Rising From the Ashes of a Solar-Induced Dark Age

Written by robertschoch.com on March 25, 2021. Posted in Current News

Gobekli Tepe. Image: Robert Schoch

What was the state of humanity before civilization arose? To this day the popular conception, both among the public and as promulgated by many historians and archaeologists, is that of small, primarily nomadic, bands of people perpetually on the brink of existence, endlessly in pursuit of their next meal.

The words of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) still resonate in expressing this myth: “. . . the life of man [was] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”¹ That is, humans were mere hunters and gatherers foraging for food. The technology of the time was primitive, characterized as “stone age”. Social institutions were minimal. In warmer climates people could go naked, whereas in colder climates they wrapped themselves in animal skins and huddled in caves.

According to the standard paradigm, as espoused by the great archaeological synthesizer V. Gordon Childe (1892-1957), this all changed with the domestication of plants and animals and the development of agriculture, which ultimately led to the first great civilizations taking root in such regions as Mesopotamia and Egypt around 5000 to 6000 years ago.

This nice neat scenario may be the modern dogma, but that does not assure its veracity. There is another, much older, view found among the classical ancients – including the Greeks, the Romans, and the dynastic Egyptians – which is encapsulated in the legend of Atlantis as recounted by Plato (ca. 429-423 to ca. 348-347 BCE). The core of the Atlantis story is that a high culture, a true civilization, existed thousands of years prior to the most recent flowering of civilization, circa 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE.

Furthermore, this earlier civilization was destroyed cataclysmically by natural events, including the island nation of Atlantis being enveloped by the ocean waters (that is, it was flooded). Most interestingly, Plato gives a precise chronology which, when translated into our modern system of dating, places the fall of Atlantis at circa 9600 BCE – tantalizingly close to the end of the last ice age circa 9700 BCE, as determined by modern geological techniques.

The Atlantis story does not exist in isolation. Around the globe there are ancient and indigenous legends of early advanced peoples, civilizations, that existed thousands of years ago (thousands of years prior to the latest flowering of civilization beginning about 5000 to 6000 years ago). These early societies and civilizations were subsequently destroyed by natural cataclysms. The dynastic Egyptians two thousand years prior to Plato spoke of an epoch they referred to as Zep Tepi, or the “first time”, a “golden age” of civilization.

In modern terms, Zep Tepi may well date to the millennia just before the end of the last ice age.²

Such stories, be they framed in terms of Atlantis, Zep Tepi, or Judeo-Christian Biblical pre-deluge humanity, are disparaged and offhandedly dismissed by many modern academics. But the hallmark of good science and scholarship is to always stick with the evidence, following it wherever it may lead, whether or not it contradicts the popular paradigm of the day. In a sense, both the modern Hobbesian view (that humanity was in a primitive and brutish state prior to the rise of civilization about 5000 to 6000 thousand years ago) and the classical ancient opinion (that advanced civilizations existed thousands of years earlier) may be correct.

As I elaborate upon briefly below (and discuss more fully in my book Forgotten Civilization), in my assessment there is now overwhelming evidence that sophisticated culture – civilization – existed prior to the end of the last ice age, and this is what gave rise to the story of Atlantis and similar legends (thus confirming Plato and other ancient traditions). However, this early cycle of civilization was dealt a mighty setback; it was utterly devastated, with only a few isolated remnants surviving, by the natural cataclysms that brought the last ice age to a close, circa 9700 BCE.

Major solar outbursts and eruptions, the likes of which have not been experienced on Earth in modern times, were the instigating factors that ended the last ice age and brought early civilization to its knees. A dark age ensued, which I refer to as SIDA (solar-induced dark age³). For thousands of years following the end of the last ice age humanity was reduced to the brutish Hobbesian state – hunting, foraging, and eking out a hardscrabble existence; and this included living in caves in some regions.

Indeed, retreating to caves and other underground shelters would have been a way for isolated pockets of humanity to survive the cataclysmic solar-induced onslaughts at the end of the last ice age. Electrical plasma discharges from the Sun, driven to the surface of our planet, would have caused widespread incineration where they touched down as well as setting off wildfires. Solar outbursts not only warmed the planet overall but, hitting glaciers, oceans, and lakes, through melting and instantaneous evaporation, would have placed vast amounts of moisture into the atmosphere that subsequently came down as torrential rains.

These rains, combined with rising sea levels, caused widespread flooding across the globe.

Thus during the millennia prior to the latest cycle of civilization, beginning circa 5000 to 6000 years ago, humanity was in a primitive stone age state, as the conventional paradigm holds, except that this state was due to a decline from an earlier and more advanced state. After a time lag of millennia, civilization as we know it arose from the literal ashes of SIDA.

Image: Robert Schoch

On a personal note, at Yale University (where I earned my Ph.D.) I was trained in the conventional paradigm regarding the when, where, and why of the rise of civilization. For many years I literally would not even voice the word “Atlantis” in public for fear of being mocked by my academic peers. Now I have bucked academic conventions and even been labeled a heretic by some. Why did I change my opinion? In a nutshell, I am convinced that the evidence tells a different, more complex, story than the simple scenario I was taught so many years ago.

QUESTIONING ACCEPTED HISTORY

Back in 1991, I had the temerity to announce that the Great Sphinx of Egypt, conventionally dated to 2500 BCE (the reign of Pharaoh Khafre), actually has its origins in the 7000 to 5000 BCE range, or possibly earlier. My announcement was done via a presentation at the October 1991 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (this was allowed only after a formal abstract, submitted with my colleague John Anthony West, was accepted based on positive professional peer review).⁴

I made my case utilizing scientific analyses, comparing erosion and weathering profiles around the Sphinx to the ancient climatic history of Egypt. In brief, the Sphinx sits on the edge of the Sahara Desert, a hyper-arid region for the past 5000 years; yet the statue shows substantial rain-induced erosion. The original structure must date back thousands of years prior to 3000 BCE (the head was re-carved in dynastic times).

I had pushed the Great Sphinx, arguably the grandest and most recognizable statue in the world, back into a period when humanity was supposedly just transitioning from a hunter-gatherer economy to a sedentary life. People 7000 or more years ago were still brutish and unsavory, at least by modern civilized standards. Certainly they were not carving giant statues (the Sphinx is about 20 meters tall by over 70 meters long) out of solid limestone bedrock. Immediately after my announcement of an older Sphinx, I was under attack.

Archaeologist Carol Redmount (University of California, Berkeley) was quoted in the media, “There’s just no way that could be true.” The article continued, “The people of that region would not have had the technology, the governing institutions or even the will to build such a structure thousands of years before Khafre’s reign, she said.”⁵

The initial hoopla peaked in February 1992 at a “debate” on the age of the Great Sphinx held at the Chicago meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.⁶ As the New York Times put it, “The exchange was to last an hour, but it spilled over to a news conference and then a hallway confrontation in which voices were raised and words skated on the icy edge of scientific politeness.” Egyptologist Mark Lehner could not accept the notion of an older Sphinx, personally attacking me by labeling my research “pseudoscience.” Lehner argued, “If the Sphinx was built by an earlier culture, where is the evidence of that civilization? Where are the pottery shards? People during that age were hunters and gatherers. They didn’t build cities.”⁷

At the time I lacked any pottery shards. But I was sure of my science, and I persisted. Decades later, we have something better than pottery shards, and even earlier than my conservative Sphinx date of circa 7000 BCE to 5000 BCE (I now currently posit, based on additional evidence and a reanalysis of my original data, that the core body of the Great Sphinx dates back to the end of the last ice age; the head was re-carved in dynastic times). Göbekli Tepe dates back approximately 12,000 years ago.

BETTER THAN POT SHARDS

A short drive from Urfa (alternatively Şanlıurfa), Southeastern Turkey, atop a low mountain north of the Harran Plain, sits Göbekli Tepe. In 1995 the late Prof. Dr. Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute began excavating the site.⁸ In 2010 I first visited it for myself. I was amazed.

At Göbekli Tepe immense finely carved and decorated T-shaped limestone pillars, many in the range of two to five and a half meters tall and weighing up to an estimated 10 to 15 tons, stand in Stonehenge-like circles. The workmanship is extraordinary, with clear sharp edges that would do any modern mason proud. It may be a cliché, but I cannot help but think of the opening scene of the classic 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. A group of ape-like proto-humans discovers a giant monolith; influenced by it, they learn to use tools, leading to civilization.⁹

Various pillars at Göbekli Tepe are decorated with bas-reliefs of animals, including foxes, boars, snakes, aurochs (wild cattle), Asiatic wild asses, wild sheep, birds (cranes, a vulture), a gazelle, and arthropods (scorpion, ants). The carvings are refined, sophisticated, and beautifully executed. Not only are there bas-reliefs, but also carvings in the round, including a carnivorous beast, possibly a lion or other feline, working its way down a column, apparently in pursuit of a boar carved in relief below.

Image: Robert Schoch

In the round carvings of lions and boars have been uncovered, now housed in the Museum of Şanlıurfa, as is a life-sized statue of a man, which, though from Urfa, apparently dates to the Göbekli Tepe era. Also from Göbekli Tepe are perfectly drilled stone beads. And, according to Prof. Schmidt, while some of the stone pillars were set in the local bedrock, others were set into a concrete- or terrazzo-like floor. Looking only at the style and quality of workmanship, one might easily suggest that Göbekli Tepe dates between 3000 and 1000 BCE. How wrong one would be.

Based on radiocarbon analyses, the site goes back to the period of 9000 to 10,000 BCE (or possibly earlier), and was intentionally buried by no later than circa 8000 BCE.¹⁰ That is, the site dates back an astounding 10,000 to 12,000 years ago!

This was supposedly the time of the brutish, nomadic, hunters and gatherers who, according to many academics, did not have the technology, governing institutions, or will to build structures such as those found at Göbekli Tepe. Clearly there is a disconnect between what conventional historians and archaeologists have been teaching all these years and the clear evidence on the ground. As Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder commented, Göbekli Tepe is “unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date… huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art… Many people think that it changes everything… It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong.”¹¹

Like my redating of the Great Sphinx, Göbekli Tepe forces us to reconsider our antiquity.

And like my work on the Sphinx, the specialists are perplexed by Göbekli Tepe. Patrick Symmes wrote in Newsweek, “But the real reason the ruins at Göbekli remain almost unknown, not yet incorporated in textbooks, is that the evidence is too strong, not too weak. ‘The problem with this discovery,’ as [Glenn] Schwartz of Johns Hopkins puts it, ‘is that it is unique.’ No other monumental sites from the era have been found. Before Göbekli, humans drew stick figures on cave walls, shaped clay into tiny dolls, and perhaps piled up small stones for shelter or worship.

Even after Göbekli, there is little evidence of sophisticated building.”¹²

In a nutshell, we have evidence of high culture and civilization circa 10,000 to 9000 BCE, but then an apparent decline or hiatus for thousands of years, until the “rise” of civilization once again in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and elsewhere. What happened?

A RECORD OF PRECESSION AT GÖBEKLI TEPE

A hallmark of civilization is precise scientific observation. Astronomy is often considered the earliest yet most sophisticated of the sciences. A particularly subtle astronomical phenomenon, the discovery of which is generally credited to Hipparchus of Rhodes in the second century BCE,¹³ is the slow movement of the stars relative to the Sun (the rising and setting points of non-circumpolar stars change with time). Known as precession, the entire cycle, with stars returning to their “starting points”, takes somewhat under 26,000 years. Some researchers suggest that precession was known to the ancient Egyptians and other early civilizations, and is reflected in myths worldwide.¹⁴ Others dispute such assertions. I found evidence of precession at Göbekli Tepe, adding another layer of sophistication to this remarkable site.

The excavated portions of Göbekli Tepe lie on the southern slope of a hill looking out to the southern skies. Thus far, the better part of four stone circles (enclosures) has been excavated in an area measuring about 40 by 40 meters square. Additional, later and smaller, pillars and structures have been partially uncovered both 20 to 30 meters north and about 80 meters west of the major area of circles,¹⁵ and eighteen or more stone circles still under the earth have been identified. Enclosure D is located furthest north. To the southeast lies Enclosure C, and to the south of Enclosure D lies Enclosure B and finally A. The enclosures are very close to each other, almost abutting.

Gobekli Tepe enclosure 3. Image: Robert Schoch

Each enclosure possesses a pair of tall central parallel pillars ringed by a circle of shorter pillars with later stonewalls between the pillars. If at some point the enclosures were covered over, they may have been entered from above; indeed, possible carved stone “portals” have been found that may have been set in a roof.

The central pairs of pillars are oriented generally toward the southeast, as if forming sighting tubes toward the sky. The central pillars of Enclosure D include arms and hands, with the hands holding the belly or navel area, and it is clear that the anthropomorphic pillars are facing south. The orientations vary from enclosure to enclosure, however. For Enclosure D the central pillars are oriented approximately 7º east of south.

Those for Enclosures C, B, and A are approximately 13º east of south, 20º east of south, and 35º east of south respectively.¹⁶ These varying angles suggest the builders were observing stars and building new enclosures oriented progressively toward the east as they followed particular stars or star clusters over hundreds of years.

Read the rest here: robertschoch.com

Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method

PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

Trackback from your site.