| Somewhere in the earth's future lurks a fiery cataclysm that will be triggered by impact with a large cosmic body. When this happens, it will be no more or less than another instance of mindless violence that has shaped our planet and created the context within which life emerged and evolved. Comet and asteroid collisions with earth are now seen as crucial to the origin and evolution of life, and, as many of us appreciate, the origin, evolution and destruction of civilizations. Today, we confront the stark fact that we live on a planet that has been shaped by violent and catastrophic events, catastrophic from the point of view of species and civilizations that might have been unfortunate to experience them, yet creative from the point of view of those that followed. This circumstance is still with us. Future cosmic visitations hold the key to our collective, long-term destiny. After a few rnillion of years of human evolution, which began after more than four billion years of life on earth, the mind of Homo Sapiens is becoming aware of its existence in a cosmic context. Some part of what we have learned about the ways of nature is truly terrifying, at least if we value our long-term survival as a species. The message carried by the discovery of the threat of comet or asteroid impact means is that we can no longer assume that civilization will go on forever. But once we become aware of this, what do we do next? Now that we appreciate that we are perpetually poised on the edge of extinction, what is our species going to do with this knowledge? And what does this awareness imply regarding our place in space? GERRIT L. VERSCHUUR EVIDENCE |
| The Mound Builders - The Ancient Ones- The Giants - The Men of Old - The Mound Builders - Mound Builders Mounds of Wisconsin - Mound Builders of Wisconsin - Effigy Mounds - Conical Mounds- Ceremonial Mounds - |
INTRODUCTION
The traditions of people everywhere throughout the world refer to a series of world ages, each terminated by a natural catastrophe of cosmic dimensions, in
which raining fire and stones, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, thunderbolts, etc., contributed to the general destruction of the earth and its
inhabitants. These traditions refer to actual events which occurred not in the dim past, but well within recorded history.
Through my research of the past, it became obvious that ancient man lived in a frightened state of mind, justified by the events they or their close
ancestors had witnessed. The records they left behind was an effort to document their awe engendered at seeing nature with its elements unchained. Our
modern age of man lives in a state of denial because of the fear of having to face the horrors of the past and the possibilities that we may , once again, be
a witness to these type of events. the history of these catastrophes is extremely unsettling to the historians, evolutionists, geologists, astronomers, and
physicists, thus for the most part they try to ignore what is front of their very noses. History has been re-written many times to fit the philosophy of the times,
but truth is truth and this truth will bear the test of time. Today, we need to face the facts that we live on a planet that has been shaped by violent and
catastrophic events. We also need to realize that our ancient ancestors witnessed many of these events and survived through their ingenuity. By learning
from and understanding our ancestors, we may also survive to tell our stories.
CHAPTER ONE -
MODERN SCIENCE
After Noah had attained the age of 600 years, three days before the death of Methusalem, a comet appeared in the constellation Pisces, was seen by the
entire world as it traversed the twelve signs of the zodiac in the space of a month; on the sixteenth of April it again disappeared. After this the Deluge
immediately followed, in which all creatures which live on earth and creep on the ground were drowned, with the exception of Noah and the rest of the
creatures that had gone with him into the ark. Genesis, chapter 7.(2)
The face of the earth has changed many times. What earth looks like today is certainly not what it looked like during ancient times. For example, during the
Permian Age, all the world's land masses joined together into one supercontinent called Pangea. The latter part of the Permian Age, called the Permian-
Triassic Period had the largest extinction the world has ever experienced. About 90 percent of all species vanished in this mass extinction 250 million years
ago. Approximately 85% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species went extinct in less than one million years. This period has since been
referred to as 'The Great Dying'.
According to NASA's Astrobiology Magazine The Great Dying occurred nearly a quarter-billion years ago. Luann Becker, a scientist with the Institute for
Crystal Studies in the Department of Geology at the University of California, Santa Barbara believes the cause of of the greatest number of extinctions took
place at the end of the Permian Age and was caused by the impact of a large meteor. A theory recently published in the November 2003 journal Science
backs Becker's claim of a large meteor impact.
Becker published an article, "Repeated Blows," in the March 2002 issue of Scientific American, describing the evidence for many past collisions with
asteroids and how geologists are able to find the evidence for these collisions and to date them.
In her overview she states:
* About 60 meteorites five or more kilometers across have hit the earth in the past 600 million years. The smallest ones would have carved craters some 95
kilometers wide.
* Most scientists agree that one such impact did in the dinosaurs, but evidence for large collisions coincident with other mass extinctions remained elusive --
until recently.
* Researchers are now discovering hints of ancient impacts at sites marking history's top five mass extinctions, the worst of which eliminated 90 percent of all
living species."
Becker's current research at the Graphite Peak in the Central Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica, described in the recent Science article, has revealed
several meteoritic fragments, metallic grains, in a thin claystone "breccia" layer. Becker and the research team believe this to be strong evidence for a large
impact that appears to have triggered the Great Dying. Breccia is ejected debris that resettled in a layer of sediment. The metallic grains also appear in the
same layer (end-Permian) in Meishan, southern China. They also resemble grains found in the same strata in Sasayama, Japan. (The earth was a single
continent at the time of the impact.)
The team also found "shocked quartz" in this same layer in the Graphite Peak. In the Scientific American article Becker explained, "Few earthly
circumstances have the power to disfigure quartz, which is a highly stable mineral even at high temperatures and pressures deep inside the earth's crust."
Quartz can be fractured by extreme volcanic activity, however, only in one direction. Shocked quartz is fractured in several directions and is therefore
believed to be a good tracer for the impact of a meteor.
The researchers are somewhat surprised that they have not found the strong presence of the mineral iridium in the Graphite Peak work. In an e-mail from
Antarctica Becker stated, "Interestingly, we do not see a strong iridium anomaly (the impact tracer that marks the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary or the
dinosaur extinction event)."
As she explained in Scientific American, "The first impact tracer linked to a severe mass extinction was an unearthly concentration of iridium, an element that
is rare in rocks on our planet's surface but abundant in many meteorites . From this iridium discovery (in 1980) came the landmark hypothesis that a giant
impact ended the reign of the dinosaurs -- and that such events may well be associated with other severe mass extinctions over the past 600 million years."
The discovery was strongly debated around the world and scrutinized by geologists.
The increased attention brought about the discovery of more impact tracers, including extraterrestrial fullerenes found in the Graphite Peak boundary layer.
These tracers are carbon molecules called fullerenes for their soccer-ball shape. They trap extraterrestrial gases in space and travel to the earth in the
meteor.
The team concludes the Science article by saying, "These observations lead us to believe that continued research on such materials from additional
Permian-Triassic boundary samples will finally lead to a resolution of the long-sought and contentious issue of a catastrophic collision of a celestial body with
the Earth at the end-Permian. In light of the new evidence presented here, this is a reasonable interpretation of the global extinction event at the Permian-
Triassic boundary."
THE COMET ENCKE
Today's scientists found that no matter where they went in the world they were hearing stories of a time in modern man's history of events that also nearly
destroyed earth and its populations. Finally in 1997 various leading scientists from around the world were called in to participate at a Conference in
England to determine what - if any thing - did happen. The SIS Cambridge conference brought together historians, archaeologists, climatologists and
astronomers in order to discuss whether the 'giant comet' hypothesis could be substantiated by the archaeological, climatological and historical record.
The purpose behind the SIS Cambridge conference was that in the fields of Archaeology and Geology, ever since Claude Schaeffer published his book
"Stratigraphie Comparee et Chronologie L'Asie Occidentale" in 1948, there has been continuous scientific debate about the nature and extent of the
destructions of Bronze Age civilisations. Schaeffer claimed that the repeated collapses of Bronze Age cultures were not caused by the action of man but
instead by seismic activity. During the last decade, eminent archaeologists had substantiated his claim and had linked destruction layers in Aegean and
Near Eastern sites with natural disasters rather than with military conquests. The interpretation, however, which maintains that destruction layers are caused
by seismic catastrophes, had been disputed due to the ambiguity of the stratigraphical record. The need for an accurate methodology of verifying the actual
cause, extent and synchronicity of Bronze Age destructions was therefore essential.
In the Research field of astronomical neo-catastrophism and impact cratering the pace had quickened since the early 1980s . An increasing number of
astronomers had suggested that a series of cosmic disasters punctuated the Earth in prehistoric times. Scholars such as Victor Clube, Bill Napier, Mark
Bailey, Fred Hoyle, David Asher and Duncan Steel claimed that a more 'active' and threatening sky might have caused major cultural changes of Bronze Age
civilisations, belief systems and religious rituals. Thus their hopes was to substatiate the astronomical evidence brought forward by astronomers with
historical, archaeological and climatological evidence.
They also felt, that in light of new astronomical and archaeological theories and the emergence of scientific neo-catastrophism, it seemed necessary to re-
assess the origins and cultural implications of apocalyptic religions and catastrophe traditions in ancient mythologies and rituals. In particular, the significant
cultural and religious changes at the beginning of the Bronze Age and those which occurred after its final collapse needed to be re-evaluated.
After a week of meetings and deliberations, the general consensus was that something indeed happened and in most likelihood these cataclysms were
caused by a comet named Encke. Not only once, but these scientists declared that this comet made very close paths to our planet creating four Event
Horizons. (Events causing civizations to be brought close to the brink of destruction). One Event Horizon occurred in 3100 BC and three others there after.
The comet Encke rained down a barage of material that had a horrific effect on earth and caused the displacement of civilization. This comet and these
events were recorded by the survivors that witnessed the horrors. Encki still exists today, but has lost its material and mass. Although it is now only a pale
copy of what it once was these scientists still warn of its danger.
In 3100 B.C. Encki made its first close pass, creating the sudden burst of civilized activity in the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, Americas, etc. This event was
linked to the beginning of their civilization. 1200 B.C. Encki again made a close pass at earth creating the last of these Event Horizons.
Two Swedish astrophysists, Lars and Frances , announced that either two large meteors or a large astroid that split in half crashed parts into the Mid Atlantic
Ridge ie. Canary Islands, Aazores and other , Atlantic islands. They first realized the truth about Atlantis and this Event Horizon around 1949 when the first
sonar search of near Atlantic was conducted by The National Geographic. During this search, a sunken ridge of mountains was discovered. It was given the
name Horseshoe Sea Mound and was found 220 miles due west of The Straight of Gilbrator, fitting the description of Platos Atlantis.
One of the scientists and speakers at the Conference in Cambridge England was Gunnar Heinsohn , University of Bremen, He spoke on the ' The
Catastrophic Emergence of Civilisation, The Coming of the Bronze Age Cultures.' Following is the paper he introduced on the subject:
Throwing of barley grains or small stoned showering of ashes, public defecation and obscene exhibition, panic yelling as well as manic romp and frenzy,
mortal duels of humans and animals in strange costumes making them look like snakes or mixed creatures, entire burning of slaughtered beings - these and
similar activities took place in extremely carefully choreographed blood rituals which emerged at the beginning of the Bronze Age. The holy precincts in which
these sacrificial ceremonies were staged provide the archaeological markers by which the Bronze Age can be told apart from the Stone Age.
The theory of religion is at a loss when it comes to understanding this tremendous turn in the history of religion which, after all, brought about the first stage
of civilisation.
This perplexity did not always dominate the scholarly world. Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger (1722-1759), a French civil engineer and
sociologist' had deciphered the great ceremonies of man as ritualised memories of deluges and revolutions of the earth's crust.
It was the dogma of evolutionism which slowly obscured past global catastrophes from the view of learned men. Yet, the religious texts
were still there. Eventually, they were regarded as mere emanations of exalted souls. The cataclysms described in them supposedly had
nothing to do with earth and cosmos but everything with the unconscious.
This paper tries to prove the basic correctness of earliest cuneiform sources which explicitly state that the first "cult places" with their priestly personnel were
established to give "counseling" to people who were left "beclouded" after a "flood had swept over the earth." Counseling, indeed, meant that the therapeutic
capacities of a child's play were used to heal entire communities. The confused survivors were assigned roles in
which not only the disturbing behaviour of man under the impact of cataclysms but also the catastrophic cosmic agents themselves were
re enacted. The scene of 'cosmic' clashes ended in the spilling of blood and the killing of at least one contender. In this gruesome
act the tense aggression - bottled up in the helpless survivors - was released in one dramatic and cathartic shot Reconciliatory acts
in front of the corpses of the victims required their elevation. Bowing and asking forgiveness before the natural agents who had acquired
the human or animal shape of their skilled impersonators constituted the worship of--freshly slaughtered--idols. After the gradual
abandonment of blood sacrifice in the Iron Age, which was no longer struck by cosmic cataclysm, they were replaced by their portraits in
wood, bone or stone giving shape to the typical statuary gods of high religion.
Following are Gunnar Heinsohn's Credentials :
GUNNAR HEINSOHN (* 1943 in Gynia/Poland) studied sociology, history, psychology, economics and religious studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. He
holds a university diploma in sociology (1971) and doctorates in the social sciences (1973) as well as in economics
(1982). His publication list exceeds more than 400 tides. Since 1984 he has been a tenured professor at the Universität Bremen where he
is director of the Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie und Genozidforschung in 1993. His research focuses on the history and
theory of civilization. Population and family history was dealt with in Theorie des Familienrechts: Geschlechtsrollenaufhebung, Kindes-
vernachlässigung, Geburtenrückgang [1974] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976, with R. Knieper) and Menschenproduktion: Allgemeine
Bevölkerungstheorie der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979, with R. Knieper and O. Steiger). The Great European Witch Hunt
became the subject of Die Vernichtung der weisen Frauen: Beiträge zur Theorie und Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Kindheit (München:
Heyne [1st ed. Herbstein: März; 1985], 1994, with O. Steiger). On the emergence of the rate of interest and money he has published
Privateigentum, Patriarchat, Geldwirtschaft. Eine sozialtheoretische Rekonstruktion zur Antike (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1984). His
attempt at laying the foundations of economic theory resulted in in Eigentum, Zins und Geld. Ungelöste Rätsel der Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Reinbek:
Rowohlt, 1996, with O. Steiger). On the origin of Jewish monotheism he wrote Was ist Antisemitismus? - Der Ursprung von Monotheismus und Judenhaß. -
Warum Antizionismus? (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1988). On Hitler's peculiar brand of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust he has written Warum Auschwitz?
Hitlers Plan und die Ratlosigkeit der Nachwelt (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1995). The reconstruction of ancient history was lined out in Die Sumerer gab es nicht: Von
den Phantom-Imperien der Lehrbücher zur wirklichen Epochenabfolge in der "Zivilisationswiege" Südmesopotamien (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1988),
Wann lebten die Pharaonen? Archäologische und technologische Grundlagen für eine Neuschreibung der Geschichte Ägyptens und der übrigen Welt
(Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn 1990, with H. Illig), Wer herrschte im Industal? Die wiedergefundenen Imperien der Meder und der Perser (Gräfelfing: Mantis,
1993), as well as Assyrerkönige gleich
Perserherrscher! Die Assyrienfunde bestätigen das Achämenidenreich, Gräfelfing: Mantis, 1996). His most recent book is devoted to the
rise of high culture in the bronze age when blood sacrifice dominated religion: Die Erschaffung der Götter: Das Opfer als Ursprung der Religion (Reinbek:
Rowohlt, 1997).
Also presented at SIS Conference was Australian Duncan Steel's astronomical hypothesis on Stonehedge being used as a cometary catastrophe predictor.
His report is as follows:
Astronomical hypotheses for the purpose(s) of megalithic monuments have mostly been implicitly based upon an assumption that the designers witnessed
the same phenomena as those we observe in the sky today. This assumption is not well-based for phenomena having time-constants of order centuries or
millennia, such as the populations of comets and meteoroids in the inner solar system and the ephemeral meteor showers and storms which they produce on
the Earth.
IRAS observations have indicated that Comet Encke has a trail (not tail) of debris some tens of millions of kilometres long, presumably produced since its
latest period of activity began about 200 years ago. One may further presume that the Taurid meteor showers we observe in this epoch are the result of the
dispersal of trails produced in previous activity cycles which must stretch back to about 20,000 yr ago.
When the comet, accompanied by such a trail, has a node close to 1 AU, one expects intense meteor storms to occur, perhaps accompanied by multiple
Tunguska-type events if the disintegrating comet spawns massive lumps of debris.
Determination of the epochs of such events from backwards integrations is impossible due to (1.) Chaotic orbital evolution; and (2.i) Non-gravitational forces,
but pairs of intersections (one at the ascending node, the other descending) are to be expected a few centuries apart and separated by 2500-3000 years. It
is suggested here that one such pair occurred in 3600-3500 and 3200-3100 BC, provoking the construction of the Great Cursus and Stonehenge I.
From Stonehenge I, apparently the first construction at the famous site, as the comet neared the Earth it would have appeared to rise in the evening with a
huge bright stripe crossing much of the sky, originating in the north-east. Passage through the trail would then result in celestial fireworks (and maybe
worse); afterwards the comet and trail would have passed in the direction of the Sun, partially blocking sunlight for a few days.
In order for terrestrial intersection to have occurred in that epoch (late fourth millennium BC) the mean orbital period of the comet over the past 5,000 years
would need to have been slightly less than at present, and might then be expected to have produced a 19 year periodicity in meteor storm events (six
cometary periods). It is suggested that Stonehenge I was built by the Windmill Hill people to allow the prediction of such events, from which they hid in the
shelters we now call long- and round-barrows, and that the later developments at Stonehenge (phases II and II) by the Beaker people were a result of a
misinterpretation of the original purpose of the site in terms of lunar and solar observations, a misinterpretation which was re-discovered by Newham,
Hawkins and Hoyle in the 1960's.
Duncan Steel's Creditials are as follows:
DUNCAN STEEL is director of Spaceguard Australia and Vice-President of The Spaceguard Foundation. Steel took B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at the
University of London, studying at various colleges, and then moved to the University of Colorado where he worked on NASA's Pioneer Venus Orbiter
program. He then moved to New Zealand, where he took his Ph.D. degree at the University of Canterbury for work on radar observations of meteors. He
continued this work from 1985-96 at the University of Adelaide, Australia, spending 1987 as an ESA Fellow at the University of Lund, Sweden. From 1990
until its termination in 1996 he directed the only southern hemisphere program for the discovery and tracking of near-Earth asteroids, based at the Anglo-
Australian Observatory. In connection with this he has served on various international committees, including NASA's Spaceguard committee in 1991-92 and
the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Near-Earth Objects since 1991, and Working Group on the Prevention of Interplanetary Pollution
since 1988. He is the author of over a hundred scientific papers, and the book Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" (Wiley, Chichester and New York,
1995). In addition, he has appeared in numerous TV and radio documentary programs concerned with the impact hazard
And another scientist that gave a report at SIS was Benny J. Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University, School for Human Sciences. Peiser contributes the
following information:
During the last two decades, researchers have found evidence for abrupt climate change and civilisation collapse as well as sudden sea level changes,
catastrophic inundations, widespread seismic activity and abrupt changes in glacial features at around 2200±200 BC. Climatological proxy data together
with sudden changes in lacustrine, fluvial and aeolian deposits are clearly detectable at the Atlantic-Subboreal boundary in the archaeological, geological
and dendrochronological records from around the world. A survey of ~500 excavation reports, research papers and scientific abstracts on late 3rd
Millennium BC civilisation collapse and climate change was carried out in order to assess i) the nature, ii) the extent and iii) the chronology of sudden climatic
and social downturns at this particular chronozone. This comparative study shows a significant pattern of abrupt glacial, eustatic, lacustrine, fluvial,
pedological and geomorphic changes at around 4250±250 cal BP in many areas around the world. In addition, the majority of sites and cities (>1000) of the
first urban civilisations in Asia, Africa and Europe appear to have collapsed at around the same time. Most sites in Greece (~260), Anatolia (~350), the
Levant (~200), Mesopotamia (~30), the Indian subcontinent (~230), China (~20), Persia/Afghanistan (~50), Iberia (~70) which collapsed at around
2200±200 BC, exhibit unambiguous signs of natural calamities and/or rapid abandonment. The proxy data detected in the marine, terrestrial, biological and
archaeological records point to sudden ecological, climatic and social upheavals which appears to coincide with simultaneous sea- and lake level changes,
increased levels of seismic activity and widespread flood/tsunami disasters. The main problem in interconnecting this vast amount of data chronologically is
the application of incoherent and imprecise dating methods in different areas of geological and climatological research. It is hypothesised that the globally
detected evidence for sudden downturns at the Atlantic-Subboreal boundary is chronologically interconnected and that chronological diviations are mainly
due to imprecise dating methods. Neither a seismic nor a climatic explanation for these significant natural and social disasters appear capable to account for
the diversity of ecological alterations and great variety of damage features as well as the global extent of these events. Extra-terrestrial bodies, on the other
hand, depending on their cometary constitution and their cohesive strength, can have catastrophic effects on the ecological system in a variety of patterns
which match the glaciological, geological and archaeological features documented in this study.
Peisers creditials are as follows:
BENNY J PEISER was born in Israel and educated in West Germany. He is a historian and anthropologist with particular research interest in neo-
catastrophism and its implications for human and societal evolution. Benny is a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University and has been
researching, writing and lecturing about neo-catastrophism in the fields of ancient history, archaeology, cultural anthropology (and the origins of ancient
combat sports) since 1987. He has presented and published numerous papers on the historical, intellectual and cultural implications of neo-catastrophism.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society and is the editor of The Sports Historian, the journal of the British Society of Sports History.
Victor Clube, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, spoke on Predestination And The Problem Of Historical Catastrophism .
According to Clube, " Comets passing through the Solar System from the Oort cloud which have lost angular momentum due to planetary close encounters
include a significant proportion of sungrazers. Continuously near the ecliptic such bodies are also especially prone to orbital energy loss thereby enhancing
the prograde cometary population under Jovian control. Such control extends to "Jupiter avoiding" resonances and an expectation on this account of tidally
weakened, giant sungrazers which remain long enough in cis-Jovian space to be physically destroyed.
We therefore expect particularly massive disintegration streams containing a high proportion of sub-kilometre meteoroids such as are required to explain the
zodiacal cloud and nodal intersection with the terrestrial orbit arising in near-contemporary pairs such as are bound to impose a cyclic bombardment and
global cooling of the Earth. Thus individual impactors produced this way are expected to produce mini-ice age, (bio)-chemical pollution or "super-Tunguska"
events depending on their cohesive strength and level of break-up in or above the atmosphere.
A ~2.5kyr Late Holocene cycle of this kind with an apparent pre-Sub-boreal value of ~2.1 kyr which extends into the Late Pleistocene is consistent with a
previously named comet ("Chronos") which was instrumental in producing the last major glaciation ~50-10 kyr BP and which subsequently experienced a
significant cis-Jovian planetary encounter ~5 kyr BP, the latter reducing its orbital eccentricity whilst at the same time enhancing and broadening its
meteoroidal stream. Perceived initially as a central "tree of or life", such a system was to evolve and become the present Taurid Stream.
It follows that the remnant of proto--Encke core of the Taurids is then associated with predictable "dark age" catastrophes. These last for several centuries
and occur around 2000 - 250On BC; n = 0, 1, 2... being naturally combined with a less frequent, more random, lower incidence of such phenomena at
intervening epochs.
Such a sequence of events imposed upon the historical record and repeated down the ages very naturally give rise to the awesome sense of destiny
amongst humankind which has pervaded to post-glacial rise of civilisation and sustained the discipline of both cosmology and theology. Astrologers and
soothsayers (astronomers and priests) belonging to the last "dark age" eras are therefore foremost both in upholding the knowledge and experience of the
predominant pre-"dark age" civilisation [using cuneiform (n=0) and Latin (n+1) respectively] and in underwriting the inevitable revival of "predestination" from
time to time.
The doctrine of predestination may of course be no more than an intellectual fudge designed to make the best of a bad situation: prearranged human
bonding in relation to a supposed omnipotent yet benevolent divinity may meet a very immediate need for reassurance in respect of salvation from a
predicted cosmic threat.
But if sophistry fails, the human condition seems to be one in which secularists and hedonists in the name of condition seems to be one in which secularists
and hedonists in the name of truth, beauty and freedom will commonly respond by pursuing such as millenarianism, utopianism and uniformitarianism, even
as a recipe for revolution. With the "establishment' of such "enlightenment" it is a moot point of course whether English (n=2) will be the vehicle through
which the knowledge and experience of western civilisation are transmitted beyond the next dark age.
Victor Clube's creditials are as follows:
VICTOR CLUBE was funded by the Leverhulme Trust in catastrophism/climate studies at Oxford University and Armagh Observatory (in collaboration with
Bill Napier) having previously held a succession of career posts at Greenwich, Cape and Edinburgh Royal Observatories. These studies have the same
bearing to astrophysics as Newton's historical/eschatological investigations had to dynamical astronomy. As such, they represent a still comparatively rare
academic recognition of the highly erratic socio-political response to cosmic phenomena (mostly to do with giant comet debris) which commonly puts
civilisation seriously at risk Publications include (as co-author) The Cosmic Serpent, The Origins of Comets and The Cosmic Winter.
Amos Nur , Department of Geophysics at Stanford University, spoke on The Collapse of Ancient Societies By Great Earthquakes at the SIS. Following is his
input to the studies:
Although earthquakes have often been associated with inexplicable past societal disasters, their impact has thought to be only secondary for two reasons:
Inconclusive archaeological interpretation of excavated destruction, and misconceptions about patterns of seismicity. However, a better understanding of the
irregularities of the time-space patterns of large earthquakes suggest that earthquakes (and associated tsunamis) have probably been responsible for some
of the great and enigmatic catastrophes in ancient times. The most relevant aspect of seismicity is the episodic time-space clustering of earthquakes such as
during the eastern Mediterranean seismic crisis in the 4th century AD and the seismicity of the north Anatolian fault during our century. During these
earthquake crises plate boundaries rupture by a series of large earthquakes that occur over a period of only 50 to 100 years or so, followed by hundreds or
even thousands of years of relative inactivity. The extent of the destruction by such rare but powerful earthquake clusters must have been far greater than
similar modem events due to poorer construction and the lack of any earthquake preparedness in ancient times. The destruction by very big earthquakes
also made ancient societies so vulnerable because so much of the wealth and power w as concentrated and protected by so few. Thus the breaching by an
earthquake of the elite's fortified cities must have often led to attacks by (1) external enemies during ongoing wars (e.g., Joshua and Jericho, Arab attack on
Herod's Jerusalem in 31 BCE); (2) neighbours during ongoing conflicts (e.g., Mycenea's fall in 1200 BCE, Saul's battle ~1020 BCE); and (3) uprising of poor
and often enslaved indigenous populations (e.g., Sparta and the Helots in 465 BCE, Hattusas ~1200 BCE?, Teotihuacan ~700 AD?). When the devastation
was by a local earthquake, during a modest conflict, damage was probably limited and may have required a few tens of years to rebuild. But when severe
ground shaking is widespread, and when it happened during a major military conflict, the devastation may have been so great that it took hundreds of years
for a society to recover - going through a dark age period during which many of the technical skills (e.g., writing) are abandoned (e.g., the cessation of linear
B), construction and repairs of monumental buildings ceased, and looting of building materials by surviving squatters was common. In contrast, we can
imagine the pastoral countryside, especially away from the tsunami prone coastal areas, to have been much less affected (and perhaps even flourished a
little as their tax burden to the ruling elite is reduced). During a regional seismic crisis an entire region must have been subjected to a series of devastations
by earthquakes over a short period of time. The catastrophic collapse of the main Eastern Mediterranean civilizations at the end of the Bronze age may be a
case in point, with the Sea People being mostly squatters and refugees.
Amos Nur's Creditionals are as follows:
AMOS NUR is the Wayne Loel Professor of Earth Sciences and Professor of Geophysics at Stanford University. Amos specializes in earthquake physics. For
over twenty years, he has been investigating the temporal and spatial patterns of earthquakes throughout history to find clues useful for earthquake
prediction. The longest and most complete record is in the Holy Land, where the Dead Sea seismic fault defines the Arabia - Africa plate boundary, as the
San Andreas defines the N. American/Pacific plate boundary. Together with colleagues in archaeology, history, geology and geophysics at Stanford and
Israel, Amos has organized an expedition to search for, and excavate and recover skeleton/s, artifacts, and Dead Sea scrolls buried 2000 years ago in the
"Cave of Letters. in Israel's Judean desert by the devastating Dead Sea Earthquake of 31 BC. The first part of this expedition took place in March of this
year. Amos is a winner of the Silver Apple Award for physical sciences at the National Educational Film Festival, 1991 for producing and directing a video on
Earthquakes in the Holy Land. This has been shown extensively on a number of PBS stations around the country. Publications: Over 180 papers in refereed
journals; and 3 books.
Irving Wolfe, University of Montreal, spoke on The 'Kultursturz' At The Bronze Age - Iron Age Boundary and the focus of the 2nd SIS Cambridge
Conference: According to Wolfe:
One focus of the 2nd SIS Cambridge conference is the Bronze Age - Iron Age interface, which will be looked at from many different scientific perspectives.
They will attempt to establish between them that a significant cluster of natural cataclysms provoked by non-terrestrial influences occurred ~600 - 500 BC
and altered the physical world. These events are therefore called axial because they caused the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age. I think the period
may also be called "axial" because it seems to me to have led to a virtually universal cultural revolution in all dimensions of human existence. In my paper,
therefore, I will present evidence for what I call a 'Kultursturz' or cultural crisis in which a large number of cultural elements underwent quick and sharp
change within the same short period of time. These include the appearance of secular as opposed to strictly religious art, a host of new religions of a new
type, new philosophies of a new type, writing, dynastic upheavals, the quick upsurge and removal of several tyrannical regimes, urbanism, new patterns of
consciousness, behaviour and dreaming, new types of social organisation, vast pan-Greek ritualistic athletic games, the institution of democracy and the use
of money. All of these elements are totally different in spirit from those of the previous (Bronze Age) cultures. If all of these cultural revolutions can be
correlated chronologically among themselves and to scientific evidence for similar upheavals well documented in the geological, archaeological and
climatological records, (which is the whole point of the conference), then we have before us the outline of a global natural event which not only ended one
historical era, but led to the distinctive cultural characteristics of our modern age. After all, we are the children of this period of upheaval.
Irving Wolfe's creditials:
IRVING WOLFE is professor agrégé, Département d'études anglaises, at the University of Montreal. (M.A. in English from McGill University, Canada;
PhD in Drama from Bristol University, England; Speciality Shakespeare). In addition to his literary research, he has presented several dozen papers on
catastrophism at conferences in England, Canada and the U.S., and has published papers in this field in several British and American journals. Has also
contributed chapters on catastrophism to a number of anthologies. He is currently completing a book on Hitler and catastrophic terror and has prepared a
screenplay for Hollywood of a mass shooting by Nazi soldiers. Professor Wolfe is concerned with the long-lasting effects of unconscious catastrophic memory
on later collective human behaviour, and his work has therefore focused on such topics as catastrophism and creative art; catastrophism and religion;
catastrophism and cosmologies; catastrophism and political extremism; catastrophism and epistemology; catastrophism and soap opera; catastrophism and
Shakespeare; catastrophism and scientific repression; catastrophism and sport, and catastrophism and popular culture.
Emilio Spedicato, from the University of Bergamo, lends Evidence Of Tunguska-type Impacts Over The Pacific Basin Around The Year 1178 A.D.
In year 1178 A.D., as related by Clube and Napier in their book The Cosmic Serpent, a strange event was observed to affect the Moon, which may be
explained by a large impact on the hidden face, originating the Giordano Bruno crater. A number of observations suggest that catastrophic cometary or
meteoritic impacts around the same time also affected the Pacific basin: Maori legends of great fires destroying forests and the moa bird, to be associated to
the recently found Tapanui craters; dynastic changes and migrations throughout Polynesia; very intense El Niño activity with flooding of the coastal
Peruvian regions; demise of the local Moche civilizations, and the birth of the Incas civilization higher in the Andes; the emigration of the Aztects from the
Pacific coast to the interior in the most well protected area from tsunams; unusually intense typhoon activity in the Chinese-Japanese see; unusually strong
floods in Northern China with diversion of the course of the Huang Ho; unusually cold wheather in the Mongolian plateau, probably a main reason for the
Mongolians invading nearby areas; a great sign in the sky seen by the boy Gengis Khan forecasting his future of world master; the number of comets seen
in the sky as recorded by Chinese astronomers was unusually higher.
Spedicato's Creditials:
EMILIO SPEDICATO born in Milano, graduated in Physics and has been working since 1971 in numerical analysis (linear algebra and optimisation) and
applied mathematics. His main work, with Abaffy and Broyden and several Chinese mathematicians, has been the development of the ABS algorithms, which
unify the field of algorithms for solving linear algebraic equations and linearly constrained optimisation and provide novel and better methods than their
classical counterparts (e.g. the implicit LX algorithm which is generally faster and more accurate and has less storage than the classical best algorithm,
Gaussian elimination). Since 1979 he has been involved in the catastrophical reproach of homo sapiens history and related events in the Earth history. He
has proposed that Hispaniola was the original location of Atlantis and is working on a project aiming to study mathematically the feasibility of a revised "polar
model" approach to the history of the solar system (transition from a configuration with aligned planets in synchronous revolution around the Sun to the
present configuration after capture of Jupiter at a time when homo sapiens already inhabited the Earth). He is professor of Operations Research at
University of Bergamo.
Continued Map Four
The traditions of people everywhere throughout the world refer to a series of world ages, each terminated by a natural catastrophe of cosmic dimensions, in
which raining fire and stones, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, thunderbolts, etc., contributed to the general destruction of the earth and its
inhabitants. These traditions refer to actual events which occurred not in the dim past, but well within recorded history.
Through my research of the past, it became obvious that ancient man lived in a frightened state of mind, justified by the events they or their close
ancestors had witnessed. The records they left behind was an effort to document their awe engendered at seeing nature with its elements unchained. Our
modern age of man lives in a state of denial because of the fear of having to face the horrors of the past and the possibilities that we may , once again, be
a witness to these type of events. the history of these catastrophes is extremely unsettling to the historians, evolutionists, geologists, astronomers, and
physicists, thus for the most part they try to ignore what is front of their very noses. History has been re-written many times to fit the philosophy of the times,
but truth is truth and this truth will bear the test of time. Today, we need to face the facts that we live on a planet that has been shaped by violent and
catastrophic events. We also need to realize that our ancient ancestors witnessed many of these events and survived through their ingenuity. By learning
from and understanding our ancestors, we may also survive to tell our stories.
CHAPTER ONE -
MODERN SCIENCE
After Noah had attained the age of 600 years, three days before the death of Methusalem, a comet appeared in the constellation Pisces, was seen by the
entire world as it traversed the twelve signs of the zodiac in the space of a month; on the sixteenth of April it again disappeared. After this the Deluge
immediately followed, in which all creatures which live on earth and creep on the ground were drowned, with the exception of Noah and the rest of the
creatures that had gone with him into the ark. Genesis, chapter 7.(2)
The face of the earth has changed many times. What earth looks like today is certainly not what it looked like during ancient times. For example, during the
Permian Age, all the world's land masses joined together into one supercontinent called Pangea. The latter part of the Permian Age, called the Permian-
Triassic Period had the largest extinction the world has ever experienced. About 90 percent of all species vanished in this mass extinction 250 million years
ago. Approximately 85% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species went extinct in less than one million years. This period has since been
referred to as 'The Great Dying'.
According to NASA's Astrobiology Magazine The Great Dying occurred nearly a quarter-billion years ago. Luann Becker, a scientist with the Institute for
Crystal Studies in the Department of Geology at the University of California, Santa Barbara believes the cause of of the greatest number of extinctions took
place at the end of the Permian Age and was caused by the impact of a large meteor. A theory recently published in the November 2003 journal Science
backs Becker's claim of a large meteor impact.
Becker published an article, "Repeated Blows," in the March 2002 issue of Scientific American, describing the evidence for many past collisions with
asteroids and how geologists are able to find the evidence for these collisions and to date them.
In her overview she states:
* About 60 meteorites five or more kilometers across have hit the earth in the past 600 million years. The smallest ones would have carved craters some 95
kilometers wide.
* Most scientists agree that one such impact did in the dinosaurs, but evidence for large collisions coincident with other mass extinctions remained elusive --
until recently.
* Researchers are now discovering hints of ancient impacts at sites marking history's top five mass extinctions, the worst of which eliminated 90 percent of all
living species."
Becker's current research at the Graphite Peak in the Central Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica, described in the recent Science article, has revealed
several meteoritic fragments, metallic grains, in a thin claystone "breccia" layer. Becker and the research team believe this to be strong evidence for a large
impact that appears to have triggered the Great Dying. Breccia is ejected debris that resettled in a layer of sediment. The metallic grains also appear in the
same layer (end-Permian) in Meishan, southern China. They also resemble grains found in the same strata in Sasayama, Japan. (The earth was a single
continent at the time of the impact.)
The team also found "shocked quartz" in this same layer in the Graphite Peak. In the Scientific American article Becker explained, "Few earthly
circumstances have the power to disfigure quartz, which is a highly stable mineral even at high temperatures and pressures deep inside the earth's crust."
Quartz can be fractured by extreme volcanic activity, however, only in one direction. Shocked quartz is fractured in several directions and is therefore
believed to be a good tracer for the impact of a meteor.
The researchers are somewhat surprised that they have not found the strong presence of the mineral iridium in the Graphite Peak work. In an e-mail from
Antarctica Becker stated, "Interestingly, we do not see a strong iridium anomaly (the impact tracer that marks the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary or the
dinosaur extinction event)."
As she explained in Scientific American, "The first impact tracer linked to a severe mass extinction was an unearthly concentration of iridium, an element that
is rare in rocks on our planet's surface but abundant in many meteorites . From this iridium discovery (in 1980) came the landmark hypothesis that a giant
impact ended the reign of the dinosaurs -- and that such events may well be associated with other severe mass extinctions over the past 600 million years."
The discovery was strongly debated around the world and scrutinized by geologists.
The increased attention brought about the discovery of more impact tracers, including extraterrestrial fullerenes found in the Graphite Peak boundary layer.
These tracers are carbon molecules called fullerenes for their soccer-ball shape. They trap extraterrestrial gases in space and travel to the earth in the
meteor.
The team concludes the Science article by saying, "These observations lead us to believe that continued research on such materials from additional
Permian-Triassic boundary samples will finally lead to a resolution of the long-sought and contentious issue of a catastrophic collision of a celestial body with
the Earth at the end-Permian. In light of the new evidence presented here, this is a reasonable interpretation of the global extinction event at the Permian-
Triassic boundary."
THE COMET ENCKE
Today's scientists found that no matter where they went in the world they were hearing stories of a time in modern man's history of events that also nearly
destroyed earth and its populations. Finally in 1997 various leading scientists from around the world were called in to participate at a Conference in
England to determine what - if any thing - did happen. The SIS Cambridge conference brought together historians, archaeologists, climatologists and
astronomers in order to discuss whether the 'giant comet' hypothesis could be substantiated by the archaeological, climatological and historical record.
The purpose behind the SIS Cambridge conference was that in the fields of Archaeology and Geology, ever since Claude Schaeffer published his book
"Stratigraphie Comparee et Chronologie L'Asie Occidentale" in 1948, there has been continuous scientific debate about the nature and extent of the
destructions of Bronze Age civilisations. Schaeffer claimed that the repeated collapses of Bronze Age cultures were not caused by the action of man but
instead by seismic activity. During the last decade, eminent archaeologists had substantiated his claim and had linked destruction layers in Aegean and
Near Eastern sites with natural disasters rather than with military conquests. The interpretation, however, which maintains that destruction layers are caused
by seismic catastrophes, had been disputed due to the ambiguity of the stratigraphical record. The need for an accurate methodology of verifying the actual
cause, extent and synchronicity of Bronze Age destructions was therefore essential.
In the Research field of astronomical neo-catastrophism and impact cratering the pace had quickened since the early 1980s . An increasing number of
astronomers had suggested that a series of cosmic disasters punctuated the Earth in prehistoric times. Scholars such as Victor Clube, Bill Napier, Mark
Bailey, Fred Hoyle, David Asher and Duncan Steel claimed that a more 'active' and threatening sky might have caused major cultural changes of Bronze Age
civilisations, belief systems and religious rituals. Thus their hopes was to substatiate the astronomical evidence brought forward by astronomers with
historical, archaeological and climatological evidence.
They also felt, that in light of new astronomical and archaeological theories and the emergence of scientific neo-catastrophism, it seemed necessary to re-
assess the origins and cultural implications of apocalyptic religions and catastrophe traditions in ancient mythologies and rituals. In particular, the significant
cultural and religious changes at the beginning of the Bronze Age and those which occurred after its final collapse needed to be re-evaluated.
After a week of meetings and deliberations, the general consensus was that something indeed happened and in most likelihood these cataclysms were
caused by a comet named Encke. Not only once, but these scientists declared that this comet made very close paths to our planet creating four Event
Horizons. (Events causing civizations to be brought close to the brink of destruction). One Event Horizon occurred in 3100 BC and three others there after.
The comet Encke rained down a barage of material that had a horrific effect on earth and caused the displacement of civilization. This comet and these
events were recorded by the survivors that witnessed the horrors. Encki still exists today, but has lost its material and mass. Although it is now only a pale
copy of what it once was these scientists still warn of its danger.
In 3100 B.C. Encki made its first close pass, creating the sudden burst of civilized activity in the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, Americas, etc. This event was
linked to the beginning of their civilization. 1200 B.C. Encki again made a close pass at earth creating the last of these Event Horizons.
Two Swedish astrophysists, Lars and Frances , announced that either two large meteors or a large astroid that split in half crashed parts into the Mid Atlantic
Ridge ie. Canary Islands, Aazores and other , Atlantic islands. They first realized the truth about Atlantis and this Event Horizon around 1949 when the first
sonar search of near Atlantic was conducted by The National Geographic. During this search, a sunken ridge of mountains was discovered. It was given the
name Horseshoe Sea Mound and was found 220 miles due west of The Straight of Gilbrator, fitting the description of Platos Atlantis.
One of the scientists and speakers at the Conference in Cambridge England was Gunnar Heinsohn , University of Bremen, He spoke on the ' The
Catastrophic Emergence of Civilisation, The Coming of the Bronze Age Cultures.' Following is the paper he introduced on the subject:
Throwing of barley grains or small stoned showering of ashes, public defecation and obscene exhibition, panic yelling as well as manic romp and frenzy,
mortal duels of humans and animals in strange costumes making them look like snakes or mixed creatures, entire burning of slaughtered beings - these and
similar activities took place in extremely carefully choreographed blood rituals which emerged at the beginning of the Bronze Age. The holy precincts in which
these sacrificial ceremonies were staged provide the archaeological markers by which the Bronze Age can be told apart from the Stone Age.
The theory of religion is at a loss when it comes to understanding this tremendous turn in the history of religion which, after all, brought about the first stage
of civilisation.
This perplexity did not always dominate the scholarly world. Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger (1722-1759), a French civil engineer and
sociologist' had deciphered the great ceremonies of man as ritualised memories of deluges and revolutions of the earth's crust.
It was the dogma of evolutionism which slowly obscured past global catastrophes from the view of learned men. Yet, the religious texts
were still there. Eventually, they were regarded as mere emanations of exalted souls. The cataclysms described in them supposedly had
nothing to do with earth and cosmos but everything with the unconscious.
This paper tries to prove the basic correctness of earliest cuneiform sources which explicitly state that the first "cult places" with their priestly personnel were
established to give "counseling" to people who were left "beclouded" after a "flood had swept over the earth." Counseling, indeed, meant that the therapeutic
capacities of a child's play were used to heal entire communities. The confused survivors were assigned roles in
which not only the disturbing behaviour of man under the impact of cataclysms but also the catastrophic cosmic agents themselves were
re enacted. The scene of 'cosmic' clashes ended in the spilling of blood and the killing of at least one contender. In this gruesome
act the tense aggression - bottled up in the helpless survivors - was released in one dramatic and cathartic shot Reconciliatory acts
in front of the corpses of the victims required their elevation. Bowing and asking forgiveness before the natural agents who had acquired
the human or animal shape of their skilled impersonators constituted the worship of--freshly slaughtered--idols. After the gradual
abandonment of blood sacrifice in the Iron Age, which was no longer struck by cosmic cataclysm, they were replaced by their portraits in
wood, bone or stone giving shape to the typical statuary gods of high religion.
Following are Gunnar Heinsohn's Credentials :
GUNNAR HEINSOHN (* 1943 in Gynia/Poland) studied sociology, history, psychology, economics and religious studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. He
holds a university diploma in sociology (1971) and doctorates in the social sciences (1973) as well as in economics
(1982). His publication list exceeds more than 400 tides. Since 1984 he has been a tenured professor at the Universität Bremen where he
is director of the Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie und Genozidforschung in 1993. His research focuses on the history and
theory of civilization. Population and family history was dealt with in Theorie des Familienrechts: Geschlechtsrollenaufhebung, Kindes-
vernachlässigung, Geburtenrückgang [1974] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976, with R. Knieper) and Menschenproduktion: Allgemeine
Bevölkerungstheorie der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979, with R. Knieper and O. Steiger). The Great European Witch Hunt
became the subject of Die Vernichtung der weisen Frauen: Beiträge zur Theorie und Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Kindheit (München:
Heyne [1st ed. Herbstein: März; 1985], 1994, with O. Steiger). On the emergence of the rate of interest and money he has published
Privateigentum, Patriarchat, Geldwirtschaft. Eine sozialtheoretische Rekonstruktion zur Antike (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1984). His
attempt at laying the foundations of economic theory resulted in in Eigentum, Zins und Geld. Ungelöste Rätsel der Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Reinbek:
Rowohlt, 1996, with O. Steiger). On the origin of Jewish monotheism he wrote Was ist Antisemitismus? - Der Ursprung von Monotheismus und Judenhaß. -
Warum Antizionismus? (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1988). On Hitler's peculiar brand of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust he has written Warum Auschwitz?
Hitlers Plan und die Ratlosigkeit der Nachwelt (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1995). The reconstruction of ancient history was lined out in Die Sumerer gab es nicht: Von
den Phantom-Imperien der Lehrbücher zur wirklichen Epochenabfolge in der "Zivilisationswiege" Südmesopotamien (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1988),
Wann lebten die Pharaonen? Archäologische und technologische Grundlagen für eine Neuschreibung der Geschichte Ägyptens und der übrigen Welt
(Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn 1990, with H. Illig), Wer herrschte im Industal? Die wiedergefundenen Imperien der Meder und der Perser (Gräfelfing: Mantis,
1993), as well as Assyrerkönige gleich
Perserherrscher! Die Assyrienfunde bestätigen das Achämenidenreich, Gräfelfing: Mantis, 1996). His most recent book is devoted to the
rise of high culture in the bronze age when blood sacrifice dominated religion: Die Erschaffung der Götter: Das Opfer als Ursprung der Religion (Reinbek:
Rowohlt, 1997).
Also presented at SIS Conference was Australian Duncan Steel's astronomical hypothesis on Stonehedge being used as a cometary catastrophe predictor.
His report is as follows:
Astronomical hypotheses for the purpose(s) of megalithic monuments have mostly been implicitly based upon an assumption that the designers witnessed
the same phenomena as those we observe in the sky today. This assumption is not well-based for phenomena having time-constants of order centuries or
millennia, such as the populations of comets and meteoroids in the inner solar system and the ephemeral meteor showers and storms which they produce on
the Earth.
IRAS observations have indicated that Comet Encke has a trail (not tail) of debris some tens of millions of kilometres long, presumably produced since its
latest period of activity began about 200 years ago. One may further presume that the Taurid meteor showers we observe in this epoch are the result of the
dispersal of trails produced in previous activity cycles which must stretch back to about 20,000 yr ago.
When the comet, accompanied by such a trail, has a node close to 1 AU, one expects intense meteor storms to occur, perhaps accompanied by multiple
Tunguska-type events if the disintegrating comet spawns massive lumps of debris.
Determination of the epochs of such events from backwards integrations is impossible due to (1.) Chaotic orbital evolution; and (2.i) Non-gravitational forces,
but pairs of intersections (one at the ascending node, the other descending) are to be expected a few centuries apart and separated by 2500-3000 years. It
is suggested here that one such pair occurred in 3600-3500 and 3200-3100 BC, provoking the construction of the Great Cursus and Stonehenge I.
From Stonehenge I, apparently the first construction at the famous site, as the comet neared the Earth it would have appeared to rise in the evening with a
huge bright stripe crossing much of the sky, originating in the north-east. Passage through the trail would then result in celestial fireworks (and maybe
worse); afterwards the comet and trail would have passed in the direction of the Sun, partially blocking sunlight for a few days.
In order for terrestrial intersection to have occurred in that epoch (late fourth millennium BC) the mean orbital period of the comet over the past 5,000 years
would need to have been slightly less than at present, and might then be expected to have produced a 19 year periodicity in meteor storm events (six
cometary periods). It is suggested that Stonehenge I was built by the Windmill Hill people to allow the prediction of such events, from which they hid in the
shelters we now call long- and round-barrows, and that the later developments at Stonehenge (phases II and II) by the Beaker people were a result of a
misinterpretation of the original purpose of the site in terms of lunar and solar observations, a misinterpretation which was re-discovered by Newham,
Hawkins and Hoyle in the 1960's.
Duncan Steel's Creditials are as follows:
DUNCAN STEEL is director of Spaceguard Australia and Vice-President of The Spaceguard Foundation. Steel took B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at the
University of London, studying at various colleges, and then moved to the University of Colorado where he worked on NASA's Pioneer Venus Orbiter
program. He then moved to New Zealand, where he took his Ph.D. degree at the University of Canterbury for work on radar observations of meteors. He
continued this work from 1985-96 at the University of Adelaide, Australia, spending 1987 as an ESA Fellow at the University of Lund, Sweden. From 1990
until its termination in 1996 he directed the only southern hemisphere program for the discovery and tracking of near-Earth asteroids, based at the Anglo-
Australian Observatory. In connection with this he has served on various international committees, including NASA's Spaceguard committee in 1991-92 and
the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Near-Earth Objects since 1991, and Working Group on the Prevention of Interplanetary Pollution
since 1988. He is the author of over a hundred scientific papers, and the book Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" (Wiley, Chichester and New York,
1995). In addition, he has appeared in numerous TV and radio documentary programs concerned with the impact hazard
And another scientist that gave a report at SIS was Benny J. Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University, School for Human Sciences. Peiser contributes the
following information:
During the last two decades, researchers have found evidence for abrupt climate change and civilisation collapse as well as sudden sea level changes,
catastrophic inundations, widespread seismic activity and abrupt changes in glacial features at around 2200±200 BC. Climatological proxy data together
with sudden changes in lacustrine, fluvial and aeolian deposits are clearly detectable at the Atlantic-Subboreal boundary in the archaeological, geological
and dendrochronological records from around the world. A survey of ~500 excavation reports, research papers and scientific abstracts on late 3rd
Millennium BC civilisation collapse and climate change was carried out in order to assess i) the nature, ii) the extent and iii) the chronology of sudden climatic
and social downturns at this particular chronozone. This comparative study shows a significant pattern of abrupt glacial, eustatic, lacustrine, fluvial,
pedological and geomorphic changes at around 4250±250 cal BP in many areas around the world. In addition, the majority of sites and cities (>1000) of the
first urban civilisations in Asia, Africa and Europe appear to have collapsed at around the same time. Most sites in Greece (~260), Anatolia (~350), the
Levant (~200), Mesopotamia (~30), the Indian subcontinent (~230), China (~20), Persia/Afghanistan (~50), Iberia (~70) which collapsed at around
2200±200 BC, exhibit unambiguous signs of natural calamities and/or rapid abandonment. The proxy data detected in the marine, terrestrial, biological and
archaeological records point to sudden ecological, climatic and social upheavals which appears to coincide with simultaneous sea- and lake level changes,
increased levels of seismic activity and widespread flood/tsunami disasters. The main problem in interconnecting this vast amount of data chronologically is
the application of incoherent and imprecise dating methods in different areas of geological and climatological research. It is hypothesised that the globally
detected evidence for sudden downturns at the Atlantic-Subboreal boundary is chronologically interconnected and that chronological diviations are mainly
due to imprecise dating methods. Neither a seismic nor a climatic explanation for these significant natural and social disasters appear capable to account for
the diversity of ecological alterations and great variety of damage features as well as the global extent of these events. Extra-terrestrial bodies, on the other
hand, depending on their cometary constitution and their cohesive strength, can have catastrophic effects on the ecological system in a variety of patterns
which match the glaciological, geological and archaeological features documented in this study.
Peisers creditials are as follows:
BENNY J PEISER was born in Israel and educated in West Germany. He is a historian and anthropologist with particular research interest in neo-
catastrophism and its implications for human and societal evolution. Benny is a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University and has been
researching, writing and lecturing about neo-catastrophism in the fields of ancient history, archaeology, cultural anthropology (and the origins of ancient
combat sports) since 1987. He has presented and published numerous papers on the historical, intellectual and cultural implications of neo-catastrophism.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society and is the editor of The Sports Historian, the journal of the British Society of Sports History.
Victor Clube, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, spoke on Predestination And The Problem Of Historical Catastrophism .
According to Clube, " Comets passing through the Solar System from the Oort cloud which have lost angular momentum due to planetary close encounters
include a significant proportion of sungrazers. Continuously near the ecliptic such bodies are also especially prone to orbital energy loss thereby enhancing
the prograde cometary population under Jovian control. Such control extends to "Jupiter avoiding" resonances and an expectation on this account of tidally
weakened, giant sungrazers which remain long enough in cis-Jovian space to be physically destroyed.
We therefore expect particularly massive disintegration streams containing a high proportion of sub-kilometre meteoroids such as are required to explain the
zodiacal cloud and nodal intersection with the terrestrial orbit arising in near-contemporary pairs such as are bound to impose a cyclic bombardment and
global cooling of the Earth. Thus individual impactors produced this way are expected to produce mini-ice age, (bio)-chemical pollution or "super-Tunguska"
events depending on their cohesive strength and level of break-up in or above the atmosphere.
A ~2.5kyr Late Holocene cycle of this kind with an apparent pre-Sub-boreal value of ~2.1 kyr which extends into the Late Pleistocene is consistent with a
previously named comet ("Chronos") which was instrumental in producing the last major glaciation ~50-10 kyr BP and which subsequently experienced a
significant cis-Jovian planetary encounter ~5 kyr BP, the latter reducing its orbital eccentricity whilst at the same time enhancing and broadening its
meteoroidal stream. Perceived initially as a central "tree of or life", such a system was to evolve and become the present Taurid Stream.
It follows that the remnant of proto--Encke core of the Taurids is then associated with predictable "dark age" catastrophes. These last for several centuries
and occur around 2000 - 250On BC; n = 0, 1, 2... being naturally combined with a less frequent, more random, lower incidence of such phenomena at
intervening epochs.
Such a sequence of events imposed upon the historical record and repeated down the ages very naturally give rise to the awesome sense of destiny
amongst humankind which has pervaded to post-glacial rise of civilisation and sustained the discipline of both cosmology and theology. Astrologers and
soothsayers (astronomers and priests) belonging to the last "dark age" eras are therefore foremost both in upholding the knowledge and experience of the
predominant pre-"dark age" civilisation [using cuneiform (n=0) and Latin (n+1) respectively] and in underwriting the inevitable revival of "predestination" from
time to time.
The doctrine of predestination may of course be no more than an intellectual fudge designed to make the best of a bad situation: prearranged human
bonding in relation to a supposed omnipotent yet benevolent divinity may meet a very immediate need for reassurance in respect of salvation from a
predicted cosmic threat.
But if sophistry fails, the human condition seems to be one in which secularists and hedonists in the name of condition seems to be one in which secularists
and hedonists in the name of truth, beauty and freedom will commonly respond by pursuing such as millenarianism, utopianism and uniformitarianism, even
as a recipe for revolution. With the "establishment' of such "enlightenment" it is a moot point of course whether English (n=2) will be the vehicle through
which the knowledge and experience of western civilisation are transmitted beyond the next dark age.
Victor Clube's creditials are as follows:
VICTOR CLUBE was funded by the Leverhulme Trust in catastrophism/climate studies at Oxford University and Armagh Observatory (in collaboration with
Bill Napier) having previously held a succession of career posts at Greenwich, Cape and Edinburgh Royal Observatories. These studies have the same
bearing to astrophysics as Newton's historical/eschatological investigations had to dynamical astronomy. As such, they represent a still comparatively rare
academic recognition of the highly erratic socio-political response to cosmic phenomena (mostly to do with giant comet debris) which commonly puts
civilisation seriously at risk Publications include (as co-author) The Cosmic Serpent, The Origins of Comets and The Cosmic Winter.
Amos Nur , Department of Geophysics at Stanford University, spoke on The Collapse of Ancient Societies By Great Earthquakes at the SIS. Following is his
input to the studies:
Although earthquakes have often been associated with inexplicable past societal disasters, their impact has thought to be only secondary for two reasons:
Inconclusive archaeological interpretation of excavated destruction, and misconceptions about patterns of seismicity. However, a better understanding of the
irregularities of the time-space patterns of large earthquakes suggest that earthquakes (and associated tsunamis) have probably been responsible for some
of the great and enigmatic catastrophes in ancient times. The most relevant aspect of seismicity is the episodic time-space clustering of earthquakes such as
during the eastern Mediterranean seismic crisis in the 4th century AD and the seismicity of the north Anatolian fault during our century. During these
earthquake crises plate boundaries rupture by a series of large earthquakes that occur over a period of only 50 to 100 years or so, followed by hundreds or
even thousands of years of relative inactivity. The extent of the destruction by such rare but powerful earthquake clusters must have been far greater than
similar modem events due to poorer construction and the lack of any earthquake preparedness in ancient times. The destruction by very big earthquakes
also made ancient societies so vulnerable because so much of the wealth and power w as concentrated and protected by so few. Thus the breaching by an
earthquake of the elite's fortified cities must have often led to attacks by (1) external enemies during ongoing wars (e.g., Joshua and Jericho, Arab attack on
Herod's Jerusalem in 31 BCE); (2) neighbours during ongoing conflicts (e.g., Mycenea's fall in 1200 BCE, Saul's battle ~1020 BCE); and (3) uprising of poor
and often enslaved indigenous populations (e.g., Sparta and the Helots in 465 BCE, Hattusas ~1200 BCE?, Teotihuacan ~700 AD?). When the devastation
was by a local earthquake, during a modest conflict, damage was probably limited and may have required a few tens of years to rebuild. But when severe
ground shaking is widespread, and when it happened during a major military conflict, the devastation may have been so great that it took hundreds of years
for a society to recover - going through a dark age period during which many of the technical skills (e.g., writing) are abandoned (e.g., the cessation of linear
B), construction and repairs of monumental buildings ceased, and looting of building materials by surviving squatters was common. In contrast, we can
imagine the pastoral countryside, especially away from the tsunami prone coastal areas, to have been much less affected (and perhaps even flourished a
little as their tax burden to the ruling elite is reduced). During a regional seismic crisis an entire region must have been subjected to a series of devastations
by earthquakes over a short period of time. The catastrophic collapse of the main Eastern Mediterranean civilizations at the end of the Bronze age may be a
case in point, with the Sea People being mostly squatters and refugees.
Amos Nur's Creditionals are as follows:
AMOS NUR is the Wayne Loel Professor of Earth Sciences and Professor of Geophysics at Stanford University. Amos specializes in earthquake physics. For
over twenty years, he has been investigating the temporal and spatial patterns of earthquakes throughout history to find clues useful for earthquake
prediction. The longest and most complete record is in the Holy Land, where the Dead Sea seismic fault defines the Arabia - Africa plate boundary, as the
San Andreas defines the N. American/Pacific plate boundary. Together with colleagues in archaeology, history, geology and geophysics at Stanford and
Israel, Amos has organized an expedition to search for, and excavate and recover skeleton/s, artifacts, and Dead Sea scrolls buried 2000 years ago in the
"Cave of Letters. in Israel's Judean desert by the devastating Dead Sea Earthquake of 31 BC. The first part of this expedition took place in March of this
year. Amos is a winner of the Silver Apple Award for physical sciences at the National Educational Film Festival, 1991 for producing and directing a video on
Earthquakes in the Holy Land. This has been shown extensively on a number of PBS stations around the country. Publications: Over 180 papers in refereed
journals; and 3 books.
Irving Wolfe, University of Montreal, spoke on The 'Kultursturz' At The Bronze Age - Iron Age Boundary and the focus of the 2nd SIS Cambridge
Conference: According to Wolfe:
One focus of the 2nd SIS Cambridge conference is the Bronze Age - Iron Age interface, which will be looked at from many different scientific perspectives.
They will attempt to establish between them that a significant cluster of natural cataclysms provoked by non-terrestrial influences occurred ~600 - 500 BC
and altered the physical world. These events are therefore called axial because they caused the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age. I think the period
may also be called "axial" because it seems to me to have led to a virtually universal cultural revolution in all dimensions of human existence. In my paper,
therefore, I will present evidence for what I call a 'Kultursturz' or cultural crisis in which a large number of cultural elements underwent quick and sharp
change within the same short period of time. These include the appearance of secular as opposed to strictly religious art, a host of new religions of a new
type, new philosophies of a new type, writing, dynastic upheavals, the quick upsurge and removal of several tyrannical regimes, urbanism, new patterns of
consciousness, behaviour and dreaming, new types of social organisation, vast pan-Greek ritualistic athletic games, the institution of democracy and the use
of money. All of these elements are totally different in spirit from those of the previous (Bronze Age) cultures. If all of these cultural revolutions can be
correlated chronologically among themselves and to scientific evidence for similar upheavals well documented in the geological, archaeological and
climatological records, (which is the whole point of the conference), then we have before us the outline of a global natural event which not only ended one
historical era, but led to the distinctive cultural characteristics of our modern age. After all, we are the children of this period of upheaval.
Irving Wolfe's creditials:
IRVING WOLFE is professor agrégé, Département d'études anglaises, at the University of Montreal. (M.A. in English from McGill University, Canada;
PhD in Drama from Bristol University, England; Speciality Shakespeare). In addition to his literary research, he has presented several dozen papers on
catastrophism at conferences in England, Canada and the U.S., and has published papers in this field in several British and American journals. Has also
contributed chapters on catastrophism to a number of anthologies. He is currently completing a book on Hitler and catastrophic terror and has prepared a
screenplay for Hollywood of a mass shooting by Nazi soldiers. Professor Wolfe is concerned with the long-lasting effects of unconscious catastrophic memory
on later collective human behaviour, and his work has therefore focused on such topics as catastrophism and creative art; catastrophism and religion;
catastrophism and cosmologies; catastrophism and political extremism; catastrophism and epistemology; catastrophism and soap opera; catastrophism and
Shakespeare; catastrophism and scientific repression; catastrophism and sport, and catastrophism and popular culture.
Emilio Spedicato, from the University of Bergamo, lends Evidence Of Tunguska-type Impacts Over The Pacific Basin Around The Year 1178 A.D.
In year 1178 A.D., as related by Clube and Napier in their book The Cosmic Serpent, a strange event was observed to affect the Moon, which may be
explained by a large impact on the hidden face, originating the Giordano Bruno crater. A number of observations suggest that catastrophic cometary or
meteoritic impacts around the same time also affected the Pacific basin: Maori legends of great fires destroying forests and the moa bird, to be associated to
the recently found Tapanui craters; dynastic changes and migrations throughout Polynesia; very intense El Niño activity with flooding of the coastal
Peruvian regions; demise of the local Moche civilizations, and the birth of the Incas civilization higher in the Andes; the emigration of the Aztects from the
Pacific coast to the interior in the most well protected area from tsunams; unusually intense typhoon activity in the Chinese-Japanese see; unusually strong
floods in Northern China with diversion of the course of the Huang Ho; unusually cold wheather in the Mongolian plateau, probably a main reason for the
Mongolians invading nearby areas; a great sign in the sky seen by the boy Gengis Khan forecasting his future of world master; the number of comets seen
in the sky as recorded by Chinese astronomers was unusually higher.
Spedicato's Creditials:
EMILIO SPEDICATO born in Milano, graduated in Physics and has been working since 1971 in numerical analysis (linear algebra and optimisation) and
applied mathematics. His main work, with Abaffy and Broyden and several Chinese mathematicians, has been the development of the ABS algorithms, which
unify the field of algorithms for solving linear algebraic equations and linearly constrained optimisation and provide novel and better methods than their
classical counterparts (e.g. the implicit LX algorithm which is generally faster and more accurate and has less storage than the classical best algorithm,
Gaussian elimination). Since 1979 he has been involved in the catastrophical reproach of homo sapiens history and related events in the Earth history. He
has proposed that Hispaniola was the original location of Atlantis and is working on a project aiming to study mathematically the feasibility of a revised "polar
model" approach to the history of the solar system (transition from a configuration with aligned planets in synchronous revolution around the Sun to the
present configuration after capture of Jupiter at a time when homo sapiens already inhabited the Earth). He is professor of Operations Research at
University of Bergamo.
Continued Map Four
Ancient Civilizations and Cataclysms of the Ages
by Mary Sutherland
Copyright 2006
by Mary Sutherland
Copyright 2006
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