PART V: CIVILIZATIONS
by Anthony Forwood (2011)
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36: Earth Cataclysms
Major cataclysmic events, such as that of the biblical Flood or the sinking of the legendary continent of
Atlantis, are still considered by
the scientific establishment to have been purely mythical events, or otherwise greatly exaggerated and
not actually having taken place quite in the manner or to the extent that
they’ve been portrayed. In the last century, however, this view has begun to
change as new scientific discoveries have given us many clues that offer a
better understanding of the natural planetary events that have taken place in the past. The
geological evidence that has accumulated to date suggests that
these events may have been just as real and just as profound as so many ancient
legends suggest. Further, it suggests that the
supposedly mythical descriptions of the world prior to these
events were very likely to have been more than just imaginary in nature.
For instance, scientific evidence reveals that our planet has gone through at
least four mass extinctions in the past. The last of these wiped out the
dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. Prior to this, a
mass extinction occurred about 215 million years ago, at the
end of the Triassic period. Another one occurred
about 360 million years ago, at the end of the Devonian period, and another one about
435 million years ago, at the end of the Ordovician period. It isn’t known for
certain what caused any of these extinctions, but the last of them, which
killed off the dinosaurs, is believed to have been caused by an asteroid strike. However, other possibilities are still
open to debate.
We actually know very little for
certain about our planet, the solar system, our Milky Way galaxy, or the universe beyond. Scientists are
able to make little more than educated guesses as to how the Earth was formed, what its inner structure is like,
and what outside influences might bear upon it. We have a few ideas about what
might trigger major cataclysmic events on Earth’s surface, but we’re unable to
determine which of them might ever occur, or when. All we really know with any
certainty is that such events must have occurred in the past, and that they
will undoubtedly occur again in the future.
Scientists have found evidence that the Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed a number of times in the past. Apart from many
mammoths that have been found in Siberia, apparently flash-frozen
with fresh semi-tropical plants still in their mouths, which have been dated to
about 10,000 BC, other evidence of polar shifts is revealed in magnetized rock, which is naturally
affected by the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field while the rock is still molten. When the rock
cools and hardens, it records the direction of the magnetic field at the time
of its formation.
The inner core of our planet basically consists of a very
heavy ball of magnetized iron, nickel, and other heavy elements
floating in liquid rock, with us humans living on its cooled and hardened outer
crust. A pole reversal might be caused when this iron/nickel core
shifts within the liquid rock, which could be caused by the gravitational pull of a passing celestial object. Such a shift in the core
would create enough internal disturbances to very likely cause surface activity
that could either be relatively mild and isolated, or very intense and globally
catastrophic.
The evidence of pole reversals, captured in various rock
strata from different time periods, tells us that a
pole reversal occurred early in the Pleistocene age, about 700,000 years ago.
Evidence also shows that an earlier reversal may have taken place about 2.5
million years ago. These two time periods are linked to the extinction of many of Earth’s previous life forms, and it’s believed that
this mass extinction is at least partly due to the weakening of the Earth’s magnetic field, which
normally helps to protect life from excessive cosmic radiation. Cosmic radiation is also
believed to cause the mutations that result in entirely new forms of life. Other geological evidence of more recent pole shifting is found in magnetized rock that dates such shifts at around 7640 BC and
3100 BC. These two latter dates are significant, because they line up very
closely with the dates of planetary cataclysms we would expect to find based on what the Sumerian
records suggest, and they explain both the absence of
a large fossil record prior to this period and the sudden rise of
our own first great civilizations with their advanced knowledge already intact.
And there is, of course, a large
amount of evidence that indicates that our planet went through at
least one ice age that’s estimated to have begun over a hundred
thousand years ago, and which ended only about twelve thousand years ago. What
caused the Earth to go through this ice age period is still not
certain, and scientists can only speculate, but there’s nevertheless
an abundance of evidence that shows that a large part of the Earth was once
covered by thick glaciers where there are none today, and that
landmasses have risen and fallen in relatively short
periods of time. As we’ll see, this last ice age may have been the result of
the Earth tilting on its axis of spin more and more towards ninety degrees so
that either the northern or southern hemisphere was always turned away from the
Sun. This hemisphere would
have had a very cold climate year round while the opposite hemisphere would
have had a very warm climate year round. As time went on, more and more of
Earth’s water would become locked up in glaciers that would grow extremely
massive, their weight bearing down increasingly on the Earth’s crust in the
cooler hemisphere. Eventually, this weight
would cause enough stress on the Earth’s crust to cause its tectonic plates to buckle and shift, with earthquakes and volcanic activity resulting. The glacial ice sheets, having extended beyond
coastlines and reaching far out over the ocean waters, would suddenly break off
under their own weight, causing monster-tsunamis. The release of this ice
and its relatively quick melting in the warmer ocean waters would raise sea
levels, and the large areas of open ocean where glacial ice once reflected away
the Sun’s heat would then be able to absorb that heat, and Earth’s temperatures
would begin to slowly rise.
Whatever it was that occurred,
whether an ice age, a pole shift, both, or something else
entirely, it would very probably have been preceded, accompanied, or followed
by other extreme cataclysmic events.
The sort of natural events that
might occur during a planetary cataclysm, such as earthquakes, volcanic activity, extreme weather conditions, tsunamis and floods, are all effects of some
larger event that triggers them, and although we don’t know for certain what
might have triggered such cataclysmic events in the past, we can make a number
of educated guesses. The most common suggestion is that such cataclysms have
been triggered by either an asteroid strike or by a near-passing comet. Either of these is
totally unpredictable, and can arrive with such suddenness that there would be
little time to do anything to prepare – not that there is a great deal that one
could do in the face of such a catastrophe.
A less common, but no less
supportable hypothesis that’s been put forward by a number of people, including
the Sumerians, is that another
otherwise unknown planet in our own solar system might occasionally pass close enough to affect
our planet. This hypothesis deserves serious consideration because, as we’ve
seen in earlier parts of this book, there’s actually quite a bit of historical
evidence to support it. This topic will be covered in
some detail in the last part of this book, where we’ll see that there is even a
relatively large amount of physical evidence that indicates that such a planet
actually exists.
If a large enough comet or asteroid – or even another planet – passes close enough
to Earth, its gravitational pull could cause tidal waves that would be large enough to wipe out all
coastal regions on the planet for hundreds of miles inland. It’s even possible
for such a massive celestial object to cause a shift in the Earth’s magnetic poles, which might cause a
rapid shifting of Earth’s tectonic plates. A relatively small
asteroid striking Earth could have similar effects, very possibly affecting the
entire planet. The asteroid that’s believed to have struck our planet
sixty-five million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs is estimated to have been little more than six
miles in diameter. Thousands of asteroids of this size or bigger are flying
around in our solar system, and any one of them
could hit our Earth at any time. Many of these are continuously tracked in case
they might pose a danger, but many more have yet to be located in the vastness
of our solar system.
A large solar flare is another possible cause of cataclysmic events. Solar flares are highly
electromagnetic, and could conceivably
cause a shift in the magnetic poles by actually pulling them into a new position
within the planet’s core. Apart from that, a large
solar flare could certainly cause extreme weather changes, including intense electrical storms, hurricane winds, tsunamis, extreme temperatures,
damage from solar radiation, and even geological
disturbances of the Earth’s mantle, resulting in major
volcanic activity and earthquakes.
Whatever the cause, whether a
celestial object, a solar flare, or anything else, major
catastrophes could be triggered on a global scale, throwing
most of the planet’s surface areas into major upheavals. Most or all of life on
Earth would be in extreme jeopardy of perishing, and it’s unlikely that
more than a very small fraction of it would survive through such changes. This
would be as much a threat to humans as it would be to any other earthly
creature, in spite of all the knowledge and technology we might currently have at our disposal. Much
of that technology – which we’ve become so dependent on – would be rendered
completely and permanently useless in such an event.
With major earthquakes, volcanic activity, tsunamis, and extreme weather conditions, the entire globe and all life on
it would be severely affected. The safest areas, far inland and away from
prominent tidal effects and major earthquake zones, would be little safer
than anywhere else, since just the effects of the weather on its own would throw even these areas into
major turmoil. Volcanic ash would cover much of the planet in a thick
blanket that would obliterate the sun and sky for a long time, possibly for years.
This would cause a rapid greenhouse effect as the Earth’s heat became trapped
under this heavy cloud of black dust and smoke. Evaporating water from the
increased heat would raise the humidity and create black ash-filled clouds that
would rain down a thick muck that would cover everything that was exposed to
it. The soot and ash caused by the volcanic activity would literally choke the
planet, making the air virtually unbreathable. To make matters worse, the air
would be filled with excessive noxious gasses such as methane, sulfuric oxide, and carbon monoxide, released from the inner
Earth by the activity of volcanic eruptions. Because of the blocked
sunlight and toxic atmosphere, almost all plant life
would quickly die off, leaving us and most other life forms extremely short on food sources.
Weather conditions would become
extremely violent, with storms of monster proportions,
including hurricane force winds that would sweep across large
areas and leave utter devastation in their wake. Extreme lightning effects would cause millions of acres of
forests to burn worldwide, adding further smoke and ash to an already choked
atmosphere. These depleted forest areas would have an effect on the oxygen and
carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, causing further problems. The heavy
storms would cause intense rain and flooding in areas not already hit by tidal destruction,
making much of the once-habitable land a swampy mess that would be almost
impossible to navigate through, keeping any survivors trapped and isolated.
Earth upheavals would not just consist of the relatively small
and isolated earthquakes that we’re familiar with, but would be on a
much larger scale and occurring in many areas simultaneously, and even causing
whole continental plates to rapidly shift and buckle. The fault lines along the perimeters of these continental
plates would experience the greatest upheavals, and it’s not unlikely that an
area like that encompassing the westernmost parts of the United States, which sit on the edge of
a major fault line where two tectonic plates meet, could be completely swallowed up by such
tectonic shifting. And although earthquakes are normally unheard of in those
areas that are far removed from the fault lines where tectonic plates join,
they could still be susceptible to earthquakes in such a situation, and the
destruction could still be nearly as intense. Our planet’s crust is riddled with huge cavernous pockets that could conceivably cave in on themselves,
swallowing great portions of surface areas and burying them deep beneath the
Earth’s surface.
After the initial cataclysmic trigger had passed, earthquakes and volcanic activity would eventually cease, as well as the
resulting tsunamis, but the resulting
weather conditions would take much longer to settle
down, and not before causing further destruction across the surface of the
entire planet. Conditions would slowly level off over time and the slow process
of environmental restabilization would then begin. During this period, the Earth could very well settle into an ice age as part of its final renewal as a temporarily
inhabitable planet, or it might go super-tropical due to a greenhouse effect, or it might even become
a dead planet just as Mars has become.
In effect, if and when a globally
cataclysmic event takes place, our planet would undergo
severe upheavals that would result in a long period of
extremely harsh conditions that would virtually obliterate any civilization
that had existed and reduce the human population to only a small number of the
most able survivors, no matter how advanced
the civilization might once have been. All that might be left
of human civilization, depending on the amount
of prior warning, the extent of the upheavals, and the proliferation of that
civilization on the planet, could be nothing more than a very few scattered remnants,
the rest buried in places that even with our modern technologies we still can’t go. In later ages, those few
relics of such a long past civilization that happened to be found wouldn’t be
understood for what they were, and would perhaps be regarded as anomalies in the archeological record, or they might otherwise
be misidentified so that they fit within our perceived understandings, whether
or not this might be done purposefully.
That such a planetary catastrophe can happen is inarguable. That it has already
happened a number of times in the past is undoubtedly true, although many
people don’t understand that it can happen again at any moment or they don’t
want to believe that it can, for whatever reason.
Even harder to understand and
believe is the possibility that our human history is much different than we’ve been taught to
believe, and may extend much farther back in time than we realize.
Anthropologists tell us that we only recently evolved from
primitive hunter-gatherers to civilized societies beginning less than about ten thousand years
ago, and they base this belief on Darwinian evolutionary theory and the preponderance of evidence in the archeological record that seems to support it, but with a certain
blindness to anything else that might indicate a different story. There
certainly are many signs that humans lived for a long time in relatively
primitive conditions both during and just after the last ice age, and very little evidence
to show otherwise, but the hard fact is that there is evidence that does
show otherwise, and this throws the entire archeological record and our
human history into serious question.
As we’ve already seen, scientists have tried to downplay and even suppress any evidence that doesn’t fit the consensus view that
humans have only recently evolved from their primitive status where stone tools were our greatest technological advancement. As long as we ignore the
anomalous evidence that happens to exist, this consensus
view makes a great deal of sense. However, if this contrary evidence is taken
into consideration, as it should be, a very different picture emerges.
When we temporarily suspend our
common understanding that we’ve only recently evolved from a primitive existence, and instead consider
that cataclysmic events such as we’ve just described have
occurred in our past, we can begin to understand the various anomalies that have so far been ignored or suppressed as our scientists attempt to piece together a more accurate
picture of our past. When we understand that the face of our planet can be
totally changed in a relatively short time, causing virtually every sign of any
past civilizations to be swallowed up or otherwise erased, then
it becomes much easier to comprehend why we don’t find very much evidence of these past civilizations, and why there
would instead be a preponderance of evidence of only a primitive human existence
in the aftermath of such cataclysmic events. The only signs of anything from an
advanced civilization would be those things that were not washed
away or otherwise obliterated by the effects of such a disaster – such as the
heaviest stone structures that those earlier peoples had erected.
Survivors of a global cataclysm would be quickly reduced from whatever level
of advancement they had previously attained to virtual cave-man status. The
struggle to survive would continue for many generations before any noticeable
advancements might be made, and living in small groups in primitive shelters
and subsisting by hunting and gathering would become the norm. This would continue for
many lifetimes, rather than just one or even a few. In fact, these primitive
conditions could very well continue for many thousands of years, allowing a
record of this primitive period of our history to build up within the Earth, just as we see in the
archeological record today regarding our ancestors who lived after
the last ice age.
It needs to be realized that even
over only one or two generations, much of our learned knowledge would be lost.
Unless we were able to document what we personally knew and remembered, very
little of it could be preserved and passed on to the newer generations. Some
things might be preserved from surviving books and paper documents that might
be found in the aftermath of a global cataclysm, but for the most part,
life would be just too hard to be spending much time providing the newer
generations with anything more than a very rudimentary education to help them survive. Nobody would be spending
much time learning about biology, or chemistry, or electronics, or astrophysics, or advanced mathematics, or any other field of
knowledge that’s integral to our current level of advancement as a society.
Even basic reading and writing skills would be taught to only a small portion
of the first new generations, and these skills might quickly become lost as
well unless each succeeding generation were educated in these basic skills.
This problem would not only result in a definite and drastic decline in the
extent of our current knowledge-base, but also a decline in the level of our
understanding of the concepts required to fully appreciate that knowledge. In other words, we’d
soon have almost none of the conceptions of the world around us that we have
today. With most of the new generations being illiterate, written knowledge
would be useless, and might even be destroyed in ignorance of its value. We’d
still be at an advantage to our primitive forebears, at least for a few
generations, but how long that might last is uncertain. It’s not inconceivable
that we’d sink back to about the same technological state that we were in prior
to the beginning of our first recorded civilization. Although we might still be
able to put some of our still-surviving technologies to use, we’d be left with little or no
knowledge of how they worked, and once they broke down, we wouldn’t be able to
repair them again.
With new generations in the
aftermath having never experienced any of the modern conveniences we currently
take for granted, and having little knowledge about many things that we know
today and which are integral to our current level of advancement as a civilization, they would be forced to
relearn many things all over again.
Over a very short time of only a
few generations, our remaining technologies would come to resemble magic, and those who still
retained knowledge of how to operate them might be seen as magicians, or even as gods.
We’ve already considered certain
evidence that indicates that a civilization of some advancement may have once existed on
our planet in prehistoric times. Let’s now consider some
further issues, so that we have a fairly clear perspective on what may have
taken place prior to our earliest known history, and what may again be ahead
for us in the very near future.
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