Pseudo Blast-Glass from the US

The Geological Society of America will be having a session in Denver Colorado on 'Myths and Misrepresentations surrounding Cosmic Impact claims in Paleoclimatology, Paleontology, Paleoecology, Geoarchaeology, and Quaternary Research' that will look at the evidence for the Younger Dryas Impact Theory (11-14 October 2026). One of the papers is this one presented by Robert Harris (Department of Geology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA; Georgia Space and Rocks (GASPAR), LLC, Loganville, GA, USA): 'A Critical Assessment of Anthropogenic Slags and Petroleum Pyrogenetic Glasses in the Southeastern United States: Petrology and Misidentification as Natural Melts'...

Abstract:
Many of the controversial claims that have been published over the last two decades regarding evidence of impacts or airbursts at the Younger Dryas Boundary have cited and relied upon comparisons to melt breccias collected around Blackville, South Carolina, described by Bunch et al. (PNAS, 2012). As someone acknowledged by those authors as providing “critical” samples (and as a co-author of the Firestone et al. (2007) YDB article), I am uniquely qualified to give testimony that those glasses are slags from an abandoned railroad. The lead authors were aware of the clear evidence of that before publication.

I could argue that to the extent subsequent claims of YDB glasses, and other more recent Holocene samples, convincingly demonstrate similarities to the Blackville slags, those claims of impacts or airbursts that rely on the comparison, properly should be retracted.

Remarkably, many of the Bunch at al. (2012) authors joined with Bindi et al. (2026) seemingly to endorse the conclusion, after fifteen years of saying otherwise, that they are uncertain whether the glasses were, “…produced by natural processes or anthropogenesis.” But how can there can be any doubt when the coordinates of the sample studied by Bindi (2026) map to the center of a railroad berm composed largely of construction aggregate.

No amount of circumspection prevented many of the authors from drawing on Bunch at al. (2012) to make definitive assertions of a YDB impact near Perkins, Louisiana (Fitzenreiter et al., 2025). I was asked by one author to examine samples from the site in advance of publication. My preliminary petrography suggested quench rates slower than those typically observed for small-scale impacts or short-duration airbursts. I reported that they either were anthropogenic or, less likely but plausibly, might be ejecta eroded from older impact strata that do occur up-gradient. However, a subsequent tour of the site and additional samples graciously provided by the lead author, revealed evidence that these glasses are most like those produced by petroleum fires. The Perkins site, in fact, sets in the middle of an area with abundant pimple mounds, which have been linked to gas extrusions.

The Blackville slag finds are at site 7 on this 2019 map of the YDI-sites then known.*

The other material mentioned in this take-down text refers to the study by Fitzenreiter et al. (2025), published in the journal Airbursts and Cratering Impacts, asserts that a shallow seasonal lake/depression near Perkins, Louisiana, is North America’s first identified cosmic airburst crater dating to the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB). The authors argue that the site preserves physical evidence of a low-altitude "touch-down" cosmic airburst that occurred approximately 12,800 years ago.

 * (Map showing 24 sites containing Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) nanodiamonds. The solid line defines the current known limits of the YDB field of cosmic-impact proxies, spanning 50 million km 2 , including Venezuela (open circle). Numbered sites are from this study: 1) Lake Cuitzeo, Mexico; 2) Daisy Cave, California; 3) Arlington Canyon, California; 4) Murray Springs, Arizona; 5) Lindenmeier, Colorado; 6) Bull Creek, Oklahoma; 7) Blackville, South Carolina; 8) Topper, South Carolina; 9) Kimbel Bay, North Carolina; 10) Newtonville, New Jersey; 11) Melrose, Pennsylvania; 12) Sheriden Cave, Ohio; 13) Gainey, Michigan; 14) Chobot site, Alberta, Canada; 15) Lake Hind, Manitoba, Canada; 16) Kangerlussuaq, Greenland; 17) Watcombe Bottom, Isle of Wight, United Kingdom; 18) Lommel, Belgium; 19) Ommen, Belgium; 20) Lingen, Germany; 21) Santa Maira, Spain; 22) Abu Hureyra, Syria. In addition, independent researchers have reported NDs at six sites, indicated by letters, four of which are in common: a) Indian Creek, Montana; b) Bull Creek, Oklahoma; c) Sheriden Cave, Ohio; d) Newtonville, New Jersey; e) Lommel, Belgium; f) Aalsterhut, Netherlands. Credit to Wittke et al. (2013); Kinzie et al. (2014). [Volker Dietrich])            

Not Before Time: Pyramid Scan Pseudoarchaeology Retraction From Journal of Remote Sensing

Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga's bonkers paper "Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography Reveals Details of Undiscovered High-Resolution Internal Structure of the Great Pyramid of Giza" has just been retracted from the journal Remote Sensing (Remote Sens. 2022, 14, 5231. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14205231  Published: 19 October 2022). This has been ascribed to an "investigation that confirmed serious methodological flaws and statistical errors that were deemed to undermine the scientific conclusions of the article". In other words, they are going to submit the text to the external editors that will now do what should have been done four years ago, read the work carefully. 

For the record, I am one of several archaeologists who have called out the so-called Khufu Project's methods and questionable formulations repeatedly (on the retracted paper, see here: 'Filippo Biondi, and Corrado Malanga: 'Khufu's Pyramid is Full of Holes and May Have Been a Giant Vibro-Massager' Monday, 27 April 2026), but I never found the time to actually contact the journal and am not the whistleblower [the dozy editors and their peer-reviwers should not have needed one in this case, rather they should resign].*

Nicole Ciccolo walks away from her Khufu Project

* Academic Editors: Rosa Lasaponara, Ilaria Catapano, Luca Piroddi, Sebastiano D’Amico, Marilena Cozzolino, Nasser Abu Zeid, Patrizia Capizzi and Sergio Vincenzo Calcina. Note, ms was received on 30 August 2022, it was already accepted on 12 October 2022, and published a week later, 19 October 2022.

Atlantis Theories Meet Ancient DNA

There is a quite detailed article Atlantis Theories and DNA: What Paleogenetics Excludes (May 27, 2026) on the website of a company 'Explore Your DNA' that seems worthy of attention. This service is provided by Teemu Nätkinniemi, trading as G25Requests, a registered Finnish sole proprietorship business based in Vaasa, SW Finland. The article contains too many details to summarise here, but the conclusion is as follows:

"Conclusion: what paleogenetics excludes
Paleogenetics now allows several precise versions of the Atlantis hypotheses to be excluded. First, it excludes the existence of a pre-Neolithic advanced maritime Atlantic civilization that left demographically traceable descendants: no European or Mediterranean population carries an unexplained ancestral component corresponding to a pre-7000 BCE Atlantic source. Second, it excludes the identification of Tartessos as a genetically distinct civilization: the studied Tartessian individual is a normal local descendant. Third, it excludes the identification of the Minoans as an exotic population: their profile derives cleanly from documented Aegean sources. Fourth, it excludes the identification of Doggerland as a lost civilization: its inhabitants were ordinary Western hunter-gatherers. What paleogenetics cannot exclude is the allegorical interpretation of Plato (which most classical scholars have favored since Antiquity), nor the idea that the Atlantis account reflects, in distorted form, the memory of real natural events (Santorini eruption, Doggerland submersion, Storegga tsunami, decline of Tartessos) that impressed the oral sources transmitted to Plato. Paleogenetics eliminates versions of the hypothesis that assume a distinct demography; it leaves intact the purely cultural, allegorical, or symbolic versions."

Unfortunately this whole exercise has failed to identify at its outset a useful research aim. It asks, in all seriousness, the question whether the population of EUROPE came "from Atlantis". The only bodies of genetic material examined are European. So basically what they are addressing are the very anachronistic views of writers such as Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901) and Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) - questions long ago already answered by science. 

Very few later writers are claiming that Europe was colonised by Atlantis. Those that do situate that mythical fantasy-island in Europe, so there were German nationalists such as Albert Hermann (1886–1945) and Dutch-German pseudohistorian Herman Wirth (1885-1981) who linked the process of civilization of Europe with Aryan ("German) colonisers. In more modern times we only have a few devotees of hyperdiffusionism such as Paul Dunbavin ('Atlantis of the West: The Case For Britain's Drowned Megalithic Civilization' 2003), argueing that Atlantis was a large island that once existed in the Irish Sea and that a comet impact caused a pole shift that changed the Earth's axis around 3100 BC and this somehow led to the Neolithic civilization on ythe island being drowned out by rising sea levels and this led to its inhabitants colonising Europe (a sort of a reversed Hancockism). Swedish geographer Dr. Ulf Erlingsson ('Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land' 2004) proposes that Atlantis had been located in Ireland. None of these ideas are mainstream, even in pseudo-archaeology or pseudo-history circles. So it is not cler what, or who is being "debunked" in this out-of-touch article.

The article does not address Graham Hancock’s influential "Lost Allerød antecedent Civilization" hypothesis, because it merely focuses on Bronze/Iron Age, region-specific theories rather than pre-Younger Dryas (before 10,800 BCE) narratives. To directly address Graham Hancock’s specific hypothesis, a scientific critique or article would have to pivot away from Bronze Age Mediterranean archeology and instead target his specific timelines, mechanisms, and geographic models. To address Hancock’s claims, the article would need to analyze early Palaeolithic genomes on a far wider scale than we see here.

Hancock does not usually argue that an advanced civilization mass-migrated into Europe or the Americas. Instead, he claims a few highly advanced survivors from the collapse of his postlated "Lost Allerød antecedent Civilization"  at the beginning of the Younger Dryas travelled the world to teach local hunter-gatherers agriculture, astronomy, and architecture. What is needed to examine this theory by genetic means is to show the degree of unexplained trace ancestry of 10,000–9,000 BCE populations (like those at Göbekli Tepe or early South American sites)to determine the degree that these populations are descended from known, local Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, or whether there are traces at the time of a social or cultural change of an "introgression" or "founder event" from a mysterious, technologically advanced third party. 

This needs testing for all the global hotspots Hancock highlights (such as Indonesia/Sundaland, the Amazon basin, and southeastern Anatolia). Genetic testing would need to show the degree to which, right before and during the postulated “Younger Dryas cataclysm”, there was sudden, widespread population mixing or genetic bottleneck that would indicate a global maritime network collapsing and dispersing.

Since Hancock implies that (“the idea of”) agriculture was gifted to humanity by this lost civilization after the postulated cataclysm, another approach would be through tracking the genetics of domesticated crops and animals. The paleogenomics of early domesticates (like einkorn wheat in Anatolia or maize ancestors in the Americas) needs to show to what degree the genetic wild-to-domestic transition in these plants happened gradually over thousands of years via local gathering, as opposed to the degree to which it shows a sudden, genetically engineered, or fully "pre-developed" introduction from an unknown botanical source.

Hancock has argued that his postulated “lost civilization” is today lost to sight because it flourished on landmasses that are now underwater due to post-glacial sea-level rise (like the drowned continent of Sundaland in Southeast Asia) or shifted by crustal displacement (Antarctica). A critique would need to look at the genetics of pre- and post- Younger Dryas populations living on the edges of these regions (e.g., modern and ancient genomic data from maritime Southeast Asia, Australia, and southernmost South America). This would show the degree to which these populations lack any shared, highly distinct "ghost" DNA component that would link them to a singular, central, highly developed maritime empire that sunk beneath the waves.

The Perkins Lake Site

The Perkins site (on farmland near Perkins, Louisiana,USA) is claimed by some as North America's first identified airburst crater, dating to the onset of the Younger Dryas period. The site is an unassuming, shallow depression some 300 metres across. Enthusiasts investigating the feature argue that it contains evidence for a low-altitude cosmic airburst, and that deposits found in and around the depression may preserve the physical traces of such an event.

The lake is located east of Perkins, LA, in the state’s southwest corner (inset, arrow) and is called the Perkins site. Base image: USGS. Inset image: Google Maps, 2024, INEGI.

The story of the site begins in 1938, when Walter Leo Fitzenreiter Jr., father of Robert Fitzenreiter, who would later lead the research team publishing the discovery (Fitzenreiter 2025), first speculated that a seasonal lake on his property might be an "impact crater". His interpretation was based largely on the shape of the feature and the presence of a crater-like rim, raised approximately a metre above the surrounding terrain. At the time, there was little more than the morphology of the depression to support the idea.

Depression with locations of glass-and-spherule-rich material outlined with the white dotted line. Image: Google Earth, Maxar Technologies; imagery date: 12/13/2003.

More than six decades later, in 2006, Robert Fitzenreiter began digging at the site. During this work he identified several locations around the lake where large, semi-consolidated masses of spherules occurred together with multi-centimetre-sized fragments of black, vesicular glass. Fitzenreiter reasoned that these unusual materials might have been produced by a cosmic airburst or impact event. In 2011, he contacted members of the Comet Research Group, who subsequently undertook analyses of the materials in an attempt to establish their characteristics and origin.

The resulting investigation has produced a collection of observations that the researchers regard as particularly significant. Large numbers of fused spherules and substantial fragments of high-temperature meltglass have been recovered, which they interpret as indicators of an extreme cosmic event. There are also reported to be abundant shocked quartz grains and microbreccia. These are geological features that can be associated with impact processes and, according to the researchers, are especially characteristic of confirmed impact sites.

The exceptionally high concentrations of meltglass and spherules reported at Perkins are presented as another important feature of the site. According to the research team, their abundance ranks among the greatest found at any known impact or airburst site. Chemical and structural analyses have further suggested similarities between the Perkins spherules and meltglass and materials recovered from other proposed Younger Dryas impact sites in the United States and elsewhere.

A range of analytical techniques has been applied to the material, including optical microscopy, universal-stage analysis, electron microscopy (SEM, TEM and STEM), cathodoluminescence, laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), neutron activation analysis (INAA), and radiometric dating. The researchers report that these investigations reveal morphological and compositional similarities between the Perkins deposits and impact-related proxies identified at other sites.

Dating is particularly important to the interpretation. Radiocarbon dating and ^40Ar/^39Ar analyses are reported to constrain the possible age of deposition to between approximately 30,000 and 10,000 calibrated years BP, with a concentration of dates around 12,800 years BP, specifically 12,835–12,735 cal BP, i.e., falling within the generally proposed age range of the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB), approximately 12,800 years ago.

On this interpretation, a low-altitude, or "touch-down", airburst could plausibly have produced the shallow depression as well as the unusual concentrations of meltglass and spherules found around it. The Perkins site would therefore represent, in the researchers' view, North America's first identified airburst crater associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary. 

The research team consequently concludes that the results of the investigation highlight the scientific significance of the Perkins discovery for both geology and “our understanding of cosmic hazards”.
Yeah, right. But first lets see the facts. For a site report, these 25 authors are very coy about saying EXACTLY where it is (30°23'53.55"N  93°21'13.66"W ) or showing its actual situation in the cultural landscape. In favct it is very much more complex than a simple depression, there are banks and water courses in it. That 'rim around' the site is difficult to discern on the satellite photos, but there are artificial banks crossing it, and there is a supicion (not helped by the fact that there is not a single sectoion of the stratigraphy published) that this depression was dug out as a sandpit and the banks around the edges are of stripped topsoil. The banks crossing the site may be an attempt to channel a stream that crosses the site. In my opinion, before jumping to conclusions on what this site was, the investigators needed to pay more attention to the geomrophology of the site and the nature of the deposits in and around it as well as the landscape history of the surroundings of the site. There is still much more to be investigated and documented before drawing conmclusions about some extraterrestrial influences.  

I also note that there is no archaeological context given for those C14 dates (or the "arrowheads" that seem to play some part in the dating process) this would be because they don't really seem to have gone for working out the stratigraphy, and Hole 1 is off the edge of the depression, not through the layers of its silting. WHY? I really do not understand the fascination wiyth "Baysian age-depth" models in a set of scattered dates obtained from a stratigraphical sequence that is not a sequence because they've not defined it. Just bonkers and meythodologically inept. Can we get some real archaeologists looking at this site? 

References

Martin Sweatman 2025,  'The first Younger Dryas impact surface feature identified?' Martin Sweatman Blog June 07, 2025.

Robert Fitzenreiter, Kord Ernstson, Gunther Kletetschka, Malcolm A. LeCompte, Christopher R. Moore, James P. Kennett, Michael Bizimis, Florian Hofmann, Marian Takac, A. Victor Adedeji, Timothy Witwer, Julie E. Chouinard, Jesus Paulo Perez, Marc D. Young, Teresa M. Eaton, Matthew J. Valente, David B. Lanning Jr., Yoav Rapoport, Kailey Ellison, Argyro Reyes, Ravi Holladay, Michelle Madrigal, Julian Albanil, Charlie Sanchez and Allen West 2025, 'Evidence of a 12,800-year-old Shallow Airburst Depression in Louisiana with Large Deposits of Shocked Quartz and Melted Materials', Airbursts and Cratering Impacts Vol. 3(1). DOI: 10.14293/ACI.2025.0004 [Research Gate]. 

Biondi's "Harmonic SAR" examined and found wanting

While we were all waiting for a more digestible form of the Malaga/Biondi presentation on the Khafre Project, I came across a very interesting text here: "I tried to reproduce the viral satellite radar paper about the pyramids [https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.00811]. Here's what I found" (Simone @theotherpomp Apr 21). I do not know who the author is, but their method and conclsions seem worthy of discussion.

The critique begins by outlining Filippo Biondi's extraordinary claim that satellite radar analysis has revealed vast underground structures beneath the Giza pyramids, including shafts extending hundreds of metres underground and structures more than a kilometre deep. These claims were presented as credible because the method was also said to have successfully detected the known chambers within the Great Pyramid and the underground Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy.

The author first examines whether the published single-pass SAR method is physically capable of detecting the known chambers inside the Great Pyramid. By reconstructing the imaging geometry using real satellite parameters, they conclude that the method's vertical resolution is approximately 285 metres, far too coarse to distinguish structures such as the King's Chamber and Queen's Chamber, which lie only a few tens of metres apart. This suggests that the claimed detections are not physically plausible using the published technique.

To test this conclusion empirically, the author compares the radar response of the Great Pyramid with nearby empty desert using the same processing approach described in the paper. Across 240 experiments varying multiple parameters, the method fails to distinguish the pyramid from the surrounding landscape; indeed, the empty desert often produces stronger responses than the pyramid itself. Expanding the analysis to twenty different locations (including other monuments, urban areas, farmland, and the Nile River), produces remarkably similar results in every case.

The author then investigates why the method appears to generate underground structures everywhere. Through simulation, they show that sparse tomographic reconstructions can create convincing but entirely artificial deep structures, even when only shallow features are present in the original model. As the amount of genuine observational data increases, these apparent deep structures disappear, suggesting that they are reconstruction artefacts rather than real objects.

This explanation is then applied to the Gran Sasso laboratory, which the author argues may represent a case of identifying an expected feature within a reconstruction method that naturally generates structured responses at many depths. The critique also identifies a possible inconsistency in the original study: although the published method is described as a single-pass technique, the paper references multiple acquisitions and processing tools typically associated with multi-pass interferometric SAR analysis.

The author ultimately concludes that the published single-pass method cannot support the extraordinary claims being made for it. They suggest that any genuine detections of known structures may have resulted from a different, multi-pass workflow than the one described in the paper, while the dramatic deep structures beneath Giza are more plausibly explained as artefacts generated by an under-constrained reconstruction process.

The veil is falling: Ἢ Ἀπ’ Ὄνου Πίπτειν

Nicole Cicciolo's "ancient mysteries" fanboys are trying to build up the tension.

Filippo Biondi @Filippobiondi_1 · 4h

History is about to be rewritten forever.
In world premiere at Castel San Pietro Terme, Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga unveil the groundbreaking results on the Second Sphinx of Giza. What was hidden for millennia beneath the sands is emerging — a perfect symmetrical twin of the Great Sphinx, rewriting ancient history. As the ancient Greeks whispered: «Σφίγξ δὲ δίμορφος, φύλαξ τῶν μυστηρίων» — a bimorphic Sphinx, guardian of the mysteries. And «Ἐν τῷ σκότει κεῖται ἡ ἀλήθεια» — in the darkness lies the truth. Just as the Latin masters taught: «Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem» — from shadows and images into truth.
The HarmonicSAR technology has spoken. Sacred geometry does not lie. This is the millennium of space. For discreet support to the Sphinx excavations and HarmonicSAR research, contact: biopippoo@gnail.com
The veil is falling.
Watch the world premiere preview now → https://youtu.be/wH792ihvbhk

Biondi Bollocks on The/A Flood at Giza

Italian boffin Filippo Biondi says that the Great Flood, the so-called "Zep Tepi", and the Giza pyramids are all connected. He told US podcaster Joe Rogan that "seawater salt" still stuck to the walls inside the Great Pyramid proves the entire area was flooded thousands of years ago. That same salt is the evidence that ties everything together with the mythological "first times" (Zep Tepi). "Two months ago, I went for the first time to visit the pyramids, and I found salt on the wall" and he said that this is proof that the entire area was flooded, which he suggests is supported by the fact that the shafts were flooded and filled with debris. This would mean that:

the pyramids were built sometime between Zep Tepi and the Great Flood, which could push their age back dramatically. The salt on the walls is ocean salt from when the sea rushed in over 11,000 years ago and filled the shafts with debris [...]. This changes everything we thought we knew about ancient history

. It further convinces me that this guy has some kind of mental condition that requires him to come out with firm "statements of fact" for purposes of self grndisation and attracting attention.
Salt is present in limestone and desert conditions for other reasons than an otherwise undocumented marine transgression.

Neal Sendlak ( @Gnosisinformant, May 21) and I are of the same opinion:

It's hard to tell if this guy is completely out of his mind or just a complete fraud who knows there are really stupid people in the world who will buy into his crap.