Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets (Paperback)

~ Mike Baillie (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

If Baillie is right, history has overlooked probably the single most important explanation for the intermittent progress of civilisation.... if the author is not carried shoulder-high for broaching this important subject, it will be because his doomsday scenario offers little in the way of an immediate technical fix. -- New Scientist, Ben Rudder --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

This intriguing challenge to traditional views of history, provides explanations for many of the myths and legends that continue to haunt humankind. In particular, it argues that, in the last five millennia, the Earth has undergone several catastrophic encounters with comets and their debris--and that mythology has preserved these events better than so-called "factual" records.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Batsford (June 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713486813
• ISBN-13: 978-0713486810
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #940,865 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Six climate changes in the last 6000 years in tree rings., June 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters With Comets (Hardcover)

This book reads like a detective story where the plot slowly unfolds. In the beginning it describes the use of tree rings to date old wood in buildings, paintings, ships and other archeological specimens. By a huge collaborative effort by many tree ring scientists it has been possible to establish almost continuous tree ring patterns over 6000 years in bristlecone pine, oak, and other species. Most variations in ring width is due to local conditions. However, six peculiar worldwide, decade long episodes of reduced growth has become evident, for example around 1628 BC and 540 AD. The archeologist Baillie compares this with chinese, egyptian and other history, with the bible and with myths from all over the world, and with what is known of climate changes, vulcano eruptions, analyses of Greenland ice cores and the probability of impacts of comets and asteroids. The 1628 BC event may or may not be explained by the Santorini explosion, and perhaps it caused the 10 plagues of Egypt and the exodus. The 540 AD event coincided with plagues in Constantinople, "dry fog", very pale sun and famine and with the myths of king Arthur. What caused this to happen? Baillie examines the various lines of evidence and ends up with collisions with comets and asteroids as the most likely explanation. Will it happen again and what should we do? Stock up on food like in Egypt under Moses before exodus or hit the comets with nuclear weapons?

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't judge this book by its cover!!!, July 31, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters With Comets (Hardcover)

This book contains incredibly important, scientific observations and conclusions, about the past few thousand years of Earth's history. Unfortunately, the publishers seem to have adorned this brilliant work of science with one of the silliest book jackets I've ever seen in my life. Let me just say right now that I have communicated with the author about this, and the book jacket was NOT his choice.

The author, Mike Baillie, is a highly respected professor of palaeoecology at Queen's University Belfast, in Northern Ireland. More than anyone else, he has pioneered the study of "dendrochronology," which is the study of ancient tree rings, and how widely spaced they are in a given year, to infer climate and weather conditions for the years being studied. Basically, the technique is perfectly logical. In a year with terrible weather, trees grow less. Makes sense, right? Well, indeed, this is always the case, and it is possible to see tiny discrepancies in tree growth from year to year, even today. Now, what would you think if you noticed that, at some time in the distant past, trees seem to have gone several years in a row with hardly any growth at all? Scary, eh? What would this mean to you? Well, if you think it over for long enough, you should conclude that SOMETHING was probably blotting out the sun's life-giving rays to such a great extent that trees simply could not grow. If trees could not grow well, it follows that agriculture probably suffered as well. And if agriculture suffered badly enough, there might even be records of actual civilizations crumbling and vanishing.

Professor Baillie has isolated five such periods, in our relatively recent past. These periods took place in 2354-2345 B.C., 1628-1623 B.C., 1159-1141 B.C., 208-204 B.C., and A.D. 536-545. For each of these periods, he has sought to locate historical records, or at least old legends, which might provide some evidence of terrible times for mankind. Sure enough, he always seems to come through with something or other. My favorite part is the A.D. 536-545 period, for which he has made a faily plausible case of being connected to the old legends of king Arthur's Wasteland. Usually quite a bit of detective work is required here, but more often than not he can make a strong case for something having happened to our climate, at irregular intervals of a few centuries.

The title makes plain what he has concluded to be the likely culprits -- comets and asteroids, and possibly an occasional volcano. Current astronomical theory, in fact, actually does hold that statistically, we really should expect to have been hit a few times since the dawn of civilization. Not by anything as bad as the monster asteroid that immolated the dinosaurs -- we would certainly remember that! But even much more moderate-sized asteroids could reasonably be expected to cause significant, widespread social disruption.

I would like to point out, to whoever is reading this, that TWO of professor Baillie's theories in this book have already begun receiving substantial confirmation, since 1999. For example, Baillie believes that something awful happened to the world climate in about 2350 B.C. One of the biggest underreported stories of 2001, pushed off the front pages by the events of September 11, was the discovery of a asteroid-created crater in southern Iraq. It's almost 2 miles in diameter. Many scientists feel that the crater could be the "smoking gun" to explain the events of around 2350 B.C. If you are interested in learning more about this important topic, you don't even need to stand up. Just open another window on your browser, go to any search engine you like, and do a search for the terms "2350," "asteroid," "crater," and "Iraq." You should get a few hits. If that doesn't work, try searching for "Sharad Master." He is the South African geophysicist who discovered the crater, while looking at satellite photos of southern Iraq. He will be presenting his findings at a conference at Brunel University, in the U.K., at the end of August 2002. Hopefully, this time it will get better press coverage than last year.

The other theory which has gotten more attention, since 1999, concerns the event of A.D. 536-545. If you'd like to learn more about this, I'd like to recommend that you read "Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization," by David Keys.

"Exodus to Arthur is a really important book, and I don't understand why it went out of print. It must be because of the stupid cover. Well, listen to the proverbs your grandparents taught you, and DON'T judge this book by its cover. Find a copy and read it. Two thumbs way up.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And excellent contribution to modern catastrophe theory, April 24, 1999

By	Steven Zoraster (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters With Comets (Hardcover)

I found this book both entertaining and informative. The author, Professor Mike Baillie, an expert in "dendrochronology" and palaeoecology from Queen's University, Belfast, provides a fascinating scientific detective story. The story starts with the description of a collaborative effort - over many decades - by scientists in several countries to develop a complete record of world-wide, climate modulated, annual tree growth as recorded in tree rings (dendrochronology), from the present back to several thousand years BC. The author then notes several unusual patterns in these records, separated by hundreds of years, which point to multi-year events with very poor growing conditions. This sets up the principal story in the Exodus to Arthur, as the author describes his efforts to explain these anomalies. The Professor Baillie uses as evidence historical records left by - among others - Irish, Mediterranean, Chinese and Mayan writers and story-tellers, and archeological evidence including boats and trees recovered from Irish bogs and well preserved building timbers from long abandoned Anasazi pueblos in Utah. Attention is also given to those cases in which some anomalies in tree ring records do not match well across great distances, for example, between Europe and the American southwest.

The conclusion? Well, the title gives it away, so I will not repeat it. I will say that the author does an excellent job of presenting alternative theories, and then explaining why he finds those theories less compelling than the answer he favors. The presentation of the other theories takes the readers on an easy to follow tour of efforts to duplicate parts or all of the dendrochronology timeline using other methods. These methods include gathering and analysis of ice-cores collected in Greenland, the dating of volcano eruptions by radiocarbon methods, and using archeological evidence to note similarities or differences in tools, clothing, burial practices and trade goods between spatially separated cultures. In addition, the author explains his own disagreement with recent attempts to re-arrange the "standard" chronology for the ancient cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Exodus to Arthur is one of many recently published books on "catastrophe theory" aimed at "popular" - and not necessarily scientifically trained - audiences. This book is the best one I have read. It appears to me that publishers and editors for these books are demanding "human-interest stories" presenting the thoughts and emotions of the author(s) as they performed their research. Apparently most scientists do not have the skill to write a human-interest story and still present compelling scientific arguments. Professor Baillie pulls off the trick of mixing the personal with the scientific almost seamlessly, probably because he has a good sense of humor, which comes through in his writing.

By the way, the dust cover of this book is horrible. I purchased the book through Amazon.com based on information gathered from Internet mailing lists. If I had seen the book first in a bookstore, I would have taken one glance at the cover and decided not to buy it. I suggest buying the book and then throwing the dust cover away as soon as you are near a trash can.