Mike BaillieProfessor Emeritus

School of Geography, Archaeology and PalaeoecologyQueen’s University Belfast

Tree-rings suggest that Celtic myths may have a core of

truth and may record significant astronomical

events.

In this power-point presentation

• I intend to show that scientists can reconstruct events that are largely missing from ‘history’.

• If the story I am going to tell you is even remotely true:

• Then some things have been ‘written out of history’ but do survive in mythology

First dendrochronology

This procedure of overlapping ring patterns

• Resulted in year by year chronologies for many temperate areas around the globe.

• Many are precisely dated and extend back 7000 years or more. For example in Europe there are such chronologies for Ireland, Britain, Germany, Finland and Sweden, etc.

• All the ring width chronologies are capable of being compared at annual resolution.

So, dendrochronologists

• Can look and see how trees in different areas respond to their growth conditions for any year or period of years.

• This led to the recognition of ‘global environmental downturns’

• i.e. events where trees from many different regions were negatively affected at the same time

The best catastrophic global event

• First recognised in Irish tree rings, was at AD 540.

• 540 was obviously the one to study because it lies in the historical period and there should be well dated historical information to help work out just what caused the event.

• So here is “the AD 540 event” in Irish oak and Zetterberg’s Finnish pine chronologies.

Growth downturn in Irish oak and Finnish pine at AD 540

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A slight correction

• In the last illustration it is obvious that there was a major growth downturn in Irish oak and Finnish pine at AD 540.

• However, as more chronologies became available it became clear that the event was 2-stage. With something in AD 536, a recovery, and something at AD 540.

• So the event could be defined as 536-545.

This was interesting because

• Back in 1983 and 1984 Stothers and Rampino had drawn attention to a 18 month ‘dust veil’ that was reported to have affected the Mediterranean area in 536-537.

• In these reports the sun had been dimmed and caused crop failure and famine. It was implicit that the dust veil was due to a big volcanic event.

Growth downturns S America (after Holmes and Bonensegna)

N America (open squares after Scuderi 1990)

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Temperature anomaly in pines Fennoscandia to N Siberia (after Briffa, K.M. 1999). Note the clear 2 stage nature

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For comparison here is the 536-545 event in European oaks sampled from Ireland to Poland, again showing the

two stage nature of the event

So, across AD 540 (536-545) there is a global tree-ring event

• To that we can add from history:• A “Dim Sun” of “Dry Fog” 536-537• Terrible famines Ireland to China late 530s• Maya “Hiatus” 530s to 590s• One of the two great plagues of our era -

the Justinian Plague - starts 542• Conclusion: we had a global

environmental downturn around 540 inducing famine and plague.

As early as 1993 the ice cores exposed the lack of volcanic signal around AD 540.

So what caused the event?

• Initial hypothesis = volcano• Problem: volcanic effects normally 3 years but

this event lasts much longer.• Problem: no acid in Greenland ice at 540 or

indeed anywhere 536-545.

• By 2002 there were replicated ice cores, and • the nearest ‘significant’ acid layer was dated • AD 527+/-1 (Larsen et al. 2002)

To be pedantic

• As of 1997 it had been reported by Clausen et al. that there were small acid signals in:

• Dye3 GRIP• 534 532• 530 527• As far as the ice workers were concerned these

were not related to 536-545, hence the Larsen et al. comment about 527+/-1 being the nearest significant acid layer.

There were implications about the lack of ice acid in 536-545.

• Scientifically, if a global event, with hints of a dim sun, was not caused by volcanic activity, then the next most likely cause was …..

• Something extra-terrestrial loading the atmosphere

• Raising this issue immediately led to the consideration of impacts by comet debris

Interesting thought!

• Contemplating a brush with a comet or its debris around 540, I turned to history (to read about it).

• As soon as the attempt was made to find out what had happened, it was realized that there was essentially no ‘history’ around AD 540.

What could be found?

• Cassiodorus stops writing 538

• Malalas writes only 21 lines 533-539

• Zachariah’s 9 volumes end 536; vol 10 is missing!

• History of the Popes (1750) “AD 540 nothing happened worthy of notice”

• Procopius no help and writes an ‘alternative’ history

OK

• Gibbon does have a significant comet in 539

• And• Zachariah does refer to “the stars in the

sky dancing in a strange manner” from 533 to 540

• But basically history does not tell us what might have happened to cause the tree ring downturn.

But with the failure of history, enter mythology

• The global event and missing history made it curious that the British King Arthur “died” just around 540.

• Either in 542 or just possibly 539 or 537…• Because, as befits any mythological

character, we don’t know his dates!

• E.g. We know exactly when Caesar or Charlemagne died, but not King Arthur

Who was Arthur?

• It didn’t take long in the library to find that Arthur was a Celtic deity and that his stories, and those of his knights, are closely paralleled (derived from?) Irish Celtic stories involving Celtic deities.

• One trivial example is that his sword is derived from other Celtic heroes’ swords

Arthurian and Celtic characters

• Fergus and Finn and Mongán and Cúchulainn and Arthur and Gawain all share the same “sword” whether it is Gaí Bulga or Caladbolg or Caledvwlch or Excalibur.

or, again• “the abduction of Guinevere (Arthur‘s

Queen)...had its source in the Irish abduction of Blathnat by Cúroí” (Loomis 1927)

Notice how Cúchulainn has come into the story

• The easiest way to understand this is as follows.

• Go to the library and lift a serious book on Arthurian Romance….before you even get to Arthur you will find yourself reading about Cúchulainn. He is the Ulster hero who is the ‘rebirth’ of the Celtic god Lugh.

Switch to Cúchulainn

• Cúchulainn is described in one story as follows:

• He approaches as a bright youth and undergoes a ‘frenzy’ or ‘paroxysm’…but he then heads off the next morning as a bright youth again…in the story:

• Cúchulainn has three layers of hair, and can jet red blood from the top of his head to the four corners of the heavens.

Could this be Cúchulainn?It is actually Comet Donati 1858 drawn by G P Bond

Pause for reflection

• For people to be able to describe detail in a comet it would have to be ‘close’

• If a comet comes really close to Earth it could enter the magnetosphere

• If it did there might well be amazing coloured auroral displays

• CúChulainn the comet “could jet red blood from the top of his head to the 4 corners of the heavens”. CúChulainn the hero obviously could not!

In his “paroxysm”

• CuChulainn could twist himself around internally

• And

• One of his eyes receded into his head and the other came out onto his cheekbone…

• Hard for a human obviously…but easy for a spinning comet. Here is one:

Comet Donati undergoing interesting distortions (Donati 1858 drawn by De la Rue)

So it is quite plausible

• That people in the past observed a comet so closely that they could see the details and…

• Could use those details in stories relating to the antics of the ‘sky god’ i.e. his battles, chases etc

• E.g. battles where he kills thousands• E.g. chases in the sky

• How do we know this might be correct?

Well, take the god LUGH

• It seems that Arthur and Cúchulainn are both simply versions of the Celtic god Lugh (meaning Light).

• In one Irish story we find Lugh described as:

• “Coming up in the west as bright as the setting sun: it was impossible to look upon his visage, so great was his brilliance...”

• Lugh’s other attributes lamhfada lionnbheimionach “of the long arm and the mighty blows”

Lugh of the Long Arm

• What can come up in the west, as bright as the sun, with a long arm…and can deliver mighty blows?

• Only reasonable answer seems to be:

• A comet

• But there may be more to the story.

Lugh comes up in the west

• Scientifically speaking, if a comet rises in the west – as Lugh does – then it has to be close, because it effectively has to overcome the speed of the Earth’s rotation.

• These old stories suggest that there was a comet, and it was close to the Earth. Close comets can be dangerous.

And do the stories help?

• Well, in the Irish stories CúChulainn is son of Lugh…

• No, in the stories it actually says…

• “CuChulainn is the re-birth of Lugh”

• i.e. Lugh back again (return = comet)

Only question – is Lugh’s ‘arm’ a curved dust tail or a straight ion tail?

SO!

• By asking if the AD 540 event could be linked to a comet – purely from science

• By noting Arthur’s ‘death’ around 540

• And by then noting Arthur’s links to Cúchulainn and Lugh = comet gods

• You can find comet attributes in myth around 540 – from pure myth

In summary:What happened around AD 540?

• A global environmental downturn according to trees all over the world, not least in European, Irish and English oaks

• Plus in Swedish, Finnish, North Russian, Mongolian, N American and S American trees of various species

• And a possible “brush with a comet”.

What else do we have?

• Well, we had Roger of Wendover:• “540 Battles in the Air• The reference is probably to aurorae seen in

France (Britton’s suggestion). Roger of Wendover has an account of this: In the year of grace 541, there appeared a comet in Gaul, so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire. In the same year there dropped real blood from the clouds…and a dreadful mortality ensued…” (Britton, 1937).

What else?

– Although ‘history’ seems to have missed this global environmental event, several writers do refer to it metaphorically:

• Gildas

• Zachariah of Mythilene

• An anonymous Irish monk

• AND all with dates

Gildas and Zachariah

• Gildas c.540 combed the Old and New Testaments and selected out a lot of the catastrophic (apocalyptic) bits.

• Zachariah writing in 556 tells us that....”there has been fulfilled against us and against this last generation the curse of Moses in Deuteronomy…”. Obviously referring to Biblical chastisement in the 20 years before 556

Once sensitized to the use of metaphor: here is one from an ancient Irish monk

Amazingly the Irish Annals say this (note the date):

• The Age of Christ, 539. “The decapitation of Abacuc at the fair of Tailltin, through the miracles of God and Ciaran; that is, a false oath he took upon the hand of Ciaran, so that a gangrene took him in his neck (i.e. St. Ciaran put his hand upon his neck), so that it cut off his head”

• (O’Donovan 1848)

Twaddle obviously….except

– Except that Abacuc is Habakkuk and the beheading motif takes us to The Old Testament, Habakkuk Chapter III.

– Hab. III, v13– “thou woundedst the head out of the house of

the wicked by discovering (making naked) the foundation onto the neck”

– So what does Habakkuk Chapter 3 tell us?

Habakkuk III describes catastrophic happenings

• “Before him went the pestilence and burning coals (or burning diseases): he...drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered...etc etc”

• But the key is verse 4 where it says• “and there were bright beams out of his side”

Is this what the Irish monk was trying to tell us about AD 539

Ironically Gibbon tells us directly about the AD 539 comet but the Irish monk used a metaphor: you could wonder why

• But, our anonymous Irish monk didn’t just direct us to Habakkuk Chapter III. He also left a back-up hint by way of confirmation.

• The beheading was at Tailltin (also known as Teltown) and is the site of Lugh’s Fair held at Lughnasa (early August)

The Fair of Tailltin…is Lugh’s Fair

• So, our medieval Irish monk was linking Abacuc (Habakkuk) to Lugh, which now makes sense. Previously this would have made no sense at all.

• Note the concentration of dates around 540• Britain: Gildas traditionally c.AD 540• Zachariah ‘the generation that lived across AD 540”• Irish Annals/Abacuc AD 539

We could add in Mongan’s Frenzy.

• Mongan is another Irish aspect of the Lugh deity. While Lugh means light or bright, Mongan means long haired.

• In 538 Mongan is at the fair at Uisneach (the Navel of Ireland).

• Suddenly the sky goes black from East and West and there is a horrendous shower of hail-stones.

• To escape Mongan goes to the Otherworld for a year. (similar to Arthur going to the Otherworld)

• So that is 538, 539, 540 all highlighted in ‘myths’

So

• In the period just around 540 myth and metaphor were being used to preserve a record of the catastrophic events.

• All of them include at least some mention of something to do with either the sky or comets.

• This implies that the authors who were suffering bad conditions on the ground 536-545 were ‘blaming’ things in the sky.

To recap

• There undoubtedly were bad conditions for people and trees living AD 536-545.

• Our question is: were those bad conditions caused by volcanism or by extraterrestrial bombardment?

• We have the ‘dust veil/dim sun’ records. We have the lack of ice core evidence. We have the veiled references to comets

Let’s make another aside:

• Change caused by the 536-545 events are clearly there in the dates for archaeological sites dated by dendrochronology (i.e. well dated).

• In the next two illustrations we see the product of decades of dating activity in Ireland and in the American Southwest

30 years of Irish dendro results

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felling dates

estimated felling dates

Irish sites dated by dendrochronology (2005)

fellings

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Change of slopeAD 540s

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Zero sites in AD 540s

So clearly there was archaeological change at 536-545

• Again, once you are sensitized to this you find that the effects of the 536-545 events are there in old ‘Church History’

• In the 19th century Irish Church historians listed the foundation dates for religious establishments

• If these dates are plotted as a cumulative curve it is very clear that in Church memory the biggest wave of church building was immediately after 536-545.

Irish Church Foundation Dates indicating a huge pulse AD 540-550

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Foundation dates from An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland Brenan, M.J. 1840

Date AD

536-545 environmental event

Note change of slope at AD 540

So now we know…

• 536-545 global tree-ring event• 536-545 referred to in mythical sources• 536-545 numerous hints of ‘comets’• 536-545 reflected in archaeology• 536-545 reflected in church history

Indeed up to 2008 my scenario was that the AD 536-545 events were probably the result of bombardment by ‘comet debris’.

Then in 2008

• Larsen et al. published the results of a re-analysis of three Greenland ice cores.

• They found two major acid spikes at;• AD 529+/-2 and AD 533-534+/-2

• They proposed that their 533-534 acid was actually 536 and that it caused all the effects from 536 to 550.

• Volcanoes were back!

Here we need a short digression.

• Back in 1997 the 6th century acid dates in the • Dye3 and GRIP cores were:

• 514 516• 527 530• 532 534• 572 572

• But I also knew that LaMarche and Hirschboeck had raised the possibility that frost rings in bristlecone pine trees from California might have been due to volcanoes.

So I had noticed that if you add the frost ring dates to the ice core dates you see this:

• Ice acid dates frost date offset• 514:516 522 7

531• 527:529 536 8• 532:534 541 8• 572:572 574 2

• Obviously not a consistent enough set of offsets to publish as an idea. But still an idea!

541

But here are the Larsen et al. 2008 ice datesadded to an original Clausen et al. 1997 ice date

• 515+/-2 (Clausen et al. 1997)

• 529+/-2 (Larsen et al. 2008)

• 533.5 +/-2 (Larsen et al. 2008)

• 567.5 +/-2 (Larsen et al. 2008)

• Now re-plot the offset idea.

Setting out these new 2008 dates

• Ice acid date frost date offset• 515 522 7

531• 529 536 7• 533.5 541 7.5• 567.5 574 6.5

• Now that looks sensible. Ice acidities indicating volcanoes are consistently circa 7 years before frost rings that might be caused by volcanoes.

Once this is recognised

• We might reasonably ask if the ice core dates are too old by about 7 years?

• After all, the tree ring dates are absolute, whereas the ice dates have some errors; so the ice dates could possibly move. So I suggest the ice dates are moved forward by 7 years.

• In the following figure I have plotted Grudd’s temperature-sensitive Swedish pine chronology with the frost ring dates and the Larsen et al. volcano dates plus my suggested volcano dates.

It looks as though moving the ice acidity dates forward 7 years would link the moved dates to both the frost rings and

Swedish pine narrow rings.

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Swedish pine (H. Grudd)

So here are the two possibilities

• If the Larsen et al. dates are correct then there was a big volcano at AD 536 in which case there is room for a comet to have caused the second downturn at AD 540

• If I am right and you move the ice 7 years:• Then two volcanoes (529 and 533-534 in the

ice) caused the double downturns at 536 and around 540-541 and comets just got the blame.

Now the message of all this is:

From 1994 to 2008 the story from the myths strongly suggested ‘comets’ caused the 536-545 event.

Now the ice core evidence means that either there were volcanoes at 536 and 540-541 (no need for comets)

OrThere were volcanoes at 531-532 and 536 and an

extraterrestrial bombardment at 540-541.

Only when the ice core chronologies are locked down tight will we know the answer for sure

The author

• Would like to thank all those who have generously made data available to allow a serious attempt to be made to understand the important global environmental events that took place between AD 536 and 545. Events which probably resulted in the deaths of one third of the human population of planet Earth.