Georges Leopold de Cuvier, a naturalist and professor of anatomy at the Sorbonne, published his study of the fossil bones of tetrapods, which became the basis for comparative anatomy of vertebrates. He also developed the famous correlation method. “Give me one single bone, and with its help I will restore the entire skeleton,” said Baron de Cuvier and demonstrated this with success. Using the correlation method, Cuvier successfully reconstructed the extinct ungulates, the flying dinosaur of the Tertiary period, the pterodactyl, and other animals. But he gained even greater fame thanks to the geological introduction to his book, which he later published as a separate book entitled Discourses on Catastrophic Changes in the Earth's Surface. Outlined in it a new theory of the history of the Earth and life on it: originally other living beings lived on the earth,who died as a result of a gigantic catastrophe, cataclysm. Then other living beings were created, more perfect than those that existed in the previous era, but they too died in a new catastrophe. There have been several such disasters in the history of the Earth, the last of which was the flood.
Cuvier's theory of cataclysms (catastrophism) until 1830 successfully competed with other global or private theories about the origin and development of the world - neptunism, plutonism, the first elements of actualism and the mosaic hypothesis. In 1830, the English geologist Charles Loyell published the first part of his book "Foundations of Geology", in which he substantiated actualism in detail. He denied the possibility of sudden and global catastrophes; all major changes that took place on Earth in the past were caused by the same forces that are acting at the present time, only the process of their action will be stretched for a very long time. According to Loyell, in the past, the same processes operated as in the present, they are, as it were, uniform. Uniformism, or actualism, has since become a kind of basic theory and geology, which was then gradually modified. At present, extreme processes are also allowed that are not commensurate with human experience, including catastrophes.
But actualism could not defeat catastrophism completely and completely. From time to time, catastrophism reappears as the basis of the general theory of the origin and development of space, the world and man, or at least as the main cause of some important events in human history.
“It dawned on me when, as a young engineer, I watched molten steel spilling over wet snow-covered ground. The earth exploded with some delay, but extremely abruptly. This push allowed Hans Herbinger (an engineer and amateur astronomer, as indicated on the title page of one of his books) to develop the worldwide theory of the interaction of ice and fire, which he published in 1913.
Herbinger believed that space, the Earth and its inhabitants are one interconnected organism, which is controlled through a long struggle between ice and fire, the force of repulsion and attraction. This state arose already at the time of the inception of space, when a huge cosmic body was burning on the horizon, into which a gigantic object consisting of cosmic ice penetrated. Silence reigned for a long time, but then the water vapor caused such an explosion that threw huge pieces of matter into the cold space. Some of them have become planets in our solar system. All of them were instantly bound by the cold, covered with ice and became dead; and only on Earth did the fight between ice and fire continue. But all planets are subject to the action of the initial and weakening forces of explosion and gravity, which is constant at a certain period. Therefore, each planet spirals closer to its neighbor with a greater mass, and then the entire system falls with a large ice mass on the Sun, in order to then wait for a new explosion and a new beginning.
In its history, the Earth pulled three satellites into its orbit in this way, our Moon is already the fourth. The consequence of this was also a change in four geological eras, the nature of which was determined by the distance of the Moon from the Earth: during the period of the greatest distance, and accordingly the low gravitational force of the Moon, animals of average size and average mental abilities appeared on Earth, and at the same time, at the end of the Tertiary period, our ancestors. At the smallest distance and, accordingly, with the strongest gravitational influence of the Moon, giant creatures with extraordinary mental abilities, distinguished by longevity and civilizing abilities, appeared (the memory of them seems to have been preserved in numerous myths, and also, as one of Herbinger's supporters Hans Schindler Bellamy established,and in material evidence of the civilizing activity of the last giants of the Mesozoic among the people of the Tertiary period - in the monumental buildings in Tiahuanacu in the Andes). In those periods when the Earth did not have satellites such as the Moon, small animals inhabited it. But the influence of the Moon during its spiral approach, according to Herbinger, manifests itself in different regions of the Earth in different ways, therefore, today different people live on Earth in their physical, psychological appearance and cultural level (the “greats” from their environment are capable of influencing with their energy and on the forces of space).manifests itself in different regions of the Earth in different ways, therefore today different people live on Earth in their physical, psychological appearance and cultural level (the “greats” from their environment are capable of influencing the forces of space with their energy).manifests itself in different regions of the Earth in different ways, therefore today different people live on Earth in their physical, psychological appearance and cultural level (the “greats” from their environment are capable of influencing the forces of space with their energy).
The Nazis took advantage of Herbinger's concept.
In 1950, the American researcher Immanuel Velikovsky published his own theory of catastrophes. His book, Worlds Fighting, soon became a bestseller.
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I. Velikovsky built his theory on texts from the Old Testament, using also some data from the field of astronomy, geology, archeology, history and mythology. This allows him to claim an "interdisciplinary" approach. He proceeds primarily from the conviction that the actions of people and what is happening in space, apparently, affect each other - the Sun could really stop in the firmament, if Yahweh wanted it.
The starting point in Velikovsky's hypothesis is the assumption that 3500 years ago Venus approached the Earth at a very dangerous distance, which literally coincides with the time of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. As a result of the approach of Venus, a terrible catastrophe occurred on Earth, which I. Velikovsky describes as follows:
“At one point, civilizations perished. The fauna was destroyed by the waves of the sea, which rolled over the continents of the bulk of stones and silt. The waves of an unprecedented tide killed even the largest animals and swept their bones into layers, which were then covered by other sedimentary rocks. In Siberia, mammoths froze over at one point. At the same time, Egypt was flooded with sea water, and the Pharaoh's army drowned in the Red Sea as a result of the action of the cascading forces, when the waters of the Red Sea first left, and then returned again. The earth plunged into darkness. Then Venus calmed down and departed. After 52 years, she returned to the Earth again, and the next catastrophe occurred … The Earth's axis tilted, and the Sun stopped motionless in the firmament, as the Old Testament says. Centuries passed, Venus affected Mars, it changed its orbit and dangerously affected the Earth. New catastrophes have occurred, which are spoken of in the Bible, as well as in the myths of the peoples of the Middle East."
There are several such disaster theories.
Jacques Bergier and Lewis Powells wrote in 1960 that, in their opinion, there were highly developed civilizations in the distant past that used esoteric principles and high-precision technologies that could also destroy them: “Nothing is easier than the liberation of atomic energy. It is enough to dissolve the salt of pure uranium in heavy water, and heavy water can be obtained by repeated distillation of ordinary water for 25 or 100 years.
Lord Kelvin's Tidal Predictor (1893) -the ancestor of modern analog computers and all cybernetics - was composed of rollers and bits of thread. The Sumerians could have done it.
This approach allowed for a fresh look at the problem of disappeared civilizations. If in the past there were people on Earth who had achieved a state of enlightenment, and if they applied their abilities not only in the field of religion, philosophy and mysticism, but also in the field of objective knowledge and technology, then it is quite possible to assume that they could produce "miracles" even with the simplest means."
Ludwig Soucek developed his concept of the oldest history of mankind, based on a combination of catastrophism and paleocontact hypotheses, and presented it in the books Premonition of Shadows (Prague, 1974) and Premonition of Interconnections (Prague, 1978). He believes that both space aliens and highly developed earthly civilizations took part in the social development of mankind in the prehistoric period and in the era of early history. These civilizations, which apparently disappeared as a result of catastrophes, "could develop in a special, completely unusual way for us and use unconventional means, which, despite their effectiveness, left no material traces, but only the results of their use."
Recently, the British explorer and writer Walter Raymond Drake and the American linguist and cultural historian Roger Williams Wescott have made catastrophism the basis of their concepts. We will also give them the floor.