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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 46: Jul-Aug 1986 |
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Blackened, broken stones of the middle east
The current issue of Pursuit presents an article by Z. Sitchin in which he expounds his theory about ancient conflicts between gods and men. As evidence of this supposed strife, he reproduced a photograph of a plain in the Sinai Peninsula. Basically white limestone, the plain is thickly strewn with blackish, angular stones. Whence these immense quantities of incongruous stones? Sitchin proposes that they were created when an ancient spaceport was destroyed!
(Sitchin, Zecharia; "The Wars of Gods and Men," Pursuit, 18:106, 1985.)
Comment. Whatever one thinks of Sitchin's theory, the stones remain and must be accounted for. They are not the only such deposits in the Middle East. Velikovsky, in his Earth in Upheaval, states that 28 such rock fields are found in Arabia, some with areas of 6 or 7 thousand square miles. These are the "harras." Velikovsky thinks they are meteoric debris! Are there other explanations around?
Reference. The blackened stones are just one variety of anomalous superficial aggregation of surface rocks. For more, see ESM1 in Neglected Geological Anomalies. Details here.