Mind the Shift 92. Our Civilization is a Restart – Robert Schoch
In the early 1990s, Dr Robert Schoch was able to confirm John Anthony West’s theory that the Great Sphinx must be much older than the fourth Egyptian dynasty, judging from the visible water weathering (there was more, but this was the crucial ”smoking gun”). The huge sculpture must have been there during the wet African period, which ended long before the dynastic Egyptians.
”I am a classic academic in many respects. When I first went to Egypt in 1990, it was not to prove that civilization goes back further than we are told. I was convinced it would be my only trip to Egypt”, says Schoch.
But that trip was to be followed by many more. It changed his career and life.
Re-dating the Sphinx to a much earlier period than in textbook history gave Robert Schoch a global reputation. At first, he was fiercely attacked by archaeologists and Egyptologists. Today, the notion that the Sphinx may be 12,000 years old is a bit more widely accepted. The discovery of the megalithic site Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, which the mainstream has dated to at least 10,000 BCE, was a game changer.
”It confirmed everything I had said about there being a civilization much earlier than what we are told”, says Robert Schoch.
To talk about a ”civilization before civilization” is still far from uncontroversial, however.
As late as in August of this year, there was a bit of a buzz around a study that was interpreted in a way that made Schoch’s / West’s dating of the Sphinx look impossible, but it turned out to be over- and misinterpretations.
Schoch is convinced that the Sphinx, Göbekli Tepe, probably the base elements of the Giza pyramids and many other megalithic structures worldwide were originally constructed by a civilization that was wiped out by cataclysmic events at the end of the last ice age, events that reshaped the face of the earth. The geological period in question is called the Younger Dryas and lasted from ca 10,900 BCE to ca 9,700 BCE.
Many other researchers also adhere to the Younger Dryas cataclysm theory, but when it comes to the cause of the cataclysm, Robert Schoch still walks a different path. According to Schoch, the available evidence does not primarily point to impacts by comets or asteroids, but to huge solar outbursts.
The sun is more unstable than we think. We know of several dramatic solar events during the last few millennia, like the Charlemagne event in 774-775 CE and the Carrington event in 1859. But these would appear like a walk in the park compared to what happened at the end of the last ice age.
The solar outbursts some 12,000-13,000 years ago melted the ice sheets and even melted stone. They caused huge wildfires, floods, catastrophic climate change and lethal radiation. A solar induced dark age ensued, which lasted six thousand years.
Survivors sought shelter underground for centuries or even millennia. Ancient city-wide tunnel and cave systems can be found in many locations around the world, for example in Cappadocia in Turkey.
There is also biological evidence, like the mass extinction of megafauna at precisely this point in time. This mysterious disappearance makes sense when accounting for large solar outbursts, including high levels of dangerous radiation.
And there is cultural evidence, in the form of strange petroglyphs and other depictions all over the world that look like plasma formations in the sky.
”The truth is that we have incredible hubris. Natural events can devastate us”, says Schoch.
”All the astrophysical evidence is leading up to another really devastating solar event. We’d better learn from what happened.”
The book Forgotten Civilization (revised and expanded edition)