MODERN CATASTROPHISM
In 1950 Immanuel Velikovsky published his book, Worlds in Collision, in which he concluded, based on much study of ancient myths, as well as some study of geology and astronomy, that Venus had catastrophic close encounters with Earth twice about 3,500 years ago, followed by close contacts between Venus and Mars and finally close encounters between the Earth, the Moon and Mars about 2,700 years ago. In 1955 he published another book, Earth in Upheaval, in which he presented evidence from geology and paleontology to support the theme of Worlds in Collision. He also wrote Ages in Chaos, in which he tried to show historical evidence for the same theme.
MAINSTREAM REACTION
In 1972 Dave and Steve Talbott published a magazine called Pensee’, Velikovsky Reconsidered, in which numerous scientists and scholars provided articles in support of Velikovsky’s findings. Apparently, this threatened mainstream science, which reacted by organizing an AAAS Symposium on Velikovsky. They pitted popular scientist Carl Sagan and 3 other scientists against Velikovsky and the science media reported on the debates, hastily proclaiming the establishment the winner and Velikovsky the loser.
TALBOTT & CARDONA
Nonetheless, other magazines devoted to studying Velikovsky’s theories continued to come along with excellent scientific discussions. Dave Talbott had been studying mythology since 1968 when he first came across Velikovsky’s books. Dwardu Cardona began studying Velikovsky and mythology about 1959, if I recall correctly. Both studied independently and came to the same conclusions, that Velikovsky was wrong about the timing of encounters between Earth, Venus and Mars, but that he was right that there were catastrophic encounters (but they occurred a thousand years or so earlier than Velikovsky thought) and that Earth was once a moon of the planet Saturn. Talbott published The Saturn Myth in 1980 and numerous scholars have contributed to advancing the theory since then.
Talbott and Cardona contributed many articles to an online newsletter, called Thoth, from 1997 to 2004. The newsletter is still available at https://www.saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/ . I posted a shorter Index at Funday. Cardona’s books are here.
PROSPECTS
I’ve been trying for the past few years to figure out which global cataclysms occurred when and by what cause/s. It’s pretty certain that a Great Flood occurred about 5,000 years ago. Saturn was possibly a red dwarf star which flared as a nova, which brought about the Flood. Asteroids and comets were possibly stirred up, which pockmarked the Earth and the Moon. The largest asteroid broke up the supercontinent, Pangaea, which added more flooding and volcanism. An ice sheet formed, which the Younger Dryas impacts largely melted, causing more flooding and volcanism. Whether this all occurred over a short period of time or over a few centuries is hard to tell, but data keeps coming in and the smoking guns seem likely to appear before long. So let’s share and compare data and see what we can figure out. Okay?