Companion Book Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Chapter one takes place in the fall of 7640 BCE on a hill in what is now Avebury, England. At that time, large ice caps existed, sea levels were lower, and Europe was one landmass. My characters have fled inland from their caves on the south shore to higher ground. They see a fireball in the sky that is about to strike Earth, and, having been bombarded by many smaller meteorites in the past, fear that a tsunami could wipe them out if it were to strike down in the ocean near them.

The chapter begins with our sun dragging its planets with it as it travels around its long orbit in space. Just as day and night are caused by the earth spinning on its axis, and the seasons are caused by the earth’s orbit around the sun, the ancients also believed that twelve 2,000-year ages are defined by where our sun is as it travels through the Milky Way in a much larger cycle. They called this the “Great Year” because the journey takes 26,000 years to complete.

For a celestial body to move through space, it must have another gravitational object to swing around. The ancients believed that the small, dim, dying star that orbits Sirius, designated Sirius C, travels back and forth around another 26,000-year orbit from Sirius through the Milky Way to where it swings around the outer edge of our solar system. The ancients believed that Sirius C is our unseen second sun! The people of my fiction believed this, as did, and do, the Norte Chico people of ancient Peru. You will meet the Norte Chico in chapter five of the fiction book.

The people in Chapter One of my fiction, who lived over four thousand years before my story begins, recount a legend of a time thousands of years earlier, when a chunk of debris as large as Earth itself flew by Earth and its moon. It didn’t hit them, but it flew so close that its gravitational pull unleashed unimaginable upheaval. These ancient peoples feared that such devastation could recur.

In the year 9500 BCE, as our sun was dragging its planets with it around its orbit in the Milky Way, it passed through a debris field of a supernova. Many fragments from the exploding star streaked past, but some entered our solar system. One such piece, as large as Earth itself, passed close to Neptune, sending one of Neptune’s moons out to the distant edge of our solar system. That moon is now known as the planet Pluto. As it continued on and passed by Saturn, it sent one of its moons into planetary orbit around the sun. That planet is known today as Mercury. Then the boloid crashed into a planet between Mars and Jupiter, smashing it to smithereens and sending rock and ice shooting out in all directions. Some pieces of that planet bombarded Earth for thousands of years. But that piece of extra solar debris was not done wreaking havoc with our solar system. Before plunging into our sun and being consumed, it flew close by Earth and its moon. Its gravitational pull sent our moon spiralling off course and caused Earth to tilt on its axis. In time, our moon settled into an orbit closer to Earth. Tides were higher, Earth’s crust shifted, and its belly ruptured and spewed out molten rock. Fires engulfed the land, ice sheets melted, sea levels rose, and continental landscapes were reshaped. The number of people, animals, plants, and all that flew, crept, walked, or swam on Earth diminished, many disappearing forever.

In his book, Ice Age Civilizations, James Nienhuis cites compelling evidence of this 9500 BCE cosmic catastrophe, as do Allan and Delair.

In his post on Knowth’s website¹, Martin Gray writes:

The ancients believed that the past was not simply a memory but a forewarning of what might lie ahead.

Indeed, that prophecy came true in the fall of 7640 BCE, almost two thousand years after the devastating fly-by.

The story of the 7640 BCE catastrophe was still recounted 4,000 years later at the time of my book. This holocaust is why the people in my fiction study the skies. They are afraid that they will be hit again by a cosmic body.

Mythological accounts from many parts of Europe tell of bright new stars that fell to earth as seven flaming mountains, oceans that rose up in towering waves and surged over the land, and how summer was driven away for a very long time, leaving only cold darkness. Similar myths exist in places all around the world.

Geology provides solid evidence that in the fall of 7640 BC, a bolide from the sky broke apart into seven pieces and splashed down into all seven oceans. This caused untold destruction on Earth, including the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field.

In a paper published in Terra Nova in 1994, Austrian paleontologist Edith Kristan Tollmann and her husband, geologist Alexander Tollmann, postulate that one huge comet broke apart on entry and struck down in all seven oceans around 7640 years BCE. They believe this might explain early Holocene extinctions and possibly legends of the Universal Deluge.

The Tollmanns cite stratigraphic studies of tektites, dendrochronology, and Greenland ice cores containing hydrochloric and sulfuric acids that advocate for an energetic ocean strike. Nitric acids were also found, indicating an extreme heating of the air.

Indeed, many of the highest mountains in England, Scotland and Ireland are littered with beds of sand and gravel containing sea shells deposited in the very recent geological past. This finding supports mythological accounts of vast waves covering the land.

Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, in their book Uriel’s Machine, assert that the 7640 BCE evidence is consistent with the dates of formation of several salt flats and lakes in dry areas of North America and Asia. They argue that these lakes were created by waves several kilometres wide that penetrated deep into continents as a result of oceanic strikes.