The dark traveler
As long ago as 1990, before any of the physical, geological evidence for the Younger Dryas comet impacts had been discovered, astrophysicist Victor Clube and astronomer Bill Napier warned of the view:
that treats the cosmos as a harmless backdrop to human affairs, a view which Academe now often regards as its business to uphold and to which Church and State are only too glad to subscribe.20
Such a view, in Clube and Napier’s prescient 1990 opinion, was dangerous in that its effect was to “place the human species a little higher than the ostrich, awaiting the fate of the dinosaur.”21
As can be seen from the reactions of some members of “Academe” to the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, this view, and what Clube and Napier call the “great illusion of cosmic security”22 that it engenders, are still powerful forces in the world today. Much more than the truth about our own past is at stake, however, for there is a chilling convergence between Clube and Napier’s findings on the one hand, and the findings of Kennett, West and Firestone on the other, as to what the Younger Dryas comet really means for humanity.
To understand the implications of this convergence properly it will be necessary to review some of the discoveries made by Clube, Napier and others in the 1980s and 1990s—discoveries, remember, that are completely independent of the later work of the Kennett/West/Firestone team on the Younger Dryas impacts. To cut a long story short, as I’ve already indicated in Chapter Eleven, the burden of these discoveries is that it is possible—indeed highly probable—that we are not yet done with the comet that changed the face of the earth between 12,800 years ago and 11,600 years ago. Clube and Napier’s work, with important contributions also from the late Sir Fred Hoyle, and from mathematician and astronomer Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, has raised the chilling possibility that the Younger Dryas comet was itself only a fragment of a much larger, giant comet—once perhaps as much as 100 kilometers in diameter—which entered the inner solar system about 30,000 years ago and was captured by the sun and flung into an earth-crossing orbit. It remained relatively intact for the next 10,000 years. Then around 20,000 years ago it underwent a massive “fragmentation event” somewhere along its orbit that transformed it from a single deadly and potentially world-killing object into multiple objects grading down from 5 kilometers to 1 kilometer or less in diameter, each and every one of which would still, in its own right, be capable of causing a global cataclysm.23
The evidence is that it was several fragments on this scale that hit the earth 12,800 years ago, causing the Younger Dryas,24 that we crossed the debris stream of the comet again 11,600 years ago with equally dramatic effects that ended the Younger Dryas,25 and—finally—that we can expect further encounters with the remaining fragments in the future.26 “This unique complex of debris,” write Clube and Napier, “is undoubtedly the greatest collision hazard facing the earth at the present time.”27
The Taurid meteor stream, so called because it produces showers of “shooting stars” that look to observers on the ground as though they originate in the constellation of Taurus, is the most familiar and best-known product of the ongoing fragmentation of the original giant comet. The stream sprawls completely across the earth’s orbit—a distance of more than 300 million kilometers—cutting it in two places so that the planet must pass through it twice a year: in late June and early July (when the “shooting stars” are not visible because they are encountered in daylight) and again from late October into November when a spectacular “Halloween firework” display is put on.28 Since the earth travels more than 2.5 million kilometers along its orbital path every day, and since each passage takes approximately twelve days, it is obvious that the Taurid stream is at least 30 million kilometers “wide” or “thick.” Indeed, what the earth encounters during these two periods is best envisaged as a sort of “tube” or “pipe” of fragmented debris—a bit like a huge doughnut. The geometrical term for such a shape is a “torus.”
“Shooting stars” are harmless—nothing more than tiny meteors burning up in the atmosphere—so why should we be in the least bit concerned about a meteor stream? In the case of the fifty or so distinct and separate meteor streams that have now been discovered by astronomers—the Leonids, the Perseids, the Andromedids, etc—the answer to this question is that in most cases there is probably no danger and nothing to fear. Since most of the particles that they contain are indeed tiny, they represent no threat to the earth.
But it is quite a different matter with the Taurids. As Clube, Napier, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe have demonstrated, the Taurid stream is filled to overflowing with other much more massive material, sometimes visible, sometimes shrouded in clouds of dust, and all of it flying through space at tremendous velocities and intersecting the earth’s orbit twice a year, regular as clockwork, year in year out. Among the massive, deadly members of the Taurid family are Comet Encke, which is estimated to have a diameter of around 5 kilometers. But Comet Encke is not alone. According to Clube and Napier there are also:
between one and two hundred asteroids of more than a kilometer diameter orbiting within the Taurid meteor stream. It seems clear that we are looking at the debris from the breakup of an extremely large object. The disintegration, or sequence of disintegrations, must have taken place within the last twenty or thirty thousand years, as otherwise the asteroids would have spread around the inner planetary system and be no longer recognizable as a stream.29
In addition to Comet Encke, there are at least two other comets in the stream—Rudnicki, also thought to be about five kilometers in diameter, and a mysterious object named Oljiato, which has a diameter of about 1.5 kilometers.30 Initially believed to be an asteroid, this extremely dark, earth-crossing projectile sometimes shows signs, visible in the telescope, of volatility and outgassing and most astronomers now regard it as an inert comet that is in the process of waking up.31 Comet Encke itself is known to have been inert for a long period, until it suddenly flared into life and was first seen by astronomers in 1876.32 It is now understood to alternate regularly, in extended cycles, between its inert and volatile states.
Clube and Napier’s research had convinced them that an as yet undetected companion to Comet Encke is orbiting at the very heart of the Taurid meteor stream.33 They believe that this object is of exceptional size, that it is a comet, and that like Encke and Oljiato it sometimes—for very long periods—shuts itself down. This happens when pitch-like tars that seethe up continuously from its interior during episodes of outgassing become so copious that they coat the entire outer surface of the nucleus in a thick, hardening shell and seal it off completely—perhaps for millennia.34 On the outside all falls silent after the incandescent “coma” and tail have faded away and the seemingly inert object tears silently through space at a speed of tens of kilometers per second. But, at the center of the nucleus, activity continues, gradually building up pressure. Like an overheated boiler with no release valve, the comet eventually explodes from within, breaking up into fragments that can become individual comets, every one of which threatens the earth.
Calculations indicate that this presently invisible object at the heart of the Taurid stream might be as much as 30 kilometers in diameter.35 Moreover, it is thought likely that other large fragments accompany it. According to Professor Emilio Spedicato of the University of Bergamo:
Tentative orbital parameters which could lead to its observation are estimated. It is predicted that in the near future (around the year 2030) the earth will cross again that part of the torus that contains the fragments, an encounter that in the past has dramatically affected mankind.36
Rebirth
The year 2030 is, of course, exactly in the window of danger indicated by the Mayan calendar and Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe. The dinosaur-killing asteroid 65 million years ago was only 10 kilometers in diameter, yet it set off a global firestorm and changed the world forever. A collision with an object 30 kilometers in diameter would—at the very least—mean the end
of civilization as we know it, and perhaps even the end of all human life on this planet. Its consequences, as noted in Chapter Eleven, would certainly be orders of magnitude greater than the Younger Dryas impacts 12,800 years ago that had a thousand times the combined explosive power of all the nuclear devices stockpiled in the world today and that left us as a species with amnesia, obliged to begin again like children with no memory of what went before.
However, it doesn’t have to be like that. First and foremost, the universe might spare us. Imagine crossing that torus is a bit like crossing a six-lane freeway, on foot, wearing a blindfold. Luckily for you, however, there’s not much heavy traffic on the road, so though you have to cross the freeway twice a year you usually don’t bump into much. What makes some crossings more risky than others, however, is the fact that the big trucks and other heavy traffic do have a tendency to cluster and bunch in places. Effectively what Clube and Napier have done with their calculations, backtracking the orbits of known objects in the Taurid “freeway,” is to issue a warning that now and for the coming decades, our crossings carry a greatly enhanced risk of a series of collisions with some very menacing “heavy traffic.”
The evidence that just such a series of collisions occurred between 12,800 years ago and 11,600 years ago and that fragmentation of the progenitor giant comet that gave rise to all the Taurid objects was the cause, should, at the very least, focus our minds. No longer are we dealing with something that only happens at intervals of multiple millions of years, but rather with what appears to be a cataclysmic process that is still unfolding within the framework of historical time.
Even so, we need not give up hope, nor waste a single moment of our precious lives embracing gloom and doom. While I am convinced a civilization flourished during the Ice Age and had mastered advanced sciences that seemed like magic to more primitive cultures, I do not believe that it followed our own particular path of technological development. That path has many negative consequences, but it equips us with abilities that the lost civilization clearly lacked—in particular, the ability to intervene in our immediate cosmic environment and to deflect or destroy asteroids and comets that threaten the very survival of humanity.
What it will take is the recognition that we are, after all, one species, one people, one family, and that rather than waste our energies on murderous feuds in the name of “God,” or “country,” or political ideology, or selfish greed, the time has come for love and harmony to displace fear and turmoil in every aspect of our lives, so that that we can secure the human future. If we are to do this, we will have to stop seeking out our own reflections in the mirror and learn to look up into the cosmos instead, we will have to banish hatred and suspicion and learn to pool our resources, our intelligence and our talents in a grand effort for the redemption of mankind.
We will, in short, have to awaken to the full mystery of the magnificent gift of consciousness and realize we must not squander it an instant longer.
For this, too, was the promise of the Mayan calendar—that we who are alive today will find ourselves at the threshold of a new age of human consciousness. If we can bring that age to birth, with all it implies, then preventing the remaining fragments of the Younger Dryas comet from devastating the earth will be child’s play and in the process we will have discovered, perhaps for the first time in more than 12,000 years, who we really are.
It is our choice.
It always has been.
Nothing stands in our way but ourselves.
1. Overview of Gobekli Tepe with Enclosure D in the foreground.
2. Enclosure D with the enigmatic Pillar 43 at left.
3. The author with Professor Klaus Schmidt at Gobekli Tepe in 2013. Professor Schmidt (at left of picture) passed away in 2014.
4. Eastern central pillar, Enclosure D.
5. Pillar plinth.
6. Detail from west side of pillar figure’s belt.
7. Pillar 43 in Enclosure D at Gobekli Tepe. This early photograph was taken by the excavator, Klaus Schmidt. Subsequently the lower part of the pillar showing the scorpion was reburied.
8. Enclosure B at Gobekli Tepe.
9. The author with unfinished T-shaped pillar abandoned in the quarry at Gobekli Tepe.
10. The author with geologists Robert Schoch of Boston University (left) and Danny Natawidjaja (center) at Gunung Padang, Indonesia, studying scans of the interior of the pyramid.
11. The author with Danny Natawidjaja at Gunung Padang.
12, 13. Overview of the principal terraces at Gunung Padang. In this form the site has been known to archaeology for a century. But only when geophysical survey work began in 2011 was it realized that there are hidden structures and much earlier layers of construction beneath the terraces.
14. The author with Randall Carlson at Dry Falls.
15. Wallula Gap, “the gathering of the waters,” scabland and the “Twin Sisters” in the background.
16. The giant current ripples of Camas Prairie, some more than fifty feet high.
17. “Boulder Park,” Washington State. Huge boulders of 10,000 tons and more were carried here in icebergs by the cataclysmic floods at the end of the Ice Age.
18. Mount Ararat viewed over the ruins of Zvarnots Cathedral, Armenia.
19. Entrance passageway and stone door—Derinkuyu underground “city,” Turkey.
20. The Temple of Horus at Edfu, Upper Egypt.
21. Vignette from the mysterious Edfu Building Texts. The texts leave us in no doubt that the “gods” of the “early primeval age” were sailors and navigators. After the destruction of their island homeland they are said to have wandered the world in ships.
22–27. Enigmatic Building Texts and scenes from the Temple of Horus at Edfu.
28. Scene from the Temple of Horus at Edfu. Horus does battle with his rival Set who takes the form of a hippopotamus.
29. Edfu hieroglyphs.
30. Thoth, the scribe of the gods who wrote down the words of the Seven Sages.
31, 32. The astronomically aligned monuments of Egypt’s Giza Plateau: A “book descended from the sky”?
33. Aerial view of the Sphinx and its Temples.
34. The ancient megalithic limestone core of the “Valley Temple.” Its blocks weigh up to 100 tons.
35. The Sphinx with the “Dream Stela” between its paws.
36. The granite elements of the “Valley Temple” were added in Dynastic times to the ancient, preexisting limestone structure.
37. The huge limestone blocks of the “Valley Temple” were quarried from around the core body of the Sphinx when the Sphinx was made, and are therefore the work of the same culture.
38. The author at Baalbek with the southernmost Trilithon block at his feet. The wall behind him, built on top of the Trilithon, is a later Arab fortification.
39. The three huge Trilithon blocks in the west side of the U-shaped megalithic wall flanking, but not touching, the platform of the Temple of Jupiter.
40. The author’s right foot is placed in front of the fragment of a Roman column drum used as a block in the foundations beneath the Trilithon.
41. The Roman column drum was excavated and measured by the German Archaeological Institute, who believe it could not be the result of later Arab repairs to the foundations and that the Trilithon must, therefore, be the work of the Romans.
42. A fortification wall built by the Arabs at Baalbek using recycled Roman materials. Note the column drum placed horizontally to the right of the arch.
43. Close-up of the recycled column drum in the Arab fortification wall. Note the drum is perfectly flattened at top and bottom exactly like the column drum in the foundations beneath the Trilithon. The argument that the Arabs lacked the technical expertise to cut and fit blocks so precisely therefore makes no sense.
44. Northern arm of the U-shaped megalithic wall surrounding the platform of the Temple of Jupiter. Note the smaller size of the blocks with which the platform itself (right side of picture) is built.
45. The author standing on the southern arm of the U-shaped megalithic wall with the six remaining columns of the Temple of Jupiter on the edge of the platform behind him.
46. The author, for scale, standing on the 970-ton “Stone of the Pregnant Woman” still in situ in the quarries at Baalbek. The block visible beneath it, to the left, was newly excavated in 2014 and is estimated to weigh 1,650 tons.
47. A third block in the quarries weighing 1,250 tons.
48. The tips of buried megalithic pillars jut out from a hillside at Karahan Tepe, sister site to Gobekli Tepe.
49. The “Astronomical Tower” at Harran. In its present form it dates from the Islamic period, but it occupies the site of an earlier tower that stood within a temple dedicated to the Moon God of the Sabians.
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