Rating: 
Summary: Finally a Comprehensive Theory using ALL the Sciences !
Review: Allan and Delar provide a much-needed synopsis of scientific findings that may finally explain many loose ends regarding recent earth history. Unlike those who resort to name calling to prove their point (AKA some reviewers here), the authors carefully document "ALL" of their evidence to present a compelling story that ranks as a must read if you have any interest at all in recent earth history. I disagree completely with those who discount human legend as a possible source of information from which to view evidence or start an investigation when indeed the legend has persisted throughout the eons. Usually, these people are the same one's the Wright Brothers had to convince that flight was possible by dropping plane parts on their head. There are just too too many stories concerning a massive flood of some sort from all cultures of the world to just habitually ignore it. This book presents evidence of just what "MAY" have happened without linking it to "directed biblical directives" so ubiquitous in our culture today. It uses the work of many scientists from many fields. Each of the branches of science contributes a portion of the story and from the contribution of each the authors formulate a fascinating theory. The conclusion is a theory like any other but is very thought provoking. However, unless a time machine is invented ALL information today on what happened way back when is theory ONLY ! Imagine the Medicines we would have today if researchers were not allowed to revise their theories on biochemistry. What make those who believe in Ice Ages so completely 100% correct when they can't even explain why the earth got cold or - why it warmed up? Are they the exceptional "I've never been wrong even once" group? Touché for Allan and Delair! Thank you very very much. I have a huge interest in more fields than the average person does and this book is one of the most exciting and thought provoking books I have read in quite a while.
Rating:
Summary: An Open Minded Reader
Review: Dear readers: This book is a republication of "When the earth nearly died"
Just thought you would like to know in case you already have a copy.
Rating:
Summary: The best book I have seen on the subject
Review: I am very interested in earth's past and the untold history of our species. And this book surpasses everything I have seen to date. It's erudite, and comprehensive. The author's break new ground in many areas.
I can't relate to the debunker's claim of pseudo science. That's become the mantra of dogmatists, of late, those who prefer not to look at the anomalous data. The flowers found in the mouths of the frozen Siberian mammoths and mastodons and other evidence of flora adapted to a temperate climate rules out the possibility that some of the carcasses date to 30-45,000 years. No, 11,500 years BP must be the actual date. The idea they were frozen mummies does not compute with the anecdotal reports that the flesh was fresh enough for humans and dogs to eat. The debunker has attempted to trivialize this extremely important evidence. Also, the debunker fails to understand the distinction between precession and the earth's 23 degree tilt. The two are separate characteristics.
But back to the authors: one of their biggest contributions is their provocative suggestion that the earth's axis was more vertical to the ecliptic (the plane of the orbiting planets in the solar system)prior to the cataclysm. They suggest the earth gained its 23 1/2 degree tilt in the encounter with Marduk (Phaeton). This could explain how the polar regions were more temperate before, because a vertical earth (they assert) would have a smaller polar cap. We will have to wait and see if this turns out to be correct.
I especially loved the way the authors compare and relate the geological record with the record of the great literary epics, the Edda, the Kalevala, the Avesta, Vedas, Bible, etc. Their understanding of the classics is phenomenal -- and asute. I learned a great deal and will rely on their interpretations in the future.
I do have several critical comments. I was disapointed that the authors never discussed Charles Hapgood's contribution regarding the shifting of earth's crust. They mention this as one of the effects of an encounter with Marduk, but no not include adequate discussion. A crustal shift would of course explain why the orientation of the pyramids and ancient sites of meso America are aligned east of north -- a fact no one has ever explained. Obviously, these sites are older than N-S aligned Giza and thus are human testaments that the crust really did move.
The authors are in my opinion wrong that all of earth's mountain ranges were low hills before the Phaeton disaster. If this were true, how to explain the alpine flora: wild flowers, liverworts, grasses, mosses and lichens? I agree that much mountain building occurred at this time, but not all.
Nor do the authors ever finally succeed in explaining the Greenland ice sheet. It remains a mystery.
The author's astutely conclude that a comet could not have caused the Phaeton disaster, because a cube of ice does not have the necessary mass to cause the gravity induced effects. However, Allan and Delair are unaware of scientist Jim McCanney's Plasma Discharge Comert Model, which is in process of revolutionizing our understanding of comets. If McCanney is correct, comets are not dirty snowballs, but are asteroidal and can be extremely large. We will know more next summmer when NASA's Deep Impact space probe causes a collision with the comet Tempel 1 -- an attempt to confirm the ice model. When NASA fails to find the ice, it will be time to junk the current model. No doubt about it, Phaeton was a comet!
Despite these criticisms, I heartily recommend this book. We have barely begun to understand the mind boggling power and wonder of the cosmos...
Rating: 
Summary: Read my lips: _torque_, dammit, _torque_!
Review: I found WHEN THE EARTH NEARLY DIED to be a fascinating book. Certainly as a scholarly work it is very well done, exquisitely researched and documented. The authors do present compelling evidence for the hypothesis that one or more great cataclysms have happened to this planet during the tenure of our species upon it, and that these have been memorialized in legend and lore all over the world. Up to that point, I found it an outstanding piece of research, and would have given it five stars -- and _then_ found that a) they had postulated that only _one_ such cataclysm had occurred, that 11,500 years ago; b) that it caused an extremely rapid (within days) shift of the Earth's pole of rotation such that areas in the tropics were shifted to the temperate or arctica zones and vice-versa; and c) made a great many mistakes that those well-trained in history and the sciences would not have, such as referring to George Gamow, the great astronomer and cosmologist, one of the pioneering proponents of the Big Bang theory of cosmological evolution, as a "geologist." Concerning a), there now exists a tremendous amount of hard evidence to show that our planet has been repeatedly bombarded from space by comets and asteroids as well as undergoing atmospheric explosions of really large comets ever since it first began cooling out of its molten phase, at the end of the Hadean Eon, some 4 billion-plus years ago. For example, a barrage of four or more of these was responsible for the end of the Cretaceous Period/Mesozoic Era of Earthly life, 65 million years ago. Another, far larger such barrage was probably the cause, or one cause, of the Permian catastrophe, the largest Great Extinction of life on Earth, which terminated the Paleozoic Era of life, around 250 million years ago. In fact, such barrages, whether large or relatively small, seem, given the cratering that can still be seen on our world as well as corroborating evidence from the fossil record, to have been responsible for most or all of the terminations of various geological periods from the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon of life onward and almost certainly before then, all the way back to the formation of our world, 5 billion years ago. Such terminations occur many times during the Cenozic Period, from 65 million years ago to the present. It would be strange if several, relatively minor such impacts and attendant disasters hadn't occurred numerous times throughout human history and prehistory -- one such may in fact have precipitated the Dark Ages, just 1500 years ago. So why just _one_ such disaster? To fit all the geological and other evidence of multiple cosmic disasters that have happened to our wrold into just one such, and that relatively recently, the authors had to conflate and confabulate their data nearly to death, thus destroying its usefulness. As for b)-- can you say "torque," children? If the Earth were to suddenly (within a few days or even less time) somehow "tip over" so that its axis of rotation was thereby noticeably shifted from its original position, by at least five degrees, as a result the Earth's crust would be peeled off its mantle like the rind off an orange, and melt down to the mantle in the process, thanks to the phenomenon of "torque," which is the resistance of a rotating, moving object to any change in angular momentum (which would perforce occur with a pole-tipping of the sort the authors postulate). Nothing would have been left of life on Earth after such a disaster, because the resistance of the Earth to such a change in its movement would liberate so much kinetic energy over such a short time that for a while, at least, what was left of this planet would be a very close approximation of Medieval ideas of the hotter parts of Hell. Obviously that hasn't happened since the Hadean eon; life has hung around here for over 4 billion years, so no such rapid change of the world's axial tilt, or of the positions of its tectonic plates relative to the poles of rotation, could have occurred in all that time. Back to the drawing board, gang . . . And as for c, mistakes such as those make it clear that the people who did such heartbreakingly careful work on their scholastic research weren't well-grounded in scientific method, the various scientific models and hypotheses pertinent to their subject, or important changes in those models since about 1985, when Luis and Walter Alvarez and their associates first revealed the results of their ground-breaking research on the Terminal Cretaceous Event to the world. Nice try, gang, and you certainly deserve an "E" for effort -- but you get a D+ for lack of scientific acumen, education, and awareness.
Rating: 
Summary: A GOOD READ
Review: I take cognizance of the criticism expressed by other reviewers, such as the claim that the authors have ignored the results of more recent scientific research.Even so, this is a fascinating book which makes one think, in the vein of Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods" but with greater emphasis on the natural sciences although mythology and legend are also briefly discussed. It is refreshing to see scientific orthodoxy challenged, and although the authors may err in some of their assumptions, there is still enough here of value to make you think and wonder. Every chapter has an extensive bibliography and the text is amply illuminated with maps, tables and figures. There are seven appendices and a detailed index. What I found particularly fascinating is Map 2A: "A tentative reconstruction of the pre-catastrophic Pleistocene World," showing much larger continents and smaller, scattered seas. I highly recommend this book for its multi-disciplinary approach, its bold rejection of the ice age theory (called "the icy chimera") and the interesting alternative history it proposes. Read it to broaden your outlook on our planet's unknown recent past.
Rating:
Summary: If you're into catastrophism read it
Review: I'm tired...don't feel like writing much. I read this a few years ago. I remember being impressed with the research the author had done in ancient mythology. 'Course for all I know, he could have made it all up! But I doubt it. I liked the book. I think if you're into this sort of stuff and haven't read this one yet, it's worth the cash. I'm goin' to bed. Night.
Rating:
Summary: If you're into catastrophism read it
Review: I'm tired...don't feel like writing much. I read this a few years ago. I remember being impressed with the research the author had done in ancient mythology. 'Course for all I know, he could have made it all up! But I doubt it. I liked the book. I think if you're into this sort of stuff and haven't read this one yet, it's worth the cash. I'm goin' to bed. Night.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: In 1919, J. Harlen Bretz proposed an outrageous, unbelieveable - but now accepted - interpretation of geological puzzles along the Columbia River as having come from a series of cataclysmic Ice Age floods pouring a flow of water 60 times that of the Amazon River down the Columbia. (See John Allen and Marjorie Burns, CATACLYSMS ON THE COLUMBIA, Timber Press, 1986). Allan and Delair's book does the same with the history of the Earth, gathering new research from diverse fields to show a devastating near-collision with a planet-sized object 11,500 years ago that resulted in world-wide crustal buckling, floods, firestorms, vulcanism and earthquakes. When the dust settles, their ability to think outside the accepted viewpoints to find a valid new understanding is likely to go down in history as epoch-making as that of Bretz. They'll likely be shown wrong in details; further research will refine and adjust, put I've a strong feeling their overall perspective will bring a new understanding.
Rating:
Summary: "Been there, done that"
Review: This book is absolutely chock full of scientific evidence that helps
explain the earthly changes forecast in the book of Revelation. All the
natural phenomena related in the last book of the Bible finds its
counterpart in the ancient earthly record and is a matter of "been there,
done that" as far as the earth is concerned. You can't explain away the
residual evidence of a cataclysmic event in the past so it's not too
far-fetched to imagine it happening again. The most unbelievable aspect of
this research is that more people have not been exposed to it.
Rating: 
Summary: Velikovskyites--Rally 'round
Review: This book is another in a series of conglomerations of pseudo-science, where limited amounts of facts are admixed with a surfeit of ad hominem conclusions, and presented as a finished exercise in studied thought. To say the least, although an atmosphere of copious study is fashioned, the result is sheer balderdash. The theory of extraterrestrial cataclysm set out is extraordinary, and the supportive proofs meager. Instead, the book relies on superstition, obscure and mystical folklore, and speculation, and the hard evidence is lacking. At least it was my friend, and not me who wasted the money this time. I got stuck on Bell and Streiber's "The Coming Superstorm", which was just as bad, if less artful. Both books are in the category of being entertaining page turners for short-hop flights, but which should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. Don't waste your money on either one.
|
