Rexx,

Thanks for your enquiry. In about 600 BCE, the Egyptian priest Sonchis of Sais told the visiting Greek Statesman Solon that “There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes.” But Solon had no instant access to world news the way we have today. Like everyone else, his view of the world was from ground level only. There were no fancy news graphics or disaster management videos. The archives he curated in Sais were systematically compiled by the ancestors of the Egyptians of his day over thousands of years. They contained reports, no doubt some of them eyewitness accounts, of destruction events in times long past.

The result is that although the Egyptian record keeping was detailed and evidently accurate, as it was their dedicated intent to keep such records on behalf of their neighboring countries according to Sonchis, few if any of those bringing historical accounts to Sais for safekeeping would have understood the root causes of what they had witnessed.

Nevertheless, Sonchis seems to have pieced together a consistent accounting of the root causes of these catastrophes, as evidenced by his analysis of the Greek Phaeton mythos, in which Phaeton, the son of the Sun god Helios, “…having yoked the steeds in his fathers [Sun] chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt.” Sonchis continued to Solon, “Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals.”

Sonchis had figured out, as best anyone could possibly have done in his day, that the root causes of many of the destruction events reported to the keepers of the archives in Sais under his care in 600 BCE, were cosmogenic, that is, originating from above, as celestial bodies fell from the sky and impacted the earth. Fortunately he gave a timeline for the destruction of Atlantis as having occurred circa 9,400 BCE. This time corresponds quite precisely to the modern-day climatological markers for the onset of the Younger Dryas meltwater pulse 1B.

“…and then occurred the the extraordinary inundation, which was the third before the great destruction of Deucalion,” Sonchis continued in his account to Solon of the destruction of Atlantis. This reinforces his analysis of the Phaeton mythos by placing it in the context of destruction events before and after the Atlantis destruction, which we are beginning to understand as corresponding to other major bolide impacts. See Timeline of Civilization Resets for the details.

If a major bolide or a fragment of a bolide lands in the ocean, the splash will case tsunamis, which Sonchis called inundations and launch potentially millions of tons of seawater into the atmosphere, which will rain out as a protracted deluge, which Sonchis recounts as the witnesses brought forth their reports for safekeeping, though few if any would have made the connection to a bolide strike. If an oceanic impact penetrates the seafloor, chunks of molten basalt and other rocks may be ejected along with the water, and will rain back down as hot molten spherules, which can cause sudden spikes in the temperature of the affected regions of the atmosphere. Sonchis describes these too in his account to Solon, though not in such detail, as do various witnesses to the Burckle impact circa 2,900 BCE according to Abbott, et. al. in their modern scientific paper. So far we have tsunamis (inundations) and catastrophic deluges (“water”) and incinerating heat pulses (“fire”). Both would have triggered the earthquakes that Sonchis also reported. If a major bolide or fragment lands on land, it will also trigger earthquakes and kick up potentially millions of tons of rock, resulting in sun blockage and long-term climate change due to the soot thus raised into the upper atmosphere, as well as the same sort of heat pulses resulting from an oceanic impact that breaches the seafloor as described above.

So whether we get more earth kicked up and molten spherules by land impacts, or whether we get more tsunamis and deluges from oceanic impacts, the most likely root causes of these modes of destruction, at least those worth writing epic legends about in the archives at Sais, are periodic major bolide strikes, “which recur after long intervals” as Sonchis put it to Solon.

Incidentally, the four elements in Dark Ages accounts were “Earth, Air, Fire and Water”. Sonchis presents his accounts in more detail than this, though all are mentioned, e.g. the land impacts produce “great conflagrations upon the earth”, the heat pulses affect the air, there is fire at impact sites or in the form of molten spherules raining back down from the stratosphere, and there is water in the form of tsunamis (inundations) and rainstorms (deluges). As to which will be experienced in a particular region of the Earth as a result of a particular impact, these can’t be known in advance without knowing precisely where the bolide will strike, with what energy and at what angle of incidence. Sometimes this is known or can be determined through computer simulations, as in the case of Apophis should it be found heading for Earth after all in the next few years… Sweet dreams! 🙂

David

Neo, Comments are now enabled on Volumes II and III. If all goes well, or in any case once Volume IV is posted, I’ll open up Volume I for comments as well. Wanted to get everything out there before getting bogged down in comments.

Neo, I’ve been searching for you for… Oops, wrong reality.

For Atlantis Revisited Volumes I and II, I disabled comments because there’s so much fringe out there. Everyone seems to have their own far-flung idea of where Atlantis was and who built it, etc. That’s partly the fault of Wikipedia, which still doesn’t recognize it as having ever existed. This leaves open a blank slate for Hollywood to invent on, and people spin off of that, and so on. It’s totally out of control. Some guy contacted me to insist that Atlantis was somewhere north of Japan, pointed me to an 8-minute video and insisted I cease and desist on researching the subject. Sure I may have gotten a detail wrong here and there but I have more videos to produce and didn’t want the fringe to be able to wear me down every step of the way.

Atlantis Revisited III will be different. Comments will be open so that certain parties can chime in whose inputs I really need, and others with issues will have to address them to those commenters. It should be interesting to see how the fringe will operate in that environment.

Atlantis Revisited IV is also in production but I haven’t decided about comments on that installment yet. Perhaps I’ll open up all 4 volumes for comments when that gets posted, or perhaps I’ll allow a gestation period before opening them up. But you’re right, eventually I’ll have to open them all up for comments.

Welcome… to the desert… of the Richat structure!

All for this adventure pal!

Thanks!