Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric
human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago,
according to esearchers from Royal Holloway university, who, together
with Sandia National Laboratories
and 13 other universities across the United States and Europe, have
found evidence which rebuts the belief that a large impact or airburst
caused a significant and abrupt change to the Earth's climate and
terminated the Clovis culture. They argue that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance.
Clovis is the name archaeologists have given to the earliest
well-established human culture in the North American continent. It is
named after the town in New Mexico, where distinct stone tools were
found in the 1920s and 1930s. Researchers argue that no appropriately
sized impact craters
from that time period have been discovered, and no shocked material or
any other features of impact have been found in sediments. They also
found that samples presented in support of the impact hypothesis were
contaminated with modern material and that no physics model can support
the theory.
"The theory has reached zombie status," said Professor Andrew Scott
from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway. "Whenever we
are able to show flaws and think it is dead, it reappears with new,
equally unsatisfactory, arguments. "Hopefully new versions of the theory
will be more carefully examined before they are published."
For more information: Boslough, M., et al.(editors) Climates
Landscapes and Civilizations. Geophysical Monograph Series, VOL. 198,
PP. 13-26, 2012 (first available in January 2013). Journal reference:
Geophysical Monograph Series
Image credit: craterhunter.wordpress.com
Source: The Daily Galaxy via Royal Holloway, University of London
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