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| The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture | 
 enlarge | Authors: Richard Firestone, Allen West, Simon Warwick-smith
Publisher: Bear & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00 (47.08 RON)
Buy New: $13.60 (32.02 RON)
You Save: $6.40 (15.07 RON) (32%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 152059
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 1591430615
Dewey Decimal Number: 904.5
EAN: 9781591430612
ASIN: 1591430615
Publication Date: June 5, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 22 | | NEXT » |
Well Researched & Supported December 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love it when scientists can prove what many of us have known for so long - that our civilization is MUCH older than anyone thinks or believes could be possible. This book nicely presents evidence of our ancient history, and gives one food for thought about how the "great flood" really could have happened. The authors use extensive scientific support and research to support their claims of how previous civilizations could have been destroyed. They even argue the other side so as to show they are not only self-serving. The writing is excellent, the science is excellent. This is an important book that helps fill in gaps about our ancient history that are evident in other books.
an interesting corollary December 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have no problem with the main theory of this book, that a body, or bodies from space struck the earth and caused geologic havoc and mass extinction principally to the North American continent as evidenced by the ray-pattern of craters centering on the Hudson's Bay region of Canada. What I would like to draw reader's attention to is the curious coincidence that this body struck the earth at the very same spot geologists (and the author) consider to be the center of the most recent period of glaciation, a process reputedly occurring at the time of impact. It has always puzzled me why such glaciation did not radiate from the pole. Theories put forth to explain this anomaly have always seemed rather forced. Could it be that many of the scars left on the earth by the last glaciation were actually caused by almost unimaginable displacements of water as a result of the impact documented in this book?
I am not competent to assert a final answer to this question. The very notion flies in the face of traditional geology as developed over the past century and a half, however, stronger and longer held ideas have fallen to the wayside in the light of new discovery. Glacial theory is a child of the uniformitarian paradigm. As more and more evidence comes to light, such as is presented in this book, of cataclysmic meteor or comet impact we may be forced to come to grips with a new and rather unsettling story of our planet's past and the implications it may have for our future.
What a winner! November 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First, let me say that I agree with other reviewers -- this book is not to be judged by its cover. It's a very serious (but not in any way forbidding) work of science.
30+ years ago as a geology undergraduate I heard that all important geological processes were slow, uniform, and undramatic. Perhaps because I had grown up in a landscape created by the quite recent glaciers of the last Ice Age, I wasn't entirely convinced. For better or worse, I never became a professional geologist, but ever since I've kept an eye on theories of climate and catastrophe -- a pretty obscure interest at first, but recently much less so. I've read quite a number of theories about what suddenly killed off the mammoths and other large Ice Age critters of North America. Some were fun, but ridiculous -- my favorite one had the Earth suddenly tilting on its axis, causing massive windstorms and an immediately change in climate (the novel which lays out this idea, "The H.A.B. Theory," is quite enjoyable and was still in print last time I checked).
What's different about these guys is that they appear to have nailed it. Some similar books consist mostly of eye-watering trips through obscure references to old scientific papers. Not this one. The three authors have expertise and advanced degrees in a number of scientific fields and they went out and did their own research. They also have a knack for explaining their research to non-scientists. The book is written a bit like a detective story. In each chapter they lay out their questions, do their research, discuss their evidence, reach tentative conclusions, and then move on to explore the next part of the mystery. The book is very well written and has many very useful and interesting photographs. And yes, there are charts and graphs, but nothing scarier than what you saw in 9th-grade math class.
Their conclusion is also amazing -- an impact did it. Meaning that all of us live in the immediate aftermath of a dramatic and bizarre catastrophe. I'd give more specifics, but I don't want to spoil the mystery.
This book is all the more relevant as our attempt to populate the planet with several billion people seems to be resulting in its own dramatic and bizarre catastrophes. I'm going to buy a copy for my father, a retired scientist who also loves geology, and another for the professional geologist who lives down the street. I'll just have to warn them about the cover.
Great book, terrible title & cover September 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Enlightening, with powerful implications September 8, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
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