‘The True(r) Prehistory’: A synopsis of the ancient global catastrophes that have shaped human prehistory

My book, The True(r) Prehistory,¹ introduces the possibility of a radically revised account of human prehistory through a multidisciplinary investigation that draws on the natural sciences, mathematics, archaeology, myths, and knowledge from ancient texts. The book explores humanity’s place in nature and the cosmos, the cataclysmic events that have shaped humankind and our solar system and offers a thought-provoking case for a paradigm shift in how we understand our origins.

Having presented my view of an alternative prehistory of humanity in several (too) thick books and in more than ten articles in this publication, I would like to use this article to provide a brief overview of the chronological sequence of cosmic catastrophes that I have identified as turning points in human history.

I am by no means the first to try this approach. Like Franz Xaver Kugler,² I believe that there were several catastrophes in prehistory that afflicted the Earth, life on it, and thus the development of humanity. Kugler assumes that at least two cosmic catastrophes occurred: a fire catastrophe and a flood catastrophe. He views these events as more severe and distinct from the myth of a historic World Fire, which was most likely an overflight of a large meteorite. The memory of this celestial event was undoubtedly recorded in the myths about Phaethon, the son of the god Apollo, who lost control of the sun chariot he had borrowed from his father.³

The explanation of the catastrophes remains somewhat vague and cryptic when Kugler classifies one disaster as caused by a comet-like ‘meteor sun’. Considering the limited understanding of comets during his era, his choice of vocabulary suggests that he hypothesized that the devastating phenomenon in question was similar to a sun-like entity resembling a comet. It was an incomplete theory—more of an idea—that nevertheless fit perfectly into my explanation. When Kugler speaks of global catastrophes, he refers to them as ruptures in human history. With his catastrophe theory, he agrees with the thesis of world ages, which neither he nor modern alternative prehistorians invented; rather, it is an idea that emerged from accounts drawing on ancient human memory, even though established historians dismiss them as mere fantasy or myth. Yet undeniable facts are evident. The existence of megalithic structures that defy the assumed technological capabilities of our ancient ancestors and the advanced prehistoric knowledge of mathematics, geometry, and astronomy has not been explained by academia so far. Undoubtedly, there was more technology and skill in prehistory than is officially conceded.

To encounter accounts detailing past ages of man, one need not invoke the Aztec “suns”⁴ or the yugas of Hindu belief; Greek and Roman writers, too, recognize four ages, which they divide—in the context of societal decline—into a Golden, Silver, Bronze, and the current Iron Age. Norse mythology knows the turning point of Ragnarök,⁵ and the sober-minded Cicero considers recurring, all-destructive floods (deluges) and world fires to be a fact.⁶

I have identified three turning points that mark four distinct eras in human history, which I will now briefly discuss.

The Red Sun

Life on Earth will have suffered earlier and similarly terrible catastrophes before the dawn of humanity, but in the time span regarded, the first turning point occurred approximately 40,000 years ago. It was the first epochal turning point to remain in human memory. Traces of it can be found in myths, obscure accounts, and rock art, as well as most convincingly in astronomy. At that time, a foreign dwarf star passed through the planetary system, causing havoc on an astronomical scale. In my interpretation, Kugler calls this phenomenon the “meteor sun.”

Diagram 1
The calculated path of the dwarf star, which I call the Red Sun, through the planetary system (my own computation). Its passage disrupted the orbits of the planets. It penetrated deep into the solar system and orbited the Sun within Mercury’s orbit. The disturbances are clearly preserved in the elliptical orbital shapes and orbital inclinations. I determined the rough orbital path based on myths, and fine-tuned it based on the current state of the planetary system (The calculations for this are clearly outlined in Volume 2 of my book series).
Image by Aloys Eiling

Image A
Artist’s rendering of the dwarf star that traversed the planetary system.7 It was a very young star, still surrounded by an accretion disk, with plasma flares erupting from its center. Note the size of the accretion disk in comparison to the Sun.
Image: NASA (PD-USGov)

The upheavals that accompanied the appearance of the Red Sun affected not only Earth, but the entire solar system. Although the Red Sun was a lightweight star at the lower end of the mass range for a luminous star, its gravity was sufficient to distort the planets’ orbits. The distortions of Earth’s orbit were relatively insignificant; the primary cause of the cataclysmic impact on Earth was that the Red Sun was a nascent star still encircled by an accretion disk. This enormous disk cut through the solar system like a gigantic saw. Before the Red Sun’s passage, a fifth planet existed in our solar system, which I refer to as Tiamat, that was shattered by this maelstrom. The other inner planets were scorched by the fire emitted from the accretion disk. The disk’s radiation intensified as the gravity of our Sun disrupted the orbits in the accretion disk and dissolved it from the edge. By internal friction, the initially cooled-down accretion disk grew into a fire dragon.

The memory of the traverse of an alien sun is preserved not only in ancient rock carvings but also in many ancient myths about a fiery cosmic object. The Babylonian myths and reports about the god Marduk and his star, “Nibiru,” in particular, confirm my explanation by pointing out the accretion disk and its appearance.⁸

The Earth maintained a distance from the Red Sun. Nevertheless, entire species, primarily megafauna, disappeared forever, even though Earth’s biological foundation remained intact. Among those who vanished were hominid species. The Neanderthals died out, leaving only a faint genetic trace in Homo sapiens, with whom they interbred. Living beings who found refuge in caves had the best chance of survival. However, hiding was also dangerous. In the heat of the second sun, the rate of water evaporation increased dramatically. Clouds kilometers high eclipsed the Sun, counteracting the unchecked global warming. The downside of the thermal shading was the deluge of water that crashed from the clouds to the ground in downpours spanning the globe. This caused drowning and mudslides rolling toward the sea.

Image B
Illustration (not to scale!) of the close encounter between Earth and the Red Sun, depicting the heat and radiation storm (alpha and beta particles, gamma rays, and neutrons) emanating from the Red Sun, particularly from its accretion disk. Besides drowning, radioactivity also led to mass extinctions. Luckily, the Earth and the Red Sun never actually came close to each other; otherwise, life on Earth would have been wiped out.
Image by Aloys Eiling

Spiral and circular patterns carved into rock around the world preserve the memory of the Sky Dragon. Most notably in rock carvings, the great die-off and the Red Sun itself are deeply etched into humanity’s memory. The Red Sun offers a simple explanation of where the motif of these age-old carvings stems from and why it is found in hundreds of places across every continent.

Image C
Example of rock carvings of circles and spirals, here at Ayers Rock in Australia. These are likely images of the Red Sun.
(Photograph provided and taken by Thomas Stinder, president of the GreWi-Forum Münsterland.)
Image reused with permission.
(A selection of such rock carvings from around the world, albeit with questionable classifications, can be found at: https://www.tainoage.com/spirals.html)

Those who had survived the heat and torrential rains had been lucky thus far, but the final chapter was still to come. After the Red Sun retreated, it became bitterly cold on Earth. A thick blanket of clouds continued to envelop the Earth, reflecting the Sun’s radiation. Freezing temperatures and hunger were next to present survivors with the ultimate challenge.

The concept that the Red Sun was surrounded by an accretion disk is not a figment of the imagination. In fact, this thesis is supported by measurable evidence in the form of traces of radioactive elements that are too short-lived to have survived from the earliest days of the solar system. These elements are present because, during and after the Red Sun’s passage, fresh stardust rained down on the planets from the dissolved accretion disk.

The Capture of the Moon

When the Red Sun departed, it left behind an ugly legacy. Along with the dust and grit of the disintegrated accretion disk, rogue planetesimals and giant fragments of the fifth planet, shattered by the disk, roamed among the planets. Some were large enough to shake a planet to its very foundations upon collision. One particularly large and deadly wanderer was the former companion of the fifth planet. It had lost its partner planet but survived the passage through the accretion disk. Its new orbit extended from within Earth’s orbit to the present-day asteroid belt, the former orbital distance of the fifth planet.

Since this minor planet’s orbit crossed both Mars’s and Earth’s orbits, a close encounter with a planet was inevitable. Ultimately, it was Earth that experienced an extremely close encounter with the minor planet. The rogue minor planet’s close flyby (at a distance of about 20,000 km) resulted in its capture and wreaked havoc on Earth. Contrary to official doctrine, I consider the Moon to be a young companion of Earth. Consequently, Earth was bestowed with its Moon in the relatively recent past (on a geological timescale!), approximately 12,000 years ago.

Image D
The Moon’s close flyby weakened the Earth’s magnetic field locally by distorting the crust and mantle with its gravitational pull..⁹
Image: ESA (PD)

In order for the minor planet to become Earth’s moon, its orbital velocity had to slow down to match Earth’s. The enormous deceleration in energy was distributed across many sinks. For example, during the close flyby, Earth’s gravity deformed the moon into a cigar shape, overcoming its internal gravitational forces. This deformation caused the Moon to stop rotating, resulting in its synchronous rotation from the moment it became Earth’s satellite. Deformation, frictional energy, and halted rotation slowed the Moon’s orbital motion. Since these deformations are all energetically irreversible, most of the energy is converted into heat during relaxation. This energy conversion explains the pockets of heat inside the Moon that do not conform to the expected shell-shaped cooling pattern.

The same force that reshaped the Moon acted on Earth as well. Rather than slowing Earth’s rotation, the Moon’s passage over Earth accelerated its rotation, shortening the day by 15 minutes. Combined with the altered orbit, the year became five days longer overall.

The Moon’s capture led to a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions for humans and animals as a significant amount of energy reshaped the Earth’s geography and geology. The Moon’s overflight caused water mountains to build up, flooding entire continents and washing them clean. America was hit hardest because it lay in the path of an enormous wave building up in the Pacific. The estimated height of the wave created by the Moon’s gravity is approximately 4 km. This height actually increased as the wave hit the continental shelf.

The Moon’s close flyby ruptured tectonic plates and shifted fragments. In the south, the Scotia Plate was pushed in the tow of the Moon far into the Atlantic between South America and Antarctica.

A land bridge that had previously connected the two continents disappeared. In the north, the Caribbean Plate pushed into the Atlantic, and the narrow land bridge of Central America became the land connection that had previously linked the north and south much further east. Only the chain of Caribbean islands has remained above water from this ancient land bridge.

Image E
This geological map illustrates the obliquity of the South American Plate and the two minor plates, the Scotia Plate and the Caribbean Plate, that have been pushed into the Atlantic. I attribute the formation of these geological patterns to the Moon’s capture.
Image: NASA (PD-USGov)

America was not the only continent to be submerged; the others were flooded as well when the oceans surged deep inland. The catastrophe reached true global proportions when the Earth’s axis was thrown off balance by the Moon’s flyby, causing it to tilt 24.5°. The nearby Moon absorbed the change in angular momentum, which is still evident today because the Earth’s and Moon’s in-plane orbital angular momenta are equal.^*

As the Earth’s axis tilted, the equatorial bulge moved around the planet. The displacement, which depended on longitude, reached nearly 2,500 km at its maximum. The 22-km-high equatorial bulge rolled, exerting pressure on the Earth’s crust and causing a shift in the crust’s geological strata. In some places, this resulted in the top layer becoming the bottom layer.

Image F
Shift of the equator due to the tilting of the Earth’s axis. Note the location of some important prehistoric sites near the equator.
Image by Aloys Eiling, derivative of PD-USGov CIA map

1. Tiahuanaco
2. Dilmun
3. Mohenjo Daro
4. Nan Madol

The fact that all of this happened in prehistoric times is not only derived from geology. Preserved myths around the world speak of the Moon’s capture and the catastrophes that accompanied it. For example, the ancient Greeks preserved the memory of a pre-lunar era by referring to the inhabitants of Earth at that time as “Proselenos,” meaning people who lived when the moon did not exist. The most fitting account of the Moon’s capture and the subsequent changes can be found in Zulu mythology. These myths explicitly state that the seasons only emerged after the Moon appeared. This is convincing evidence to support my conclusion that the Moon’s capture caused the Earth’s axis to tilt.

The Fall of Venus

Close encounters between rogue dwarf planets and real planets can have several consequences, ranging from impact and moon capture to deflection or even ejection from the solar system. One of the minor planets left behind in the Red Sun’s wake disappeared when Earth captured it, becoming the Moon. Fortunately for the inner planets, most of the large fragments from the shattered fifth planet took wide orbits around the Sun. Only meager remnants remain, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter in a zone called the asteroid belt.

Another catastrophe loomed when Jupiter deflected a massive fragment of the fifth planet into a much narrower orbit, causing it to cross the orbits of the inner planets. A celestial body’s duration in such an orbit is measured not in millions of years, but in millennia. In this case, Venus drew the short straw.

Today, Venus is a hostile planet. Its atmosphere is so dense that lead and zinc melt on its surface. Its status is strange because few of its properties align with those of the other planets. This is all the more puzzling given that its proximity to the Sun places Venus well within the Sun’s habitable zone. A cosmic catastrophe just about 6,000 years ago reduced the planet to its current state. Not only do I propose this, but I also argue that Venus was once teeming with life. I take this idea further by claiming that Venus was home to an advanced civilization that practiced interplanetary space travel prior to that disaster. Despite all their technology, the inhabitants of Venus—the rulers of the planetary system and the gods of our progenitors—were powerless against an onrushing minor planet.

Not only do physics and astronomy chronicle Venus’s fall, but so do the myths and religions of ancient cultures.

Some Venusians managed to escape to Earth before their habitat was destroyed. There, they acted as culture formers and were worshiped by humans as gods. Thus, the gods of human history did not come from Sirius or Aldebaran, but rather from right next door. When Venus fell, the Venusians lost their home and became refugees among humans. They could still initiate construction and found cities. But likely, their group was too small to survive. Due to death and internal strife, their power base and divine status gradually crumbled. Perhaps some of their descendants still silently exist, having simply lost interest in humanity. Perhaps it is they that we occasionally catch glimpses of with their UAPs and observe them from time to time as the grey ones.

The consequences of my assertion are anything but insignificant. Assuming that extraterrestrials once walked on Earth means that we no longer need to consider interstellar travel.

Image G
Artist’s rendering of a cosmic collision ¹⁰
Image: NASA (PD-USGov)

When the collision occurred, a blinding flash illuminated the solar system and made Venus the brightest object within hundreds of light-years for a brief moment.

The minor planet collided with Venus near its equator, opposite its direction of rotation. The resulting energy release and imparted angular momentum altered the planet’s structure and mechanics. Venus became a glowing ball that continued to smolder for centuries and still exhibits a dramatically high surface temperature today. My calculations, which I fully lay out in Volume 3 of my book series, suggest that the collision occurred less than 6,000 years ago, and the inner heat continues to rise to the surface, albeit slowly. It will take millions of years for the surface to cool to a normal equilibrium.

Image H
Illustration of a minor planet impacting Venus, which was a cooled, normal planet prior to the impact.
Image by Aloys Eiling

The atmosphere expanded due to the energy released by the impact, which heated it to over a thousand degrees. The atmosphere’s pressure increased even further manyfold. This happened as carbonate rock decomposed at high temperatures, and the release of enormous amounts of CO₂ caused the atmosphere to expand even more.

The boiling lava broke the water down into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen formed high-melting oxides, while the light hydrogen rose into the atmosphere and was blown away into space by the solar wind sweeping through the giant atmospheric balloon. From Earth, Venus appeared like an enormous comet with a tail extending beyond Earth’s orbit.

Image I
After the impact, Venus took on the appearance of a giant comet.¹¹ A comet-like tail extended beyond Earth’s orbit.
Image by Aloys Eiling, based on PD-USGov, NASA

Image J
Relief of the prehistoric tri-star in Earth’s sky shows the Sun (left), the Moon (center), and Venus (right), which in prehistoric times was bright and self-luminous..¹² The wavy lines in Venus’s inflated atmosphere reflect the pressure induced undulating motion.
Image: Jastrow (PD)

The impact nearly halted the rotation and even slightly reversed its direction, so that today a Venusian day (one full rotation around the axis) lasts longer than a Venusian year (orbit around the Sun). The additional energy input was sufficient for humanity to experience another Great Flood. As Hertha von Dechend, the grande dame of classical mythology, noted: This Great Flood was a bonus.

This cosmic event in Earth’s vicinity and its temporal proximity to our own time provide a perfectly natural explanation for Venus’s prominent position in global mythology. This event revived ancient myths about cosmic events and has been handed down with more than just vague details.

Image K
These are what the gods from Venus might have looked like. Such figurines, which are characteristic of their alien-like heads, date back to prehistoric times and have been found all over the world.^{13, 14}
Left: image by Arbenllapashtica (CCBYSA4.0)
Right: image by Mary Harrsch (CCBY2.0)

Summary

My alternative theory of prehistory is not a patchwork of unrelated events. Instead, it provides a comprehensive picture spanning 40,000 years. However, since it contradicts official doctrine, tenured historians will dismiss it as fringe science. They are accustomed to this attitude toward those outside their field, considering them ignoramuses or, more likely, dimwits. They feel authorized to gleefully dissect the inconsistencies in alternative prehistorians’ explanations and point out their errors and discrepancies. Yet, they constantly forget about the shortcomings in their own explanations.

My theory posits that epochs and their associated turning points are explained and defined by catastrophes of cosmic origin. The doctrine of world ages may be dismissed as a fairy tale or an idealized utopia. However, I believe this is not necessarily the case. I have identified at least three major ruptures that have left their mark on human history. By combining myths, archaeological facts, and written accounts from ancient authors with mathematics and the natural sciences—particularly astronomy—I elevate my alternative prehistory from a collection of plausibilities and puzzles to a level previously considered unattainable.

The first turning point in human history occurred forty thousand years ago when the Red Sun, a dwarf star, passed through the solar system and devastated it. The Red Sun destroyed the fifth planet and altered the other planets’ orbital parameters. Amid a storm of radioactive particles and intense heat from this additional sun, a mass extinction event occurred on Earth. The subsequent rebuilding of civilization from nearly nothing is remembered in Egyptian mythology as the Zep Tepi era.

Approximately 12,000 years ago, a second cataclysm took place when the Moon was captured. A sky-high wave crashed over the Earth, triggered by the Moon’s close flyby. The Earth’s axis tilted, the equator shifted, the oceans surged, mountain ranges folded, and land bridges broke apart. Continents were submerged, and entire species of animals vanished instantly or dwindled to numbers too low to ensure long-term survival. The floods remained most vividly in human memory in myths. Among these myths, the story of the Great Flood in the Bible stands out.

Though less devastating than the previous two cataclysms, the climate catastrophe that occurred about 6,000 years ago was still terrible for those affected. A collision with a rogue minor planet transformed Venus into a planetary sun. The additional heat radiation transformed Earth into a sauna. Torrential rains washed entire civilizations into the sea. The era following this third flood saw the emergence of the so-called classical civilizations. We still live in this epoch today.

Image L
A graphical illustration of the eras in human history according to my “true(r)” prehistory theory.
Image by Aloys Eiling

The idea of gradually deteriorating living conditions, as recounted in myths, taught in religions, or written about by ancient writers, is all too human. It’s normal to romanticize the past, even over shorter periods of time. In fact, already, older generations often have a negative perception of the following one.

Even if I dismiss the idea of the ages of the world as a fairy tale or a utopian ideal, the cataclysmic turning points are real and persist in human history and consciousness.

It’s also worth noting that our civilization is not set to last forever. The question is whether we will wait for the sky to fall on our heads or wipe ourselves out in a nuclear war.

As Mephisto in Goethe’s play ‘Faust’ states: And rightly so, since everything created in turn deserves to be annihilated.¹⁵