3 ms·
There is something here that I do not understand. The article claims that “[The tablet] is a copy of the night notebook of a Sumerian astronomer as he records
by mjd 8mo ago
There is something here that I do not understand. The article claims that
“[The tablet] is a copy of the night notebook of a Sumerian astronomer as he records the events in the sky before dawn on the 29 June 3123 BC”
But radiocarbon dating of trees buried in the landslide seems to have reliably dated the landslide to 7500 BC.
For example https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169555X15002548 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01695...
Update:
The Wikipedia article about the coauthor Mark Hempsell says:
“Hempsell got public audience as author of the book "A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event", with Alan Bond proposes a theory not accepted by the scientific community…”
The link posted in this thread by user arto calls the theory “pseudoscience”:
“Despite this new evidence, curiously in 2008 the impact hypothesis was revived by some pseudoscientists in connection to supposed observations of a meteorite by the Sumerians…”
Now it seems very suspicious that the article claims that the tablet is from 3123 BC, when it was excavated from the palace of Ashurbanipal (650 BC).
- YeGoblynQueenne 8mo ago>> “[The tablet] is a copy of the night notebook of a Sumerian astronomer as he records the events in the sky before dawn on the 29 June 3123 BC” I'm pretty sure clay tables, that had to be fired to preserve them, did not function as "notebooks". Scribes probably used either unbaked clay or wax tablets to take notes, and they would erase and overwrite them constantly like etch-a-sketch.
- griffzhowl 8mo agoAh, oh well. Was an interesting story. But I mainly shared this to remind myself of this incredible star map, or whatever it really is... Seems not easy to find bona fide information on it, maybe because it's untranslated/decoded except for this Kofels' story, which indeed appears to be out of the bounds of likelihood by 4000 years.
- willismonroe 8mo agoThe tablet has been translated for the better part of a century. The problem is that many of the popular depictions of it don't give it's museum number or any other (correct) identifying information, often erroneously referring to it as a "Sumerian" object. If you search for the museum number K. 8538 you'll find quite a bit (some still bad). That said, this article is wildly off-base.
- mjd 8mo agoIt was a great theory, and I was glad to have read it. Thanks for posting!
- griffzhowl 8mo agoThanks for the landslide info! Good to have the proper knowledge. Shame there's no reliable stuff about the tablet. Maybe it hasn't been translated by a sane, competent professional