Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by District5524 131 days ago
In a movie, I'd definitely involve Ötzi as well (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi). Ötzi was found like 30 km from the impact site. And could have been a contemporary. E.g., he cursed the guy who shot him and whose village is struck by a meteor in the end.
2 comments
griffzhowl 131 days ago
The plot thickens: a commenter here posted this link, which indicates Ötzi might have been roped in to this story in quite an imaginative way:

"Despite this new evidence, curiously in 2008 the impact hypothesis was revived by some pseudoscientists in connection to supposed observations of a meteorite by the Sumerians or to explain the death of the Iceman as a human sacrifice to prevent a nuclear winter after the impact."

http://historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com/2011/04/landslide...

Unfortunately the sciforums link to discussion of the pseudoscientists is dead

link
INTPenis 131 days ago
Ötzi and his killers might have been up there looking for the impact site, there might have been a mad rush to find the impact, they might have seen it as some sort of holy item worth killing for.

There was after all a sun cult in Europe at this time.

And we have recovered an iron dagger made from a meteorite in the 14th century BCE. So this phenomenon of tracking a meteorite impact site and finding it might go much further back in human history.

link
LargoLasskhyfv 130 days ago
Hrm. Maybe. Though I have to wonder from how far afar, considering the energy of this thing. Be it scorched by its heat, blinded by its light, or ruptured lungs from the sonic boom it must have made over a long and wide track, leaving not that many survivors in that track. Try to find a 'best of' of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor from 2013 on YT, or elsewhere, and watch what that little thing did.

Some witnesses are speaking of the heat they felt on their faces.

Now compare the size of that thing which is assumed to be schoolbus-like at the most, with what's assumed for the 'Köfels impact'. I think it was about one kilometer.

Ouch!

link
INTPenis 130 days ago
Presumably none of the meteor hunters would have seen it themselves. They did have a network of trade, as well as information in those days.
link