Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization

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Everybody knows the Dark Ages weren't really dark, right? Not so fast, counters archaeological journalist David Keys, maybe it's more than just a slightly judgmental metaphor. His book Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World, based on years of careful research spanning five continents, argues that sometime in A.D. 535, a worldwide disaster struck and uprooted nearly every culture then extant. Given contemporary reports of the sun being blotted out or weakened for nearly a year and a half, followed by famine, drought, and plague, it's hard not to think that so many reports from all over the world must be related.

Keys shows a keen grasp of both the written historical record from Asia, Africa, and Europe and the archaeological evidence from the Americas, and tells many tales of great havoc destroying old empires and laying the ground for new ones. Rome may have fallen, but Spain, England, and France rose in its place, while farther east, Japan and China each unified and gained strength after the chaos. Could an enormous volcanic eruption have had such influence on the world as a whole, and could the same thing happen tomorrow? Catastrophe makes no predictions, but leaves the reader with a new sense of history, nature, and destiny. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

It was a catastrophe without precedent in recorded history: for months on end, starting in A.D. 535, a strange, dusky haze robbed much of the earth of normal sunlight. Crops failed in Asia and the Middle East as global weather patterns radically altered. Bubonic plague, exploding out of Africa, wiped out entire populations in Europe. Flood and drought brought ancient cultures to the brink of collapse. In a matter of decades, the old order died and a new world—essentially the modern world as we know it today—began to emerge.

In this fascinating, groundbreaking, totally accessible book, archaeological journalist David Keys dramatically reconstructs the global chain of revolutions that began in the catastrophe of A.D. 535, then offers a definitive explanation of how and why this cataclysm occurred on that momentous day centuries ago.

The Roman Empire, the greatest power in Europe and the Middle East for centuries, lost half its territory in the century following the catastrophe. During the exact same period, the ancient southern Chinese state, weakened by economic turmoil, succumbed to invaders from the north, and a single unified China was born. Meanwhile, as restless tribes swept down from the central Asian steppes, a new religion known as Islam spread through the Middle East. As Keys demonstrates with compelling originality and authoritative research, these were not isolated upheavals but linked events arising from the same cause and rippling around the world like an enormous tidal wave.

Keys's narrative circles the globe as he identifies the eerie fallout from the months of darkness: unprecedented drought in Central America, a strange yellow dust drifting like snow over eastern Asia, prolonged famine, and the hideous pandemic of the bubonic plague. With a superb command of ancient literatures and historical records, Keys makes hitherto unrecognized connections between the "wasteland" that overspread the British countryside and the fall of the great pyramid-building Teotihuacan civilization in Mexico, between a little-known "Jewish empire" in Eastern Europe and the rise of the Japanese nation-state, between storms in France and pestilence in Ireland.

In the book's final chapters, Keys delves into the mystery at the heart of this global catastrophe: Why did it happen? The answer, at once surprising and definitive, holds chilling implications for our own precarious geopolitical future. Wide-ranging in its scholarship, written with flair and passion, filled with original insights, Catastrophe is a superb synthesis of history, science, and cultural interpretation.

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In A.D. 535-536, a climatic catastrophe occurred. It was of such mammoth proportions, it blotted out much of the heat and light of the sun for eighteen months and resulted -- directly or indirectly -- in climatic chaos, famine, migration, war, and massive political change on every continent. In other words, it altered history.

In this breakthrough examination, British archaeological journalist David Keys traces the identity and roots of this catastrophe -- continent by continent and virtually country by country -- showing how it is directly linked to the development of our modern world. The Plague, the rise of Islam, the fall of the Roman Empire, the movement of Asiatic tribes, the beginnings of the great South American empires -- Keys connects all these events that have previously been considered separate and shows us the far-reaching effects of incidents that first appear only localized. He makes us see history in holistic terms, as an integrated, planet-wide phenomenon.

In this fascinating, impeccably researched, and accessible book, Keys's innovative conclusions demonstrate how closely entwined global events truly are, and prove we must change the way we look at our past -- and thus, our future.

Customer Reviews:

My 100-word book review.......2007-03-28

In Catastrophe, author David Keys builds a convincing case for sudden climate change having occurred in the early 6th century, an abrupt dip in worldwide temperatures that would have had massive long-term consequences for civilisations all over the globe. Results could have included the weakening of the Byzantines, the downfall of Teotihuacan and the rise of Islam. This is a fascinating book, and the author's identification of a super volcano as the culprit is highly plausible. However, I think Keys possibly over-estimates this event as a shaper of our modern world, given the existence of so many other important factors.

A truly fascinating history.......2006-12-14

This is truly one of the most fascinating theories in ancient history. A volcano that shaped the modern world by forcing the migration of the huns, the crop failures in the Middle East that led to the rise of Islam and the start of the barbarian migrations towards Rome. It is almost too hard to summarize but if you believe that climate can change history than this is the book that will provide excellent evidence on that idea. Truly a masterpiece of an idea.

Looking for a catstrophe?.......2006-09-12

How much of human history has been shaped by catastrophic events? This exhaustively researched document seems like a natural place to find the answer. Unfortunately, the author's fascination with lurid details of human torture and dismemberment caused me to put the book down after just 60 blood-soaked pages. It's pretty clear that Mr. Key's interests in history do not run parallel to my own. I also found myself wondering about Key's qualifications as "Archaeological Journalist." I guess there are plenty of people who like reading tabloid-style history, and good luck to them, but I much prefer a calmer and scientific perspective of Derek Ager, in his book "The New Catastrophism, The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History." -- Auralgo

FORCED CONCLUSIONS?.......2006-03-12

Mr. Key's authoritative research created a unique and new approach to the writing of history. His synthesis of science, culture and history was informative and entertaining. He identifies the volcanic eruption between Sumatra and Java in 535 that led to a climatic disaster that he believes helped create the modern world. He did convince this reader that the "Dark Ages were more literal than figurative." However, many of his historical conclusions were overstated. Chapters 19-29 lacked a depth of evidence and were too speculative. His constant use of words like "undoubtedly" made the reader question if he truly beleived his entire thesis? I concluded that he was at most one third correct, but ended in disagreeing that climate changes "alone" caused the birth of the modern world. I give it 4 stars for effort, but only 3 in its totality.

Interesting, relevant, but sometimes a bit stretched........2005-06-28

For the most part I found this book to be enjoyable, but it seems that Keys attempted in some areas to force his conclusion. Also, the same arguement seemed to be repeated far too often. Although I liked that the evidence of climate change was presented for essentially the entire planet, the conclusions at the end of each civilization were repetitive, simply restating the same thing (although, I suppose that was the point). I began to lose patience about 1/3 way through the book, but was able to persist through the conclusion. Perhaps it would have been better had Keys not spent so much time on minutae of Roman history and decline and had moved through the evidence quicker. The latter chapters on Asian and American experience were a little faster reading, likely due to the lack of minutae, largely due to the lack of records from which Keys could draw on. The final arguement on the causes of so much misfortune was compelling, but also left me feeling like our participation in the environment may all be for naught, since the Yellowstone caldera could explode at any moment, wiping us all out. I could not determine if this book wanted to be a book about climate change, history, or science.

Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago

Average customer rating:

Very informative overview of the Permian Mass Extinction
Interesting topic, expert writer, frustrating book
Perspective on Global Warming
Splendid agnosticism
Some self-aggrandizing here...

Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago
Douglas H. Erwin
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions
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ASIN: 0691005249

Book Description

Some 250 million years ago, the earth suffered the greatest biological crisis in its history. Around 95% of all living species died out--a global catastrophe far greater than the dinosaurs' demise 65 million years ago. How this happened remains a mystery. But there are many competing theories. Some blame huge volcanic eruptions that covered an area as large as the continental United States; others argue for sudden changes in ocean levels and chemistry, including burps of methane gas; and still others cite the impact of an extraterrestrial object, similar to what caused the dinosaurs' extinction.

Extinction is a paleontological mystery story. Here, the world's foremost authority on the subject provides a fascinating overview of the evidence for and against a whole host of hypotheses concerning this cataclysmic event that unfolded at the end of the Permian.

After setting the scene, Erwin introduces the suite of possible perpetrators and the types of evidence paleontologists seek. He then unveils the actual evidence--moving from China, where much of the best evidence is found; to a look at extinction in the oceans; to the extraordinary fossil animals of the Karoo Desert of South Africa. Erwin reviews the evidence for each of the hypotheses before presenting his own view of what happened.

Although full recovery took tens of millions of years, this most massive of mass extinctions was a powerful creative force, setting the stage for the development of the world as we know it today.

Customer Reviews:

Very informative overview of the Permian Mass Extinction .......2007-10-08

I found this book very easy to read. Mr. Erwin has a sort of sense of humor he adds to the book to take away from any text book monotony you may be afraid of. He is also extremely in depth and explains with seemingly little bias the many proposed possible causes and evidence (or lack of) for this mass extinction. There are also many diagrams and graphs to illustrate much of the pertenant information. I won't get too in depth with the contents, I will just say if you have any interest in the Permian, or any other prehistoric event, I suggest you read it.

Interesting topic, expert writer, frustrating book.......2007-03-23

I wish I could give this book three or four stars. Erwin is an expert in the area of the Permian extinction, and when he tries, he can write well. Unfortunately, he does not seem to try often. There are just too many sentences here that need to be read two or three times before their meaning becomes clear. The meaning of many of the graphics never become clear! And at the end of each chapter, I was unclear about what I had learned, and what I could expect next.

I finally gave up half way through the book. At that point, I was as confused about the Permian extinction as I was at the beginning, and I cannot even say I was confused at a higher level.

Perspective on Global Warming.......2007-02-22

A geologist's view of global warming puts things in perspective. The sky may or may not be falling, but it's happened before.

Splendid agnosticism.......2006-11-23

In Kentucky, there's a museum with a lifesize model of a dinosaur with a saddle on it. This is a hymn in fiberglass to young Earth creationism, the idea that the Universe was created about 6,000 years ago.
It costs $1,500 to become a charter member (family rate) of this museum. A much better investment would be $24.95 for Douglas Erwin's thriller about the Permian extinction.
More than nine-tenths of all species died out 251 million years ago. Erwin, a researcher with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and the Santa Fe Institute, finds the end-Permian "enigma far more compelling than the end of the dinosaurs," a relatively minor event from 65 million years ago.
For an event that Kentuckians think never happened, the end-Permian event left a lot of debris, of which the most interesting is in China. Until 20 years ago, the paleontological record there was unknown to the outside world.
What the evidence is telling us is difficult to say. Erwin says "Extinction" was "frankly written as a mystery story." In this one, the clever detective does not wrap up all the loose ends on the last page.
Instead, we learn that there are at least seven major theories of what might have happened. These range from a big meteorite to gigantic volcanic eruptions in Siberia to a climatic or biological or geological change that drove oxygen out of the oceans.
The first chapters set the stage. Life was very different in the Permian. There were reefs in warm oceans, and they contained corals, but the corals were only distantly related to those of today and they were not as important as crinoids and lampshells, animals that still exist in out-of-the-way places.
On land, flowering plants had not yet evolved, nor mammals, dinosaurs or saddles. In South Africa's Karoo basin, fossils remain of a fabulous, lost fauna.
There were widespread extinctions on land as well as in the sea during the end-Permian event, but it is hard to say whether the land extinction was as complete as in the sea, where 94 percent of species disappeared in a short time. Erwin's team and their Chinese collaborators have found evidence that it all happened in less than 160,000 years -- maybe a lot less.
It is also not proved that the big land extinction exactly coincided with the sea kill, but it seems likely. The land kill was a whopper, too. This was apparently the only time in history when a mass extinction had any real impact on insects.
Whatever the cause, it did set up the modern world. "Mass extinction is a powerful creative force," says Erwin.
Or did it? As they learn more and more of the details, scientists are also learning to question the easy assumptions of more innocent decades.
Evolutionary biologists are vigorously debating whether the animals and plants that dominated the Permian were already being outcompeted by the early forerunners of modern flora and fauna, or whether they would have maintained their control of resources.
Erwin, splendidly agnostic about this and other debates, lays out the questions but leaves the resolution for some other time. Perhaps not too far in the future. He notes that his 1993 book on the Permian extinction already is out of date in many ways.
In fact, after decades researching the extinction itself, he has now concluded that "understanding the recovery from the extinction poses a far greater intellectual challenge."

Some self-aggrandizing here..........2006-10-18

It is always gratifying to see popular books about science get rave reviews because we scientists benefit from public enthusiasm about what we do. Erwin has a chatty and disarming style that is a joy to read. Unfortunately, it is a public disservice to distort reality as Erwin has done in this book. In depicting his role in the whodunit, Erwin has liberally embellished his own contributions and those of his colleagues. After proclaiming for years that the extinction was unrelated to the Siberian volcanism, this book now implies that such a relationship was his idea. The whitewashing treatment of his team's blunder in misdating the extinction and related events is worthy of the most guileful politician explaining away some scandalous act.

As long as you don't mind the plethora of factual errors and self-promotional aspects, it is a fine book. Unfortunately, it will not weather history well.

The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture

Average customer rating:

Have we passed our "Extinct By" Date?
More like 3.9 stars--generally liked 2/3 of it
You can tell a "soft science"...
A "must-read" book on a massive cosmic event
This well-written book reads like a captivating detective story and, in my view, is the best available popular account of the gr

The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture
Richard Firestone , Allen West , and Simon Warwick-Smith
Manufacturer: Bear & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1591430615
Release Date: 2006-06-16

Book Description

Newly discovered scientific proof validating the legends and myths of ancient floods, fires, and weather extremes

• Presents new scientific evidence revealing the cause of the end of the last ice age and the cycles of geological events and species extinctions that followed

• Connects physical data to the dramatic earth changes recounted in oral traditions around the world

• Describes the impending danger from a continuing cycle of catastrophes and extinctions

There are a number of puzzling mysteries in the history of Earth that have yet to be satisfactorily explained by mainstream science: the extinction of the dinosaurs, the vanishing of ancient Indian tribes, the formation of the mysterious Carolina Bays, the disappearance of the mammoths, the sudden ending of the last Ice Age, and the cause of huge underwater landslides that sent massive tsunamis racing across the oceans millennia ago. Eyewitness accounts of these events are chronicled in rich oral traditions handed down through generations of native peoples. The authors’ recent scientific discoveries link all these events to a single cause.

In The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith present new scientific evidence about a series of prehistoric cosmic events that explains why the last Ice Age ended so abruptly. Their findings validate the ubiquitous legends and myths of floods, fires, and weather extremes passed down by our ancestors and show how these legendary events relate to each other. Their findings also support the idea that we are entering a thousand-year cycle of increasing danger and possibly a new cycle of extinctions.

Customer Reviews:

Have we passed our "Extinct By" Date?.......2007-04-17

This book is about the "Event" that took place about 12,000 years ago that is recorded in myth and legend variously as the Fall of Atlantis and Noah's Flood. Plato describes a destruction that occurred in a day and a night, and the Bible recounts the story of torrential rains and an immense flood in which most of the life on earth perished. There is also a rich body of Native American literature about a worldwide cataclysm of fires, followed by floods and death raining down from the skies. As many as fifty different cultures around the globe record versions of this story, and physicist Firestone, along with his geologist co-authors, have put together a book, based on hard scientific evidence, describing a cosmic chain of events that they believe culminated in the global catastrophe of circa 12,000 years ago. They believe that the Event was triggered by a nearby supernova that occurred 41,000 years ago.

Firestone et al propose that we are still traversing an "extinction cycle" related to that event and that may very well be so, but it may also be true that there is more to the matter.

On March 13, 2005, the UK Observer published an article entitled "Bad news - we are way past our 'extinct by' date" which tells us:

"After analysing the eradication of millions of ancient species, scientists have found that a mass extinction is due any moment now.

"Their research has shown that every 62 million years - plus or minus 3m years - creatures are wiped from the planet's surface in massive numbers. Even worse, scientists have no idea about its source.

"'There is no doubting the existence of this cycle of mass extinctions every 62m years. It is very, very clear from analysis of fossil records,' said Professor James Kirchner, of the University of California, Berkeley. 'Unfortunately, we are all completely baffled about the cause.'"

This part of the article is actually quite disingenuous. It is well known that there are other major extinctions and the cycle is not ONLY every 62 million years! There is also a very strong signal for a 26 million year extinction cycle. The different estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years are due mainly to what the individual researcher chooses as the threshold for naming an extinction event as "major" as well as what set of data he selects as the determinant measure of past diversity. As it happens, the 62 million event data stems mainly from marine fossil evidence. The article goes on to say:

"But what is responsible? Here, researchers ran into problems. They considered the passage of the solar system through gas clouds that permeate the galaxy. These clouds could trigger climatic mayhem. However, there is no known mechanism to explain why the passage might occur only every 62m years.

"Alternatively, the Sun may possess an undiscovered companion star. It could approach the Sun every 62m years, dislodging comets from the outer solar system and propelling them towards Earth. Such a companion star has never been observed, however, and in any case such a lengthy orbit would be unstable, Muller says.

"Or perhaps some internal geophysical cycle triggers massive volcanic activity every 62m years, Muller and Rohde wondered. Plumes from these would surround the planet and lead to a devastating drop in temperature that would freeze most creatures to death.

"Unfortunately, scientists know of no such geological cycle.

"'We have tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction,' Muller said. 'So far we have failed."

The fact is, the above article doesn't even mention the Pleistocene extinction which is the subject of "The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes," yet a mountain of evidence points to the fact that this extinction was global and catastrophic.

Back in the 1940s Dr. Frank C. Hibben, Prof. of Archeology at the University of New Mexico led an expedition to Alaska to look for human remains. He didn't find human remains; he found miles and miles of icy muck just packed with mammoths, mastodons, and several kinds of bison, horses, wolves, bears and lions. Just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, the members of the expedition watched in horror as bulldozers pushed the half-melted muck into sluice boxes for the extraction of gold. Animal tusks and bones rolled up in front of the blades "like shavings before a giant plane". The carcasses were found in all attitudes of death, most of them "pulled apart by some unexplainable prehistoric catastrophic disturbance."[Hibben, Frank, The Lost Americans (New York: Thomas & Crowell Co. 1946)]

The killing fields stretched for literally hundreds of miles in every direction.[ibid.] There were trees and animals, layers of peat and moss, twisted and tangled and mangled together as though some Cosmic mixmaster sucked them all in circa 12000 years ago, and then froze them instantly into a solid mass. [Sanderson, Ivan T., "Riddle of the Frozen Giants", Saturday Evening Post, No. 39, January 16, 1960.]

Just north of Siberia entire islands are formed of the bones of Pleistocene animals swept northward from the continent into the freezing Arctic Ocean. One estimate suggests that some ten million animals may be buried along the rivers of northern Siberia. Thousands upon thousands of tusks created a massive ivory trade for the master carvers of China, all from the frozen mammoths and mastodons of Siberia. The famous Beresovka mammoth first drew attention to the preserving properties of being quick-frozen when buttercups were found in its mouth.

What kind of terrible event overtook these millions of creatures in a single day? Well, the evidence suggests an enormous tsunami raging across the land, tumbling animals and vegetation together, to be finally quick-frozen for the next 12000 years. But the extinction was not limited to the Arctic, even if the freezing at colder locations preserved the evidence of Nature's rage.

Paleontologist George G. Simpson considers the extinction of the Pleistocene horse in North America to be one of the most mysterious episodes in zoological history, confessing, "no one knows the answer." He is also honest enough to admit that there is the larger problem of the extinction of many other species in America at the same time. [Simpson, George G., Horses, New York: Oxford University Press) 1961] The horse, giant tortoises living in the Caribbean, the giant sloth, the saber-toothed tiger, the glyptodont and toxodon. These were all tropical animals. These creatures didn't die because of the "gradual onset" of an ice age, "unless one is willing to postulate freezing temperatures across the equator, such an explanation clearly begs the question." [Martin, P. S. & Guilday, J. E., "Bestiary for Pleistocene Biologists", Pleistocene Extinction, Yale University, 1967]

Massive piles of mastodon and saber-toothed tiger bones were discovered in Florida. [Valentine, quoted by Berlitz, Charles, The Mystery of Atlantis (New York, 1969)] Mastodons, toxodons, giant sloths and other animals were found in Venezuela quick-frozen in mountain glaciers. Woolly rhinoceros, giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant jaguars, ground sloths, antelopes and scores of other entire species were all totally wiped out at the same time, at the end of the Pleistocene, approximately 12000 years ago.

This event was global. The mammoths of Siberia became extinct at the same time as the giant rhinoceros of Europe; the mastodons of Alaska, the bison of Siberia, the Asian elephants and the American camels. It is obvious that the cause of these extinctions must be common to both hemispheres, and that it was not gradual. A "uniformitarian glaciation" would not have caused extinctions because the various animals would have simply migrated to better pasture. What is seen is a surprising event of uncontrolled violence. [Leonard, R. Cedric, Appendix A in "A Geological Study of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge", Special Paper No. 1 ( Bethany: Cowen Publishing 1979)] In other words, 12000 years ago, something terrible happened - so terrible that life on earth was nearly wiped out in a single day.

Harold P. Lippman admits that the magnitude of fossils and tusks encased in the Siberian permafrost present an "insuperable difficulty" to the theory of uniformitarianism, since no gradual process can result in the preservation of tens of thousands of tusks and whole individuals, "even if they died in winter." [Lippman, Harold E., "Frozen Mammoths", Physical Geology, (New York 1969)] Especially when many of these individuals have undigested grasses and leaves in their belly. Pleistocene geologist William R. Farrand of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, who is opposed to catastrophism in any form, states: "Sudden death is indicated by the robust condition of the animals and their full stomachs ... the animals were robust and healthy when they died." [Farrand, William R., "Frozen Mammoths and Modern Geology", Science, Vol.133, No. 3455, March 17, 1961] Unfortunately, in spite of this admission, this poor guy seems to have been incapable of facing the reality of worldwide catastrophe represented by the millions of bones deposited all over this planet right at the end of the Pleistocene. Hibben sums up the situation in a single statement: "The Pleistocene period ended in death. This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period, which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all inclusive." [Hibben, op. cit.]

This is the event that Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith discuss in their book, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization. They suggest that, as a result of the above mentioned supernova, Planet Earth encountered a massive "swarm" of cometary bodies that nearly destroyed every living thing on Earth about 12000 years ago. They write:

"Until recently, the astronomical mainstream was highly critical of Clube and Napier's giant comet hypothesis. However, the crash of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in 1994 has led to a change in attitudes. The comet, watched by the world's observatories, was seen split into 20 pieces and slam into different parts of the planet over a period of several days. A similar impact on Earth, it hardly needs saying, would have been devastating."

Readers of my Cassiopaea website and the experiment in superluminal communication that I began in 1992 are aware that this experiment finally bore fruit in 1994 on the very day that the fragments of Comet Shoemaker Levy began impacting the planet Jupiter. We find it amusingly synchronous that one of the themes of the Cassiopaean experiment is planetary destruction via a Comet Cluster that cycles through the solar system every 3,600 years as a consequence of the orbit of our Sun's solar Companion, a smaller, dark, Twin Sun. I discuss this and the Carolina Bays in "The Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive".

With the idea that there is a Cometary Bombardment Cycle, we have naturally been alert to the fact that the last few years have brought increasing evidence that this theory is the correct one. This evidence includes the fantastic increase in the number of "moons" attached to Jupiter that have so recently been "discovered", as well as the increase in frequency of comets over the past few years, along with the astonishing increase in meteorites and fireballs entering Earth's atmosphere and falling to earth. In some cases, these events have resulted in damage to human beings and property, and one recent case even resulted in death.

The third edition of the university textbook Exploration of the Universe, by George O. Abell, published in 1975, informs us that Jupiter has 9 moons as of 1974. It says:

"The outer seven, however, have rather eccentric orbits, some of which have a large inclination to Jupiter's equator. The four most distant satellites revolve from east to west, contrary to the motions of most of the other objects in the solar system. They may be former minor planets captured by Jupier. [p. 324]"

Please note that Abell is suggesting that some of Jupiter's moons have been captured by Jupiter's gravity.

Now let's time travel back to the future, and see what the latest information tells us about Jupiter's moons:

"Jupiter is now given 63 satellites." Forty-seven of those satellites have been discovered since 1999. What if they weren't there before?

What about Saturn. Our 1975 text tells us that Saturn has 10 satellites. In 2007? Well, there are so many that one source declines to give a precise number!

However, counting the named satellites on the Timeline of discovery of solar system planets and their natural satellites gives us a count of 62, with 41 being discovered since 2000 and another ten in the 80's and 90's.

Moving outward, we come to Uranus, given five satellites in 1975, it now has 28, with ten being discovered in the 1980's, six in the 90's, and 7 since 2000.

Neptune had two satellies in 1975, now it has 13.

The explanation given most often to explain this surge in the numbers of satellites for these planets is that telescopes have gotten better. That is, we can see further, with greater detail, and can therefore find things that we couldn't see before. It is an explanation that makes sense. One small problem with this theory is that the "new" moons of Neptune and Uranus showed up before the new moons of Jupiter and Saturn. One would think that powerful telescopes capable of finding moons as far away as the seventh and eighth planets would have found the hard to see moons of the fifth and sixth first.

Another possible explanation, and one which fits with new moons appearing around Nepture and Uranus prior to appearing around Jupiter and Saturn, is that these new moons, or some of them, are objects that have been trapped into orbits around these planets only recently, that they were captured by the gravity of these planets and removed from the incoming comet cloud. Passing the orbits of the outer planets first, they would arrive at the inner planets afterwards.

We also note that the much derided Immanuel Velikovsky, in his book Worlds in Collision, gives a time frame of nine years as the time it would take for a comet to cover the distance between Jupiter and Earth. The new Jovian moons were discovered beginning in the late nineties.

Do the math.

Anybody with eyes and ears and a bit of scientific knowledge can look around and see that something is going on "out there". The problem is, of course, that the masses of humanity are so distracted by all the concerns of everyday life - many of which are quite serious nowadays, especially the threat of nuclear war brought to us by George W. Bush and the Ziocons - that most of them haven't got a clue that they probably don't have to worry about Global Warming. (And just because I say that people don't have to worry about Global Warming doesn't mean they don't have to worry!)The evidence that is all around us nowadays even helps us to realize that there was nothing really magical or mysterious about the story of Noah.

When I read Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" that I realized that the "plagues of the Exodus" was very likely a description of a bombardment of the Earth by rocks and bolides from space. Velikovsky, of course, attributed it to an errant planet Venus that came careening into the solar system just as Firestone et al attribute it to a supernova 41,000 years ago. The Cyclic Comet Cluster related to a Companion Sun explanation is a better fit to all the data, though a supernova could also be involved as well as a "Newcomer" to the Solar System.

In any event, what is perfectly clear is that the story of the Exodus and Noah and the story of Atlantis are apocryphal: many groups of people survived the event of 12,000 years ago here and there, and very likely many of them survived because they realized what was coming. As Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith write:

"It begins with meteors failing like raindrops, a few here and there. Perhaps a few hit the sun, provoking large solar flares. The solar flares provoke colourful auroras even in the daytime sky. Then the day of the comets arrive. From horizon to horizon, growing larger every second, they streaked into the atmosphere, lighting up brighter than the sun."

In the final pages of the final pages of The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization, Firestone et al write:

"If you want more evidence for what happened to the mammoths, you need only to look up at the clear night sky. In almost any month, you can see shooting stars from one of many meteor showers. Nearly every fiery streak you see is the tiny remnant of some giant comet that broke up into smaller pieces. Of course, most of those pieces are microscopic, but their parent comet was not - it was enormous. Astronomers know that, even today, hidden in those cosmic clouds of tiny remnants, there are some huge chunks of comet pieces. We pass through their clouds every year like clockwork, so eventually we will collide with some of bigger pieces.

"In 1990, Victor Clube, an astrophysicist, and Bill Napier, an astronomer, published The Cosmic Winter, a book in which they describe performing orbital analyses of several of the meteor showers that hit Earth every year. Using sophisticated computer software, they carefully looked backward for thousands of years, tracing the orbits of comets, asteroids, and meteor showers until they uncovered something astounding. Many meteor showers are related to one another, such as the Taurids, Perseids, Piscids, and Orionids. In addition, some very large cosmic objects are related: the comets Encke and Rudnicki, the asteroids Oljato, Hephaistos, and about 100 others. Every one of those 100-plus cosmic bodies is at least a half-mile in diameter and some are miles wide. And what do they have in common? According to those scientists, every one is the offspring of the same massive comet that first entered our system less than 20,000 years ago! Clube and Napier calculated that, to account for all the debris they found strewn throughout our solar system, the original comet had to have been enormous.

"So was this our megafauna killer? All the known facts fit. The comet may have ridden in on the supernova wave, [or was knocked into the solar system by the Companion Sun - LKJ] then gone into orbit around the sun less than 20,000 years ago; or, if it was already here, the supernova debris wave may have knocked it into an Earth-crossing orbit. Either way, any time we look up into the night sky at a beautiful, dazzling display of shooting stars, there is an ominous side to that beauty. We are very likely seeing the leftover debris from a monster comet that finished off 40 million animals 12 to 13,000 years ago.

"Clube and Napier also calculated that, because of subtle changes in the orbits of Earth and the remaining cosmic debris, Earth crosses through the densest part of the giant comet clouds about every 2 ,000 to 4,000 years [or 3,600 years?]. When we look at climate and ice-core records, we can see that pattern. For example the iridium, helium-3, nitrate, ammonium, and other key measurements seem to rise and fall in tandem, producing noticeable peaks around 18,000, 16,000, 13,000, 9,000, 5,000, and 2,000 years ago. In that pattern of peaks every 2,000 to 4,000 years, we may be seeing the "calling cards" of the returning megacomet.

"Fortunately, the oldest peaks were the heaviest bombardments, and things have been getting quieter since then, as the remains of the comet break up into even smaller pieces The danger is not past, however. Some of the remaining miles-wide pieces are big enough to do serious damage to our cities, climate, and global economy. Clube and Napier (1984) predicted that in the year 2000 and continuing for 400 years, Earth would enter another dangerous time in which the planet's changing orbit would bring us into a potential collision course with the densest parts of the clouds containing some very large debris. Twenty years after their prediction, we have just now moved into the danger zone. It is a widely accepted fact that some of those large objects are in Earth-crossing orbits at this very moment, and the only uncertainty is whether they will miss us, as is most likely, or whether they will crash into some part of our planet. [...]

"We are years away from being able to control our own destiny as it relates to supernovae and giant comets and asteroids, but scientists are working on solutions. This is not a high priority with the world's governments, however, which typically prefer to confront terrestrial threats rather than cosmic ones. To prevent one of those giant objects from smashing into us, collectively, we spend about $10 to $20 million annually, an amount less than the cost of one or two sophisticated fighter jets. Almost no money is spent trying to detect imminent supernovae [or comets or asteroids].

"Our politicians are seriously underestimating these severe threats, which are capable of ending our species, just as they snuffed out the mammoths a mere 13,000 years ago, only an eyeblink in cosmic terms. There are few threats of that magnitude facing us today. The survival of the human race is not seriously threatened by the avian flu, Al Qaeda attacks, the end of the Age of Oil, monster hurricanes, giant earthquakes, or enormous tsunamis; if any of those occur, most of us will continue with our lives. Furthermore, nothing on that list is broadly accepted as having caused worldwide extinctions in the past. The same cannot be said about supernovae and massive [cometary] impacts. Those two cosmic events are implicated in many of the largest extinctions on our planet over the last millions of years. Fortunately, we survived them, but many of our fellow species did not. Humankind might not survive the next one. It seems reasonable to forgo several of our military fighter jets each year to decrease our chances of being" nuked" from space by a supernova or a comet."

So, indeed, perhaps humanity has passed its "extinct by" date and, just as it was in the days of Noah...

"They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

"Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all."

More like 3.9 stars--generally liked 2/3 of it.......2007-03-17

Gad I love/hate books like this. I think these guys are 75% clearly onto something but the book is not the best-written (my guess as to one reason why it ended up with a dinky New-Age-ish publisher), some of the linking ideas are a bit muddy, and I'm not thrilled with the logic of supernova radiation bath (OK), followed by supernova debris wave (OK), followed by (a stretch to me) comet impacts.

Much better linkage needed to be established between the supernova and the comet appearances other than "they were knocked out of orbit" by the supernova--that's kitchen table physics; the kind of thinking about how the "out there" physical world works based on small scale home observation. If that was in fact the case, then the comet(s) could have come from nearly any direction, but the authors make minor hay of the idea that the comet(s) came from the same direction in the sky as the alleged supernova. The physics of orbital dynamics is not the same thing as the physics of making shots in a game of pool (meaning if you get your pool cue, the moon, and the Earth all in a line, and tap the orbiting moon with your cue, it's not going to sail straight at the Earth).

Oddly, the book by a certified expert in orbital dynamics, astronomer Tom Van Flandern ("Dark Matter, Missing Planets, and New Comets" from another metaphysical rinky-dink press) maintains that the comets are debris produced by the explosion of a gas-giant planet within our solar system. All comet orbits, he claims, roughly trace back to a single point of origin. His is yet another frustrating book full of stupendous insights and appalling credibility-blowing observations (he doesn't rule out the possibility that aliens blew up the planet!). Do some of these writers intentionally sabotage their own work?

Otherwise, the authors of this book make note of a lot of in-the-face oddities that other scientists should have been all over ages ago, like the Carolina bay "craters" (the accepted theories for their formation almost sound like pseudo-science) and the "Black Mat"--a layer of organic material that, beneath a certain level in the soil, seems to blanket nearly everything in North America, and dates to the extinction of the mega-fauna 13,000 years ago. We all know mainstream scientists are conservative, but to ignore this "Mat" and its potential implications one would have to be fossilized.

So you should probably pick this up and add it to the stack of variable-quality outsider Ancient Catastrophe books. It's better and more straight-up than nearly all of them. The authors need to push the supernova of 40,000 years ago theory; it's well-argued and palatable for stone-sober science types. They're over their heads on the comet impact idea for 13,000 years ago, though. Something big happened back then (at least that's what all the natives tell us), and it may have been a comet, but other ideas need to be examined and worked out more comprehensively.

To conclude on a sour note, few legit scientists seem to read these things (most won't jeopardize their reputations by even being seen with copies), and they'll instead get read and critiqued generally by people looking for Atlantis, or ley lines, or ancient astronauts. In other words the biggest fans will probably contribute to keeping the material at the margins of acceptance or consideration. The atrocious cover and title alone will keep this forever out of the hands of academics--it's up there with Chris Dunn's "The Giza Power Station," an amazing and thought-provoking book with cover art so insufferably knuckleheaded that I'm ashamed to show it to people.

Marketing.

You can tell a "soft science"..........2007-03-16

You can tell a "soft science" when it's central dogmas can be permanently disrupted by a physicist messing around in his spare time. The best example is how you can still detect the "post-traumatic-stress" in the voices of paleontologists even decades after "Comet Alvarez" crashed their party. Hey, they had a century head-start and like Ted Turner says, they should be prepared to "Lead, follow, or get out of the way..."

Firestone and his colleagues may be initiating a repeat along the same lines as Walter Alvarez and his stalwarts did with the K/T extinction back in the 1980's. While this book has it's minor flaws, there seems to be enough evidence here to foresee the demise of the overkill theory of megafaunal extinction. And not a minute too soon. As a big fan of Vine Deloria's Red Earth, White Lies, I found this both predictable and highly entertaining. So, just as Dr. Alvarez found pieces of the "smoking bullet" spread around the planet, so also Firestone and his colleagues have found impressive evidence sprayed out onto vast areas of North America at the exact end of the so-called Clovis era. Mark your calender and start counting how many decades it takes the overkill advocates to die off...

Yet, evidence, and interpretation-of-evidence are two different things. The evidence convinces that the Clovis era and it's embattled beasties came to a sudden demise by an extraterrestrial cause. But what was that cause? Firestone and crew interpret the evidence in ways that suggest a nearby supernovae set the whole deadly chain of events in motion. Even if the evidence is solid for a group of related cataclysms, is a supernove, per se, the best or only explanation? I have only gotten 3/4's of the way through the book and I am not yet wholly sold on that. One can take a leisurely look at pictures of the Crab nebula and ponder the 6 light year diameter remnant, 6300 light years distant, as it expands at 600 miles per second. Would such an event deliver enough mass in particles to fill the entire expanding spherical shell so densely that, after traveling hundreds of light years.... it could still plausibly deliver swarms of impactors to earth to form the Carolina Bays? It seems that the surface area of the spherical shell would be too great. Could smaller particles enter the atmosphere fast enough to embed themselves in Mammoth tusks, without also having had enough velocity to burn up much higher above ground before they could reach the surface? It seems there is something wrong here, but perhaps the explanation is that the particles found embedded in the tusks were like secondary cosmic rays: just fragments of much larger chunks of hypervelocity bodies that did detonate at high altitudes. Who knows? Maybe the particles found embedded in the tree trunks at the Tunguska ground zero will be instructive here.

If a supernovae did the dirty deed, we should be able to find the remnant, or at very least a huge cavity in the interstellar gases within our neighborhood of the Milky Way. If, on the other hand, it is implausible that a supernovae could deliver such mass and disruption to our solar system at Firestone's proposed distance of hundreds of light years, than perhaps a more modest cataclysm at closer range might better explain the evidence. Is there anything in the solar sytem that suggests such an explosive event? Perhaps, but the time scales do not jive. Pardon the digression but I refer to Thom VanFlandern's theory on the origin of comets. If Thom VanFlandern is correct, something very interesting happened in the solar system about 3.2 million years ago. Whatever could have caused that event, could also have deposited alot of hell on earth, but again, the time scales do not jive.

So, the book is an A+ for the evidence it presents, and a solid "A" for the theory of causation. This is a must-read book. It is another wonderful proof of the notion that the difference between dinosaurs and men might turn out to be due to the work of physicists. Not to suggest that "soft" scientists are like dinosaurs...but you know, it might just turn out that way....once again.

A "must-read" book on a massive cosmic event.......2006-12-16

"The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes" is a must-read for any thinking and aware person. First, the evidence amassed is overwhelming that an ET/ELE (extraterrestrial/extinction level event) took place at some point in the past, culminating in a massive event at about 12,500 yrs BP. The authors of the book, most specifically Allen West and Richard Firestone, and I all totally agree something happened that was cosmic, catastrophic, and sudden. Firestone and I do not disagree, but rather are dealing with different levels of causality. For instance, whatever happened started with the Big Bang. Much later in time, there is no question but that supernovae did take place relatively near our solar system and those supernovae, or even one, must have had some effect on our sun ranging from ~ 0.1% to X%. I am focused on the immediate causation for what happened at about 12,500 yrs BP, and personally I see no way out of concluding that that event involved a massive and lethal neutron event, as you can read on a paper entitled, "Response to Comments" on Bob Kobres website, which makes the evidence clear.

Considering all of the available evidence that involves a massive neutron event, inverse radiocarbon resets from 14C being produced in situ, and the worldwide pattern as noted in the piece above, my own conviction is that only a giant solar flare could have done or caused all that happened, and it was over in one very, very bad day. If readers take some time to investigate giant solar flares, they will find the necessary conditions: antimatter to obliterate much of the atmosphere, entrapped neutrons in the flare's magnetic field, and a relatively short time span of less than one earth day which fits the evidence completely.

There also is a tantalizing clue in the book that indicates "they saw it coming" and got out. I believe my own view, which is that Paleo-Indians travelled by boat (probably skin), now is the prevailing view which would explain the lack of any human remains at all, particularly teeth. About the only thing they could have seen coming was a giant flare manifested by greatly increased solar activity. Flares arrive at varying speeds.

Radiocarbon dating does work, but the evidence at hand strongly suggests (if not proves) that before ~ 12,500 yrs BP nobody can say much of anything at all about "real dates" because of the production of 14C in a younger direction. This raises the interesting possibility, suggested as far back as the 1960's, that Paleo-Indian actually is a Mousterian (European) tradition. Mousterian toolkits remained virtually unchanged for about 200,000 years (depending on which sources indicate what dates) while later prehistoric toolkits persisted (in terms of style) for perhaps ~ 500 yrs. Most importantly, again as noted in the web-published piece, if the dates for Lewisville are as old as the most recent radiocarbon dates suggest, and lignite was NOT in the firepits), then as two world-class scholars have concluded that the only difference between European Solutrean and American Paleo-Indian are identical with the once exception of "fluting" not present in Solutrean, then the most logical conclusion is that European Solutrean derived from a longstanding American Mousterian tradition when those American Mousterians (and I am NOT saying Neanderthals) crossed back across the North Atlantic. In that event, which I believe to be the case, we (or I) are/am ruffling feathers but so be it.

One thing is certain about this book. The evidence at hand did not come from dedicated work and enormous salaries and expenditures at laboratories and universities, but rather from a dedicated and somewhat obsessive small group of people both professional and avocational who spent many years and very much of their own monies at this project. In and of itself, this is a "must read" for anyone in the world who wants to know how much, if not most scientific discovery, actually comes about.

William H. Topping, Ph.D.

This well-written book reads like a captivating detective story and, in my view, is the best available popular account of the gr.......2006-10-15

Availing themselves of various sciences and mythology, the authors of this volume postulate a cosmic event--a supernova--that occurred 41,000 years ago and culminated some 13,000 years ago in sudden warming and the fifth mass extinction. Like other investigators, they believe that humanity remembers this catastrophe in its legends.

They present the available evidence in a systematic fashion, which makes it easy to follow their argument. This well-written book reads like a captivating detective story and, in my view, is the best available popular account of the great ice-age calamity that significantly shaped humanity's cultural evolution.

Copyright ©2006 by Georg Feuerstein. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in any form requires prior permission from Traditional Yoga Studies at www.traditionalyogastudies.com

Voices of the Rocks : A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations

Average customer rating:

Don't buy this waste of paper
The Sphinx got wet once; does that make it older?
A book with view (point) ... - Interdisciplinary treat!
Very Disappointing.
Wishy Washy

Voices of the Rocks : A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations
Robert M. Schoch
Manufacturer: Harmony
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

Voyages of the Pyramid Builders
Pyramid Quest: Secrets of the Great Pyramid and the Dawn of Civilization
The Origin Map: Discovery of a Prehistoric, Megalithic, Astrophysical Map and Sculpture of the Universe
Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients
Before the Pharaohs: Egypt's Mysterious Prehistory

ASIN: 0609603698
Release Date: 1999-05-11

Amazon.com

Everything changes. The great 19th-century battle between catastrophists and uniformitarians seemed to end with the notion of global cataclysms being dismissed as a back door to the supernatural. But the catastrophist theory has gradually become more and more plausible, so that now, less than a hundred years later, it is widely believed that mass extinctions are linked to meteor strikes. Geologist Robert M. Schoch believes that if a large meteor or comet could extinguish most of our planet's complex life (just ask the trilobites), then a smaller one could destroy a civilization, and perhaps did. In Voices of the Rocks, he tells us how it may have happened.

Asked to investigate the Sphinx at Giza, Schoch was troubled to find evidence of a much greater age than the 4,500 years suggested by Egyptologists. This led him to examine the possibility of a lost civilization dating back to at least 10,000 B.C. Looking at linguistic, geological, and archaeological evidence from around the world, he proposes an outline of prehistory that differs markedly from our received wisdom--after all, if the Lascaux cave paintings really are star maps, then we've got a lot of catching up to do. Schoch's willingness to dismiss implausible evidence and to use Occam's razor to cut away unnecessary complications is admirable and refreshing in a field in which credulity pays and skepticism is viewed with deep suspicion. Ending on a note of warning, Voices of the Rocks reminds us that by weakening the planet, we have made ourselves much more vulnerable to the next global cataclysm, which may come at any time. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

Could the Egyptian Sphinx have been built many centuries earlier than conventional history would have us believe? Could the great natural disasters that propelled the evolution of life on Earth have played a dominant role as well in the rise and fall of civilizations? Could Earth have been home to civilizations far greater in number -- and far older -- than orthodox researchers have suspected? In Voices of the Rocks, Dr. Robert M. Schoch examines these and other crucial questions about our past and shows how the answers can guide us in the future.

In 1990, Robert Schoch, a scientist and tenured university professor, traveled to Egypt and conducted geological testing to evaluate the accepted date for the construction of the Great Sphinx of Giza. His research revealed that the Sphinx is actually thousands of years older than previously supposed, a discovery that upended the standard history of ancient Egypt.

Following the intellectual trail uncovered by his redating of the Sphinx, Schoch became convinced that we are in the midst of a profound scientific paradigm shift. The predominant notion that our species inhabits a slow-changing, steady-state planet is falling by the wayside. Instead, we are coming to see that the history of Earth, all living beings, and human civilizations comprises a series of stops and starts, in which equilibrium abruptly ends during a sudden severe catastrophe, like the extraterrestrial impact that initiated the extinction of the dinosaurs. Meteors, asteroids, and comets are potential sources of such disasters, as are shifts in Earth's axis, movements of the continents, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes.

According to Dr. Schoch, Earth's long, catastrophic history has obscured and obliterated evidence of lost civilizations. But the traces remain for those who know where to look and what to look for. At its core, Voices of the Rocks is the story of Schoch's own search, his fascinating discoveries, and the warnings we must heed if we wish to survive whatever catastrophes the future has in store for us.

Customer Reviews:

Don't buy this waste of paper.......2004-05-19

Well I got SUCKERED, what a grandly misleading title. Seeking hard science arguments from a reputed ph.D further explaining the anomities of the geological record, as the title suggests, I was greatly disappointed with the lack of story or revelations as claimed, and the petty partual inclusions of airy-fairy wish wash "Hype" themes. Lord behold, I was worried when I read the dubious praises on the rear cover by the renown cranks Hancock, West, and Bauval.

Nothing at all new, the only compelling area covers little more than the intial pages where the dating of the Sphinx
is detailed. The book then slips into crank theories where the author hovers around the sides like a timid scum-sucking iliterate fearful to be judged to be of any persuasion or belief. Everything from Atlantis in Antartica to Hapgood's maps are rehashed revealing zip.

NOTHING new, BIG disappointment, much grandstanding with a hint of "just trying to fill a book". Any beneficial data could easily have been published in a single article, and has been.

A author I would never purchase again.

The Sphinx got wet once; does that make it older?.......2004-03-01

Dr Schoch shows that the Sphinx shows water erosion marks. The last time it rained a lot in Egypt was tens of thousands of years before 4500 BC (the standard built-by date). So, Dr Schoch thinks the Sphinx was really built tens of thousands of years earlier.
Hiroshima shows higher background radiation than most Japanese cities. That's not because Hiroshima was built earlier.
Was the Sphinx built earlier? Did nasty canal-builders wash its builders and their works away?

A book with view (point) ... - Interdisciplinary treat!.......2002-03-21

This was a book I read a few years ago, but re-read recently. Its a book by an archeologist. And it aims to show how one reads history through the glasses of an archeologist.

One gets some pretty good insights into the study of archeology, the tools the subject uses and how inferences are drawn. The book takes some known facts and uses them to extrapolate in very good ways, drawing from other disciplines to construct new viewpoints of the past and our history.

Its pretty elementary in its approach and simple, so in case you're one of the more serious heavy seekers of information, this is not for you. But if you're looking for alternate viewpoints from disciplines you have not much information about, then this is definitely a good place to begin.

Very Disappointing........2001-10-16

If you saw this guy on Discovery or The History Channel, you probably won't find much of interest in this book. The amount of space devoted to the Sphinx and Yonaguni Monument is almost an afterthought. And sadly, this is the only original work in the entire book.

Most of this book deals with uniformitarianism (gradual change) and catastrophism (rapid change) in geology, evolution, and human history. The author's main credibility in presenting this evidence is that he is a dispassionate scientist that went to Yale and you are not. In creating a dispassionate work, Schoch has only managed to write a book that is very boring.

Nearly half the book is simply looking at various theories to explain impacts with space rocks. So we're treated to rocks of varying densities and speed impacting at various angles sometimes on land and sometimes on water and sometimes both. These rocks are used to explain everything from the Ice Age to Polynesian emigration to Genghis Khan leaving Mongolia to conquer the world.

In the end, there is still little science here and a lot of conjecture. Schoch clings ferociously to some "facts" and theories while tossing others aside because they weren't advanced by the right discipline. In the end, I realize that Carl Sagan did all this earlier and much better.

Wishy Washy.......2000-12-20

I was not impressed with this effort by Mr. Schoch. He seems to take a different stand depending on his mood. I would have expected more from a Yale Professor. Since I caught him on the Discovery Channel in a documentary concerning the underwater "Pyramid" off Yonaguni Island I will focus on this portion of his book. In the chapter concerning this debated monument Mr. Schoch states that it's origin is most likely natural in origin, and yet in his final paragraphs of this chapter he postulates a theory based on the idea that it is man-made.

The natural side of his theory on this monument includes erosion that "bores" holes through rocks with the shape of the resulting hole having sharp right interior angles (a perfect rectangle!). He would also have us believe that the strong current of the region has carved out and carried off what would, on land, amount to small boulders! Yet, this powerful eroding current is also supposed to have taken the care to produce inumerable right angles(exterior and interior) to form what others believe to be an ancient monument. He has also ignored the film evidence of careful, though eroded, carvings on this monument which are plainly visible! When asked about the monument onshore of the Island that is strangely similar to the sunken one, Mr. Schoch replied that it was probably a copy of the underwater one. This is the same type of thinking that has had scholars claiming that the clay tablets of Sumer are merely fanciful fairy tales even though they pointed out the outer two planets of our solar system thousands of years before we found them in the middle of this century.

Book Description

• Bestselling author Barbara Hand Clow examines legendary cataclysms and shows how we are about to overcome the collective fear they have instilled in us.

• The long-awaited follow-up that continues the revelations begun in The Pleiadian Agenda, which has sold more than 60,000 copies.

• Explains why, contrary to many prophets of doom, we are actually on the cusp of an era of incredible creative growth.

The recent discovery of the remains of ancient villages buried beneath the Black Sea is the latest instance of mounting evidence that many of the "mythic" catastrophes of history--the fall of Atlantis, the Biblical Flood--were actual events. In Catastrophobia Barbara Hand Clow shows that a series of cataclysmic disasters, caused by a massive disturbance in the Earth's crust 11,500 years ago, rocked the world and left humanity's collective psyche permanently scarred. We are a wounded species, and this unprocessed fear, passed from generation to generation, is responsible for our constant expectations of apocalypse, from Y2K to the famed end of the Mayan calendar in 2012.

Catastrophobia reveals the insidious global forces that have used these collective fears to control humanity for thousands of years. But we are in the midst of a tremendous shift in the Earth's 26,000-year precessional cycle, and there is every indication that the changes in consciousness over the last 30 years are the beginnings of a collective healing from these deep fears, heralding a new age where we will see that the era of cataclysms is ending and a time of extraordinary creative activity is at hand.

Customer Reviews:

The Messages and the Recipients.......2005-10-14

I've been reading a lot about global catastrophe -- either as earth changes, political war-based mayhem, or weather that is out-of-control -- and it comes down to this: Change is inevitable. Ms Clow allows as to how that is the case. It's the reaction of all of us that will make or break civilization as we know it. Clow has a lot of material for us to chew on.

I've just read most of this book -- it's the technical one of the three I'm keeping close at hand. I like the meaty parts. Reality is a good thing. But I have to recommend that it be purchased with two other selections.

First, read "The Song of an Emerald Dove" by Xanna Vinson to get a feel for what it feels like to live in a world sensitized by global instability if you are a woman who "feels" in a psychic way and wants to help put things to right. Then pick up Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen's newest work, "Urgent Message from Mother" in order to see how globally the 'messages' are being received -- and then use her wise suggestions to find a way to balance truth and imagination in your own mind and world -- and learn to take action in ways that will better prepare you and your loved ones to make it through *whatever* is on the horizon with flying colors.

We aren't a world of alarmists, not most of us. But there is a time when one has to ask: Am I insane to believe what I'm feeling? Or am I insane *not* to believe it? "Catastrophobia" helps you figure that out; "Message" helps you mobilize if you feel you should; and "Dove" makes you feel empowered -- and just plain good about taking those first steps to live in a changing world.

Read all three. Do it now!

A different twist.......2005-09-18

Catastrophobia has a lot of alternative scientific explainations concerning astronomical mechanics of the earth's motion. I enjoyed her recognition of the fear that seems to have swept through the modern human psyche. Clow's style is grounded, mature and not hesitant to go straight for the heart of many bizarre but well explained theories. There is a lot of information in this book and a lot of ancient knowledge comes to light.

Extremely good book.......2004-08-21

It is a facinating new paradigm book, It will change completely your perspective of life with very valuable and recent information. Thanks Barbara Hand Clow for giving this masterpiece to the world!

Excellent Information despite flawed conclusion.......2004-01-03

I had a tough time rating this book as it has a flawed conclusion that changes the entire message of the book. The author of the Foreword is the main reason for this flawed conclusion of the great cataclysm occurring 11,500 years ago which is when he suggests we went through the galactic equator plane. This is patently FALSE as prooved by the book "Galactic Alignment" by Jenkins, as we are going through the Galactic Equator Plane in the 2000-2012 time period NOW. I rated it three stars and considered giving it 4 stars cuz of the good information that can be gleaned from this book. It does establish that a catastrophe does happen every 30 milllion years like clockwork due to the earth going through the galactic equator plane 8 times in a galactic year of 240 million years. Yes this book is a keeper, even with the flawed conclusion that we have already had the great catastrophe 11,500 years ago when we are about to experience it in 2012.

Catastrophobia: Have We Been Viewing the Film in Reverse?.......2003-07-05

Barbara Hand Clow is a noted astrologer, shaman, teacher, theologian and trained anthropologist, a tireless researcher, and the author of a number of important and best-selling books including "Pleiadian Agenda" and "Chiron: Rainbow Bridge Between the Inner and Outer Planets." In "Catastrophobia: The Truth Behind Earth Changes in the Coming Age of Light" she once again reaches beyond the consensus to shed new light and original thinking on the events, processes and anxieties that humans deal with on a daily basis.

The pervasive fear of an impending catastrophe is the motivating force, in Ms. Clow's postulation, behind and beneath all of the obsessions having to do with the structure of contemporary earthly civilization: work, human relationships, the economy, the environment and the state, and the search for healing of these structures and ourselves. But whence this anxiety? Why now, and indeed at periodic intervals over the course of recorded history, have we feared a coming catastrophe, a tragedy of such proportions as to snuff out the Earth and all that lives on it?

In this monumental work, Ms. Clow examines legendary cataclysms and delineates how - contrary to prevailing prophecies of dark and deadly times to come - we are truly on the cusp of an era of incredible creative and spiritual growth. The very recent discovery of the remains of ancient villages buried beneath the Black Sea is but the latest in the accumulation of mounting evidence that many of the "mythic" catastrophes of history - the fall of Atlantis, the Biblical flood - were historic events. Ms. Clow ably demonstrates how a series of cataclysmic disasters resulting from a disturbance in the Earth's crust some 11,500 years ago (itself likely caused at least in part by a stellar supernova in the nearby Vela system) "rocked the world" and left humankind's collective psyche deeply scarred and ineradicably traumatized. We are, in her view, "a wounded species," and the unprocessed, until-now indescribable fear passed from generation to generation is responsible for the constant and widespread expectation of a world-ending apocalypse, seen in such instances as the Y2K event to the much-reported end of the Mayan calendar in 2012.

"Catastrophobia" also uncovers in detail the insidious global forces - economic, political and religious - that have used these collective fears to control and manipulate humanity for countless centuries. But Ms. Clow's book offers more than a glimmer of hope. It is the work of an informed, reasonable and persuasive optimist. In the author's view, we are in the midst of a shift in the Earth's 26,000 year precessional cycle, and there is every indication that the changes in consciousness seen over the past forty years are the beginnings of a collective healing from these deep fears from the primeval past, heralding a time to come of great spiritual evolution.

Ms. Clow's monumental research effort in writing this insightful and important book and the scientific efforts underlying that research it are particularly praiseworthy. The reader is advised, for a taste of the foregoing and as a preface to "Catastrophobia," to consult the article by G.R. Brackenridge in Icarus (16:81-93) entitled "Terrestrial Paleoenvironmental Effects of a Late Quarternary Age Supernova."

Book Description

A breakthrough of enormous proportions, this multidisciplinary study examines evidence of a great catastrophe that occurred 11,500 years ago.

Customer Reviews:

CATACTYSM: COMPELLING EVIDENCE OF A COSMIC CATASTROPHE IN 9500 B.C........2007-09-09

This is an amazing book of scientific fact. I have read, over the years, various accounts of advanced civilizations, from Egypt to the Americas, and other accounts of the so-called "Noa's Ark" that all resulted from unknown calamities that went unexplained. This book pulls it all together and offers a clear explanation as to what probably took place 11,500 years ago!

John McCauley

He who laughs last, laughs best!.......2007-06-24

Some comments about this book:

1.) A book with an odd or even incorrect theory can be of enormous utility if it illustrates, documents and footnotes a large number of scientific anomalies. Aside from the many books of William Corliss, this book must be near the top of the heap in that category. You can enjoy this book and even cherish it without accepting the specific theory that the book proposes as an explanation of all the anomalies it reports.

2.) The book proposes a cosmic cataclysm about 11,500 BC. In order to get a wonderful primer on how these authors may indeed have the "best and last laugh" even regarding the essential correctness of their theory..., use Google to find a set of videos on YouTube with these search terms: Comet Catastrophe 12,500 BP (before present). There are seven video segments with almost an hour of material from a recent, (May 2007) meeting of professional geologists (the American Geophysical Union meeting). Watch these video segments, and then buy a copy of Cataclysm! Then also buy the Book by Richard Firestone. If you buy and read both of these books, I think you will agree that some of the reviewers who have slammed Cataclysm may find themselves changing their minds. Yes there were ice ages, but there were also sudden extreme events - such as the one that brought on the so-called Younger Dryas, a 1200 year cold spell before the end of the last ice age.

3.) In the 4th segment of YouTube video: Comet Catastrophe, note that one of the scientists answers a question from the audience about whether there were any North American Indian legends that might contain recollections of the event. His answer is yes. And if you buy Cataclysm!, you will be able to read alot of excerpts of such stories. And if those excerpts intrigue you (as they did me), the copious footnotes will help you find the original source materials.

What other books should you buy if you find that you like this one? Buy all the books by Irish Dendrochronologist Mike Baillie and his co-authors. These books will introduce you to how long tree-ring chronologies are telling us about several abrupt, global climate disasters in the past 5000 years that may have been caused by impacts or interactions with comets. Buy a used, hardcover copy of Ragnarok by Ignatius Donnelly, wherein you can read a wonderful summary of evidences from human mythologies that led Donnelly to opine (in 1880 !!!) that Earth has been hit by a comet at least once during the tenure and written memory of mankind. (Donnelly was so far ahead of his time, that he is still ahead of ours...) And then familiarize yourself with the wonderful body of work on the K/T boundary through a tome like GSA Special Publication 356 or something like it. The reason for the latter is because Firestone and his colleagues are going to precipitate the same type of revolution in paleontology that Alvarez and his co-workers wrought in the 1980's by hypothesizing and then proving that Earth was struck by a speeding asteroid. Alot of the evidence for the Younger Dryas event is similar, and some of the same investigators who found critical chemical clues in the K/T boundary layers are doing so again in the end-Clovis "black mat." Also, I recommend all the books by Clube, Napier and Bailey - most especially Cosmic Winter, Cosmic Serpent and the Origin of Comets.

Lastly, keep your eyes open for a Discovery Channel special with a similar title: Comet Catastrophe. This special, which has apparently already aired in Canada, will feature Dr. Dallas Abbott and a colleague Dee Breger in program that will discuss powerful evidence of an Indian Ocean impact about 5000 years ago that left an 18 mile crater under 2.5 miles of water, and a 1/4 mile thick tsunami deposit 45 kilometers across on the southern shores of Madagascar.

So what does all this mean? It means that the surface of the Earth is a more dangerous place than most astronomers (especially on this side of the Atlantic) think. It means that there have been significant impact events at least once and perhaps dozens of times during the written memory of men on the Earth. It means that it would be really smart for us to pay attention to all these scientific developments and to respond in thoughtful ways to the warning being delivered by living voices, and also the warnings delivered to us in many myths and legends.

A fascinating read.......2007-01-09

The authors make a most compelling presentation of this very unorthodox interpretation of recent geology. The story is so good that it makes you wish it were literally true, perhaps it is. I can only hope that other scientists will take it seriously and subject it to the ultimate scientific test, falsifiability.

Exposing establishment lies.......2006-05-07

The establishment must pan a work of this nature. It threatens their very being, their status, their intelligence, even their ability to procreate with high quality members of the opposite sex.
It's easy for the establishment to find problems in this kind of work as it covers in a few pages what could be done in a million.
Almost everything that is today written about pre-history must go through the biases of the establishment. That means that disorder is ordered (the facts are bent) to satisfy these biases. A quick look at the book, "Forbidden Archaeology," reveals the wholesale bending of the truth by the establishment and its destruction of anything and anyone that disagrees with the current paradigm.
I for one am tired of these establishment lies and thrilled at a chance to see what human pre-history may really have been like.

An Important Book.......2005-10-30

The publisher and authors of Cataclysm are to be congratulated for not dumbing down the prodigious amount of scientific material indicating a cataclysm occurring aobut 11,000 years ago. Finally, we now have all the references and sources that are just passingly referred to in other catastrophe books. This is an important book; one that bases surprising conclusions on the scientific evidence and not speculation or wishful thinking.

La Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelee, the Worst Volcanic Disaster of the 20th Century

Average customer rating:

A comparative review of two (very good) books about the same event
Decent read - but beware of quality issues!
VIVID DETAILS
A huge cloud of red-hot ash and gas shot down the mountain
Outstanding study of the 1902 disaster.

La Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelee, the Worst Volcanic Disaster of the 20th Century
Alwyn Scarth
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed 30,000 Lives
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ASIN: 0195218396

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When nature kills on a grand scale, it does so indiscriminately: a murderer may be spared and an orphanage destroyed. So it was with the May 8, 1902, eruption of Mount Pelee on the Caribbean island of Martinique, author Alwyn Scarth shows in La Catastrophe, his study of the event. The explosion, more specifically, its aftermath--a 300 mph burst of superheated gas as well as roiling mudflows and tsunamis--killed more than 28,000 people, sank a dozen seaborne ships, and reduced the city of Saint-Pierre to rubble. Scarth, after briefly delineating the island's geology and history, methodically describes the increasingly fraught days before the event and, with gruesome precision, the event itself. Most welcome are his many sidebars, including firsthand accounts by survivors, newspaper stories, and lists of widespread rumors (and their dispelling). As well, the book is amply and instructively illustrated. The prose is powerful and understated, and the book somberly thrilling and perceptive. Nor does it avoid ghastly ironies. A few months after the eruption, Scarth observes, "the ruins of Saint-Pierre suffered the supreme indignity of becoming an attraction for boatloads of tourists." --H. O'Billovich

Book Description

On May 8, 1902, on the Caribbean island of Martinique, the volcano Mount Pelee loosed the most terrifying and lethal eruption of the twentieth century. In minutes, it killed 27,000 people and leveled the city of Saint-Pierre. In La Catastrophe, Alwyn Scarth provides a gripping day-by-day and hour-by-hour account of this devastating eruption, based primarily on chilling eyewitness accounts. Scarth recounts how, for many days before the great eruption, a series of smaller eruptions spewed dust and ash. Then came the eruption. A blinding flash lit up the sky. A tremendous cannonade roared out that was heard in Venezuela. Then a scorching blast of superheated gas and ash shot straight down towards Saint-Pierre, racing down at hundreds of miles an hour. This infernal avalanche of dark, billowing, reddish-violet fumes, flashing lightning, ash and rocks, crashed and rolled headlong, destroying everything in its path--public buildings, private homes, the town hall, the Grand Hotel. Temperatures inside the cloud reached 450 degrees Celsius. Virtually everyone in Saint-Pierre died within minutes. Scarth tells of many lucky escapes--the ship Topaze left just hours before the eruption, a prisoner escaped death in solitary confinement. But these were the fortunate few. An official delegation sent later that day by the mayor of Fort-de-France reported total devastation--no quays, no trees, only shattered facades. Saint-Pierre was a smoldering ruin. In the tradition of A Perfect Storm and Isaac's Storm, but on a much larger scale, La Catastrophe takes readers inside the greatest volcanic eruption of the century and one of the most tragic natural disasters of all time.

Customer Reviews:

A comparative review of two (very good) books about the same event.......2006-02-04

This review is unusual in that it compares two books that were published nearly at the same time and both deal with the same event: the devastating 1902 eruption of Montagne Pelée volcano on the Caribbean island of Martinique.

The first of these books is Alwyn Scarth's "LA Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelée, the Worst Volcanic Disaster of the 20th Century", the second is Ernest Zebrowski's "The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed 30,000 Lives", published just four months earlier. Both books mark the 100th anniversary of the eruption that virtually exterminated the town of Saint-Pierre along with nearly all of its inhabitants. Both fulfill an important mission: putting an end to the incredible amount and degree of misinformation veiling that tragic event to the present day.

The 1902 Montagne Pelée (commonly translated into Mount Pelée in the English literature) produced a phenomenon called pyroclastic flows (and/or surges), which had until then not been recognized by geologists - although today we know that they occur quite frequently. Just as I write this review (early February 2006), pyroclastic flows are spilling down the slopes of Mount St. Augustine volcano in Alaska. They were produced by nearly all the famous explosive eruptions in history, including Mount St. Helens (1980), Pinatubo (1991), Krakatau (1883), and Vesuvius (79 A.D.).

However, there was no common conscience of pyroclastic flows among scientists and people living on volcanoes in early 1902, when Montagne Pelée stirred and gradually came back to life. What was known at the time about volcanoes was limited to lava flows, ash falls, and tsunamis (the latter are rarely caused by volcanic eruptions). Often, eruptions were confused with earthquakes (which are a completely different geological process). So people in Saint-Pierre most worried about such things, and they had no means to know that Montagne Pelée held something else in store for them.

Many accounts about the 1902 events on Martinique blamed Governor Mouttet for the death of about 28,000 people in the eruption. Some writers accused him even to have posted troops on the roads exiting the threatened town to prevent the inhabitants from evacuating. Just the fact that Mouttet went to stay in Saint-Pierre the night before the tragic eruption says enough - he did not know, and there was no way of knowing, that the volcano would unleash a deadly pyroclastic flow the next morning.

Both Scarth and Zebrowski spend a lot of words and reasoning to clan the memory of Mouttet from these unjustified accusations. They do a lot of similar work concerning the vast amounts of contorted or false information regarding many other aspects of the 1902 events. There are, however, some significant differences between these two books.

Scarth has looked much more profoundly into the French sources of information, which Zebrowski - he himself admits in the introduction to his book that he is not too familiar with French - has done to a much lesser degree. Scarth's slightly higher degree of scrutiny does lead to a more precise result, which goes from the correct spelling of names (e.g., Mouttet's followup governor, whose correct name - as given by Scarth - was Lhuerre, not L'heurre as in Zebrowski) to the numbers of victims of the 1902 events: there were actually three eruptions in that year in the Caribbean that killed each more than 1000 people.

The first, on 7 May 1902, occurred on the island of St. Vincent, where the Soufrière volcano killed some 1560; only 18 hours later, Montagne Pelée snuffed out some 27,000 souls, and the same volcano killed another 1200 on 30 August that year. These numbers are those most likely to represent the real death toll - which is quite a few thousand less than those numbered by Zebrowski. Some of the most accurate scientific accounts of those events are cited in Zebrowski's bibliographic list but little of their information is used in his book. This is most notable in the case of T.Anderson and J.Flett (1903), who wrote a harrowing tale of the Soufrière (St. Vincent) eruption and witnessed one of the major eruptions of Montagne Pelée in July 1902. Interestingly, the most prominent scientist studying Montagne Pelée and its activity in that period was the French professor A. Lacroix, who is mentioned relatively briefly in Zebrowski's book. His monumental monograph "La Montagne Pelée et ses éruptions" (1904) is not even included in the bibliography, which does, however, refer to the less known and somewhat controversial "La Montagne Pelée après ses éruptions", published by Lacroix in 1908.

We find less errors of this kind in Scarth's book. This is partly due to the fact that Scarth has close relationships to volcanologists who have worked, and are working, on the 1902 Montagne Pelée eruption and its effects. Some of them are French. Im am certain that Scarth has indeed read through at least large portions of Lacroix' "La Montagne Pelée et ses éruptions". I know that book fairly well. It does not very much deal with the political and social turmoils preceding and following the eruption. But as for details concerning the eruption itself, and its tremendous effects on human beings and their environment, this is one of the most thrilling things to read - if one is familiar with French. Unfortunately, this makes it quite unaccessible to non-French readers, besides the fact that it is extremely difficult to find (Amazon France has a used copy "in correct state" offered for 995 Euros - more than 1000 US$)...

Without being too critical about the somewhat higher amount of flaws in Zebrowski's book, I find that in the end both Zebrowski and Scarth are definitely worth a read, also because they deal with very different details - so there is not all that much of a repetition there. Both do a precious effort to put things about the 1902 events into the right perspective. I hope that they will help to diminish the vast amount of misinformation currently in circulation.

Catania (Sicily, Italy), 3 February 2006

Decent read - but beware of quality issues!.......2005-01-26

Spurred on by Scarth's great 'Vulcan's Fury: Man against the Volcano' and my interest in the Pelée disaster of 1902, I purchased this book from Amazon. First of all, Scarth really knows his business and, just as importantly, he knows how to convey it to the audience. However, there are some stylistic aspects that I have trouble with, most of all Scarth's preference for drama, as witnessed in sentences of the '... but little did he know that in a few days...' variety. Already present in 'Vulcan's Fury', it tends to become very annoying in this book. The story doesn't need it, and neither does the book.
The second problem is something that is hardly Scarth's fault, but Amazon sent me a real monday morning copy: low-res images, smeared print, unreadable text, moiréd photographs, the works. I don't know whether this is a unique problem, but you might want to check out this title in a book store - at least be aware of possible quality issues.
All in all a worthwile book, but I'd go with Ernst Zabrowski's 'The last days of St. Pierre' any day. However, it needs to be said that both authors put their emphasis differently, with Zabrowski giving a detailed picture of the days leading up to the May 8 eruption, and Scarth devoting more attention to the events following the disaster.

VIVID DETAILS.......2004-07-02

Loved this book, could not put it down, felt like I was there. I want to keep reading .

A huge cloud of red-hot ash and gas shot down the mountain.......2003-08-14

The volcano Mount Pelée, on the Caribbean island of Martinique did not behave according to scientific expectations. Almost 27,000 people died on the morning of May 8, 1902 because, according to this book's author, no one had ever heard of a nuée ardente (pyroclastic flow) until after the destruction of Saint-Pierre.

Instead of a relatively sluggish stream of lava, a heavy ash-fall, or the earthquake plus tsunami that many were expecting (including the scientific commission appointed by the island's governor), Mount Pelée exploded in a huge lateral blast of gas, dust, and rock. The superheated cloud raced down the side of the volcano with the speed of a hurricane-force wind and headed directly for the port of Saint-Pierre about five miles away.

At 8:02 A.M., May 8, 1902 a businessman in Fort-de-France (an hour's boat trip down the coast of Martinique) was talking on the telephone with a friend in Saint-Pierre. The businessman relates that his friend "...had just finished his sentence, when I heard a dreadful scream, then another much weaker groan, like a stifled death rattle."

Then there was silence. Nearly 27,000 people lay dead or dying at the other end of that telephone line, crushed by falling masonry, asphyxiated by the scalding breath of the nuée ardente, or incinerated in the resulting inferno. There were only two survivors in the city itself: a shoemaker; and a prisoner in a solitary confinement cell who happened to be sheltered in the lee of a hill at the edge of the city.

Alwyn Scarth, former Professor of Geography at the University of Dundee begins "La Catastrophe" with the founding of Saint-Pierre in 1635, and the slaughter of the indigenous Carib population. Unfortunately, the French settlers never paused to question the original inhabitants' choice of name for the mountain that loomed on their northern horizon. 'Mountain of Fire' was renamed 'Bald Mountain,' and the colonists moved on to develop an economy built on slaves, sugarcane and rum without questioning the lack of vegetation on Mount Pelée's summit.

Minor eruptions occurred in 1792 and 1851, causing occasional curious picnickers to struggle up the volcano's slope for a view of the new sulphur vents (soufrières) and hot springs.

Memories of those harmless volcanic sputterings contributed to a false sense of security among residents of Saint-Pierre when Mount Pelée began hurling columns of ash into the air and steaming torrents of mud down her slopes in the spring of 1902.

When "La Catastrophe" appeared in 2002, along with other, similarly-themed books that were hastened onto the shelves (and the remainder tables) during the centennial year of Saint-Pierre's destruction, its author separated himself from the pack by blaming the non-evacuation of the city on her residents' false sense of security, and on their ignorance of pyroclastic flows. He thoroughly debunks the myth presented by some of his fellow-authors, that the inhabitants of Saint-Pierre were forced to stay in town because of a pending election.

Professor Scarth has produced a meticulously-researched account of the "worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century." It is my favorite among the centennial publications, although I found his exposition of the history and sociology of Martinique to be a bit dry.

Here are some of the other myths he discredits while telling the story of this catastrophe:

* Saint-Pierre was never called 'the Paris of the West Indies'--at least not before the 1902 eruption.

* There were more than two survivors. Over a hundred people may have escaped alive from the August 8th nuée ardente, although only two from the city proper. Many of the survivors died shortly thereafter of their external burns and scalded lungs.

* Governor Mouttet was not a villain. He acted courageously in visiting Saint-Pierre on the eve of the eruption, and died believing that the volcano was harmless. The real villain of this story is the man who succeeded him. The new governor had little sympathy for his constituents, and refused to evacuate the still-inhabited villages lying closest to the volcano. Three months after the destruction of Saint-Pierre, Mount Pelée climaxed another period of eruption with a gigantic nuée ardente that claimed another 1085 victims.

* Don't be fooled by the photograph of the ruins on the back of the "La Catastrophe's" dustcover. Saint-Pierre is not a ghost city on the order of Pompeii. According to the author, "nowadays [it] is a hot and sleepy village of about 5000 people."

Outstanding study of the 1902 disaster........2003-08-06

It seems there has been a lot of attention focused on the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee and its destruction of Saint-Pierre recently, and this book stands out as a wonderful account of the events surrounding it. Alwyn Scarth is an exceptionally literate writer and provides a very frank and objective analysis of the events before and after the eruption as well as copious detail on the eruption itself. His writing style is dry at times, but it is enhanced by the occasional wry humor and his portraits of the people of Martinique, especially those of Father Mary and the captain of the cruiser Suchet.

Scarth presents a great number of original documents from a variety of sources (sometimes providing photos of originals such as French naval telegrams), and provides as many eyewitness accounts as possible. Although the eruption of Pelee is the subject of the book, Scarth spends a comparable amount of time on the society of Saint-Pierre and Martinique, particularly the apartheid-based social structure and contentious politics of the colony. He also makes an admirable attempt to show that past accounts that accuse Governor Mouttet of forcing citizens to stay in Saint-Pierre to vote are groundless, and he recounts the political arrogance of the post-eruption administration.

Scarth also refutes several myths about the eruption, especially the belief that Louis-Auguste Sylbaris was the sole survivor and that 30,000 people or more were killed (the likely number is several thousand fewer). He presents Saint-Pierre as a busy and modern colonial city, but vehemently disagrees with any romantic notions of a "Paris of the East Indies."

The geology here seems quite oriented to the European, and Scarth sometimes uses terms that may confuse Americans unfamiliar with volcanoes (he never equates the term 'nuee ardente' with the more common 'pyroclastic flow'), but his descriptions of the nature of stratovolcanoes and their nature is right on; he goes so far as to give Pelee a personality of sorts (describing the murderous volcano as sitting 'innocently under a clear blue sky' minutes after its terrible eruption) that seems to fit in well with the portraits of the other figures on Martinique.

Like many accounts of disasters, there is plenty of 'if only... if only...' here, but Scarth does not seek to blame anyone here: there was simply nothing most residents of Saint-Pierre could do about Pelee. They had no idea what it was capable of, few could afford to move even to other parts of the island, and the city of Saint-Pierre logically seemed the safest place on the island with all of its resources. Nobody knew what a pyroclastic flow was, and the greatest fear was of an earthquake of the type that had damaged the island's capital of Fort-de-France in the past. The only figure to get skewered is the governor who succeeded Mouttet for his awful handling of the terrified residents of La Morne Rouge and his miserable management of the refugees.

The images Scarth presents of the eruption are stark and morbid, and although he sometimes seems to revel in its destruction he never fails to commend the heroism of the survivors. Events slowly build to their climax as Ascension Day dawns and the volcano strikes Saint-Pierre down. The last paragraph is rather morbid, recounting the moment of shock just before the city's destruction, but it rightly illustrates the enormity of the moment as the hapless residents of Saint-Pierre realize something horrible is coming to scribe their names into history.

Amazon.com

French zoologist and geologist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) is remembered largely for opposing pre-Darwinian theories of evolution and instead advancing his theory of catastrophism. When evolution took the fore, many of Cuvier's ideas were swept aside. Martin J. S. Rudwick makes a good case, in this edition of several of Cuvier's key papers, for restoring the scientist to currency; his ideas anticipated modern research in mass extinctions and what Stephen Jay Gould calls "punctuated equilibrium." This collection is especially interesting in tracing the formation of Cuvier's ideas on the fossil record--another idea we owe to him.

Book Description

French zoologist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) helped form and bring credibility to geology and paleontology. Here Martin J. S. Rudwick provides the first modern translation of Cuvier's essential writings on fossils and catastrophes and links these translated texts together with his own insightful narrative and interpretive commentary.

"Martin Rudwick has done English-speaking science a considerable service by translating and commenting on Cuvier's work. . . . He guides us through Cuvier's most important writings, especially those which demonstrate his new technique of comparative anatomy."—Douglas Palmer, New Scientist

Customer Reviews:

An extremely important resource.......2007-01-20

In April 1796 Georges Cuvier read a paper he had written, entitled Memoir on the Species of Elephants, Both Living and Fossil, to the National Institute in France. Besides establishing that African and Indian elephants were different species, it established that mammoths were a separate species from any living elephant and therefore must be extinct. Thus for the first time establishing the fact of extinction. It is one of the foundation documents of paleontology, and of the 19th century catastrophist school of geology. An argument could be made that it is the most important publication in the history of the natural sciences prior to The Origin of Species. This book has the only English translation of a significant portion of it that I have ever been able to find and it is only one of several texts from Cuvier, Rudwick has translated for this book. Rudwick's comments accompaning the translated texts do a good job of placing them in their proper historical context. This book is obviously not for everyone, but anyone really interested in the historical development of the natural sciences, especially paleontology, zoology and geology will find it fascinating.

The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science

Average customer rating:

Excellent book
A companion star causing comets here on earth?
The Birthing Pangs of an Idea
An exciting example of how science works
Good Account of Science Interaction

The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science
David M. Raup , and David Raup
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393319180

Book Description

Nemesis is the name given by scientists to a (theoretical) small companion star to our sun. Every 26 million years, Nemesis's orbit brings it close enough to the sun to bombard our solar system with billions of comets. While most of the comets will float harmlessly beyond the outer planets, some passing through the sun's Oort Cloud will be deflected by its gravitational force toward Earth. Such a "large-body impact," the Nemesis theory holds, was responsible for the mass extinction that led to the demise of the dinosaurs. The next impact, millions of years from now, might very well extinguish humanity. In this lively, fascinating, and often disturbing book, updated and revised with the latest scientific evidence on terrestrial impacts, David M. Raup re-explores the controversies of the Nemesis theory from the trenches of the scientific community, and investigates the issues--both scientific and philosophical--of mass extinction.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book.......2006-08-22

David Raup is a brilliant writer. Although slanted he does present alternative view points and hypotheses. A very interesting book on extinction theory as well as insight into the scientific process and its flaws.

A companion star causing comets here on earth?.......2004-06-29

According to the hypothesis a small companion star to the earth, like a binary, but smaller and more distant (perhaps two light years distant) passes through the Oort belt approximately every 26 thousand years (don't hold your breath), causing some comets to veer from their paths and impact the earth and its neighbors, causing a large scale extinction of species, among whom in the past were the dinosaurs, and giving others, like us and our cousins, a better chance for survival.

The author points out that the star, long known as "Nemesis," or the "Dark star", has never been seen--nor, for that matter has the so-called Oort belt. They are both hypothetical, with no evidence of their true existence.

The whole idea of why species go extinct, with a life span of from one to ten million years on average, depending on the species involved is a mystery to scientists--much like the mystery of why individuals within a species must necessarily die, perhaps.

Although the author defends, as well as finding fault with, scientific method, it sounds much like turf wars between gangs or political parties. And some of their favorite ideas sound, well, less than reasonable shall we say. They seem more impressed with each other's credentials and reputations than the reasonableness of their pet projects. Is a star--even a small one--so hard to see with the optics, radio telescopes, etc., that are available today?

Yet, this hypothesis is no more far-fetched than many others, and may well turn out to be true, yet. Mr. David M. Raup is most persuasive in his presentation.

There are some good points made herein. For instance the author's point that almost all species that ever existed on the earth have gone extinct--both plant and animal life forms. He also mentions that often they simply change form, from environmental necessity, or gradually spawn new life forms. It would seem inevitable, either gradually or catastrophically for any given species to cease to exist and another to arise. If they died out and were not replaced, soon all life would become extinct, or if they did not necessarily die, then life forms would certainly overwhelm the earth at some point. So, a balance is achieved, which, for whatever reason seems to be the order of things.

And the ecologists who continually fret about how the human race is responsible for all of the earth's problems, and want to "save" all its species except their own--(an impossible task, even if they successfully destroyed all of the "evil" human beings, cockroaches would probably survive) would find that all species would continue to die, and others be reborn. An exercise in futility, gone awry.

I suspect that, while the sciences are playing their guessing games and one-upsmanship, the earth will continue to revolve around its poles with a jolly little wobble, continue its orbit around the sun, at least until it implodes, or explodes, and the inhabitants, individually and collectively, will continue to be born, and die, and think that they are so important that they are causing it all. And when Mount Pinatubo or St. Helens erupt they will put out hundreds of time more particulate matter in 24 hours than all of the "pollution" their own insignificant species, Homo Sapiens, will produce in 100 years.(...)

The Birthing Pangs of an Idea.......2001-02-10

David M. Raup has written an interesting account of the scientic process in The Nemesis Affair (A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science). This is a perfect book for the non-specialist as it gives a glimpse into the larger world science inhabits beyond the minutiae of scientific details. This book shows the ways in which the scientific community, the popular press, and the general public all compete and struggle in creating and accepting (or dismissing) new ideas. The belief that dinosaurs died out partially due to a meteor or comet colliding with earth is one such idea and its genesis from a small spark of inspiration into common belief is told in a clear and entertaing fashion. This is a book that is interesting for the scientific idea it is trying to postulate as well as for the way it illuminates the larger world science is trying to inform and shape.

An exciting example of how science works.......2000-07-25

In the June, 1980 edition of Science an article written by four UC Berkeley scientists, led by Walter Alvarez, was published. This article claimed an extraterrestrial cause for the extinction of the dinosaurs and other species 65 million years ago. Reaction from paleontologists and others was immediate and largely negative. They saw it as a splashy, media-darling type of catastrophic explanation anathema to most working scientists. Author David Raup and his colleague Jack Sepkoski were however among those paleontologists (Stephen Jay Gould was another) who liked the idea. Since there are a number of other mass extinctions in the fossil record, they wondered if these events might be connected and how. They began a statistical analysis of the record, and in February, 1984 published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrating a 26-million-year periodicity. This led to the question, why would these extinctions be regular and what caused them? The answer came from astrophysicists who postulated (among other theories) a "Death Star" companion to the sun, dubbed Nemesis. This star would periodically come close to the sun, disturbing the Oort Cloud of comets, sending some of them to rain down on Earth, thus killing substantial amounts of life on earth.

It's a great theory and I love it. Unfortunately no one has ever seen this Nemesis star, which is not due to return for another 13 million years or so. In fact no one has seen the Oort Cloud either, although I understand most astrophysicists believe it is there. And of course paleontologists do not like catastrophic explanations for mass extinctions. In fact they hate them for both theoretical and personal reasons.

Thus we have the ingredients for an engaging and very human story about how science works and how it doesn't work. In this extremely readable book Raup reveals how scientific ideas develop, how they are rejected and accepted, and how some theories can neither be confirmed nor rejected, and how the scientific community treats such ideas, and how the media is involved. The blurb on the book cover has a quote from James Trefil comparing it as a memoir to The Double Helix, James Watson's personal story of how he and Francis Crick got credit for discovering the structure of the DNA molecule. I agree that this book is as readable as that very involving story, but Raup's book is more on the order of readable journalism, while Watson's book was more like a novel.

What is intriguing in both books is the sheer humanity displayed in both a positive and a negative sense. Here we see a kind of knee jerk, turf-protecting rejection of new ideas by the established cadre of scientists, especially in paleontology. In one sense this is understandable. If you work all your life to help build a certain view of the way things are in your chosen field, and along comes an idea that completely overturns your life's work, you are not going to be happy. You will rail against it and try to show that it is false. We see this in all fields of science since all fields are staffed by humans. I notice in psychology, for example, that the old cognitive and psychoanalytical people find it very difficult to accept the findings of evolutionary psychology, some of which make Freud, for example, look very much mistaken. In this sense scientists are like the Victorians who fought against the ideas of Darwin that threatened to overturn their view of the world (and did!).

Part of what makes this book effective is the openness with which Raup tells the story. He is candid to the point of showing and admitting his own faults and prejudices. He shows how success in science is gauged, not by dollars or fame, or even necessarily by what's discovered, but by prestige among colleagues. He writes on page 211 that "one's success as a scientist can be measured more by the number of people he or she puts to work on new problems than by the correctness of specific research results."

This book is a revision of the 1986 edition with a new introduction and a new final chapter entitled "Update 1999." The Nemesis Affair is not over with. Raup lets us know that the crater has been found for the K-T extinction of the dinosaurs, and that most scientists now accept the Alvarez scenario for Cretaceous extinctions. However neither a dark star nor a tenth planet has been found, and so the acceptance of the periodicity of mass extinctions is on hold.

To show how ideas in science can lead to totally unexpected advances elsewhere, note that the work done in understanding how the dinosaurs died after the impact of the K-T meteor led to a realization of the possibility of "nuclear winter," which in turn was a factor in ending the cold war. It is somewhat amazing to realize that the work of Alvarez and his colleagues may have helped to prevent a nuclear holocaust. Some people think that money spent on SETI or on space exploration is wasted. I think that knowledge gained is always valuable, and sometimes, spectacularly so.

Good Account of Science Interaction.......2000-03-24

The book, though now outdated, presents a wonderful insight into science and how it works. Especially well written, the author clearly explains the interlocking processes and activities that makes science what it is. He also reveals some of the deep biases that often exist among scientists committed to a paradigm. A recommended read for anyone interested in dinosaurs and their demise.

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