The archaeology and anthropology of quaternary period cosmic impact

Abstract

Humans and cosmic impacts have had a long and intimate relationship. People live in ancient impact craters, such as at Ries and Steinheim in Germany, and use impact breccias for building material. People historically witnessed and venerated fallen meteorites, in some cases the meteorites becoming among the most sacred of objects - such as that kept in the Kaaba at Mecca. People made tools from meteoritic iron, including certain examples from the objects named the tent, woman, and dog by the Greenland Eskimos. And in one of the more peculiar ironies linking humans and cosmic impacts, people carved a portion of an ancient Ohio impact crater into the shape of a Great Serpent. This act not only created one of the more spectacular archaeological sites in North America, but also depicted a symbol used by a number of cultures to represent comets, the very source of some impact craters on the Earth. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.