Let me start by being clear that I am no blind adherent to orthodox science, especially concerning the late Pleistocene. I think there is overwhelming evidence for an impact event causing the Younger Dryas and the Late Pleistocene Extinction. Having grown up just a stone's throw from the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, it is very disturbing to see the studied neglect with which that site (and pretty much every paleoindian site east of the Mississippi) is treated by "mainstream" archaeology and related disciplines.
This book has no relation to those theories. "Cataclysm!" is pure lunatic fringe, tin foil hat territory. The frequent references to Velikovsky put things into perspective. As a summary, the authors propose that a super dense, still luminescent fragment of an exploding star came careening thru the solar system 11500 years ago. In a close encounter with Earth, the entire planet was reshaped. Entire continents sank into the sea, the Rockies, Alps and Andes rose up practically overnight, and the earth's axis got its tilt. Not only was the Earth affected, the entire solar system from the moons of Mars, to the elliptical orbits of the planets, to asteroids and other minor rocks and interplanetary debris are all attributable to this one event (fortunately, the planets were all in line so each could be visited in turn). The authors are quite explicit that this was not a comet, meteor or asteroid. Because why resort to real things that actually exist and are pretty well understood, when you can conjure up physically impossible nonsense?
The book is well documented, but many of the sources are a century or more old. So much of the incongruities and mysteries are little more than Victorian era drivel. Large portions of the book are nothing more than fanciful descriptions of what things would look like under their imagined scenarios. In a way though, you have to admire the authors' dedication to their theme. In a solar system 4.5 billion years old there is not a single quirk, oddity, or even mundane characteristic in either the heavens or on Earth that they won't attribute to arising in an instant only 11500 years ago.
You could write a book disproving this claptrap point by point, but there are two things that really stick out as inescapable oversights. If, barely more than 10000 years ago, the Earth encountered a force so powerful as to resurface the entire planet and literally wrench it in its orbit, the evidence would be a bit stronger than a few archaeological anomalies. We certainly wouldn't be here to puzzle over the aftermath. But most remarkable, is that they get the date wrong. 11500 years ago was the end, not the beginning, of the Younger Dryas. Whatever caused the climatic upset and its associated events took place around 13000 years ago. This date is universally accepted by impact theorists, Clovis mammoth slaughterer devotees, and everyone in between. By 11500 ya, the upset was coming to a close and earth was back on the mend, ready for the remaining humans to try this new thing called "farming".
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