Tree-rings indicate global environmental downturns that could have been caused by comet debris

Abstract

The dates of a series of narrowest ring events (dates where numbers of long-lived oaks showed catastrophically narrow growth rings at the same time) have been identified in a long Irish oak tree-ring chronology (Baillie and Munro 1988). The dates were christened 'marker dates' because they were immediately noted to fall in clusters of information relating to traumatic happenings in widely separated areas around the world. For example, one of the Irish oak dates was 207 BC. In China events in 208 BC, and the years following, included a dim Sun, crop failures, famine and high death rates; and a new dynasty, the Han, is believed to have started in 206 (Pang et al. 1987). Meanwhile, in Europe, problems in Rome called for consultation of the Sibylline Books resulting in the return of the Goddess Cybele from Asia Minor; Cybele was manifest as a 'small black meteorite.' This latter occurrence made sense of a series of references by Livy to 'stones falling from the sky' and strange lights in the sky, 'prodigies of Jupiter', et cetera (Forsyth 1990). Clearly, dates around 207 BC might be expected to show up in other records. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.