Hopewell Culture may have been destroyed by a comet

[Erpingham]

To be fair to the wikipedia article, such an overarching subject, covering the whole of human history and needing to report a wide range of scholarly and other opinion, is pretty much guaranteed to be a series of non sequitors.  It's not for wiki editors to impose their own structure or rationale and it should be read as a collection of "things that people have suggested might have caused social collapse".

Defence of wiki editorial policy over, can I recommend the critique on the article talk page, which ends

"I don't really know what do with this mess except suggest that it should be deleted and edit-protected so that responsible authors can start again. " 

And, yes, good to see Justin back on form.  You and Richard promise to play nice, now

[Duncan Head]

I still find it difficult to believe. Hopewell culture was not sophisticated with all sorts of specialised industries such as we have. The network would have been villages, all pretty much making the same things, connected to each other by tracks. To disrupt it you would have to incinerate the entire area and a 12 MT comet isn't going to do that. Even if it did break up on impact I don't think it could lay waste an area 2000km long and hundreds of km wide. 

My limited understanding of the Hopewell decline is that the villages mostly carried on, it was the larger-scale manifestations such as the monumental earthwork building that stopped. Presumably this was a manifestation of some sort of religious belief, and a manifestation of heavenly displeasure as spectacular as a cometary airburst is really going to shake that belief.

The ash layer argues warfare to me,

The microspherules and the platinum and iridium anomalies seem to suggest something other than mere burning.

[RichT]

"I don't really know what do with this mess except suggest that it should be deleted and edit-protected so that responsible authors can start again. "

Ha! Well, serves me right for thinking it was a good article because it seemed comprehensive, without troubling to actually read it... However, though I would now like to distance myself (several million miles from) parts of that particular article, the point stands that to dismiss all forms of societal collapse (and all evidence for all such forms) in favour of war, and always war, is, well, a bit silly.

And I'll choose Thumper over Jordan Peterson every single time.

[Chuck the Grey]

Jason, in my comments I said that the comet broke up in the atmosphere, not on impact. If the comet had only broken up on impact, then I agree that the damaged area would have been more limited. When the comet, or any object for that matter, breaks up in the atmosphere, the number of objects impacting the ground increases. Think of a cannon firing grapeshot versus a single cannonball. The grapeshot creates a wider swath of damage compared to the single cannonball.

I'm not saying that the hypothesis of the comet is correct, but it is possible.

[Justin Swanton]

I still find it difficult to believe. Hopewell culture was not sophisticated with all sorts of specialised industries such as we have. The network would have been villages, all pretty much making the same things, connected to each other by tracks. To disrupt it you would have to incinerate the entire area and a 12 MT comet isn't going to do that. Even if it did break up on impact I don't think it could lay waste an area 2000km long and hundreds of km wide. 

My limited understanding of the Hopewell decline is that the villages mostly carried on, it was the larger-scale manifestations such as the monumental earthwork building that stopped. Presumably this was a manifestation of some sort of religious belief, and a manifestation of heavenly displeasure as spectacular as a cometary airburst is really going to shake that belief.

I can imagine propitiatory ceremonies or even sacrifices following a big bang in the sky but not a wholesale cessation of activity.

The ash layer argues warfare to me,

The microspherules and the platinum and iridium anomalies seem to suggest something other than mere burning.

True. Looking at the original article the archaeological sites where the meteorites were found with the platinium and iridium are confined to a fairly small region in the Ohio River valley. It's possible the meteorites came from an airburst but also possible they came from another source as the locals did value meteorites for jewellery and musical instruments and collected them. The Hopewell culture ranged from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic to the Rockies, so most of its area wasn't affected by a hypothetical comet. There really is just too little solid evidence to say anything.