For the past 40 years, comparative mythologist David Talbott has amassed thousands of pieces of evidence towards an entirely novel theory about the origin of humanity’s earliest mythology and prehistoric art.

Inspired by implications of Immanuel Velikovsky’s much-maligned theory of gravitational instability in the early solar system, Talbott came to believe that Mars and Saturn were once much closer to the earth, within our band of the ecliptic, close together, visibly, in the sky.

Following Velikovsky, he maintains that at one time within the past 10,000 years Venus entered the solar system as a comet with a long, streaming trail; the gravitational fields of earth, Mars and Saturn disrupted its plunge towards the sun and “captured” it. During this period, there was instability in the earth’s geosphere due to the gravitational fluctuations—massive earthquakes and floods.

But the chain of planets eventually stabilized into alignment, producing a period of calm that would later come to be known in myth as a “Golden Age.” Then the stable configuration “fell apart” and a period of geological catastrophe again ensued. The electro-gravitational fields between the planets clashed and produced bolts of plasma energy that passed between all four “characters” in the drama. The planet Mars was scarred by the worst discharges, which rent the great Valles Marineris trenches still visible on its surface.

Talbott believes that this cycle of events was witnessed by the human population across the entire earth, and recorded in the earliest rock art. Regardless of location on the planet’s face, the story of the great battle told was the same.

The comet Venus’s tail produced a common association in the human mind: that of long, flowing hair. Mars, the god of war, had a "face" that had been horribly scarred. Saturn, being the largest of these three planets, was called the “king” that held them together in the sky and presided over the dissolution.

Talbott concentrates in particular on universal descriptions of the “cosmic wheel” and the “cosmic thunderbolt”, both of which are depicted innumerably amongst the earliest known rock carvings. The wheel he takes as the settled configuration of the three planets in the sky, which occupied a place many times larger than the moon as it appears to us now. The cosmic thunderbolt he takes as a representation of the plasma bolts that arced between the planets and the earth when they separated.

Prehistoric man carved these configurations and battle scenes into rocks, and recounted the scenes orally to further generations this electrical war between the “titans” and told stories of the “disfigurement” of Mars, as the planets receded into their present distant orbits. (I’ve always wondered why the epic tales of the Greeks could have inspired by distant and weak motes of light in the night; Talbott’s narrative gives us an entirely plausible reason for it: they were enormous, fully visible “travelers” in the sky in remote antiquity, visible at all times to people around the earth).

Talbott worked for decades on building evidence for his thesis. Then in 1996, he came into contact with renegade astrophysicist Wal Thornhill, who had been developing on a theory that the universe is electrical in nature, and that plasma formations would be seen when planets pass in close approach to one another. Moreover, he told Talbott it was possible that toroid plasma formations could fill the atmosphere, akin to an auroral display that would encircle the globe for months or even years at a time. For Talbott, this was a scientific clincher for what he had long suspected and researched. They began to collaborate.

This melding of Velikovsky's suspect belief with an “electro-plasma” theory would sound risible if it weren’t for the amount of evidence Talbott has amassed to support its recordings in myth and meticulous care he’s taken to make it coherent—especially the correspondence between toroid energy formations and the prehistoric carvings found all over the world.  He has found a correspondence between just about every prehistoric symbol and Neolithic myth around the globe, from continent to continent. Just watch this striking video of the correspondence between plasma formations and the rock carvings. The video is fascinating in its entirety, but the correlations occur in this first video at 5:35:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ZT-IOf0gM

This second video gives an overview of Talbott’s thesis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoThe9EzcaE

Now…is this simply an elaborate example of pareidolia—the effect of perceiving a pattern in “random” stimuli—or does the evidence supporting his thesis surmount the barrier beyond a mere “coincidence” between ancient symbols and plasma formations? What would put it in the running as worthy of further investigation by “mainstream” science? I can't answer this, but I think he may be on to something...