Post by mmmmbarium on Sept 14, 2006 1:06:04 GMT -5
The following item appeared in the New York Herald Tribune on February 16, 1947 (and was repeated by Ivan T. Sanderson in the January 1970 issue of his magazine, Pursuit):
When the first atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico, the desert sand turned to fused green glass. This fact, according to the magazine Free World, has given certain archaeologists a turn. They have been digging in the ancient Euphrates Valley and have uncovered a layer of agrarian culture 8,000 years old, and a layer of herdsman culture much older, and a still older caveman culture. Recently, they reached another layer.of fused green glass.
It is well known that atomic detonations on or above a sandy desert will melt the silicon in the sand and turn the surface of the Earth into a sheet of glass. But if sheets of ancient desert glass can be found in various parts of the world, does it mean that atomic wars were fought in the ancient past or, at the very least, that atomic testing occurred in the dim ages of history?
This is a startling theory, but one that is not lacking in evidence, as such ancient sheets of desert glass are a geological fact. Lightning strikes can sometimes fuse sand, meteorologists contend, but this is always in a distinctive root-like pattern. These strange geological oddities are called fulgurites and manifest as branched tubular forms rather than as flat sheets of fused sand. Therefore, lightning is largely ruled out as the cause of such finds by geologists, who prefer to hold onto the theory of a meteor or comet strike as the cause. The problem with this theory is that there is usually no crater associated with these anomalous sheets of glass.
Brad Steiger and Ron Calais report in their book, Mysteries of Time and Space,1 that Albion W. Hart, one of the first engineers to graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was assigned an engineering project in the interior of Africa. While he and his men were travelling to an almost inaccessible region, they first had to cross a great expanse of desert.
"At the time he was puzzled and quite unable to explain a large expanse of greenish glass which covered the sands as far as he could see," writes Margarethe Casson in an article on Hart's life in the magazine Rocks and Minerals (no. 396, 1972). She then goes on to mention: "Later on, during his life.he passed by the White Sands area after the first atomic explosion there, and he recognized the same type of silica fusion which he had seen fifty years earlier in the African desert."2
Tektites: A Terrestrial Explanation?
Large desert areas strewn with mysterious globules of "glass"--known as tektites--are occasionally discussed in geological literature. These blobs of "hardened glass" (glass is a liquid, in fact) are thought to come from meteorite impacts in most instances, but the evidence shows that in many cases there is no impact crater.
Another explanation is that tektites have a terrestrial explanation--one that includes atomic war or high-tech weapons capable of melting sand. The tektite debate was summed up in an article entitled "The Tektite Problem", by John O'Keefe, published in the August 1978 edition of Scientific American. Said O'Keefe:
If tektites are terrestrial, it means that some process exists by which soil or common rocks can be converted in an instant into homogeneous, water-free, bubble-free glass and be propelled thousands of miles above the atmosphere. If tektites come from the Moon, it seems to follow that there is at least one powerful volcano somewhere on the Moon that has erupted at least as recently as 750,000 years ago. Neither possibility is easy to accept. Yet one of them must be accepted, and I believe it is feasible to pick the more reasonable one by rejecting the more unlikely.
The key to solving the tektite problem is an insistence on a physically reasonable hypothesis and a resolute refusal to be impressed by mere numerical coincidences such as the similarity of terrestrial sediments to tektite material. I believe that the lunar volcanism hypothesis is the only one physically possible, and that we have to accept it. If it leads to unexpected but not impossible conclusions, that is precisely its utility.
To cite just one example of the utility, the lunar origin of tektites strongly supports the idea that the Moon was formed by fission of the Earth. Tektites are indeed much more like terrestrial rocks than one would expect of a chance assemblage. If tektites come from a lunar magma, then deep inside the Moon there must be material that is very much like the mantle of the Earth--more like the mantle than it is like the shallower parts of the Moon from which the lunar surface basalts have originated. If the Moon was formed by fission of the Earth, the object that became the Moon would have been heated intensely and from the outside, and would have lost most of its original mass and in particular the more volatile elements. The lavas constituting most of the Moon's present surface were erupted early in the Moon's history, when its heat was concentrated in the shallow depleted zone quite near the surface. During the recent periods represented by tektite falls, the sources of lunar volcanism have necessarily been much deeper, so that any volcanoes responsible for tektites have drawn on the lunar material that suffered least during the period of ablation and is therefore most like unaltered terrestrial mantle material. Ironically, that would explain why tektites are in some ways more like terrestrial rocks than they are like the rocks of the lunar surface.
Mysterious Glass in the Egyptian Sahara
One of the strangest mysteries of ancient Egypt is that of the great glass sheets that were only discovered in 1932. In December of that year, Patrick Clayton, a surveyor for the Egyptian Geological Survey, was driving among the dunes of the Great Sand Sea near the Saad Plateau in the virtually uninhabited area just north of the southwestern corner of Egypt, when he heard his tyres crunch on something that wasn't sand. It turned out to be large pieces of marvellously clear, yellow-green glass.
In fact, this wasn't just any ordinary glass, but ultra-pure glass that was an astonishing 98 per cent silica. Clayton wasn't the first person to come across this field of glass, as various 'prehistoric' hunters and nomads had obviously also found the now-famous Libyan Desert Glass (LDG). The glass had been used in the past to make knives and sharp-edged tools as well as other objects. A carved scarab of LDG was even found in Tutankhamen's tomb, indicating that the glass was sometimes used for jewellery.
An article by Giles Wright in the British science magazine New Scientist (July 10, 1999), entitled "The Riddle of the Sands", says that LDG is the purest natural silica glass ever found. Over a thousand tonnes of it are strewn across hundreds of kilometres of bleak desert. Some of the chunks weigh 26 kilograms, but most LDG exists in smaller, angular pieces--looking like shards left when a giant green bottle was smashed by colossal forces.
According to the article, LDG, pure as it is, does contain tiny bubbles, white wisps and inky black swirls. The whitish inclusions consist of refractory minerals such as cristobalite. The ink-like swirls, though, are rich in iridium, which is diagnostic of an extraterrestrial impact such as a meteorite or comet, according to conventional wisdom. The general theory is that the glass was created by the searing, sand-melting impact of a cosmic projectile.
However, there are serious problems with this theory, says Wright, and many mysteries concerning this stretch of desert containing the pure glass. The main problem: Where did this immense amount of widely dispersed glass shards come from? There is no evidence of an impact crater of any kind; the surface of the Great Sand Sea shows no sign of a giant crater, and neither do microwave probes made deep into the sand by satellite radar.
Furthermore, LDG seems to be too pure to be derived from a messy cosmic collision. Wright mentions that known impact craters, such as the one at Wabar in Saudi Arabia, are littered with bits of iron and other meteorite debris. This is not the case with the Libyan Desert Glass site. What is more, LDG is concentrated in two areas, rather than one. One area is oval-shaped; the other is a circular ring, six kilometres wide and 21 kilometres in diameter. The ring's wide centre is devoid of the glass.
One theory is that there was a soft projectile impact: a meteorite, perhaps 30 metres in diameter, may have detonated about 10 kilometres or so above the Great Sand Sea, the searing blast of hot air melting the sand beneath. Such a craterless impact is thought to have occurred in the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia--at least as far as mainstream science is concerned. That event, like the pure desert glass, remains a mystery.
Another theory has a meteorite glancing off the desert surface, leaving a glassy crust and a shallow crater that was soon filled in. But there are two known areas of LDG. Were there two cosmic projectiles in tandem?
Alternatively, is it possible that the vitrified desert is the result of atomic war in the ancient past? Could a Tesla-type beam weapon have melted the desert, perhaps in a test?
An article entitled "Dating the Libyan Desert Silica-Glass" appeared in the British journal Nature (no. 170) in 1952. Said the author, Kenneth Oakley:3
Pieces of natural silica-glass up to 16 lb in weight occur scattered sparsely in an oval area, measuring 130 km north to south and 53 km from east to west, in the Sand Sea of the Libyan Desert. This remarkable material, which is almost pure (97 per cent silica), relatively light (sp. gin. 2.21), clear and yellowish-green in colour, has the qualities of a gemstone. It was discovered by the Egyptian Survey Expedition under Mr P.A. Clayton in 1932, and was thoroughly investigated by Dr L.J. Spencer, who joined a special expedition of the Survey for this purpose in 1934.
The pieces are found in sand-free corridors between north-south dune ridges, about 100 m high and 2-5 km apart. These corridors or "streets" have a rubbly surface, rather like that of a "speedway" track, formed by angular gravel and red loamy weathering debris overlying Nubian sandstone. The pieces of glass lie on this surface or partly embedded in it. Only a few small fragments were found below the surface, and none deeper than about one metre. All the pieces on the surface have been pitted or smoothed by sand-blast. The distribution of the glass is patchy.
While undoubtedly natural, the origin of the Libyan silica-glass is uncertain. In its constitution it resembles the tektites of supposed cosmic origin, but these are much smaller. Tektites are usually black, although one variety found in Bohemia and Moravia and known as moldavite is clear deep-green. The Libyan silica-glass has also been compared with the glass formed by the fusion of sand in the heat generated by the fall of a great meteorite; for example, at Wabar in Arabia and at Henbury in central Australia.
Reporting the findings of his expedition, Dr Spencer said that he had not been able to trace the Libyan glass to any source; no fragments of meteorites or indications of meteorite craters could be found in the area of its distribution. He said: "It seemed easier to assume that it had simply fallen from the sky."
It would be of considerable interest if the time of origin or arrival of the silica-glass in the Sand Sea could be determined geologically or archaeologically. Its restriction to the surface or top layer of a superficial deposit suggests that it is not of great antiquity from the geological point of view. On the other hand, it has clearly been there since prehistoric times. Some of the flakes were submitted to Egyptologists in Cairo, who regarded them as "late Neolithic or pre-dynastic". In spite of a careful search by Dr Spencer and the late Mr A. Lucas, no objects of silica-glass could be found in the collections from Tut-Ankh-Amen's tomb or from any of the other dynastic tombs. No potsherds were encountered in the silica-glass area, but in the neighbourhood of the flakings some "crude spear-points of glass" were found; also some quartzite implements, "quernstones" and ostrich-shell fragments.
Oakley is apparently incorrect when he says that LDG was not found in Tutankhamen's tomb, as according to Wright a piece was found.
At any rate, the vitrified areas of the Libyan Desert are yet to be explained. Are they evidence of an ancient war--a war that may have turned North Africa and Arabia into the desert that it is today?
The Vitrified Forts of Scotland
One of the great mysteries of classical archaeology is the existence of many vitrified forts in Scotland. Are they also evidence of some ancient atomic war? Maybe, but maybe not.
There are said to be at least 60 such forts throughout Scotland. Among the most well-known are Tap o'Noth, Dunnideer, Craig Phadraig (near Inverness), Abernathy (near Perth), Dun Lagaidh (in Ross), Cromarty, Arka-Unskel, Eilean na Goar, and Bute-Dunagoil on the Sound of Bute off Arran Island. Another well-known vitrified fort is the Cauadale hill-fort in Argyll, West Scotland.
One of the best examples of a vitrified fort is Tap o'Noth, which is near the village of Rhynie in northeastern Scotland. This massive fort from prehistory is on the summit of a mountain of the same name which, being 1,859 feet (560 metres) high, commands an impressive view of the Aberdeenshire countryside. At first glance it seems that the walls are made of a rubble of stones, but on closer look it is apparent that they are made not of dry stones but of melted rocks! What were once individual stones are now black and cindery masses, fused together by heat that must have been so intense that molten rivers of rock once ran down the walls.
Reports on vitrified forts were made as far back as 1880 when Edward Hamilton wrote an article entitled "Vitrified Forts on the West Coast of Scotland" in the Archaeological Journal (no. 37, 1880, pp. 227-243). In his article, Hamilton describes several sites in detail, including Arka-Unskel:4
At the point where Loch na Nuagh begins to narrow, where the opposite shore is about one-and-a-half to two miles distant, is a small promontory connected with the mainland by a narrow strip of sand and grass, which evidently at one time was submerged by the rising tide. On the flat summit of this promontory are the ruins of a vitrified fort, the proper name for which is Arka-Unskel.
The rocks on which this fort are placed are metamorphic gneiss, covered with grass and ferns, and rise on three sides almost perpendicular for about 110 feet from the sea level. The smooth surface on the top is divided by a slight depression into two portions. On the largest, with precipitous sides to the sea, the chief portion of the fort is situated, and occupies the whole of the flat surface. It is of somewhat oval form. The circumference is about 200 feet, and the vitrified walls can be traced in its entire length. We dug under the vitrified mass, and there found what was extremely interesting, as throwing some light on the manner in which the fire was applied for the purpose of vitrification. The internal part of the upper or vitrified wall for about a foot or a foot-and-a-half was untouched by the fire, except that some of the flat stones were slightly agglutinated together, and that the stones, all feldspatic, were placed in layers one upon another.
It was evident, therefore, that a rude foundation of boulder stones was first formed upon the original rock, and then a thick layer of loose, mostly flat stones of feldspatic sand, and of a different kind from those found in the immediate neighborhood, were placed on this foundation, and then vitrified by heat applied externally. This foundation of loose stones is found also in the vitrified fort of Dun Mac Snuichan, on Loch Etive.
Hamilton describes another vitrified fort that is much larger, situated on the island at the entrance of Loch Ailort.
This island, locally termed Eilean na Goar, is the most eastern and is bounded on all sides by precipitous gneiss rocks; it is the abode and nesting place of numerous sea birds. The flat surface on the top is 120 feet from the sea level, and the remains of the vitrified fort are situated on this, oblong in form, with a continuous rampart of vitrified wall five feet thick, attached at the SW end to a large upright rock of gneiss. The space enclosed by this wall is 420 feet in circumference and 70 feet in width. The rampart is continuous and about five feet in thickness. At the eastern end is a great mass of wall in situ, vitrified on both sides. In the centre of the enclosed space is a deep depression in which are masses of the vitrified wall strewed about, evidently detached from their original site.
Hamilton naturally asks a few obvious questions about the forts. Were these structures built as a means of defence? Was the vitrification the result of design or accident? How was the vitrification produced?
In this vitrification process, huge blocks of stones have been fused with smaller rubble to form a hard, glassy mass. Explanations for the vitrification are few and far between, and none of them is universally accepted.
One early theory was that these forts are located on ancient volcanoes (or the remains of them) and that the people used molten stone ejected from eruptions to build their settlements.
This idea was replaced with the theory that the builders of the walls had designed the forts in such a way that the vitrification was purposeful in order to strengthen the walls. This theory postulated that fires had been lit and flammable material added to produce walls strong enough to resist the dampness of the local climate or the invading armies of the enemy. It is an interesting theory, but one that presents several problems. For starters, there is really no indication that such vitrification actually strengthens the walls of the fortress; rather, it seems to weaken them. In many cases, the walls of the forts seem to have collapsed because of the fires. Also, since the walls of many Scottish forts are only partially vitrified, this would hardly have proved an effective building method.
Julius Caesar described a type of wood and stone fortress, known as a murus gallicus, in his account of the Gallic Wars. This was interesting to those seeking solutions to the vitrified fort mystery because these forts were made of a stone wall filled with rubble, with wooden logs inside for stability. It seemed logical to suggest that perhaps the burning of such a wood-filled wall might create the phenomenon of vitrification.
Some researchers are sure that the builders of the forts caused the vitrification. Arthur C. Clarke quotes one team of chemists from the Natural History Museum in London who were studying the many forts:5
Considering the high temperatures which have to be produced, and the fact that possibly sixty or so vitrified forts are to be seen in a limited geographical area of Scotland, we do not believe that this type of structure is the result of accidental fires. Careful planning and construction were needed.
However, one Scottish archaeologist, Helen Nisbet, believes that the vitrification was not done on purpose by the builders of the forts. In a thorough analysis of rock types used, she reveals that most of the forts were built of stone easily available at the chosen site and not chosen for their property of vitrification.6
The vitrification process itself, even if purposely set, is quite a mystery. A team of chemists on Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World subjected rock samples from 11 forts to rigorous chemical analysis, and stated that the temperatures needed to produce the vitrification were so intense--up to 1,100°C--that a simple burning of walls with wood interlaced with stone could not have achieved such temperatures.7
Nevertheless, experiments carried out in the 1930s by the famous archaeologist V. Gordon Childe and his colleague Wallace Thorneycroft showed that forts could be set on fire and generate enough heat to vitrify the stone.8 In 1934, these two designed a test wall that was 12 feet long, six feet wide and six feet high, which was built for them at Plean Colliery in Stirlingshire. They used old fireclay bricks for the faces and pit props as timber, and filled the cavity between the walls with small cubes of basalt rubble. They covered the top with turf and then piled about four tons of scrap timber and brushwood against the walls and set fire to them. Because of a snowstorm in progress, a strong wind fanned the blazing mixture of wood and stone so that the inner core did attain some vitrification of the rock.
In June 1937, Childe and Thorneycroft duplicated their test vitrification at the ancient fort of Rahoy, in Argyllshire, using rocks found at the site. Their experiments did not resolve any of the questions surrounding vitrified forts, however, because they had only proven that it was theoretically possible to pile enough wood and brush on top of a mixture of wood and stone to vitrify the mass of stone. One criticism of Childe is that he seems to have used a larger proportion of wood to stone than many historians believe made up the ancient wood and stone fortresses.
An important part of Childe's theory was that it was invaders, not the builders, who were assaulting the forts and then setting fire to the walls with piles of brush and wood; however, it is hard to understand why people would have repeatedly built defences that invaders could destroy with fire, when great ramparts of solid stone would have survived unscathed.
Critics of the assault theory point out that in order to generate enough heat by a natural fire, the walls would have to have been specially constructed to create the heat necessary. It seems unreasonable to suggest the builders would specifically create forts to be burned or that such a great effort would be made by invaders to create the kind of fire it would take to vitrify the walls--at least with traditional techniques.
One problem with all the many theories is their assumption of a primitive state of culture associated with ancient Scotland.
It is astonishing to think of how large and well coordinated the population or army must have been that built and inhabited these ancient structures. Janet and Colin Bord in their book, Mysterious Britain,9 speak of Maiden Castle to give an idea of the vast extent of this marvel of prehistoric engineering.
It covers an area of 120 acres, with an average width of 1,500 feet and length of 3,000 feet. The inner circumference is about 11Ú2 miles round, and it has been estimated...that it would require 250,000 men to defend it! It is hard, therefore, to believe that this construction was intended to be a defensive position.
A great puzzle to archaeologists has always been the multiple and labyrinthine east and west entrances at each end of the enclosure. Originally they may have been built as a way for processional entry by people of the Neolithic era. Later, when warriors of the Iron Age were using the site as a fortress, they probably found them useful as a means of confusing the attacking force trying to gain entry. The fact that so many of these "hill-forts" have two entrances--one north of east and the other south of west--also suggests some form of Sun ceremonial.
With 250,000 men defending a fort, we are talking about a huge army in a very organised society. This is not a bunch of fur-wearing Picts with spears defending a fort from marauding bands of hunter-gatherers. The questions remain, though. What huge army might have occupied these cliffside forts by the sea or lake entrances? And what massive maritime power were these people unsuccessfully defending themselves against?
The forts on the western coast of Scotland are reminiscent of the mysterious clifftop forts in the Aran Islands on the west coast of Ireland. Here we truly have shades of the Atlantis story, with a powerful naval fleet attacking and conquering its neighbours in a terrible war. It has been theorised that the terrible battles of the Atlantis story took place in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and England--however, in the case of the Scottish vitrified forts it looks as if these were the losers of a war, not the victors. And defeat can be seen across the land: the war dykes in Sussex, the vitrified forts of Scotland, the utter collapse and disappearance of the civilisation that built these things. What long-ago Armageddon destroyed ancient Scotland?
In ancient times there was a substance known through writings as Greek fire. This was some sort of ancient napalm bomb that was hurled by catapult and could not be put out. Some forms of Greek fire were even said to burn under water and were therefore used in naval battles. (The actual composition of Greek fire is unknown, but it must have contained chemicals such as phosphorus, pitch, sulphur or other flammable chemicals.)
Continued....
When the first atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico, the desert sand turned to fused green glass. This fact, according to the magazine Free World, has given certain archaeologists a turn. They have been digging in the ancient Euphrates Valley and have uncovered a layer of agrarian culture 8,000 years old, and a layer of herdsman culture much older, and a still older caveman culture. Recently, they reached another layer.of fused green glass.
It is well known that atomic detonations on or above a sandy desert will melt the silicon in the sand and turn the surface of the Earth into a sheet of glass. But if sheets of ancient desert glass can be found in various parts of the world, does it mean that atomic wars were fought in the ancient past or, at the very least, that atomic testing occurred in the dim ages of history?
This is a startling theory, but one that is not lacking in evidence, as such ancient sheets of desert glass are a geological fact. Lightning strikes can sometimes fuse sand, meteorologists contend, but this is always in a distinctive root-like pattern. These strange geological oddities are called fulgurites and manifest as branched tubular forms rather than as flat sheets of fused sand. Therefore, lightning is largely ruled out as the cause of such finds by geologists, who prefer to hold onto the theory of a meteor or comet strike as the cause. The problem with this theory is that there is usually no crater associated with these anomalous sheets of glass.
Brad Steiger and Ron Calais report in their book, Mysteries of Time and Space,1 that Albion W. Hart, one of the first engineers to graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was assigned an engineering project in the interior of Africa. While he and his men were travelling to an almost inaccessible region, they first had to cross a great expanse of desert.
"At the time he was puzzled and quite unable to explain a large expanse of greenish glass which covered the sands as far as he could see," writes Margarethe Casson in an article on Hart's life in the magazine Rocks and Minerals (no. 396, 1972). She then goes on to mention: "Later on, during his life.he passed by the White Sands area after the first atomic explosion there, and he recognized the same type of silica fusion which he had seen fifty years earlier in the African desert."2
Tektites: A Terrestrial Explanation?
Large desert areas strewn with mysterious globules of "glass"--known as tektites--are occasionally discussed in geological literature. These blobs of "hardened glass" (glass is a liquid, in fact) are thought to come from meteorite impacts in most instances, but the evidence shows that in many cases there is no impact crater.
Another explanation is that tektites have a terrestrial explanation--one that includes atomic war or high-tech weapons capable of melting sand. The tektite debate was summed up in an article entitled "The Tektite Problem", by John O'Keefe, published in the August 1978 edition of Scientific American. Said O'Keefe:
If tektites are terrestrial, it means that some process exists by which soil or common rocks can be converted in an instant into homogeneous, water-free, bubble-free glass and be propelled thousands of miles above the atmosphere. If tektites come from the Moon, it seems to follow that there is at least one powerful volcano somewhere on the Moon that has erupted at least as recently as 750,000 years ago. Neither possibility is easy to accept. Yet one of them must be accepted, and I believe it is feasible to pick the more reasonable one by rejecting the more unlikely.
The key to solving the tektite problem is an insistence on a physically reasonable hypothesis and a resolute refusal to be impressed by mere numerical coincidences such as the similarity of terrestrial sediments to tektite material. I believe that the lunar volcanism hypothesis is the only one physically possible, and that we have to accept it. If it leads to unexpected but not impossible conclusions, that is precisely its utility.
To cite just one example of the utility, the lunar origin of tektites strongly supports the idea that the Moon was formed by fission of the Earth. Tektites are indeed much more like terrestrial rocks than one would expect of a chance assemblage. If tektites come from a lunar magma, then deep inside the Moon there must be material that is very much like the mantle of the Earth--more like the mantle than it is like the shallower parts of the Moon from which the lunar surface basalts have originated. If the Moon was formed by fission of the Earth, the object that became the Moon would have been heated intensely and from the outside, and would have lost most of its original mass and in particular the more volatile elements. The lavas constituting most of the Moon's present surface were erupted early in the Moon's history, when its heat was concentrated in the shallow depleted zone quite near the surface. During the recent periods represented by tektite falls, the sources of lunar volcanism have necessarily been much deeper, so that any volcanoes responsible for tektites have drawn on the lunar material that suffered least during the period of ablation and is therefore most like unaltered terrestrial mantle material. Ironically, that would explain why tektites are in some ways more like terrestrial rocks than they are like the rocks of the lunar surface.
Mysterious Glass in the Egyptian Sahara
One of the strangest mysteries of ancient Egypt is that of the great glass sheets that were only discovered in 1932. In December of that year, Patrick Clayton, a surveyor for the Egyptian Geological Survey, was driving among the dunes of the Great Sand Sea near the Saad Plateau in the virtually uninhabited area just north of the southwestern corner of Egypt, when he heard his tyres crunch on something that wasn't sand. It turned out to be large pieces of marvellously clear, yellow-green glass.
In fact, this wasn't just any ordinary glass, but ultra-pure glass that was an astonishing 98 per cent silica. Clayton wasn't the first person to come across this field of glass, as various 'prehistoric' hunters and nomads had obviously also found the now-famous Libyan Desert Glass (LDG). The glass had been used in the past to make knives and sharp-edged tools as well as other objects. A carved scarab of LDG was even found in Tutankhamen's tomb, indicating that the glass was sometimes used for jewellery.
An article by Giles Wright in the British science magazine New Scientist (July 10, 1999), entitled "The Riddle of the Sands", says that LDG is the purest natural silica glass ever found. Over a thousand tonnes of it are strewn across hundreds of kilometres of bleak desert. Some of the chunks weigh 26 kilograms, but most LDG exists in smaller, angular pieces--looking like shards left when a giant green bottle was smashed by colossal forces.
According to the article, LDG, pure as it is, does contain tiny bubbles, white wisps and inky black swirls. The whitish inclusions consist of refractory minerals such as cristobalite. The ink-like swirls, though, are rich in iridium, which is diagnostic of an extraterrestrial impact such as a meteorite or comet, according to conventional wisdom. The general theory is that the glass was created by the searing, sand-melting impact of a cosmic projectile.
However, there are serious problems with this theory, says Wright, and many mysteries concerning this stretch of desert containing the pure glass. The main problem: Where did this immense amount of widely dispersed glass shards come from? There is no evidence of an impact crater of any kind; the surface of the Great Sand Sea shows no sign of a giant crater, and neither do microwave probes made deep into the sand by satellite radar.
Furthermore, LDG seems to be too pure to be derived from a messy cosmic collision. Wright mentions that known impact craters, such as the one at Wabar in Saudi Arabia, are littered with bits of iron and other meteorite debris. This is not the case with the Libyan Desert Glass site. What is more, LDG is concentrated in two areas, rather than one. One area is oval-shaped; the other is a circular ring, six kilometres wide and 21 kilometres in diameter. The ring's wide centre is devoid of the glass.
One theory is that there was a soft projectile impact: a meteorite, perhaps 30 metres in diameter, may have detonated about 10 kilometres or so above the Great Sand Sea, the searing blast of hot air melting the sand beneath. Such a craterless impact is thought to have occurred in the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia--at least as far as mainstream science is concerned. That event, like the pure desert glass, remains a mystery.
Another theory has a meteorite glancing off the desert surface, leaving a glassy crust and a shallow crater that was soon filled in. But there are two known areas of LDG. Were there two cosmic projectiles in tandem?
Alternatively, is it possible that the vitrified desert is the result of atomic war in the ancient past? Could a Tesla-type beam weapon have melted the desert, perhaps in a test?
An article entitled "Dating the Libyan Desert Silica-Glass" appeared in the British journal Nature (no. 170) in 1952. Said the author, Kenneth Oakley:3
Pieces of natural silica-glass up to 16 lb in weight occur scattered sparsely in an oval area, measuring 130 km north to south and 53 km from east to west, in the Sand Sea of the Libyan Desert. This remarkable material, which is almost pure (97 per cent silica), relatively light (sp. gin. 2.21), clear and yellowish-green in colour, has the qualities of a gemstone. It was discovered by the Egyptian Survey Expedition under Mr P.A. Clayton in 1932, and was thoroughly investigated by Dr L.J. Spencer, who joined a special expedition of the Survey for this purpose in 1934.
The pieces are found in sand-free corridors between north-south dune ridges, about 100 m high and 2-5 km apart. These corridors or "streets" have a rubbly surface, rather like that of a "speedway" track, formed by angular gravel and red loamy weathering debris overlying Nubian sandstone. The pieces of glass lie on this surface or partly embedded in it. Only a few small fragments were found below the surface, and none deeper than about one metre. All the pieces on the surface have been pitted or smoothed by sand-blast. The distribution of the glass is patchy.
While undoubtedly natural, the origin of the Libyan silica-glass is uncertain. In its constitution it resembles the tektites of supposed cosmic origin, but these are much smaller. Tektites are usually black, although one variety found in Bohemia and Moravia and known as moldavite is clear deep-green. The Libyan silica-glass has also been compared with the glass formed by the fusion of sand in the heat generated by the fall of a great meteorite; for example, at Wabar in Arabia and at Henbury in central Australia.
Reporting the findings of his expedition, Dr Spencer said that he had not been able to trace the Libyan glass to any source; no fragments of meteorites or indications of meteorite craters could be found in the area of its distribution. He said: "It seemed easier to assume that it had simply fallen from the sky."
It would be of considerable interest if the time of origin or arrival of the silica-glass in the Sand Sea could be determined geologically or archaeologically. Its restriction to the surface or top layer of a superficial deposit suggests that it is not of great antiquity from the geological point of view. On the other hand, it has clearly been there since prehistoric times. Some of the flakes were submitted to Egyptologists in Cairo, who regarded them as "late Neolithic or pre-dynastic". In spite of a careful search by Dr Spencer and the late Mr A. Lucas, no objects of silica-glass could be found in the collections from Tut-Ankh-Amen's tomb or from any of the other dynastic tombs. No potsherds were encountered in the silica-glass area, but in the neighbourhood of the flakings some "crude spear-points of glass" were found; also some quartzite implements, "quernstones" and ostrich-shell fragments.
Oakley is apparently incorrect when he says that LDG was not found in Tutankhamen's tomb, as according to Wright a piece was found.
At any rate, the vitrified areas of the Libyan Desert are yet to be explained. Are they evidence of an ancient war--a war that may have turned North Africa and Arabia into the desert that it is today?
The Vitrified Forts of Scotland
One of the great mysteries of classical archaeology is the existence of many vitrified forts in Scotland. Are they also evidence of some ancient atomic war? Maybe, but maybe not.
There are said to be at least 60 such forts throughout Scotland. Among the most well-known are Tap o'Noth, Dunnideer, Craig Phadraig (near Inverness), Abernathy (near Perth), Dun Lagaidh (in Ross), Cromarty, Arka-Unskel, Eilean na Goar, and Bute-Dunagoil on the Sound of Bute off Arran Island. Another well-known vitrified fort is the Cauadale hill-fort in Argyll, West Scotland.
One of the best examples of a vitrified fort is Tap o'Noth, which is near the village of Rhynie in northeastern Scotland. This massive fort from prehistory is on the summit of a mountain of the same name which, being 1,859 feet (560 metres) high, commands an impressive view of the Aberdeenshire countryside. At first glance it seems that the walls are made of a rubble of stones, but on closer look it is apparent that they are made not of dry stones but of melted rocks! What were once individual stones are now black and cindery masses, fused together by heat that must have been so intense that molten rivers of rock once ran down the walls.
Reports on vitrified forts were made as far back as 1880 when Edward Hamilton wrote an article entitled "Vitrified Forts on the West Coast of Scotland" in the Archaeological Journal (no. 37, 1880, pp. 227-243). In his article, Hamilton describes several sites in detail, including Arka-Unskel:4
At the point where Loch na Nuagh begins to narrow, where the opposite shore is about one-and-a-half to two miles distant, is a small promontory connected with the mainland by a narrow strip of sand and grass, which evidently at one time was submerged by the rising tide. On the flat summit of this promontory are the ruins of a vitrified fort, the proper name for which is Arka-Unskel.
The rocks on which this fort are placed are metamorphic gneiss, covered with grass and ferns, and rise on three sides almost perpendicular for about 110 feet from the sea level. The smooth surface on the top is divided by a slight depression into two portions. On the largest, with precipitous sides to the sea, the chief portion of the fort is situated, and occupies the whole of the flat surface. It is of somewhat oval form. The circumference is about 200 feet, and the vitrified walls can be traced in its entire length. We dug under the vitrified mass, and there found what was extremely interesting, as throwing some light on the manner in which the fire was applied for the purpose of vitrification. The internal part of the upper or vitrified wall for about a foot or a foot-and-a-half was untouched by the fire, except that some of the flat stones were slightly agglutinated together, and that the stones, all feldspatic, were placed in layers one upon another.
It was evident, therefore, that a rude foundation of boulder stones was first formed upon the original rock, and then a thick layer of loose, mostly flat stones of feldspatic sand, and of a different kind from those found in the immediate neighborhood, were placed on this foundation, and then vitrified by heat applied externally. This foundation of loose stones is found also in the vitrified fort of Dun Mac Snuichan, on Loch Etive.
Hamilton describes another vitrified fort that is much larger, situated on the island at the entrance of Loch Ailort.
This island, locally termed Eilean na Goar, is the most eastern and is bounded on all sides by precipitous gneiss rocks; it is the abode and nesting place of numerous sea birds. The flat surface on the top is 120 feet from the sea level, and the remains of the vitrified fort are situated on this, oblong in form, with a continuous rampart of vitrified wall five feet thick, attached at the SW end to a large upright rock of gneiss. The space enclosed by this wall is 420 feet in circumference and 70 feet in width. The rampart is continuous and about five feet in thickness. At the eastern end is a great mass of wall in situ, vitrified on both sides. In the centre of the enclosed space is a deep depression in which are masses of the vitrified wall strewed about, evidently detached from their original site.
Hamilton naturally asks a few obvious questions about the forts. Were these structures built as a means of defence? Was the vitrification the result of design or accident? How was the vitrification produced?
In this vitrification process, huge blocks of stones have been fused with smaller rubble to form a hard, glassy mass. Explanations for the vitrification are few and far between, and none of them is universally accepted.
One early theory was that these forts are located on ancient volcanoes (or the remains of them) and that the people used molten stone ejected from eruptions to build their settlements.
This idea was replaced with the theory that the builders of the walls had designed the forts in such a way that the vitrification was purposeful in order to strengthen the walls. This theory postulated that fires had been lit and flammable material added to produce walls strong enough to resist the dampness of the local climate or the invading armies of the enemy. It is an interesting theory, but one that presents several problems. For starters, there is really no indication that such vitrification actually strengthens the walls of the fortress; rather, it seems to weaken them. In many cases, the walls of the forts seem to have collapsed because of the fires. Also, since the walls of many Scottish forts are only partially vitrified, this would hardly have proved an effective building method.
Julius Caesar described a type of wood and stone fortress, known as a murus gallicus, in his account of the Gallic Wars. This was interesting to those seeking solutions to the vitrified fort mystery because these forts were made of a stone wall filled with rubble, with wooden logs inside for stability. It seemed logical to suggest that perhaps the burning of such a wood-filled wall might create the phenomenon of vitrification.
Some researchers are sure that the builders of the forts caused the vitrification. Arthur C. Clarke quotes one team of chemists from the Natural History Museum in London who were studying the many forts:5
Considering the high temperatures which have to be produced, and the fact that possibly sixty or so vitrified forts are to be seen in a limited geographical area of Scotland, we do not believe that this type of structure is the result of accidental fires. Careful planning and construction were needed.
However, one Scottish archaeologist, Helen Nisbet, believes that the vitrification was not done on purpose by the builders of the forts. In a thorough analysis of rock types used, she reveals that most of the forts were built of stone easily available at the chosen site and not chosen for their property of vitrification.6
The vitrification process itself, even if purposely set, is quite a mystery. A team of chemists on Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World subjected rock samples from 11 forts to rigorous chemical analysis, and stated that the temperatures needed to produce the vitrification were so intense--up to 1,100°C--that a simple burning of walls with wood interlaced with stone could not have achieved such temperatures.7
Nevertheless, experiments carried out in the 1930s by the famous archaeologist V. Gordon Childe and his colleague Wallace Thorneycroft showed that forts could be set on fire and generate enough heat to vitrify the stone.8 In 1934, these two designed a test wall that was 12 feet long, six feet wide and six feet high, which was built for them at Plean Colliery in Stirlingshire. They used old fireclay bricks for the faces and pit props as timber, and filled the cavity between the walls with small cubes of basalt rubble. They covered the top with turf and then piled about four tons of scrap timber and brushwood against the walls and set fire to them. Because of a snowstorm in progress, a strong wind fanned the blazing mixture of wood and stone so that the inner core did attain some vitrification of the rock.
In June 1937, Childe and Thorneycroft duplicated their test vitrification at the ancient fort of Rahoy, in Argyllshire, using rocks found at the site. Their experiments did not resolve any of the questions surrounding vitrified forts, however, because they had only proven that it was theoretically possible to pile enough wood and brush on top of a mixture of wood and stone to vitrify the mass of stone. One criticism of Childe is that he seems to have used a larger proportion of wood to stone than many historians believe made up the ancient wood and stone fortresses.
An important part of Childe's theory was that it was invaders, not the builders, who were assaulting the forts and then setting fire to the walls with piles of brush and wood; however, it is hard to understand why people would have repeatedly built defences that invaders could destroy with fire, when great ramparts of solid stone would have survived unscathed.
Critics of the assault theory point out that in order to generate enough heat by a natural fire, the walls would have to have been specially constructed to create the heat necessary. It seems unreasonable to suggest the builders would specifically create forts to be burned or that such a great effort would be made by invaders to create the kind of fire it would take to vitrify the walls--at least with traditional techniques.
One problem with all the many theories is their assumption of a primitive state of culture associated with ancient Scotland.
It is astonishing to think of how large and well coordinated the population or army must have been that built and inhabited these ancient structures. Janet and Colin Bord in their book, Mysterious Britain,9 speak of Maiden Castle to give an idea of the vast extent of this marvel of prehistoric engineering.
It covers an area of 120 acres, with an average width of 1,500 feet and length of 3,000 feet. The inner circumference is about 11Ú2 miles round, and it has been estimated...that it would require 250,000 men to defend it! It is hard, therefore, to believe that this construction was intended to be a defensive position.
A great puzzle to archaeologists has always been the multiple and labyrinthine east and west entrances at each end of the enclosure. Originally they may have been built as a way for processional entry by people of the Neolithic era. Later, when warriors of the Iron Age were using the site as a fortress, they probably found them useful as a means of confusing the attacking force trying to gain entry. The fact that so many of these "hill-forts" have two entrances--one north of east and the other south of west--also suggests some form of Sun ceremonial.
With 250,000 men defending a fort, we are talking about a huge army in a very organised society. This is not a bunch of fur-wearing Picts with spears defending a fort from marauding bands of hunter-gatherers. The questions remain, though. What huge army might have occupied these cliffside forts by the sea or lake entrances? And what massive maritime power were these people unsuccessfully defending themselves against?
The forts on the western coast of Scotland are reminiscent of the mysterious clifftop forts in the Aran Islands on the west coast of Ireland. Here we truly have shades of the Atlantis story, with a powerful naval fleet attacking and conquering its neighbours in a terrible war. It has been theorised that the terrible battles of the Atlantis story took place in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and England--however, in the case of the Scottish vitrified forts it looks as if these were the losers of a war, not the victors. And defeat can be seen across the land: the war dykes in Sussex, the vitrified forts of Scotland, the utter collapse and disappearance of the civilisation that built these things. What long-ago Armageddon destroyed ancient Scotland?
In ancient times there was a substance known through writings as Greek fire. This was some sort of ancient napalm bomb that was hurled by catapult and could not be put out. Some forms of Greek fire were even said to burn under water and were therefore used in naval battles. (The actual composition of Greek fire is unknown, but it must have contained chemicals such as phosphorus, pitch, sulphur or other flammable chemicals.)
Continued....