The history of ancient civilisation, as recorded in textbooks, is not a real history, but a patchwork of misconceptions pieced together during the 19th century. It is a fiction which has given rise to innumerable mysteries, puzzles and enigmas, which have in turn left the field open for numerous outlandish speculations claiming to provide an answer. The truth is, however, as presented in the Ages in Alignment series of books, is at once more prosaic and yet infinitely more dramatic than anything imagined by the 'alternative' histories.
Ages in Alignment is the name given to a series of four books which argue that the history of early civilization, as presently understood by scholars, is seriously flawed. More specifically, it is argued that the histories of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Israel, are not aligned properly, and events in these regions which were contemporaneous have been placed centuries apart in the textbooks, making a nonsense of the historical narrative.
Ages in Alignment is heavily influenced by the work and ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky, as well as by that of other scholars of the Velikovsky school, such as Gunnar Heinsohn and Heribert Illig. Like Velikovsky, I argue that world-wide natural catastrophes, caused by extra-terrestrial agencies, occurred within the span of recorded human history. These events, clearly referred to in the legends and traditions of all ancient peoples, had a profound impact upon human societies, and influenced the development of the early civilizations in a fundamental way.
Whilst agreeing with much of what Velikovsky said in Ages in Chaos, Ages in Alignment goes much further; and it is argued that early civilizations arose at a much more recent time than even he believed. Furthermore, the last great event of prehistory, the Deluge which brought the Pleistocene epoch to an end, occurred immediately before the rise of the first civilizations.
In summary, Ages in Alignment proposes that:
- The first civilizations arose in the wake of a tremendous natural catastrophe, recalled in ancient tradition as the Deluge. The disaster was caused by earth's close encounter with an enormous comet - a body recalled in ancient tradition various as Ishtar, Hathor, Typhon, Quetzalcoatl, Lucifer, etc.
- This catastrophe terminated the Pleistocene Age and brought the mass extinctions of the time.
- Immediately after the Deluge, human beings became obsessively interested in the stars. This was the epoch of the first priest-kings and temples of sacrifice. The urge to erect high platforms ('altars') upon which to perform sacrifice delivered to mankind the rudiments of architecture, mathematics, and record-keeping.
- After the Deluge, the earth was electro-magnetically 'recharged,' and a plasma pillar or funnel appeared above the North (and South) Pole. This was the Tower, or Pillar, or Tree of Life, which occurs in all ancient tradition.
- About three centuries later, another cosmic catastrophe, not nearly so violent as the first, once again altered the earth's electrical charge, and the 'Pillar' over the North Pole disappeared. To the inhabitants of the earth, it seemed that the connection between heaven and earth had been severed.
- Two centuries or so later another catastrophe removed the threat posed by the Great Comet, which seemed to have been decapitated. The practice of human sacrifice came (in many regions) to an end.
- A hundred years or so after this a final catastrophe, around 850 BC, brought the age of catastrophes to a definitive end. In celebration, men began to erect enormous temples and monuments of various kinds. Among these were the Giza Pyramids in Egypt. These monuments were built of enormous blocks of stone ('megaliths') and were specifically designed to be earthquake-proof - since the earth's tectonic plates had not yet returned to full stability after the epoch of catastrophes.
- The histories of all the ancient peoples can be aligned precisely in accordance with the sequence of cosmic catastrophes. All of them show detailed correspondences in terms of cosmogonies and cultural ideas.