Geological evidence clearly indicates that physical disruptions of enormous magnitude have in the past imposed mjor alterations to the planet's geography, often submerging entire continetal landmasses beneath the sea, or raising others to become some of todays highest mountain ranges, as evidenced by teh shells and skeletons of sea animals that have been found high in the Himalayas. Geological evidence also confirms that the great plains of the USA and Mexico to Alaska were at one time under the sea; so also was today's eastern coast of America whee the ocean once broke the 'Shores' of the Appalachian Mountains. There is similar evidence of changes in the Earth's axis; tropical coral reefs have been discovered as far north as Spitzbergen whithin what is now the Polar Circle.
With these upheavals have come correspondingly sudden climatic changes. Coal deposits in Antartica indicate that the area was once covered by forests. In 1799 frozen bodies of mammoths were discovered in the tundra of Siberia, their stomachs containing freshly eaten grasses and leaves that nowadays belong in regions a thousand or more miles to the south.
Everything is cyclic and changes of the above magnitude have happened before and will happen again.
The pyramid of Xochicalco, situated at an altitude of 5,395 feet above sea level, to the south-southwest of the city of Cuernavaca, four and a half miles from Tetlama, is one of the most ancient constructions made by human hands, and one of the most important in the history of mah among modern civilized Christian and Mohammedan nations. This monument is a record, written on stone, of the tremendous cataclysm which caused the submergence and destruction of the Land of u along with its population of 64,000,000 people , about 11,500 years ago.
Immanuel Velikovsky has made a major contribution to research in this area. In his book WORLDS IN COLLISION, written in 1950, he assembles numberous biblical and ancient historical references to such events, drawing substantially on contemporary accounts from the Middle East and Lower Mexico. He quotes , for example, a long inscription in hieroglypics on a shrine of black granite found at El-Arish on the border of Egypt and Palestine that reads:
"The land was in great affliction. Evil fell on this earth. There was a great upheaval in the residence. Nobody could leave the palace dureing nine days, and during these nine days of upheaval there was such a tempest that neither men nor gods couls see the faces of those beside them."
This inscription corresponds exactly with the Bible's Exodus 10:22 "And there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. ZThey saw not one antoehr, neither rose from this place for three days."
East of Egypt, in Babylonia, the eleventh tablet of the 'Epic of Gilgamesh" refers to the same events: "From out of the horizon rose a dark cloud and it rushed against the Earth; the land was shrivelled by the heat of flames. Desolation stretched to heaven; all that was bright was turned into darkness. Nor could a brother distinguish his brother. For Six days the hurrican, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land , and all humans back to their clay were returned"
The historian Ipuwer witnessed and survived this earthquake, recounting that; "The towns are destroyed, Upper Egypt has become a waste. ALl is ruin . The residence is overturned in a minute." (Papyrus Ipuwer 2:11, 3:13)
From his research of ancient documents, Velikovsky concludes that the Earth was forced out of its regular motion by the close approach of the body of a comet: a major shock convulsed the lithosphere, and the area of the earthquake was the entire globe. Terrific hurricanes swept the Earth because of the change or reveersal of the angular velocity of rotation and because of the sweeping gases, dust and cinders of the comet. He supports this contention of worlwide disruptions with similar quotations from historical recores of Mexican tradition.
According to the Mexican sacred book 'Popol-Vuh', the ' Manuscript Cakchiquel' and the 'Manuscript Troano', the mountains in every part of the Western Hemisphere simultaneously gushed lava. The volcanoes that opened along the entire chain of the Cordilleras and in ohter mountain ranges and on flat land vomited fire, vapour and torrents of lava.
The Troano Manuscript and other Mayan documents describe a cosmic catastroophe during which the ocean fell upon the continent and a terrible hurrican swept the Earth. These records provide graphic accounts of hurricans which broke up and carried away all towns and forests. Exploding volcanoes, tides sweeping over mountains, and raging winds thretened to annihilate humankind, and actually did annihilate many species of animals. The face of the Earth changed, mountains collapsed, others grew and rose over the onrushing cataract of water driven from oceanic spaces, numberless rivers lost their beds, and a wild tornado moved through the debris descending from the sky.
The ancients referred to the physical agent that brought darkness and swept away houses and trees and even rocks and mounds of earth as 'Hurakan'' , from which our present word 'hurricane' is derived. Hurakan , it is recorded, destroyed the major part of the human race . In the darkeness swept by wind, resinous stuff fell from the sky and participated with fire on water in the destruction of the world. For five days, save for the burning naphtha and burning volcanoes, the world was dark, since the sun did not appear.
In a later book, EARTH IN UPHEAVAL, Velikovsky takes a slightly different approach, now supporting biblical and other historical references with currently visible geological evidence of past upheavals.
He describes, for example, an area in Alaska to the north of Mount McKinley which has a frozen layer of 'muck' composed of a jumble of trees and extinct animals, such as the mammoth, mastodon and super bison. This was analyzed by Professor F.C. Hibben of the University of New Mexico who concluded the following:
"There is ample evidence that at least portions of this material were deposited under catastropohic conditions. Mammal remains are for the most part dismembered and disarticulated, even though some fragments yet retain, in their frozen state, portions of ligaments, skin, hair and flesh. Twisted and torn trees are piled in splintered masses.
At least four considerable layers of volcanic ash may be traced in these deposits, although they are extremely warped and distorted. "The presence of volcanic ash indicates that a volcanic eruption did take place, and repeatedly, in four consecutive stages of the same epoch; but it is also apparent that the trees could have been uprooted and splintered only by hurricane or flood or a combination of both. The animals could have been dismembered only by a stupendous wave that lifted and carried and smashed and tore and buried millions of bodies and millions of trees. Also, the area of the catastrophe was much greater than the action of a few volcanoes could have covered."
During the late 1830s Hugh Miller made a special study of the Old Red Sandstone in Scotland, in which an abundant aquatic fauna is embedded. The animals embedded within it are seen in very 'disturbed' positions. Miller writes: " Some catastropohe involved in sudden destruction the fish of an area at least a hundred miles from boundary to boundary, perhaps more. The same plaform in Orkney, as at Cromarty, is strewed thick with remains, which exhib unequivocally the marks of violent death. The figures are controted, contracted, curved; The tail in many instances is bent around the head; the spines stick out; the fins are spread to the full, as in frish that die in convulsions."
In 1901 , a quick frozen mammoth was found in Berosovka, Siberia, so well preserved that its eyeballs were fullly intact. It still had buttercups in is mouth and the content of its stomach indicated that it had been eating temperate zone plants, no longer growing in the area. R.S. Lull, Director of the Peabody Museum at Yale, reports the discover in his book ORGANIC EVOLUTION , confirming that " ...a fractured hip and fore limb, a great mass of clotted blook in the chest, and unswalled grass between the clenched teeth, all point to the violence and suddenness of its passing."
Rock geology shows that there have been major uplifts of land masses around the globe. The great massif of the Himalayas is estimated to hve risen to its present height since the last Ice Age of over 11,000 years ago. Likewise the Andes in South America also show evidence of having been thrust upwards at this time.
Many other researchers have identified evidence of major geological changes during our plant's long history; indeed, thee are many areas in which even a casual observer can see such evidenc e for him or herself, as for example when erosion shows cross sections of hillsides miles from the present coastline desplaying desposits of seashells.
The stone city of Tiahunaco is so old that its broken pottery show pictues of Pleistocene animals.
Immanuel Velikovsky summarizes these sudden geological changes: "Whereever we investigate the geological recoreds of this Earth, we find signs of catastrophes and upheavals, old and recent. Mountains sprang from plains, and other mountains were leveled; strata of the terrestrial crust were foldedd and pressed together and overturned and moved and put on top of other formations. Igneous rock melted and flooded enormous areas of land with miles-thick sheets, and the ocean bed flowed with molten rock. Ashes were showered down and built layers many yards thick on the ground and on the botton of the oceans in their vast expanse. The shores of ancient lakes were tilted and are no longer horizontal and the seacoasts show subsidence or emergence, in some place of over one thousand feet.
Rocks of the earth are filled with remains of life extinguished in a state of agony. Sedimentry rocks are one vast graveyad and the granite and basalt, too, have embedded in them numberless living organism. Shells have closed valves as they do in living state, so unexpectedly came the entombment. Vast forest were burned and washed away and covered with the waters of the seas and with sand and turned to coal. Animals were swept to the far north and thrown into heaps and were soaked by bitumionous outpourings. Broken bones and torn ligaments and the skins of animals, both of living specieis and of extinct species, were smashed together with splintered forests into huge piles. "
The theme of the cosmic hurricane is reiterated time and again in the Hindu Vedas and in the Persian Avesta. The 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh says that 6 days and a night the hurricane, deluge and tempest continued , sweeping the land and mankind persished almost altogether.
The Maoris narrate that amid a stupendous catastrophe the mighty winds, the fierce squalls, the clouds, dense, dark, fiery, wildly drifting , wildly bursting, rushed on creation....and swept away giant forests and lashed the waters into billows whose crests rose high like mountains.
The Polynesians celebrate a god, Taafanua. In Arabic, Tyfoon is a whirlwind and Tufan is the Deluge and the same word occurs in Chinese as Ty-fong. It appears as though the noise of the hurrican was ...not unlike the name Typhon.
EXCERPTS FROM WORLDS IN COLLISION, THE HAIL OF STONES, by Velikovsky pp 51-53
Following the red dust, a small dust, like ashes of the furnace fell in all the land of Egypt (Exodus 9:18) and then a shower of meteorites flew toward the earth. We are informed by Midrashic and Talmudic sources that the stones which fell on Egypt were hot. Ipuwere wrote. "Trees are destroyed. No fruits, no herbs are found . Grain has perished on every side". In the Book of Exodus 9:25, it is written. "And the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field." .
The description of such a catastrophe is found in the Visuddhi-agga, a Buddhist text on the world cycles. "When a world sycle is detroyed by wind...thee arises ...a wind. First it raises a fine dust, then fine sand, the coarse sand, then grit, stones, up to boulders as large as trees. The Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan describe how a cosmic catastrophe was accompanied by a hail of stones.
EXCERPTS FROM WORLDS IN COLLISION, NAPTHA by Velikovsky, pp 53-55
Crude petroleum is composed of two elements, carbon and hydrogen. The inorganic theory (of the origin of petroleum states that) hydrogen and carbon were brought together in the rock formations of the earth under great heat and pressure. The tails of comets are composed mainly of carbon and hydorgen gases. Lcking oxygen, they do not burn inflight, but he inflammable gases, passing through an atmosphere containing oxygen, will be set on fire, binding all the oxygen available at the moment. The descent of a sticky fluid which came earthward and blazed with heavy smoke is recalled in the oral and written tradtions of the inhabitants of bother hemispheres.
Popol-Voh, th sacred book of the Mayas, narrates, "People were drowned in a sticky substance raining from the sky..and then there was a great din of fire above their heads:. The entire population of the land was annihilated. A similar account is preserved in the Annals of Cuahtitlan . The age which ended in the rain of fire was called "The Sun of Fire-Rain" .
In Siberiea, the Voguls carried down through the centuries and millenia this memory. "God sent a sea of fire upon the Earth. In the Eat Indies, the aboriginal tribes relate that in the remote past "water of fire" rained from the sky. With very few exceptions, all men died. The (Egyptian) payrus Ipuwer describes this consuming fire. "Gates, columns and walls are consumed by fire. The sky is in confusion." The payrus says that this fire almost exterminated mankind.
EXCERPTS FROM WOLDS IN COLLISION, BOILING EARTH AND SEA by Velikovsky, pp 91-92
The Mexican sacred book, Popol-Vuh, the Manuscript Cakchiquel, the Manuscript Troano all record how the mountains in every part of the Western Hemisphere simultaneously gushed lava. The rivers steamed, and even the botton of the sea boiled here and there. The Zend -Avesta says "The sea boiled, all the shores of the ocean boiled, all the middle boiled."
The traditions of the Indians also retain the memory of this boiling of the water in river and sea. The tribes of British Columbia tell "Great Clouds appeared...and such a great heat came, that finally the water boiled. People jumped into the streams and lakes to cool themselves and died." On the North Pacific Coast of America , the tribes insist that the ocean boiled. "It grew very hot..manyh animals jumped into the water to save themselves, but the water began to boil." The Indians of the Southern Ute tribe in Colorado record in their legends that the rivers boiled.
Jewish tradition, as preserved in the rabbinical sources, declares that the mire at the bottom of the Sea of Passage was heated. Hesoid in his Theogony, rlating the upheaval caused by a celestrial collision, says " The huge earth groaned...A great part of the huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by man's art...or as iron, which is hardeswt of all things, is softened by glowing fire in mountian glens."
EXCERPTS FROM WORLDS IN COLLISION, THE TIDE by Velikovsky pp 70 -75
The slowing down or stasisof the earth in its rotation would cause a tidal recession of water toward the poles, but the celestial body near by would disturb this poleward recession, drawing the water toward itself. The traditions of many people persist that seas were torn appart and their water heaped high and thrown upon the continents.
The traditions of the people of Peru tell that for a period of time the sun was not in the sky, and then the ocean left the shore and with a terrible din broke over the continent. The Choctaw Indians of Oklahoma relate, " The earth was plunged into darkness for a long time. finally a dark light appeared int he north, but it was mountain high waves, rapidly comin nearer. : According to the Lapland epic, after the sea wall fell on the continent , gigantic waves continued to roll and dead bodies were dashed about in the dark waters.
The Hebrew story of the passage of the sea relates that the bottom of the sea was uncovered, the waters were driven apart and heaped up like walls in a double tide. The Sepuagint translation of the bible says that the water stood 'as a wall' and the Koran, referring to the event, says 'like mountains' . In the old rabbincial literature it is said that the water wsas suspendede as if it were 'glass, solid and massive'.
DESCENT INTO SAVAGERY
Then follows the woeful description of the pitiful plight of these survivors, who had been left desttude of all their shelter, clothing, tools and food. It was amid this dreadful scene of steaming wters and clouds of drifting ash and smoke, that most of them perished, and those few who remained took their first step backward into the dark depths of savagery as they finally found themselves having to resort to cannibalism in order to survive.
This was but the beginning of a deep descent into the lowest state of humanity, which was to remain a traditional way of life in the Pacific region for thousands of years to come. Cannibalism was still rife in many of the Pacific Island, even up to the mid 1900s.
No doubt, we oe much of our modern civilization today, to tha t ancient motherland in the Pacific Ocean, by ways of the various grat civilaztions whch she spawned fiirst in Atlantis, then India, the Americas, China, Egypt and finally, in Greece and Rome. It would seem that many of the inventions and skills that were common to the Muvians and Atlanteans, are now simply being rediscovered by modern man.
Madame Helean Blavatsky, the famous psychic and occultist, who founded the Theosophical Society, claimed to have had contact through psychic means with the Brotherhood of Mahatmas (a group of ethereal beings who purported to run the world from their Tibetan headquarters) and that, among other amazing things, they had revealed the true emergence of life on the earth. She was told that there are seven 'root rces' of beings destined to occupy the earth, and that we present day humans are the firth such race. The Sixth will evolve out of us and go back to occupy lemuria, then the seventh and final root race will leave this planet altogether and start over again upon the planet Mercury.