Mike wrote:
>The minimal growth of trees around 2350 BC has been associated in the past
>with the eruption of a volcano in Iceland. Yet, the period in question is
>also associated with floods, the creation of new lakes, and even
>the start of Chinese history.
I don't buy this. The Chinese Calendar starts at 1953 BC.
"For centuries astronomers have sought the starting point of the
Chinese calendar, which has cycles seemingly linked to planetary
motions. Thanks to a brief passage in an ancient text and some
computer calculations, a pair of researchers have finally found
the event to which it is pegged. Kevin D. Pang (Jet Propulsion
Laboratory) and John A. Bangert (U. S. Naval Observatory)
announced at the June meeting of the American Astronomical
Society that the Chinese calendar is synchronized to March 5,,
1953 B. C.
"The key shred of information that led to Pang and Bangert's
success was found in a passage in the 1st-century-B. C. text Hong
Fan Zhuan, written by Liu Xiang. It reads: 'The Ancient Zhuanxu
calendar began at dawn, in the beginning of spring, when the Sun,
new Moon and five planets gathered in the constellation Yingshi
[Pegasus].' Using accurate planetary ephemerides developed at
JPL, the astronomers searched back to 2000 B. C. - and found only
one possibility."
"Sure enough, the dawn skies of late February and early
March 1953 B. C. featured all five naked eye planets rising with
pegasus. The faithful match with Liu's statement suggests that
the description was carefully recorded and passed down by
eyewitnesses some 2,000 years earlier. As Pang explains, Liu and
his contemporaries could not possibly have computed positions of
the Sun, Moon and planets and the precession of the sky back to
the previous millennium." ~ "Ancient Celestial Sign Started
Chinese Calendar", Sky and Telescope 86:6, Dec. 1993, p. 13.
And farming communities were founded about 4000 BC along the Huang He and
they are the people from whom the Chinese civilization arose.
The oracle bones of the Shang dynesty date to 1700 BC or later.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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