Product Description
Newly discovered scientific proof validating the legends and myths of ancient floods, fires, and weather extremes

• Presents new scientific evidence revealing the cause of the end of the last ice age and the cycles of geological events and species extinctions that followed

• Connects physical data to the dramatic earth changes recounted in oral traditions around the world

• Describes the impending danger from a continuing cycle of catastrophes and extinctions

There are a number of puzzling mysteries in the history of Earth that have yet to be satisfactorily explained by mainstream science: the extinction of the dinosaurs, the vanishing of ancient Indian tribes, the formation of the mysterious Carolina Bays, the disappearance of the mammoths, the sudden ending of the last Ice Age, and the cause of huge underwater landslides that sent massive tsunamis racing across the oceans millennia ago. Eyewitness accounts of these events are chronicled in rich oral traditions handed down through generations of native peoples. The authors’ recent scientific discoveries link all these events to a single cause.

In The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith present new scientific evidence about a series of prehistoric cosmic events that explains why the last Ice Age ended so abruptly. Their findings validate the ubiquitous legends and myths of floods, fires, and weather extremes passed down by our ancestors and show how these legendary events relate to each other. Their findings also support the idea that we are entering a thousand-year cycle of increasing danger and possibly a new cycle of extinctions.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 19 reviews)

Great book, terrible title & cover

I had this book in my wishlist for over two years. I kept off buying it basically because it looked like many other "past catastrophes that will happen again unless we repent and stop buying SUVs" type of book.
However during that same period many reviews indicated that this was a different book, and frankly it is the best book on the subject of ancient catastrophes that I've ever bought.
It gives a scientific support to other author's wild claims of ancient cultures and technologies that are very badly proposed in many other books.
Finally a book shows that it's feasible that many ancient cultures were decimated by the events related in this book, even though they make no such claims.
This will be a great addition to your collection.
September 18, 2008

Enlightening, with powerful implications

In brief, the authors' thesis is this: 41,000 years ago, a Supernova (Geminga) exploded, in the cosmic vicinity of Earth. On at least three separate occasions, this event had significiant influence on the lives of creatures on this planet. 1.) The radiation from the Supernova killed or mutate species in Australia and southeast Asia. 2.) About 7,000 years later, the shockwave material began to arrive in our Solar System. 3.) A low density object (comet, or supernova material) impacted the norther hemisphere, wiping out megafauna (large animals - mammoths, mastodon, horses, rhinoceroses, etc.) and the paleoamerican Clovis culture, in North America.

The book, divided into three parts - Solving the Mystery, Describing The Event Sequence, and Presenting the Evidence - does a fantastic job of entertaining and educating the reader. We become (vicariously) an investigator, an eye-witness, and a multi-disciplinary scientist. In the process, the authors succeed in convincing us (most thoughtful, objective readers) of the validity of their theory's main points.

I like this book for a number of reasons. The first part, solving the mystery of the black mat, allows us to peer inside the recognizably human world of a scientific researcher. We get to share his travels and curiosity, sympathize with his hunches, and envy his luck. We also learn of his low tech pragmatism - using a shotgun to blast iron grains at a mammoth tusk, or tossing small objects into a cakepan filled with flour to see what kind of craters they make.

The second part provides a chilling account of the three times when there was Hell on Earth. No disaster movie yet made comes close to the intensity and devastation that this Event probably caused.

And while the third part - The Evidence - takes up most of the book, it too can be fascinating in its own right. Not only are we given the data gathered to support the authors' claim, but we are shown the reasoning which rules out previous, conventional explanations, and supports this theory as the correct one.

More importantly for me personally, and perhaps for anyone with an interest in cultural, spiritual and religious mythology, the authors take care to present a diverse sampling of ancient legends and stories which apparently attempt to convey what survivors of that time actually may have experienced or observed, albeit with symbolic embellishments being added along the way.

All told, this book/theory may explain a great deal about our world today. It implies that the event and our reaction to it, caused the prevalence of global disaster and flood myths around the world. Quite often we note that the gods or heavens were the source of our ancestors doom, and the blame is often laid upon the evil or wickedness of those who perished during the cleansing. Some say that it was because our ancestors forgot their creator, that he wanted to remind them/us that he was still important in their lives.

More specifically, the research tends to dispell the more recent myth that early Americans overhunted the mammoths, resulting in their extinction. And the timing with the disappearance of Atlantis, according to Plato, is too close for coincidence. What is not clear is whether this particular event is also responsible for the Biblical story of Noah and the Flood. Other sources cite a meteor impact closer to 5,000 years ago. Of course, the authors may have avoided this suggestion, for fear of alienating the religious fundamentalist who take exception with anything that appears to conflict with their understanding of scripture.

Finally, the authors issue an explicit warning that the consequences of this supernova event are not over yet. Mankind owes much of his current success, and overpopulation, due to the supernova events wiping out competing predators. They remark that after all extinction events, some species proliferate and overpopulate, but eventually succumb to limited resources, and suffer a massive depopulation eventually. Humans are still at the overpopulation stage, but may yet be on the brink of depopulation. In any event, the bombardment of the Earth by meteors and comets (due to the supernova) is far from over, and we are experiencing a rate of about 75% of the all-time high, about three times what it was a billion years ago.

None of this is to say that the book is without some faults. The wording is not as clear as I would like it (in places), and some of the statements are just plain wrong. For instance, Gemini is said to have only a few weeks every year when it rises in the northeast (as seen from a particular location.) The reality is, that at that latitude, Gemini always rises in the northeast, each and every day, whether it can be seen or not.

Yet on the whole, this is perhaps the most important book I have ever had the pleasure to read, because the theory answers so many questions I have long pondered, and it does so with the weight of scientific thought and evidence behind it.
September 08, 2008

Thought provoking

As other reviewers have mentioned, the title of this book is not completely accurate as it doesn't explore much in the way of cycles of catastrophe's such as comet strikes and Im not sure why the authors would title it in such a way because the essence of this book if marketed well is interesting enough to attract many serious readers. Unlike other `pseudo science books' this one tackles head on a number of key findings relating to an `event' that supposedly happened 13,000 years ago in a way that iw generally well backed up and emphasizes what is theory, what is unproven and what is likely to be true. As a result I enjoyed this book emmensely because it does away with the Graham Hancock style of rhetoric and gives us some clear evidence in the form of pictures, scenarios and diagrams.

It could be said that the authors have not tied together all the loose ends and considering what their focus of investigation was I don't think this detracts from what the book implies. If one is to research a number of other books on similar topics a picture starts emerging about our past that not only sounds very logical but is incredibly fascinating.

Mass extinctions are nothing new. One of the most common geological process in the solar system is meteor and comet impacts. This book specifically explores the role of an exploding supernova's influence on earth. Other scientists have documented supernova explosions and dynamics before including the potential for it causing a major event 13,000 years ago. This is highly significant because it happened at the end of our last ice age and happened towards the beginning of wat we have recorded as history. Its also very significant because many ancient cultures have deeply embedded stories of such an event.

I enjoyed the evidence presented relating to micro meteorites imbedded in mammoth tusks and clovis stone tools and the photos showing clear meteor or comet strikes on earth. There should be nothing controversial about debris impacting with earth...anyone who's spent a little time looking at the night sky will have seen a shooting star. The book made me ponder the scenarios presented and try and tie them in with other theories such as earth displacement and catastrophes evident elsewhere in the solar system. The idea that the earths crust could have shifted, or other geological processes happened, in a short space of time is a valid theory and especially so when applied to an event as covered in this book. I thought the authors could have at least speculated some of the more unknown areas or discussed how one could investigate any link between a comet strike on earth and crust displacement. It's not a giant leap of imagination to contemplate a large enough strike on earth as causing some disbalance to our plate tectonics or geological processes. Tis would tie into other theoretical books that propose geological processes may happen much faster and not as uniformly as believed.

The same goes even for adventurers seeking remnants of Atlantis or highly civilized ancient people. Its seems highly likely that if there was an Atlantis that is was somewere in the america's - it matches Plato's description and seems logical as a trading location given its proximitry to Africa and Europe. Its enjoyable to speculate that what happened in north America 13,000 years ago wiped out much of this civilization and that indeed humans may have almost been wiped out many times before. Graham Hancock will go to length to talk about how earthquakes shook the world and so the pyramids were this built for sophisticated astronomical purposes. But astronomy is not volcanism. It seems much more likely that the ancients wanted desperately to understand the mechanics of the universe because they had been severely affected by it. It makes sense that a culture battered by a process such as described in this book would then strive to understand natural processes and build monuments of stone that also act as astronomical computers.

What would have been nice in this book is a more in depth comparison with the theory of our solar system having a companion star. It is suggested that every 26,000 years we orbit a binary star that could also explain comet strikes due to the disruption such an orbit would induce. This theory is well put together in the dvd `the great year' and points to a range of cultures that perhaps understood this process. The timing of such an event caused by such a binary orbit could also be calculated to around 13,000 years. Day and night have a profound impact on us, the moon cycles have a profound affect on us, the sun a profound affect on us...why not a binary star?

One of the most interesting aspects of this book was in its discussion of how human populations increased after this event and how this could have been due to greater access to the land or even due to mutations from the supernova/comet radiation. Mutations might sound like science fiction but no-one still has a clear idea of how one species evolves into another. This was Darwins dilemma. Perhaps it is in fact catastrophic events like this that push evolutionary mutations along. Like war - long periods of nothing and then short shapr periods of change. I just can't buy this old school view of the world as being so uniform and rigid. It doesn't make sense. The idea that legitimate scientists would overlook these sorts of issues of how we view geological time, our antiquity and our solar system geology is not suprising but a shame more scientists are not actively researching these fields. Instead they are researching global warming and other areas, that likely lead to better paychecks.

Now Im going to go read `when life nearly died' and see what light it sheds.

Fascinating book and well worth the read. The many pictures, questions and answers and scholarly authorship makes this one a true contemplator in the hit and miss alternative theory market. Its just a shame they didnt elaborate on other 'cycles of cosmic catastrophes'.

September 08, 2008

Interesting theory

I agree with one other reviewer here who said "horrible cover but great book"...the cover and the title of the book are way over the top. I half expected the book to start with chapters of little green men who caused the extinction of mammoths. Despite the goofy title and cover, this is an easy to read, easy to follow theory of what caused the great extinctions of 13,000 years ago in North America, killing off the mammoths, mastodons and evidently much of the human population (clovis culture) along about that time. Firestone's theory of the comet hitting an area near Lake Michigan, which was covered in ice two miles thick at the time, takes a little getting used to, and opening the mind a bit to grasp the entire theory. He examines everything from the mysterious "black mat" at the Murray Springs Arizona Clovis site to the micro meteorites embedded in Mammoth tusks, to the "Carolina Bays" that were supposedly created by large chunks of glacial ice, blown out of the Michigan glacier by this comet. He explains the comet was supposedly made of "dirty ice" a cosmic dustball, and the size of the comet was what caused the depression which later became Lake Michigan. A very entertaining read, and a theory worth considering.
May 16, 2008

This one will mess you mind

I'll make this short - everyone should read it!!!
The slightly lengthier version is -
The authors put a case for a cataclysmic planetary impact event of circa 13000 - 16000 BP having been preceded by the shock wave and the initial light / radiation blast of a nearby supernova around 41000BP but with the major focus being on the impact event(s).
Unlike others that have written on similar themes, these authors supply a myriad of evidence to back up their claims and the real strength of their work is the breadth of various unrelated scientific studies undertaken which seem to support the proposition. A tremendous amount of work has gone into this book.
It provides the supporting scientific evidence in an easy to read way - I eagerly await the next work they produce on this subject.

April 07, 2008

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