An Ancient Warning,

A Global Message,
From the End of the Last Ice Age

© By ROBERT M. SCHOCH, PH.D.

A
t the end of the last ice age, some 12,000
years ago, Earth underwent dramatic cata-
clysmic changes. It was not simply a matter
of the climate gradually warming and the
glaciers melting. No, something very sudden
and very unusual took place, unlike anything, by orders of
magnitude, which we have experienced since.
The civilisations and high cultures of that remote
time were either utterly destroyed, or thrown for a mighty
setback. Knowledge was lost, order devolved to chaos, and
a dark age lasting thousands of years ensued. Yet, not all
records were lost.
Unrecognised until recently, consistently repeated
petroglyph forms (engravings on rocks) around the globe
reproduce what ancient peoples observed. Mirroring those
petroglyphs is a mysterious and barely known text that may
record in greater detail what happened when our world was
thrown into turmoil.

The Younger Dryas

Approximately 15,000 to 11,000 years ago Earth experi-
enced a series of climatic fluctuations. It had been extremely
cold, with continental glaciers extending much further than
they do today, but the climate started to warm. Then there
was a short cold spell, known as the Younger Dryas, before
the final warming and the “official” end of the last ice age.
Geologists have long argued over how quickly or gradually
Earth’s climate can change from very cold glacial conditions
to modern-like conditions, and vice versa. The classical
view is that such changes may happen very quickly from
a geological perspective, perhaps over a few hundred to a
thousand years or more, but relatively gradually from a hu-
man perspective. The latest research indicates otherwise.
Studying Greenland ice core data, from which tem-
perature and climatic history can be extracted by analysing
changes in various isotopes and dust content at a virtually
year-by-year scale, J.P. Steffensen (Niels Bohr Institute,
Catherine Ulissey and Robert Schoch standing next to
University of Copenhagen) and his colleagues determined a moai on Easter Island. (Photograph courtesy of
that such climatic transitions can in some cases occur in R. Schoch and C. Ulissey.)
only a few years.1 They also pinpointed precise dates for the

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NEW DAWN 15
climate changes. According to their study, the cooling that Vaporised and displaced water would rain down on Earth,
marks the beginning of the Younger Dryas dates to about and tsunamis would wash across coastal areas, all serving
10,900 BCE. This cooling was very rapid from a geologi- to warm the planet and bring the ice age to a final end. But
cal perspective, but while some parameters show transitions even with a comet, or a series of comets, bombarding the
over just a few years, other factors (for instance, changes in oceans, could the warming happen as quickly and dramati-
the dust record) are more gradual and seem to have respond- cally as the Greenland ice cores suggest? Should comets be
ed much more slowly. implicated in a warming transition, or does the evidence
The warming at the end of the Younger Dryas, which rather suggest that comets will in most cases cause a cooling
also heralds the end of the last ice age, began about 9,700 event? If not comets, what?
BCE and may have occurred within an incredible three
years – for all practical purposes instantaneously; given our The Fourth State of Matter
current inability to resolve the finest details of something My attention turned to another outer space phenomenon:
that happened so long ago, it may have literally happened Plasma – ionized particles and associated intense electrical
overnight. and magnetic phenomena that may originate as an outburst
How do we explain this pattern of abrupt climatic shifts? from our Sun, or possibly from the interactions of other
Some years ago I hypothesised that comets bombarding extraterrestrial objects, such as a close flyby of an electrical-
Earth initiated the end of the last ice age.2 A comet hitting ly charged asteroid or comet, or maybe even due to a large
the land or shallow ocean, or exploding about the land’s object colliding with our Sun. The concept of a big chunk of
surface, may have scattered dust and debris into the atmos- rock or ice from outer space – a meteor, comet, or asteroid –
phere causing global cooling, which, although relatively colliding with Earth is easy to grasp. But plasma?
sudden, would take some years to reach its full extent. This Plasma is not necessarily readily familiar to the average
pattern fits well with the cooling at 10,900 BCE. Since I first person. Sometimes referred to as the fourth state of matter
hypothesised such an event, compelling evidence of a comet (in addition to solids, liquids, and gases), plasma consists of
exploding over North America at 10,900 BCE has been ions (electrically charged atoms or particles) and constitutes
presented.3 such familiar phenomena as lightning, fire, and the glowing
What about the warming event of circa 9,700 BCE? material in a neon tube. The northern and southern polar
Initially I hypothesised that comets hitting not the land or lights – the aurora – are plasma phenomena, caused by the
shallow water, but the deep oceans, may have brought about interaction between the solar wind (plasma emitted by the
this warming. A comet, I speculated, might break the thin Sun) and Earth’s magnetic field and magnetosphere.
oceanic crust, releasing heat from the hot magma beneath. Today lightning is a relatively minor weather phenom-

Figure 1. Rongorongo tablet.

(Photograph from: William J.
Thomson, “Te Pito Te Henua,
or Easter Island,” Report of the
U.S. National Museum, Under
the Direction of the Smithsonian
Institution, for the Year Ending June
30, 1889, 1891, 447-552, plate XLII.)

Figure 2. Rongorongo tablet.

(Photograph from: Katherine Pease
Routledge, The Mystery of Easter
Island: The Story of an Expedition,
London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney,
1919, figure 98.)

16 NEW DAWN ■
July-August 2010 www.newdawnmagazine.com
 Easter Island moai. (Photograph courtesy of R. Schoch and C. Ulissey.)
enon, and the aurora are little more than pretty lights in the such a short span of time only that it cannot answer the
sky, offering no threat to the inhabitants on Earth, but I do question.
not believe this was always the case. In particular, our Sun is For one big outburst every ten thousand years, for ex-
not as stable as most generally believe. It undergoes relative- ample,... The Earth’s magnetic field could clearly not hold
ly regular small-scale variations, such as the 11-year sunspot up the incoming gas, and it would indeed drive down
cycle, as well as longer-term patterns (perhaps on the order to the atmospheric level... This breakdown would be
of millennia and more). Presently unpredictable instabili- in the form of a series of sparks, burning for extended
ties of the Sun can result in mass ejections of plasma (solar periods of time and carrying currents of hundreds of
millions of amperes. One might search whether there is
storms) that may reach Earth with far-ranging consequences.
any geological record of fusing and vitrification of rock
An 1859 solar storm, the Carrington Event, though relatively or sand which cannot be accounted for by volcanic or
tame from a geological perspective, resulted in unusual au- meteoritic events. 4
rora seen around the world. Additionally, telegraph systems
failed. If an equivalent solar storm hit today, possibly our Records Engraved on Rocks
modern electrical grids and communication systems would
be devastated with untold consequences. Arguably, the Car- Four decades later, Dr. Anthony L. Peratt (a plasma
rington Event was minor compared to other past events. physicist with Los Alamos National Laboratory) addressed
In 1962 the astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the topic that Gold discussed.5 Powerful plasma discharges,
Cornell University, Thomas Gold (1920-2004; recipient of much more powerful than the aurora observed in the present
the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1985) day, form structures known as plasma columns that can ex-
wrote: pand in some places and constrict or narrow in other places
(due to “pinch instabilities”). In profile these plasma col-
The question I would like to tackle is whether solar
outbursts of the present day [such as the 1859 event]
umns can form donut shapes and may look like intertwin-
are representative of all that has happened in geologic ing snakes, a stack of circles, or even resemble human stick
times or whether much greater outbursts have occurred
from time to time. Our evidence that nothing very vio- Continued on page 19...
lent has taken place in historic times is concerned with

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NEW DAWN 17
 Inset images: Plasma configurations, petroglyphs, and rongorongo glyphs. (Plasma and petroglyph illustrations courtesy of Dr.
Anthony L. Peratt, reprinted with permission from IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, December 2003, vol. 31)
Background image courtesy of R. Schoch and C. Ulissey.

18 NEW DAWN ■
July-August 2010 www.newdawnmagazine.com
figures. In some cases the stick figure will have an upper rongorongo intensely, these enigmatic hieroglyphs, just like
cup shape (head) that has the appearance of a bird in profile. the petroglyphs, indeed appear to reproduce intense electri-
Peratt and his colleague W.F. Yao record that observers of cal and plasma phenomena. We see the same donut-like and
the Carrington Event reported seeing “figures in the sky as intertwining shapes, the same odd humanoid figures, the
if drawn with fire on a black background.”6 same bird-like heads. The similarities are undeniable.
Peratt has studied ancient petroglyphs found around the Although the Western discovery of the island (often re-
world that are not only remarkably similar to one another, ferred to by its Polynesian name, Rapa Nui) dates to Easter
but apparently record with a high degree of accuracy the Sunday 1722, not until the 1860s did Europeans became
configurations that intense electrical and high-energy aware of rongorongo. Unfortunately, between missionary
plasma phenomena would form in the skies. Peratt et. al.7 zeal attempting to separate new converts from old pagan
have recorded and analysed the orientations of innumerable ways, and internecine warfare, almost all of the rongorongo
petroglyphs spread over 139 countries, and not only do they tablets were burned or otherwise destroyed. Today just
share many similar morphologies, but upwards of two dozen remain.10 Fur-
they are also characterised by similar thermore, natives literate in rongorongo
orientations. The petroglyph locations were killed in fighting, succumbed to
share a distinct southern field-of-view, ...these enigmatic disease, or were carried off in slave
and Peratt and Yao concluded that the raids. By the late nineteenth century, no
associated plasma phenomenon showed hieroglyphs, just one could genuinely read the rongoron-
“relativistic electron flow inward at like the petroglyphs, go script.
Earth’s south polar axis and hyperve- Not only do the rongorongo tablets
locity proton impacts around the north indeed appear to remain undeciphered, but there is no
polar axis.”8 Intense radiation, including agreement among researchers concern-
x-rays and synchrotron radiation would reproduce intense ing even the fundamentals of rongoron-
have been given off. electrical and plasma go. How far back in time it may go is a
subject of debate. Some scholars assert
The Easter Island phenomena. it was invented on Easter Island during
Connection the late eighteenth century, in imitation
I was aware of Peratt’s work, and of European writing the natives had
through Peratt I knew of Gold’s specula- observed. A researcher in this camp is
tions, but until recently I had not given them ample con- the linguist Steven Roger Fischer. After
sideration – not until my wife, Catherine Ulissey, and I years of study, Fischer concluded it was a post-European
returned from a brief excursion to Easter Island (January contact invention. Furthermore, according to Fischer, the
2010), home of those strange giant heads, the moai, as well majority of surviving rongorongo texts are cosmogonies or
as a perplexing undeciphered “script” carved on wooden procreation chants that repeat, over and over, the generic
tablets, known as rongorongo. One evening, Katie suggested formula of X copulates with Y to form Z. An example:
that we re-watch a video written and narrated by David Tal- “All the birds copulated with the fish: there issued forth the
11
9
bott, Symbols of An Alien Sky, which features Peratt’s work sun.” In other words, the rongorongo tablets are an Easter
connecting petroglyphs and plasma. As we watched the Island kama sutra! Fischer’s “decipherment” has not re-
video, Katie turned to me and suggested that the rongorongo ceived widespread acceptance.
script, too, is a record of plasma phenomena in the ancient Other researchers believe the rongorongo script has
skies. This insight spurred me into action. Studying the an ancestry thousands of years old, though the surviving

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 Nazca geoglyphs compared to rongorongo glyphs and an Easter Island petroglyph. (Photographs courtesy of R. Schoch.)

wooden tablets are at most a couple of hundred years old. studied, I believe the rongorongo tablets record plasma con-
The known tablets are copies of copies of copies... For many figurations in the very ancient skies. Each glyph may show
centuries scribes, not able to truly read the script, piously one of the forms the plasma column took. In sequence, they
copied and recopied something they knew was important record, like a scientific record, what was happening in the
and held in reverence. Brother Joseph-Eugène Eyraud wrote skies. Supporting this interpretation are Rapa Nui words and
in 1864, “But the little they [the Easter Islanders] make of legends. Explorer Francis Mazière recorded an indigenous
these tablets persuades me to think that these characters, name for the island as “Matakiterani,” or “eyes gazing at the
probably a script in origin, are for them now just simply a sky.”14 He also recorded a legend of the sky falling:
custom they preserve without attempting to account for it.”12 In the days of Rokoroko He Tau the sky fell.
Far from being an indigenous creation of the Easter
Islanders, some researchers suggest the rongorongo script Fell from above on to the earth.
originated in parts of Polynesia well west of Easter Island, The people cried out, ‘The sky has fallen in the days of
or perhaps even in China. Others look to South America. King Rokoroko He Tau.’
Still others have seen similarities between rongorongo He took hold: he waited a given time. The sky returned; it
characters and the enigmatic ancient scripts of the Indus went away and it stayed up there.15
Valley civilisation. One researcher seriously suggested
that rongorongo is related to Egyptian hieroglyphics.13 I This legend could refer to strange plasma configurations,
have long advocated that there is good evidence supporting perhaps even manifested in part as tremendous bolts of
cultural contact across both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans lightning, seen in the sky and making contact with the land.
in remote ancient times, but looking carefully at such Subsequently the plasma “went away” and the sky returned
rongorongo analyses, I do not find them particularly con- to normal. The legendary king’s name bears a striking
vincing. A stylized fish, human figure, Sun, or vulva could similarity to “rongorongo” and “Tau” is similar to “ta’u,” a
conceivably look similar across unconnected cultures. category of inscriptions commemorating a series of deeds
Perhaps treating rongorongo as a script, as a form of or events.16 When a staff covered with rongorongo texts
writing comparable to an alphabetical language, or even as was collected in 1870 by Chilean naval officers, the com-
a script based on pictographs, ideographs, or hieroglyphics, mander Don Anacleto Goñi reported that the natives could
is a wrong or incomplete approach. This brings us back to not decipher them but “we, in asking explanations of the
the plasma hypothesis. Like the petroglyphs that Peratt has natives about said staff, were shown the sky and the hiero-
glyphs that [the staff] contained with such respect that I was

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July-August 2010 www.newdawnmagazine.com
inclined to believe that these hieroglyphs recalled something less dramatic plasma phenomena since 9,700 BCE, which
sacred.”17 may have also been recorded. Some of our physical records
Curiously, the few surviving rongorongo tablets have may preserve oral traditions passed down over many genera-
many sequences of glyphs in common. This suggests they tions, or like the rongorongo, may be copies of copies of
are based on a common source, they are recording the same copies….)
phenomena, and they fit together to form a complete whole. The plasma event of 9,700 BCE eradicated advanced
It is similar to finding ancient manuscripts in the Middle civilisations and high cultures of the time (the mythic
East. Piecing together fragments of the Book of Daniel, for garden of Eden and the very real builders of Göbekli Tepe
instance, the entire work emerges. come to mind), and the radiation emanating from the plasma
Here is another enigma: Easter Island lies some 2,300 may have affected mental and psychical abilities. Perhaps
miles (3,700 kilometres) west of the coast of South America. this is the basis for a universal myth of a Golden Age, a
On the mainland, in modern Peru, are time when beings on Earth had mental
found the Nazca lines and geoglyphs – abilities far surpassing those of later
huge drawings on the ground. Curiously, times. The 9,700 BCE event may be the
some of these drawings are hauntingly The plasma original basis for the Atlantis legends;
reminiscent of both Peratt’s petroglyphs the timeframe fits well with Plato’s ac-
and rongorongo glyphs. Are the Nazca event of 9,700 count. People cowered for their lives;
geoglyphs part of the same story? Peratt BCE eradicated they sought shelter in caves, under cliffs,
et al. mention the Nazca lines and Nazca in dwellings built of thick stone or
pottery decoration as possible depictions advanced carved into mountainsides. Humankind
of plasma phenomena. I see similari- was thrown into a dark age for thou-
ties between Easter Island petroglyphs, civilisations and sands of years, only to reemerge with
rongorongo glyphs, Nazca geoglyphs, high cultures vague and scattered memories of what
and plasma configurations. had happened. Some of those memories
of the time... took physical shape in the megalithic
A Plasma Cataclysm architecture found around the world –
Returning to the end of the last ice what better way to attempt an escape
age, although there have been climatic from fierce skies than in a protective
fluctuations since then, the last major global warming event solid stone “fallout shelter”? While most memories were
occurred around 9,700 BCE. I hypothesise a major plasma vague, becoming little more than forebodings and legends of
event occurred then, one that had dramatic, catastrophic, the fury of the gods against the ancestors, there may be one
cataclysmic, effects globally. Plasma hitting the surface of record that precisely details exactly what happened in the
Earth could heat and fuse rock, incinerate flammable ma- skies 11,700 years ago: the rongorongo writings.
terials, melt ice caps, vaporise shallow bodies of water, and The rongorongo tablets may constitute the oldest surviv-
send the climate into a warming spell. The release of pres- ing texts, thousands of years older than the Judeo-Christian
sure that follows the melting of thousands-of-metres-thick Bible. Isolated on their tiny island, the Easter Islanders can
ice sheets can induce earthquakes and even cause hot rock be compared to medieval monks closely copying and recop-
under pressure to melt and erupt to the surface as volcanoes. ying their treasured written archives. Maybe that is why, of
Interacting with the magnetic field and magnetosphere, this all places, the detailed record survives on this remote little
extreme plasma event may have even affected the rotation Pacific island. The sequences of the rongorongo glyphs may
and axis of Earth. This is the event recorded by petroglyphs, record the plasma configurations seen in the skies as they
geoglyphs, the rongorongo texts, and other artistic depic- writhed and twisted, morphing from one form to another.
tions around the world. (Admittedly, there may have been Extremely accurate observations, meticulously recorded,

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NEW DAWN 21
may store valuable scientific information. Now it is impor- faunal Extinctions and the Younger Dryas Cooling”, Proceedings
tant to assemble the surviving tablets, currently scattered of the National Academy of Sciences, of the United States of
among museums around the globe, and decipher the details America, vol. 104, no. 41, 16016-16021 (9 October 2007).
of their message. This is not just an exercise in reconstruct- 4. Thomas Gold, “Large Solar Outburst in the Past”, Conference
ing the past, but could be crucial to the survival of modern at the Vatican Academy of Sciences, October 1962, Pontificiae
civilisation. The rongorongo tablets may record not just the Academiae Scientiarum Scripta Varia, vol. 25, 159-174 (1963);
material in brackets added by R. Schoch; quoted in Peratt et al.
plasma configurations, but information on the first signs to
2007, 778-779, and Peratt and Yao, 2008, 2 [see endnotes 6 and 7].
expect, perhaps instabilities on the Sun’s surface or subtle
5. Anthony L. Peratt, “Characteristics for the Occurrence of a
changes in the atmosphere, before a cataclysmic plasma
High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity”, Institute
outburst. of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Plasma
Thomas Gold, in an offhand way, guessed that major Science, vol. 31, no. 6, 1192-1214 (December 2003).
plasma events might affect Earth approximately every ten
6. A. L. Peratt and W. F. Yao, “Evidence for an Intense Solar Out-
thousand years. It has been 11,700 years since the last one; burst in Prehistory”, Physica Scripta (The Royal Swedish Acad-
the next one could arrive at any moment! Let us fully under- emy of Sciences), 13 pages (December 2008); quote from page 3.
stand what the ancients had to say to us – the warning and 7. Anthony L. Peratt, John McGovern, Alfred H. Qöyawayma,
instructions they may have left for us – before it is too late. Marinus Anthony Van der Sluijs, and Mathias G. Peratt, “Char-
acteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora
In the next issue of New Dawn, Robert Schoch discusses the as Recorded in Antiquity Part II: Directionality and Source”,
Easter Island connection to the southern Turkey Neolithic Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on
site Göbekli Tepe. Plasma Science, vol. 35, no. 4, 778-807 (August 2007).
8. Peratt and Yao, 1.

Footnotes:
9. David Talbott, Symbols of an Alien Sky, Episode One [video],
MIKAMAR Publishing, 2009.
1. Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Katrine K. Andersen, Matthias Bigler, 10. Steven Roger Fischer, Rongorongo: The Easter Island Script,
Henrik B. Clausen, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Hubertus Fischer, Ku- Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
miko Goto-Azuma, Margareta Hansson, Sigfús J. Johnsen, Jean
11. Fischer, 1997, 259. For another recent approach to deciphering
Jouzel, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Trevor Popp, Sune O. Rasmus-
rongorongo, which has received strong criticism in some quarters
sen, Regine Röthlisberger, Urs Ruth, Bernhard Stauffer, Marie-
and is not generally accepted at this time, see M. de Laat, Words
Louise Siggaard-Andersen, Árn E. Sveinbjörnsdóttir, Anders
Out of Wood: Proposals for the decipherment of the Easter Island
Svensson, and James W. C. White, “High-Resolution Greenland
script, Delft, The Netherlands: Eburon, 2009.
Ice Core Data Show Abrupt Climate Change Happens in Few
Years”, Science, vol. 321, 680-684 (1 August 2008). 12. Fischer, 1997, 12; material in brackets added by R. Schoch.
2. Robert M. Schoch with Robert Aquinas McNally, Voyages of 13. For a discussion of these various theories, see Fischer, 1997;
the Pyramid Builders: The True Origins of the Pyramids from Alfred Metraux, Easter Island: A Stone-Age Civilization in the
Lost Egypt to Ancient America, New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Pacific, New York: Oxford University Press, 1957; Werner Wolff,
Penguin, 2003. Island of Death: A New Key to Easter Island’s Culture through an
Ethno-psychological Study, New York: J. J. Augustin, 1948.
3. R. B. Firestone, A. West, J. P. Kennett, L. Becker, T. E. Bunch,
Z. S. Revay, P. H. Schultz, T. Belgya, D. J. Kennett, J. M. Erland- 14. Francis Mazière, Mysteries of Easter Island, New York: W. W.
son, O. J. Dickenson, A. C. Goodyear, R. S. Harris, G. A. Howard, Norton, 1968, 9.
J. B. Kloosterman, P. Lechler, P. A. Mayewski, J. Montgomery, R. 15. Mazière, 1968, 57.
Poreda, T. Darrah, S. S. Que Hee, A. R. Smith, A. Stich, W. Top- 16. Fischer, 1997, 288.
ping, J. H. Wittke, and W. S. Wolbach, “Evidence for an Extrater-
17. Fischer, 1997, 26; material in brackets added by Fischer.
restrial Impact 12,900 years ago that Contributed to the Mega-

ROBERT M. SCHOCH, Ph.D., is renowned for his work on re-dating the Great
Sphinx. Based on his geological studies, he determined that the Sphinx’s ori-
gins date prior to dynastic times. He has also focused his attention on the Great
Pyramid and various other temples and tombs in Egypt, as well as studying simi-
lar structures around the world. Dr. Schoch is an author and coauthor of both
technical and popular books, including the trilogy with R. A. McNally: Voices of
the Rocks: A Scientist looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations (1999), Voy-
ages of the Pyramid Builders: The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt
to Ancient America (2003), and Pyramid Quest: Secrets of the Great Pyramid and
the Dawn of Civilization (2005). Dr. Schoch’s most recent book is The Parapsy-
chology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research
(2008, compilation and commentary by Robert M. Schoch and Logan Yonavjak).
Website: www.robertschoch.com.

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