egyptian chronology. Also, around 1950, the distinguished Amer-
ican Egyptologist, Parker, conducted a quite searching and
apparently reassuring analysis of the ancient calendar and chron-
ology. He placed what appears to be a seal of approval on what had
been the already established opinion, namely that the ancient
Egyptians maintained the so-called Sothic calendar. This, it is
supposed, survived without break throughout the three millennia
 1369 BC 227

before the present era. Subsequently, neither Neugebauer nor van

der Waerden, both notable experts on the subject, have dissented
from this view. So the Sothic calendar stands today virtually
unchallenged, and with all the authority that its successful use for
nearly eighty years can provide. Certainly we cannot escape the
evidence that the Egyptians used an official year of exactly 365 days
nor that they also observed the inevitable wandering of a wsolar' year
of 365\ days initiated by the heliacal rising of Sirius (= Sothis) and
relative to which they fixed their seasonal festivals. Cumbersome
though such a procedure might appear from a modern viewpoint, it
would in practice have been very simple to use and there is no doubt
at all that the heliacal rising of Sirius was of immense significance to the
Egyptian civilization. In a land dominated by the requirements of
agriculture, it was widely recognized as a convenient marker for the
beginning of the annual inundation of the Nile. In the light of all this,
one might well wonder whether there is any compelling reason for
questioning Egyptian chronology.
As it turns out however, the evidence for a wandering solar year is
really convincing for only two periods of Egyptian history. The first is
during the Middle Kingdom presumed to be around 2000 BC. The
second is the Ptolemaic Period between about 300 BC and AD 100. In
the first case, we are aware of several, perhaps a dozen, ‘diagonal
calendars' in the pharaoh tombs of the time. These quite clearly show
the heliacal rising of Sirius advancing one day every four years from
near the end of Mechir (sixth month) to near the end of Pharmuti
(eighth month) during the 300 years or so of the Middle Kingdom. In
the second case, there is a specific reference by Censorinus of the third
century AD to the heliacal rising on the first of Thoth (first month) in
AD 139. Rather earlier, in 237 BC, there was the famous Canopus
Decree, which played a major part in the original translation of
hieroglyphics, representing what appeared to be an unsuccessful
attempt to stop the wandering year in favour of a leap year system.
On the basis of these and one or two additional facts, a continuous
wandering year has been inferred.
Given it takes 1,460 years for a 365-day (civil) year to get back in
synchronism with a 365^-day (solar) year, it is the retrospective
evidence of Censorinus that has served to define the Sothic calendar
ever since. Heliacal risings on the first of Thoth are assumed to have
taken place previously in 1321 BC and 2781 BC (and so on), and it is
on the basis of this scheme that the Middle Kingdom dates, lor
example, have been placed between 2052 (approximate end of
228 1369 BC

Mechir) and 1786 BC (approximate end of Pharmuti) in the relevant

Sothic cycle. Some measure of the intrinsic difficulties that exist in
setting up this scheme may be gathered from the fact that even the
choice of cycle for the Middle Kingdom was a subject of considerable
controversy at one time. Also, only very few early references to other
dates are available for integrating the remaining periods of Egyptian
history into the framework. But a unique chronology seems
nevertheless to emerge. Three great periods of high civilization are
distinguished: the Old Kingdom (2664-2155 BC), the Middle
Kingdom (2052-1786 BC), and the New Kingdom (1554-1072 BC).
These are followed by the Late Egyptian Period (670-332 BC), when
there were many contacts with Phoenicia, Syria, Lydia and Greece,
and the Ptolemaic Period (332-30 BC), which began with the conquest
under Alexander, for both of which the chronology is reasonably
secure.
One of the most curious features of the final scheme is the lack of
records supplying calendar dates of any significance in the compara-
tively more recent period between about 1100 BC and 700 BC. During
most of this time, Egypt is supposed to have been in a state of serious
decline with relatively few important links with surrounding nations.
Such knowledge as we have of this period appears to relate to
Ethiopian and Libyan empires rather than the heart of Egypt itself.
The paucity of relics of this period in central Egypt as compared to
the riches of the New Kingdom beforehand is sufficiently striking to
raise very real doubts, at least in the minds of the uncommitted, as to
whether an artificial gap in the historical sequence may have
somehow been introduced by later insistence on the Sothic cycle.
Thus, although archaeologists have come to depend totally on the
validity of the cycle, it remains to this day a very disturbing fact that
there is no known reference to the Sothic cycle in Egyptian texts. Like
it or not, there is no secure basis for supposing the ancient civilization
of Egypt attached any significance to the dates of 1321 and 2781 BC.
We may continue to ask therefore whether the facts admit of any
other interpretation.
An outstanding result of Parker’s investigations was the realization
that the Egyptians also maintained a third calendar based on the
motion of the Moon. Many primitive communities are known to have
begun time-keeping with a lunar calendar and its seems Egypt was no
exception. Indeed, Parker was able to demonstrate very impressively
how an exact 365-day calendar might have grown quite naturally
out of a lunar calendar in which its users regularly introduced
 1369 BC 229

intercalary months so as to try and keep the lunar year in step with a
solar year, itself regulated by heliacal risings such as that of Sirius. He
showed moreover how the official year of 365 days could have been
established this way well before its drift with respect to the solar year
(or vice versa) was properly recognized. Thus, seasonal points or
heliacal risings of other stars would have fluctuated by whole months
relative to dates on a lunar calendar and this could at first have
obscured any slow drift. Only after one or two hundred years would
the early regulators of the calendar have been obliged to contemplate
the disparity between the lunar-based and solar calendars and accede
to a possibly unacceptable leap or let the solar year continue to drift.
For this to have happened however, an official year, kept in step with
the Sun and the seasons, must to begin with have been considered a
desirable objective. According to this theory, which has not been
improved on, the solar year probably would have been allowed to drift
relative to the official one from near the start of the Old Kingdom,
presumed to be 2664 BC, some 120 years after the beginning of the
relevant Sothic cycle.
The persuasiveness of Parker's theory as a whole loses a little of its
force however, when it is appreciated that later Egyptians in post-
Middle Kingdom times were still continuing to maintain a lunar
calendar. This they quite clearly did during the New Kingdom, and
further impressive sophistications of the lunar calendar were
introduced as late as 357 BC. On Parker’s theory, given a Sothic
calendar in which the dates of the seasonal festivals could have been
fixed without difficulty, it is by no means obvious why the lunar
calendar should have been kept going with such dedication. Parker
did not meet this point satisfactorily. He evidently envisaged priest-
astronomers who, while all the time maintaining a simple wandering
year that required very little astronomical knowledge, also contrived
to keep themselves in business through the centuries by perpetuating
a special lunar-based system for calculating certain feast days and the
like of such complexity and presumed importance that its basic
redundancy was never detected. It has to be accepted that the truth
of the matter could have been just this, but Parker does appear to
have overlooked another possibility, admittedly a less convenient
one, but one nevertheless that should be considered since it could
explain why the lunar calendar did not become obsolete. That is that
the Egyptians did for a period maintain a 365-day civil year observing
the inevitable drift of the solar year and even returned to it after a
time, but that there was also a period when the schematic 365-day
230 1369 BC

year was purposely deposed in favour of a more complex lunar

calendar intended to be kept in step with the solar year. If this did
indeed happen some of the modern basis for calculating Egyptian
dates might have to be reconsidered. That is, there is an unsupported
assumption of unbroken continuity in the calendar over three
millennia, a picture which does not fit well with the continuing
utilization of an unnecessary lunar calendar.
Now, although Parker implicitly rejects the hypothesis that the
Egyptians did at some time cease to give priority to a schematic 365-
day year, there is quite an impressive range of evidence that they did,
and several expert chronologists have at various times upheld this
view in the past. The very fact even that the late Egyptians divided
their 365-day civil year into three seasons of four thirty-day months,
plus five epagomenal days of festival is almost proof itself that the
calendar was at some comparatively recent time treated as fixed or
nearly fixed in relation to an agricultural or solar year. Thus, the three
divisions of the civil year did not have arbitrary names but were
specifically called periods of flood, sowing and harvest respectively. A
possible way, for example, of ensuring that an official year of this kind
did not wander too drastically from the solar or agricultural year
would have been to introduce leap months. A deviation of two
months would probably have been regarded as the maximum
permissible if seasonal feast days were not to become intolerably
unseasonal. Under these circumstances, we might expect to be aware
of isolated royal proclamations or edicts requiring a certain date or
festival day to take place some months later at a new time of the year.
Surprisingly, there is just such a proclamation, otherwise hardly
explained, known to have been issued in the reign of Ramses II. On
the first of Phamenoth (seventh month) of his thirtieth year on the
throne, Ramses announced that the next lunar year which would
otherwise have commenced on the first of Phamenoth would now
begin ten months later on the first of Tybi (fifth month). At the same
time or very soon after, the Sed festival, the traditional start to the
lunar year now on the first of Tybi, was brought forward to the
heliacal rising of Sirius then at the first of Thoth (first month) thus
introducing an effective leap of four months. Ramses II and his
successors are the only kings known to have placed the Sed festival at
this time of the year and the fact has proved impossible to explain
satisfactorily on the conventional scheme. It remains to be explained
why the New Kingdom pharaohs regarded the months of inundation
heralded by the heliacal rising of Sirius as more properly associated
 1369 BC 231
0 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 9 8

29. Ramasseum month list: illustration from Lockyer’s Dawn of Astronomy. The
numbering is such that Thoth for example is 1, Tybi 5, Phamenoth 7, Epiphi 11 and
so on. The blank rectangle is usually regarded as representing an intercalary month.
Note however that Phamenoth begins the sequence from the right-hand side in
accord with the lunar calendar initiated by Amenhotep I 200 years before. It seems
the lunar calendar may have taken precedence over the Sothic calendar.

with those months whose names (Tybi, Mechir, Phamenoth,

Pharmuti) were originally associated with the season of growth. We
shall return to this point later.
The most striking evidence in favour of a relatively fixed official
lunar year at some time, that is fixed with respect to a 365^-day year,
is the famous calendar written out at the start of the so-called Ebers
Papyrus, first translated in 1870 by Brugsch. This begins by referring
to a heliacal rising of Sothis on the ninth day of Epiphi (eleventh
month) in the reign of Amenhotep E (It is in fact by this solitary
record that his date on the conventional scale of 1545 BC has been
established. The calculation based on the assumption of a drifting
year is 4 x (10 x 30 + 9) years after 2781 BC.) The reference is followed
by what has been widely presumed to be a lunar calendar based on
Sirius. Thus the heliacal risings of Sirius in this calendar are supposed
to regulate the lunar year so as to keep it fixed with respect to the
seasons. No refutation of this interpretation is available other than a
general ex hypothesi presumption against it. It is interesting to notice
that at this particular time near the very beginning of the New
Kingdom, there are many signs of renewed interest in a lunar
calendar. Indeed, it is a time of intellectual ferment generally since the
old Osiris cult was being gradually supplanted by official religions
paying more direct homage to the sun-god. It is also a time
immediately following on the restoration of the land to indigenous
Egyptian people after a lengthy period of foreign subjugation under
the Elyksos invaders. Since the Ebers Papyrus contains references to
First Dynasty kings, many centuries previously, when the lunar
calendar was originally set up, it is conceivable that Amenhotep I
232 1369 BC
was seeking to restore such a calendar. On this assumption the
heliacal rising of Sirius would then continue to be associated with the
eleventh month, and it seems highly significant that subsequent
generations were soon to alter the name of the seventh month to
p-n’Imnhtp (= Amenhotep) and that of the eleventh to Epiphi. (Very
much later, the seventh month came to be called Phamenoth.) Thus,
it is Parker’s conclusion that the Ebers Papyrus signifies a date on a
Sothic calendar from which was projected forward a new lunar
calendar. We agree with this important conclusion but would go
further. It also signifies the date when a lunar calendar with
Phamenoth as first month assumed priority. The splendid astronomi-
cal ceilings of the tomb of Senmut and the Ramasseum both belong to
subsequent years and unmistakably display lunar calendars which
take precedence over any other. These calendars begin with the
month Phamenoth.
Corresponding to the reign of Amenhotep III some 150 years later,
there exists the well-known water clock of Karnak. This is essentially
a calibrated water jug which is filled to the brim at sunset and whose
contents then flow out slowly through an outlet at the bottom of the
clock in such a way that the water level indicates the passage of hours
through the night. The interesting point about this clock is the
sequence of time marks which change for each month in a way that
reflects the actual variation of the length of the night throughout the
year. This fact is really acceptably interpreted only if the months
occurred with general approval at the same fixed time in a solar year.
The Karnak clock is therefore good evidence for an officially
intended solar year. Parker rejects this hypothesis. Since the implied
date of the autumnal equinox is not consistent with Amenhotep Ill’s
Sothic date, he prefers to claim obsolescence in the design at the time
of making. This is a weak argument however because it arbitrarily
adheres to the very assumption we are seeking to check. In fact, the
monthly variations are consistent with a solar-based calendar set up
in the reign of Amenhotep I and can be regarded as rather good
evidence for what was intended to be a lunar calendar tied to the solar
year, through at least the first 150 years of the New Kingdom.
Around this time of course, the inevitable drift of Sirius risings
would have again been revealing itself and an official decision would
have been necessary whether to let it drift or whether to introduce
leap months. There is a strong suspicion that this newly established
lunar calendar was run concurrently with a 365-day official year
causing the solar year to continue to drift since there is an inscription
 1369 BC 233
on the Elephantine stone associating Thutmose III some eighty years
prior to Amenhotep III with a heliacal rising of Sirius on the twenty-
eighth day of Epiphi. Not so much later, the Medinet Habu papyrus
provides a possible association of Ramses II with a heliacal rising on
the first day of Thoth. Nevertheless given the importance attached
then to a lunar calendar and the desirability of resisting the drift of the
seasons, a logical step around this time, maybe 200 years or more
after Amenhotep I, would have been to restore the heliacal rising of
Sirius to the start of Epiphi. It apparently did not happen quite like
this however. Instead of going back, the calendar date of the heliacal
rising was eventually advanced by four months. As we have seen
already, it was Ramses II, halfway through his reign, who proclaimed
the leap. The latter half of the reign of this king is distinguished for the
quite mysterious and previously unexplained association of the
heliacal rising of Sirius with the first day of Tybi, the opening month
of the middle (formerly the growing) season. Since the heliacal rising
of Sirius had strong historical associations with this time of the year
during the early Middle Kingdom when Egypt was at its intellectual
zenith, it could be that Ramses II took what he considered to be a
sensible advantage of the need for an adjustment whilst continuing to
preserve a lunar calendar, and chose to associate the heliacal rising
with Tybi. It is of interest to note that after the initial announcement
in the thirtieth year of Ramses II, there were according to Gardiner
continued proclamations of the Sed festival in the month of Tybi at
approximately three-year intervals precisely what one would expect
if there were being made renewed attempts to regulate a lunar
calendar. Yet again however, the heliacal risings were allowed to
drift, purposely or otherwise, and by the time another 150 years had
passed and the twentieth dynasty was coming to an end, some of the
principal lunar feasts were being celebrated in the following month.
This fact has also caused some bafflement amongst experts. Gardiner
for example suggested Mesore (twelfth month) became the first
month of the year instead of Thoth. But Parker, rejecting this
hypothesis, showed that the explanation was more likely to lie in the
transfer of feasts from a 'stationary’ lunar calendar to a shifting solar
calendar. Such an interpretation would hardly be defensible had not a
lunar calendar recently taken precedence. Parker’s analysis in fact
makes it clear that the names of many feast days were transferred
early on from a wandering year to a lunar year and then, rather
curiously, from a lunar year back to a wandering year. This is very
difficult to comprehend on the continuous wandering year hy-
234 1369 BC

pothesis, but it is easily accepted if official switches of the basic

calendar actually took place in the way we describe.
There is further evidence that the New Kingdom leaders sought to
abandon the wandering solar year by instituting a lunar year. As both
van der Waerden and Neugebauer have emphasized, the tombs of
Seti I and Ramses IV possess elaborate inscriptions involving one
particular diagonal calendar of the Middle Kingdom period along
with instructions as to its interpretation. According to these critics, it
looks very much as if the wandering calendar to which the inscribers
refer had fallen into disuse. Again, this fact hardly sits comfortably
beside their fundamental assumption that the calendar was in
continuous use throughout and beyond the period in question. It
favours more the assumption that the official calendar had actually
been changed. To sum up therefore, Parker has shown how a new
lunar calendar assumed priority and was maintained during the New
Kingdom. It was however kept in step with an official 365-day year
and inevitably as before there came a time when it was recognizably
out of step with the seasons and it was necessary to introduce leap
months. The adjustments during the reign of Ramses II are thus of
fundamental importance.
As remarked already, calendrical information in the interval
between the New Kingdom and the Ptolemaic period is so sparse as to
be essentially non-existent. We do know of course that a wandering
year was being used in a period following Ramses II and that it was in
use during the Ptolemaic period. If we make the usual assumption
that the Sothic calendar was continuous in the intervening time and
project back from AD 139, a heliacal rising on the first day of Tybi
would have occurred either in 834 BC or 2294 BC. The latter date is
ridiculously remote and we are forced, however unexpectedly, to the
conclusion that the thirtieth year of the reign of Ramses II was in
834 BC—that Ramses II came to the throne near 864 BC instead of circa
1260 BC. This takes some 400 years out of the conventional system of
dates, but it has the great advantage of explaining why there are
no calendrical facts after about 1100 BC; the real date is around
700 BC.
If we continue to accept the broad outline of the succession of kings
of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first dynasties ending with
rule by the high priests of Amun at Thebes, the revised date of
Ramses II implies that this spell of central Egyptian history comes to
an end around 550 BC, just before the accredited beginning of the later
Persian domination. By this reckoning, the twenty-second, twenty-
 1369 BC 235

third and twenty-fourth dynasties of Libyan kings (950-710 BC) in

Lower Egypt and the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth dynasties of
Ethiopian kings (730-520 BC) are partly contemporaneous with the
New Kingdom monarchs. It follows that the last great king of the
twentieth dynasty, Ramses III, was on the throne at much the same
time as the Ethiopian king Piankhy who is known to have conquered
Egypt from the south around 730 BC. That being the case, we can now
comprehend some of the unexplained mysteries of the last will and
testament of Ramses III. This is handed down to us in the form of the
Harris Papyrus and records the great battles with Libyan invaders
from the north including the ‘Peoples from the Sea’. These were
eventually repelled and Egypt then lived for a while in comparative
peace and prosperity. Curiously however, the papyrus refers to an
interregnum prior to Ramses III and his predecessor Set-nakht: The
land of Egypt was overthrown from without and every man was
thrown out of his right; they had no chief mouth for many years
formerly until other times. . . . Other times having come after it,
empty years, Arza, a certain Syrian, was with them as chief. He set the
whole land tributary before him together; he united his companions
and plundered their possessions. They made the gods like men, and
no offerings were presented in the temples.' There is no mistaking the
implication that Egypt was a vassal state for a time, and under
conventional chronology it has not been possible to identify Arza
satisfactorily. Under our revised chronology, Arza is almost certainly
Piankhy, and central Egypt is seen more clearly as a declining power
caught between two warring giants. From the north was the advancing
frontier of the Macedonian empire assisted by the peoples from the sea,
and from the south, the forward thrust of the Persian empire across the
lands of Arabia and Ethiopia. In the time of Ramses III, there was still
sufficient strength and will in the Egyptian nation for it to reassert itself
on the frontiers of these empires, but by 500 BC and then again in
300 BC, it had weakened to such an extent that it was prey to permanent
domination, first by the Persians, and then by the Ptolemies,
descendants of the Macedonians.
Let us now summarize some of the crucial dates in this revised
scheme of Egyptian chronology. In Table 8, we list a number of
prominent epochs on a conventional Sothic calendar. The cor-
responding dates on the revised scale are arrived at in the following
way. First 834 BC is when the heliacal rising of Sirius takes place on
the first of Tybi on a Sothic calendar projected back from AD 139.
This wandering year calendar is assumed to have been initiated by a
236 1369 BC

Table 8. Revised Egyptian chronology

Period Revised Conventional Comments
date date

PRE-DYNASTIC Primitive lunar calendar

2313 BC 2781 BC First Sothic cycle begins

OLD KINGDOM 2196 2664

Major pyramid building
1687 2155

MIDDLE KINGDOM 1584 2052

Diagonal calendars in use
1318 1786

1086 1554

1077 1545 Amenhotep I: Lunar

calendar adopted

NEW KINGDOM 950 Start of Libyan dynasties

(xxii, xxiii, xxiv)

834 1272 Ramses II 30th year:

second Sothic cycle begins

634 1072
Tanite dynasty
512 950

LATE PERIOD 520- 520- Persian domination

PTOLEMAIC PERIOD 332- 332-

Schematic tabulation of some principal dates in the conventional and revised

Egyptian chronologies. The crucial revised dates are 1077 and 834 BC. Apart from
the Libyan dynasties and later, the remaining chronologies relative to the
conventional and revised New Kingdom dates are essentially the same.

leap following the two-month drift of a lunar calendar set up by

Amenhotep I. This is a little arbitrary but is more or less in accord
with the timespan of the relevant kings in conventional chronology
and corresponds to Ramses Iks edict. Amenhotep Ts date is thus 243
years earlier, and is 1077 BC. Since this year occurs on the ninth of
Epiphi in the previous Sothic calendar, its starting date was
approximately 1,236 years earlier, that is 2313 BC. The Old and
Middle Kingdom dates may now be interpolated accordingly while
the beginning and end of the New Kingdom relative to Amenhotep Ts
dates are assumed to be the same in the revised and conventional
chronologies.
 1369 BC 237
Two independent confirmations of the revised chronology may be
mentioned straightaway. The first of these comes from consideration
of the pyramids. These objects have long remained inscrutable as to
their purpose, but the precise orientation of the sides of the Great
Pyramid to the cardinal points clearly indicates something of
astronomical significance. In spite of this, it is customary to decry
the early Egyptians’ knowledge of practical astronomy; certainly
scholars have floundered in their attempts to read the intent behind the
pyramids, not least those who have staked a claim to understand their
astronomical connections. Piazzi Smyth for example discovered a
‘pyramid inch’ on the basis of erroneous measurements. Neverthe-
less, there is abundant evidence of accurate astronomical alignment
of many temples as well as the pyramids, and it was John Herschel in
1836 who first pointed out that the north-facing entrance of the
Descending Passage, which slopes steeply downwards for over 100
metres into the Great Pyramid, was aligned precisely on the then Pole
Star, Alpha Draconis, about 2160 BC before it precessed away from
this position. This and other arguments led Piazzi Smyth to favour
2170 BC. Such dates agree very closely with that of the Great Pyramid
construction on the revised chronology but have no relevance to the
date of 2600 BC implied by the standard chronology.
A second confirmation comes from the Greenland ice sheet. Large
volcanic eruptions over the past 10,000 years have ejected acid gases
into the air, and these have left traces in snow layers. Many historical
eruptions have recently been dated from Greenland ice cores, one of
them being the Thera eruption in the Aegean Sea which some have
associated with the end of the Minoan civilization. The strong signal
in the ice corresponding to this event is dated at 1388 + 50 BC. Several
layers of volcanic tephra from cores taken from the eastern
Mediterranean sea bed have also been examined recently. These can
be dated, and for the Minoan ash a date of 1390 BC has been found.
These absolute dates differ greatly from the radioactive carbon dates
of the Thera event adjusted to the standard scale, the latter being
assumed to be in agreement with conventional Egyptian chronology.
On this scale, the date is 1720 + 50 BC and there is an implied
discrepancy of 330+ 100 years in adjusted carbon dates of this epoch
(see Section 10.4) as well as in Egyptian chronology. These
independent lines of evidence seem then to lead to the same
conclusion: there is a major error in the standard chronology which,
by our arguments, makes all Old, Middle and New Kingdom dates
before 512 BC too early by 468 years.
238 1369 BC

10.3 Date of the Typhon catastrophe

With this revision, our attention now focuses upon the end of the
Middle Kingdom. Pliny claimed that it was a king of this time,
Typhon, who gave his name to the comet which is the subject of our
investigations (although we have found no such name in the king
lists). It is to this time that the Ipuwer Papyrus, 'Admonitions of a
Sage’, belongs. This was translated in 1901 by Gardiner and like
Revelations, it is evidently a kind of warning, based on experience, of
future catastrophe: it is in part a chronicle of catastrophic
happenings which disrupted and overwhelmed Egypt, the length and
breadth of the land. The chronicler describes how many people were
once even driven to suicide, and the reader is left in little doubt that
something fairly horrific is involved. The account bears many
similarities to the description of events in Exodus of which some
aspects at least, as we have seen in Chapter 9, are attributable to a
cometary impact. The time of its writing seems also to be very close to
that paraded in the inscriptions on the tombs of Seti I and Ramses IV.
For some reason not previously understood at all, the people of these
later times attached enormous importance to a particular year in the
past in which the heliacal rising of Sirius took place on the twenty-
sixth day of Pharmuti. This corresponds on our revised chronology to
the date 1369 BC near the end of the Middle Kingdom. Somehow,
judging by the magnificent and elaborate inscriptions on the tombs of
these later rulers, their way of life, their religion, and their cosmology
were intimately linked with this date. Given the extent to which the
pharaohs of Egypt assumed the role of gods on this earth, it is not too
much to suppose they saw in this date that supreme occasion—the
end of an age—when one of their principal objects of worship chose
to exercise its terrible power on the world. By continued reference to
the event and, no doubt, to the remnant comet in the sky, rulers
would have reminded people of the passing of the previous era and
the fragility of their own. The opportunities for exercising control
through fear of the gods are not at all difficult to imagine.
The revised chronology now has the considerable merit of fitting
more or less perfectly with the known course of events in the
neighbouring and powerful nation of Assyria. The Middle Kingdom
for example corresponds almost exactly to the period during which
the Cassites, a people from the mountainous country in the east, were
engaged in extending their empire over Babylon. During this period,
the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian became a leading language
 1369 BC 239

throughout the Near East. The Cassite sovereignty eventually ended

around 1160 BC and it is significant that the domination of central
Egypt by the Hyksos people would under the new chronology have
ended about the same time. It is questionable however, whether the
Hyksos invaders were completely removed from Egypt at this time.
Parenthetically, one might observe Manetho’s statement that the
Hyksos ‘and their descendants were masters of Egypt for 511 years.’ If
correct, this would now place their final departure exactly at the time
Ramses II was expelling enemies, apparently Hittite, from Lower
Egypt. The implication is that Hittite and Hyksos may be one and the
same and that they remained dominant in Lower Egypt for many years.
The Hyksos have been generally identified also as invaders from the
East, and the suspicion may be entertained that these fourteenth-
century invaders of Assyria and Egypt were of similar origin. Under
Cassite rule however, Assyria considerably strengthened and
prospered; Egypt on the other hand was rather mercilessly subdued. It
is interesting to note that the powerful new dynasty of Assyrian kings
started by Assur-Uballit I in 1356 BC came very soon after our date for
the Typhon catastrophe. If the devastation caused by such an event
was as complete as one might imagine, we might well expect to find
some powerful opportunist on its fringe displacing the existing
authority and assuming control.
We can hardly do better than refer to van der Waerden to get some
idea of the changes that were overtaking Assyria at this time: There
must have been a very lively intellectual life in Babylonia and Assyria
from about 1350 to 1100 BC. Older traditions were collected and
systematized; for example, it was probably at this time that the
gigantic astrological series Enuma Anu Enlil was composed. Many
epics, prayers and other religious literary works were reshaped or
created. Thus, probably in the twelfth century, a highly gifted poet
moulded the magnificent Gilgamesh Epic into its final form.' In many
respects, this all seems very fitting for a highly organized people
adapting their lives in the wake of a catastrophe on the scale of the
Typhon event, possibly even preparing for the next. This period for
example also saw the production of many astronomical calculations
and the early development of a sophisticated lunar calendar. It is
perhaps now possible to understand why the Egyptians in their newly
found freedom around 1100 BC should very soon have emulated the
brilliant civilization of their neighbours. In particular, we can
understand a new weight of informed opinion favouring a lunar
calendar instead of the wandering calendar to which the people had
240 1369 BC

previously been accustomed. We can also understand that this same

opinion was oriented towards a Babylonian cosmology in which
the sky-gods had assumed almost unlimited power over man. It was
the prevalence of such ideas throughout the Near East logically
supported by knowledge of what happened in and before 1369 BC
that eventually formed the basis of what we now recognize as
astrology—the theory that events on Earth are ultimately dictated by
events in the heavens. However before astrology deteriorated into a
hollow scheme for impossible things like the predictions of births
and other affairs, it was notably preoccupied with the calculations of
astronomical periodicities. Babylonian astronomers, influenced as
they were also by Persian doctrine, were above all concerned with
predicting the end of the world and the ultimate judgement by fire.
Given what they evidently knew to be the cause of such events, the
idea of planetary conjunctions was inevitably a natural and dominant
theme. It may have been reasonable until now to see in these ideas the
fanciful projections of uneducated minds. But perhaps it would be
more sensible to see them as perfectly logical developments from an
earlier knowledge of conjunctions with the Earth and periodicities in
cometary orbits.
Perhaps we should have a little more sympathy for that lively
theorist, whoever he was, who in due course first saw the mighty
conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces during 1396 BC, three
years before the birth of Moses, as the cause of all the trouble; and
who then foresaw in 7 BC the occasion of the next conjunction in
Pisces, the signal for the arrival on Earth of the son of Zeus. It may be
that the coming of a comet was thought to be linked in some way with
such conjunctions for there is evidence that the star of Bethlehem may
have been a comet. But whatever the facts, the widespread state of
anticipation of the peoples of the Near East at this time for the
coming again of the Messiah is a measure of the great conviction
theories of this kind carried, not unlike that presumably, with which
Einstein is upheld today. It is not altogether easy to see how such a
theory could have produced such conviction unless the basis of its
calculation, an earlier visitation by Zeus, had already impressed itself
indelibly upon the popular memory.
At the start of this chapter, we speculated that knowledge of the
Typhon event might cause us to revise some of our understanding of
prehistory. As we have now seen, there is a well-supported
interpretation of Egyptian chronology that places the event in 1369
BC. On this basis, the catastrophe turns out to be an exceedingly
 1369 BC 241

powerful theme in the subsequent lives of the Egyptian and

Babylonian peoples. Indeed if there were a cosmic disaster, one might
expect the subsequent social structure and events to reflect it in some
way, for example by commemoration at a particular calendar date. It
is of interest to consider the calendar that Amenhotep I enshrined
when Egypt re-established its nationhood following the Hyksos
domination. It was one in which the modern months of January,
February, March and April corresponded to Tybi, Mechir, Phame-
noth and Pharmuti respectively. At this time, Tybi may have
assumed importance as the starter of a New Year after the winter
solstice—a new birth of Ra. It has been suggested by Parker that the
two months linked with Fire, namely Mechir and Phamenoth were so
named because of their association with artificial heat. The
association certainly derives from the Old Kingdom but it is not clear
that it has been correctly interpreted. Ramses II later adjusted the
calendar so as to bring the period of annual inundation of the Nile in
coincidence with the months of Fire, thereby suggesting some kind of
logical association of Flood and Fire nothing to do with winter
temperatures. One is tempted perhaps to see these months as
commemorating in some way the events pertaining to two great
disasters, first the Flood and then the event of 1369 BC. Thus
another possibility is that these months long associated with Fire were
adjusted by Ramses II to correspond to that period of the year when the
Earth was encountering the main meteor stream in the sky resulting
from the original fragmentation and which was perhaps still visible.
The orbit of such a stream would be bound to drift with time and any
feast days related to the Earth’s successful passage through the stream
would have needed periodic adjustment. During April in Amenhotep
I’s reign, close to the modern timing of Easter, there is the 'Feast of the
Repelling of the Troglodytes’ on the 21 st Pharmuti which could well be
seen now as a matter of necessity—the annual attempt to assuage the
gods and avoid further attacks. A possible objection to this is that the
term Troglodytes’ ('cave-dwellers’^literally those who penetrate the
ground) was a name applied by ancient writers to various tribes, real or
apocryphal, especially in regions from Fibya to the Red Sea. However
it will be recalled that the sky divinities had underground and
thunderbolt associations, and it is conceivable that these lacets ol the
Egyptian Typhon (Set) as a thrower of explosive missiles are here
referred to. The next feast day of importance was the first day ol
Pachons (ninth month) coinciding in Amenhotep I’s reign with May
Day. In ancient Egypt, it celebrated the 'voyage ol Horus to Dendera
242 1369 BC

but throughout the Old World generally this festival came to symbolize
new life, perhaps the aftermath of calamity, and it acquired strong
associations with fertility rights and rebirth. If, as we have implied, it
was the intention of the Egyptians at the time of Amenhotep I to
inaugurate a new fixed calendar it is not unreasonable to suppose the
association of the above festivities with the actual date of the last
catastrophe may have extended very generally to other nations as they
recovered from the holocaust. Indeed, as we have seen, the months of
March and July both took new names with Amenhotep I, their
significance perhaps being that the meteor stream was then at its
furthest and at its point of entry. Certainly dragons have been
associated with new year festivals (and still are by the Chinese) and with
the May Day festival until very recent times. It is also interesting that a
May Day ceremony among the Celts, which lasted well into the
eighteenth century, involved the kindling of bonfires on hilltops. These
were the Beltane fires (in Gaelic, the ‘ Beal-tene’, that is, ‘the fire of Bel’),
and the custom was of very great antiquity and certainly pre-Christian.
Easter and May Day may thus survive as silent and misunderstood
reminders of events which once assumed pre-eminence for many
peoples.
10.4 Bronze Age chronology: carbon dating
An alteration of the kind we are making to Egyptian chronology can
hardly be made without looking at the consequences elsewhere. Let
us begin by considering the immediate environment of the Aegean
and eastern Mediterranean area. At present, the links between Egypt
and these surrounding countries before the first millennium BC do not
depend greatly on known dates of particular events in the separate
national histories. Very broad chronologies are built around the
presence of contemporary artefacts—pottery and metal work in
particular—in the stratified remains of each country. Carbon dating
tends to play an essentially secondary role in these particular
countries compared with what are considered to be the primary
archaeological indicators.
The assumption is that particular skills such as working with
bronze or with iron do appear more or less simultaneously over a
wide area. This is not to imply simultaneity of discovery and
invention but rather a diffusion of particular kinds of practical
knowledge that is fairly rapid. It is perhaps a little disturbing that
such a basic assumption is not particularly compatible with another
often used principle in archaeology, namely that there has been a slow
 1369 BC 243
diffusion of cultures from country to country. The picture in this case
would be one of relatively sluggish intercourse between countries
where it happens. This latter theory is increasingly challenged these
days, however, so the assumption of near contemporary ages related
to bronze-working and the like over a wide area is probably a fairly
secure basis for establishing relative chronologies in neighbouring
countries.
The period of immediate interest is the Bronze Age which is
conventionally divided into three main intervals: an early period,
circa 2800-2100 BC; a middle period, 2100-1550 BC; and a late
period, 1550-1000 BC. The last of these brings us to the era of Saul
and David and a reasonably secure Palestinian chronology based on
biblical records. It is already well into the Iron Age. These intervals
could be regarded now as requiring major adjustment as a result of
the error in Egyptian chronology, but in practice we suspect the
Bronze Age sequences based on stratified remains and their
associated transition dates will remain essentially unaltered. Note,
first of all, that the intervals do to a large extent reflect the relative
placing of the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms respectively. In
essence, current chronology places each of these kingdoms together
with their technological and stylistic advances in the first half of the
relevant subdivision of the Bronze Age, while the second half is a
period of cultural stagnation or decline. The presence of associated
artefacts in neighbouring countries towards the end of each
subdivision has then been consistent with a presumed slow diffusion
of knowledge and skills each time from an Egyptian source. Our
revision simply moves the kingdoms in time towards the end of the
corresponding period, thereby perhaps contravening the slow
diffusion hypothesis but without seriously affecting the Bronze Age
subdivisions.
One or two decades back, this contravention would have been
regarded as a quite fundamental heresy in archaeological circles, but
in recent years there has been a serious reappraisal of the hypothesis
that the Europe of this time acquired most of its knowledge and skills
by diffusion from the Near Eastern civilizations. Renfrew in
particular has emphasized the reasons for looking upon the Aegean
community as a ‘stand-alone’ development, if anything drawing from
countries in eastern Europe to the north for its skills rather than from
the south. In as much as this theory implicitly lowers the stature of
Egyptian civilization, so also do our changes of timescale. As we have
seen also, in later years Egypt appears to have been fought over
244 1369 BC
continuously by two other empires which were eventually its cultural
and technological equals. In general terms therefore, our revision of
Egyptian chronology need make very little change to the broad
subdivisions of the Bronze Age in the immediate surroundings, and
also it has the merit of being within the spirit of modern
archaeological developments.
As one goes further afield in Europe however, the contemporary
archaeological links with the Egyptian and Aegean civilizations
become more tenuous, and increasingly the modern methods of
radiocarbon dating have a more significant role to play in
establishing chronology. Broadly speaking, whatever the un-
certainties in calibration, the carbon dates tend to be producing a
dramatic new set of relativities in European prehistory that now
make it even more difficult to accept the idea that knowledge and
skills diffused slowly from the Near East. The evidence for a new
picture has been carefully discussed by Renfrew and it is one with
which modern archaeologists are now coming to terms. The megalith
builders of the Atlantic border, as discussed by MacKie for
example, appear to have been motivated by forces that owe little
to a pre-existing civilization in the eastern Mediterranean. If the new
picture and its implied relativities are correct, our bringing forward of
pre-twenty-second dynasty Egyptian civilization by 468 years must
now imply also a similar advance in time of European dates based on
C-14 measurements. In general terms, this is possible only if one uses
uncalibrated radiocarbon dates, that is ones that have not been
corrected to the system of the bristlecone pine. Such dates are
designated b.c. rather than BC. They essentially imply an erratic but
basically uniform atmosphere over the whole of Europe and the Near
East through at least the last 10,000 years.
Radioactive carbon, or Carbon 14, is generated in the atmosphere
by cosmic rays. A given sample decays with half-life of 5,500
years, and a terrestrial balance is expected between its creation by
cosmic rays and its destruction by spontaneous decay. Quickly
oxidized to carbon dioxide, it is taken up by plants from the
atmosphere and so enters the food chain; on the death of an organism
there is no further C-14 ingestion and the proportion of C-14 then
declines at a known rate. Measurement of this proportion gives the
age of the plant or animal from the moment its food intake stops.
However it is now recognized that the proportion of C-14 in the
atmosphere may have fluctuated in the past; and a plant which died
at a time of large C-14 abundance would be given a spuriously young
 1369 BC 245
age. The significance of the bristlecone pine is that these ancient trees
can be dated in two ways, by tree ring counts and by C-14
measurements. Any discrepancy is attributed to a global variation in
the proportion of C-14 in the atmosphere, perhaps due to past
changes in the cosmic ray flux. The tree ring data thus provide a
calibration to be applied to other artefacts dated by C-14.

calendar years

Fig. 20. Carbon 14 dates b.c. of Egyptian artefacts compared to historical date BC
using the conventional Sothic calendar. The data are taken from Berger (1970). The
solid line after 800 BC corresponds to a period in which the two methods of dating
are known to be in systematic agreement despite some relatively small random
departures. The extension to earlier epochs which is displaced 480 years in historical
date in general accord with the revised chronology seems to provide a satisfactory
lower envelope to the artefact points. This is exactly as expected for material such as
wood which may be long dead at the time of use, and a calendar which is in error
by around 480 years before 800 BC or so (see text). The dotted line gives the
bristlecone pine calibration: so far as the magnitude of its displacement from the
pre-800 BC calibration is concerned, the approximate correspondence with the solid
line is fotuitous. The enhancement of high-level radiation is seen as a likely cause of
an excess Carbon 14 in bristlecone pinewood before 800 BC causing the
displacement.

The bristlecone pine dates start to deviate from carbon dates prior
to 500 BC or so in the sense that applying the correction makes a
carbon date more remote in time. The deviation is around 400 years
by 2000 BC, not so very different from the error we presume in
Egyptian chronology. It is clear then that the simplest way of
continuing to preserve the relative dates of modern European
archaeology whilst correcting the absolute Egyptian scale is to
propose an error in the bristlecone pine calibrations. Although this
246 1369 BC
calibration has still to be checked against others, it has been widely
accepted as immune from error. It might therefore in the end be an
obstacle to the revision proposed in this chapter. The Californian
bristlecone differs in one important respect however from the sites to
which its calibration is applied: it grows at relatively high altitudes. It
is therefore relatively more exposed to disturbances of the C-14
content of the upper atmosphere.
The dumping of the kinetic energy of a Tunguska-like object into
the atmosphere will create a fireball whose temperature may briefly
approach a million degrees. While this is quite low compared to that
of a nuclear weapon, it is likely that relativistic particles (as well as X-
rays and gamma rays) will nevertheless be produced within this
plasma by ill-understood particle acceleration processes: Brown and
Hughes have examined this for the Tunguska event. Rough
calculations based on their work show that for every 50 megatons of
energy dumped into the lower atmosphere about 6 tons of C-14 will
be created, corresponding to about a-10 per cent increase in the
proportion of atmospheric C-14, and yielding a dating error of 50 to
500 years in any organism which died shortly thereafter and which is
now about 5,000 years old. The generation of C-14 will be more
efficient at higher altitudes since the process tends to be quenched by
higher atmospheric densities: the particle acceleration will take place
in the plasma sheath surrounding the incoming missile. A few large
fireballs, occurring in an epoch of high fireball activity, could raise the
atmospheric C-14 content quite appreciably.
It might be considered that so long as tree counts are available for
calibration these erratic inputs do not matter. However the
atmospheric nuclear weapon tests of the 1950s and 1960s showed that
radioactive fallout is patchy rather than diffuse. In the northern
hemisphere, most of the C-14 generated by a fireball would reach
ground level in the first year. Some regions, with dimensions
thousands of kilometres, would receive two or three times the average
C-14 fallout; smaller ‘hotspots’ with dimensions of tens to hundreds of
kilometres would be subject to fallout up to twenty or thirty times the
average. This patchy distribution is consequent on C-14 creation in
the lower stratosphere or upper troposphere. Thus in an era of high
bombardment an organism dying in one part of the globe might have
a quite different C-14 age from one dying at the same time in another.
The effect might be to create random error amounting to some
centuries both in the straightforward dating and in the bristlecone
pine correction.
 1369 BC 247

Whether this would create a systematic error in the calibration is

another matter. The bristlecone pine would have had to be more
radioactive than other artefacts, mass for mass, prior to 500 BC.
These trees are found at high altitude in the White Mountains of
California and it is conceivable that an altitude effect such as in situ
irradiation might have been involved: however until this question is
properly examined, it must be admitted that, for reasons not yet
understood, the calibrated dating fits the conventional chronology as
well or as badly as our revised one, and the revised Egyptian
chronology is better fitted by the straightforward dating uncorrected
by the bristlecone pine (Figure 20). It is clearly now of great
importance to check this conclusion by finding suitable calibration
data characteristic of sea level, preferably from many different sites.

10.5 Biblical chronology

Let us now turn from the broad features of prehistoric dating and
consider rather more precise local links with Egyptian chronology.
Thus, a somewhat questionable aspect of Near Eastern prehistory is
the almost complete lack of parallels in the course of events described
by Egyptian and Hebrew chroniclers. Such has been the assumed
weight of existing Egyptian chronology and the lack of cor-
respondence this brings that some modern scholars have tended to
look upon the biblical evidence as an unreliable presentation of
events in the lives of a not particularly significant people. And this
despite wherever detailed correspondence between biblical accounts
and archaeological facts can be established, then it has usually turned
out that the Bible is an accurate description of what went on. This has
already been mentioned in the previous chapter. It must be deemed
rather remarkable that some scholars should have succeeded in
placing the Bible in such a light since there is no question that the
ancestors of present Western civilization took the Book to be the
fountain of wisdom. So how is it that this point of view has come
about?
Three centuries ago, Newton sought to reconcile his new
gravitational theory with Genesis by demonstrating that the solar
system had been created in a single act and had remained in stable
equilibrium ever since. The existence of comets, with masses at that
time unknown, wandering through the solar system, was very
damaging to this thesis, and Newton was greatly occupied with
explaining them away. Even without them however, it was obvious
that the gravitational action of the various planets would tend to
248 1369 BC

modify their respective orbits, and although in due course Laplace

was able to show that some of the principal effects were periodic
rather than secular, Newton could do little else but appeal for the
intervention of divine providence to maintain stability and order.
Newton’s great rival Leibniz was duly led to mock his adversary who,
he said, claimed God not only as a clock-maker, and a poor one at
that, but also as a clock-mender. Nevertheless, so pressing was this
desire for order that Newton even turned against his former pupil
Whiston who saw in the Bible evidence for several catastrophic
events, not least of which was a Deluge caused by the impact of a
comet! Newton, recognizing the strength of the argument and the
inevitability of cometary impacts, went so far as to maintain that
comets were not really a disruptive element but contributed to the
preservation of the original order by replenishing the Earth’s stock of
water. There can be little doubt now that Newton, conscious of the
scientific and intellectual revolution he was leading, was driven with a
kind of religious zeal to maintain supreme order in his surroundings
by professing to uncover a completely clockwork universe. Little
wonder that Whiston was dismissed from his post and Newton
displayed such ferocity towards notions of catastrophism. To some
extent, we can still feel the breeze! With the benefit of hindsight
however, we see that Newton’s reasoning in this matter was not of the
best, and though his influence was considerable in his lifetime and
his search for a completely mechanical universe dominated science
for the next 200 years, his arguments to invalidate some of the biblical
evidence were rightly treated with great suspicion. It is natural
nowadays to think the validity of the evidence was the main reason
for this suspicion, but the Bible was not really in question—it was the
logic supporting Newton’s vision of an orderly universe that was met
with disbelief. Newton’s contemporaries were really in very little
doubt about Biblical history and its possible association with
astronomically induced catastrophism. A hundred years later on,
when religion and science were slowly disengaging, Laplace could
presume the same orderly theory of gravitation free of precon-
ceptions about the origin of the solar system, and face with
equanimity the possibility that the Earth suffered catastrophic
collisions with comets. He wrote:

‘The axis and the movement of rotation would be changed. The

seas would abandon their ancient positions, in order to precipitate
themselves towards the new equator; a great portion of the human
 1369 BC 249
race and the animals would be drowned in the universal deluge, or
destroyed by the violent shock imparted to the terrestrial globe;
entire species would be annihilated; all monuments of human
industry overthrown; such are the disasters which the shock of a
comet would produce, if its mass were comparable to that of the
Earth.
'We see then, in effect, why the ocean has receded from the high
mountains, upon which it has left incontestable marks of its
sojourn. We see how animals and plants of the south have been
able to exist in the climate of the north, where their remains and
imprints have been discovered; finally, it explains the newness of
the human civilization, certain monuments of which do not go
further back than five thousand years. The human race reduced to
a small number of individuals, and to the most deplorable state,
solely occupied for a length of time with the care of its own
preservation, must have lost entirely the remembrance of the
sciences and the arts; and when progress of civilization made these
wants felt anew, it was necessary to begin again, as if man had been
newly placed upon the Earth.’

The situation then, as now, was thus one in which astronomers saw
no basic conflict between celestial mechanics and the biblical
evidence for catastrophes. But about this time also, the newly
emerging sciences of geology and biology were coming to recognize
the evolutionary nature of terrestrial processes and life generally. On
the so-called uniformitarian hypothesis, obviously related in concept
to physical ideas of secular stability, it was impossible to accept this
evolution without also invoking a great age for the Earth. Much is
now made in scientific histories of the differences between this
geological timescale and Kelvin’s calculation of the Sun’s age, but this
particular argument was still in the future. The main conflict was at
first the biblical timescale, and by association, with implications
of a catastrophist history. The argument raged through much of the
nineteenth century with Darwin a principal figure. Inevitably
entrenched and somewhat extreme attitudes were adopted. Biblical
history and catastrophism became inseparably linked. So, when the
uniformitarian theory eventually prevailed catastrophism was
discredited and scientific faith in the biblical record as even an
approximation to the truth was destroyed. Historically, this conflict
has often been seen in a purely religious context: the more important
aspect from today’s viewpoint is that scientific faith in biblical
250 1369 BC

evidence was destroyed, whether or not any supernatural element in

the story was allowed for. In fact, the arguments deployed by
uniformitarians against catastrophism, suggesting the perpetual,
slow, long-term action of weak geological forces and steady
biological evolution, no longer carry the conviction they used to. As
we saw in Chapter 5, the stratigraphic record revealed by palaeonto-
logists is equally consistent with a steady procession of catastrophes.
The ages of the Earth and the solar system are now established by
physical measurements unknown in the nineteenth century and it is
not at all difficult to uphold this evidence and look upon much of the
Biblical record as a fairly authentic account of the trials and
tribulations of a single determined people through a relatively short
period of history quite unrelated to the age of the Earth. And this can
be done whilst making suitable allowances for supernatural
embellishments which would have some difficulty surviving in a
scientific thesis. The critic might complain that there is an element of
subjectivity in making such allowances and so there is. But where
correspondence with independent evidence can be established, any
argument will then tend towards greater objectivity. Thus in so
far as it can be treated as a historical record without supernatural
overtones, the Bible is not at all in conflict with science. This means
we should take the biblical timescale more or less at its face value.
Perhaps we can be permitted a somewhat jaundiced view of the ages
of Joshua’s ancestors. If so the Old Testament simply becomes a
record going back to about 2500 BC say, the occasion of the Flood.
During the period subsequently covered by the tale, it seems the
course of events was seriously disturbed by a pattern of major
catastrophes of extra-terrestrial origin. The time of Exodus figures
large in all the accounts.
Two major figures in the history of science, namely Newton and
Darwin, thus found themselves in serious conflict with the secular (i.e.
non-supernatural) evidence of the Bible. In both cases, it has later
become apparent that although their main theses may have been
reasonably valid (i.e. mechanical universe, great terrestrial age) the
arguments they paraded against the biblical evidence were not at all
direct or necessary consequences of these theses. So it is ironical that
the eventual success of Newton’s and Darwin’s theories should then
have persuaded even biblical scholars of the unreality of much of the
Old Testament evidence. There grew up a willingness to treat much of
it as allegorical. More and more the tales were regarded only as of
value for their moral content, and increasingly they took on a
 1369 BC 251
revelationary character special to the people involved.
These assumptions took an even firmer hold in the early years of
the present century when historians began to discover very similar
detail in some of the myths of different civilizations in the eastern
Mediterranean. Biblical scholars simply could not allow this to
be evidence of a general revelation since it denied any special status
to the Bible. The view gained ground that the similarity in the events
described was the result of the diffusion of knowledge. Increasingly
the allegories became mere fairytales, thus minimizing conflict
between scholars of the Old Testament and mythologists, and
providing a ready-made explanation of discrepancies between the
tales themselves and any realistic assumptions. The differences could
simply be treated as results of the vivid imagination or incompetence
of an unknown raconteur. This is a thoroughly dangerous theory,
providing as it does virtually free rein to the imagination of the
investigator.
In making this detour, we have sought to show how unimpressive
are the grounds for neglecting the Old Testament as an accurate
source of history. Inevitably, if there was a general catastrophe on the
scale of the Typhon event to which the events of Exodus refer,
independent dating of the event should confirm our calculation based
on Egyptian chronology.
The Exodus of the Hebrew slaves from bondage under the
pharaohs is undoubtedly the major turning point in the history of the
Jewish people. Four complete books in the Bible bear witness to the
events of the period: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteron-
omy. wLet my people go,’ Moses demanded; and the Pharaoh
capitulated, permitting the twelve tribes of Israel to depart Egypt in
huge numbers. They then wandered the desert for forty years before
reaching the Promised Land. In that time, Moses received the Laws,
and the whole structure of Jewish culture was formulated. They
arrived in Canaan under Joshua’s leadership and conquered Jericho
and other big cities. The Bible is quite specific about what went on:
some of the cities were burnt, in some the inhabitants were allowed to
go in peace, in some they were slaughtered, while in others, no
capture was ventured. The taking of Jericho for example was assisted
by an earthquake.
Modern excavations of Jericho are not at all at variance with this
picture and they even permit a dating of some precision. The end of
the middle period of the Bronze Age (circa 1550 BC) in Palestine is
marked by the widespread destruction of fortified cities generally
252 1369 BC
assumed at present to have been Hyksos strongholds. It is supposed
that the cities of which Jericho is one, were destroyed by Egyptian
armies carrying out a war of retaliation subsequent to the expulsion
of the Hyksos from Egypt. Whether or not this is true, the
excavations at Jericho not only confirm the destruction but they now
also reveal a later rebuilding. Then the city was again destroyed. The
remains show a double defensive wall apparently broken down by an
earthquake and they also display traces of an extensive fire and other
signs consistent with attack by enemies. Kenyon suggests a period of
150 years after 1550 BC, during which Jericho was completely
abandoned, then a period of renewed occupation lasting slightly over
75 years. This gives a date for the final fall of Jericho circa 1325 BC.
And by this reckoning, the Exodus occurred in 1365 BC, in
remarkably good agreement with the Typhon date of 1369 BC we
have derived from Egyptian sources.
Heretofore, the date obtained by Kenyon has been inconsistent
with accepted chronology and the biblical evidence since con-
ventional theory has the Exodus occurring in the middle of the
thirteenth century, that is around 1250 BC. Although there are no
unequivocal records supporting this assumption, Ramses II has
apparently been considered a suitably powerful pharaoh for whom
the comings and goings of a crowd of escaping Israelites would be of
sufficiently little consequence not to warrant a mention. This ffion-
evidence’ is hardly satisfactory by itself as a proof and the date
therefore seems to be based on two things: one, general archaeolo-
gical signs of what is presumed to be an extended Israelite conquest of
Canaan at this time following their displacement from Egypt.
Franken and others have disputed this theory since there is absolutely
no certainty that Israel was responsible. Indeed, it may have been the
work of the Philistines, other invaders of Canaan of the period,
possibly originating from Crete. The second derives from the account
in Exodus which has the Egyptians pressing the captive Hebrews to
build the pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses. These are
normally identified as Tanis and Tell el-Mashkouta supposedly built
in the reign of Ramses II, but the evidence is equally if not more
consistent with Middle Kingdom cities constructed by the Hebrews
soon after their original enslavement, such as Tell el-Retebak and
Qantir. The evidence for 1250 BC is thus far from secure. As we have
seen also, such a date for Ramses II is in any case based on a
misinterpretation of Egyptian chronology, and any reliance on this
mistaken correlation is now likely to be incorrect. So, all in all.
 1369 BC 253

Kenyon’s dating has much to commend it and it provides good

support for our revised chronology. In summary, Palestinian and
Hebrew chronology are, in some important essentials as well as their
broad outlines, in very good agreement with the new Egyptian dating.

10.6 Astronomically induced disasters as agents of history

The re-adjustment of Egyptian chronology also brings the New
Kingdom kings into the immediately pre-classical period. Where the
standard archaeological picture obtained from the cross-dating of
pottery styles, has previously obliged one to place the Mycenaean and
Spartan kings at the start of the Greek Mark ages’ in the thirteenth
century BC, contemporaneous with the Egyptian New Kingdom, it
now turns out that the Trojan wars must have been no earlier than
900 BC. In composing the dramas of the Iliad and the Odyssey,
Homer was thus drawing upon events within a generation or so of
their happening; they were evidently still fresh in people’s minds, and
Homer was not what he is usually credited with being, a mere
collector of ancient tales from ages past. His audience must have been
the immediate descendants of the Mycenaean warriors whose history
he was recounting. Thus, Homer’s claim that the Phrygians helped
defend Troy against the Greeks is now in accord with the earliest
Phrygian remains which date from around 800 BC. In central
Anatolia, up to now, neither Phrygian nor indeed any cultural
remains of any people have come to light which might be dated to
between 1300 and 800 BC. The heroic civilization of Mycenae did
not, as some historians would have us believe, vanish for half a
millennium only to spring to life again as if nothing had happened. A
critic has already argued against this thesis admitting the implications
of conventional dating as little short of fantastic: ‘The craftsmen and
artists seem to vanish almost without trace; there is very little new stone
construction of any sort, far less any massive edifices; the metal-
worker’s technique reverts to the primitive and the potter, except in
the early stages, loses his purpose and inspiration; and the art of
writing is forgotten.’ None of these difficulties is present in our revised
chronology. And as further evidence of the inconsistencies that the
hypothetical dark ages of Egyptian and Aegean history have
introduced, let us finally mention those quite mystifying ceramic tiles
removed from one of the palaces of Ramses III. These show what
appear to be Greek letters on the reverse side incised during the
process of manufacture, although under standard chronology, the
Greek alphabet was not invented until fully four centuries later.
254 1369 BC
Heretofore, of course, the late Mycenaean empire has been dated
between 1600 and 1200 BC, not between 1200 and 800 BC as we now
propose. The long prehistory of the Minoan civilization thus becomes
a natural predecessor of the late Mycenaean. This people had its home
on the narrow, mountainous island of Crete at the southern end of the
Aegean Sea. The Minoans revered the bull as a symbol of power.
Regular human sacrifices were made to appease the ‘Earth Bulb who
periodically devastated the island with earthquakes; likewise the
‘Minotaur’, son of Zeus, a monstrous and terrifying god, half-bull and
half-man. The Minoan people were above all a seafaring race and
energetic traders: given frequent contacts there is every reason to
believe their Bronze Age developments were contemporaneous with
those of the eastern Mediterranean generally. So, the accepted Bronze
Age dates of Cretan life are probably more or less correct, as is that of its
final decline into oblivion around 1200 BC. Until quite recently,
Minoan developments tended to be considered as taking their lead
from a superior Egyptian civilization. Renfrew has shown quite clearly
that the society was essentially an independent culture basing its
prosperity on the exploitation of its own vines and olives. Contrary to
the earlier view, the influence of Egypt, though present, was relatively
weak.
But as is well known, the truly splendid life of this people was
brought to a singularly abrupt halt around 1400 BC. Not only was the
unrivalled capital, Knossos, devastated by fire and tumult (although
the famous palace survived), so also were all the other principal
towns. There seems to be no doubt that a quite exceptional and
unexplained catastrophe occurred around this time, with widespread
destruction of buildings. It has been suggested, not altogether
convincingly, that the major volcanic eruption of the nearby island of
Thera may have been responsible. Certainly the explosion was the
greatest volcanic event in post-glacial times. Whether the five
centimetres of volcanic ash which settled over central and eastern
Crete was sufficient to cause the collapse of the civilization is
doubtful, however. Excavations on the island of Rhodes about
150 km east-north-east of Crete have revealed a similar depth of ash
although continuity of life was there unaffected. Destruction by
earthquake concurrent with the great explosion was suggested by
Evans, who was understandably impressed by the collapse of 2,000
buildings in 45 seconds during an eruption of Thera in 1926. However
all known Minoan sites except the palace of Knossos were destroyed,
and the earthquake associated with a volcanic eruption is very small
 1369 BC 255
compared with that caused by tectonic slip.
It is only speculation at the moment but the near-coincidence in
time between the Thera eruption, the decline of Minoan civilization
and our proposed date of Exodus suggests that these events may have
been interrelated. A 100-megaton event occurring over Crete would
have been sufficient to destroy the whole island and might have
induced the eruption 90 km to the north. It is known that a hydrogen
bomb explosion can induce tectonic slip at fairly distant sites, and
it is conceivable that a vastly greater disturbance in the eastern
Mediterranean might have triggered the volcanic event. The Typhon
event might then have been simultaneously responsible for the
destruction in Crete as well as in Egypt. The survival of the palace of
Knossos might be a problem with this view, however, and the
evidence for tsunami generation, which surely must have occurred on
this hypothesis, is debatable. It is intriguing nevertheless that a large
disturbance of the sea in this area would have inundated the low
coastal lands of Egypt, and that the parting of the Red Sea was
recorded as being contemporaneous with the Exodus. Our
understanding of the nature of Typhon as well as the statements in
Exodus and the Ipuwer Chronicle render the hypothesis attractive.
Thus: The Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran along upon the
ground; and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt (Exodus
9:23). . . and there was a great cry in Egypt for there was not a house
where there was not one dead (Exodus 12:30) . . . groaning that is
throughout the land, mingled with lamentations (Ipuwer 3:14). .. .
He who places his brother in the land is everywhere (Ipuwer 2:13)2
That a vast area was laid waste need hardly be questioned, and the
less so if the Phaethon tale, as we saw in Chapter 9, originated in
northern Italy.
However, the inclusion of Crete does remain a little speculative.
This is because the approximate epoch of the destruction partly
depends upon some remnants of Egyptian New Kingdom ceramics
found in the remains at Knossos. The study of these by Evans at the
turn of the century seems at present to be regarded as providing a
secure date. Obviously, if the correlation is binding, our revised
chronology would advance the collapse of Knossos to a later date
inconsistent with the Bronze Age limits. This would surely be
incorrect. The conventional argument however appears to be that the
last Egyptian remains found in Knossos should give us the date ol its
collapse. In fact, it is now known that Minoan civilization continued,
much weakened, for at least another one or two centuries. So the
256 1369 BC
epoch of the fall of Knossos is now strictly independent of the
crossdating of ceramics, important though this may once have been.
If our sequence of events is correct the successor of the linear A part-
hieroglyph script used by the early Minoans, namely the linear B
emerging at Knossos around 1400 BC and then at Mycenaean Pylos,
would appear to be the natural and continuous forerunner of the
eventual Greek script. It may be the catastrophe of 1369 BC was
responsible for transporting the main stream but not all of Minoan
culture to the Mycenaean mainland. Thus, although early Greek
history still leaves room for doubt, taking it with that of the Egyptians,
the Babylonians and the Hebrews does suggest there may have been a
major hiccough in the march of civilization at this time.
No authors can justifiably make reference to proposals of this kind
without mention also of the investigations by Velikovsky. In a quite
remarkable piece of historical analysis some thirty years ago, this
author not only drew attention to the parallels between the events
described in Exodus and the Ipuwer Chronicle, but also to their
implications so far as a catastrophic extra-terrestrial missile and
ancient chronology were concerned. In his book Ages in Chaos, he
proceeded to show how as a result of the 400- to 500-year shift this
imposed on Egyptian chronology, not unlike the leap we have been
discussing, the renowned Israelite King Solomon, circa 950 BC,
became contemporaneous with the early New Kingdom monarch.
Queen Hatshepsut, a descendant of Amenhotep I. Drawing upon
many convincing parallels in the historical evidence, Velikovsky
succeeded in identifying Hatshepsut as the Queen of Sheba.
Egyptologists and biblical scholars have argued over the identity of
the Queen of Sheba for many centuries, and this dramatic alignment
must, if right, be counted as a significant and remarkable achieve-
ment. We need not assemble all the evidence here, suffice to say the
theory that it was Queen Hatshepsut who made a voyage to the
legendary Land of Punt, now identified as Palestine, is one that
speaks with considerable conviction.
Unfortunately, Velikovsky’s researches have remained firmly
outside the main line of historical enquiry, and his arguments
involving a correction of Egyptian dates up to the end of the
eighteenth dynasty, similar to the one we are proposing in this
chapter, have not been given the attention by experts they deserve.
The reasons for this are not hard to find. In the first place, Velikovsky
followed up these quite plausible discoveries by drawing attention to
further challenging parallels between the late New Kingdom kings
 1369 BC 257

and rulers in the latter half of the first millennium BC. HIS later
identifications contravened the usual stratigraphic sequence of
events however, and archaeologists have generally found them quite
unacceptable. But much worse than this, Velikovsky became
seriously involved in pressing a quite impossible astronomical
hypothesis to explain the catastrophic events. Although in the
reaction to these ideas one can see the signs of an irrational adherence
to the principle of uniformitarianism. Velikovsky himself was quite
unable to conduct rational and scientific arguments in support of his
case. The result has been to turn opinion firmly against all aspects of
his work, sound and reasonable thought some of it is.
The aspect of Velikovsky’s thesis that seems to have generated the
most steam is his identification of the planet Venus as a gigantic
comet that swept past the Earth before moving into its present orbit.
Wildly improbable though this is for dynamical and many other
reasons, there is no doubt that Venus did eventually assume a
particularly significant place in many early astronomies. If undue
reliance is placed on the mythological rather than the scientific
evidence, the absurd speculations about Venus can at least be
understood if not forgiven. How the confusion of blame between
Typhon and Venus arose in some myths, assuming indeed it did, is
obscure. We have already mentioned the great difficulty which may
arise in unambiguously identifying a celestial object from Baby-
lonian text. This problem will be greatly compounded when the
translating scholar is unaware of the picture we have developed. Both
objects would have the characteristics of being lost in sunlight at
intervals, and being seen as morning and evening phenomena, but
there may be stronger reasons for attributing the properties of one
also to the other (see page 269). The Velikovsky thesis was therefore
not so much wrong as hopelessly misguided.
As we have emphasized, we can do no more than skim over the
surface of a vast field of knowledge; hopefully however we have
alighted on sufficient points of significance to suggest to the reader
that there are already strong indications of a completely new
sequence of events in prehistory. Perhaps indeed, during the
fourteenth century BC, there was a ferocious people from the
mountainous regions of south-west Asia who succeeded in establish-
ing ruthless dominion over a vast Near Eastern empire centred on
Assyria and including Palestine and Egypt. Perhaps a major
catastrophe in 1369 BC devastated these countries, so weakening their
governments that the invaders were able to step in and assume power.
258 1369 BC

And perhaps this same catastrophe brought the Minoan civilization

to an abrupt halt, never again to achieve its former glory. Cotterell
has already suggested economic and social dislocation following the
natural disaster on Crete paved the way for invaders, whom he
identifies somewhat arbitrarily as Mycenaean Greeks. If there was
indeed an astronomically induced disaster in this area, the role of
catastrophism in the history and progress of mankind has to be at last
recognized.

10.7 Systematic observation of cometary deities

Events of this character are so much outside normal experience that it
is not at all easy to envisage the full consequences. However, it seems
likely that environments relatively close to the epicentre of a fall in the
ocean would suffer such a huge transformation that the survivors
would be very soon obliged to move to new lands less affected by any
inundation. Where these lands were already well settled, it would not
be surprising if conflict ensued. Throughout history of course, many
peoples have been involved in great migrations, no doubt for a whole
variety of reasons, so it is not possible to see in such happenings a
single exclusive cause. Nevertheless, if the Great Deluge and the
Typhon event were real, large-scale migration is one of the probable
effects of which we should certainly be aware. The local movements in
Canaan and the Aegean are examples already discussed, but journeys
further afield are possible. Students of language have long suspected
from the apparent presence of certain prominent and common roots
amongst different tongues all over the world, that evidence for
substantial past migrations exists. An interesting study by Cohane
suggests two principal dispersals, one world-wide associated with the
Great Deluge, the other later for an unknown reason and on a lesser
scale radiating from the Near East. Amongst the most common
words are ones representing the pagan deities related to each event:
whether or not this is true, some of the more recent reconstructions of
the course of events in European Neolithic society seem to add
support to these ideas.
In Britain for example, the first farmers had arrived apparently
from the continent by 3500 BC. They introduced the basis for a
civilization which has developed more or less without break ever
since. Unfortunately they did not develop writing and our knowledge
of them is correspondingly limited. Also, although metal was used
quite early on in Mediterranean and eastern European communities,
these settlers remained isolated and continued to use stone. The
 1369 BC 259

period of their dominance, the Neolithic, lasted from around 3500 to

1900 BC. Although it was once thought that the culture of Neolithic
society was slowly enhanced by diffusion from the eastern Mediter-
ranean, radioactive dating methods have led to the realization that
the megalithic builders of the Neolithic were probably establishing
themselves in Britain well before the principal cities of Sumeria
appeared. According to Renfrew and MacKie, there came into
existence a specifically Atlantic European people possessing a
professional priesthood and customs involving collective burial in
long barrows and new types of stone tombs. These skilful people who
can, it seems, be distinguished from the earliest settlers, secured a
foothold along the Atlantic borders all the way from Iberia up to the
north of Scotland; not so much by organized colonizing expeditions
but by what MacKie calls genetic and cultural mingling. They also
reached into the Mediterranean but here they were closely restricted
to the coastal regions. Impressive monumental stone architecture
developed particularly in Malta during this period, but it looks as
though the Iberian peninsula was the main cultural epicentre.
In France, Ireland and Britain, the building of graves and cairns
was on a relatively small and local scale until about 2400 b.c.—in this
section, we use uncorrected carbon dates—after which megalith-
building blossomed and became significantly more elaborate. This
was the period in which quite a few stone circles were first set up, in
which for example the passage graves at New Grange, Ireland, and
the earthworks at Silbury Hill, England, were built, and in which the
first foundations of Stonehenge were laid. Above all, the period 2400
through to 2000 b.c. saw the rise in Britain of what MacKie calls an
astronomy-practising theocracy, exactly paralleling, it seems, the
main phase of pyramid construction in Egypt. Accurate surveys of
many stone circles in Britain by Thom and others have been
interpreted to show that a proportion of them could have been used
as solar and lunar observatories. But, if this is so, there has been no
really compelling explanation as to why so many of them were
constructed. Indeed, astronomical motives have seemed so unlikely
and the implied astronomical techniques have seemed so implausible
that archaeologists on the one hand and statisticians on the other
have been inclined to be very sceptical of the evidence from the surveys.
Thom could only suggest, rather tamely, that the prediction of tides
may have been important. But if celestial phenomena were really the
object of their interest, then we would expect the magnificent periodic
comet, the Olympus of Greek mythology, alias the World Tree, alias
260 1369 BC

the Cosmic Serpent, to have commanded quite as much universal

attention as the Sun and the Moon: one should look for evidence of the
cosmic serpent among the megaliths.
Among the earliest Stone-Age structures in Brittany and southern
England, there are many linear arrays of stones and very long
earthworks, often aligned with points on the eastern horizon. It is
conceivable that these sites began with simple attempts to portray,
not so much the Sun and the Moon, but this other, singular, most
impressive object in the sky, namely the Cosmic Serpent. The plan
layout of the early earthworks at Stonehenge, for example, was a
circle out of which led an avenue towards the eastern horizon. If
intended as a portrayal of something in the sky, the resemblance to
Gill’s description of the great daytime comet of 1882 (see Chapter 2),
with its short stubby tail, is striking, to say the least. One of the
earliest investigators of megalithic monuments of any renown was
William Stukeley (1687-1765). Although he was the first antiquary to
observe that the principal axis of Stonehenge is aligned towards the
midsummer sunrise, Stukeley was unfortunately also given to making
wild conjectures. Indeed, there is a long history of somewhat fantastic
theorizing about megalithic monuments but there has been an
equally irrational over-reaction on the part of some historians and
scientists to almost any theoretical framework explaining them. The
result has been a tendency to reject any non-archaeological evidence
deriving from ethnography, linguistics and genetics, but Stukeley was
no doubt closer in time to local tradition which had by then not been
silenced by the arrival of a new rationalism. It is interesting to record
his obsession with the idea that these monuments were serpent
temples. He based his conclusions on Pliny’s story in which the Gallic
Druids made use of a 'magic egg’ produced by a snake. He saw in
winding megalith avenues, often oriented somewhere between north-
east and south-east, evidence of serpent worship. Such notions have
never been held in high regard by hard-headed researchers, but if our
theory is correct, the probable starting point for all these monuments
was symbolic and of religious inspiration. Only with the passage of
time would the observers have detected patterns of motion among the
Cosmic Serpent, the Sun and the Moon and gradually some edifices
would have been turned over to the business of systematic
measurement. We would not then be dealing with 'scientifically
developed’ observatories that degenerated into temples, rather with
temples that blossomed occasionally into observatories. Similar ideas
could be associated with the large and ancient earthen mounds in
 1369 BC 261
northern America which were first constructed as early as 1000 BC. In
this case, there are regular and symmetric forms suggesting sky
alignments, and effigies which have counterparts among Indian
representations of constellations. If the name of the mighty Serpent
Mound of Newark, Ohio, does not prove an association of the kind we
are suspecting, it does at least indicate how widespread were objects
that resemble the Old World earthworks that were the source of
Stukeley’s inspiration.
Over 900 stone circles are known in the British Isles, either still
preserved, ruined, or as sites where their former existence is well
attested. They are distributed all over the accessible highland areas
with some indications of a later spreading to lower-lying land. The
largest circles are as far apart as Brodgar in Orkney and, outside
Britain, Carnac in Brittany. Using a system of dates based on the
C-14 chronology of artefacts found in the vicinity of stone circles,
various aspects of their evolution are now becoming clear. For
example, it is now known that their constructed shapes were evolving
from purely circular amongst the earliest to elliptical and egg-shaped
configurations amongst the latest. The reasons for this development
of pattern are not yet understood. It has also become clear that
though nearly all the circles were being set up between about 2400 b.c.
and 1300 b.c., most of them were constructed just prior to the latter
date. This is very close to the ultimate stage of Stonehenge
construction (culminating in the erection of the Great Trilithon
around 1300 b.c.). There was then evidently some widely recognized
purpose in setting up stone circles which reached some kind of climax
at around this particular epoch. It is tempting to see the 1369 BC
catastrophe as the culmination of a period during which the need to
appease the sky god and/or predict its imminent arrival became ever
more pressing.
Hawkins and Hoyle have given reasons for supposing the
fifty-six Aubrey holes—a ring of pits dating from the earliest
phase of Stonehenge construction in the middle of the third
millennium were a crucial part of the monument; they regard
Stonehenge as an analogue computer for calculating lunar and solar
phenomena including eclipses. Thus, the number 56 happens to be
the lowest multiple of the Saros eclipse cycle of 18.61 years close to a
whole number, and it is possible to conceive of straightforward
procedures in which the holes could have been used lor predicting
eclipses. But why, if so, were eclipses important? The enormous scale
of effort required to build Stonehenge and similar monuments implies
262 1369 BC

a powerful motivation, and it is just conceivable that the eclipses were

not of prime interest in themselves but were an index of the recurrent
encounters with Zeus and Typhon. Thus 56 -t- 3.30 is near integer (see
page 267) so that Typhon-associated phenomena might, like the
eclipse cycle, recur at roughly fifty-six-year intervals. Possibly
something of these origins emerges in Plutarch’s statement that
Eudoxus associated Typhon, the demon of eclipses’ with the figure of
fifty-six angles. Perhaps the primitive builders of Stonehenge I
arrived at this number by a simple year count between the first two
spectacular encounters with Typhon rather than by a sophisticated
astronomy requiring knowledge of the Saros. Another possibility is
that a simple commensurability was detected between Typhon and a
planet (see page 270).
Is there evidence to indicate that these settlers of prehistoric Britain
were observers of comets? Their rock carvings, known in modern
times for over a hundred years, may be the clue we seek. According to
Morris, who has surveyed the petroglyphs at eighty or so sites in
Argyll, Scotland, some of the most common motifs are those
illustrated in Plate 30. He points out that the carvings are nearly
always made where there is a fine, open, unobstructed view to the
south on outcrops that are close to horizontal. Burl has given much
attention to recumbent stone circles, ones with flat altar-like stones
which seem to be set up with a view to the south in mind. On some of
these are depicted the same motifs. Many of these patterns include
larger rings or circles to which are attached parallel wavy tails, in
some cases described by Morris as ’comet-like’ figures. There have
been many conjectures as to what these arrays of comet-like figures
represent; the possibility that they simply represent comets does not
seem to have been considered before. Plate 30 illustrates the
carvings on an outcrop at Ardmarnoch, typical of many others, and
another from Traprain Law near Edinburgh, and if it is as we suggest,
then a truly awe-inspiring spectacle was being witnessed by prehistoric
man. Similar elaborate carvings are to be found on standing stones.
If the purpose Of Stonehenge was predictive as well as religious
there is the interesting and mathematically testable proposition that
the numerous alignments of this or other monuments represent an
attempt to track one particular comet. If this were so, the evolution of
this orbit through precession and non-gravitational forces might
account for the sequence of abrupt changes in the construction of
Stonehenge over its long history. Similar explanations might be
invoked for adjustments to the alignments of Egyptian temples which
 1369 BC 263

30. On the left are illustrated some of the most common motifs to be found
among Neolithic ‘cup and ring’ markings on rock outcrops and megaliths at various
places in the British Isles. In the centre is shown a typical set of markings on a flat
rock at Ardmarnoch in western Scotland (Morris 1979). The wavy serpent-like lines
with haloes surrounding the heads have been likened to comets64 and at least one such
display in Yorkshire, England, is on what is known as the ‘Tree of Life Stone’. Elsewhere
markings containing various arrays of single dots have been tentatively identified as
constellations of stars.64 It is possible therefore that the Ardmarnoch array shows a
family of comets moving through a star field. Below is shown a carving from
Traprain Law, now at the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in
Edinburgh. Note particularly the appearance of a long curved comet tail and a huge
halo surrounding a comet head that was probably as bright as the full moon (cf. Han
tomb paintings of comets, Plate 20).
264 1369 BC

were first noted by Lockyer, since it is now quite clear that limi-solar
precession is not itself an adequate explanation.
The general linking of stone circles with ancient superstitions,
often as we have seen involving dragons and serpents, and the
popular assumption that Stonehenge was a kind of arch-temple of the
Druids, are of course well known. The consensus of archaeological
opinion is that the connection of Druids with Stonehenge is a creation
of nineteenth-century romanticism, but there is enough in tune with
our general line of reasoning to suggest an association may after all be
valid. From classical sources such as Posidonius, it is clear that the
Celtic world considered Druidism a long-established institution by
200 BC, although how far back it goes in time is unknown. Caesar
tells us that the Druids 'have many discussions concerning the stars
and their movements, the size of the universe and of the earth, the
order of nature, the strength and power of the immortal gods, and
hand down their learning to younger men’. The claims of Caesar and
Pliny concerning Celtic interest in calendrical matters have been
confirmed by the discovery of a bronze plate at Coligny in France
carrying figures that bear all the signs of reconciling a lunar calendar
with the solar year. Classical history provides us with tantalizing
glimpses of a people called the ‘Hyperboreans’, and although
Herodotus claimed them as a mythical race, another writer, Hecateus
of the fourth century BC, was in no doubt of their association with
Britain. A fragment of his history cited by Diodorus reads:

‘[The island] is at least the size of Sicily and lies opposite the land
inhabited by the Celts, out in the ocean. This is in the far north, and
is inhabited by the people called Hyperboreans from their location
beyond Boreas, the north wind. The land is fertile and produced
every sort of crop; it is remarkable for the excellent balance of its
climate and each year it affords two harvests. The story goes that
Leto [Apollo’s mother] was born there. It is for this reason that
Apollo is honoured above all the gods. There are men who serve as
priests of Apollo because this god is worshipped every day with
continuous singing and is held in exceptional honour. There is also
in the island a precinct sacred to Apollo and suitably imposing, and
a notable temple decorated with many offerings, and looking like a
globe. There is also a community sacred to this god, when most of
the inhabitants are trained to play the lyre and do so continuously
in the temple and worship the god with singing, celebrating his
deeds. . . .’
 1369 BC 265

Whether the Hyperboreans’ circular temple is a genuine reference

to Stonehenge has been much debated. The new perspective does
appear to put the Druids in a new light however. Certainly there is no
hard archaeological evidence to link them directly with the much
earlier megalithic culture, but with our model of events based on
modern astronomical facts, and the ancient writings and archae-
ological facts of the eastern Mediterranean, we can now detect a
semblance of order in the course of Celtic history from as far back as
3000 BC. Once again, Typhon assumes a crucial role, and dates of
1369 BC and around 2500 BC take on an added significance. It is
probably true that the Atlantic megalith culture achieved its greatest
flowering in Britain, but as MacKie has shown, its origins can be
rather securely traced to the Iberian peninsula. But here it seems
rather difficult to identify a prior history like that known in Sumeria
for example. The advance of the civilization prior to 2500 BC shows
much more the signs of a steady infiltration of a new culture into a
previously existing primitive society. MacKie leaves the source of this
culture quite open, but suggestively deplores the lack of solid
evidence for any infiltration or diffusion from the east. The
Phoenicians seem perhaps the most likely candidates, but the
evidence unequivocally focuses attention on the Atlantic front. We
will not speculate further but leave the reader with an inevitable
thought: that around 2500 BC, the time of the Flood if our analysis is
correct, saw the arrival of what seems to have been a stream of more
sophisticated immigrants very conscious of what caused the calamity
they survived and who rapidly took over the administration of the
Atlantic border. From whence did they come? There is a temptation
to see here the beginnings of a realistic framework for the well-
known ‘story, strange but true’ told by some nameless priest to Solon
and recorded in the Timaeus. But any link between the Platonic myth
and the Cosmic Serpent is another story.

10.8 Calendars and constellations: the origins of astronomy

If short-period comets were indeed sky-gods, and the comet which we
are now calling the Cosmic Serpent came spectacularly close to the
Earth at intervals, then the desirability of predicting the returns
would be clear: astronomy would grow out of theology. Obviously
no extreme or exclusive claims can be made for the role of comets, as
agricultural and navigational requirements provide their own
impetus for observing the heavens. Nevertheless the extraordinary
past behaviour of comets may well have generated an acute interest in
266 1369 BC

celestial cycles. And if this was so, it is to be expected that significant

vestiges of these origins may yet be with us in forms that have until
now gone unrecognized. In particular, evidence might be found in the
early calendric systems. Any calendar recording the recurrence of
the Cosmic Serpent would operate concurrently with a solar one
necessary for agriculture. As the comet faded out, say later than
about 1000 BC, the comet calendar would either be forgotten or
become a divine vestige of unknown purpose. Calendar systems
reached their highest stage of development amongst the South
American and Mexican civilizations, and we shall examine some
aspects of these.
The Mayas had three calendars and a belief in the cyclic nature of
time. They believed that the forces controlling the gods were subject
to these cycles; although some gods were unaffected by them, others
were trapped within them. According to von Hagen, ‘Every moment
of their lives was involved in the position of the planets. They feared
that if the gods were not propitiated they would put an end to the
world, and that is perhaps the reason for their obsession with an
almost exact calendar. . .
The haab calendar was made up of eighteen months of twenty days,
plus five empty days. This year was adjusted to give a solar year of
365.2420 days, closer to the ‘real’ year of 365.2422 days than our own
Gregorian calendar, and confirming that they were keen and
competent observers of the sky. A second calendar, the long count,
simply reckoned the number of days from a date in 3111 BC of
unknown significance. The third calendar was the tzolkin, 260 days
long. Von Hagen remarks that ‘No one knows why they settled on
this precise number of days, unless it comes out of some “crystallized
pantheon”, for it has no astronomical significance.’ This third
calendar is of very great antiquity; it had great significance as a divine
calendar; and it was used also by the Aztecs and Toltecs.
It happens that twice 260 days is the mean interval between
oppositions (i.e. the synodic period) of any object in a direct orbit
whose orbital period is 3.35 years. This is remarkably close to the
present orbital period of comet Encke. These oppositions are well
behaved in the case of the planets, because of their virtually circular
orbits, but with an eccentric Apollo orbit involved their nature is
quite different: successive synodic periods will vary greatly, and
opposition will vary from a dramatic close encounter to a passage
about 3 a.u. distant. The close encounters, of course, are the
significant ones, but these will happen only very briefly, small
 1369 BC 267
departures from optimum making a large difference to the encounter.
Now 73 periods of 260 days equals 52 years almost exactly; no
smaller number of these periods gives a whole number of years so
closely. That is, the interval between very close encounters of the
Earth, with a Cosmic Serpent of period 3.35 years, is 52 years (we
have met a similar phenomenon with Leonid meteors, which recur in
strength at 33-year intervals). And as it happens the Mayas and
Aztecs were obsessed with a 52-year cycle, which they measured as 73
tzolkin years, for at the end of each cycle the fire god Xiutecuhtli
returned, and was worshipped and propitiated by human sacrifice. It
seems then that the major features of the Maya, Aztec and Toltec
calendars are explicable along these lines and that their notion of
gods trapped within cycles of time is understandable in a quite literal
way.
Because of the high orbital eccentricity, perihelion passage would
be a brief event during which angular motion would be rapid, the
comet would presumably be at its most active, and any dimming of
sunlight of which the tail might be capable would occur. These effects
would be seen at about 3.3-year intervals, but the precision of timing
of these phenomena would be lower because of their more diffuse
nature. Nevertheless they would be spectacular and a record of the
sidereal as well as the synodic interval might possibly be preserved in
early calendars.
European and Asiatic calendars were unquestionably lunar and
solar and tied to agricultural needs. Even here, however, one finds
that although the early Roman calendar seems to have comprised
twelve lunar months plus extra days to make up a year of 354 days,
some early Roman authorities mention a year of ten months and 304
days, which makes no sense in terms of agriculture or planetary
movements. Almost certainly this goes back to a time before the
formation of the Graeco-Roman empires, that is, before the eighth
century BC. AS it happens, four such years amount to 3.33 solar years.
The number four seems arbitrary but it may be significant that when
the Greeks emerged from this period and set up a twelve-month year,
they also chose to celebrate a major event, whose primary symbol was
the torch of Olympus, on a four-year cycle. Speculative though this is,
the numerology is sufficiently striking to suggest that a deeper
investigation of these early calendars might be rewarding. Allowing
for the errors introduced by rounding, the permissible range of period
we find for the progenitor of Encke is, roughly:
268 1369 BC

from the 56 pits of the Aubrey ring: 3.27-3.32 years

from the 260 days and 52 years of the
Mayan calendar: 3.31-3.38 years
from the 4 x 304 days of the early
Roman calendar: 3.32-3.34 years
(cf. the modern orbital period of Encke of 3.30 years).

Evidently there is a degree of selectivity here as these numbers are

to some extent obtained in consequence of the preconception that the
Cosmic Serpent was important. Nevertheless to our knowledge no
explanation has been forthcoming until now for these early Mayan
and Roman calendars, and a stronger rationale than simply
predicting eclipses is obtained for the Aubrey ring.
If our interpretation of certain aspects of megalithic monuments is
correct, the comet was presumably seen at least as far back as
2500 BC. We have one further astronomical inheritance from this
period, the division of the sky into constellations. The traditional
pattern of constellations derives from the star catalogue of
Elipparchus (c. 190-120 BC) who in turn had access to descriptions of
the sky from Eudoxus (c. 403-350 BC) and the Phaenomena, a poetic
manual intended for sailors written by Aratus (c. 315-250 BC). The
astronomer Ovenden has been able to show that the constellations
are of vastly greater antiquity than the dates of these authors. Because
the pole of rotation of the celestial sphere is fixed at any one epoch,
stars within a certain distance of one pole will always be visible on any
clear dark night, while those within the same angular distance of the
opposite pole will never be seen. The size of these zones depends on
the latitude of the observer. However the poles precess, moving
around a small circle in the sky with a period of 26,000 years, so that
over the millennia different sets of stars will come to occupy the zones.
By studying the pattern of constellations given us by Hipparchus, it
should be possible to detect a blank area, an unknown region, the
extent and centre of which define the date and latitude of the
constellation makers. Ovenden went considerably further than this,
demonstrating that the constellations were arranged in a pattern
symmetric about a single point in the sky. For example the
constellations of Auriga, Perseus, Hercules, Bootes and others form a
ring whose centre is the north celestial pole in the middle of the third
millennium BC. Again, Hydra the water snake stretches for almost 90°
and yet its stars are all faint. The only reason for assigning a
constellation to these inconspicuous stars seems to be that Hydra
 1369 BC 269

marked the celestial equator around 3000 BC. Combining these

alignments, Ovenden found the constellations date from
2800 BC + 300 years fitting by eye, or 2600 BC + 800 years fitting by a
statistical method. The latitude of observation was found to be
36°N + ly°, and although it was suggested that the Minoans might
have been the creators, most investigators believe the constellations to
be of Mesopotamian origin. Many of the early constellation figures,
some of which were handed on to us by the Greeks, portray creatures
which are horned or have dragon-like appendages—all known
attributes of later descriptions of comets. Certainly the constellations
were seen as the mansions of the gods, their creation being described for
example in the Enuma Elish as:

Then Marduk created places for the Great Gods.

He set up their likenesses in the constellations.

The division of the sky into figures with possible cometary

associations emerged then at just about the time we suppose man was
first observing the celestial events that were eventually responsible for
disaster. The possibility of a causal link exists, and although there is
no denying navigational and agricultural reasons for mapping the
sky, there is now also a real possibility that serious attention to the
sky arose in part as a result of the spectacular and sometimes
terrifying events that man was witnessing. After all, so far as is
known, the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent had managed without
constellations for a long time prior to these events. At least there may
be further dimensions to our understanding of the origins of
calendars and constellations, and their place in the evolution of the
earliest civilizations.
Indeed, these may extend to the origins of astronomy generally.
And the final picture will, we suspect, incorporate many facts which
currently sit on the borderlines of knowledge. Thus if one takes a
dispassionate look at the mythological evidence assembled by
Velikovsky for example, setting aside his singular astronomy, one
may conclude that there was a widespread anticipation of an
encounter of the Earth with a comet or its debris in 687 or 686 BC.
This event could have been, as he suggests, a significant turning point
in the history of civilization, releasing new visions of the nature of the
gods, perhaps finally weaning man away from sacred calendars and
the view of life in which the world progressed through catastrophe,
fire and flood from one "great year’ to the next. What van der Waerden
calls "the triumphal advance of cosmic religion' progressed in Greece,
270 1369 BC
Egypt and Asia, and from this time forward we become aware of the
growth of systematic astronomy in Babylonia, apparently aimed first
of all at determining fundamental long-term periodicities in celestial
phenomena. According to the records, the Babylonians particularly
observed the planets, objects that seem to have been given both
‘scientific’ and ‘divine’ names. The latter, like ‘star of Zeus’ or ‘star of
Ares’, involved the names of divinities of great antiquity, yet it is an
interesting fact that the new ‘scientific’ names did not survive. They
were eventually displaced in the later classical period (post 200 BC) by
names like ‘Zeus’ and ‘Ares’. It has always been assumed of course
that these dual titles applied to objects that were one and the same,
but this can be seen now as possibly a fundamental error. If our
theory is correct, the substitution of divine comets’ names for planets
has been a source of subsequent confusion.
Thus, the principal planetary names were at the start of the first
millennium BC probably still applied to cometary deities which were
presumably mostly in periodic Earth-crossing orbits. The main figure
of the Silver and Bronze Ages (2500-1300 BC say) was Zeus-Jupiter-
Marduk-Athura Mazda-Osiris (as it was named in the Greek-
Latin-Babylonian-Persian-Hellenistic Egyptian tongues), and it
was recognized as the successor of Kronos-Saturn-Ninib-Zervan-
Nemesis of the Golden Age (prior to 2500 BC say). It now seems much
of the religious conflict inherited by the new rational age (700-0 BC)
can be understood as relating to the baffling question whether the god
Z-J-M-A-O took precedence over the god K-S-N-Z-N. It is very
interesting to note that K-S-N-Z-N was worshipped as Time, an
associated meaning of Kronos that has tended to evade explanation
before now, and it is logical in the light of the earlier discussion if it
was K-S-N-Z-N in the pre-fragmentation era that originally gave
rise to sacred calendars around the world.
Among the early ‘planetary’ periodicities that emerged from the
Babylonian observations was one significantly related to eclipses of
the Sun and Moon for which van der Waerden has been unable to find
any really satisfactory explanation. It was a period of 684 years.
There is no question of the figure being a copying error since it occurs
several times in astrological texts, yet there is no combination of
known lunar periods capable of explaining it. It is tempting therefore
to suggest that this figure is related in some way to the Babylonian
doctrine of cosmic recurrence, attributing perhaps conflagration and
flood to encounters with a predictable dragon also responsible for or
somehow associated with eclipses. Admittedly the suggestion is
 1369 BC 271
speculative but it is possible the ancients had come to believe in a
rough periodicity in the phenomena observed around 2100 BC
(3 x 684 = 2052), 1369 BC (2X684= 1368) and 687 BC respectively
and that these led the astrologers to anticipate great happenings
around 0 BC. Some 2,000 years closer in time to these events than us, it
is reasonable to suppose memories of what went on at these epochs
still survived. The Magi would look back to events like the Flood, a
subsequent time when for example pyramids were being constructed
by Egyptian monarchs and hill-top temples were set up by megalith
builders, another later time when for example Moses led the exodus
to the promised land, and yet another when Sennacherib’s army was
allegedly destroyed by a Tost from heaven’. If on some such
occasions in the past the close passage of a great comet had led to
celestial fireworks and local catastrophe of the sort we have
discussed, then an integral part of the astrological theory would be
the belief that these great historical events were heralded by, or
caused by, the significant return of a god or comet. The search for
periodicities would be important. That great comets came to be
associated with planets may eventually be verifiable from Babylonian
astrolabes; another approach is to look for associations through 684-
year, 56-year or even 52-year cycles. The longer periodicity at least
can only have been a theoretical construct and must have been based
on multiples of shorter periods. The movement of Mars against the
stellar background is generally retrograde but changes direction
twice in the 780-day synodic period. The turning points can be timed
to a day through naked eye observations, and to this precision the
Martian cycle repeats itself against the same background of stars with
a 171 -year period; and 4x 171 = 684 years. We have seen that in pre-
classical times Halley’s comet must have been a brilliant object on its
returns, over a thousand times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star.
And nine revolutions of Halley’s comet, taken as 76 years, is 684
years. That is, there is a strong (4:9) commensurability between the
Martian super-synodic period and that of Halley’s comet, and this
cycle recurs on a 684-year period. No such commensurability exists
between this comet and the other planets. Evidence has been given for
associating a comet ‘Mars' with the event of 687 BC; perhaps it is
more plausible to attribute catastrophic encounters to comets in
Earth-crossing orbits, but it is also possible that our forefathers may
have come, illogically, to associate some contemporaneous near
encounters with Halley’s comet as warnings of impending disaster.
By the first millennium BC, the idea that comets presage catastrophe
272 1369 BC

as much as cause it is so deeply inbred that one should perhaps look

for coincidences of this kind to explain it. If correct, then Halley’s
comet has been known to mankind for a very long time as
Ares-Mars-Nergal-Verethragna-Herakles.
There is also a 7:17 commensurability between the 8-year Venusian
period used for predictions by the Babylonians, and returns of
Encke’s comet taken as 3.30 years. This is a weak commensurability;
but it has a 56-year recurrence time to within a month or so and its
derivation follows the same logical route as the Halley/Mars one.
Yielding to temptation, we may suppose this connection to be a
significant one; and we should then look to myth for descriptions
of a disastrous encounter with a giant comet Typhon, alias
Aphrodite-Venus-Ishtar-Anahita-Isis, in 1369 BC.
It is appropriate that we end as we began, on a note of uncertainty,
for the realization that mythology and early astrology are telling us
about past comets means there is a great deal more research still to be
done. Such research will require the skills of many disciplines and
hopefully it will be encouraged by the new perspectives that have now
been opened up.
Epilogue

The strands have now been brought together, and it is for the reader
to judge the strength of the final rope.
Of course it would be quite possible to agree that catastrophic
impacts have played their part in Earth history but dispute the
interstellar connection. Or one could agree that the myths of old are
based on things cosmic but deny our cosmic interpretation of
Exodus. Or accept the revised chronology but deny the significance of
catastrophe in subsequent migrations or megalith-building. The
combinations are endless and we would be the first to agree that, in
attempting to cover this enormous span, we have sometimes lived
dangerously. But it is the overall strength of the rope that matters,
and our case is simple: the Earth is a cosmic body; and it may
sometimes be struck by other cosmic bodies.
People have been on the fringes of many of these ideas for a long
time. That fear was a prime motive for building megaliths is not a new
idea (Burl); likewise that catastrophe may have been a factor in the
migration of the megalith-builders (MacKie); that a cosmic
interpretation should be put on many myths has been suggested
before (Bellamy, generally ignored); likewise that some Old
Testament events describe real cosmic catastrophe (Whiston;
Velikovsky, dismissed as a charlatan); that great impacts may have
catastrophic global effects is an idea about 200 years old (Laplace:
Wright); likewise that the ultimate source of the missiles is the space
between the stars (Laplace).
What was missing from all these speculations was a workable
astronomical scenario. It has taken a profusion of modern
instrumentation —radio and optical telescopes. Earth-survey satel-
lites, Moon missions and so on—to bring our knowledge to the point
where that scenario can be supplied. And the result of this battery of
high technology has been to turn the clock back to the ideas of 200
years ago. Why should this be? Part of the answer may he in the
words of the palaeontologist McLaren, who was speaking in a
274 Epilogue

somewhat narrower context: 'Geology was liberated as a science by

Hutton and Lyell at the beginning of the last century by means of the
great principle of “uniformity”.. . . however, there has been a natural
tendency to over-compensate and to avoid catastrophic inter-
pretations even when the evidence calls for it.’ Of course
obscurantism is older than catastrophism, but it should have no place
in science: one must judge the evidence of telescope, crater, iridium
layer or thunderbolt on its merits.
So much for the past and present. What can we say of the future?
Impacts of the dinosaur-destroying variety are too remote to concern
us. But only fifty human lifespans separate us from the events of
Exodus, only one from the Tunguska fireball. Within any human
lifetime there is a 1 or 2 per cent chance that say a 1,000-megaton
impact will take place somewhere on the globe, an event totally
outside modern experience. The consequences would be devastating
on a ‘local’ scale but this might well be completely overshadowed by
other imponderables. A temporary drop in mean global temperature
might be expected. These have in fact been detected by the geologist
Flohn through the study of past lake-level fluctuations. During the
last 700,000 years there have been abrupt changes in temperature,
reaching about 5°C in fifty years and enduring for several centuries.
These occur at intervals of about 10,000 years, but there are epochs
when the frequency reaches about one in 1,000 years. To get enough
dust into the stratosphere Flohn speculates that major volcanic
eruptions may occur in clusters, but of course a cosmic mechanism
for adequate dust injection is readily to hand. One gets the impression
that the Earth is continually trying to glaciate but that these attempts
are usually overridden by some feedback mechanism. The disquieting
feature is that these abrupt coolings occur, as we would expect, even
within warm interglacial periods. A 1°C drop in mean global
temperature, in the growing season, would eliminate commercial
wheat production in Canada; a 3°C cooling would move the limit of
the corn belt in the USA to southern Iowa. According to a report of the
National Academy of Sciences in 1975 produced to assess the likely
global consequences of nuclear war, ‘The United States and Canada
have become the world’s “breadbasket”, producing about two thirds
of all the grain and much of the other food that is available for
shipment in international commerce. There is reason to believe that
the dependence of other nations on grain grown in North America to
feed their growing populations will become increasingly severe for
many decades.’
 Epilogue 275
In palaeontological terms a small impact with such effects would
correspond to an undetectably small hiatus in the fossil record; in
human terms it would be global calamity beyond imagination
engulfing rich and poor alike. It has taken us 3,000 years to begin to
understand the significance of comets. It might be another 3,000 years
before a disintegrating comet again intersects the Earth’s orbit, and
we may choose to eat, drink and be merry, and forget the morrow; on
the other hand we can see now that the decline over the years of the
priest-astronomer from astrologer to soothsayer, and from thence
towards magician and jester, has hardly been one to open the doors of
perception.

Acknowledgements

We owe a considerable debt of gratitude to those scientific colleagues

and others, too numerous to mention, with whom we have over the
years discussed many aspects of the thesis developed in this book. In
particular we would like to thank Dr Douglas Heggie, Mr Fred
Watson and Mr Bryan Bass for helpful and critical readings of a
preliminary draft of the text. For encouragement throughout the
development of our impact catastrophism theme and its interstellar
connection, we are indebted to Professor Bill McCrea. For extensive
translations from Fatin and Greek, we thank both Mr and Mrs
Douglas Young and Mr Jeremy Fenton; the former in particular
provided an invaluable critique of our classical thesis. Mr Angus
Macdonald gave us much assistance in obtaining original sources for
examination and in translating German sources, while Professor
Hermann Briick kindly translated a passage from Orosius. On
various aspects of Egyptian chronology, Dr John Fermor kindly
gave of his time and advice. The Han tomb discoveries at Changsha
were kindly drawn to our attention by Mr David Farmer. We thank Mr
Brian Hadley and his staff for the production of photographic material
at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. Our special thanks are due to
Mr Michael Wright of Faber and Faber Ftd whose advice and help at
all stages of production was invaluable. The progress of the book was
materially advanced by the unstinting aid of Nancy Napier as typist,
while Tristan Clube prepared the diagrams; we are grateful to both. Of
276 Acknowledgments
course, responsibility for views expressed, errors and so on remains
with the authors.
Finally, the plates reproduced here and quoted extracts are derived
from the following sources, and we would like to thank those
concerned for kindly allowing us to make use of this material: Pis. 1,
3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 21,22 Royal Observatory Edinburgh; PI. 2 Astrophysical
Journal, University of Chicago Press; Pis. 7, 8 Lick Observatory,
California; Pis. 10, 12 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California; PI. 11,
Langley Research Centre, Virginia; Pis. 13,17,18 Copyright Agency,
USSR; Pis. 14, 15, 19 Sky and Telescope, Cambridge, Mass-
achusetts; PI. 16 New Mexico State University Observatory; PI. 21
Kunstsammlungen, Stadt Augsburg; PI. 28 Ash and Grant, London;
Fig. 14 Dr Beland, Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa, Canada.
The Frontispiece is reproduced from a French caricature, American
Museum of Natural History; PI. 24 from Corpus Vasorum
Antiquorum, Union Academique Internationale, pi. 86; PI. 25 from
Auserlesene Grieschische Vasenbilder, Berlin, pi. 237; PI. 26 from
relief in British Museum; PI. 27 from William MacQuitty, London;
PI. 29 from The Dawn of Astronomy, Norman Lockyer, 1894. PI. 30
is reproduced from The Prehistoric Rock Art of Argyll, R. W. B.
Morris, Dolphin Press, 1977, and from a petroglyph at the National
Museum of Antiquities of Scotland. Extracts from Lucretius, On the
Nature of the Universe, translated by R. E. Latham, 1951,pp.9f., 174f.,
182f., 225f., 229f., and from H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of
Northern Europe, 1964, pp. 37f., are reprinted by permission of
Penguin Books Ltd. Extracts from the New Jerusalem Bible, 1967,
are reprinted by permission of Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd.
Bibliographic notes

In preparing the bibliographic notes below, we have assumed that the reader
has already acquired some background knowledge of the subjects studied.
Our rather limited aim therefore is to provide the technically minded reader
with adequately referenced modern literature citations so as to guide him or
her into the relevant research fields. Numbers in Roman type relate to the
main reference list, italicized numbers to corresponding pages of the text.
Except where appropriate, we have not specifically referenced the more
familiar passages from classical authors. So far as more general references are
concerned, our listing is by no means exhaustive but simply provides an
introduction to the topics considered.

Chapter 1: Universe to galaxy: the cosmic framework

The history of scientific thought warns us against supposing that because a

particular world view is prevalent at any one time, it is necessarily correct. It
has frequently happened that ideas which seemed plausible at one epoch have
been superseded by some totally different way of looking at things.
Astronomical science in particular has been in a state of ferment and rapid
development over the past decade or so, and in Chapter 1 we have tried to
indicate that even the broad features of the universe (origin, redshift,
structure of galaxies, star formation) may be interpreted in more than one
way. Thus although our trail starts from the planetesimals, their ultimate
origin is shrouded in mystery; and their study may eventually contribute to
the resolution of such problems.
The postulate that the universe presents the same aspect everywhere and at
all times, the so-called perfect cosmological principle, follows from the
conservation laws of physics and ensures that these laws are continuous. The
principle excludes a big bang or other types of evolving universe. If the
universe appears to be expanding, then to uphold the principle there must
either be continuous creation of matter in some form or else the apparent
expansion must be an illusion. The former is out of fashion at the moment but
has been vigorously defended by Hoyle.77 The latter is inherent in, for
example, the so-called fib cosmology.9 Several mechanisms other than
expansion might yield a systematic redshift and it has been shown85 that they
fit the data more readily than big-bang scenarios.
The view that the universe is not expanding and that ordinary galaxies
evolve by successive ejections of spiral arms from their nuclei, gradually
278 Bibliographical notes

converting initially spheroidal systems into disc/halo structures, has been

developed by Clube.28 That the outer structure of an ordinary galaxy is
determined by frequent violent ejections of nuclear material had already been
proposed by Ambartsumyan4, Burbidge & Hoyle19, Pismis149 and others. The
chemical evolution of the Galaxy implicit in these ideas was first recognized by
Unsold.175 According to such theories there is recurrent activity in galactic
nuclei (e.g. Bailey & Clube8) at intervals of approximately 100 million years.
During the short active episodes, successive active nuclei develop briefly into
quasars before disgorging oppositely directed ejecta at relativistic speeds. The
effects invite the question ‘Does our Galaxy have a violent history?’ (Clube27)
and an affirmative answer seems to be born out by evidence that our Galaxy is
in a state of comparatively rapid large-scale expansion. In this chapter such a
picture of galactic evolution is contrasted with that of expanding universe
cosmology. We emphasize that it is the latter picture which is currently
subscribed to by most current astronomical opinion. Almost inevitably with
this world view, spiral arms are usually interpreted as density waves whilst the
gravitational collapse of galactic nuclei proceeds in accord with the predictions
of general relativity theory, forming black holes. This conventional theme is
very well covered in many technical as well as general books and is not
elaborated here. Black holes for example are not normally considered capable
of producing relativistic ejecta of the kind that could form spiral arms, so the
actual observed state of spiral arms may be looked upon as a means of critically
distinguishing the two theories of their origin. We therefore anticipated that
the study of Earth history would become a means of probing the state of spiral
arms.125 Globules, considered as seats of star formation, are a crucial
component of the theory. These objects were originally discovered in the
Galaxy as long ago as 1935, but the existence of cometary globules only
emerged in very recent surveys using the powerful UK Schmidt telescope in
Australia (see 71).
22, 6; 22, 5

Chapter 2: Galaxy to comet: the interstellar connection

The traditional separation of galactic and solar system disciplines in
astronomy owes more to default than analysis. It derives from an epoch when
our understanding of the state of the interstellar medium was incomplete to
the extent that regarding the solar system as isolated within the Galaxy was
considered justifiable. Radio astronomy has transformed the situation. It is
now known that there exist in the spiral arms, besides dust and young stars,
huge dense clouds of cold gas containing hydrogen and a whole variety of
interstellar molecules, many of them organic (Gordon & Burton59, Solomon
& Sanders169). It is just an accident of history that optical astronomers
discovered hot, tenuous gas in the galactic plane at an earlier stage, so
perhaps it was inevitable that the view should have been formulated first that
the cold gas derived by compression from the hot gas before condensing to
form stars, and that density waves were responsible for the compression. This
theory is now facing difficulties however: it fails to account for detailed
 Bibliographical notes 279

observations of non-circular motions in our Galaxy (Watson & Clube184) and

the classical picture of star formation by collapse of a gas cloud is not found
in computer simulations (Larson100, Tohline174; but see Hunter82). An
opposite viewpoint, consistent with ejection in a compressed state from
galactic nuclei, that the warm clouds derive from very much colder material,
has still to be studied quantitatively. But whichever of the several possibilities is
correct, the cold clouds are now seen as an ideal place for the synthesis of
kilometre or more sized bodies (planetesimals or planetoids), those that outgas
on heating being the ones we recognize as comets (Napier124).
In this chapter, we develop the idea that the observed globules are
fragmenting-accreting aggregates of planetesimals in the process of forming
planetary systems with central stars. It follows that as stars evolve and
circulate through the Galaxy, their primordial clouds of comets disperse and
disintegrate until a time is reached when the capture of new comets from the
interstellar medium dominates what remains of the original cloud (Napier &
Staniucha127, Clube & Napier29). The current solar system comets may be
understood as recent captures (Hasegawa70, Yabushita194) following
passage through Gould's Belt between 10 and 20 million years ago. This
model, in which the solar system continually interacts with the Galaxy, may
be contrasted with that held by most astronomers at the present time, first
quantified by Oort138, in which it is assumed not to interact with its
surroundings and to possess only a huge primordial cloud of comets. Other
comet theories which have been proposed (e.g. Lyttleton112, Vsek-
hsvyatsky180) have met with severe objections (Whipple192, but see Fellgett45).
If we are to discover the correct theory, it is evident that the determination of
the ages and chemical compositions of comets, particularly isotope ratios, is
crucial. This is an unsolved problem which satellite probes of the future may
resolve. In 1986, the European Space Agency plans an expedition to Halley’s
comet under the codename Giotto.55 In the meantime, the lunar surface and
the terrestrial ocean beds are considered to be good places for examining
recent deposits of cometary material.
117; 140; 171; 192; 48, 62; 54, 185, 56, 107

Chapter 3: Comet to asteroid: solar system debris

If comets are indeed interstellar in origin, sporadically captured from the
spiral arms of the Galaxy, then it is natural to enquire whether other small
bodies of the solar system may also have been captured. We have been led
therefore to examine the origin of asteroids in particular. The asteroid belt
was originally thought to be a fragmented planet between Mars and Jupiter
(e.g. Ovenden144), but in more recent times has been considered to be a
collection of remnants from a primordial solar nebula (Kuiper07). Since this
nebula is supposed to have been fiat, it has been seen as a problem for theory
how to disperse the asteroids into orbits of high eccentricity and high
inclination.74- 126- 193 A decade or so ago, it began to be realized that there
were similarities between Apollo asteroids and main-belt asteroids and that
the former were the credible evolutionary products of short-period comets
280 Bibliographical notes

(e.g. Opik141). Since there are good grounds for supposing short-period
comets evolve from long-period orbits (Everhart41), we can entertain the
obvious hypothesis that main-belt asteroids are themselves also the
descendants of earlier generations of captured comets as well as an original
solar globule. The discovery now of bodies which behave as if they were part
comet and part asteroid lends support to this view (e.g. 141). The rocket effect
due to cometary outgassing (Whipple192) is invoked as the mechanism which,
coupled with planetary perturbations, transfers bodies from the unstable
(cometary) to the stable (asteroidal) regimes; however, such transitions have
yet to be calculated in detail. The asteroid belt is thus proposed to be in part
the result of past capture episodes in the history of the solar system and we are
led to view the numerous other short-lived phenomena amongst the moons
and smaller bodies of the solar system as further evidence of recent capture.
The mass distribution of these small bodies is that of the comets and
asteroids; and the preponderance of direct orbits follows from the fact that
satellites captured into retrograde orbits have shorter lifetimes (McCord116).
The rings of Jupiter145 and Saturn36' 179, the inner moon of Mars165 and
Chiron134 are among other examples considered.
2; 54; 125; 141; 186

Chapter 4: Asteroid to crater: the anatomy of impact

Some proportion of the missiles captured from interstellar space will collide
with the planets and satellites of the solar system to form craters. There are
now strong grounds for believing that most of the objects of 1-10 km
diameter in Earth-crossing orbits are the end products of the evolution of
short-period comets and are hence by the arguments of previous chapters,
indeed interstellar. (To avoid confusion we have retained the conventional
name, Apollo asteroids, for these objects and have not followed a recently
revised subdivision by orbit.)164 Encke’s comet is the single known example of a
comet currently in the process of becoming an Apollo asteroid.141
All the inner planets and satellites are studded with impact craters. Most
were formed early on but a quasi-steady impact rate has been maintained
over the past 3 billion years, e.g.67' 68; and for a comprehensive study of
impact cratering mechanics see153. There is evidence however that this
average rate of cratering may have been slightly increasing and that the flow
of missiles is in any case sporadic.67' 64 These facts are all comprehensible in
terms of a model in which the Apollos are the missiles and they are regularly
replenished during spiral arm passages.
Impacts have only rarely been considered by mainstream scientists as an
important factor in the evolution of the Earth’s surface and biosphere. The
amateur geologist Gallant is a notable exception: see his Bombarded Earth
published in 1964.50 Whatever the reasons for this omission, it is now clear
that it can no longer be maintained (Table 3); but the significance of the new
astronomical evidence has still to be appreciated by Earth scientists as a
whole (see Chapter 5).
Included among the missiles are meteorites. These are seen as fragment-
 Bibliographical notes 281
ation products of 100-km-sized bodies;160 traditionally these bodies have
been identified as asteroids, and much effort has been expended in attempts
to identify individual meteorites with particular asteroids.49 These parent
bodies, in turn, have been interpreted (through meteorite mineralogy) as
condensations from a hot primordial solar nebula.160 In actual fact, the
reasons for identifying meteorites with main-belt asteroids are not
compelling; further, although the ‘hot’ school of thought is still predominant
amongst meteoriticists,182 there is also a view that many meteorite types may
have formed in a much lower temperature regime,24 25 over a much wider
range of conditions than one would expect in a narrow strip of solar nebula
around 2.5 a. u.161’ 183 These considerations have led us to propose that
meteorites are fragments of a cloud of interplanetary boulders (cf. 16’ 69)
which in turn are the collisionally processed remains of the primordial
globule.
53: 54; 63; 153; 163; 166; 182; 186; 74, 183, 75, 187; 84, 131; 157

Chapter 5: Crater to catastrophe: the aftermath of impact

Following speculations going back to the time of Laplace and even earlier (103'
n9. i39, i76) we develop reasons for supposing that cosmic bombardments are a
major cause of biological extinctions. There have in fact been numerous
hypotheses to account for individual extinction events.14 It has not been our
aim to add further speculation which can neither be proved nor disproved,
but rather to emphasize the inevitable derived nature of the present theory:
these collisions are bound to produce extinctions on all scales from local to
global, a fact which has so far largely been overlooked by many scientists.
Thus within the last decade many large terrestrial craters have been
discovered ;157 the lunar missions have led to a reconstruction of the cratering
history of the Moon and so, presumably, the Earth;68 and wide-angle
telescope surveys have revealed the existence of a substantial missile
population in circum-terrestrial space.104 These new lines of evidence
demonstrate that catastrophic impacts are indeed common occurrences over
geological timescales: their significance in this context was first pointed out by
the authors and is the foundation of their ‘theory of terrestrial catas-
trophism’.125 As it happens, confirming evidence on the ground quickly
emerged: several geological groups discovered exceptional concentrations of
material apparently of extra-terrestrial origin at the Cretaceous-Tertiary
boundary (3i 51 • 167) and it is to be hoped that other boundaries and
nonconformities will be similarly examined. The erratic nature of the
palaeontological record (e.g. 129) is qualitatively in agreement with the
predictions of the theory; and it seems likely that a large part of the extinction
record can be accounted for by the considerations outlined here, which thus
provide a rational basis for gaining further insight into the progress and
evolution of life on this planet.
That geological effects will follow in the wake of a large impact seems
entirely reasonable, particularly as a great global vulcanism coincided with
the dinosaur extinction event.156 Evidence is discussed for a sequence of lesser
282 Bibliographical notes

impacts, since the event, causing sudden sea-level changes.89 These are
interpreted in terms of a mechanism leading'to ice-ages e.g. see also 21.
Particular attention is drawn inter alia to a coincidence in time between the
close of the Eocene and the epoch of formation of the Popigai crater. All
these aspects of catastrophism in Earth history highlight also the episodic
nature of orogeny. The conflict between geophysicists who hold that the
mantle is too viscous to permit continental drift and those who claim from
the more visible evidence that it has nevertheless happened,37 is in principle
resolved if one recognizes that the main part of plate tectonics takes place in
violent episodes initiated by large impacts. Such ideas, if substantiated,
would constitute a new fundamental theory of geological action.
26; 110; 188; 95,164; 96,106; 99, 86; 135,136; 99,121; 102, 52; 172; 103, 30;
112, 78; 122, 57; 123, 80; 81; 124, 154

Chapter 6: The mystery of the short-period comets

Numerical computations by Everhart40 show how long-period comets may
be fed regularly into short-period orbits. Using observational evidence
gathered by Kresak & Pittich,93 it is possible to calculate the current rate of
production of Apollo asteroids. The observed number of Apollos is
consistent with a capture of comets circa 10 million years ago as the solar
system passed through the Gould Belt. The implied steady state number of
short-period comets is considerably less than the actual numbers observed.
(A contrary viewpoint was developed by Delsemme.32 This was based on
primordial Oort cloud theory.) The short-period comets which we now observe
are thus of recent origin and fragmentation due to tidal forces during a Jupiter
or Sun encounter appears to be one plausible and certainly the least ad hoc
cause. (See Marsden114 for a description of a giant Sun-grazing comet which
split into perhaps thousands of fragments some of them, such as the great
comet of 1881, themselves brilliant objects at perihelion.) Reviewing similar
data, Drobyshevski36 has suggested fragmentation of a Saturnian satellite
whilst van Flandern has proposed the recent explosion of a planet in the
asteroid belt.46 Whatever process is invoked the effects imply a recently
increased probability of active comets in Earth-crossing orbit.
23; 132, 162; 134, 192

Chapter 7: Prehistoric encounters?

The evidence so far mostly relates to Apollo asteroids and the impacts they
produce, down to the telescopically detectable size of around 100-1,000
metres diameter. Missiles in the range of approximately 1 metre or less mostly
burn up as fireballs in the upper atmosphere and have been well studied in
recent years with North American and European networks of all sky
cameras.22' 118 Downward and upward extrapolation to the intermediate size
range places realistic limits on the rate of Tunguska and super-Tunguska
events. This rate is very significant on a historical timescale and is consistent
with a current overproduction of meteor streams which is itself consistent
with a current overproduction of short-period comets. The Taurids are the
 Bibliographical notes 283
most energetic stream and are additional evidence of the extremely active
nature of Encke’s comet several thousand years ago (e.g. Whipple189,
Whipple & Hamid190). The prehistoric sky therefore contained at least one
very active comet in periodic Earth-crossing orbit (Whipple & Hamid191); we
conclude that it is necessary to consider the effect these aspects of the
prehistoric sky would have had on primitive peoples.
94; 138, 164; 140, 95; 142, 94; 143, 68; 148, 34; 149, 120, 173

Chapter 8; Comets and gods

A survey of the theories of comets through the mediaeval and classical
periods shows a clear development of attempts to describe their behaviour in
rational, materialistic terms. It would appear that these attempts started with
Greek philosophers as a reaction to explanations involving supernatural
behaviour. To exemplify this, we have paid special attention to the writings of
Lucretius as they appear in the translations of Latham102, Munro 123
and
-7
Bailey . The conclusion is reached that comets were for the most part treated
as celestial deities in prehistoric times; and that the principal reason why the
ancient records of Egypt and Babylonia carry so little information about
comets is that, being regarded as gods, they were the subject of worship rather
than objective analysis. As we have seen, newly formed comets and meteor
streams were at some not so remote period very prevalent in the sky, and man
would have been obliged to formulate some sort of picture of what was going
on. As it happens, comets were not seen as objects subject to the control of
deterministic physical law but as benign or malignant beings with minds of
their own, and as such, they were not incapable of influencing the lives of men
on Earth below. Indeed, they inspired great terror since man was conscious of
the disasters they caused. It may well be therefore that the polytheistic origins
of many modern religions relate to primitive beliefs about comets. This
enables us to place the facts of mythology in a new light and it is concluded
that many myths have a common core reflecting world-wide observations of
a large active short-period comet. The genealogy of the gods is interpreted as
a history of fragmentation.
157-162,42, 73, 91, 115; 162-165,98, 150, 181; 165-178, 61; 178-189, 13,38,
60, 101,155; 163,158; 164,15, 133; 171, 56; 176, 31; 178,111; 186, 75; 188,43

Chapter 9: Zeus and Typhon

The modern astrophysicist tends to see astronomy as an exclusively modern
puzzle. Armed with the laws of physics, he dissects the scene before him with
the antiseptic calm of a skilful surgeon. But like the surgeon, he can overlook
the mysterious origins of his patient. For some reason, astronomy is the
oldest of the sciences and it is certainly known to have a past that is rooted in
primitive polytheistic religion and celestial mythology (e.g. King91). The
question we address is why. In this chapter, we abandon those twentieth-
century tendencies to see in much mythology mere tales with an astronomical
flavour but take as our basis the assumption that many myths have a
284 Bibliographical notes

common astronomical core overlaid with embellishments that have long ago
lost touch with the original meaning. Taking as our starting point the modern
analysis of Greek combat myths (e.g. Fontenrose48), we recognize a huge and
threatening god-like pair of dragons that return at intervals. The Phaethon
myth (e.g. Engelhardt39) indicates astronomical associations with flood and
fire. With brief reference to other myths world-wide, we bring together these
themes in a detailed hypothesis involving a large disintegrating comet in
Earth-crossing orbit during prehistoric times. By attempting fairly literal
interpretations, along the same lines, of the events in Exodus and the
apocalyptic literature of the Bible (following e.g. Freedman & Frost in84), we
deduce an association with a comet which is, not altogether speculatively,
identified as the progenitor of Encke’s comet.
84; 95; 190,159; 142; 196,152; 197,105; 198,10; 200,66; 202, 83; 206,33,92;
212, 132, 17

Chapter 10: 1369 BC

It is assumed that encounters with a huge disintegrating comet in Earth-

crossing orbit, the progenitor of Typhon and of Encke’s comet, gave rise to
two principal bombardment episodes of cometary fragments. The first in the
third millennium BC was probably world-wide and precipitated the Flood;
the second in the second millennium BC was apparently confined to the
eastern Mediterranean basin and caused severe local dislocation of the
peoples involved. The events are seen as fundamental turning points in
human history and they fathered doom-laden beliefs in the end of the world
which were probably realistic and which have never since entirely
disappeared.
In this chapter, we describe a revision of Egyptian chronology based on
recent research (e.g. Parker146; van der Waerden181) consistent with Hebrew
chronology (e.g. Kenyon88) that places the Typhon-induced catastrophes
circa 2500 BC and 1369 BC respectively. This revision recognizes defects in the
standard Sothic calendar, carbon dating and dendrochronological calibration
using the bristlecone pine, all of which suffer through failure to appreciate the
roles of Zeus and Typhon in prehistoric times. The realization that Zeus was
the dominant feature of the prehistoric sky following a dramatic flooding of the
inner solar system with many short-period comets leads us to new
understandings of previously unexplained aspects of the Roman and Mayan
calendars, a new partial understanding of the role of megalithic temple-
observatories, and a new understanding of the origin of the constellations.
Although Parker suggests that the 365-day Egyptian civil year arose with
astronomer-priests over a long period by averaging an intercalated lunar year,
it is possible the simple day count became established rather more quickly with
a populace observing the fireball displays and precipitation that came with
regular annual passages through a dense meteor stream. If these events marked
the start of another year, a new lunar calendar initiated by heliacal risings of
Sirius would probably have been substituted only when the meteor stream had
almost ceased to be visible. When this happened in the reign of Ramses II, the
civil year had drifted a very long way from the time year, requiring the
introduction of a discontinuity in the Sothic calendar, which is the reason for
 Bibliographical notes 285

the revision of Egyptian chronology proposed in this chapter.

It is remarkable that the simplest integer commensurability between the
orbital period of Halley’s comet and the longest Martian period is a cycle of
684 years. The same reasoning gives a weaker Encke/Venus com-
mensurability whose cycle time is 56 years. Cycles of 684 and 56 years seem to
have been significant in the ancient world and it may be the early Babylonian
descriptions181 of gods and their ‘stars’ were a manifestation of these
associations. When these dualities later became merged as the comets faded,
myths describing close encounters of the Earth with the Encke and Halley
comets would tend to be attributed to the planets Venus and Mars respectively.
The erroneous deductions by Velikovsky177 178 from mythology, involving
close encounters with Venus as a giant comet, and with Mars, are then in
principle explicable.
Many of the facts relevant to this interpretation of prehistory were
apparently known to mediaeval scholars, and we suggest the subsequent
failure to comprehend fully the part played by a comet, namely Zeus, in
terrestrial history springs from illogical applications of certain fundamental
tenets of Newton (belief in a mechanical universe) and Darwin (belief in a
great terrestrial age) to arguments which were developed to counter the
biblical evidence with which they were confronted.
224-226, 96; 226-227, 108, 128, 146, 181; 238-242, 1; 242-247, 113, 151;
247-253, 88, 170; 253-258, 58, 177, 178; 258-265, 20,64, 72, 99; 225, 11; 226,
109; 237,168; 240, 79; 242, 11,104; 246, 18; 252,12; 254, 35,44, 87; 259,113;
260, 147, 148; 261, 72, 76, 130; 252, 64, 122; 266, 65; 268, 143
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Index

Aeschylus, 208 Athena, 193

Agung, Mount, 99 Athura Mazda, 270
Akkad, 163 A turn, 179, 180
Akkadian dialect, 238 Aubrey holes, 261, 268
Alexander the Great, 164 Australites, see tektites
Alpha Draconis, 237 Aztecs, 266
Alvarez, L. W., 115
Amenhotep I, 23Iff., 236, 241, 242, 256 Balder, 187
Amenhotep III, 232, 233 Bediasites, see tektites
Amos, 165 Bellamy, H. S., 198, 273
Anahit, 164 Beltane fires, 242
Anahita, 272 Beowulf, 199
Antarctica: iridium layer, 116; ice Bible: apocalyptic literature, 212, 213;
varves, 237 as history, 248ff.; Exodus, 218ff., 251,
Anunnaki, 210 255
Apepi, 179ff. Bifrost, 186, 187
Aphrodite, 272 Big Bang, 20
Apollo (mythical), 183, 187, 192ff, 199, black holes, 19, 41
202, 264 Bright, J., 212
Apollo asteroids: discovery, 72, 73; bristlecone pine, 225, 244ff.
origin, 73ff.; relation to cratering, 53, Bronze Age, 182
82, 84; Adonis, 72; Amor,72; Apollo, Brown, J. C., 246
72; Hephiaistos, 65, 73, 15Iff.; Brugsch, H., 231
Hermes, 62, 72; 1979 VA, 65, 75 Burl, A., 262, 273
Apollodorus, 194
Apollon Rhodios, 207 Caesar, J., 264
Apsu, 199 calendars: and constellations, 265ff.;
Aratus, 268 diagonal, 234; early Roman, 267,
Ares, 270 268; Egyptian lunar, 228ff.; Mayan,
Aristotle, 161, 208 266ff.; Sothic, 226ff.
Arp, H. C„ 23 Canadian network, 143
Artemis, 183, 194 Canopus decree, 227
Arza, 235 Capitoline Hill, 182
Assyr-Uballit I, 239 Cassites, 238, 239
Asteroids: belt structure, 61, 62, 66ff.; catastrophism: vs. uniformitarianism, 94
discovery, 60ff.; dimensions, 62; Censorinus, 227
origin, 63ff., 66ff.; relation to comets, Cerro Tololo, 99
64ff.; C and S types, 88; Ceres, 62, Chladni, E. F., 192
63; Chiron, 65, 66, 70; Eros, 62, 72; chondrites, 85ff.
Hidalgo, 65, 66, 70; Hilda group, 65; chronology: Bronze Age, 242ff.;
Pallas, 67; Trojans, 62, 68 Egyptian, 226ff.; Palestinian, 243,
Astronomical unit, 43 247ff.
 Index 295

Clayton, D. D., 90 density wave, 28ff.

Cohane, J. P., 258 De Ostentis 197
comet: Biela’s, 133; Brooks, 134, 136; Deucalion flood, 209
Encke’s, 63, 75, 132, 149, 151, 152, Diggle, J., 206
154, 175, 220; Giacobini’s, 148; dinosaurs, 106; extinction of, 11 Iff.
Halley’s, 43, 74, 154, 157, 158, 181, Diodorus, 171, 264
271, 272; Lexell’s, 134, 136; Neujmin Djed column, 179
I, 65, 75; Tempel, 148; Wirtanen, Donolo, 198
152; West, 134, 152; of 1490, 188; of dragons: associations with water
1577, 160, 205; of 1758, 157ff.; 1862 underworld, 205; Chinese, 186, 187,
III, 150 205; distribution, 192; pair of, 198ff.;
comets: association with deities, 162; relation to World Tree, 186; Typhon
capture, 40, 49, 50; chemical as, 196
composition, 40, 44, 48, 112, 114ff.; Druids, 260, 264, 265
coma, 43; early descriptions of, 176,
177; early views on, 157ff.; Easter, 242
fragmentation of, 133fF., 202; growth, Ebers Papyrus, 231
48; lifetimes, 75; masses, 53; periodic, Eclipses, comet induced, 156, 171, 180,
74; primordial Oort cloud of, 52ff.; 203
relation to asteroids, 64ff., 74; Edfu text, 202
relation to cratering, 82; short-period, Elephantine stone, 233
13Iff.; structure of, 34, 43ff.; tails of, Empedocles, 171
43 ff. Engelhardt, W. V., 206ff.
cometary globules, 36 entropy, 19
Comte, A., 190 Enuma Elish, 199, 204, 239, 269
constellations, 268, 269 Epicureanism, 166ff.
continental drift, 128 episodic bombardment, 54ff., 76, 83ff.,
continuous creation, 18 125ff.
Cosmic Serpent, 260, 265ff. Eridanus, 207, 208
Cotterell, L., 258 Eudoxus, 268
craters: Barringer, 142; Copernicus, 81, Euripides, 206
108; Henbury, 83; Nordlinger Ries, European network, 143
98; Odessa, 83; Popigai, 120; Tycho, Evans, A., 199, 254, 255
108 Everhart, E., 75, 131, 132, 134
craters, impact: energies of collision, 76, evolution and impacts, 118ff.
82, 75; episodic cratering, 54; Exodus, see Bible
formation of, 81; frequency of Exposure age, meteorites, 86
collision, 77; on Moon, 54, 80; on extinction, biological, 104ff.; late
planets, 78; on Earth, 83, 84 Devonian, 105; Permo-Triassic, 105;
Cretaceous-Tertiary: 108, 11 Iff.; Cretaceous-Tertiary, 106, 107, 11 Iff.;
geochemical anomalies, 144ff.; sea mechanisms, 107ff.; on lesser scale,
level drop, 126; vulcanism, 127; 118ff.; planktonic, 122
extinctions, see extinction
Cronus, 179, 182, 183, 200, 203, 270 Fabulae, 206
Cutbill, J. L, 104 Fairman, H. W., 202
Cuvier, G., 94, 103, 129 Fauconnet, M., 188, 198
Cyclopes, 182, 200 Fenrir, 187
fireballs, 143ff.
Danu, 199 fireball storms, 148ff., 199
Darwin, C., 129, 150 Flohn, H„ 274
Darwinism, 94, 103 Flood: biblical, 209ff„ 258, 271; of
David, 243 Deucalion, 208, 209
Davidson, H. R. E., 187 Fontenrose, J., 194, 198, 199, 204
Deimos, 78 fossil record, 103
296 Index

Franken, H., 252 History of Israel, 212

Freedman, D. N., 212 Homer, 181, 182, 192, 193, 253
Frost, S. B., 212 Hooke, R., 78, 79
Funnell, B. M., 104 Horus, 180, 196, 202, 205
Hoyle, F., 124, 261
Gaea, Ge, 182, 193, 200 Hsu, K. J., 112, 115
Galaxy, the: age, 15; chemical Hughes, D., 246
evolution, 47, 115; dimensions, 15, Humboldt, F. A. H. von, 147
16; spiral arms of, 30fF., 127 Hutton, J., 94
galaxies, 16ff.; clusters of, 16; elliptical, Huxley, F., 203
25; nuclei, 19ff., 40; rotation, 29; Hygmus, 194, 206
spiral, 26ff.; structure, 24ff. Hyksos, 231, 239
Galileo, 77, 80 Hymn to Apollo, 192, 199
Gallant, R. L., 84 Hyperboreans, 264, 265
Gardiner, A., 233, 238
Gault, D. E., 101, 102 ice ages, 33, 34, 124, 125
Gauss, K. F., 60, 61 ice-albedo feedback, 123
Geb, 180 Iliad, 181, 253
geological boundaries: 34; end of impacts: blast wave from, 96, 97; dust
Eocene, 120; see also extinctions from, 99; earthquakes from, 100;
Gilgamesh, Epic of, 210, 239 energies of, 76, 82, 95; frequencey of,
Gill, D„ 42, 205, 260 77, 138; ozone depletion from, 100;
Giussani, C., 171 see also craters
glaciations, 123, 124 Indra, 199
Glass, B. P., 120 Interstellar medium, 46ff.
globular clusters, 41 Io, 79
globules, 36ff., 54, 58, 86, 91 Ipuwer Papyrus, 238, 255
Goethe, J. W. von, 206 iridium, 114, 115
Golden Age, 182, 200 Ishtar, 163, 164, 272
Gomorrah, 224 Isis, 180, 272
gravity: influence of, 15, 16, 24, 49; law Isis and Osiris, 196, 202
of, 40, 157
Grimal, P., 190 Joshua, 251
Jupiter: ring, 69, 70; sphere of
Hades, 182 influence, 50, 53, 64
Hagen, V. W. von, 266 Jupiter (mythical), 180, 182, 209, 270
Halley, E., 74
Harris Papyrus, 235 Karnak water clock, 232
Hatshepsut, Queen, 256 Kelvin, Lord, 249
Hawkins, G. S., 261 Kenyon, K. M., 252
Hacateus, 264 Kepler, J., 48
heliacal rising, 227 Knaack, G., 209
Helm, E., 72 Knossos, 254ff.
Helinandus chronicles, 196 Krakatoa, 76, 82, 99, 102
Heilman, C. D., 160 Kresak, L., 132
Hera, 182, 193 Krinov, E. L., 196
Herakles, 272 Kronos, see Cronus
Herodotus, 264 Kugler, F. X., 206
Herschel, J., 237 Kulik, L. A., 140, 224
Hertogen, J., 114
Hesiod, 181, 183ff., 194, 196, 206, 208 Landsat satellite, 94
hike, 180 Laplace, P. S. de, 11, 46, 58, 92, 248,
Hipparchus, 268 273
Hiroshima explosion, 76 Late Egyptian Period, 228
 Index 297

Latham, R. E., 166ff. Moses, 218ff., 251, 271

Laubenfels, M. W. de, 92, 111 Mycenean Empire, 182, 253, 254
Lavrentevka chronicles, 196 myths: as a history of comets, 178ff.;
Leibniz, G. W., 248 combat, 192ff., 200, 202; distribution
Leto, 182, 183, 194, 264 of, 198; Egyptian, 179fL, 202; Greek,
Liddell, H. G., 197 181 fF., 190ff.; historical content of,
light year, 15 190, 191
Lindsay, J. F., 56, 57
Linear A and B scripts, 256 Naglfar, 187
Local Group, 16 Nemesis, 270
Lockyer, J. N., 264 Neolithic period, 259
Loki, 187 Nephilim, 210
Lucan, 194 Nephthys, 180
Lucretius, 160ff., 178, 208, 210 Neptune, 53
Lydus, J., 178, 197, 204 Nergal, 272
Lyell, C., 94 Neugebauer, O., 227, 234
Newell, N. D„ 103, 120
ma’at, 180 Newton, I., 158, 247ff.
MacKie, E., 244, 259, 265, 273 New Grange, 259
magnetic field reversals, 122, 126, 127 New Kingdom, 228
Manetho, 239 Ninib, 270
Marduk, 199, 212, 270 Noah, 179
Mariner spacecrafts, 78 Nonnos, 206ff.
Mars (mythical), 271, 272 Norman, J., 84
Marsden, B., 65 Noth, M., 212
May Day, 244 Nun, 179, 180
McLaren, D. J., 92, 117, 273 Nunet, 179, 181
Medinet Habu Papyrus, 233 Nut, 162, 180
meteor storms, 145ff. Nyberg, H. S„ 164
meteor streams: Andromedids, 150;
Aquarids, 150; Geminids, 146, 150; ocean: impact, 101 fif.; regression, 122ff.
Giacobinids, 148; Leonids, 146, 150, Ocean, interpretation of, 172, 183ff.,
267; Lyrids, 150; Orionids, 150; 201
Perseids, 150; Taurids, 148, 151fL, Odyssey, 181, 253
175; relation to Flood myths, 156 Olbers, H. W. M., 60, 61
meteorites, 85fF.; ages, 15, 86; impact Old Kingdom, 228
rates, 142; Nakhla, 89; origin, 90; Olmo, V. dall’, 176fL, 195, 196
relation to asteroids, 88; Shergotty, O’Keefe, J. A., 113
89; sidereal association, 161; Velikii Olympus, 183IT., 194, 259; Mons, 78
Usting fall, 174, 185 Oort, J., 52
micrometeoroids, 56ff. Oort cloud, see comets
microwave background, 21 Opik, E. J., 73, 75, 92, 98
Middle Kingdom, 228 Orion arm, 30, 33
Milankovitch, M., 129 Orosius, 217
Milky Way, see Galaxy Osiris, 180, 181, 187, 196, 203, 270
Minoan civilization, 254fF. Otto, W. F., 180
Minotaur, 254 Ovenden, M. W., 268, 269
Mirabilia, 208 Ovid, 193, 194, 206ff.
Mithraism, 213 ozone, depletion of, 100, 110
mixed magnetic intervals, 127
Moldavites, see tektites Parker, R. A., 226, 228fif., 241
Moon: cratering history of, 53ff.; lunar parsec, 15
maria, 80; soil analysis, 57 Peoples from the Sea, 235
Morris, R. W. B., 262 Perseus arm, 30
298 Index

petroglyphs, 262 Russell, D. A., 94, 106, 113

Phaenomena, 263
Phaethon, 172ff., 183, 206ff., 217, 220, Sagittarius arm, 30
255 Saros cycle, 261
Philo Judaeus, 219 Saturn: rings, 69
Phlegyas, 194 Saturn (mythical), 270
Phobos, 70, 78 Saul, J. M., 84
Phoenicians, 265 Schaumberger, J., 163
Phorbas, 194 Scorpio-Centaurus association, 32
Piankhy, 235 Schelling, F. W. J. V. von, 190
Piazzi, G., 60 Schliemann, H., 191
pillar of fire and cloud, 220ff. Scott, R., 197
Pindar, 181, 195 sea-level variations, 125, 126
Pioneer II, 69 Sears, D. W., 90
planetary cycles, 266, 267, 271, 272 Sekanina, Z., 132
planetary names, 257, 270fF. Seneca, 162, 175, 178, 186
planetesimals, 35, 40, 46, 89; isotope Senmut, tomb of, 232
ratios in, 115 Sennacherib, 271
plate tectonics, 122ff. Serpent Mound, 261
Plato, 222 Seth, 180, 202, 204, 205
Pleiades cluster, 33 Seti I, 234, 238
Pliny, 175, 197, 238, 260, 264 Set-nakht, 235
Plutarch, 196, 202, 262 Shamash, 163
Poseidon, 182 Sheba, Queen of, 256
Posidonius, 264 Shoemaker, E. M., 72, 73
Prairie Network, 143ff. Shu, 179, 180
Ptah, 179, 181 Sikhote-Alin meteorite, 140, 141
Ptolemaic period, 228 Silbury Hill, 259
primordial cloud, see comets Silver Age, 182, 200
pyramids, 236, 237, 259 Simonides, 193
Python, 192ff. Sin, 163
Smit, J., 114
quasars (QSOs), 21, 22, 40 Smyth, P., 237
Quetzlcoatl, 188 Sodom, 224
solar apex, 55
radiocarbon dating, 225, 244flf. solar neighbourhood, 30ff.
radio sources, 26 solar nebula, 58, 63, 80, 86
Ragnarok, 187 solar system: age, 15, 80, 85ff.;
Ramasseum, 232 dimensions, 15; formation, 58;
Ramses II, 230, 233, 234, 241, 252, 253 passage through Gould’s Belt, 33, 46,
Ramses III, 235, 254 52, 76; short-period phenomena in,
Ramses IV, 234, 238 69 ff.
Re (Ra), 180, 202 Solomon, 256
red shift, 18ff., 40 spiral arms, 26ff., 40
regolith, 86 Srnka, L. J., 56, 57
Reinmuth, K., 72 St Helens, Mount, 99
religion, cometary associations with, stars: clusters of, 36; formation of, 35, 36
165ff., 247ff. Stonehenge, 259, 261, 262
Renfrew, C., 243, 244, 254, 259 Strabo, 205
Revelations of St John, 213ff., 220 Strelitz, R., 102
Rickard, T. A., 196 Stukeley, W„ 260
Roche limit, 69 supernovae, 21, 47, 115
Rockenbach, A., 220 Surt, 187, 188
Royalty in the Skies, 205 synodic period, 266
 Index 299

Tartarus, 183ff. Uranus, 53

Tefenet, 179 Uranus (mythical), 200
tektites: Australites, 98; Bediasites, 108,
120; Moldavites, 98; correlated with Velikii Usting, 174, 185
field reversals, 122 Velikovsky, I., 256, 269, 273
Telphusa, 199 Venus (mythical), 272
Temple, W., 147 Verethragna, 272
Thales, 160, 161 Voyager spacecraft, 69, 79
Theogony, 183, 194, 196 Vritra, 199, 202
Thera event, 237, 254, 255 vulcanism, 78, 122ff., 194
thermodynamics, second law of, 18, 19
Thor, 188 Waerden, B. L. van der, 227, 234, 239,
Thoth, 180, 187 269, 270
Thutmose III, 233 Wallace, A. R., 129
Tiamat, 179, 199, 212 Wetherill, G. W., 75
Tian-shan, Z., 149 Whipple, F. L., 44, 73, 100, 151
tired light hypothesis, 20 Whiston, W., 248, 273
Timaeus, 222 Wolf, M., 61
Titans, 182ff., 200, 202, 210; as comets, World Tree, 186ff., 260
170, 171, 183ff. Wright, T., 11, 273
Tityos, 194
Toltecs, 266 Xolotl, 188
Tree of Life, 186, 187
Triton, 70 Yabushita, S., 50, 52
troglodytes, 241 Yahweh, 212, 218ff.
Tycho, 205 Yggrdrasil, 186
Typhoeus, 184
Typhon, 185, 192fT, 204, 220, 257, 262, Zach, A. von, 60
272 Zervan, 270
Tunguska event, 82, 140, 141, 144, 224, Zeus, 179, 180, 182ff., 187, 197, 200,
225 209, 240, 270
Zoroaster, 165
Ur, evidence of Flood at, 209 Zwart, M. J., 120
% .
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017

https://archive.org/details/cosmicserpentOOvict
553.-7 126541
Clube, V.
The cosmic serpent#

DATE DUE
JUL 0 8 1998
Se- > 5 czi t-c

1EP - 4 iQ<}ft
SEP 1S 1999
OCT 1 6 2003
JUL 1 5 2004

GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A.

cosmicserpentOOvict
cosmicserpentOOvict

cosmicserpentOOvict
 // H 7/ »

"A certain bestseller—exciting, well written; sure

to generate publicity."

—Kevin tl. Prendcrgast

Professor of Astronomy
Columbia University

"Although it presents new and, in some ways, startling

results, it isperfectly sane. It is controversial, certainly,
but the authors marshal their results in a balanced way
and make clear how much of their view is based on
solid evidence and how much on extrapolation. This is
not a'crank book'."

—Colin Ronan
Professor of Astronomy
. University of Cambridge

$ ’ -v.

"This is one of the most extraordinary books I have

ever read. Both the authors are professional astrono-
mers, and both hold responsible scientific positions.
Yet the views expressed here are totally unorthodox —
Mot that I can accept many of the views put forward.
but they are fascinating nonetheless The book is
N extremely well-written. It will create a stir. It will be
\ strongly criticized on scientific grounds, but it will
certainly be widely read and discussed."

Patrick Moore

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