I did a bit of digging this past week to see if there is any evidence to substantiate a much later date for the life of Julius Caesar, looking at historical records from both Europe and China as well as stratigraphic dating using ice core and tree ring records. The post is a bit lengthy and hopefully not too convoluted. Let’s first look at the information given by the C’s during two sessions in 2014.
(Pierre) Maybe you can ask this question. Caesar was born roughly 2,114 years ago according to our official calendars. In reality, how many years ago was Caesar born?
A: 1635. {Difference of 479 years}
(Approaching Infinity) You want to ask about Baby Caesar?
(L) What about Baby Caesar?
(Approaching Infinity) If his story was either taken on by Augustus, or if the Jesus story... if either of those people stole it from Caesar?
A: The Baby Jesus Story is an amalgamation of Mithras and Caesar. The story of "Jesus" causing wonder among the "Doctors of the Law" is referring to Caesar. Augustus borrowed an element or two of the tale of Caesar, but mostly not.
Q: (L) Okay. Hmm. Well, that doesn't help me at all, does it? Was there anything remarkable about Caesar's birth?
A: Comet.
Q: (L) So there was a comet at the time of his birth, and that was the main thing. A comet at his birth, and a comet at his death. Is that it?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) But, no “laid in the manger” business, no wise men, nothing like that.
A: No.
Based on the remark in the first session we can infer that
Julius Caesar was born circa 379 CE (2014-1635). According to accepted history, Caesar was born in 100 BC and died in 44 BC; that’s a difference of 56 years. Applying this to the later date,
Caesar would have died around 435 CE. During the second session, the C’s remarked that there was a comet both at the time of his birth and at the time of his death. There are several historical sources relating to a comet appearing the year of his death, also known as Caesar’s Comet (C/-43 K1). Some of the most known historians from Roman times talk about a comet in the skies during Caesar’s funeral games organised by Augustus in July of that year.
The only place in the whole world where a comet is worshiped is in a temple at Rome. It was a comet that the divine Augustus judged as particularly propitious to himself since it appeared at the beginning of his rule during the games which he gave in honor of Venus Genetrix not long after his father's death when he was a member of the religious body that Caesar had founded. For Augustus expressed his joy in the following words: "On the very day of my games, a comet was seen for seven days in the northern part of the sky. It arose during the eleventh hour of the day, and it was bright and visible from every land. The people believed that this star revealed that the soul of Caesar was received among the divine spirits of the immortal gods, and for this reason an emblem was added to the likeness of his head, which I later consecrated in the forum."These things he said publicly; but with a more private joy he interpreted that the comet had arisen for his own sake and that he was born under its sign. And, to speak the truth, it was beneficial to the world. Pliny
“A star shone for seven successive days, rising about the eleventh hour, and was believed to be the soul of Caesar.” Suetonius
There is however much less evidence for a comet in 100 BC. I did find one mention of a comet sighted at that time as reported by French astronomer Alexandre Guy Pingré in his book Cométographie where he catalogues all comet sightings found in historical records.
[English Translation] 99 [BC]. During the Consulate of C. Marius & L. Valerius, a burning torch was seen at Tarquinia, which suddenly fell. Towards sunset, a kind of round body was seen, similar to a shield; its movement was from west to east. If one recognizes here a Comet, it will be rather in the shield, than in the torch which falls suddenly. Cométographie, Tome I - Pingré
While Pingré gives a date of 99 BC for the sighting of the comet,
Gaius Marius and
Lucius Valerius Flaccus were actually consults in 100 BC, not in 99 BC. His BC datings seem to be off by one year as he also dated Caesar’s comet in 43 BC when it is generally accepted that it happened in 44 BC.
So there is evidence from Roman sources that a comet was sighted both during Caesar’s birth and death. When it comes to historical recording of comets, China is a much better source as there are clear records dating all the way back to two millennia ago unlike in Europe where the records during the first millennium are sparse and not clearly detailed.
A comet was also observed in China in 44 BC, however, there is a difference in the timing of the sighting which makes it hard to reconcile with the Roman accounts. The
Chinese records talk about “a broom star comet was seen at the Northwest. It was reddish-yellow and neared about 12 degrees. After a few days, it was located near Orion, measured over 15 degrees, and pointed toward the northeast.” According to this report, the comet would have been seen around 30th May. However, modern-day astronomers have a hard time reconciling the two accounts when trying to determine the orbit of the comet. Moreover, no visible comet was observed in China in the year 100 BC.
A comet sighting doesn’t necessarily mean that it will impact the Earth or even enter the atmosphere. However, comet fragmentation is a common occurrence as described by
@Pierre in his book
Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection (chapter 15).
Stratigraphic markers from ice cores, tree rings and marine sediments have been used to identify sudden spikes in the concentration of specific elements that can be linked to earth change events. These include volcanic eruptions, solar proton events (SPE) and even cometary impacts. In recent years, the academic community has been placing most of its focus on analysing these records to identify volcanic eruptions by identifying spikes in the concentration of acids, sulfur or sulfate. Apart from a few researchers such as Mike Baillie, the study of comets has been ignored for the most part by the academic field.
However, ice core records when combined with dendrochronology, the study of tree rings, can yield important information about cometary impacts. Some of the most notable elements that can be tied to comets entering the Earth’s atmosphere are ammonium, nitrate as well platinum, carbon, titanium, carbon and many other elements depending on the class of meteorite. Pierre goes into detail about the chemical composition of meteors and cometary impacts in his many SOTT articles and his most recent book
Cometary Encounters.
Looking at high resolution ice core records from the Tunu site in northern Greenland, we note a few interesting signals.
Figure 1: Ammonium concentration in Greenland TUNU2013 ice core: 350-450 CE
Figure 2: Nitric acid concentration in Greenland TUNU2013 ice core: 350-450 CE
Three main signals can be observed during the 350-450 CE timespan for both ammonium and nitric acid at circa 379 CE, 435 CE and 441 CE respectively, the first two matching the dates derived from the C's remarks for the birth and death years of Caesar. Emissions of both nitrate, ammonium and black carbon are generally considered indicators of biomass burning of forest fires and grassland. However, we can observer similar spikes for other ions that cannot be attributed to biomass burning and lend further credence to a cometary origin of these signals.
In fact, similar spikes in Titanium are also observed for the 379 CE and 441 CE events. We can infer from this, together with the carbon signal, that the meteors in question are most likely carbonaceous chondrites, or C-type chondrites, that are rich in carbon compounds, water and lithophile elements like silica, including oxygen, titanium and aluminium. The 435 CE signal instead does not exhibit a spike in these same elements but does have a visible spike in Bromide. As I explain in a
SOTT article:
"Bromide is found in relatively low concentrations in the Earth's crust, about the same concentration found in meteorites, or 1ppm. [...]
The ocean contains much larger concentrations of bromide relative to the Earth's crust. The impact of a comet in the ocean could explain the unusually high signal in the ice core, as explained here by
Pierazzo et al:
The impact of a 500m asteroid increases the upper atmospheric water vapor content by more than 1.5 times the background over a wide region surrounding the impact point for the first month after the impact. Halogens, ClY (chlorine) and BrY (bromide), follow the water vapor distribution, with an initial increase of over 20 and 5 times normal background, respectively, in the same region surrounding the impact. The perturbations eventually spread over the northern hemisphere, where water vapor content remains about 50% above background for the first year after impact, while ClY and BrY exceed five times and twice their background values.
The strong bromide signal, together with the spike in ammonium and nitrate, supports the possibility that a bolide impacted the Earth [...]".
The Chinese records of cometary sightings are much more accurate than the European ones during the first millennium CE so let's see what the historical accounts show for that time.
There is no record of a comet sighting around 379 AD, however, the later sightings dated 435-6 and 442 AD seem to match the signals observed in the ice core records with a lag of circa 1 year, substantiating the relative accuracy of the dating of the Chinese records.
While analysis of ice cores has improved substantially in the last decade, one still needs to account for a margin of error of at least ±1 year when looking at records from the first millennium, and there are many variables at play in terms of the speed and intensity of deposition of the dust particles containing these elements.
In order to improve dating, ice core signals are generally anchored to tree ring data which provides us with a more accurate dating of sudden climatic changes. Looking at tree rings from Northern Europe and temperature anomaly for that period, we notice a corresponding drop in ring width and temperature during those same years.
Figure 3: Tree ring max density and temperature anomaly in Northern Europe, 373-385 CE.
Figure 4: Tree ring max density and temperature anomaly in Northern Europe, 424-444 CE.
We see notable drops in tree ring width and temperature at years 379, 381 CE and 431, 436 CE. The drops in the early period suggest that we are looking at two separate events causing a cooling in Europe. This is confirmed by the NEEM ice core in Greenland that has higher resolution data compared to the TUNU record and shows a double spike in ammonium, nitric acid and black carbon. From this we can surmise that not just one, but two comets hit the Earth within the span of a year, a true double-whammy.
Figure 5: Greenland NEEM Ice core data, 378-382 CE.
The data for the later timeframe show a notable drop at 431 CE before a second one in 436 CE. This may be related to the eruption of a volcano as it is accompanied by a spike in sulfate and acid in the ice core records from both Greenland and Antarctica shortly after in 433 CE. A
recent paper published last year ties the ice core signal to the Tierra Blanca Joven (TBJ) eruption of the Ilopango volcano in El Salvador. They estimated the column of ash rising by circa 45km, exceeding that of the Pinatubo eruption in 1991, and producing a cooling in temperature of around 0.5 °C for a couple of years.
While there are few if any historical accounts of weather changes around Caesar's birth, literature from the time of his death talks about a dimming of the Sun. Pliny the Elder writes:
Portentous and protracted eclipses of the sun occur, such as the one after the murder of Caesar the dictator and during the Antonine war which caused almost a whole year's continuous gloom. Pliny
Plutarch also recounts a more detailed description of the weather during that time:
Among events of the divine ordering there was...after Caesar's murder...the obscuration of the sun's rays. for during all that year its orb rose pale and without radiance, while the heat that came down from it was slight and ineffectual, so that the air in its circulation was dark and heavy owing to the feebleness of the warmth that penetrated it, and the fruits, imperfect and half ripe, withered away and shrivelled up on account of the coldness of the atmosphere. Plutarch
These same weather changes and subsequent crop failures are recounted in the
historical records of Europe around 536 AD but on a bigger scale, the year when the Sun dimmed for 18 months and the temperature dropped by 2 °C leading to crop failure, famine and plague.
In conclusion, the stratigraphic data does point to cometary impacts or overhead explosions around 379 CE, 435 CE and 441 CE, the latter two dates substantiated by Chinese records of comet sightings in 435-6 AD and 442 AD. Historical records from Ancient Rome talk about cometary sightings observed during the years of Caesar's birth (100 BC) and death (44 BC) matching the timespan of the cometary impacts recorded in 379 CE and 435 CE.
), I can't help but read it as 'understand'. Maybe because I'm German. When translating English into German you would often translate it that way. For example english 'Ah, I see!' would become 'Aha!' or 'Ah, yes!' or rather more clearly 'I understand!' and it would be strange to use words akin to 'eyes' or 'looking' in that context in German, it's just not how you would say it.
People seeing through this being 12% is not so bad. That's about an eighth.
