-
- Immanuel Velikovsky believed history
was shaped by violent planetary clashes. But those were nothing compared
to his own battles with mainstream science.
-
- The last decade of this millennium has
seen an explosion of interest in alternative views of humanity,s distant
past. Fascination with historical revisionism has spread beyond the ranks
of New Age devotees and into the cultural mainstream, highlighting a growing
sentiment that a new era of enlightenment may be at hand. This crypto-history,
or willingness to accept alternative views of history, can be traced in
part to an intellectual maverick named Immanuel Velikovsky, whose unconventional
views fanned the flames of scientific controversy at mid-century.
-
- Dr. Velikovsky remains an obscure figure
20 years after his death, but in his time he developed stunning and controversial
new theories about Earth and the history of humanity. His work not only
infuriated his colleagues, but also threatened the existence of long-standing
scientific, cultural, and religious paradigms. If Velikovsky,s vision was
correct, our distant ancestors witnessed unimaginable battles between celestial
titans. These cosmological close encounters turned Earth,s oceans into
cloud-piercing mountains of water, he wrote, bringing the human race --
and the planet itself -- to the very brink of annihilation.
-
- Scholars of the 1950s scoffed at Velikovsky,
as do their successors today. They also laughed at the idea of a Freudian
psychiatrist conducting legitimate research into such fields as astronomy
and ancient history. But Immanuel Velikovsky was a complex and gifted man.
Born in Vitebsk, Russia, in 1895, he studied law and economics in Moscow
and became fluent in six languages, including Hebrew and Latin. He then
spent time at the University of Edinburgh where he studied under philosopher
and writer Henri Bergson, winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Velikovsky later studied medicine in Berlin and became a practicing physician
and psychiatrist. He lived in Paris for a time, then Palestine, before
emigrating to the U.S. in 1939 and settling in New York City. In 1952,
he moved to Princeton, New Jersey, renewing a friendship with physicist
Albert Einstein.
-
- Despite his broad credentials, Velikovsky,s
monumental book Worlds in Collision earned him the undying enmity of the
scientific establishment. The foundation of this work was Velikovsky,s
belief that archaeologists and historians studying the Middle East and
Egypt were guilty of significant chronological errors. His analysis of
ancient texts had convinced him that a number of natural catastrophes and
Earth changes -- which many believed were merely the stuff of myths, legends,
and religious exaggeration -- had actually occurred during the exodus of
the Hebrews from Egypt around 1500 b.c., and again several hundred years
later. Velikovsky came to believe that these catastrophes were caused by
close planetary encounters between Earth, Mars, and Venus. He also theorized
that Venus had begun life as a comet that, for some unknown reason, had
been disgorged by the planet Jupiter.
-
- Velikovsky,s conclusions were stunning
in their magnitude. After years spent correlating ancient knowledge from
Asia and South America with that from Egypt and the Middle East, he reconstructed
an astonishing series of near-collisions among the three planets. According
to him, ancient writings from different parts of the world clearly show
to what extent our ancestors feared Mars and Venus -- even to the point
of worshipping them as living celestial gods. Close approaches by Venus
resulted in stupendous gravitational effects that could draw Earth,s great
oceans into fear-inspiring columns thousands of feet high, simultaneously
triggering massive volcanoes and earthquakes all over the globe as the
planetary crust was wrenched and torn by titanic forces. At the point of
closest approach,
-
- he theorized, Earth and Venus would have
exchanged a colossal spark of planetary electricity, an unbelievably huge
thunderbolt with a crash heard by millions, followed by massive planetwide
tidal waves as oceans settled back into their seabeds.
-
- The most catastrophic of the Earth-Venus
encounters occurred during the time of Moses, Velikovsky believed, and
was responsible for an environmental catastrophe that triggered the biblical
plagues of Egypt. He theorized that the close proximity of Venus to Earth
during the Hebrew exodus was responsible for parting the Red Sea.
-
- Velikovsky also said that some of Venus,s
atmosphere was exchanged for the oxygen-rich air of our planet. The result,
he believed, was a deluge of hydrocarbons from our skies. Some of these
compounds fell as the petroleum we know today, seeping beneath the ground
of the Middle East into vast pools of liquid energy. Other, lighter compounds
precipitated in a form nourishing to both humans and animals, the Bible,s
so-called "manna from heaven. Velikovsky believed the "manna
had enabled life to continue on Earth even after the global destruction
of crops and years of cloud-shrouded darkness produced by this planetary
cataclysm.
-
- According to Velikovsky,s theory, the
erratic orbit of the new planet Venus probably would have ended life on
Earth but for the intervention of Mars. A gravitational tug-of-war ensued,
culminating in a series of close approaches by both planets to Earth. A
climactic, simultaneous approach by both planets occurred several hundred
years after the Jewish exodus from Egypt. Velikovsky maintained that this
singular event -- which moved Venus into the harmless orbit it occupies
today -- was immortalized in the mythologies of many different cultures.
-
- Velikovsky presented an autographed first
edition of Worlds in Collision to Albert Einstein when the eminent physicist
turned 67. In a thank-you note, Einstein expressed his belief that the
new book would be the cause of significant controversy. Einstein,s intuition
proved correct: Macmillan created an uproar within the academic world when
it published Worlds in Collision in 1950. The book,s most vociferous critic
was the late Harlow Shapley, then the administrator of the Harvard Observatory.
-
- Velikovsky had offended legions of professionals
in the fields of geology, astronomy, celestial mechanics, and history --
and these irate individuals were determined to strike back. Led by Shapley,
scores of university and college professors threatened to boycott Macmillan
textbooks unless that company ended publication of Velikovsky,s book. Macmillan
soon quailed and Worlds in Collision was turned over to Doubleday, where
it became a commercial success. This prompted Velikovsky to produce two
follow-up books: Ages in Chaos (1952) and Earth in Upheaval (1955).
-
- The popularity enjoyed by Velikovsky
petered out by the end of the 1950s and he labored in obscurity for the
next decade, his ideas roundly denounced by his colleagues. But the radicalism
of the 1960s brought a new skepticism of establishment science. Baby boomers
developed an open-mindedness toward ideas like UFOs, Atlantis, and alternative
views of history. Demands by student activists helped expand fields of
study and class offerings, but many academics and scientists were less
than eager to acknowledge a change of emphasis from long-accepted theory.
Even the late Carl Sagan, who had established a reputation as a scientific
free-thinker, remained adamant in his opposition to Velikovsky,s ideas.
"There is a range of borderland subjects that have high popularityÉincluding
UFOs, astrology, and the writings of VelikovskyÉthat seem to deny
the scientific method, Sagan wrote in 1972 in UFOs -- A Scientific Debate.
-
- In 1974, it seemed that Velikovsky,s
theories would finally receive a fair hearing in an objective, scientific
forum. The American Association for the Advancement of Science convened
a Velikovsky symposium, to be held during its annual meeting in San Francisco
that February. Among those presenting papers would be Velikovsky himself
and Carl Sagan, who two years earlier had sneered at the idea of such a
gathering. But the symposium got off to a decidedly anti-Velikovsky beginning.
In his opening remarks, moderator Dr. Ivan King declared: "No one
who is involved in the organization of this symposium believes that Dr.
Velikovsky,s ideas are correct.
-
- Numerous accusations of unfairness were
raised by Velikovsky,s supporters during and after the conference. But
there is no complete record of the proceedings. Even more puzzling is the
fact that a book about the event published by the Cornell University Press,
Scientists Confront Velikovsky (edited by a symposium organizer, Donald
Goldsmith), contains neither a paper presented by the pro-Velikovsky academician
Professor Irving Michelson of the Illinois Institute of Technology, nor
the paper presented by Velikovsky himself.
-
- Despite these attempts to discredit his
work, Velikovsky enjoyed renewed popularity. The Age of Velikovsky, by
Dr. C. J. Ransom, was published in 1976, and two new books by Velikovsky
(Ramses II and His Time and Stargazers and Gravediggers) were printed as
recently as 1983 -- four years after he died.
-
- The scientific establishment today continues
to reject Velikovsky,s more controversial work, but several of his theories
from the 1950s have since proven correct. Most notable are his predictions
that Jupiter is the source of powerful, natural radio emissions, and that
the Earth is surrounded by a powerful magnetic field we now call the magnetosphere.
-
- Crypto-History: Alive and Well
-
- His death in November 1979 brought Velikovsky,s
illustrious career to an end, but the cause of historical revisionism survived,
as illustrated by recent events.
-
- In the early 1990s geologist Robert Schoch
of Boston University and Egyptologist John Anthony West developed compelling
evidence that the Sphinx at Giza, Egypt, may be thousands of years older
than previously thought. [Editor,s note: See "Sandstorm, page 20.]
In his 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods, crypto-historian Graham Hancock
presented data -- based in part on computer-generated star maps of the
ancient sky -- to support his hypothesis that the great artifacts of ancient
Egypt actually date from a much earlier civilization, such as Atlantis.
-
- One of the most credible revisionists,
Dr. Paul LaViolette, caused a stir in 1997 with the publication of his
Earth Under Fire. LaViolette is a trained scientist with degrees in physics
and systems science, and for the first time he gives revisionism an advocate
with scientific credentials that are above reproach by academic skeptics.
-
- Combining accepted scientific doctrine
and techniques with thorough research into esoteric subjects, LaViolette
has arrived at some extraordinary conclusions. According to him, our solar
system is periodically bombarded by enormous energy bursts, or cosmic super
waves. Huge clouds of interstellar dust accompany this phenomenon, and
these can trigger intense solar activity while shrouding Earth in near-total
darkness for years. He has also developed a compelling case that an event
of this kind was responsible for ending the most recent ice age about 11,500
years ago.
-
- Today,s crypto-historians differ in training,
perspective, and accomplishments, but they have one important thing in
common: The roots of their work can be traced back to the groundbreaking
approach of Immanuel Velikovsky. His courage, vision, and persistence allowed
him to blaze a path of new understanding for later researchers to follow.
________
-
- John Vincent Sanders writes about UFOs
and alternative science.
|
