Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage

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Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage

Post by Winged Isis »

Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage
Some sites are beyond the traditional classification of heritage, yet are worthy of attention and protection, such as Egypt's Kamil Crater which was only even noticed using Google Earth
Mohammed Elrazzaz, Saturday 14 Jul 2012

A few years ago, New Zealand called on the UNESCO to put one of its sites, Aoraki Mackenzie, on the World Heritage List. The site is a Dark Sky Park, known as one of the best spots on earth for stargazing. The call was rejected because there were no categories under which the site could be listed. Moreover, the ‘sky’ in itself does not belong to anyone and is not an ‘earthly’ heritage. In Egypt, it is not the sky that raises the debate; it is actually things falling from the sky!

Vagabonds from outer space

“Subject to the mercy of wind, a grain of sand is an eternal vagabond” – Cassandra Vivian, Islands of the Blest

And subject to the mercy of gravity, a meteoroid is a vagabond, too, until it hits another body in space. When this ‘body’ is our planet Earth, the consequences can be apocalyptic. One look at the moon is enough to understand why: Theories hold that it was formed following a catastrophic impact involving a body from space colliding with our planet. The debris eventually cooled off and, attracted by gravity, gave birth to the moon. But such impacts are not always that grand, and we do not have to go as far as the moon to imagine the possible outcome: Egypt has quite a track record of such collisions, and Nakhla village in Beheira is a good place to start.

In 1911, something happened in Nakhla that the little village would remember ever after. On the morning of June 28 of that year, the locals saw a meteorite shower over their village. They did not understand what it was, and obviously did not know the treasure that this shower had brought: this was one of the few meteorites in history to be identified as proceeding from Mars. Eventually, this meteorite would immortalize the name of the village, being the prototype of a famous type of meteorites: The Nakhlites.

Folk tales are not lacking on this incident. An urban legend holds, for example, that a dog was in the wrong time and place when the meteorite hit, and it simply vanished in the air due to the impact. Back to tangible evidence, and apart from specimen scattered in museums around the world, one can still contemplate meteorite fragments from Nakhla at the Egyptian Geological Museum in Cairo. There, visitors can see fragments from another, much larger and older meteorite.

Gebel Kamil Crater

The silicon in the rocks, the oxygen in the air, the carbon in our DNA, the gold in our banks, the uranium in our arsenals were all made thousands of light years away and billions of years ago … we are made of star stuff.” – Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Star-stuff is what we can call the meteorite debris of Gebel Kamil. It took the Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele a lot of time and hard work to spot a crater that bears witness to yet another meteorite collision. He found it in Egypt’s Western Desert, surprisingly, using Google Earth.

The Gebel Kamil Crater is a relatively recent one, a few thousand years old. Its importance lies in the fact that it is “one of the best preserved craters yet found on Earth” as National Geographic described it, since craters that size are usually eroded or have disappeared completely.

Over the last couple of years, meteorite fragments from the Kamil Crater appeared on the black market, both physically and online. Collectors from all over the world can buy these fragments and very little can be done to recover them. We have yet to figure out how protect this remote area, almost on the border with Sudan.

Egypt's extraterrestrial heritage

Heritage, by definition, is not necessarily man-made. In the case of Egypt, natural heritage is clearly visible in such sites as Gebel Elba, the White Desert, Ras Mohamed and elsewhere. Many of these sites are national parks, and one of them is even a UNESCO World Heritage Site (namely Wadi Al-Hitan).

This means that, at least in theory, these sites enjoy some measure of protection and have a management and conservation plan in place. This is also the case with sites like Gebel Kamil Crater, which, since March 2012, is a protected area. A problem arises, however, because many people fail to see why we should celebrate such a site as heritage in the first place.

What heritage values are there in an alien body hitting a spot in our desert and leaving a scar? How can we classify this heritage and what would be its type? Why and how should we protect it?

Apart from its value for geologist and mineralogists, the Kamil Crater (and other such sites) represent a very rare type of heritage…one that involved a unique astronomical phenomenon in Egypt thousands of years ago and that changed part of its topography for good. Meteorites are visitors from other worlds, and in the case of the Nakhla Meteorite, the fragments are believed to have been formed over one billion years ago. This makes them like time capsules; storing a priceless record of our cosmic history and helping us better understand the evolution of our solar system and the evolution of life itself.

The toughest question remains: how to protect this heritage, apart from technicalities such as declaring the site a protected area.

Spreading awareness and educating people about its existence and its significance is a first step. Only then will people behave as stakeholders and perceive the site as something worth protecting, investigating and passing on to future generations.


http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... itage.aspx


Carpe diem! :le:
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Re: Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage

Post by Horus »

I have often wondered if the ‘Black Stone’ of the Kaaba which is revered by Muslims and according to Islamic tradition it fell from Heaven to show Adam and Eve where they should build an altar. It was said to be polished and smoothed by the hands of the faithful, but to me it sounds very much like a meteorite! ;)
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Re: Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage

Post by LovelyLadyLux »

My vote would be on a meterorite. Can you imagine way way way back years ago when it actually fell how that was perceived by those sitting about in a Bedouin camp?
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Re: Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage

Post by Horus »

Especially if it landed near by, streaking in lighting up the sky and exploding on impact, thus are we given signs from god. 8)
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Re: Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage

Post by LovelyLadyLux »

Can't remember the name of it but there is a quasi documentary type program periodically on TV here that tries to link extra terrestrials historically to earth. They research all sorts of symbolism in ancient art and writings etc. Some of it kinda makes sense and I'm betting that any sort of natural phenomena (i.e. solar eclipse) would have brought lots of 'thoughts' to ancient man. Can't imagine what would be thought of a huge meteorite crashing to earth! Would be pretty spectacular.
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Re: Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage

Post by Ra-Mont »

To this thread we could include the theory that the original ben-ben stone which was a focus of worship at Heliopolis was itself a meteorite. Perhaps the Black Stone of the Kaaba, referred to by Horus above, was that very stone, moved to Mecca in the distant past. It is fragmented, conjuring a picture of it receiving a violent blow, possibly for its pagan connotations, and then being reconstituted by a less fanatical Muslim sect who respected its sacred quality. Pure speculation, of course.

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Re: Egypt’s extraterrestrial heritage

Post by Horus »

All interesting stuff, I have always subscribed to the theory that everything in the bible and other writings probably have their basis in some sort of facts, albeit distorted over time and for the politics of religion. Although the Egyptian Ben Ben was supposed to be the mound of creation that rose from the waters, it is also described as being the home of the Bennu bird. It is believed that the Pyramids actually represented this stone in their shape and of course we only have to look at the top of an Egyptian obelisk to see the stone itself. So like all creation myths I believe that they have some basis in fact and if we go back far enough who knows, maybe a falling meteorite was the basis of these myths especially if we look at the similarities of many of the regions religions.
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