Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in our Past and Future

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About the Book Building upon his revolutionary theory that the Sphinx dates back much further than 2500 BCE, geologist Robert Schoch reveals scientific evidence of advanced civilization predating ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and Greece, as well as the catastrophe that destroyed it nearly 12,000 years ago and what its legacy can teach us about our own future. Combining evidence from multiple scientific disciplines, Schoch shows how the last ice age ended abruptly in 9700 BCE due to coronal mass ejections from the Sun. These solar outbursts unleashed electrical/plasma discharges upon Earth and triggered volcanic activity, earthquakes, fires, and massive floods as glaciers melted and lightning strikes released torrential rains from the oceans. He explains how these events eradicated the civilization of the time and set humanity back thousands of years, only to reemerge around 3500 BCE with scattered memories and nascent abilities. He explores, within this framework, how many megalithic monuments, under-ground cities, and ancient legends fall logically into place, as well as the reinterpreted IEaster Island rongorongo texts and the intentional burial, 10,000 years ago, of the Gobekli Tepe complex in Turkey. Schoch reveals scientific evidence that shows how history could repeat itself with a coronal mass ejection powerful enough to devastate modern society.

Weaving together a new view of the origins of civilization, the truths behind ancient wisdom, and the dynamics of the planet we live on, Schoch maintains we must heed the megalithic warning of the past and collectively prepare for future events.

About the Author Robert M. Schoch, a full-time faculty member at the College of General Studies at Boston University since 1984, earned his Ph.D. in geol-ogy and geophysics at Yale University. He also earned an M.S. and an M.Phil. in geology and geophysics from Yale as well as a B.S. in geology and a B.A. in anthropology from George Washington University. He has been quoted extensively in the media for his revolutionary research on ancient cultures and monuments from such diverse countries as Egypt, Turkey, Bosnia, Romania, Wales, Scotland, Mexico, Peru, Chile (Easter Island), and Japan.

In the early 1990s, Robert Schoch's geological analyses of the Great Sphinx demonstrated that the statue is thousands of years older than the conventional dating of 2500 BCE, bringing him worldwide fame. He is featured in the Emmy-winning documentary The Mystery of the Sphinx, which first aired on NBC and has been subsequently broadcast on numerous channels both in the United States and abroad.

A featured speaker at international conferences and symposia, Schoch's work has been instrumental in spurring renewed attention to the interrelationships between geological and astronomical phenom-ena, natural catastrophes, and the early history of civilization. Besides The Mystery of the Sphinx, he has appeared on many radio and tele-vision shows. He has contributed to magazines, journals, and reviews, and he is the author, coauthor, and/or editor of a number of books, both technical and popular, including Phylogeny Reconstruction in Paleontology, Strati graphy: Principles and Methods, Voices of the Rocks, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders, Pyramid Quest, The Parapsychology Revolution, and the university textbook Environmental Science: Systems and Solutions.

Preface Forgotten Civilization. A few notes on the title, which was the brain-child of my wife, Katie, are in order.

To place things in context, when I was a youngster the British art historian Kenneth Clark (1903-1983) wrote and produced an influential thirteen-part television documentary series (first aired in 1969 by the British Broadcasting Corporation) and accompanying book, both of which were titled Civilization: A Personal View. We were enthralled by the TV series and digested every word of the book, fall-ing under the spell of this uncommon arbiter of taste and excellence, accepting his pronouncements without question. Clark codified for a generation the common concept of what civilization (being British, Clark spelled it as "civilization") was all about, and his views endure among much of the public (or at least the Western European and American public) to this day. For his contributions, Clark received the title Lord Clark of Saltwood (Saltwood is a castle in Kent that Clark purchased in 1955).

In actuality, Clark had a rather narrow view of what exactly con-stituted civilization. His book and series concentrated on Western European Christian civilization from the period of about 1100 CE through the nineteenth century and had a decidedly English slant to it. About the concept of civilization more generally, leading up to the apparent height of civilization as he viewed it, Clark wrote:

There have been times in the history of man when the earth seems suddenly to have grown warmer or more radio-active.... I don't put that forward as a scientific proposition, but the fact remains that three or four times in history man has made a leap forward that would have been unthinkable under ordinary evolutionary conditions. One such time was about the year 3000 BC, when quite suddenly civilization appeared, not only in Egypt and Mesopotamia but in the Indus valley; another was in the late sixth century BC, when there was not only tie miracle of Ionia and Greece-philosophy, science, art, poetry, all reaching a point that wasn't reached again for 2000 years-but also in India a spiritual enlightenment that has perhaps never been equaled. Another was round about the year 1100. It seems to have affected the whole world; but its strongest and most dramatic effect was in Western Europe-where it was most needed. It was like a Russian spring. In every branch of life-action, philosophy, organization, technology-there was an extraordinary outpouring of energy, an intensification of existence. (Clark 1969, 33; ellipses in the original)

My contention, as I will develop in this book, is that the sudden appearance of civilization circa 3000 BCE of which Clark speaks is not the first appearance of civilization. Rather it is the reemergence of civilization after some five thousand or more years. True, unambiguous civilization is evident during the period of circa 10,000 BCE to 9000 BCE, thousands of years earlier than the dynastic Egyptians and their contemporaries in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. This earliest flowering of civilization has been generally forgotten by humanity, although allusions to it are still to be found in sacred scriptures, traditional legends, and ancient texts; the Garden of Eden, tales of a golden age, and Plato's recounting of Atlantis may all be referencing this primordial civilization. Now it is time to recognize its legacy.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages