Re: A bolide did it! No... not really.

["Michael Lovejoy" <michael@palaeoproductions.fsnet.co.uk>]

This thread was five days ago, I know, but I've been busy wandering around
the Highlands.
So, in belated support of the 536AD impact, here goes...

Dr Clube of Oxford Uni Astrophysics dept. has shown a peak in meteorite
activity caused by the Taurid-Arietid swarm at the start of the Dark Ages.
Also from around 536, we have Roman historion and essayist Cassiodorus
writing of a strange phenomenon: "who will not be disturbed and deeply
curious... if something mysterious and unusual seems to be coming on us from
the stars? For, as there is a certain security in watching the seasons run
on in their succession, so we are filled with deep curiosity when we see
that such things are changing. How strange it is, I ask you, to see the
principal star, and not it's usual brightness; to gaze on the moon...shorn
of it's natural splendour? All of us are still observing...a blue coloured
sun...we marvel at bodies that cast no midday shadow...and this has not
happened in the momentary loss of an eclipse, but has been going on equally
through almost the entire year...whence can we hope for mild weather, when
the months that once ripened the crops have been deadly sick under the
northern blasts? For what will give fertility, if the soil does not grow
warm in summer?"

In Cardiff, Cardigan Bay, the Conway Estuary, the Scilly Isles, and
Heligoland in Denmark, there are all human settlements, ports, fields and
towns which fell below sea level apparently around the time of the alledged
536 impact.

The Brut Tysylio tells of a comet that appeared prior to these events, and
goes on to relate of a pestilence and famine striking Britain as a result.
"At that time a star of amazing size appeared. It had one beam, and on the
head of the beam was a ball of fire resembling a dragon; and from the jaws
of the dragon two beams ascended, the one towards the extremity of France,
and the other towards Ireland, subdividing itself into seven small
beams...During these disturbances, a pestilence and a famine, sent from God
as a punishment for their sins, fell upon the Britons so greviously that
food was not to be had...In Britain there were left, by the pestilence and
famine, those only who retired into the forests, and lived by hunting,
mostly in the recesses of Wales. This calamity continued for eleven years."
Additionally Gildas writes that the island of Britain was set on fire from
end to end.
Finally from this time in history, we find the origins of the Holy Grail
stories, when men set out to find a cure for the calamities befalling
Britain. The "Grail" was not originally a cup, however. It was referred to
as "lapis ex caelis", or "stone from heaven".
All circumstancial, I guess, but compelling nonetheless.

Regards,
Michael Lovejoy