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The Revision of Ancient History - A Perspective
SIS - How Historians have now embraced Velikovsky! ^ | Internet Paper Revision no.1 March 2001 | By P John Crowe

Posted on 04/19/2002 12:33:06 PM PDT by vannrox

Ancient history as taught today is a disaster area. The chronology of the first and second millennium BCE is badly wrong. The history of ancient history revisionism offered here is drawn largely from the pages of SIS publications over the last 25 years.

The Revision of Ancient History - A Perspective

By P John Crowe.

An edited and extended version of a paper presented to
the SIS Jubilee Conference, Easthampstead Park, Sept. 17-19th 1999 [1]
Internet Paper Revision no.1 March 2001

Contents


  1. Introduction

2.1 Exaggerating Antiquity. 2.2 The Early Greek and Alexandrian Historians. 2.3 The Early Christian Chronologists. 2.4 Sir Isaac Newton, First of the Major Revisionists. 2.5 The Birth of Egyptology and the Chronological Debate. 2.6 The Invention of the Dark Ages, and Resulting Disputes.

3.1 Velikovsky and Ages In Chaos. 3.2 Donovan Courville. 3.3 Pensée, and E Schorr on Dark Age Mythology. 3.4 Schorr and the Stratigraphy of Troy

4.1 1974 to 1978 The SIS Early Years. 4.2 Velikovsky's Peoples of the Sea and Rameses II and his Time 4.3 J Dayton and 'Minerals, Metals, Glazing and Man' 4.4 Glaring Glazing Anachronisms. 4.5 Glazing Anomalies Resolved by The Glasgow Chronology

5.1 The James-Rohl Chronology. 5.2 The Formation of ISIS. 5.3 D Rohl and the New Chronology; Will It Stand the Test of Time? 5.4 P James, Centuries of Darkness, and an Alternative Revision. 5.5 G Heinsohn and the Evidence of Stratigraphy.

6.1 An Overview. 6.2 Mainstream Revisionists. 6.3 Ages in Chaos Revisionists. 6.4 More Radical Revisionists. 6.5 'Significant Others'.

7.1 Revisionists Are Still Needed. 7.2 Archaeology to the Rescue? 7.3 Scientific and Astronomical Dating. 7.4 Catastrophic Dating. 7.5 Israel or Greece as the Flash-points? 7.6. Proof beyond Reasonable Doubt. 7.7 Vested Interests and the Deaf Establishment.

8.1 Velikovsky's Pillars Supporting Conventional Chronology Have Changed. 8.2 The Shishak = Shoshenk Equation in Focus. 8.3 Manetho Revisited. 8.4 Which of the Competing Revisions will Win?


NOTE -- The historical dates quoted are B.C.E. unless otherwise stated.

1. Introduction

2. An Outline History of Revising Egyptian History - Up to 1952.

The early chronologists had lived long after the events, so could not know the facts. Their prejudices were exposed, as was their use of excessive reign lengths. He said that before monarchies and Empires, 'every king shared his territories amongst all his sons until there was no more room for division.' In Egypt as elsewhere, there were many 'kingdoms'. A king, he wrote, 'never set up more than one religion in his country, so the diversity of religions in Egypt arose from the diversity of kingdoms there in the early ages'

His favourite bêtes noires were Manetho and Berosus. As well as exaggerating history as already mentioned, Newton complained that Manetho sometimes reported the same reign twice under different names, listed kings in the wrong order, corrupted their names, repeated them again and again, and included the names of other great men and women who were only the relations of kings or their viceroys or secretaries of state. Manetho also stretched out into successive dynasties for the whole of Egypt some contemporary local kings whose domains never extended beyond a single city. Newton believed that Manetho's kings reigned in several parts in earlier times when Egypt was divided up into several small kingdoms, and that priests, from records of several cities, 'collected all these into one continual succession to make the ages of their gods look ancient'.

Newton also called Eratosthenes and his follower Apollodorus 'major felons in corrupting world chronology'. By using excessive reign lengths 'they made the antiquities of Greece 300 or 400yr older than the truth.'Ctesias was also accused of distorting history by making it almost 300yr older than it was, and of 'feigning names at pleasure'. Manetho and Diodorus were wrong to take the wars of Saul and David against the Philistines as those of the shepherds (i.e. Manetho's Hyksos), ejected from Egypt and fighting to take Palestine and build Jerusalem. He accepted that the later Christian chronographers Julius Africanus and Eusebius could do little to correct the errors of Manetho's original work.

The widely held belief that ancient civilisations knew and had accurate records of their own antiquity was also exposed as a fallacy. He showed that the ancient records of many countries were lost as a result of wars and invasions. The Egyptians had been conquered successively by the Ethiopians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians, and all their records were carried away by Cambyses, and again by Ochus. The annals of the Tyrians eventually came into the hands of the Greeks, were translated into Greek but both translation and originals are now lost. The old records of the Latins were burnt by the Gauls 64yr before the death of Alexander the Great. The annals of Carthage fell into the hands of the Romans but are lost, or were destroyed when Carthage was burned. Even the chronology of nations with written annals were suspect. Most records of remote epochs had been destroyed in the course of the numerous wars. What was said of nations before the Olympiads 'is confused and obscure'.

In Newton's opinion the most reliable historical sources were 'the Old Testament, the Chronological Canon of Ptolemy, the books of Tobit, Judith, Herodotus, Thucydides, the Annals of Tyre and Carthage as given by Josephus, and what has been taken from the ancient monuments and records by Diodorus, Strabo, Pausanias, Josephus, & a few others down to the reign of Darius King of Persia'. Herodotus' Egyptian history of earlier times was less accurate because their archives had suffered much during the reign of the Ethiopians and Assyrians. Newton agreed with Josephus that the Sesostris of Herodotus was Sesac, and listed many variants of the name Sesostris in Greek form to show such a mistake was linguistically plausible. That Sesostris was Tuthmoses III finds indirect support from Homer, who tells us that Memnon (i.e. Amenophis III) was at Troy, which Newton dates some 70-90yr after the death of Solomon.

Newton was the first and only revisionist to use the precession of the zodiac signs for retrocalculating three early dates where the ancients had recorded the necessary information. One such instance was in the story of the Argonautic expedition. In the account of Jason and the Argonauts, a primitive globe was said to have been constructed upon which was marked the position of the ecliptic where it passed thorough specific parts of the signs of the Zodiac. Using 1689AD as a base, and his rate of precession of 72yrs per degree, the primitive sphere could be placed 2627 years earlier -- 939BCE. This was roughly 40-60yr after the death of Solomon in around 980, according to Ussher. This was separate and independent evidence to support the same conclusion derived from genealogies, working back using more realistic reign lengths for the intervening kings. A date for the battle of Troy was then fixed from the evidence of Herodotus, who said this was one generation after the voyage to Colchis, the land of the Golden Fleece. Hence the fall of Troy was dated to around 900.

Newton's reconstruction caused an international furore. He was criticised both before and after his death by many scholars who wished to enhance their prestige by exposing weaknesses in Newton's work. Unlike mathematics, so much of history is based upon probabilities and speculation, so this was not difficult. A major weakness was his unflinching assertion that the first great monarchy was that of Solomon. This left him Hconfronted with a big problem. A reading of the Bible appears to bestow greater antiquity on the Egyptians and the Assyrian royal institutions. The Biblical picture of Egypt at the time of Moses is quite grand, and Newton never satisfactorily resolved this problem. He concluded, since the Israelites were 'scattered throughout all the land of this kingdom' in two days to gather straw, that the Egypt of Moses comprised only part of the area of the Nile Delta. The debate he started lasted for a further century, but there was always more mileage in criticising him than in offering support. In the 19th century, once Egyptian hieroglyphs could be read, the urge to exaggerate antiquity again exerted its pervasive influence. The king lists found in tombs at Abydos and Saqqara, and other texts, were read as giving support to Manetho. Thus, after a century of debate, historians quietly consigned Newton's historical work to academic oblivion.

Some important conclusions from Newton's historical studies are: -

  1. The early Greek and Alexandrian chronologists such as Eratosthenes, Manetho and Berossus are shown to have greatly exaggerated the antiquities of Egypt and Assyria.

2.5 The Birth of Egyptology and the False Chronology.

Worldwide interest in Egyptology rocketed after Napoleon and his savants brought the world of ancient Egypt to the attention of the early 19C western world. Scholars from many countries, along with treasure hunters and vandals descended upon the Nile Valley, and many among the British upper classes started to acquire collections of Egyptian antiquities. Once the great British scholar Thomas Young, followed by Champollion, had discovered how to read the hieroglyphs, Egyptologists started to see the names of kings mentioned by Herodotus and Manetho appear on the monuments before their eyes. The identification of Shoshenk I as the Biblical Shishak by Manetho/Syncellus was apparently confirmed by Champollion in 1828 when he read Shoshenk I's wall relief at Karnak. This seemingly named many Palestinian cities conquered by him during one of his campaigns. Manetho's king lists, along with others found in tombs and on papyri, were then used, together with Biblical dates for Abraham, the Exodus, and Shishak to formulate more informed views on the antiquity of Egyptian history. Separate museum and university departments for the study of Egyptology sprang up all around the world. Textbooks started to proliferate, and, of course, Egyptologists followed the natural inclinations of their predecessors in wanting to date everything as early as possible.

Around the turn of the century, the concept of Sothic Dating, first proposed by German Egyptologists, began to be accepted as a means of estimating dates, otherwise unobtainable, for the end of the MK and the beginning of the New Kingdom (NK). Although no evidence for its use by Egyptians was ever found, Sothic Dating became incorporated into accepted Egyptological dogma after being embraced by J H Breasted in his hugely influential work 'Ancient Records of Egypt' (1906).[10] At that time almost all Manetho's kings were assumed to have reigned solely and consecutively over all of Egypt, and Petrie was dating the start of the first dynasty to before 5000BC. Eusebius, 1600 years earlier, had warned that Manetho's king lists should not be read as being a sequential list, since they probably included the names of dynasties which ruled concurrently in several different parts of Egypt. Needless to say, this warning has been studiously ignored.

2.6 The Invention of the Dark Ages, and Resulting Disputes.

When Schliemann excavated the famous Shaft Graves at Mycenae in Greece in the 1870's, he found they contained some scarabs bearing the names of Amenhotep III and his wife Queen Tiy. So, when Petrie later found much similar Mycenaean pottery at Pharaoh Akhenaten's short lived capital city of Amarna, between Memphis and Thebes, such was the confidence in the correctness of Egyptian chronology that it was used to date the entire contents of the graves of the Late Helladic age at Mycenae to not later then about 1300. Egyptian dates were also applied at other sites to artefacts and everything else that was obviously contemporary with them, such as architectural and technological designs and developments. Art historians and other scholars noted their obvious and close affinities with those clearly datable in Greece, Syria and Mesopotamia to a period some 500-700 years later. Because of these similarities, many scholars, including Petrie, at first accepted the early Egyptian dates for the start of the Mycenaean era, but concluded that it must have lasted for some 7-800 years, making it flow continuously into the Greek Archaic period of the 7th century. But by the beginning of the 20th century it became clear, again from archaeology and Egyptian dates, that the Mycenaean era ended no later than around 1200BC. According to Greek tradition the Mycenaeans were believed to have been overrun by the Dorians from Northern Greece, but no evidence could be found in Greece for people, alive or dead, to fill the yawning gap between the 12th and 9th centuries. To fill these empty years, the concept of the Dark Ages of Greece was invented.

No rational explanation has ever been offered to explain why the Greeks disappeared, where they went to, why they returned, and how they managed to resume their artistic and cultural development some half a millennium later with no apparent break in continuity. And worse, no Dark Age was heard of among any of the early classical Greek and Roman writers, who lived some two millennia nearer that time. So this idea was not well received by modern art and Greek historians. It led to many heated and bitter academic disputes. Around the turn of the century A S Murray, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, excavated a previously unopened tomb of Mycenaean age at Enkomi on Cyprus, and published some of the ivory carvings it contained. These showed such a striking resemblance to later Greek and Assyrian work that he unhesitatingly assigned the tomb and all its contents to the 9th-7th century. His conclusions were based on a long study of a uniquely extensive range of Mediterranean and Mesopotamian sculpture, pottery and other artefacts that daily surrounded him at the British Museum. This gave him no reason whatsoever to believe in a Greek Dark Age. For his disbelief he was roundly blasted as a heretic by Sir Arthur Evans, who believed uncritically in the Egyptian dates. Evans had recently achieved wide public acclaim for his discovery of a mortuary temple at Knossos on Crete [11], which he theatrically presented to the world as a great king's palace. He was not about to have his dates for the Mycenaean and their Minoan predecessors downdated by anybody. His blast, and Egyptian dates, eventually carried the day, and Evans' romantic illusions of antiquity have contributed to the insolubility of many archaeological and art historical problems to this day. Further details of this incident are set out in a paper by Velikovsky entitled 'The Scandal of Enkomi' [12]

Another British Museum based scholar, H R Hall, was totally convinced that some of the items from Mycenae Grave Circle A belonged to c900 or later. He therefore suggested that priests opened up early D18 graves after an interval of some 600yrs, stole nothing, but piously inserted later items. This rather incredible idea not surprisingly received little support, but it illustrates the huge pressure being placed upon archaeologists and art historians, once they were forced to accept Egyptian dates for the Late Helladic period, to invent an explanation for these anachronisms.

Among other scholars disagreeing with these early dates was Cecil Torr. He also felt strongly that the monumental, traditional and genealogical evidence from Egypt and Greece could not justify a Dark Age. In the 1890's he issued a public challenge to Petrie to justify his chronology, and exposed some unsubstantiated assumptions in Petrie's archaeological reports. In 1896 he published Memphis and Mycenae [13] giving a lower Egyptian chronology based solely on monumental evidence. Since, however, Torr did not attempt to dispute that Shishak was Sheshonk I, a major reduction of the chronology was impossible, so the ensuing debate faded out with neither side altering their position.

3. Immanuel Velikovsky and Revisionists 1952-1974

4. SIS and the Pro-Ages in Chaos Era.

4.3 1978 to 1982. The Glasgow Conference and the Glasgow Chronology.

The SIS Glasgow conference was well attended. Velikovsky wrote a paper for the event, but ill health sadly made his attendance impossible, so it was read in his absence. An alternative revision called the Glasgow Chronology (GC) was then developed by SIS revisionists over the next four years. It retained the AIC synchronisms, reducing the dates for D18 by around 500yr, and leaving the remaining dynasties in their numerical sequence but with extensive overlapping. It was a joint effort mainly by Gammon, James and Bimson. Bimson in particular produced some high quality papers in support of the GC. His Glasgow conference paper had tackled stratigraphy, an issue he said Velikovsky had failed to address adequately. He argued that the archaeological ages in Palestine could be revised to accommodate Tuthmoses III as Shishak, and the start of the Iron Age down dated by some 500 years. Other important papers by him supported an 8C date for Merenptah and a 9C date for the wars of Seti I, linking each convincingly with evidence from the OT and the archaeology of Palestine.

The GC was eventually abandoned quite suddenly in 1982, due to an inability to compress the dynasties following D18, including D20 and D21 into the time available prior to the well-attested Assyrian invasion by Esarhaddon. Unfortunately those involved did not document the details of their work, or the many avenues explored, the basis for their interpretation of the evidence examined, and the reasons why they collectively failed. Indeed, with no funds available for such work, one could hardly expect them to do so. However, this left SIS members being asked to abandon their faith in Velikovsky's 500-year gaps without fully understanding why, and to adopt instead the New Chronologies of either Rohl or James. Not all, it must be said, have been willing to do this.

The Glasgow Conference Proceedings, entitled 'Ages in Chaos?' were published in 1982. In it James had added a Postscript indicating his move away from the AIC synchronisms. The authors' unanimous view was that Shishak could not have been Tuthmoses III. But did they actually prove this? Or did they prove only that, given the evidence considered and their rules for its interpretation, they were unable to condense Egyptian history into the remaining time available? Was this a failure in fact, or a failure in interpretation? Either way, the credibility of Velikovsky as a historian was dealt another heavy blow.

4.4 J Dayton and 'Minerals, Metals, Glazing and Man'

Before moving past 1978, a major publication in that year by John Dayton must be mentioned, entitled 'Minerals, Metals, Glazing and Man' [23]. This was reviewed enthusiastically by James in SISR 3:4, who said '...Dayton develops his work, which started out as a simple study of glazing technology...into a massive and devastating attack on traditional chronology...In challenging the accepted dates and synchronisms of the...Bronze Ages, his work is potentially more disruptive than Ages in Chaos itself...'. In 1971, when a student at the London Institute of Archaeology, Dayton wrote a paper in World Archaeology on 'The Problem of Tin in the Ancient World'[24]. This demonstrated that metallurgy and related arts spread along trade routes from Europe into the Near East, not from East to West, as is the popular view. The Bronze Age, contrary to current dogma, could not have started in Mesopotamia, where the required metals are absent. By exposing so much establishment dogma about the sources of metal ores, metallurgy, and their use in bronze and iron artefacts as false and misleading, he caused great annoyance to the English establishment. Their response, since they were powerless to avenge themselves on Dayton, was to take steps that led to the closure of the university section that had fostered him.

Using uncorrected and relative C14 dates, he showed an overall picture 'of metallurgy developing earlier in the regions (unlike Mesopotamia) where metals do in fact occur.' He identified the emergence of new technological achievements as a means of correlating cultural phases. Accepting the local unreliability of C14 dating, he cited the extraordinarily wide range of C14 dates from nine samples of grain from a sealed storage jar found buried at Thera (2037, 1850, 1420, 1350, 1394, 1300, 1110, 960, and 900).

Dayton's glazing study showed just how much this term has been misused by archaeologists, and revealed Petrie's 1500-year chronological blunder. Petrie had written in his 1902 Abydos 2 Report 'We have already noted the difficulty of these things being found at such a high level. But whatever dates they were placed there, it is clear that the objects are ALL of the First Dynasty. At the beginning of the First Dynasty we meet the art of glazing fully developed, not only for large monochrome vessels but also for inlay of different colours. Certainly no advance on new lines appears until in the 18th Dynasty.' To explain this, Petrie claimed that a new civilisation must have moved into Egypt, taken over the country and united it. These people brought with them a fully developed glazing technology, and the use of ware 'with a body identical to that with that of later Aegean or Mycenaean pottery...'. Where these people may have come from he did not explain, and over the following century no evidence for such an advanced 4th millennium BC civilisation has been found anywhere. But amazingly, Egyptologists believed him. None challenged Petrie over this claim, although he himself was well aware he was excavating in disturbed ground.

Petrie's unshakable belief in the early emergence of fully developed technologies had a devastating effect on chronology. By 1891 he had developed pottery sequences for Egypt that were then applied, with their Egyptian dates, first at Lachish and then to the rest of Palestinian archaeology. This led directly to the confusion we find in Middle Eastern archaeology to this day.

4.5 Glaring Glazing Anachronisms

Dayton's glazing study revealed some new and important anachronisms. Set against conventional dating, he found the first crude attempts to glaze clay seen in 14C Mitanni. Around this time glazing in early D18 Egypt also 'takes a great leap forward.' Glazing in the Near East went on to reach high standards, but in Mesopotamia it died out c13C with the fall of Mitanni. In Elam glazing had a brief flowering in the Mitanni style before dying out when Elam was conquered by Babylon in 12C. In Egypt, the last high quality glazing was found in Ramesses III's time, early 12C. After this Dayton found a gap of some 300yr until the Neo-Assyrian conquests of 9C, where he found again crude attempts at glazing. For example, Assurnasirpal II's palace has a '...scene in black on a poor blistery white glaze.' This was far from the perfection reached some 600yr earlier in Mitanni, so he concluded the craft had died out and had to be rediscovered. Dayton noted 'polychrome faience production dies out in Egypt' after Ramesses III (CC 1198-1166BC), and did not reappear on large scale until D26 (CC c664BC) - a hiatus of c500yr. Also, tin and antimony glazes first appeared at 14thC Amarna and their next appearance was in 9thC Phoenicia.

Although unaware at that time of Velikovsky's proposed revision, Dayton suggested downdating the end of the LBA and the invasion of the Sea Peoples by some 300yr from c1200BC to c900BC.

4.6 Glazing Anomalies Resolved by the Glasgow Chronology

Bimson, in SISR 7A (1982) pointed out that a 500yr rather than the 300yr downdating mentioned by Dayton would perfectly explain Dayton's most important anomalies. Removing the 300yr gap did not solve the problem.'It removes the curious 300yr gap but replaces it with another anomaly. For it places the crude glazes of 9C immediately after the fine glazes of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) without any explanation for the sudden regression.This situation seems rather improbable.' Bimson showed that the GC gives a very good fit with the development of glazing. All the crude glazing attempts, i.e. the early D18 and the Assyrian glazes of Assurnasirpal now date from the same time - the beginning of the technique. There is no question of a gap, a regression, or a re-learning. Similarly, the GC makes the Neo-Elamite ware made of Egyptian Blue, dated 9C, contemporary with Mitannian ware with similar decorations. Dayton found 9-8C glazes from Assyria similar to LBA glazes from the Levant, and suggests 9-8C Phoenicians were trading in the same ores to produce the same glazes. Bimson said a better explanation was to lower the date of the (LBA) glazes to 9-8C. He concluded 'The facts collected by Dayton can be brought into a logical scheme when Velikovsky's D18 dates and the GC dates for D19 and D20 are applied to the relevant finds.'

In the same Review, Dayton replied to Bimson saying that, since publishing his book, he had done some further work on chronology. He fully supported Bimson's 500yr downdating, and he made two further points:-

  1. The Phoenicians did not stop making glass c14C, then start again c800BC.

Bimson, after the fall of the GC, added a later Postscript in SISR 7A saying he now preferred to go back to the original view, as suggested by Dayton in his book, that the 'gap' was around 300yr. But he accepted that Dayton's points 'do reveal certain weaknesses in the new scheme relative to the GC,' which he hoped would be discussed as the New Chronology was developed.

5. 1982-1990 - P. James, D. Rohl, and G. Heinsohn lead in New Directions.

6. The 1990's - Open Season for Revisionists.

6.3 Ages in Chaos Revisionists.

Revisionists in this group are those working on the basis that Tuthmoses III was Shishak (T3=S). This was the basis of the revisions of Velikovsky and Courville, and the T3=S equation retains significant support among others.

, after his ground-breaking, and as yet largely unchallenged analysis of the Ninsianna (Venus) Tablets and 'Star Ceilings' found in Egyptian tombs, has identified an 'Era of Disturbances' around the approximate dates 880-740BC. He continues to work on historical synchronisms around this era, and is quietly confident a solution will gradually emerge which confirms the T3=S equation, although he accepts this may take some time to achieve.

was at one time a researcher for Velikovsky, and like Eddie Schorr amassed a lot of evidence against the myth of the Greek Dark Ages. He has recently made a huge contribution to the revisionist's cause by helping to make much of Velikovsky's unpublished work available in 1999 via the Internet. In a note near the end of Velikovsky's paper on applying radiocarbon dating, he has drawn to our attention to the publication, in a Canadian Medical Journal, of the first known independent radiocarbon dating of the linen wrapping of a mummy firmly dated to the reign of Setnakht. The date obtained was 345BCE +/- 75yr.[27]

is an Australian, and a long time scholar of ancient history. While his revision has not yet been published, his papers to date clearly show support for the T3=S equation. In a recent paper in AEON, he has also shown that the archaeological evidence from Timna can be interpreted as offering support to Velikovsky's placement of Ramesses III. In a paper in C&CR 1998:1 he suggests that it is wrong to assume that Manetho's dynasties should automatically be read as being in chronological order. He promises soon to rekindle belief in Ramesses II = the Biblical Necho, and Ramesses III = the Nectanebos of Diodorus, as first proposed by Velikovsky in Rameses II and His Time and Peoples of the Sea. While hoping this may not prove 'a bridge too far', we all look forward to his next publications.

6.4. More Radical Revisionists.

For this group, either Shishak, as dated broadly by the Thiele chronology, is identified with Egyptian kings before Tuthmoses III or after Ramesses VI, or both the Egyptian and OT chronologies are revised downwards, which in turn redefines the Shishak placement.

has been one of the most prolific revisionists in recent years, producing a revision in outline book format entitled 'Concerto for History', underpinned by a huge computer spreadsheet of synchronisms and interlocking dates. While a number of articles and sections from this revision have been published, unfortunately the whole was too lengthy for the Review. His work, in which Shishak is equated with Ahmose, shows much familiarity in such areas as Calendars and Assyrian texts. He has also revised Velikovsky's Amarna synchronisms, bringing them forward to 8C, and has usefully exposed some instances where Velikovsky, by quoting selectively, used his historical sources misleadingly. His spreadsheet has unfortunately led to the identification of a 'black hole' in his revision, but hopefully further work will resolve these problems.

has made some interesting contributions recently, including taking a fresh approach to interpreting the dynastic sequences as defined by Manetho. But his recent claim that some D18 pharaohs find their alter egos as rulers in the Ptolemaic era has disturbed those SIS readers who are aware that D18 is archaeologically proven to be contemporary with the Mycenaean Age. How he intends to overcome this apparently insurmountable hurdle remains to be seen.

have not had details of their recent work published in C&CR, but the reader is referred to the 1998 Reviews for further information about these two radical revisionist's theories. Our Chairman, Trevor Palmer has taken the trouble to prepare some detailed responses that oppose the radical reductions in British AD history suggested by these authors. This was published in C&CR 1999:2.

6.5 'Significant Others'

There have been many other valuable contributors who, if they are not working on their own revisions, are certainly interested and well informed participants in the chronological debate. These include the following:

contributed two very important papers to the chronology debate. One, in SISR:4 1979, related in part to Velikovsky's inappropriate use of archaeological evidence from the Palace of Esagila at Babylon to support his suggested altered order of Neo-Babylonian kings. The other, in C&CR IX, 1987, set out in detail the several independent lines of supporting evidence, including many thousands of business documents, underpinning the conventional Mesopotamian chronology back to around 930BC. Revisionists ignore this evidence at their peril.

Many others, including Steven Robinson, Brad Aaronson, Eva Danelius, and Jeremy Goldberg in the past, and Lynn Rose and Damien Mackey at present have made, and continue to make, valuable contributions to an on-going and lively debate in the revisionist arena.

7. The Revisionist Outlook for the New Millennium.

7.4 Catastrophic Dating.

Some have tried to develop their chronologies around global catastrophes. But since the Exodus no really widespread catastrophe across many nations has been mentioned in any ancient texts. My own view is that the term catastrophe is used far too loosely, with little evidence to explain the relationship between cause and event. In an earthquake zone like the Middle East, it may be better to sort out the chronology before deciding which 'catastrophes' might have some common cause. However, others argue that without synchronism of catastrophic events the chronology cannot be resolved. The many changes in alignments seen at temple sites around the world may arguably be linked to what Reade (C&CR 1997:2) calls a 'period of disturbances' during 9-8C, possibly linked (Reade, C&CR 1996:2) to an era when the earth appears to have suffered changes to its angle of axial tilt. Also some historic sources do seem to suggest that small asteroid impact 'events' similar to that which occurred at Tunguska in Siberia in 1908 may have occurred previously in parts of the Middle East. And so the catastrophist debate continues.

7.5  Israel or Greece as the Flash Points?

In Israel, archaeologists are deeply divided over their historical heritage. Some, like Prof. Herzog according to an article in a recent Spectator [32], are denying the historical truth of the OT history, including the Sojourn, Conquest, and Solomonic eras, on the grounds that these, despite the Tel Dan stele, are not seen in the archaeological record. In contrast, Prof. Anati and R. Cohen have shown that the archaeological evidence at the end of the EBA can be interpreted to reflect very accurately the activities of Joshua during the Conquest as recorded in detail in the OT. To explain this early date Anati prefers to postulate one or two missing 'Books of the Judges Era' rather than propose a revision of the world's ancient chronology - a choice both prudent and understandable. Ironically, by denying the existence of Solomon, Herzog is also denying the existence of Pharaoh Shishak, which is the primary pillar of the conventional Egyptian chronology that led to the 'absence' of the United Monarchy kings in the first place. It was this Egyptian chronology, based on the Biblical date for Shishak, which Petrie bequeathed Palestine, along with his faulty pottery dating sequence, when he first worked for the Palestine Exploration Fund on Lachish in 1891. No wonder the Israeli archaeologists are in such disarray. They should have realised that once the Dark Ages of Greece were imposed upon the ancient world, at a stroke they would effectively wipe out all history outside Egypt for the period from 12C to 8C -- including Israel's now missing Golden Age. There are good grounds, therefore, for Israel's archaeologists to back their own historical records and declare their chronological independence. They could rescue their country's rightful heritage and historical soul by identifying a more likely Shishak for themselves, and leave the Egyptologists to sort out their own chronology problems.

Greece could also do the same. For over a hundred years they have meekly accepted Egyptian dates, along with a Dark Age that goes totally against their own archaeology and their magnificently documented classical ancient history. Athens was never conquered by the Dorians, and has its own tradition of continuous kingship. Archaeology has proved beyond all reasonable doubt that the Dark Ages did not exist. It is now time the Greek Establishment abandoned its exaggerated antiquity in favour of a continuous culture. It would, of course, require considerable courage to make a unilateral declaration of chronological independence, but courage is not a quality lacking in the historical traditions of either Greece or Israel.

7.6 The Deaf Establishment and Vested Interest.

As said in the Introduction, the control exerted by today's Establishment over what is taught, what is researched, and what is published in academic journals has never been greater. Innovators from outside academia have made many of our greatest breakthroughs in science in the past. Nowadays, however, it is much harder for outsiders to buck conventional wisdom and make real advances in our understanding of the world in which we live. The often anonymous 'peer review system' serves to maintain the status quo, but, as Dr. Thomas Gold wrote in 1989 [33], a jury system for major decisions in science would serve the public much better.

Today, judging from the ever-increasing numbers of books and TV programmes, interest in matters ancient and Egyptological has never been greater. But publishing a book on chronology problems does not mean the Establishment will take any notice of it. Turning a deaf ear is a very effective response. Can anything make them sit up and take notice? Rohl's TV programmes were the most effective yet in this area. His NC was briefly mentioned as 'trial by television' by Kitchen, and dismissed as nonsense in the latest edition of his TIP [34]. Kitchen also wrote a somewhat petulant letter to all his Establishment colleagues, in which he refers to Rohl's work as '98% rubbish.' Rohl, in JACF 8, has provided a well argued response to this letter, showing many of the arguments Kitchen used in his letter were fundamentally flawed.

James et al, using conventional archaeological interpretations as far as possible, have undoubtedly made some impact on the thinking of some mainstream archaeologists, which is a major achievement. Perhaps the beginnings of an acceptance that a 50 years reduction in Egyptian chronology may be needed means that the Establishment has started some sort of negotiating process that will eventually lead to a reduction acceptable to both parties.

But let no one be in any doubt as to the magnitude of the vested interest working against the revisionist. The careers, and reputations of the great and the good in the professions are on the line, and the consequences of accepting a major revision are enormous. Once a revised chronology is accepted, most current ancient history books and Egyptology books will have to be rewritten. So too will those that examine the early history of art, writing, literature, religion, and cultural and technological developments of every kind. New school textbooks will be needed. The history of early civilisations will have to be re-thought. Every archaeological report on every ancient site throughout the Mediterranean area and the Middle East will have to be re-examined and reinterpreted. At every ancient site, thousands of information leaflets, guidebooks, and notice boards will have to be revised. In hundreds of museums and universities around the world, and in countless private collections, hundreds of thousands of labels identifying ancient treasures and artefacts will have to be redated. And within the academia countless lecture notes, overheads, and other teaching aids will need correcting.

There will therefore be a big price tag associated with the sweeping away of nearly two centuries of erroneous dogma. Vested interest will be a powerful force for maintaining the status quo. But hopefully they will eventually be opposed by public opinion when, as taxpayers, the public and their representatives the politicians realise these establishments are misleading present and future generations, and are not delivering good value for money. Sheer weight of public opinion may yet win the day.

7.6  Proof Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

The near impossibility of forcing Establishments to accept new theories has troubled many scholars recently. In cosmology, another scientific world with which Velikovsky collided, the brilliant American astronomer Halton Arp [35] has now, by applying probability theory to his observations, proved beyond reasonable doubt that the underlying assumptions behind the concepts of the Big Bang and the Expanding Universe are wrong. Yet the vested interest in the Big Bang, and all that goes with it, is so great that still the Establishment will not accept these findings. But how could the theories and dogma of both Establishments, Cosmology and Ancient History, be so wrong for so long?

Perhaps part of the answer lies in the similarities between the two. It is interesting to compare them, to see if ancient history revisionists can learn from their counterparts in cosmology.

  1. The cosmologist develops his theories mainly from observations discovered by astronomers, while the ancient historian develops his mainly from observations, including artefacts and texts, discovered by archaeologists.

8. Concluding Comments.


New contributors to the chronological debate are always welcome, and are invited to join the SIS.


P John Crowe.
Copyright March 2001

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the many contributors to the pages of SIS publications, and particularly to Michael Reade for his much valued friendship and continuing support and encouragement of my efforts to achieve a better understanding of the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky and their historical consequences.

9. References.

  1. Crowe PJ. 'Ancient History Revisions: the Last 25 years - A Perspective'. Proceedings of the 1999 SIS Jubilee Conference. C&CR 2000:1

  2. Petrie, Sir Flinders. History of Egypt Vol.1. 1896.

  3. Woolley, Sir Leonard. Ur of the Chaldees, Penguin Books 1930

  4. Newton, Sir Isaac. The original of Monarchies. Published for the first time by Manuel F.E. in his book 'Isaac Newton Historian' Cambridge University Press, 1963.

  5. Herodotus. The Histories, Penguin Books 1972

  6. Manetho, Translated by W.G.Waddell, Loeb Classical Library, 1997.

  7. Diodorus of Sicily, Books 15 and 16, Loeb Classical Library, 1995

  8. Josephus, The Works of, Translated by W Whiston. Hendrickson (paperback), 1995.

  9. Manuel F.E. 'Isaac Newton Historian' Cambridge University Press, 1963.

  10. Breasted, J.H. Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. 1 Chicago, 1906

  11. Wunderlich, HG. The Secret of Crete, Fontana/Collins 1976

  12. Velikovsky, I. The Scandal of Enkomi, Pensée, Vol. 4 No. 5 Winter 1974-75 p21

  13. Torr, C. Memphis and Mycenae. Reprinted in ISIS Occasional Publication Series Volume 1. 1988.

  14. Freud, S. Moses and Monotheism, New York, 1939

  15. Velikovsky, I Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History, 1945. Access via the SIS Web site.

  16. Velikovsky, I. Worlds In Collision, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1950

  17. Velikovsky, I. Ages In Chaos. Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1952, and ref. 12 below.

  18. Courville, D.A. The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, Challenge Books, Loma Linda, California, 1971.

  19. Schorr, E.M. Applying the Revised Chronology. Pensée, IVR IX [ 1974], pp5ff.

  20. Velikovsky, I. Peoples of the Sea. Sidgwick and Jackson, London. 1977.

  21. Velikovsky, I. Rameses II and his Time, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1978

  22. Bietak M, 'Avaris and Piramesse: Archaeological Exploration in the Eastern Nile Delta'. Revised reprint from the Proceedings of the British Academy 65. (1979):225-96. 1986

  23. Dayton, J. Minerals, Metals, Glazing and Man. London 1978

  24. Dayton, J. The Problem of Tin in the Ancient World. World Archaeology 1971.

  25. Rohl, D.M. A Test of Time. Century Ltd. 1995.

  26. James P.J. et al, Centuries of Darkness. Jonathon Cape, London, 1991.

  27. Dr J Iles, letter, Canadian Medical Association Journal. March 1980

  28. Sweeney, E.J. The Genesis of Israel and Egypt. London 1997

  29. Sweeney, E.J. The Pyramid Age. Domra Publications, UK 1999

  30. H Jacquet-Gordon, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 1967

  31. Snodgrass A. M. The Dark Age of Greece [Edinburgh, 1971] p389.

  32. Manyon, J. 'It Ain't Necessarily So'. The Spectator, 6th November 1999

  33. T Gold, New Ideas in Science, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 3, No. 2. pp. 103-112 1989.

  34. Kitchen, K. The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100-650 B.C.) 2nd Rev. ed., Aris & Phillips Ltd, Warminster, England. 1995.

  35. Arp, Halton 'Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science' Aperion, Montreal 1998

  36. Ginsberg A. Legends of the Jews, Philadelphia, 1925-38. Vol.IV, p283]

  37. Ginsberg. A. Ibid VI p307.

  38. Kitchen. K. ibid

  39. Manuel F.E. Ibid.

  40. Schliemann, Tyrins (New York, 1895) p.39.


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Symposium on: Fifty years after Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision:
Classical and New Scenarios on Evolution of Solar System.

Bergamo, October 20 / 21 , 2001. Original announcement Here
Thanks to Emilio Spedicato for providing this summary page.
This is not an SIS Event.


Speakers

Saturday 20th, morning:
  • Prof. Emilio Spedicato, Un. of Bergamo:
    Introduction to the workshop
Saturday 20th, afternoon:Sunday 21st, morning:


Talk Summaries


This is a summary of a workshop discussing a number of issues related to the role of Velikovsky in the cultural history of the 20th century and a number of recent evidence that some claims of Velikovsky are confirmed by observations and computations not available at his time.


Nieves Mathews De Madariaga

Message addressed to the participants

Dear friends, friends of Immanuel Velikovsky, Dear Emilio, explorer, on Velikovskian lines, of the frontiers of Paradise; Dear Shulamit, translator of your father's work for the country of his choice.

As an old friend of Velikovsky, who sent him tit-bits of confirmation throughout the last twenty-five years of his life - and queries which he answered to my complete satisfaction (on calendars, on Homer, on Stonehenge...) I wish I could hear viva voce all you have to say about the changes in planetary orbits and in the earth's axis after near collisions; about the geological and dendrological evidence of recent catastrophes of extraterrestrial origin; about the electromagnetic forces which play so vital a role in Velikovsky's cosmological scenario, and about the fascinating interplay between the rejection and the recognition of scientific genius. Above all I wish I could hear your arguments and counter-arguments, agreements and disagreements.

I shall be with you in spirit, and so will my father, the Spanish statesman and historian, Salvador de Madariaga, who, many years ago, read the copy of Worlds in Collision I had given him, on his way to America, and became a staunch supporter of its author. When my father died (a year before Velikovsky) the last words he dictated were about this friend's brilliant discoveries, and his undeserved rejection by the Academe of his day.

After half a century of familiarity with Worlds in Collision and with Ages in Chaos, I welcome a time when those who follow in Velikovsky's footsteps no longer feel the need to protect themselves from established opinion by dismissing, in a condescending footnote, the pioneer thinker who had opened up their path, but can hail him instead for the inspired, indefatigable seeker of the truth Velikovsky was. And I would like to propose to you and to all his admirers, and particularly to those who recognize their debt to his tought, a way of honouring the fifty years we have spent in Velikovsky's company - along with the twenty five centuries we have spent in that of Plato, who first described the effects of near planetary collisions on our earth.

We know that Velikovsky made many suggestions for further research which might confirm his conclusions, whether cosmological or historical, and that some were put into effect, with noted success. But among those not taken up there is one I think he would have been particularly glad to see carried out today; the excavation of El-Arish, on the Egyptian frontier with Palestine - the site of the great Hyksos fortress of Avaris (situated by Manetho to the East of the Estern Delta of the Nile), which fell at last to Ahmose, the first Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, by the hand of his Israelite ally Saul. A different site has recently been proposed for this fortress, on the strength of one late allusion to 'Avaris' as a southern quarter of Pi-Ramesses - a city built centuries later by Ramses II above what may have been an ancient Israelite colony, right on the Eastern Delta. But its author did not refute, or mention, the numerous converging connections found by Velikovsky in the Bible, in Josephus, and in various Egyptian, Greek, Arab and other sources. Between 'El-Arish' or 'the brook of Egypt' (so called by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon) and the site of the imposing fortress from which the Hyksos - dreaded by Israel a the Biblical Amalekites or 'king-shephards', and by Egypt, as the Amu, or 'shephard-kings' - spread terror for centuries. Until, as Pharaoh Ahmasis recorded, 'the saviour of Egypt fought in the riverbed ' of the only river of that region.

Not long before Velikovsky's death in 1979, a preliminary attempt was made to survey this site. Could we not find the funds - and the intrepid minds - to celebrate this great man with so worth while a project?


Prof. Walter Baltensperger, Brazilian Center for Research in Physics, Rio de Janeiro

On the Geographical Displacement of Poles after Close Passage of a Body of Planetary Size

The aim of this work is not to prove or disprove ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky, but to explain the Ice Ages. These began about 3 million years ago, when the mean global temperature started to decrease. Irregularly, several times in 100,000 years, the mean temperature sharply increased, sometimes reaching values higher than at present. The lower the average temperature, the stronger were these fluctuations.

During the Late Glacial Maximum, about 20,000 years ago, the ice cover was asymmetrically distributed around the present position of the poles. On the northern hemisphere it reached the region of present New York and covered northern Germany, while eastern Siberia and parts of Alaska were ice free and inhabited by mammoths. Some of these were found in deep frozen state, indicating a rapid temperature drop in these areas. A postulate that the North Pole was in the Baffin Bay region and swiftly moved to its present position near the end of the Ice Age, 11,500 years ago, was refuted more than a century ago. Indeed, deformations of both the solid or the liquid state of matter, envisioned at that time for the Earth, relax too quickly to allow a pole shift. However we find that a plastic Earth with a relaxation time of a few hundred days or more makes the pole shift possible. Earth's rotation is stabilized by the equatorial belt. The shift is made possible by a one per thousand stretching deformation of the Earth in an oblique direction. This could be produced by the tidal action of a mass like that of Mars passing at a distance less than 15,000 km. The gyroscope Earth then performs a tumbling motion while its shape relaxes to an equilibrium with a displaced equatorial belt. Geographically, the poles spiral to the new position, requiring about 400 days for a turn. Angular momentum is conserved, and the rotation axis points to the same star before and after the event. Since the present planetary system with its motion calculated backwards does not show a close encounter between Earth and a planet, the passing mass must have been an additional object. We assume it to be in a highly eccentric orbit. At each passage near the Sun it is heated by solar radiation and tidal work. From the hot surface atoms escape. Light pressure expells most types of atoms, but some remain bound to the Sun. They build up an interplanetary gas. Its dynamics is complex and involves the gravitational coupling to other panets, inelastic collisions between particles, ionisations, and the formation of molecules, which are readily expelled. It is not unplausible, that the screening of sunlight by this gas leads to the lower global temperature and its violent fluctuations. During the close encounter, the additional hot planet is torn to pieces. The fragments evaporate during the Holocene, or they drop into the Sun.


Ing. Ammiraglio Flavio Barbiero, Accademia Navale, Livorno

Changes in the Rotation Axis of Earth After Asteroid/cometary Impacts And Their Geological Effects

The geological history of Earth is characterised by long periods of absolute stability, interrupted by short violent crisis, during which there are volcanic eruptions, orogenesis, climatic changes, inversions of the magnetic field, sea level variations and very often a radical change in the ecological equilibrium, with mass extinction and the emergence of new species. For some of these crises it was possible to prove that their beginning coincides with the impact of an asteroid; therefore a connection of cause-effect between these two events can be hypothesised.

This work shows that the impact of astronomical objects as small as an Apollo class asteroid could "trigger" a process which in a matter of days provokes a "reshaping" of the equatorial bulge around a different axis, and therefore a shift of the poles and a change of the tilt. In order to trigger that process, the peak value of the torque developed by the impact has to be greater than a "threshold" value, equal to the stabilizing torque developed by the equatorial bulge. A rough calculation shows that such threshold value can be reached during an impact of asteroids the size of one km.

A sudden shift of the poles like this would provoke: immediate destructive phenomena all over the world, due to earthquakes, hurricanes and tides of exceptional magnitude and to a temporary freezing of the climate; a violent burst of volcanic activity in all areas interested by the "reshaping" of the equatorial bulge; perturbation of the magnetic field; change of the Coriolis component acting on all continental masses displaced in latitude, making it possible the starting of new cells of circulation in the Sima and of new orogenesis as a consequence; variation of the sea level with respect to most of the coasts, due the new asset of the continents. There would be also permanent climatic changes, due on one side to the shift of the poles, which provokes a shift of the climatic bands and significant changes on oceanic and aerial streams; on the other side to the change of the tilt, which as great influence on the seasonal climate. As a consequence a great number of species well adapted to the previous climatic conditions (and besides strongly reduced in number by the destructive phenomena) would be pushed into extinction and new more flexible species would be established.

Therefore, the impacts of asteroids and comets emerges as a key factor in Earth's history, as capable of starting main geological processes on planetary scale.


Prof. Vladimir Damgov, Space Science Institute, Sofia

Solar System: A Megaquantum Model, Instabilities and Chaos

A heuristic model is proposed of the mean distances between the solar-system planets, their satellites and the primaries. Our model is a much better fit than that given by the classical Titius-Bode law, particularly with respect to the last two planets (Neptune and Pluto). The model is based on:

  1. the concept of the solar system structure wave nature;
  2. the micro-mega analogy (MM analogy) of the micro and megasystem structures
  3. the oscillator amplitude "quantization" phenomenon, occuring under wave action, discovered on the basis of the classical oscillations theory.

The phenomenal success of Newtonian dynamics, the three-body problem etc. are discussed from the point of modern views about the chaotic nature of the Solar system. Several examples for chaotic motion in the Solar system are presented, e.g. the rotational chaos of the Jovian satellite Hyperion, Martian satellites Phobos and Deimos etc. It is noted that cosmic chaos has been present and is present everywhere in the Solar system, especially in the history of its internal planets. As a whole the history of the planetary system has a high correlation with its chaotic evolution. Now, though, the resonance and the gravitational tidal relations between the planets result in a possible consideration of the Solar system as practically unstable for time periods of the order of its age - 5 billion years.


Dwardu Cardona, editor of journal Aeon, Vancouver

Saturn before the Sun

In which it shall be shown that the characteristics and motions of the so-called "suns" and sun-god of ancient man do not correspond to the motions and characteristics of the Sun. It shall also be shown that, in more than one case, the ancients themselves identified these so-called "suns" and sun gods as the planet Saturn and its divine personifications.

It was only later that some of these Saturnian names were transferred to the Sun - and thus the title of my paper.

In view of this, it becomes manifest that mythologists, who have long ignored these inconsistencies and identifications, as well as those who have pointed them out in the past, owe us an apology. It then becomes necessary to rewrite just about all of mythology.

It will also become obvious that, with perhaps one or two exceptions, these characteristics and motions with which the ancients burdened their various "suns" and so-called sun gods do not correspond to the characteristics and motions of the planet Saturn either. It will, however, be additionally indicated that the ancients viewed Saturn at closer proximity than is possible at present. Without going into too much detail, it will then be proposed, as it has already been by others, that Earth had once been a satellite of the planet Saturn. Thus the ancient view of Saturn would have been entirely different from the present view.

But even if this proposal, bizarre in the extreme, fails to capture the acceptance of mythologists, to say nothing of astronomers, it still behooves mythologists to rectify their misconceptions and represent the beliefs of our ancient forefathers correctly before they embark on any attempts at interpreting them.


Anne-Marie De Grazia, Angouleme

The Last Days of Velikovsky

I knew Velikovsky for two years, until his death. I almost accompanied my husband, Alfred, to what was going to be the last meeting ever he would have with Velikovsky, that was on Wednesday, November 14, Velikovsky would die on the 17, a Sabbath. It was a beautiful fall afternoon in Princeton, characteristic of the climate of the Northeast of the United States. Somewhere near the top of Harrison Street, I let Alfred go on alone, after he had asked if I wanted to come with him. He had important things to talk with him about - two days earlier, on Monday, we had visited Velikovsky together and Alfred had offered to write an article that he would draft which would then be revised by Velikovsky and sent out in finished form.

Alfred was trying something no one had done before, co-sign an article with Velikovsky. They had once decided to collaborate on a book for Simon and Shuster Publishers, for which Alfred had drawn up the outline, but between the demands of the publishers and those of Velikovsky, the project fell through. Alfred thought that Velikovsky would feel less depressed if he could engage himself in something. He knew Velikovsky as perhaps no man living did. They had spent hundreds of hours together over the years and engaged in countless phone calls. They had become angry at each other on several occasions, so that it seemed that the relationship would rupture but it never did. Velikovsky reaction to Alfred's idea about the article had been favorable. He said: "Write it tomorrow!" This Alfred had done, and now he was ready to bring it over to him. It was called "Six Spheres of Venusian Effects," and it was written in the form of a hypothesis and a challenge, positing that the astronomical record, the atmospherical records, the geosphere, the ecosphere, the anthroposphere, the historical records, wherever available, would show some significant disturbances 3500 years ago, at the time at which Velikovsky put the catastrophic near passage of cometary Venus, before she was emplaced in her orbit as a planet, which was also the time which Velikovsky assigned to the Exodus of the Hebrew from Egypt. The article which Alfred projected to write in collaboration was to be offered to Nature magazine. There was going to be, obviously, a lot to serious and difficult talk about it -- Velikovsky was not an easy interlocutor -- and I thought that my presence -- although I would be well-taken care of by Elisheva, Velikovsky's wife -- might be somewhat disturbing, at least, useless.

Also, I must confess that I myself had something to tell to Velikovsky which I suspected would make him very excited and might deflect his attention from what Alfred had to say. To use a mythological expression, I didn't want to steel his thunder. Because as projects went with Velikovsky, Alfred's was a fairly big thunder. I remember feeling a little twinge of regret as I turned around to walk back home.

Velikovsky had not written, or at least published, anything major for some years. He had advice from all sides to publish rather than to engage in polemics; he would admit the wisdom of doing just that, but nothing seemed to happen afterwards.

When Alfred returned home, on foot, about two and half hours later -- we lived about one kilometer away from Velikovsky's house -- he told me that Velikovsky had liked the phrasing of the propositions but disputed his selection of examples and said that he would not be a co-author because he didn't have the time to do the necessary research. As Alfred wrote two days later to Brian Moore: "(Velikovsky's) powers were fully engaged; he was concerned with the shortness of time, with editorial priorities, with the campaign to advance and defend his ideas..." Then, something a little bit unusual happened: when Alfred left -- it was getting dark already -- Velikovsky did not get up to walk him to the door as he always did -- they would always spend a few minutes talking on the deep, dark porch before taking leave. Velikovsky was an Old World man, with deeply ingrained courtesy. So, this was a little breach in habits for him, which acquired greater significance a few days later.

Alfred became discouraged with him when in a phone conversation the next day Velikovsky reiterated that he did not want to go ahead with the article -- of course, Alfred could not know that he would never see his friend again, and I thought that they even quarrelled -- but they did not.

As for what I had wanted to tell to Velikovsky -- well, I am no scientist myself, I am a writer -- and, must I confess, I was not absolutely enthralled by Velikovsky's theories -- I was cautious, but open... But, just a few days earlier, I had made my own little discovery, in the encyclopaedia section of the Firestone Library, the main library of Princeton University. Alfred was at that time working on his book on Moses, God's Fire, a project about which Velikovsky was not very enthusiastic -- for at least two main reasons: he didn't like the idea of Alfred examining the character of Moses (who was, in some way, the character with which he, Velikovsky, identified most). But, too, he would have preferred that Alfred, and everybody else interested in his theories, do nothing else but loyally fight for him, defend him, attack the scientific establishment on his behalf , rather than do truly creative work or research on their own.

So, I was helping Alfred to do research on his forthcoming Moses book, and Alfred had asked me to check up things on the color "red" in Ancient Egypt (which Velikovsky had pointed out, in World's in Collision, became the "evil" color at the time of the Exodus, which he associated as you know already with the large catastrophes associated with the passage of Venus as a comet. Well, knowing German, I consulted an interesting work, unfinished -- I think it ended then at the letter E -- an Encyclopaedia bound in white called Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, published by Anton Hiersemann, Stuttgart, ten years earlier, in 1969, and it had an article on the topic of "color." And there I read that, in Ancient Mesopotamia, portentous events for the king and the country were predicted from the color that "the plume of Venus," the "feather of Venus" was taking, i.e. whether it was dark, or light... Now what on earth could the "plume of Venus" have referred to? The encyclopaedia neglected to address itself to this question. But, in the light of Velikovsky's theories, a satisfactory explanation was close at hand: at the time referred to, Venus, the planet Venus, must have had some kind of visible physical extension, the appearance of which could undergo some observable changes, and what else could this be, if not some remnant of a cometary tail?

Alfred used the information in his book, I never heard any more reference made to this Mesopotamian text, or to this encyclopaedia article, although I mentioned the fact to a few people, especially German speaking scholars who supported Velikovsky... It was an intriguing finding but, as I said, Velikovsky died three days later, without having the occasion to hear about it... On that Saturday afternoon, we were both together at Firestone Library, checking out on the technology of wire, such as it was known in Ancient Egypt -- wondering if, at Moses' time, metal wires existed that might have been capable of conducting electricity. I remember going through some large books by Flinders Petrie...

While we were at the library, Elisheva Velikovsky and her daughters tried to call Alfred but, of course, could not find us. They finally called Alfred's mother. Velikovsky had had a poor night, occasioned by rapid pulse and feelings of weakness. He arose at first light on the Sabbath and showered. He returned to his bed and Elisheva sat next to him. He murmured several undistinguishable words and took her hand. He became quiet and she saw that he had passed away as if to sleep. He was buried the next day in a private ceremony at a small ceremony not far from Princeton, near the Atlantic Ocean, in a plot he had selected just the year before. He was buried before almost anybody knew of his demise.

Moses and Exodus were of course centrally important to Velikovsky's theories and, if it had not been for his identification with Moses -- or, at least, at the start, for his strong, so to speak, loyalistic attitude towards Moses, he probably would never have had his brilliant insights about Venus, and about chronology -- in short, his revolutionary theories might never have occurred to him.

Velikovsky was in effect a Zionist, though he told Alfred that he was not. And he was a psychoanalyst. He was, we recall, critical of Freud and a disciple of Stekel. He wrote and published material analysing the dreams of Freud. He was annoyed that Freud should harbor so obvious an ambivalence concerning Judaism.

Velikovsky's father was among the earliest settlers of what was then the British colony of Palestine. Zionism and psychoanalysis came to a sudden clash, at least in Velikovsky's mind, when Sigmund Freud published his last book, Moses and Monotheism. And it was, in this case, a fruitful clash. Sigmund Freud, like Velikovsky, had a personal problem with Moses. All his life, Moses stood in Freud's way, it seems, and ultimately, in his last intellectual act, Freud confronted him and, literally, put him to death. Freud made out of Moses an Egyptian, member of the royal household, and derived his greatest invention, monotheism, from Akhenaton's failed religious revolution, the worship of a unique god, Aton. He also, most powerfully, brought together his own theories of "Totem and Taboo" (the murder of the father by the rebelling sons as one of the founding acts of civilization) and the hypotheses of German biblical scholars concerning the murder of Moses in a rebellion at Beth Peor, after he had ordered the massacre of several thousand people for being friendly and engaging in festivities with local tribes. This interpretation was, for a religious Jew, sacrilegious, but Velikovsky was not a religious Jew. However, making Moses an Egyptian and having him killed by his own people on the eve of entering the Promised Land sat poorly with Velikovsky. The reputation of Moses as the historical founder of Israel would be damaged, too, and this Velikovsky could not accept. He set out to destroy Freud's hypothesis, by putting in question the accepted chronology and showing that Moses had, in fact, lived before Akhenaton, and that, if anything, Akhenaton might have been inspired by the Hebrew religion, instead of the other way around. One time, reflecting upon some evidence that Akhenaton might have been partly of Palestinian or other Near East origin, Alfred wondered to Velikovsky whether Akhenaton might not have been half-Hebrew and got his monotheistic notions there. But Velikovsky would have no part in this theory of a half-Hebrew either.

It was this revolt against Freud that eventually brought Velikovsky to his monumental hypothesis, for as he examined the literature he came upon elements of Egyptian documents that resembled the Bible and when put in place occurred well before the Pharaoh Akhnaton, the most important being the Ipuwer papyrus, describing what appeared to be the famous plagues of the Bible that sent the Hebrews from Egypt. He could now consider that something extraordinary and hitherto unrecognized had happened on the cosmic level at the time of the Exodus. Something that was recorded both in the Bible and in ancient Egyptian texts, provided that these were synchronized according to the new chronology.

Ruth Velikovsky tells what happened next in her profound and candid life of her father. When we visited her with Prof Spedicato in Princeton earlier this year, she was still hoping to get into shape for Alfred to publish on the Internet. So Velikovsky's theory of recent, historic cosmic catastrophes derived from his desire to salvage Moses from the deadly blow dealt to him by Freud, and restore him as the foundation of the legitimate claim of the Hebrew - the Jewish - people to Yahweh's Promised Land.


Alfred de Grazia, Princeton

Quantavolution and Solaria Binaria

I am here to pay homage to an old friend already 22 years dead, Immanuel Velikovsky. His books of fifty years ago, however, are very much alive.

I also see this conference as an occasion to pay my respects to Professor Emilio Spedicato, who has given a unique impetus to the quantavolution movement at the University of Bergamo and around the world.

And third, I am privileged here to tell something about my own work.

If you will permit me now, I would like to define the term Quantavolution. Afterwards, I can proceed to introduce the theory of Solaria Binaria.

Quantavolution refers to great changes of both inorganic and organic realms of existence happening swiftly, powerfully, and on a large scale.

The means of quantavolution are largely electromagnetic. That is, the theory of dynamic physics may eventually treat most or all natural energy operations as originating in electricity. Gravitation has lost prestige as an all-explainer in physics and astronomy, and might conceivably be dispensed with in quantavolution theory.

Quantavolutions are catastrophes, but they are constructive as well as destructive. For example, if you prefer mammals to dinosaurs as your pets, then possibly you would regard the comets or meteoroids that struck the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous and put an end to the dinosaurs as a stroke of good luck, a quantavolution that was on the whole favorable from a mammalian and human point of view.

When a quantavolution occurs, the phenomena of air, water, earth, and existence change sharply. Logically, then, every science is concerned with quantavolutions, past and future. Every sphere of being is affected, so we can say Q is holospheric.

Thousands of plant and animal species extincted with the famous dinosaurs. The stratigraphy of much of the Earth changed. The atmosphere changed. The motions of the Earth changed, how much we do not yet know. As a matter of fact, we know very little yet about the events and changes that took place when the dinosaurs felt the disastrous effects of falling bodies from outer space. But name me a field of learning, and I will give you a suitable subject for a dissertation in that field on a problem of quantavolution.

Linguistics, for another instance, finds every language loaded with ancient words of disaster and electricity and punishing gods. A study by Hugh Crosthwaite tells us that about 15% of the words of Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Egyptian are connected in some fashion with electricity.

Quantavolution is not a theory that I can express mathematically. It is a cognitive theory, or perhaps only a heuristic theory. I can write it in signs, as if it were a formula. This might help to remember it.


Q=C(SISa)x × 3(a...n)

where Q = quantavolution
X = exponential rising and subsiding
C = change  x  3   =  multiplied  by  the sum of
S = suddenness a..n = all phenomena affected
I = intensity  Sa = scope

Thus: If a meteor (or comet) strikes at "Chassenon, France" and is 1.5 km in diameter, striking with a speed of 20 k/second, coming from the Northwest, it will burst open, within seconds, a great crater, and shoot up a towering column of fire, gas, and debris, a terrestrial tsunami whose swells will become arcs of hills, and all forms of rocks for 20 km around will be metamorphosed, while practically all life forms will be extincted up to a radius of 500 km, and most habitats around the world and the atmosphere everywhere will be affected to different degrees but markedly.

A new world will be soon established over the vast area , and when humans come to inhabit it a long time afterwards, they will not recognize its nature and learned scientists will call it a volcano, until they finally realize that the strange rocks providing the natives with beautiful stone for building are not sedimentary, and then finally, 17 years after a book called Worlds in Collision raises a hullabaloo, a leading French scientist will visit colleagues in Germany at the Ries crater; he will change his mind, and initiate 27 years of research and persuading other scientists that they are dealing with an exoterrestrial meteoritic phenomenon . In 1994 a conference called specially for the purpose, gives its blessing to the site, and in 1995 a geological map of the area is produced.

The earlier tale of the discovery of the catastrophic origin of the horrendous scablands of Washington State by Professor J. H. Bretz, and the acceptance of his findings, took several decades.

Similar stories can be told about an increasing number of places around the world. Old volcanoes are turning into meteor craters. I wonder whether Italian geologists could be wrong in regarding Lago di Bolsena as a typical extinct volcano crater. The Roman encyclopedist Pliny said that it was the spot where a Jovian thunderbolt had destroyed the Etruscan city of Volsinium.

Today I can introduce these matters without being contradicted. Fifty years ago, if I said them to a respectable audience, I would be regarded as a strange character who belongs to the fringes of outer space.

Immanuel Velikovsky had much to do with this change of paradigm, as you will be hearing today and tomorrow. He had much to do with my partial shift in mid-life from a social historian to a universal natural historian, or, maybe I should say, a cosmologist.

I would add, however, that the new paradigm of quantavolution was bound to happen, with or without my old friend Velikovsky. All history is that way, is it not? -- political history, social history, the history of science? History can be pushed forward a bit or dragged back, but it cannot be cut out of whole cloth by any man or woman. It should not surprise anyone, then, that predecessors can be found for most of the elements of Velikovsky's work, and these forerunners keep turning up from odd quarters.

When I reoriented my intellectual telescope, I could perceive what appeared to me new large regions for investigation. I might even see in old facts a remarkably new history of the solar system. And so, around 1975, I invented the theory of Solaria Binaria.

I began to imagine the history of the solar system as the career of a speeding, electrically charged star that destabilized when it entered upon a region of space that supported a markedly different electric charge. The Sun then underwent a nova explosion and fragmented into a double star that evolved into our present planetary configuration.

The Sun, I imagined, threw off a large fragment, about 7% of its mass. It bound the fragment to itself at a proper distance, however, that is, a distance that would enable it to maintain a powerful electric arc and an associated magnetic field. What can be done in a child's playroom may be true of the cosmos. A magnetic field of dust and debris circled around the electric current and was kicked back into the larger bodies or formed smaller bodies, the dense planets.

The area of magnetic forces was enormous and I called it the magnetic tube, which constituted what I called a plenum of charges, gases, and rock. You can see how this plenum of electrified plasma would provide millions of times the area for experimentation with forming life than might be found on the little planet Earth.

The plenum provided 60 million times the volume of the Earth's oceans and atmosphere today, as a breeding ground for living organisms.

The electrical energy liberated by the central arc into the plenum would also have been exponentially greater than the electrical energy available today for experimentation in the forming of living organisms. It was in this plenum that organic forms might originate and develop before they landed on Earth, or before they were domiciled on the planets as the plenum diminished in size.

The time factor must also be examined. Here just the nova explosion itself, in a few months before creating the system, would have liberated a creative energy equivalent to two billion years of Earth history. All in all, Solaria Binaria would appear to be millions of time more effective in producing the living species of today than mainstream science theory would provide.

Still, my collaborator Earl Milton and I were dissatisfied, because the probabilities of life originating in any conceivable volume of plasma are far beyond the opportunities afforded even by the Solaria Binaria system. Therefore we had to become cell engineers and reconstruct how electrical energy working with various chemical elements could build an organism that could ingest and excrete, meanwhile reproducing. Certain accidents that occur often in these processes turn out to be helpful and are retained. I think that our scenario is convincing, even if too elaborate to detail here.

Too, there is an element of teleology in our theory. I conjectured that any gene that mutates for any reason signals all the genes of the organism to assist in living with its change. If they can cooperate, the other genes do so, and an organic change takes place and is included in successful reproductions. Perhaps because I felt Napoleonic at this moment, I called this gene that gives the acceptable signal to all the other genes, the 'leader gene,' and compared the gene with the common soldier of the armies of Napoleon: "Every soldier," he is reported to have said, "carries the baton of a Marshal in his knapsack."

The binary partner of the Sun I called Uranus after the nebulous first Great God of the Greeks. When Uranus developed an instability and lost mass, its greater remaining part could be called by us 'Saturn,' and when a nova exploded Saturn, the larger part was identified by me as what would be called 'Jupiter.' Distances between the dense and gaseous plants and the Sun stretched out as the electric current diminished, and at the same time the planets moved ever closer to the arterial center of the great electric current, until they were agreeably on the same plane, called now the plane of the ecliptic, and there the motion that they had in circling around the current in the magnetic tube turned into the motion that we know as their rotation.

I had already placed the dinosaur disaster and other quantavolutions of the solar system into the memory of early mankind, so I could not contradict myself by using the long conventional time scales. And how could I extract the Moon from the Pacific Basin in the memorial time of human beings? It would take years before I could settle upon an age to give to for Solaria Binaria. Then, with my comrade Earl Milton aiding and abetting me, the question was asked: how much time would be reasonably enough to do everything that had to be done with the sun and its descendants down to today, employing the huge energy of electricity, incomparably more forceful than the puny strength of the force of gravitation. We chose the round figure of a million years for the history of the solar system, from when the Sun went nova down to the present time.

In the 18 years since SB was published, evidence supporting its principal theses has expanded greatly.

In regard to Quantavolution itself, I would guess that the number and proportion of scholars and scientists who accept in large part the formulation of Q=c(SIS)x 3(A...n) has increased from 10,000 to 6,000,000 or 600 times, and represents 60% of the 10,000,000 scholars and scientists of the world. This has happened despite the fact that they do not even know the word Quantavolution.

In view of this increased open-mindedness (or is it gullibility?) for novel theories, the literature of Q has increased greatly. When I first entered the field, Velikovsky's work and a few other items of the period from 1927 to 1963 constituted the relevant bibliography. For the rest of one's references, one had to go to collections of ancient myths and to early Greek and Roman philosophers, to holy scriptures of the Jews, Persians, Hindus, and to rare writers of the last thousand years. The most important were Whinston, a little-read disciple of Newton; Boulanger a Frenchman of the Enlightenment a century later, whose books were called to Velikovsky's attention by Livio Stecchini, an unrecognized great historian of science whose works have yet to be published, although he has been dead for decades; to a brief monograph by Xavier Kugler on the erratic behavior of Venus and the weird language of the Sibylline oracles, which came late to Velikovsky, and was also introduced to us by Stecchini; to the work of Melvin Cook, which also came late to Velikovsky; to the Hoerbigger School, that Velikovsky avoided because he felt Hoerbigger was a proto-Nazi; and to Claude Shaeffer, who worked with the French resistance and wrote his books on comparative archaeology in London during World War II. My bibliography of 1981 in Chaos and Creation may have been the largest; I put into it any item that gave a glimmer of hope to my theories.

There has been also an expansion of evidence in support of specific theses of Solaria Binaria.

That there are many binary and other multiple-partner systems is now universally admitted. There may be millions of them in our single galaxy. These are recent discoveries. Many stellar binaries have planets that move in some relationship to the principal partners.

Many craters exist everywhere in the solar system. Even asteroids can carry craters.

Electrical effects are widely remarked. A web site called Intersect and a Web magazine called Thoth, both under the lively direction of astronomer Amy Acheson, pursues the issue of the electrification of the universe.

The development of plasma physics has speeded up and has found many applications to cosmology. I might note that, in 1963, I wrote of Velikovsky: "He found space a vacuum and has made it a plenum." When I conjectured the plenum of Solaria Binaria, I could have used the new language of plasma physics. Instead, Milton and I used other words for essentially the same phenomena. The filling of space by astrophysicists has proceeded until some 99% of the matter in the universe can be characterized as plasma. It is a forceful confirmation of the tube, sac, and plenum proposed in Solaria.

The threatening habits of asteroids and comets and their frequently unexpected behavior reminds one of our reconstruction of the many "erratic" movements of the solar system bodies in history.

The bewildering movements of magnetic fields of the earth as a whole and in its parts over history, a mystifying subject, can be simplified and better understood if the short-term reconstruction provided in Solaria Binaria is pursued.

A proliferation of splendid photographs of space objects of all kinds and of all regions of the Earth has given us countless occasions to confirm the pages of Solaria Binaria, none of substance to deny it, so far.

The collection of myths applicable to Q theory has been expanded, much of it represented in the work of David Talbott in regard to the planet-god Saturn.

The genome projects that have decoded thousands of genes have lent some support to the 'leader gene' theory I proposed in Homo Schizo and again with Milton in Solaria Binaria. There may well be a system within the genome for following the leader when a mutation is proposed.

Discoveries of many correct fits between widely separated continental masses have continued while the theory of a land-covered Earth until the blow-out of the Pacific Basin have in no way been affected adversely.

Discovery of relationships among all the languages circling the basin from which the Moon emerged and correlating with the Ring of Fire of earthquakes and volcanism indicate that a community of language families existed before lunagenesis and/or that a recent event emptied the vast region of people and then quickly allowed their repopulation thereafter by related peoples.

The willingness to advocate and accept theories of the origin of life forms in the plenum of solaria binaria has grown with the increase in similar theories of the origin of life in space and atmospheres or its transit from comets from other worlds.

The critical transactions between Jupiter and its system of moons were expected under the Solaria Binaria model, including the explosion of large cometary fragments on Jupiter a few years ago.

The rapidity of stratification of large masses and differently composed materials after a quantavolution or even isolated natural disasters, so as to mimic old age, is a deserving topic in search of compilers employing statistical methods.

The radical reconstruction of human history from the origin of mankind to the present epoch has held its own in general, but is awaiting a rigorous editing in the view of writings by Gunnar Heinsohn, Peter James and other critics. The work of Mandelkehr and others evidencing a quantavolution of worldwide proportions around 2250 B.C. tends to support the events attending the so-called Mercury Period of Solaria Binaria.

Debate over the age of the Earth and the accidents befalling it has expanded. A far-reaching controversy deals with the response of radioactive elements to electromagnetic currents; laboratory experiments are especially needed. To the trenchant critiques of Melvin Cook against the constancy of radioactive decay measures are now added a new type of criticism, based on the idea that the speed of light is not constant and therefore atomic time is not constant, and therefore the radioactive decay measures that are correlated to the atomic clocks cannot be valid. A billion years can become a thousand years if the speed of light has changed, but is used in a measuring instrument as if it were a constant. The astronomer Barry Sutterfield has been pressing the case for this theory. I would not wish to commit myself on it yet.

To continue my listing, evidence of catastrophically-induced diffusion of cultures and artifacts has piled up.

Outside the solar system, in numerous instances, bodies composing multiple star systems have been observed to shift erratically their positions. Examples are now available of electromagnetic arcs between large bodies that resemble the electric axis or arc that Solaria Binaria once possessed.

There have been convincing comparisons of the solar wind with a drastically weakening and dying electrical connection between the sun and its planets along the ecliptic.

Barbieri and others have confirmed that drastic shifts in the axis and orientation as well as rotational and orbiting patterns of the earth and other planets are far from impossible, therefore permitting the movements of planets proposed in Solaria Binaria.

The accretion of evidence of lunagenesis out of the Pacific Basin now includes studies of the intense heat, life forms, and topography of the abyssal floors, which can be interpreted to indicate youth.

So there is where we stand today. And if any of you are inclined to join the battles of science, I can assure you that many places for volunteers exist, and that you will, like every other soldier of science, carry a marshal's baton in your knapsack.


Antonino Del Popolo, University of Bergamo

Extrasolar Planetary Systems: Observational Results and Theoretical Problem

The discovery of the first extra-solar planet surrounding a main sequence star was announced in 1995, based on very precise radial velocity (Doppler) measurements. A total of 34 such planets were known by the end of March 2000, and their numbers are growing steadily. The newly-discovered systems confirm some of the features predicted by standard theories of star and planet formation, but systems with massive planets having very small orbital radii and large eccentricities are common and were generally unexpected.

Between the unexpected properties of these planets, most of which are Jupiter-mass objects, particularly noteworthy is the small orbital separations at which these planets orbit around their parent stars: among the several tens of planets detected so far, at least fifteen of the planets orbit at a distance between 0.046 and 0.11 AU (Astronomical Units, 1 AU is about 150 million km) from their parent star. The properties of these planets are difficult to explain using the quoted standard model for planet formation (Lissauer 1993; Boss 1995). The most natural explanation for planets on very short orbits is that these planets have formed further away in the protoplanetary nebula and they have migrated to the small orbital distances at which they are observed.

Other techniques being used to search for planetary signatures include accurate measurement of positional (astrometric) displacements, gravitational microlensing, and pulsar timing, the latter resulting in the detection of the first planetary mass bodies beyond our Solar System in 1992. The transit of a planet across the face of the host star provides significant physical diagnostics, and the first such detection was announced in 1999. Protoplanetary disks, which represent an important evolutionary stage for understanding planet formation, are being imaged from space. In contrast, direct imaging of extra-solar planets represents an enormous challenge. Long-term efforts are directed towards infrared space interferometry, the detection of Earth-mass planets, and measurement of their spectral characteristics.


Laurence Dixon, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK

On the Planetary Orbital Changes Proposed by Velikovsky

In Worlds in Collision Velikovsky assumed that planet Earth interacted catastrophically with Venus and Mars at least in two occasions:

Velikovsky moreover proposed that Venus originated from Jupiter at some previous time and that the orbits of Mars and Venus rounded up after the 687 BC event.

A detailed analysis of the dynamics of the proposed interactions and rounding up of the orbits in relatively short time has never been made by Velikovsky or other scholars. It has been claimed however by some that the proposed orbital changes would violate the energy and momentum conservation laws. This question has been studied partly with analytical means, leading to equations in terms of planetary masses, energies, momenta, semi-major axes, eccentricities and distances from the Sun. Such equations do not have a unique solution, being underdetermined, hence they allow for a variety of solutions (of course the solution would be unique if the initial conditions were exactly known and the dynamical evolution of the planets would be exactly computed). It has been possible to show numerically the existence of sets of orbits that satisfy the conservation laws, under the hypothesis of the following sequence of interactions:

  1. Venus with Earth
  2. Venus with Mars
  3. Mars with Earth
  4. Mars with an asteroid

There are therefore 5 systems of orbits, the initial one (after Venus was expelled from Jupiter) till the final one after the last interaction, which is the present system. Two solutions satisfying the conservation laws have been obtained. One solution has however the Earth getting too close to the Sun in the first stage. The other solution, obtained via nonlinear optimization techniques aiming to minimize Earth eccentricity, has Mars on an orbit that takes it too far away. So the search for acceptable orbits in the Velikovsky scenario is still open (and it might require a more complex approach using not only gravitational forces).


Charles Ginenthal, editor of The Velikovskian

Electro-gravitic Cosmology

Immanuel Velikovsky theory that the solar system has been unstable in historical times was based on the assumption that there was an electromagnetic force in celestial space. This follower of Velikovsky has enlarged upon this suggestion and developed a completely new theory of cosmology.

The theory does not explain the origin of the Universe. It does not explain the origin of matter, energy or space. To do so requires creation ex nihilo, which requires a miracle. The theory takes as given that matter, energy and space have always existed and are changing form in a Universe that is eternal.

The theory is based on the concept of fissioning; it offers that black holes containing masses of millions to hundred of billions of stars spin to instability and eject out of their poles masses that evolve into stars in the arms of spiral barred galaxies. These galaxies evolve to spiral galaxies and then to elliptical galaxies. Ellipticals may congregate in great clusters, such as the Virgo cluster where at the center a black hole takes these galaxies into itself and then throws off black holes that start the process over again. Some galaxies of the elliptical type may repeat the process outside such clusters.

Stellar birth, evolution and death is also based on the fission concept. Black holes with masses larger than stars are ejected from the poles of galactic black holes. At various distances from the central galactic black hole these break up and spin to instability forming either white dwarf stars, pulsars or protostars. These all evolve across the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram from the left side to the right. This evolution exhibits entropy as the star develops. The star starts out as a superdense, exploding mass, generating great electromagnetic emissions and spinning at great velocity. As it ages it becomes less and less dense, emitting less and less mass and electromagnetic emissions, spinning at less and less velocity.

One can test in space the theory that electromagnetism affects celestial motion. By placing a very low mass highly magnetic ball in space outside the Earth's magnetic field in a highly circular orbit with devices to measure the magnetic resonance of space affecting the ball and the elevation of it from Earth one can determine if electromagnetism changes the orbit from a highly circular to a more and more elliptical one over the course of time. Should the orbit change in this way, this will prove that electromagnetism does affect celestial motion as Velikovsky suggested and will open cosmology to a new theory by which galaxies and stars are born, evolve, die and are reborn.


Erasmo Recami, University of Bergamo

A View of Velikovsky From A Physicist

We shall attempt a brief examination of Velikovsky's theories: trying, on the one hand, to call attention to his innovative and surely interesting hints, and, on the other hand, to the difficulties that various of them meet within the standard physical theory.


Emilio Spedicato, Universita' di Bergamo

Evidence of a Tunguska-type event in the year 1178 AD

In Worlds in Collision Velikovsky paid attention to two catastrophical events that happened one in the second millennium BC (the event associated with Exodus, by him dated at 1447 BC) and the second one in the first millennium BC (the destruction of Sennacherib army near Jerusalem circa 700 BC). These events were attributed by him to the close passage of a planetary body (identified actually as Venus and Mars, respectively).

In the last two millennia there is no evidence of a close passage of large bodies, present known planets being safely located on almost circular orbits quite away from Earth (but there is still discussion about a planet in a possible highly elliptical orbit). However there have been a number of catastrophical events, among whom:

In the year 1178 a special phenomenon was observed on the Moon, a flame jutting out, a change of color and vibrations. This may have been due to an impact on the hidden face, possibly one that formed the Giordano Bruno crater. It is natural to ask if also earth was affected by pieces of the Moon or of the impacting body or bodies. We give hints that the Pacific region was probably affected by such impacts, resulting in climatic and political changes, that finally affected Europe via the Mongols.


SIS Home Page

2 posted on 04/19/2002 12:36:50 PM PDT by vannrox
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Comment #3 Removed by Moderator

To: vannrox, annaz, f.Christian, gore3000
In the area of historical/chronological revision, as I've noted, my money is on Heinsohn and Sweeney, and I view Sweeney's two books "Pyramid Age" and "Genesis of Israel and Egypt" as must-haves.
4 posted on 04/19/2002 12:44:59 PM PDT by medved
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To: *History_list;blam

5 posted on 04/19/2002 12:45:31 PM PDT by Libertarianize the GOP
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To: blam
FYI
6 posted on 04/19/2002 12:46:03 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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To: Blam
A mention of dendrochronology, among other things.
7 posted on 04/19/2002 12:46:14 PM PDT by RightWhale
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To: vannrox
James McCanney, ( The Millenium Group) who supposedly dispensed with the archaic notion that comets were 'dirty snow balls,' gives much credence to Velikovsky, and noted that the one variable that Velikovsky did not consider was the true nature of comets, which McCanney names the "Plasma Discharge Comet Model."

If you are familiar with McCanney's works, would you express an opinion? I'm currently studying McCanney and don't have much to compare with his thinking concerning catastrophism, cometary/asteroidal collisions and/or gravity wars, violent weather and plate movements. Thanks. -- Dave

PS: Thanks for posting this study.

8 posted on 04/19/2002 1:23:56 PM PDT by Eastbound
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To: Eastbound
PPS: McCanny also suggests that the timelines are up for grabs.
9 posted on 04/19/2002 1:33:28 PM PDT by Eastbound
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To: vannrox
It has been many years since I followed Velikovsky.
Did you dump core, or do you have a synopsis of all you posted?

I've often speculated, but have not tried to demonstrate, that the "crime" that the Establishment science community saw in Velikovsky's theses, were his choices of sources. I think it obvious that Velikovsky's use of biblical stories as one of several bits of evidence supporting his ideas ran into conflict with Establishment science's running feud with bible defending adversaries. After WWII, that adversarial argument was about to be firmly swinging to scientism's side, especially in the schools. I suspect that Establishment science feared that were Velikovsky taken seriously at that juncture, scientism's advance would have been hit with a very untimely setback.

So, starting with Harlow Shapely's unprescendented vehement displeasure in 1950, one after another of those with influence were either recruited to Shapely's side of the dispute or discredited. Were they given an ultimatum such as: "you're either with us or against us?" I'd like to know. It certainly seems to be likely.

Do you know if anyone has gone to the effort to follow up on facts that support a hypothesis such as mine? I'd like to read it.

10 posted on 04/19/2002 1:33:57 PM PDT by Avoiding_Sulla
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To: medved
Ted Holden. Paging Ted Holden.
11 posted on 04/19/2002 1:39:33 PM PDT by Junior
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To: Junior
You might try reading some of the article above...
12 posted on 04/19/2002 1:44:50 PM PDT by medved
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To: Avoiding_Sulla
McClannan (in my previous link to the Millenium Group) states that Cornell dumped him immediately after he tried to publish his plasma comet model, and eventually turned to the internet where he is widely supported, mostly from the Russian scientific community, which McClannan states teaches his theory in the classroom. If you are not familiar with McClannan, here's an on-air interview he had a couple of years back with Chuck Shramek, of Houston. Shramek (who has since died) was the guy who took and published the first picture of Hale-Bopp with the companion 'object.' :

- CLICK! -

Fascinating!

13 posted on 04/19/2002 1:56:50 PM PDT by Eastbound
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To: vannrox; Admin Moderator
Vannrox - maybe these mega posts of yours about revisionist history, catastrophic history, etc. ought to be posted in General Interest, and not News/Activism? Just a suggestion...
14 posted on 04/19/2002 1:57:50 PM PDT by Notforprophet
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To: vannrox; Avoiding_Sulla
Oops.
Please pardon my bad vannrox -- the answer to my first question was at the very top. Great job. thankyou.

And I also think I ought to be more clear about my last question. The hypothesis of which I speak is the one involving the bible versus science dispute being a big reason for the poor treatment of Velikovsky, not the likeliness of a vendetta against those in science who didn't sign on to Shapely's side.

15 posted on 04/19/2002 2:03:07 PM PDT by Avoiding_Sulla
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To: afraidfortherepublic;RightWhale
Thanks for the bump. I'll read later.
16 posted on 04/19/2002 3:45:40 PM PDT by blam
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To: vannrox
Ancient History is mere rumor. And this post is too damn long.
17 posted on 04/19/2002 3:47:36 PM PDT by Khurkris
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To: vannrox
Rattling the bones of ancient history --- BUMP!
18 posted on 04/19/2002 6:05:42 PM PDT by Eastbound
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To: Avoiding_Sulla
I don't think it was so much the bible versus science as the whole question of uniformity and evolution and the kinds of time requirements such doctrines have, and what Velikovsky's theses did to the dating methods which such time estimates are based on.
19 posted on 04/19/2002 8:10:03 PM PDT by medved
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Comment #20 Removed by Moderator


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