There’s no shortage of candidates for the cause of the mass extinctions of prehistory. But experts have found flaws in every one.
Asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Yucatan clearly played a role in the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65,000,000 years ago, though scientists point to the serious disruptions that had begun hundreds of thousands of years before with the basalt flows of the Deccan Traps. Giant basalt lava flows that poisoned the atmosphere and oceans played a role in four or perhaps all five major extinctions. But other enormous basalt flows have not caused extinctions, nor did they cause the tsunamis associated with various extinctions. Researchers have suggested many other mechanisms, but there’s no consensus at all.
Lurking in the background, however, is a quite plausible cause, one that would have possessed the power to set off the volcanic activity, air pollution, sea level shifts, loss of oxygen in oceans, climate changes, and other phenomena associated with the extinctions.
The Martian Theory Continue reading »
Tags: catastrophe, Chicxulub, climate change, Deccan Traps, dinosaurs, earth science, extinctions, geology, great mass extinctions, Mars, paleontology, planetary science, prehistory, tsunamis, Valles Marineris
The famous Snake Goddess of ancient Crete has long attracted students of history and art. Elegant, risquée, enigmatic, she embodies the mystery and allure of Minoan civilization. Continue reading »
Tags: Ancient Greece, Ancient Near East, art, Astarte, crete, iconography, Ishtar, isis, minoan, planetary science, Velikovsky, venus

411-meter long Great Serpent Mound in Ohio is the world’s longest effigy monument. Archaeological investigations have yielded conflicting results about its initial construction date, and various theories regarding its meaning have failed to gain traction. But a revised and enhanced version of the theory of Immanuel Velikovsky that the planet Venus was originally a comet that approached the Earth and caused great devastation neatly matches key characteristics of the Great Serpent Mound.
Recently, this Venus theory has gained additional credibility from a commonsensical explanation of how a comet-like Venus could have seemed to emerge from Jupiter as in ancient Hindu and Greek myths (it was pulled from the outer solar system), including a simple, obvious reinterpretation of the Metis myth. Much new evidence has also emerged. And the theory has found powerful substantiation from a reinterpretation of the headdress of Queen Nefertari of Egypt, consort of Pharaoh Ramses II, in this image from Abu Simbel (Ramses II’s headdress appears to contain Mars with two moons and a tail, either borrowed from Venus in an encounter or from Martian dust stirred up by an encounter). Continue reading »
Tags: Ancient Egypt, Ancient North America, catastrophe, comet, iconography, planetary science, serpent mound, Velikovsky, venus
Immanuel Velikovsky argued famously, based on his interpretation of
ancient sources, that Venus had emerged from Jupiter as a comet, interacted with the Earth and Mars in the second and first millennia B.C., and then finally settled into a nearly circular orbit of the Sun.
Four new lines of reasoning support a revised and enhanced version of this theory.
First, instead of the various unpersuasive suggestions that Velikovsky and others have made for how a cometary Venus could have emerged from Jupiter, we should consider the possible consequences of the immense gravitational field of Jupiter, which pulls into the giant planet a stream of asteroids and comets such as Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994. Continue reading »
Tags: Abu Simbel, Ashen Light, Athena, Black Drop, Great Serpent Mound, Jupiter, Mars, Metis, Nefertari, planetary science, Poseidon, Ramses II, tidal locking, Velikovsky, venus, Zeus
New evidence and interpretation at the intersection of astronomy and religion can help us better understand the history of the Ancient Near East and of the origins of Islam.
In recent years, a revised and enhanced version of Immanuel Velikovsky’s theory that the planet Venus first entered the inner solar system as a comet with a bifurcated tail around 1500 B.C. (new evidence indicates shortly before 2500 B.C.) has found plentiful substantiation. Now we have a much better explanation of the origin of Venus (it was pulled from the outer solar system by Jupiter’s gravity and, via tidal heating, became a comet with a long tail, overcoming the leading objection to Velikovsky’s theory). Venus interacted with the Earth on a 52-year cycle during the Late Bronze Age, causing catastrophes worldwide. And we now have a framework theory of the terrestrial planets into which these phenomena neatly fit and for which there is much telling evidence. For Comet Venus, there is also newly interpreted, compelling iconographic and linguistic evidence. The names of both Athena (A Fena, the Phoenician) and Poseidon (Bos eidon, the Bull of Heaven), for instance, referred to the double-tailed Venus.
So we can ask, with new-found confidence that the Ancients and Velikovsky were right about Venus, how can we use this to better decipher aspects of the culture of the Ancient Near East and of the background of Islam?
Continue reading »
Tags: Ancient Near East, Ashur, Astarte, Ishtar, Islam, Kaaba, Mohammed, planetary science, Velikovsky, venus


When Venus first appeared in the skies shortly before 2500 B.C., ancient peoples worldwide strove to come to terms with this brilliant and awesome new comet-planet (the best account is in Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, though it needs some revision). That meant assigning the deity a gender and a name.
In the Near East, they tried both genders. In its masculine incarnation, Venus became the Bull of Heaven (as Velikovsky pointed out, the comet-planet’s body blocked the sun’s rays from the central portion of its tail and thus it was seen as having two horns). In its feminine version, Venus was called Ishtar or Astarte; and in the Levant Astarte was depicted with serpents in her hands—the twin tails of the comet.
In Greece, according to Velikovsky, planet Venus was originally named Athena. Continue reading »
Tags: ancient history, Athena, Bull of Heaven, crete, etymology, Gilgamesh, Greece, Jupiter, Linear B, Master Impression, minoan, Minotaur, Mycenaean, mythology, Phoenicia, planetary science, Poseidon, science, Snake Goddess, Velikovsky, venus
There are good reasons to think that Earth and Mars originally formed a single protoplanet—Terramars—outside the orbit of Jupiter. Then, about 4.47 billion years ago, Terramars was pulled by Jupiter’s powerful gravitational field past the gas giant. As Terramars neared Jupiter, tidal forces heated it to the melting point, and Jupiter tore Mars away from Earth, leaving the Pacific Basin. Both planets, now turned into red-hot comets, sped off into the inner solar system.
Continue reading »
Tags: Earth, earth science, geomagnetism, Hawaiian Islands, hotspots, Mars, moon, Pacific, planetary science, plate tectonics, plumes, seismography, volcanism
Honor Immanuel Velikovsky, a great, misunderstood scientist! This striking, 100%-cotton Immanuel Velikovsky T-shirt, designed by Scientia Press, will get you and Velikovsky plenty of attention! Medium size. Wash in cold water.
To order yours, Continue reading »
Tags: Bronze Age catastrophes, Immanuel Velikovsky, Mars, planetary science, venus