Pantasma

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Coordinates: 13 ° 22 ′ 0 ″  N , 85 ° 57 ′ 0 ″  W.

Relief Map: Nicaragua
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Pantasma​
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Nicaragua

Pantasma is a region in northern Nicaragua in the Jinotega Department . Pantasma means “small person” or “flat head” in the Miskito language. The Galician word Pantasma ( Spanish Fantasma ) comes from the Greek φάντασμα ( phantasma ) and means "ghost" or "illusion".

Valle de Pantasma

The "Valle de Pantasma" is located in this region and is a circular, km 12 large basin with the coordinates 13 ° 22 '  N , 85 ° 57'  W . It is traversed by the "Río Pantasma", a tributary of the Río Coco (also called "Rio Segovia"). In its center lies the “Las Praderas” settlement, capital of the 40,000-inhabitant municipality of Santa Maria de Pantasma, which belongs to the Jinotega province. In the poor but fertile valley, which is used intensively for agriculture, maize, fruit, coffee and beans are grown and cattle are raised.

Probable impact crater

There is renewed scientific evidence that the "Crater of Pantasma" originated when a 500 m large meteorite hit the tertiary effusive blankets of the volcanic mountainous region in northwest Nicaragua around 800,000 years ago . The circular bowl shape of the crater, its seemingly arbitrary position and the slight inclination of its floor in the direction of the large-scale mountain drop speak for a meteorite impact . Its strikingly "fresh" appearance speaks for a young age in relation to the surroundings. A central elevation is missing or may already be covered with sediments. An ejection ring may be present, but is not clearly visible in the mountainous surroundings. The size and shape of the crater are strongly reminiscent of the 10 km large and approximately one million year old Bosumtwi crater in Ghana . Its embedding in the landscape is astonishingly similar to that of the impact crater of Goat Paddock in Australia (5 km in diameter, up to 50 million years old). The volcanic history of the entire region and the proximity to active volcanic zones suggest a volcanic origin (see: Explosive Caldera , Krakatau , Tambora , Laacher See ) but cannot prove it. A targeted search for typical impact rocks (see: ray cones , suevites , tektites ) could, however, prove a meteorite impact .

An expedition of the "Association of Nicaraguan Astronomers and Astrophysicists" (ASTRONIC) to the Pantasma Valley in July 2009 confirmed the impact thesis.

In 2010 the geologist Jean H. Cornec (Denver) found tektites about 820,000 years old, 500 km northwest in Belize. The well-known Tikal tektites in Guatemala are also of a similar age.

In a scientific publication in February 2019, Prof. Pierre Rochette, Director of the Geological Institute CEREGE at the University of Marseille-Aix-en-Provence, reports that in 2016 he found extraterrestrial minerals in the Pantasma crater, their chemical and isotope analysis on an impact 815,000 years ago (± 11 ka) and is strong evidence of its meteoritic origin. Geomorphological investigations also support the thesis of a Pleistocene impact in Oligocene volcanic layers. The findings have similar properties to the tektites in Belize (and Guatemala), which suggests that they belong to the stray field of the Pantasma crater of the same age. This would make it only the fourth impact crater to which an associated stray field is known - after the Nördlinger Ries, the Bosumtwi- and the Zhamanshin crater (Kazakhstan)!

Further scientific studies are to follow as soon as the political stability of Nicaragua allows this.

Pantasma massacre

The place gained international fame through the "Massacre of Pantasma", in which on October 18, 1983 the CONTRA terrorists, financed and armed by the USA under President Ronald Reagan against the Sandinista government, attacked the agricultural cooperatives of the valley. Murdered women and children. This was one of the reasons for the Federal German solidarity movement with Nicaragua to send construction brigades to Pantasma under the slogan "We are rebuilding what the Contra is destroying" and they set up two settlements, a school and a health post . On October 19, 1986, an anti-tank mine on the main road from Pantasma to the provincial capital Jinotega tore up a truck, leaving 11 civilians killed and 33 mutilated. On March 23, 1987, members of the US “First Veterans Peace Action Team” started a week-long “Peace Walk” on this road through the Pantasma Valley to draw attention to the particularly cruel counter-terror in this part of the country.

literature

  • Richard Weyl: The geology of Central America . Borntraeger, 1961. ISBN 3-443-11001-0
  • Günther Weber: The defiant efforts for freedom, Nicaragua's farmers fight for their land. Reports from the valley of Pantasma. Nahua edition, 1986. ISBN 3-923329-21-0

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.culturagalega.org/lg3/novidade.php?Cod_prdccn=115
  2. ↑ http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/images/goat-paddock.htm
  3. ↑ ASTRONIC .
  4. ↑ Jean H. Cornec: New tektite strewn field discovered in Belize ( English ) ambergriscaye.com. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  5. ↑ TEKTITES OF WESTERN BELIZE - CHARACTERISTICS AND POSSIBLE ORIGIN ( English , PDF) hou.usra.edu. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  6. ↑ CEREGE .
  7. ↑ P. Rochette, R. Alaç et al. a .: Pantasma: Evidence for a Pleistocene circa 14km diameter impact crater in Nicaragua. In: Meteoritics & Planetary Science. 54, 2019, p. 880, doi : 10.1111 / maps.13244 .
  8. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated May 8, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aliciapatterson.org
  9. ↑ http://www.brianwillson.com/awolvpat1.html
  10. ↑ http://www.brianwillson.com/awolvpat2.html