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Fire in the sky.

Article Excerpt
A review of A Sumerian Observation of the Kofels impact Event by Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell. Alcuin Academics/Writers' Printshop, 2008. $24.00, 113 pp. ISBN 978-1-904623-64-9.

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ACCORDING TO THIS BOOK, AN asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere in 3123 BCE and exploded above the Austrian Alps, triggering a major landslide. The authors also argue that during the final minutes of the object's approach, it was observed by an astronomer in Mesopotamia who made detailed notes of the event, and by Neolithic people in coastal Croatia, who were inspired to depict it on their pottery.

The landslide is real. The Croatian pottery is real. The asteroid and the Sumerian astronomer, however, are in our opinion very poorly founded speculation. We take it that the authors are quite sincere about their work. But their assumptions are so many, and so outlandish, that this book would no doubt dull William of Ockham's razor before he had slashed through half of it.

When considering the argument, we first need to know whether or not any extraterrestrial body did in fact contribute to the giant landslide at Kofels, Austria. If not, then the Sumerian connection is moot.

The Kofels deposit is about half a kilometer thick and measures five kilometers in diameter. It is very young in geological terms, dating from after the end of the last ice age. In 1936, geologist F. Suess published an extraterrestrial impact hypothesis to explain the formation. There is a lot of glass in it--a pumice-like mineral...

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