For thousands of years, people have worshiped the planets Venus and Mars, often without knowing it. Velikovsky had a piece of the truth, as does Richard C. Hoagland.
In ancient times, people were terrified of the planet Mars. Why? The planet Venus sometimes passed close to the Earth, but Mars did so more often and with more devastating effects.
Ancient ritualistic magic and blood sacrifice were feeble attempts to stop Mars from passing close to Earth and causing devastating floods, fires and earthquakes. The long day of Joshua was probably due to a close pass by Mars, as described by Chuck Missler.
Many modern occult practices go back to the dimly seen ancient past, when powerful leaders took advantage of the superstitions of the masses. Certainly, when the Aztecs ripped out the hearts of their victims, that sacrifice could not stop Mars or Venus from coming near to Earth, but it worked because those planets had already settled into their present orbits. The temple prostitutes in ancient Sumer were not serving the gods, but rather enriching the warlords.
But in ancient Sumer, there was a real possibility that one of those rogue planets would come close to Earth.
An awesome force must have knocked those planets out of their proper orbits, and they have only recently settled down into their present places in the sky.
Mars must once have been a moon of a much larger planet, a planet that exploded and formed the asteroid belt plus a few other fragments. Some of those fragments probably got caught up in Jupiter's gravity, while others continued moving outward to form Pluto and the other planetoids and comets in the far distant reaches of our solar system.
Other fragments must have hurtled toward the inner solar system, giving Earth the Moon, while others fell into the sun and were vaporized. The planet Mercury might be a large fragment that managed to escape destruction.
What was life like for the survivors of that ancient catastrophe? In my novel
Origins, Part One: Thor's Hammer, I explore the lives of people who take refuge on the prison planet Earth after their home planet is destroyed in an interplanetary war.
Available on Amazon.
~~~
