A HISTORY OF UPHEAVAL

A HISTORY OF UPHEAVAL 


We tend quite naturally to regard "our Earth" as a stable and unchanging home, a "sure stronghold" which could never be substantially disrupted. Our confidence may from time to time be shaken by major earthquakes and typhoons, but these soon pass over, and we prefer to regard them as minor temporary upsets in an otherwise comfortable and predictable environment. There is however much geological evidence of sudden and major structural changes having taken place on Planet Earth in the past; and it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that what has happened in the past may well be repeated.
Historical accounts written many centuries ago bear witness to previous planetary disruptions. Immanuel Velikovsky has made a major contribution to research in this area; his "Worlds in Collision", written in 1950, assembles numerous Biblical and ancient historical references to such events, drawing substantially on contemporary accounts from the Middle East and lower Mexico.
He quotes, for example, a long inscription in hieroglyphics on a shrine of black granite found at El-Arish on the border of Egypt and Palestine. It reads: "The land was in great affliction. Evil fell on this earth. There was a great upheaval in the residence. Nobody could leave the palace during nine days, and during these nine days of upheaval there was such a tempest that neither men nor gods could see the faces of those beside them".
This inscription corresponds with the Bible, Exodus 10,22: "And there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days".
East of Egypt, in Babylonia, the eleventh tablet of the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' refers to the same events:
"From out of the horizon rose a dark cloud and it rushed against the Earth; the land was shriveled by the heat of flames. Desolation stretched to heaven; all that was bright was turned into darkness. Nor could a brother distinguish his brother. (For) six days the hurricane, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land, and all humans back to their clay were returned".
The Ancient Egyptian historian Ipuwer witnessed and survived this earthquake, recounting that: "The towns are destroyed, Upper Egypt has become a waste. All is ruin. The residence is overturned in a minute". [Papyrus Ipuwer 2:11, 3:13]
From his research into ancient documents, Velikovsky concludes that the Earth was forced out of its regular motion by the close approach of the body of a Comet: a major shock convulsed the lithosphere, and the area of the earthquake was the entire globe. Terrific hurricanes swept the Earth because of the change or reversal of the angular velocity of rotation and because of the sweeping gases, dust, and cinders of the Comet.
He supports this contention of worldwide disruptions with similar quotations from historical records of Mexican tradition.
The Mexican sacred book "Popol-Vuh", the "Manuscript Cakchiquel", and the "Manuscript Troano" all record how the mountains in every part of the Western Hemisphere simultaneously gushed lava. The volcanoes that opened along the entire chain of the Cordilleras and in other mountain ranges and on flat land vomited fire, vapour, and torrents of lava.
Velikovsky quotes "Manuscript Troano" and other documents of the Mayas which describe a cosmic catastrophe during which the ocean fell upon the continent and a terrible hurricane swept the Earth. These records provide graphic accounts of hurricanes which broke up and carried away all towns and forests. Exploding volcanoes, tides sweeping over mountains, and raging winds threatened to annihilate Humankind, and actually did annihilate many species of animals. The face of the Earth changed, mountains collapsed, other mountains grew and rose over the onrushing cataract of water driven from oceanic spaces, numberless rivers lost their beds, and a wild tornado moved through the debris descending from the sky.
The ancients referred to the physical agent that brought darkness and swept away houses and trees and even rocks and mounds of earth as "Hurakan", from which our present word 'hurricane' is derived. Hurakan, it is recorded, destroyed the major part of the Human Race. In the darkness swept by wind, resinous stuff fell from the sky and participated with fire on water in the destruction of the world. For five days, save for the burning naphtha and burning volcanoes, the World was dark, since the sun did not appear.
In a later book, "Earth in Upheaval", Velikovsky supports Biblical and other historical references with currently visible geological evidence of past upheavals.
He describes, for example, an area in Alaska to the north of Mount McKinley which has a frozen layer of "muck" composed of a jumble of trees and extinct animals, such as the mammoth, mastodon and super-bison. This was analyzed by Professor F.C. Hibben of the University of New Mexico, who concluded:
"There is ample evidence that at least portions of this material were deposited under catastrophic conditions. Mammal remains are for the most part dismembered and dis-articulated, even though some fragments yet retain, in their frozen state, portions of ligaments, skin, hair, and flesh. Twisted and torn trees are piled in splintered masses. At least four considerable layers of volcanic ash may be traced in these deposits, although they are extremely warped and distorted.
"The presence of volcanic ash indicates that a volcanic eruption did take place, and repeatedly, in four consecutive stages of the same epoch; but it is also apparent that the trees could have been uprooted and splintered only by hurricane or flood or a combination of both agencies. The animals could have been dismembered only by a stupendous wave that lifted and carried and smashed and tore and buried millions of bodies and millions of trees. Also, the area of the catastrophe was much greater than the action of a few volcanoes could have covered."
During the late 1830s Hugh Miller made a special study of the Old Red Sandstone in Scotland in which an abundant aquatic fauna is embedded. The animals embedded within it are seen in very 'disturbed' positions. Miller writes: "Some terrible catastrophe involved in sudden destruction the fish of an area at least a hundred miles from boundary to boundary, perhaps more. The same platform in Orkney, as at Cromarty, is strewn thick with remains, which exhibit unequivocally the marks of violent death. The figures are contorted, contracted, curved; the tail in many instances is bent around to the head; the spines stick out; the fins are spread to the full, as in fish that die in convulsions."
In 1901 a quick-frozen mammoth was found in Beresovka, Siberia, so well preserved that its eyeballs were fully intact. It still had buttercups in its mouth and the content of its stomach indicated that it had been eating temperate-zone plants, no longer growing in that area. R.S. Lull, Director of the Peabody Museum at Yale, reports the discovery in his book "Organic Evolution", confirming that: "...a fractured hip and fore limb, a great mass of clotted blood in the chest, and unswallowed grass between the clenched teeth, all point to the violence and suddenness of its passing."
Rock geology shows that there have been major uplifts of land-masses around the globe. The great massif of the Himalayas is estimated to have risen to its present height since the last Ice Age of over 11,000 years ago. Likewise the Andes in South America also show evidence of having been thrust upwards eleven thousand years ago.
Many other researchers have identified evidence of major geological changes during our Planet's long history; indeed, there are many areas in which even a casual observer can see such evidence for him or herself, as for example when erosion shows cross-sections of hillsides miles from the present coastline displaying deposits of seashells.
An interesting example, quoted in "Doomsday 1999 A.D.", by Charles Berlitz, can be found in Bolivia. The stone city of Tiahuanaco is so old that its broken pottery shows pictures of Pleistocene animals. Although Tiahuanaco is now at an altitude of 13,500 feet, too high for a population to live, its docks and quays indicate that it was once a seaport and that it rose with the Andes when they were created 11,000 years ago.
Immanuel Velikovsky summarizes these sudden geological changes:
"Wherever we investigate the geological records of this Earth, we find signs of catastrophes and upheavals, old and recent.
"Mountains sprang from plains, and other mountains were levelled; strata of the terrestrial crust were folded and pressed together and overturned and moved and put on top of other formations. Igneous rock melted and flooded enormous areas of land with miles-thick sheets, and the ocean bed flowed with molten rock. Ashes were showered down and built layers many yards thick on the ground and on the bottom of the oceans in their vast expanse. The shores of ancient lakes were tilted and are no longer horizontal and the seacoasts show subsidence or emergence, in some places, of over one thousand feet.
"Rocks of the Earth are filled with remains of life extinguished in a state of agony. Sedimentary rocks are one vast graveyard, and the granite and basalt, too, have embedded in them numberless living organisms. Shells have closed valves as they do in a living state, so unexpectedly came the entombment. Vast forests were burned and washed away and covered with the waters of the seas and with sand and turned to coal. Animals were swept to the far north and thrown into heaps and were soaked by bituminous outpourings. Broken bones and torn ligaments and the skins of animals, both of living species and of extinct species, were smashed together with splintered forests into huge piles.
"The evidence is overwhelming that the great global catastrophes were either accompanied or caused by the shifting of the terrestrial axis, or by a disturbance in the diurnal and annual motions of the Earth. The shifting of the axis could not have been brought about by internal causes, but only under the impact of external forces. The state of lavas with reversed magnetization, hundreds of times more intense than the inverted terrestrial magnetic field could impart, reveals the nature of the forces that were in action". ['Earth in Upheaval', by Immanuel Velikovsky – 1955 – Buccaneer Books Inc., Cutchogue, NY, USA.]
Set against the wider time-frame of the many dramatic surface changes which have already occurred, current predictions of major physical 'Earth Changes' may now perhaps seem less extreme. There is plenty of evidence that the Planet's very geography has in fact been dramatically changed many times before, and likewise, there is no scientific evidence to support the contention that such changes will not happen yet again.
Human Earth civilizations have also come and gone. Most people today look at the story of Humanity and assume that it has lasted for only six thousand years or so, but there have in fact been many much older civilizations, such as Lemuria (or Mu) in the Pacific Ocean and the legendary Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean.