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Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future
Scientific confirmation of advanced civilization at the end of the last ice age, the solar catastrophe that destroyed it, and what the evidence
means for our future
• Demonstrates, based on the 12,000-year-old megalithic complex of Göbekli Tepe, that advanced civilization extends thousands of years further back than generally acknowledged
• Examines the catastrophic solar outbursts that ended the last ice age, wiping out antediluvian civilization and incinerating much of the evidence of that period
• Reveals data that show solar outbursts powerful enough to devastate modern society could return in the future
Building upon his revolutionary theory that the Sphinx dates back much further than 2500 BCE, geologist Robert Schoch reveals scientific evidence of advanced civilization predating ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and Greece, as well as the catastrophe that destroyed it nearly 12,000 years ago and what its legacy can teach us about our own future.
Combining evidence from multiple scientific disciplines, Schoch shows how the last ice age ended abruptly in 9700 BCE due to coronal mass ejections from the Sun. These solar outbursts unleashed electrical/plasma discharges upon Earth and triggered volcanic activity, earthquakes, fires, and massive floods as glaciers melted and lightning strikes released torrential rains from the oceans. He explains how these events eradicated the civilization of the time and set humanity back thousands of years, only to reemerge around 3500 BCE with scattered memories and nascent abilities. He explores within this framework, how many megalithic monuments, underground cities, and ancient legends fall logically into place, as well as the reinterpreted Easter Island rongorongo texts and the intentional burial, 10,000 years ago, of the Göbekli Tepe complex in Turkey. Schoch reveals scientific evidence that shows how history could repeat itself with a coronal mass ejection powerful enough to devastate modern society.
Weaving together a new view of the origins of civilization, the truths behind ancient wisdom, and the dynamics of the planet we live on, Schoch maintains we must heed the megalithic warning of the past and collectively prepare for future events.
means for our future
• Demonstrates, based on the 12,000-year-old megalithic complex of Göbekli Tepe, that advanced civilization extends thousands of years further back than generally acknowledged
• Examines the catastrophic solar outbursts that ended the last ice age, wiping out antediluvian civilization and incinerating much of the evidence of that period
• Reveals data that show solar outbursts powerful enough to devastate modern society could return in the future
Building upon his revolutionary theory that the Sphinx dates back much further than 2500 BCE, geologist Robert Schoch reveals scientific evidence of advanced civilization predating ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and Greece, as well as the catastrophe that destroyed it nearly 12,000 years ago and what its legacy can teach us about our own future.
Combining evidence from multiple scientific disciplines, Schoch shows how the last ice age ended abruptly in 9700 BCE due to coronal mass ejections from the Sun. These solar outbursts unleashed electrical/plasma discharges upon Earth and triggered volcanic activity, earthquakes, fires, and massive floods as glaciers melted and lightning strikes released torrential rains from the oceans. He explains how these events eradicated the civilization of the time and set humanity back thousands of years, only to reemerge around 3500 BCE with scattered memories and nascent abilities. He explores within this framework, how many megalithic monuments, underground cities, and ancient legends fall logically into place, as well as the reinterpreted Easter Island rongorongo texts and the intentional burial, 10,000 years ago, of the Göbekli Tepe complex in Turkey. Schoch reveals scientific evidence that shows how history could repeat itself with a coronal mass ejection powerful enough to devastate modern society.
Weaving together a new view of the origins of civilization, the truths behind ancient wisdom, and the dynamics of the planet we live on, Schoch maintains we must heed the megalithic warning of the past and collectively prepare for future events.
390 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 10, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
March 5, 2013
I met geology professor Dr. Robert Schoch the day (in 1991) he announced to the world that the Sphinx is much older than anyone previously suspected. I was the only journalist on site, and we spent nearly 12 subsequent hours chatting about his exciting discoveries. Meanwhile the geologists at the convention agreed with him, the rest of the media ignored him, and the entrenched Egyptology and archeology communities hadn't yet realized that he'd turned their assumptions upside down. It was the calm before the storm. I was so fortunate to be first in line! But I hadn't spoken to him, nor had our paths crossed, since my little news item appeared in print back in the early 90s.
So I was very happy to "reconnect" with Dr. Schoch through the pages of his latest book, particularly since his open-minded yet serious scientific assessments were now taking up topics closer to my own esoteric interests. He does a wonderful job of keeping his text conversational and personal, while carefully laying out his scientific sources, and examining everything in the light of his rigorous training in scientific disciplines.
For instance, I can tune in to my Cosmic CoAuthors and say, yes, of course Atlantis and other advanced civilizations predated our written history on Earth, and of course our solar system and our planet are affected by energetic outpourings from the center of the galaxy, planned and time by greater Minds than our own. But I'm the kind of source that gains credibility only among those who know what I mean when I describe my Cosmic CoAuthors. Dr. Schoch, on the other hand, brings his scientific reasoning and hard, personally collected data to bear on these same topics---with very exciting results! He also draws in the work of other leading-edge scientists from numerous discplines to back up his theories and to fairly evaluate others, never stooping so low as to dismiss them out of hand as so many do. Moreover, he makes this sometimes esoteric science very accessible for the average reader.
I found the book to be an excellent resource for the latest news from the frontiers of science, while also laying out Dr. Schoch's theories about solar outbursts past, present, and perhaps future. Fascinating to read, and a surprising page-turner, considering the subject matter.
I also appreciate his viewpoints on the forces that keep visionaries like Dr. Schoch and others from getting their discoveries a fair airing in front of the public at large -- the politics, money, and other factors that keep us in the dark, slow the developments in all scientific fields, and hold back our collective evolutionary growth.
So I was very happy to "reconnect" with Dr. Schoch through the pages of his latest book, particularly since his open-minded yet serious scientific assessments were now taking up topics closer to my own esoteric interests. He does a wonderful job of keeping his text conversational and personal, while carefully laying out his scientific sources, and examining everything in the light of his rigorous training in scientific disciplines.
For instance, I can tune in to my Cosmic CoAuthors and say, yes, of course Atlantis and other advanced civilizations predated our written history on Earth, and of course our solar system and our planet are affected by energetic outpourings from the center of the galaxy, planned and time by greater Minds than our own. But I'm the kind of source that gains credibility only among those who know what I mean when I describe my Cosmic CoAuthors. Dr. Schoch, on the other hand, brings his scientific reasoning and hard, personally collected data to bear on these same topics---with very exciting results! He also draws in the work of other leading-edge scientists from numerous discplines to back up his theories and to fairly evaluate others, never stooping so low as to dismiss them out of hand as so many do. Moreover, he makes this sometimes esoteric science very accessible for the average reader.
I found the book to be an excellent resource for the latest news from the frontiers of science, while also laying out Dr. Schoch's theories about solar outbursts past, present, and perhaps future. Fascinating to read, and a surprising page-turner, considering the subject matter.
I also appreciate his viewpoints on the forces that keep visionaries like Dr. Schoch and others from getting their discoveries a fair airing in front of the public at large -- the politics, money, and other factors that keep us in the dark, slow the developments in all scientific fields, and hold back our collective evolutionary growth.
January 2, 2013
The title promises more than it delivers. This book was to satisfy my thirst for unexplained phenomena, but unfortunately most of what was discussed in this book was the same ole same ole of alternative archeology: the pyramid is older than mainstream believes; there were giants and we have the evidence in Easter Island, etc.
There were a few interesting new details about an underground city I hadn't read about before, but ultimately the book suffers from that same disconnected and rambling writing style that makes reading any of these alternative science books such a task. This author, given to parenthetical digressions which split in half the full meaning of every single interesting sentence, also spent a good deal of time talking about his "summer vacation," his dinners with important friends and the formless bedtime theories of his wife, whose qualifications remain obscure. His attempt to connect plasma storms with cave paintings left me mostly unimpressed. I was amenable to the idea, but to say that his arguments were weak is to be kind.
His most interesting ideas came at the end of the book, referencing vaguely experiments about entangled diamonds and proof of speed beyond the speed of light, which would mean that time travel is possible and is, perhaps, already occurring. But you know there is something to worry about when the book's appendixes, which go on and on and on and on, are more interesting than the book itself.
My suggestion for all these scientists writing this stuff is to get an editor, a real editor, and learn some narrative structuring skills, for goddsake.
There were a few interesting new details about an underground city I hadn't read about before, but ultimately the book suffers from that same disconnected and rambling writing style that makes reading any of these alternative science books such a task. This author, given to parenthetical digressions which split in half the full meaning of every single interesting sentence, also spent a good deal of time talking about his "summer vacation," his dinners with important friends and the formless bedtime theories of his wife, whose qualifications remain obscure. His attempt to connect plasma storms with cave paintings left me mostly unimpressed. I was amenable to the idea, but to say that his arguments were weak is to be kind.
His most interesting ideas came at the end of the book, referencing vaguely experiments about entangled diamonds and proof of speed beyond the speed of light, which would mean that time travel is possible and is, perhaps, already occurring. But you know there is something to worry about when the book's appendixes, which go on and on and on and on, are more interesting than the book itself.
My suggestion for all these scientists writing this stuff is to get an editor, a real editor, and learn some narrative structuring skills, for goddsake.
October 31, 2012
In the quest to explain the disappearance of a lost ancient civilization this book finally hits on a plausible natural event that could lead to the kind of widespread cataclysm that is frequently reported in the old mythologies and texts left to us by our ancestors. Reading this has helped bridged the gap between multiple disciplines, each with their own intriguing ideas, but rarely pulled together to explain the bigger picture. It was exciting to read about the ancient technology and feats of such distant ancient cultures and have the accepted timeline reevaluated into a context that makes sense. I am familiar with the works of the Electric Universe people, the plasma experiments and work with ancient petrogyphs from Dr. Anthony Peratt, but combining those ideas with the currently known megatlithic structures found all over the globe helps to paint a picture of a formidable advanced culture in our past that was capable of feats we can only scratch our heads at. To understand that man has fallen from this distant time, that man has devolved and we are just now beginning to see glimpses of our past golden age is humbling and the theme of cataclysmic cycles becomes more important. The ancients knew this, we are just beginning to understand. There had to be a reason man in the distant past was obsessed with watching the sky, with tracking time and the movements of the heavenly bodies. Even with this intimate knowledge of the natural world, man was unable to avoid utter destruction on a global level. It is a history lesson and a warning.
March 30, 2015
This was a great idea for a book and it's too bad that Mr. Schoch decided not to write it. Some of the ideas about solar events, the way the plasma manifested in the sky as it relates to ancient petroglyphs is fascinating. Mr. Schoch spent very little time in this space however (in spite of the book's title). Instead we got a brief, incomplete overview coupled with a survey of every piece of fringe science out there from the memory of water, to quantum entanglement to telepathy. There was the obligatory chapter on his work with the Sphinx of course. It always comes back to the Sphinx with this guy. Not an original thought in the book, but there was plenty of promotion of fringe science, especially the work of Paul LaViolette whose confusing and widely ignored and self-published work got several chapters.
I gave the book 3 stars for its entertainment value and docked it two for not staying on point. This is still a great and fascinating subject. I wish Mr. Schoch thought so too.
I gave the book 3 stars for its entertainment value and docked it two for not staying on point. This is still a great and fascinating subject. I wish Mr. Schoch thought so too.
April 18, 2013
I first heard of Robert Schoch about fifteen years ago when I watched the NBC special "The Mysterious Origins of Man." Schoch was brought into the project both for his PhD in geology from Yale and for his open-mindedness, specifically on the age of the Sphinx. Despite the assertion of mainstream Egyptology that the Sphinx could not be more than, at most, about 4,500 to 5,000 years old - Schoch said the Sphinx showed obvious erosion from intense rainfall, the likes of which Egypt had not seen for several thousand years before conventional theories permitted. He stuck his neck out (though not as boldly as John Anthony West, who suggested a far older date for the Sphinx) and said that mainstream Egyptology's date for the Sphinx is probably off by a few thousand years. This unorthodoxy brought many negative responses from established PhDs in a variety of fields.
At the time (early to mid 1990s) when Schoch and West were first getting attention for the idea that erosion by rainfall proved the Sphinx is older than we have been taught, one rebuttal from the orthodox Egyptologists was to ask who built it. "Where's the civilization" before dynastic Egypt? In the early 90s there was little evidence to counter the accepted paradigm that no society that far back was organized enough to build monuments.
This changed with the ongoing discoveries at Gobekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, which has been excavated by German (and Turkish) archeologists since 1994. As Schoch points out in "Forgotten Civilization" mainstream archeologists now date the monuments there to approximately 9-10,000 B.C. The established existence of an organized society at this point in time makes Schoch's conservatively early dating of the Sphinx seem less unlikely. It offers proof that man had achieved civilization earlier than we were taught.
But a very ancient Sphinx and very ancient Gobekli Tepe also force us to wonder what happened to this early civilization which rose and fell with no continuation, with no evidence of organized society for thousands of years after - until approximately 3,100 B.C. Why did the earliest monument builders completely disappear?
Schoch suggests that there were "catastrophes that occurred over ten thousand years ago, eradicating this early, forgotten civilization." (p. 8) He tells us that "geological data indicate that the last ice age ended extremely suddenly, catastrophically, around 9700 BCE.... and I believe, the date of a major solar outburst." (p. 253) He describes evidence of a major solar flare hitting the earth, and suggests that the sun is nowhere near as stable as recent history implies. Instead he assumes "that major plasma events might impact Earth approximately every ten thousand years. It has been 11,700 years since the last one." (p. 103)
The implication is that we are overdue for a solar event capable of causing a civilization-ending catastrophe. It might originate with the sun's own cyclical variations, or perhaps the sun's activity is triggered by a cosmic source like Dr. Paul LaViolette's galactic superwaves. While not specifically assuming that a pole shift will occur, nor that it will occur on December 21, 2012 at the end of the Mayan Long Count - Schoch suggests that something catastrophic may very well occur near the Mayan end date. But to him, such an approximation could mean 2012, 2013, or even 2050. (p. 216)
As an author covering similar topics (ancient civilizations, cosmic catastrophes, the Mayan Calendar, prophecies of the end of the world, etc.) I agree with Schoch on many points, although my analysis concludes that we should worry about a very specific date in 2019. Schoch takes a slightly different route than I do (focusing on geological evidence and solar outbursts) but we reach similar overall conclusions because we are analyzing many of the same facts. The truth is becoming more obvious, (especially within the last twenty years) despite attempts from established schools of thought to stifle innovative reevaluations of cherished paradigms.
A major part of Schoch's premise assumes not only that a solar plasma event devastated Earth around 9700 BCE, but that our distant ancestors recorded what they saw when the plasma hit and strange electrical discharges and auroras dominated the skies. He discusses what might be drawings and descriptions of this event from many cultures, but focuses on Easter Island's moai statues and rongorongo text. I do not feel there is enough evidence on Easter Island to be thoroughly convincing, but his ideas on this merit consideration - he made a sensible argument based on the minimal evidence available.
I am not quite sure why, near the end of the book, he delves into many unusual topics - such as ESP and parapsychology, quantum entanglement, harmonic resonances, faster than light travel, retrocausality, precognition, and the illusion of free will - to name a few. I suppose his aim is to point out that many ideas are viewed as pseudoscience, even when there is some evidence in their favor... or perhaps to suggest that research in these fields challenges accepted conclusions, and like his early dating of the Sphinx, may be accepted in due time. If nothing else, such topics provide readers with more questions to ponder after finishing the book - because Schoch proves fairly conclusively that a solar event did terminate a forgotten civilization over ten thousand years ago, and that we have reasons to expect a similar catastrophe soon ourselves. Schoch thinks it could be "near" 2012. If interested read "End Times and 2019."
At the time (early to mid 1990s) when Schoch and West were first getting attention for the idea that erosion by rainfall proved the Sphinx is older than we have been taught, one rebuttal from the orthodox Egyptologists was to ask who built it. "Where's the civilization" before dynastic Egypt? In the early 90s there was little evidence to counter the accepted paradigm that no society that far back was organized enough to build monuments.
This changed with the ongoing discoveries at Gobekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, which has been excavated by German (and Turkish) archeologists since 1994. As Schoch points out in "Forgotten Civilization" mainstream archeologists now date the monuments there to approximately 9-10,000 B.C. The established existence of an organized society at this point in time makes Schoch's conservatively early dating of the Sphinx seem less unlikely. It offers proof that man had achieved civilization earlier than we were taught.
But a very ancient Sphinx and very ancient Gobekli Tepe also force us to wonder what happened to this early civilization which rose and fell with no continuation, with no evidence of organized society for thousands of years after - until approximately 3,100 B.C. Why did the earliest monument builders completely disappear?
Schoch suggests that there were "catastrophes that occurred over ten thousand years ago, eradicating this early, forgotten civilization." (p. 8) He tells us that "geological data indicate that the last ice age ended extremely suddenly, catastrophically, around 9700 BCE.... and I believe, the date of a major solar outburst." (p. 253) He describes evidence of a major solar flare hitting the earth, and suggests that the sun is nowhere near as stable as recent history implies. Instead he assumes "that major plasma events might impact Earth approximately every ten thousand years. It has been 11,700 years since the last one." (p. 103)
The implication is that we are overdue for a solar event capable of causing a civilization-ending catastrophe. It might originate with the sun's own cyclical variations, or perhaps the sun's activity is triggered by a cosmic source like Dr. Paul LaViolette's galactic superwaves. While not specifically assuming that a pole shift will occur, nor that it will occur on December 21, 2012 at the end of the Mayan Long Count - Schoch suggests that something catastrophic may very well occur near the Mayan end date. But to him, such an approximation could mean 2012, 2013, or even 2050. (p. 216)
As an author covering similar topics (ancient civilizations, cosmic catastrophes, the Mayan Calendar, prophecies of the end of the world, etc.) I agree with Schoch on many points, although my analysis concludes that we should worry about a very specific date in 2019. Schoch takes a slightly different route than I do (focusing on geological evidence and solar outbursts) but we reach similar overall conclusions because we are analyzing many of the same facts. The truth is becoming more obvious, (especially within the last twenty years) despite attempts from established schools of thought to stifle innovative reevaluations of cherished paradigms.
A major part of Schoch's premise assumes not only that a solar plasma event devastated Earth around 9700 BCE, but that our distant ancestors recorded what they saw when the plasma hit and strange electrical discharges and auroras dominated the skies. He discusses what might be drawings and descriptions of this event from many cultures, but focuses on Easter Island's moai statues and rongorongo text. I do not feel there is enough evidence on Easter Island to be thoroughly convincing, but his ideas on this merit consideration - he made a sensible argument based on the minimal evidence available.
I am not quite sure why, near the end of the book, he delves into many unusual topics - such as ESP and parapsychology, quantum entanglement, harmonic resonances, faster than light travel, retrocausality, precognition, and the illusion of free will - to name a few. I suppose his aim is to point out that many ideas are viewed as pseudoscience, even when there is some evidence in their favor... or perhaps to suggest that research in these fields challenges accepted conclusions, and like his early dating of the Sphinx, may be accepted in due time. If nothing else, such topics provide readers with more questions to ponder after finishing the book - because Schoch proves fairly conclusively that a solar event did terminate a forgotten civilization over ten thousand years ago, and that we have reasons to expect a similar catastrophe soon ourselves. Schoch thinks it could be "near" 2012. If interested read "End Times and 2019."
December 29, 2025
I considered this one as a potential 4 but the more I pondered on it more I came to realise it was a bit of a plonker of a book.
There’s no doubt that the author is a learned gentleman a noted geologist and obsessive about ancient civilisations but his left of centre, moonbeam musings about outrageously ancient and extraordinarily clever primitive civilisation has blotted his notebook re credibility.
A quick internet check on the old chap revealed that he is not highly regarded in the scientific arenas and his waffling falls into the dark realms of pseudoscience.
Damn shame ol chap but I did learn a good deal about the Sphinx, Gobleki Tepi, Easter Island and solar induced ice ages from reading your book, so thank you.
On a positive note many outstanding scientific gentlemen ( Galileo - earth moves around the sun guy, Semmelweis - wash your hands after touching infectious people, Wegerer - Mr continental draft man - to name a few ) had their ideas ridiculed, ignored and rejected in the past only to have their ideas validated and considered as jolly fine ideas that were eventually accepted worldwide… unfortunately some had popped off before they could receive the praise.
There’s no doubt that the author is a learned gentleman a noted geologist and obsessive about ancient civilisations but his left of centre, moonbeam musings about outrageously ancient and extraordinarily clever primitive civilisation has blotted his notebook re credibility.
A quick internet check on the old chap revealed that he is not highly regarded in the scientific arenas and his waffling falls into the dark realms of pseudoscience.
Damn shame ol chap but I did learn a good deal about the Sphinx, Gobleki Tepi, Easter Island and solar induced ice ages from reading your book, so thank you.
On a positive note many outstanding scientific gentlemen ( Galileo - earth moves around the sun guy, Semmelweis - wash your hands after touching infectious people, Wegerer - Mr continental draft man - to name a few ) had their ideas ridiculed, ignored and rejected in the past only to have their ideas validated and considered as jolly fine ideas that were eventually accepted worldwide… unfortunately some had popped off before they could receive the praise.
May 29, 2023
https://mitteldorf.substack.com/p/sch...
There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. . . . Just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.
— Plato, the Timaeus
What we think of as the full “history of human civilization” is just the latest cycle of ascendance in a series. Humanity has flourished during the last 12,000 years — a “brief” period of stability in great, turbulent forces that reign in our sun and beyond.
This is the umbrella theme of Robert Schoch’s book, Forgotten Civilizations — a book which also includes references to a dozen other chapters of occluded science, well-documented experiments and observations that have been set aside by the scientific community because they don’t fit into the prevailing paradigm. The book is an invitation to a dozen research projects, but here I will try to summarize just one theme: cosmoclimatology.
The stormy surface of the sun,
earth’s magnetic field and ionosphere,
the motion of our solar system through interstellar space,
the seething black hole at the center of our galaxy
All these systems can erupt, periodically, in ways that are threatening to life on earth. In the ~2 million year history of hominids, there have been many worldwide calamities of celestial origin and more of geologic origin. The latest of these have destroyed civilizations and our memory of technologies that were once highly developed.
Robert Schoch’s wide-ranging book is a breath of fresh air for people like me who think that the scientific community has been willfully blind to diverse findings that would require a rethinking of established paradigms if they were accepted. I’ll focus here just on Chapters 7 through 9 (of 15). These discuss cosmoclimatology = influence of astronomical systems on the earth’s atmosphere. Our sun and even the galactic core have been subject to periodic disturbances that are associated with extinction-level effects on a living earth.
But first, let’s remember some reasons to take these possibilities seriously on a human time scale.
The Carrington Event of September, 1859 was the result of a solar flare that happened to be pointed toward our planet. At the time, telegraph wires were the only widely-deployed electrical technology. The electrical disturbance caused by particles from the sun blew out telegraph systems and shocked the operators. A comparable event in 2023 could knock out computer systems globally and fry the transformers which are essential to power grids around the world. [Speculation in New Scientist]
From about 1600 to 1800 was a Little Ice Age, with temperatures noticeably colder than anything we recognize in our lifetimes. In Europe and N America, there was a lot more snow, ice lasted longer into the spring, and growing seasons were shorter.
The Egyptian Pyramids were built with technologies that we cannot reproduce in the 21st Century. Hollow stone vessels and core drill holes attest to a capacity to work with hard rock that today’s science cannot support or even explain. A thousand-ton foundation stone in Lebanon is ten times larger than any crane today could lift. [I referenced these and other anomalies in a 2021 article.]
There are extensive, ancient tunnel systems in Europe, South America, and Asia. The best known are at Derinkuyu in Turkey. https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x9... There are miles of underground tunnels, living quarters for tens of thousands of people, space for gatherings, for cooking, for keeping livestock, all in 7 layers going down to 85 meters below the surface.
Schoch states the obvious: Such underground cities were not built with hand shovels, and there must have been powerful motivation to move living quarters underground. A natural hypothesis is that before the 12,000-year time frame for which we have historic records, there was a highly developed technological civilization and there were long periods of ultraviolet or cosmic ray or other condition that compelled whole communities to seek refuge underground.
End of the last ice age
The Younger Dryas is the name geologists give to the end of the last ice age. There were two dramatic events, about a thousand years apart, with a return to freezing conditions in between. There are competing theories for the cause of the sudden warming; Schoch believes that the ice age ended with a series of solar storms. One of the pieces of evidence that he cites is vitrification of (human-carved) stone monuments. Vitrification means melting of stone, creating a glass-like consistency on the surface. He has found forts in Scotland, stones on the Giza Plateau and elsewhere in Egypt that show signs of vitrification. He takes this as evidence, (1) that the monuments and the Pyramids themselves are much older than the Egyptian dynasties (~5,000 years) and, in fact, older than the Younger Dryas (~12,000 years); and (2) that there were severe solar outbursts, sending tongues of plasma into space from the sun’s atmosphere, touching down on earth and causing these vitrifications locally. Also part of this story: People lived in underground cities to escape dangerous levels of radiation on the earth. Smaller mammals also were able to burrow underground, but the extinctions of sloths, mammoths, and sabre-tooth tigers during this period occurred because large mammals could not hide underground.
The solar storms melted glaciers the world over, causing flooding which imprinted mankind’s mythic history, including Noah’s flood, the story of Gilgamesh, Manu and Matsya, and countless indigenous legends.
Schoch talks about the solar cataclysm as causing a die-off of humanity. The most technically advanced groups tended to live near the seacoast, which was suddenly under a hundred meters of water, and their economies were more fragile, depending on trade with distant lands for the essentials of life. Only primitive peoples survived. Thus began a global dark age, from which civilization began to re-emerge only 6,000 years later in the Indus Valley, the Yangtze Valley, the Nile Valley, and the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia.
Sunspots, solar storms, and earth’s climate
Sunspot activity is approximately cyclical with a period of 11 years. The sun’s magnetic field varies on a 22-year cycle, reaches a minimum and flipping direction when sunspots are at a maximum. The average 11-year cycle can vary by a year or two. There have been 24+ recorded cycles since sunspots were first tracked in 1755.
Sunspots are magnetic storms on the sun’s surface, unrelated to the energy generation that is occurring at the sun’s core. They appear dark because they are slightly cooler than the average 5800o surface temperature, but sunspots are fringed by areas where temperatures are hotter than 5800o, and indeed the hotter temperatures more than make up for the cooler sunspot temperature. During periods when sunspots are more numerous, the earth is warmer, but it is not because of luminosity from the sunspot fringes. Rather, magnetic storms on the sun send plumes of ionized gas which increase the earth’s high-up magnetic field and deflect cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are an important mechanism for seeding clouds in the lower atmosphere, so fewer cosmic rays lead to lower cloud cover (albedo, reflecting sunlight back into space) and more of the sun’s radiation reaching the earth. [Mackey, 2009]
Reading this chain of reasoning, I am reminded what an MIT colleague told me long ago: computer models of the world’s climate future are woefully inadequate. Atmospheric, oceanic, geological, and astronomical systems interact in more ways than we can model, and some of the key inputs have not yet been quantified.
The sun moves
We think of the sun as motionless at the center of the solar system. 99.8% of the mass of the solar system is in the sun. We may correct this to say that the sun goes around the fixed center of mass of the solar system, which is always a few solar diameters outside the sun. But this is not accurate, either. It is true for two bodies that they orbit stably and predictably about their common center of mass. But for a system of three or more bodies, the motion is complex. It is chaotic in the technical sense of the word: long term prediction is impossible because the motions are too sensitive to tiny variations in the present measurements — the butterfly effect.
In the present case, the sun moves in an epitrochoid, returning near its starting place about every 20 years, but the motion never repeats itself exactly. When the sun is swinging through the smaller circles, the acceleration churns up more motion, and magnetic storms are more likely. At present (2023) we are approaching a sunspot maximum (higher earth temperatures) and finishing a tightly-wound epicycle.
In the short term, up to a few hundred years, we can predict the sun’s motion accurately; but we don’t yet know enough about the effect of the orbit on solar storms or the effect of solar storms on the earth to draw conclusions about the probability of events that might affect us.
100,000 year cycles in earth’s climate
Determining the temperature hundreds of thousands of years ago is not an exact science. There are, however, some points of consensus.
There is a cycle of approximately 100,000 years
We are near the high-temperature peak of the latest cycle
These peaks arise suddenly (“suddenly” might mean several thousand years) and they subside more gradually
The amplitude of these cycles is about 10oC. For comparison, global warming since 1900 is only about 1oC.
Most of the time, the earth trends much colder than the climate to which we are accustomed
The cycles of ~100,000 years are apparent, but there is no agreement about the driver behind them. The “norm” is for all of Canada and the northern half of the USA and Europe to be covered in thick sheets of ice that we now associated with the extreme Arctic and Antarctic regions. As recently as 12,000 years ago, New York was under a two-mile thick ice sheet. Hard to imagine, and yet this was “recent” history. Anatomically modern humans have been around for 300,000 years and most of this time has been what we would call an “ice age”.
There is a meme that is driving climate panic: “the earth is hotter than it has been in 100,000 years.” The statement is true, but we can see it in a different context. We are near a cyclic peak in temperature that had nothing to do with humans or CO2 emissions until industrial mining of fossil fuels pushed the temperature up 1 extra degree. The warm temperatures of the last 10,000 years have enabled a remarkable flowering of human civilization, which has only recently become a blight upon the ecosphere. We must expect that the long-term trend is for dramatically colder temperatures, and it is arguable that human activity has already delayed a return to ice age conditions.
More worrisome than the cyclic changes are the extraordinary events, solar outbursts that we don’t know how to predict. The largest recent solar ejection occurred in July, 2012 (as reported by NASA). The event was bigger than Carrington in absolute terms, but it was pointed in a different direction, and missed planet earth. We know little about the causes of the more energetic events, and less about the statistical distribution of their strength and frequency.
Shifting magnetic pole
Compasses have not always pointed north. The earth’s magnetic poles flip every 200,000 to 300,000 years, but the most recent reversal took place 780,000 years ago. This was a time when early hominids were alive; but the entire 300,000 tenure of Homo sapiens in our modern form has not known a pole flip.
A pole flip is preceded by a weakening and then disappearance of the earth’s magnetic field. Without a magnetic field to deflect cosmic rays, radiation levels at the earth’s surface can be dangerously high. Cosmic rays seed clouds, increasing the earth’s albedo and cooling the planet. They would also deplete the ozone layer that protects the earth’s surface from the sun’s UV rays.
The magnetic field of the earth has been weakening in the two centuries for which data have been recorded. The effect seems to be accelerating, and the poles are also drifting in position at an increasing rate. Since 2000, the north magnetic pole has shifted about 1,000 km. From Canada, it has crossed into the Eastern hemisphere, headed for Siberia. There are alarmist books and videos on the web, and there are official assurances from NASA and NOAA. Schoch takes the position that we really don’t understand enough to say definitively whether a pole shift is presently underway. But he quotes extensively from Russian geophysicist-catastrophist Dr Alexey Dmitriev.
“There is a growing probability that we are moving into a rapid temperature instability period similar to the one that took place 12,000 years ago…This high-energy atmospheric phenomena, which was rare in the past, is now becoming more frequent, intense, and changed in its nature…These fundamental processes of change create a demand within all of Earth’s life organisms for new forms of adaptation. The natural development of these new forms may lead to a total global revision of the range of species, and life, on Earth…it is evident that we are faced with a problem of the adaptation of humanity to this new state of the Earth.” — A. Dmitriev
The center of our galaxy
Like most (possibly all) galaxies, our Milky Way sports a black hole at its center. Ours contains the mass of about 4 million stars, and as it swallows up gas and whole stars, it shoots out particle beams which appear to us as cosmic rays. Paul Laviolette has been the foremost advocate of the view that violence at the center of our galaxy, 30,000 light years away, can have major impacts on conditions in our solar system and on the earth’s surface.
Center of the Milky Way, photographed as Saggitarius A
“It is proposed that outbursts of cosmic ray electrons from the Galactic Center penetrate the Galaxy relatively undamped and are able to have a major impact on the Solar System through their ability to vaporize and inject cometary material into the interplanetary environment. It is suggested that one such ‘superwave’, passing through the Solar System toward the end of the last Ice Age, was responsible for producing major changes in the Earth’s climate and for indirectly precipitating the terminal Pleistocene extinction episode.”
Note that this is not inconsistent with Schoch’s hypothesis of solar storms ending the ice age. The superwave from the galactic core can bombard the sun, precipitating solar storms.
LaViolette then goes on to cite evidence for this hypothesis from isotope levels in 12,000-year-old ice cores, as well as astronomical observations. Particle beams from the center of the galaxy have the potential to disrupt our environment in many different ways
Creating comets, increasing risk of meteor impacts
Stimulating the sun to heightened activity, which would warm the earth
Showering Earth with cosmic rays, which would cool the earth
Damaging the ozone layer which protects life on the surface from the sun's UV
Seeding clouds that cause cooling
Interstellar dust clouds
Our galaxy is a big family of objects, some condensed like planets, stars of various types and black holes; some dispersed like nebulae and clouds of gas and dust. Roughly speaking, we are all in orbit around the galactic center, but every object is on its own path, attracted to whatever happens to be passing by.
At present, our solar system is on the verge of entering a dust cloud located in the direction of the constellation Hercules, traveling at a relative velocity about 20 km per second. The dust is very diffuse, finer than the best vacuums we are able to create on earth; nevertheless, it is tens of thousands of times denser than the surrounding interstellar medium. (The story was first presented 45 years ago by Alfred Vidal-Madjar in the Astrophysical Journal.)
Normally, the interstellar medium is kept out of the solar system by the positive pressure created by discharge from the sun. Even in quiet times, the sun is sending streams of particles out in all directions, the solar wind, which pushes out the interstellar medium somewhere beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto.
The collision velocity with the dust cloud is likely to create pressures that can overcome the solar wind. What happens when this dust enters our solar system, traveling at high speed? The most likely effect (according to Jeffrey Winters and (again) Dmitriev and LaViolette) is to bombard the sun, increasing solar activity and warming the earth, while increasing surface UV and cosmic rays to levels that would be unhealthy for life.
Is this a hint about the original purpose of those ancient tunnels and underground cities, found all over the planet (mentioned at the beginning of this article, and described by a German husband-and-wife team)?
Postlude
It is a major theme in evolutionary history that natural selection takes place at a rate faster than geological and ecological changes. This results in species being too-well adapted to whatever specific conditions happen to prevail at the time. Over and over, species have suffered extinction when conditions changed and they were no longer well-adapted. So evolution has found pathways to robustness, insurance against change. For example, our genome contains inactive copies of genes that were useful in the past and retained because they may again be useful some time in the future.
For hundreds of thousands of years, our human culture has been diverse and robust. But presently, capitalism has driven our world toward global integration, complex supply chains for essentials of life, just-in-time delivery schedules, combined with complex, global trade networks. Our world economy is very efficient and very fragile, becoming more so every year. Thinking about our vulnerability to unpredictable cosmic events may help motivate us as a species to step back toward more diversity, more local self-sufficiency, more innovation. The human future may depend upon it.
There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. . . . Just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.
— Plato, the Timaeus
What we think of as the full “history of human civilization” is just the latest cycle of ascendance in a series. Humanity has flourished during the last 12,000 years — a “brief” period of stability in great, turbulent forces that reign in our sun and beyond.
This is the umbrella theme of Robert Schoch’s book, Forgotten Civilizations — a book which also includes references to a dozen other chapters of occluded science, well-documented experiments and observations that have been set aside by the scientific community because they don’t fit into the prevailing paradigm. The book is an invitation to a dozen research projects, but here I will try to summarize just one theme: cosmoclimatology.
The stormy surface of the sun,
earth’s magnetic field and ionosphere,
the motion of our solar system through interstellar space,
the seething black hole at the center of our galaxy
All these systems can erupt, periodically, in ways that are threatening to life on earth. In the ~2 million year history of hominids, there have been many worldwide calamities of celestial origin and more of geologic origin. The latest of these have destroyed civilizations and our memory of technologies that were once highly developed.
Robert Schoch’s wide-ranging book is a breath of fresh air for people like me who think that the scientific community has been willfully blind to diverse findings that would require a rethinking of established paradigms if they were accepted. I’ll focus here just on Chapters 7 through 9 (of 15). These discuss cosmoclimatology = influence of astronomical systems on the earth’s atmosphere. Our sun and even the galactic core have been subject to periodic disturbances that are associated with extinction-level effects on a living earth.
But first, let’s remember some reasons to take these possibilities seriously on a human time scale.
The Carrington Event of September, 1859 was the result of a solar flare that happened to be pointed toward our planet. At the time, telegraph wires were the only widely-deployed electrical technology. The electrical disturbance caused by particles from the sun blew out telegraph systems and shocked the operators. A comparable event in 2023 could knock out computer systems globally and fry the transformers which are essential to power grids around the world. [Speculation in New Scientist]
From about 1600 to 1800 was a Little Ice Age, with temperatures noticeably colder than anything we recognize in our lifetimes. In Europe and N America, there was a lot more snow, ice lasted longer into the spring, and growing seasons were shorter.
The Egyptian Pyramids were built with technologies that we cannot reproduce in the 21st Century. Hollow stone vessels and core drill holes attest to a capacity to work with hard rock that today’s science cannot support or even explain. A thousand-ton foundation stone in Lebanon is ten times larger than any crane today could lift. [I referenced these and other anomalies in a 2021 article.]
There are extensive, ancient tunnel systems in Europe, South America, and Asia. The best known are at Derinkuyu in Turkey. https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x9... There are miles of underground tunnels, living quarters for tens of thousands of people, space for gatherings, for cooking, for keeping livestock, all in 7 layers going down to 85 meters below the surface.
Schoch states the obvious: Such underground cities were not built with hand shovels, and there must have been powerful motivation to move living quarters underground. A natural hypothesis is that before the 12,000-year time frame for which we have historic records, there was a highly developed technological civilization and there were long periods of ultraviolet or cosmic ray or other condition that compelled whole communities to seek refuge underground.
End of the last ice age
The Younger Dryas is the name geologists give to the end of the last ice age. There were two dramatic events, about a thousand years apart, with a return to freezing conditions in between. There are competing theories for the cause of the sudden warming; Schoch believes that the ice age ended with a series of solar storms. One of the pieces of evidence that he cites is vitrification of (human-carved) stone monuments. Vitrification means melting of stone, creating a glass-like consistency on the surface. He has found forts in Scotland, stones on the Giza Plateau and elsewhere in Egypt that show signs of vitrification. He takes this as evidence, (1) that the monuments and the Pyramids themselves are much older than the Egyptian dynasties (~5,000 years) and, in fact, older than the Younger Dryas (~12,000 years); and (2) that there were severe solar outbursts, sending tongues of plasma into space from the sun’s atmosphere, touching down on earth and causing these vitrifications locally. Also part of this story: People lived in underground cities to escape dangerous levels of radiation on the earth. Smaller mammals also were able to burrow underground, but the extinctions of sloths, mammoths, and sabre-tooth tigers during this period occurred because large mammals could not hide underground.
The solar storms melted glaciers the world over, causing flooding which imprinted mankind’s mythic history, including Noah’s flood, the story of Gilgamesh, Manu and Matsya, and countless indigenous legends.
Schoch talks about the solar cataclysm as causing a die-off of humanity. The most technically advanced groups tended to live near the seacoast, which was suddenly under a hundred meters of water, and their economies were more fragile, depending on trade with distant lands for the essentials of life. Only primitive peoples survived. Thus began a global dark age, from which civilization began to re-emerge only 6,000 years later in the Indus Valley, the Yangtze Valley, the Nile Valley, and the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia.
Sunspots, solar storms, and earth’s climate
Sunspot activity is approximately cyclical with a period of 11 years. The sun’s magnetic field varies on a 22-year cycle, reaches a minimum and flipping direction when sunspots are at a maximum. The average 11-year cycle can vary by a year or two. There have been 24+ recorded cycles since sunspots were first tracked in 1755.
Sunspots are magnetic storms on the sun’s surface, unrelated to the energy generation that is occurring at the sun’s core. They appear dark because they are slightly cooler than the average 5800o surface temperature, but sunspots are fringed by areas where temperatures are hotter than 5800o, and indeed the hotter temperatures more than make up for the cooler sunspot temperature. During periods when sunspots are more numerous, the earth is warmer, but it is not because of luminosity from the sunspot fringes. Rather, magnetic storms on the sun send plumes of ionized gas which increase the earth’s high-up magnetic field and deflect cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are an important mechanism for seeding clouds in the lower atmosphere, so fewer cosmic rays lead to lower cloud cover (albedo, reflecting sunlight back into space) and more of the sun’s radiation reaching the earth. [Mackey, 2009]
Reading this chain of reasoning, I am reminded what an MIT colleague told me long ago: computer models of the world’s climate future are woefully inadequate. Atmospheric, oceanic, geological, and astronomical systems interact in more ways than we can model, and some of the key inputs have not yet been quantified.
The sun moves
We think of the sun as motionless at the center of the solar system. 99.8% of the mass of the solar system is in the sun. We may correct this to say that the sun goes around the fixed center of mass of the solar system, which is always a few solar diameters outside the sun. But this is not accurate, either. It is true for two bodies that they orbit stably and predictably about their common center of mass. But for a system of three or more bodies, the motion is complex. It is chaotic in the technical sense of the word: long term prediction is impossible because the motions are too sensitive to tiny variations in the present measurements — the butterfly effect.
In the present case, the sun moves in an epitrochoid, returning near its starting place about every 20 years, but the motion never repeats itself exactly. When the sun is swinging through the smaller circles, the acceleration churns up more motion, and magnetic storms are more likely. At present (2023) we are approaching a sunspot maximum (higher earth temperatures) and finishing a tightly-wound epicycle.
In the short term, up to a few hundred years, we can predict the sun’s motion accurately; but we don’t yet know enough about the effect of the orbit on solar storms or the effect of solar storms on the earth to draw conclusions about the probability of events that might affect us.
100,000 year cycles in earth’s climate
Determining the temperature hundreds of thousands of years ago is not an exact science. There are, however, some points of consensus.
There is a cycle of approximately 100,000 years
We are near the high-temperature peak of the latest cycle
These peaks arise suddenly (“suddenly” might mean several thousand years) and they subside more gradually
The amplitude of these cycles is about 10oC. For comparison, global warming since 1900 is only about 1oC.
Most of the time, the earth trends much colder than the climate to which we are accustomed
The cycles of ~100,000 years are apparent, but there is no agreement about the driver behind them. The “norm” is for all of Canada and the northern half of the USA and Europe to be covered in thick sheets of ice that we now associated with the extreme Arctic and Antarctic regions. As recently as 12,000 years ago, New York was under a two-mile thick ice sheet. Hard to imagine, and yet this was “recent” history. Anatomically modern humans have been around for 300,000 years and most of this time has been what we would call an “ice age”.
There is a meme that is driving climate panic: “the earth is hotter than it has been in 100,000 years.” The statement is true, but we can see it in a different context. We are near a cyclic peak in temperature that had nothing to do with humans or CO2 emissions until industrial mining of fossil fuels pushed the temperature up 1 extra degree. The warm temperatures of the last 10,000 years have enabled a remarkable flowering of human civilization, which has only recently become a blight upon the ecosphere. We must expect that the long-term trend is for dramatically colder temperatures, and it is arguable that human activity has already delayed a return to ice age conditions.
More worrisome than the cyclic changes are the extraordinary events, solar outbursts that we don’t know how to predict. The largest recent solar ejection occurred in July, 2012 (as reported by NASA). The event was bigger than Carrington in absolute terms, but it was pointed in a different direction, and missed planet earth. We know little about the causes of the more energetic events, and less about the statistical distribution of their strength and frequency.
Shifting magnetic pole
Compasses have not always pointed north. The earth’s magnetic poles flip every 200,000 to 300,000 years, but the most recent reversal took place 780,000 years ago. This was a time when early hominids were alive; but the entire 300,000 tenure of Homo sapiens in our modern form has not known a pole flip.
A pole flip is preceded by a weakening and then disappearance of the earth’s magnetic field. Without a magnetic field to deflect cosmic rays, radiation levels at the earth’s surface can be dangerously high. Cosmic rays seed clouds, increasing the earth’s albedo and cooling the planet. They would also deplete the ozone layer that protects the earth’s surface from the sun’s UV rays.
The magnetic field of the earth has been weakening in the two centuries for which data have been recorded. The effect seems to be accelerating, and the poles are also drifting in position at an increasing rate. Since 2000, the north magnetic pole has shifted about 1,000 km. From Canada, it has crossed into the Eastern hemisphere, headed for Siberia. There are alarmist books and videos on the web, and there are official assurances from NASA and NOAA. Schoch takes the position that we really don’t understand enough to say definitively whether a pole shift is presently underway. But he quotes extensively from Russian geophysicist-catastrophist Dr Alexey Dmitriev.
“There is a growing probability that we are moving into a rapid temperature instability period similar to the one that took place 12,000 years ago…This high-energy atmospheric phenomena, which was rare in the past, is now becoming more frequent, intense, and changed in its nature…These fundamental processes of change create a demand within all of Earth’s life organisms for new forms of adaptation. The natural development of these new forms may lead to a total global revision of the range of species, and life, on Earth…it is evident that we are faced with a problem of the adaptation of humanity to this new state of the Earth.” — A. Dmitriev
The center of our galaxy
Like most (possibly all) galaxies, our Milky Way sports a black hole at its center. Ours contains the mass of about 4 million stars, and as it swallows up gas and whole stars, it shoots out particle beams which appear to us as cosmic rays. Paul Laviolette has been the foremost advocate of the view that violence at the center of our galaxy, 30,000 light years away, can have major impacts on conditions in our solar system and on the earth’s surface.
Center of the Milky Way, photographed as Saggitarius A
“It is proposed that outbursts of cosmic ray electrons from the Galactic Center penetrate the Galaxy relatively undamped and are able to have a major impact on the Solar System through their ability to vaporize and inject cometary material into the interplanetary environment. It is suggested that one such ‘superwave’, passing through the Solar System toward the end of the last Ice Age, was responsible for producing major changes in the Earth’s climate and for indirectly precipitating the terminal Pleistocene extinction episode.”
Note that this is not inconsistent with Schoch’s hypothesis of solar storms ending the ice age. The superwave from the galactic core can bombard the sun, precipitating solar storms.
LaViolette then goes on to cite evidence for this hypothesis from isotope levels in 12,000-year-old ice cores, as well as astronomical observations. Particle beams from the center of the galaxy have the potential to disrupt our environment in many different ways
Creating comets, increasing risk of meteor impacts
Stimulating the sun to heightened activity, which would warm the earth
Showering Earth with cosmic rays, which would cool the earth
Damaging the ozone layer which protects life on the surface from the sun's UV
Seeding clouds that cause cooling
Interstellar dust clouds
Our galaxy is a big family of objects, some condensed like planets, stars of various types and black holes; some dispersed like nebulae and clouds of gas and dust. Roughly speaking, we are all in orbit around the galactic center, but every object is on its own path, attracted to whatever happens to be passing by.
At present, our solar system is on the verge of entering a dust cloud located in the direction of the constellation Hercules, traveling at a relative velocity about 20 km per second. The dust is very diffuse, finer than the best vacuums we are able to create on earth; nevertheless, it is tens of thousands of times denser than the surrounding interstellar medium. (The story was first presented 45 years ago by Alfred Vidal-Madjar in the Astrophysical Journal.)
Normally, the interstellar medium is kept out of the solar system by the positive pressure created by discharge from the sun. Even in quiet times, the sun is sending streams of particles out in all directions, the solar wind, which pushes out the interstellar medium somewhere beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto.
The collision velocity with the dust cloud is likely to create pressures that can overcome the solar wind. What happens when this dust enters our solar system, traveling at high speed? The most likely effect (according to Jeffrey Winters and (again) Dmitriev and LaViolette) is to bombard the sun, increasing solar activity and warming the earth, while increasing surface UV and cosmic rays to levels that would be unhealthy for life.
Is this a hint about the original purpose of those ancient tunnels and underground cities, found all over the planet (mentioned at the beginning of this article, and described by a German husband-and-wife team)?
Postlude
It is a major theme in evolutionary history that natural selection takes place at a rate faster than geological and ecological changes. This results in species being too-well adapted to whatever specific conditions happen to prevail at the time. Over and over, species have suffered extinction when conditions changed and they were no longer well-adapted. So evolution has found pathways to robustness, insurance against change. For example, our genome contains inactive copies of genes that were useful in the past and retained because they may again be useful some time in the future.
For hundreds of thousands of years, our human culture has been diverse and robust. But presently, capitalism has driven our world toward global integration, complex supply chains for essentials of life, just-in-time delivery schedules, combined with complex, global trade networks. Our world economy is very efficient and very fragile, becoming more so every year. Thinking about our vulnerability to unpredictable cosmic events may help motivate us as a species to step back toward more diversity, more local self-sufficiency, more innovation. The human future may depend upon it.
March 23, 2014
-Free review copy courtesy of Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
I was first blown away in the early 90's when I saw a documentary on TV hosted by Charleton Heston about the Sphinx and how two men had a interesting theory about the age of the Sphinx and civilization. Those men were Robert M. Schoch and John Anthony West and they truly inspired me to really think about our past. Now with the recent discoveries of Gobekli Tepe, Gadung Padang and Nan Madol they only strengthen Robert's theories about ancient civilizations. The world is far older than mainstream archaeology tells us. This book describes what ended most of those early civilizations. A coronal mass ejection/solar outburst that caused volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, fires and massive floods worldwide. It also warns us that this will happen again. Great Book! A must have for anyone's library!
I was first blown away in the early 90's when I saw a documentary on TV hosted by Charleton Heston about the Sphinx and how two men had a interesting theory about the age of the Sphinx and civilization. Those men were Robert M. Schoch and John Anthony West and they truly inspired me to really think about our past. Now with the recent discoveries of Gobekli Tepe, Gadung Padang and Nan Madol they only strengthen Robert's theories about ancient civilizations. The world is far older than mainstream archaeology tells us. This book describes what ended most of those early civilizations. A coronal mass ejection/solar outburst that caused volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, fires and massive floods worldwide. It also warns us that this will happen again. Great Book! A must have for anyone's library!
March 3, 2017
Thought-provoking
Thought-provoking and open-minded. By a researcher who is unafraid to question the status quo. The whole point is to find truth, whatever that may be and how ever strange it may seem. This is a captivating read if you love mythology and sacred stories and believe ancient cultures weren't just spinning fairy tales and carving cartoons on rocks -- I believe they were trying to pass on important, meaningful information to help us prepare for and survive the cosmic catastrophes they endured. Schoch's research is earnest, deep, and his ethics are outstanding. Highly recommend.
Thought-provoking and open-minded. By a researcher who is unafraid to question the status quo. The whole point is to find truth, whatever that may be and how ever strange it may seem. This is a captivating read if you love mythology and sacred stories and believe ancient cultures weren't just spinning fairy tales and carving cartoons on rocks -- I believe they were trying to pass on important, meaningful information to help us prepare for and survive the cosmic catastrophes they endured. Schoch's research is earnest, deep, and his ethics are outstanding. Highly recommend.
July 12, 2013
I felt this book was great! It gave me many things to think about. I try to read works from other points of view so I can make a more informed decision of my own. I can say this, at least he did not lie like in Temples book (page 57, figures 1.40 from the North, and 1.41 from the south). Look at the stone in those two pictures carefully! Now Temple, what were you shoveling!
December 9, 2018
Fascinating Read
The unraveling of the mystery of the impact that solar flare activity has on the evolution of human consciousness and the planetary forces that shape and control climate; a thoroughly researched theory that is quite riveting in its detail. Schoch has a vast depth to f knowledge that he shares with those who are interested in more than the usual scientific cant.
The unraveling of the mystery of the impact that solar flare activity has on the evolution of human consciousness and the planetary forces that shape and control climate; a thoroughly researched theory that is quite riveting in its detail. Schoch has a vast depth to f knowledge that he shares with those who are interested in more than the usual scientific cant.
October 23, 2017
Incredible Book
This book discusses a wide range of concepts from controversial to downright unbelievable but never strays too far off of the science. Well cited from a range sources including everything from geology to astronomy to the paranormal.
This book discusses a wide range of concepts from controversial to downright unbelievable but never strays too far off of the science. Well cited from a range sources including everything from geology to astronomy to the paranormal.
August 24, 2018
I got as far as the part of psychokinesis needing to be taken seriously as a form of moving stones around, and gave up. That sort of von Daniken grade nonsense has no place in a book written by a professional geologist.
January 14, 2014
Brilliant! Extremely interesting, well integrated and scientific.
November 9, 2018
Interesting. If not a time machine, I'd love a time mirror so that I could go and see stuff myself.
August 31, 2021
It was an interesting read, with concepts and paradigms which are beyond the academic norm. The difference I believe, is how the book presents these ideas based on science and research. This differs Dr. Schoch's work from other esoteric writers like Sitchin, who just tried to fit everything into his version of truth.
Grammar-wise, it was so difficult to follow a number of paragraphs in the book because of an excessive use of parentheses. Imagine reading something very interesting, only to be cut by another parenthetical thought bubble. It's bothersome and confusing. Also, Dr. Schoch somehow used this book as a forum for his academic and professional grievances. There is a better way to expand readers' views sans the heightened emotions from the author.
In summary, I'm giving it three stars. Content-wise, it provides research-backed schools of thought that are worth digesting. However, the structure and form need a lot of improvement.
Grammar-wise, it was so difficult to follow a number of paragraphs in the book because of an excessive use of parentheses. Imagine reading something very interesting, only to be cut by another parenthetical thought bubble. It's bothersome and confusing. Also, Dr. Schoch somehow used this book as a forum for his academic and professional grievances. There is a better way to expand readers' views sans the heightened emotions from the author.
In summary, I'm giving it three stars. Content-wise, it provides research-backed schools of thought that are worth digesting. However, the structure and form need a lot of improvement.
October 2, 2018
Solar outbursts are a real occurrence and Mr. Schoch does a good job of explaining what they are, how they may have wiped out an ancient civilization around 10,000 to 12,000 BC. I am not convinced but it certainly is a topic worth studying and pondering. He brings up the Carrington event and that is real. If anything like that happens today, it is going to be a reckoning of our civilization. Some things I think are a stretch, but I do recommend the book. One point that is so true, is that money, power, prestige, tenure and grants really do influence science. Keep that in mind as truth is not always what we are taught or even believe. Just in our recent past, doctors did not believe washing surgical tools were important!
July 15, 2025
Sphinx is interesting.
Göbeklitepe is interesting.
Whats not interesting -
Repitition that makes me question if im reading the same part over and over.
The personal drama.
I like to approach these books with an open-mind. People need to challenge the theories we have built up with others that contain plausible evidence. And not get offended by them as some sort of attack.
I do personally think from the craftsmanship shown at Göbeklitepe that is roughly from 9000 BCE. That a pre-Egyptian civilsation is plausible to have used the help of the land and their tools to make a Lion Statue, Mehit, that would eventually become the Sphinx and its remodelled head.
Now we just need to find this civilisation and is that not fascinating?
My critisism.. is I deeply wish Robert was more coherant with his thoughts and maybe just maybe.. dropped the telekinesis. A very clever man with a different perspective bogged down by the need to be a mainstream rebel for the sake of it - atleast that is the impression from reading the book I came away with. Mileage may vary.
Essentially I wish I could edit and cut the book into two. One with the ideas that are far more plausible and the personal drama/Telekinesis in another for a different style of reader.
I continue to be excited for insights from Professor Robert M. Schoch. While I question some things - I am not in a cult - I am greatful that he is pushing and poking in areas.
This year alone in Egyptian news:
- Ancient Egyptians drew the Milky Way on coffins and tombs, linking them to sky goddess, study finds
- Tomb discovered of unknown ancient Egyptian pharaoh
- The tomb of Thutmose II, a pharaoh who ruled about 3,500 years ago, has been discovered west of the Valley of the Kings.
There is more im just snapshotting some discoveries but we have so much still to learn about Egypt.
2024 news:
An enigmatic L-shaped structure found underground near the pyramids at Giza may be an entrance to a mysterious deeper feature below it.
Göbeklitepe is interesting.
Whats not interesting -
Repitition that makes me question if im reading the same part over and over.
The personal drama.
I like to approach these books with an open-mind. People need to challenge the theories we have built up with others that contain plausible evidence. And not get offended by them as some sort of attack.
I do personally think from the craftsmanship shown at Göbeklitepe that is roughly from 9000 BCE. That a pre-Egyptian civilsation is plausible to have used the help of the land and their tools to make a Lion Statue, Mehit, that would eventually become the Sphinx and its remodelled head.
Now we just need to find this civilisation and is that not fascinating?
My critisism.. is I deeply wish Robert was more coherant with his thoughts and maybe just maybe.. dropped the telekinesis. A very clever man with a different perspective bogged down by the need to be a mainstream rebel for the sake of it - atleast that is the impression from reading the book I came away with. Mileage may vary.
Essentially I wish I could edit and cut the book into two. One with the ideas that are far more plausible and the personal drama/Telekinesis in another for a different style of reader.
I continue to be excited for insights from Professor Robert M. Schoch. While I question some things - I am not in a cult - I am greatful that he is pushing and poking in areas.
This year alone in Egyptian news:
- Ancient Egyptians drew the Milky Way on coffins and tombs, linking them to sky goddess, study finds
- Tomb discovered of unknown ancient Egyptian pharaoh
- The tomb of Thutmose II, a pharaoh who ruled about 3,500 years ago, has been discovered west of the Valley of the Kings.
There is more im just snapshotting some discoveries but we have so much still to learn about Egypt.
2024 news:
An enigmatic L-shaped structure found underground near the pyramids at Giza may be an entrance to a mysterious deeper feature below it.
July 25, 2021
I liked this book. I come to the subject with great skepticism that our current civilization and culture is the greatest of all time. Since I was a kid I have believed that modern society would be hard pressed to recreate structures such as the pyramids with the same precision as they were apparently constructed. This book finally offers what seems to be a rational explanation of how nature can ‘reset’ the development of civilization. I just hope his predictions of the future hold off for another 40 yrs…..
August 6, 2018
It had its "almost not worth slogging through chapters" but over all it had some good insights. One point it made reflected that Sometimes science is not all it seems. It did not answer the "earlier civilization" question anywhere near what I expected. No depth there. A lot of sun related numbers that got to be too much. A lot of pages written that did not delve into the "earlier civilization" issue. I guess I rated it stronger because it ended on a high note.
October 11, 2022
This book reads like a textbook, but does inform on many variables involved in climate change. My favorite quotes are "...we as a society, with our increased reliance on ever -more -sophisticated and fragile electronics, are becoming increasingly vulnerable to even relatively small- scale solar events...To make matters worse, modern global systems have become incredibly interconnected and interdependent (Schoch 2012). "When one link in that chain is broken there is no fallback" (Stoller 2011).
August 14, 2017
Some very interesting ideas and was surprised the level of detail that was gone into the science. However I was looking for more descriptions on the actual "forgotten civilization" and less on the solar aspect of it.
March 25, 2019
I really enjoyed his writing on the Sphinx, Gobekli Tepe, and Easter Island. I also like his theorem on coronal mass ejections leading to the end of the last Ice Age. Other aspects of the book get off topic.
February 20, 2023
the argument that the sphinx is older than the pyramids is interesting. five stars.
the argument that rongo-rongo is ten thousand years old and contains messages about solar eruptions sounds cooky, one star
the argument that rongo-rongo is ten thousand years old and contains messages about solar eruptions sounds cooky, one star
August 22, 2024
A little dated, but an interesting analysis on the age of the Sphinx and the evidence that it is much older than traditional believed. This book gets a little too into the weeds of the data for the average reader but only a surface level understanding is required to follow along.
October 12, 2024
Muy bueno el libro, interesante las investigaciones del autor y teorías que propone. La parte de la telekinesis yes un poco densa, pero muy interesante abrir la mete ante temas más esotéricos. El autor hace que uno quiera seguir investigando y leyendo más del tema.
February 10, 2017
Overall good book. Some information and conclusion differ from other information on the subject. Not certain who's correct on the subject. Overall a good read.
June 14, 2017
Not a convincing case at all.
July 28, 2018
Thought provoking in parts. I liked the central theme and would recommend it for that reason.
However, the author often rambles off the theme.
However, the author often rambles off the theme.
November 21, 2018
Not worth the time or effort to read.
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