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Articles
Big Bang Theory


Jason Colavito
2008





  • Read an expanded and updated version of this article in my eBook, Ancient Atom Bombs

In February 2008, global dignitaries gathered to inaugurate the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a repository for plant life designed to withstand nuclear war so survivors could restart civilization with healthy seeds. Magnus Bredeli-Tveiten, who oversaw construction of the vault, told the Associated Press that he expected it to last as long as the 4,500-year-old pyramids of Egypt. However, for a certain percentage of the public, ancient civilizations like Egypt are just one key to a nuclear war that already happened-thousands of years ago.

Believers maintain that in the distant past either extraterrestrials or a lost civilization like Atlantis detonated nuclear weapons, producing terrible devastation. This disaster was recorded, they say, in the Bible, Hindu scriptures, and world mythologies. Sodom and Gomorrah felt the sting of nuclear weapons when “the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens” (Genesis 19:24-25).

The ancient Indian Mahabharata was said to describe a “single projectile charged with all the power of the universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as ten thousand suns rose in all its splendour.” To believers, these sound like eyewitness accounts of nuclear bombs being dropped from above. To sceptics, these sound like imaginative interpretations of the equivalent of prehistoric science fiction.

No mainstream scientist or historian endorses the idea of prehistoric atomic bombs, and nearly all experts believe the evidence cited to support the idea is misinterpreted at best and fraudulent at worst. For example, believers hold that deposits of 28-million-year-old glass found buried in the deserts of Libya are the result of ancient atomic bombs that melted the desert sand. In fact, according to geologist Evelyn Mervine, the glass (while still not completely understood) is likely the result of either a meteorite impact or volcanic action.

What is interesting, though, is not the alleged evidence for ancient atom bombs but rather why people come to embrace a belief in the existence of nuclear devastation in the remote past.

Those who support the theory tend to be believers in a lost civilization like Atlantis or in extraterrestrial intervention in ancient history, the so-called “ancient astronaut” theory popularized by Swiss hotelier Erich von Däniken in the 1960s and ’70s with his book Chariots of the Gods?, its sequels, and movie adaptation. It was von Däniken who introduced mainstream audiences to the idea (borrowed from the French writer Robert Charroux) that the “aliens” had blown up Sodom and Gomorrah with atom bombs.

Unfortunately, there are no reliable statistics to tell us just how many people today believe that the ancient world experienced nuclear war. We do know that surveys conducted by anthropology professor Kenneth L. Feder found that in the 1990s anywhere from a quarter to a third of college students believed Atlantis existed, and a third or more believed “aliens from other worlds visited the earth in the prehistoric past.” By 2003, belief in ancient astronauts had fallen to less than 10%, but more than a third still believed in Atlantis, today often seen as a hotbed of advanced (and atomic) technology.

Though the Atlantis legend has its origins in an unfinished work by Plato written more than 2,500 years ago, the modern version of the Atlantis legend begins with Ignatius Donnelly, an American politician who wrote Atlantis: The Antediluvian World in 1882 to prove that the lost continent was very real and was the origin of all European, Asian, and Native American civilizations.

Donnelly was the first to equate Atlantis with the destructive power of advanced weaponry. In the book he discusses an event from the Bible when “a fire from the Lord consumed two hundred and fifty men” who led a rebellion against Moses (Numbers 16:31-41). Tellingly, though, Donnelly interpreted this event through the lens of the technology of his time: “This looks very much as if Moses had blown up the rebels with gunpowder.” He also thought gunpowder was responsible for explosions in India and Atlantis.

Though Donnelly believed Atlantis was roughly as sophisticated as the pre-industrial Europe of the eighteenth century, those who built on his work steadily expanded the wonders of the lost continent to include everything from lasers to anti-gravity devices to nuclear power, keeping the mythical Atlantis one step ahead of modern technology. By the time of von Däniken, Donnelly’s quaint ideas about gunpowder had gone out the window. Instead, von Däniken argued that biblical explosions, like the one at Sodom, were effected “deliberately, by a nuclear explosion.”

Granted, even nuclear scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb, noted the (thematic, not literal) similarities between passages in the Bhagavad Gita and the destructive power of atomic weapons, but why was it that in the 1970s ancient texts started to seem like historical records of nuclear war?

Ironically enough, von Däniken provides the answer to this question.

“[S]ince the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan,” he wrote, “we know the kind of damage such bombs cause and that living creatures exposed to direct radiation die or become seriously ill.”

Because the nuclear age had produced horrors on a scale previously unimaginable, and because nuclear war was a very real possibility during the Cold War (the Cuban Missile Crisis had occurred just six years before von Däniken published his first book), it made sense that some would begin to look for mythological and historical precedents for otherwise unprecedented events. This relationship between modern technology and the ancient atom bomb theory has kept it current even as so many other “alternative” beliefs of the ’70s -- like psychic spoon bending, EST, and pyramid power--have lost their currency.

In fact, the same day that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened, an article appeared on the American Chronicle website declaring that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Atlantis and the lesser-known lost continent of Mu were all the result of ancient atom bombs. Like von Däniken, author Paul Dale Roberts immediately understood the connection between his reconstruction of the past and his concerns about the present.

“The world is in dire straights (sic) …With the threat of terrorism, crime, global warming, wars and the rumours of wars, new diseases arising, we are facing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

Roberts’s description of ancient atomic warfare leaned heavily on the work of the field’s most popular author, David Hatcher Childress, a self-described Indiana Jones who has investigated what he sees as nuclear anomalies in the ancient history of humanity. In a chapter of his 2000 book Technology of the Gods, he discusses his belief that a nuclear war was once fought in what is now India, among other places. He quickly connected the dots to events then in the news, the development of nuclear weapons in the 1990s in both Pakistan and India, countries that had previously fought several (non-nuclear) wars.

“The echoes of ancient atomic warfare in south Asia continue to this day with India and Pakistan currently threatening each other,” Childress wrote. “Ironically, Kashmir, possibly the site of an earlier atomic war, is the focus of this conflict. Will the past repeat itself in India and Pakistan?”

(Full disclosure: Childress has publicly criticized my earlier discussion of his theories in my 2005 book entitled The Cult of Alien Gods as inaccurate because it linked him with those who believe in alien visitations in the remote past. Childress had published a book entitled Extraterrestrial Archaeology speculating that aliens left structures on the moon and Mars thousands or millions of years ago. He now claims that ancient anomalies are the work of a lost super-civilization.)

Mr. Childress has appeared in countless television documentaries to testify to the advanced state of ancient technology, and cable channels like the History Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel have been complicit in popularizing the story of ancient nuclear weapons, the myth of Atlantis, and the “reality” of ancient astronauts. The echo chamber of the internet reinforces these beliefs among the core of believers. And ancient mysteries sell better than science.

“I have to wonder,” geologist Mervine wrote in 2005, “what inspires such crazy notions and how people such as Von Daniken and Childress manage to sell so many books. Certainly, far more copies of a single one of their books have been sold than, say, all the editions of my igneous petrology textbook.”

For Mervine, the answer comes from the explanatory power of fringe theories, which offer a one-size-fits-all explanation for the otherwise complex and difficult tangles of ancient history. It’s easier to say the aliens or Atlanteans did it than to study the intricacies of history.

While this may be true for the Atlantis theory or the ancient astronaut theory, for the specific case of ancient atom bombs, it seems that contemporary anxieties are being projected backward into the past. Until the first nuclear blast in 1945, no human civilization had possessed the power to completely destroy civilization, but imagining such a civilization in the deep past serves two powerful purposes.
First, it provides a morality tale for the modern world. A great civilization (human or alien) once had the power to destroy the world. They misused the power and destroyed themselves. We must therefore avoid their fate. Second, it provides a comforting ray of hope. Although early human civilization had been destroyed, we are still here today. Humanity can and will survive nuclear war, and the species will go on. The story of ancient atomic bombs, therefore, is a morality tale with a promise for redemption. It tells us that we will be ok even when the technology we create threatens to destroy us. For this reason, the modern myth of ancient atom bombs continues to ricochet around the internet, cable television, and “alternative history” publishers and likely will for years to come.



"Belief in Prehistoric Nuclear War Fuels Modern Fears" first appeared in The Canadian in March 2008. © 2008-2010 Jason Colavito. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this article is strictly forbidden without the express written permission of the author.
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      • Pirate Treasure of the Knights Templar
      • Search for the Lost Giants
      • Forbidden History Reviews
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      • Legends of the Lost
      • Unexplained + Unexplored
      • Rob Riggle: Global Investigator
      • Ancient Apocalypse
    • Book Reviews
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    • Collection: Ancient Alien Fraud >
      • Chariots of the Gods at 50
      • Secret History of Ancient Astronauts
      • Of Atlantis and Aliens
      • Aliens and Ancient Texts
      • Profiles in Ancient Astronautics >
        • Erich von Däniken
        • Robert Temple
        • Giorgio Tsoukalos
        • David Childress
      • Blunders in the Sky
      • The Case of the False Quotes
      • Alternative Authors' Quote Fraud
      • David Childress & the Aliens
      • Faking Ancient Art in Uzbekistan
      • Intimations of Persecution
      • Zecharia Sitchin's World
      • Jesus' Alien Ancestors?
      • Extraterrestrial Evolution?
    • Collection: Skeptic Magazine >
      • America Before Review
      • Native American Discovery of Europe
      • Interview: Scott Sigler
      • Golden Fleeced
      • Oh the Horror
      • Discovery of America
      • Supernatural Television
      • Review of Civilization One
      • Who Lost the Middle Ages
      • Charioteer of the Gods
    • Collection: Ancient History >
      • Prehistoric Nuclear War
      • The China Syndrome
      • Atlantis, Mu, and the Maya
      • Easter Island Exposed
      • Who Built the Sphinx?
      • Who Built the Great Pyramid?
      • Archaeological Cover Up?
    • Collection: The Lovecraft Legacy >
      • Pauwels, Bergier, and Lovecraft
      • Lovecraft in Bergier
      • Lovecraft and Scientology
    • Collection: UFOs >
      • Alien Abduction at the Outer Limits
      • Aliens and Anal Probes
      • Ultra-Terrestrials and UFOs
      • Rebels, Queers, and Aliens
    • Scholomance: The Devil's School
    • Prehistory of Chupacabra
    • The Templars, the Holy Grail, & Henry Sinclair
    • Magicians of the Gods Review
    • The Curse of the Pharaohs
    • The Antediluvian Pyramid Myth
    • Whitewashing American Prehistory
    • James Dean's Cursed Porsche
  • The Library
    • Ancient Mysteries >
      • Ancient Texts >
        • Mesopotamian Texts >
          • Eridu Genesis
          • Atrahasis Epic
          • Epic of Gilgamesh
          • Kutha Creation Legend
          • Babylonian Creation Myth
          • Descent of Ishtar
          • Resurrection of Marduk
          • Berossus
          • Comparison of Antediluvian Histories
        • Egyptian Texts >
          • The Shipwrecked Sailor
          • Dream Stela of Thutmose IV
          • The Papyrus of Ani
          • Classical Accounts of the Pyramids
          • Inventory Stela
          • Manetho
          • Eratosthenes' King List
          • The Story of Setna
          • Leon of Pella
          • Diodorus on Egyptian History
          • On Isis and Osiris
          • Famine Stela
          • Old Egyptian Chronicle
          • The Book of Sothis
          • Horapollo
          • Al-Maqrizi's King List
        • Teshub and the Dragon
        • Hermetica >
          • The Three Hermeses
          • Kore Kosmou
          • Corpus Hermeticum
          • The Asclepius
          • The Emerald Tablet
          • Hermetic Fragments
          • Prologue to the Kyranides
          • The Secret of Creation
          • Ancient Alphabets Explained
          • Prologue to Ibn Umayl's Silvery Water
          • Book of the 24 Philosophers
          • Aurora of the Philosophers
        • Hesiod's Theogony
        • Periplus of Hanno
        • Zoroastrian Fatal Winter
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Fragments of Artapanus
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • Fragments of Bruttius
        • Eusebius' Chronicle
        • Chinese Accounts of Rome
        • Ancient Chinese Automaton
        • The Orphic Argonautica
        • Fragments of Panodorus
        • Annianus on the Watchers
        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Byzantine World Chronicle
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Chronicle to 724
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Pseudo-Diocles Fragmentum
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • Popol Vuh
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Atlantis as Biblical History
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Atlantis and Nimrod
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and Hanno's Periplus
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
          • Amazing New Light (Hoax)
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • History of Paleontology
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • Arabic Names of Egyptian Kings
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • America Known to the Ancients
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Remarkable Discoveries Within the Sphinx (Hoax)
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • The Shaver Mystery >
          • Lovecraft and the Deros
          • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • CIA Search for the Ark of the Covenant
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • The Fall of the Sky
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Poltergeist UFOs
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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