Authors: J. Douglas Kenyon
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Gnostic Dementia, #Fringe Science, #Alternative History, #Amazon.com, #Retail, #Archaeology, #Ancient Aliens, #History
Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization (6 page)
While stories of floods of biblical proportion exist in the myths and folklore of cultures all over the world and, together with some scientific evidence, might suggest some watery global destruction in the distant past, they cannot account for the inferno that appeared to engulf the numerous Near Eastern communities extant at the end of the Bronze Age. Schoch also reviews the comings and goings of ice ages and ponders whether forces of nature or Earth’s rotation might be responsible for the temperature changes that caused them.
He notes only in passing, but at least with suitable astonishment, the apparent coincidence of a scientifically validated incident of dramatic global warming around 9645
B.C.E.
(a rise of fourteen degrees Fahrenheit in fifteen years) with the scientifically postulated scenario of a massive freshwater flood pouring into the Gulf of Mexico at about the same time and coincident with the date that Plato ascribed to the sinking of Atlantis. Although of seemingly great significance, Schoch does not pursue the matter.
Schoch’s review also covers the possibility that pole shifts accounted for alterations in the surface conditions on Earth, whether gradual or rapid, actual or only apparent. He examines the work of Dr. Charles Hapgood, who asserted that Earth’s crust has slipped over the inner layers and moved the poles at least thrice, by about thirty degrees of latitude, in just the last 80,000 years, with the last movement being completed ca. 10,000
B.C.E.
(shades of Atlantis’s demise again?). Schoch discounts Hapgood’s work, however, on the basis of, among other things, “new and better [paleomagnetic] data” having been collected since the late professor conducted his research.
Schoch also disputes the related “soon-to-be-slipping-polar-ice-cap” thesis of the successful catastrophist author Richard Noone, who wrote
5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster,
asserting that the planetary alignment which occurred on May 5, 2000, would be of very little moment because of its occurrence on the other side of the Sun from Earth.
Still, in seeking an explanation for the so-called Cambrian explosion of wildly diverse and numerous new life-forms over a ten-million-year period more than five hundred million years ago, Schoch is somewhat more sympathetic to the later work of the Cal Tech geologist Joseph Kirschvink and his colleagues, who, using more varied and more reliable data than Hapgood had access to, have proposed that “true polar wander,” an entire crustal and mantle displacement of ninety degrees over the earth’s core during the Cambrian period, somehow helped make the generation of so many new life-forms possible. Exactly “how” this happened, however, remains a mystery.
Schoch finally turns his attention to the heavens and the possibilities of drastic change owing to impacts on the earth of asteroids, meteorites, and comets (generically called bolides). Since 1957, when scientists finally agreed that the meteor crater in Arizona was the result of an asteroid impact 50,000 years ago, approximately 150 impact craters have been identified around the world, and the number grows annually.
With the discovery in 1993 of the comet known as P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 and the observation of its striking Jupiter in 1994, science was forced to acknowledge the possibility that a comet could indeed, even in contemporary times, collide with a planet and do so with a force sufficient to cause global extinctions.
Whether the Tunguska explosion of 1908, which occurred in Siberia, was the result of a similar impact or that of an asteroid or even an extraterrestrial space vehicle is unknown, but the massive devastation caused by whatever collided with Earth on that fateful day is a sobering portent of what could occur if and when it happens again in or around a highly populated area. Schoch intimates that even a shift in the polar spin axis is possible as a result of such a major collision, if the hypotheses of other researchers are correct.
In any event, two other reputable scientists have cited evidence for a significant bolide impact on Earth circa 10,000
B.C.E.
that they claim caused the sudden end of the last ice age and probably led, in turn, to a great flood (Atlantis again?). And in 1996 and 1998, two chains of craters were identified on Earth, chains that can be correlated, in time, with past major extinctions of life on our planet. Whether such phenomena suggest some periodic pattern of destructive hits—for instance, that of an asteroid or comet crossing Earth’s orbit on a collision course sometime in the future—is currently a matter of much conjecture and theorizing on the part of scientists. In this vein, Schoch postulates that with respect to the fiery end of the Bronze Age in 1200
B.C.E.
, a serial stream of hot bolides, fragmenting upon entry into Earth’s atmosphere and detonating there with much force and heat, could well account for the widespread devastation recorded for that period.
In terms of the immediate future, in addition to taking steps to preserve the atmospheric ozone layer and counter the environmental trend toward global warming, Schoch advocates protecting our planet against colliding asteroids and comets. According to him, the first action to meet the threat of space-sourced objects would be to create a dedicated system that would locate all objects in space that are in relative proximity to the earth and to determine which ones pose a risk of collision.
The second step would be to find a way to better understand the composition and structure of these objects, information necessary in deciding how to deflect or destroy any threatening object heading our way. And the third activity would be to develop nonnuclear technologies to perform the actual deflection or destruction of these objects should that become necessary, without the attendant risk of collateral harm to human and other terrestrial life.
Schoch believes that we have a sizable window—perhaps until 2200
C.E.
.—until the next likely swarm of bolides appears and descends on Earth. Of one thing he can be sure: We all hope he’s right.
5
Cataclysm 9500
B.C.E.
Two New Works of Immense Scholarship Throw Orthodox Ice Age Theories into Question and, in the Process, Corroborate Plato and Many Other Ancient Sources
David Lewis
I
n recent prehistory, possibly as late as 9500
B.C.E.
(the date ascribed by Plato to the sinking of Atlantis), a profoundly traumatic phenomenon plagued the earth. This event, the result of a distant cosmic explosion, caused severe volcanic eruptions, massive earthquakes, catastrophic flooding, and the upheaval of the world’s mountain ranges. Earth’s axis may have tilted or its crust may have been violently displaced. Continents rose and sank. Mass extinctions of plants and animals followed, as did a period of eerie global darkness.
The catastrophe struck suddenly, researchers report. Those humans who survived sought refuge in caves and high mountains, the record of their plight preserved to this day in hundreds of ancient deluge/conflagration myths from virtually every cultural tradition. In the last century as well as more recently, scientists gathered the evidence for such a catastrophe, but explained away parts of it through “ice age theory,” which is now known to be fundamentally flawed. The rest of the evidence, until now, science has been unable to explain.
No, this is not the synopsis of Hollywood’s next disaster extravaganza, nor a rehashing of Immanuel Velikovsky’s catastrophe theory, but rather the product of serious research and the subject of two books written by independent experts in the field of recent prehistory. The compelling evidence assembled by these authors reveals the existence of a prehistoric reality that casts orthodox notions about early man into the realm of mere guesswork. The books are
Cataclysm! Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C.,
by D. S. Allan and J. B. Delair, and
Earth Under Fire: Humanity’s Survival of the Apocalypse,
by Paul LaViolette, Ph.D.
ORTHODOX ASSUMPTIONS
With its long-standing preference for uniformitarianism (the doctrine that nothing sudden occurred in prehistory, but instead only slow evolutionary and geological changes occurred), modern science has discounted what was taken for granted in the last century based on the hard evidence that was uncovered at that time: A global catastrophe occurred recently on Earth. That bias for uniformitarianism, coupled with the dogma of scientific materialism—the presumption that all existence, even consciousness, evolved from matter alone—remains the unproven basis upon which conventional theories of human origins rest.
Ice age theory was born about 180 years ago in connection with studies carried out in the Alps. Geology was then only just being born. Pioneers of the day took most fossil evidence as having resulted from the Great Flood of tradition—
the
benchmark in world history before the birth of modern science— promulgated by Classical writings and religion and tied to beliefs that the world is a mere four thousand to six thousand years old. Geology, however, as a systematic science, found that Earth is millions of years old and that rain-induced flooding could not account for much of the geological devastation that occurred at the time of the mass extinctions. As the scientific movement adopted its uniformitarian dogma, it sought to explain away
all
prehistory in purely materialistic terms, discarding anything that smacked of superstition or
catastrophism
. Scientists of the day, in effect, threw out the baby with the floodwater, adopting prejudices about human origins and past civilizations that dominate to this day.
Within this skewed climate, science ascribed some of the hard evidence of a great cataclysm in recent prehistory to the movement of glaciers, which undoubtedly took place in some areas. But relying on this theory alone necessitated a full-blown ice age, an ice age of greater duration and severity than anything that had come before, to account for burgeoning evidence that something extraordinarily severe had struck the planet and had wiped out most of the world’s mammals, uplifted mountain ranges, caused widespread volcanic explosions, carved valleys and fjords, and left massive deposits of stone and gravel strewn across the globe’s landmasses.
LETTING THE FACTS SPEAK
To understand more fully the story told by the scientific record, rather than what may be described as the contrived positions of orthodoxy, we spoke with J. B. Delair, a longtime researcher in the field of recent prehistory and coauthor of
Cataclysm! Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C.
Delair told us that in his career as a researcher he had come upon many “very strange anomalies,” including massive fossil records in “bone caves” where the remains of countless numbers of incompatible prehistoric animals such as saber-toothed tigers, lions, wolves, bison, rhinoceroses, and mammoths were found washed into deep subterranean recesses. These were the remains of animals that perished in recent prehistory all over the world.
Human beings, in many instances, were found in similar conditions, radiocarbon-dated to times consistent with the animal deaths, and from ethnic groups as diverse as European, Eskimo, and Melanesian (as in the case of a find in China). Similar finds have been recorded in India, Brazil, North America, and the Balkans. Geologists have also recorded finding the remains of hundreds of humans who died from
natural
causes in caves, apparently seeking refuge from the catastrophe.
“As a result of this, I wasn’t at all happy with some of the explanations,” Delair said, “one of these being the ice age, another being the chronology.” The key to unlocking the problem of the anomalies proved elusive. But Delair discovered he was not alone in his quest. He received a phone call from Dr. D. S. Allan, a biologist and researcher in the field of Earth severance (shifting landmasses) who shared similar interests, and a partnership was born. Coupling their talents and interdisciplinary backgrounds, they labored for years and found what appears to be the missing link that unlocks the secret of recent prehistory—“global cataclysm.”
Allan and Delair discovered that, contrary to scientific dogma, certain events took place very rapidly in Earth’s prehistory, such as the shifting of landmasses, as in the case of their own British Isles—which detached from the European mainland just six thousand years ago.
Allan, a Cambridge University doctor of philosophy, versed in physics, chemistry, and biology, had already discovered that many of the same types of plants and animals have existed in different parts of the world when they should not; they are separated by deserts or water. Delair characterized his knowledge of anomalous fossil evidence and Allan’s of anomalous biological evidence as “two sides of the same coin . . . bits and pieces of the same puzzle.”
After years of work, those pieces would fit together, buttressed by an ignored scientific record that when fully revealed proved stunning. As Delair told us when asked about the implications of his work, “It throws a monkey wrench into almost everything, even evolution. Evolution cannot always be a question of the survival of the fittest. You can have a sudden event that can wipe out the best and worst—the survival of the
luckiest
in those instances,” he said.
Using carbon dating, the resources of the British Museum, and those of the Cambridge University library, Delair and Allan established a time frame for the anomalous fossils, which in turn set a time frame for the event that caused their sudden demise.
“The main thing is the dating of the fossils,” Delair said. “They are very, very recent in geological parlance, although quite old in human history. The changes they signify are enormous because there are dislocations in entire faunas and floras by thousands of miles. There are also a lot of very abnormal burials. You get sea animals alongside birds and land animals, coal alongside tropical sea urchins, and all sorts of funny things.”
CONTRIVED SCIENCE
“It [the ice age] was an invention,” Delair stated flatly. In part, it was a reaction to what early geologists and the scientific movement as a whole considered superstition—the flood/conflagration legends. “The original idea of an ice age going back millions of years, ebbing and flowing across the northern and southern hemispheres near the poles, just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, as you can see from our writings. We’ve drawn upon the literature, which was, in fact,
full
of objections [to ice age notions], on geological and biological grounds.”
Many Norwegian fjords, for example, thought to have been carved by ice sheets sliding down from mountains, are open-ended. “There is nowhere for the glaciers to have come down
from,
” Delair said. “The fjords were gigantic fissures, filled up with ice at some later time and smoothed by
some
ice action but not
caused
by ice.” So-called evidence for an ice age having occurred, moreover, such as striation (grooved or ridged rocks) and erratically strewn boulders—supposedly the result of glacial movements—occurs in parts of the globe where an ice age is known
not
to have taken place.
Research funding that rewards conventional results, Delair told us, is partially responsible for perpetuating erroneous assumptions, along with trying to fit all the evidence into the same worn-out theory, necessitating longer, geographically broader, and more numerous ice ages. Also, Delair notes, fitting together the pieces of this grand puzzle of prehistory requires expertise in a variety of fields. Dr. Allan, what’s more, devoted his retirement to this study, a concentration of effort that few, if any, conventionally employed researchers would be able to accomplish.
The picture that Allan, Delair, and others paint, supported by a great deal of field evidence, resembles a catastrophe of mythic proportions. Ice age theory, on the other hand, fails time and again to account for the overwhelming field evidence. The devastation proves to have been so great, in fact, that nothing of earthly origin could have been responsible. Not even a comet or an asteroid, Allan and Delair say, could have wreaked such severe damage. The destructive agent, they tell us, would not necessarily have been very large, but it would have been magnetically powerful, such as an exploding star, a supernova that hurled one or more pieces of its fiery mass our way, upsetting the axes and orbits of various planets through magnetic influence as it moved like a pinball through our solar system for about nine years. The event wreaked horrific trauma upon various planets and caused Earth to convulse, they say, but amounted to nothing more than a minor incident in cosmic terms.
COSMIC EXPLOSIONS
Evidence of a supernova explosion in the form of aluminum 22 (along with other scientific and mythological evidence) found in concentration at the edge of our solar system helped Allan and Delair conclude that a stellar blast probably caused the massive destruction. Iron ore in the earth from 11,000 years ago, its magnetic polarity violently reversed, also testifies to a powerful, extraterrestrial encounter with a magnetically powerful agent at the same time period.
Paul LaViolette, Ph.D., author of
Earth Under Fire: Humanity’s Survival of the Apocalypse,
discovered evidence of a different sort of cataclysm—a volley of cosmic waves resulting from an explosion in the galactic core. Entering our solar system, this “galactic superwave” (the most powerful energetic phe nomenon in the galaxy) would have interrupted the solar wind’s ability to repel most intruding cosmic dust particles, letting the interstellar wind, in effect, have its way with us.
LaViolette, a systems scientist and physicist, found high concentrations of cosmic dust at ice age depths in undisturbed polar ice from Greenland. He determined the amount of cosmic dust in the ice samples by measuring the amount of iridium, a metal that is rare on Earth but abundant in extraterrestrial material. The old uniformitarian assumption was that the rate of cosmic dust depositing in the earth would not have changed over millions of years, but LaViolette found unusually high concentrations in his samples, as well as other evidence of a cosmic visitor during ice age times.
In
Earth Under Fire,
a synthesis of astrophysics and ancient mythical and esoteric traditions, LaViolette details the case for the superwave phenomenon having recently passed through our solar system. He includes in his body of evidence the discovery by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft of narrow grooves, like those of a phonograph record, in the rings of Saturn—which, if they were indeed millions of years old, as uniformitarians maintain, would have banded together by now. LaViolette explains how the superwave would have caused the rings to appear as they do, while Allan and Delair describe how a supernova “chunk” would have disrupted the orbital paths and axial rotations of neighboring planets. Some researchers stated, even before the Voyager visit, that Saturn’s rings may be a mere 10,000 to 20,000 years old, within the time period LaViolette, Allan, and Delair say the cataclysm took place.
Within months of the event, LaViolette says, a shroud of cosmic dust would have caused severe climatic changes on Earth, periods of darkness, severe cold and then extreme heat, massive flooding, and incendiary temperatures as the dust interacted with the Sun, “causing it to go into an active, flaring state,” LaViolette said. “If you could imagine the worst solar storm that’s ever occurred and beef that up a thousand or hundred thousand times—that would be going on continuously. . . . And then you have the possibility that a flare event could engulf the earth.”
