Randall Carlson is a geological researcher and renegade scholar with extensive knowledge of ancient mythology, sacred geometry, and the Earth’s history of catastrophes. For over four decades he has been relentlessly pursuing the truth about the history of this planet and its human inhabitants, and his independent and interdisciplinary approach to knowledge synthesis has put him firmly outside the mainstream as a thinker and a theorist.
The breadth and scope of Randall Carlson’s research is immense, and one of his most startling theories that ancient civilizations across the world, such as the Egyptians, Sumerians, Mayans, and Megalithic builders, all had access to a universal system of advanced knowledge. He asserts that this knowledge was not confined to one specific culture, but instead was a shared inheritance passed down through generations.
This idea points to an origin story for human society and culture that predates known history, stretching far back into the remote mists of what we mistakenly refer to as “prehistory.” When researchers are willing to evaluate the evidence without prejudice or fear of being sanctioned by the academic gatekeepers, Carlson argues, the amazing truth about our past becomes obvious.
Mythical History and the Atlantis Connection
Randall Carlson links his ideas to Plato’s account of Atlantis, a story relayed by Solon, an Athenian statesman who traveled to Egypt around 600 BC. According to Solon, Egyptian priests spoke of an advanced civilization, Atlantis, which existed 9,000 years before his time and met its demise in a catastrophic event.
Moving back 9,000 years from Solon’s era, the suggested timeline places Atlantis’s destruction at approximately 11,600 years ago—a time Carlson believes is profoundly significant.
As Carlson points out, this date aligns with findings from geology and climatology that mark the end of the Younger Dryas, a period characterized by sudden cooling followed by rapid warming. Carlson argues that this connection is not coincidental; rather, it serves as evidence that Plato’s Atlantis may have been a real civilization that was lost in a major cataclysm.
Map of the Younger Dryas and its impact on climate in Europe and the surrounding region. (Offthemapz/CC BY-SA 4.0).
From Carlson’s perspective, Plato’s story of Atlantis plus the geological evidence indicate a shared ancient knowledge that civilizations may have inherited from this glorious but lost era. And his analysis of the legend of Atlantis sets the template for his larger analysis of the planet’s history as a whole, which has included many catastrophic events that had a profound impact on the people living on earth at those times.
Catastrophes and the Disappearance of Historical Records
Carlson’s theory addresses a fundamental question: if anatomically modern humans have existed for at least 150,000 years, why do we lack a continuous historical record of their civilizations? He attributes this absence to repeated catastrophic events that effectively erased entire societies and their accumulated knowledge, leaving virtually nothing behind for archaeologists to find (except perhaps on the ocean floor, where ancient flooding would have left ruins and artifacts hidden but preserved under the earth’s seas).
According to Carlson, modern human skeletons dating back 150,000 to 180,000 years confirm that people of equivalent intelligence to contemporary humans lived through these vast time spans. The lack of surviving records, he states, is due to the overwhelming scale of the destruction caused by these cataclysms. He has identified at least 16 significant catastrophes that have taken place over the last 150,000 years—events powerful enough to dismantle civilizations entirely. He warns that if such disasters were to occur today, modern industrial society would be equally vulnerable to obliteration, potentially leaving behind only minimal traces of its existence for future generations to find.
Cosmic Cycles and the Great Year
Carlson ties these catastrophic events to cosmic cycles, particularly the concept of the Great Year—a 25,920-year cycle corresponding to the Earth’s axial precession. He believes that ancient cultures, including those that built the pyramids and megalithic structures, understood these cycles and encoded their knowledge into their architectural and mythological traditions.
- Giza, The Time Keeper of the Ages: Alignments, Measurements, and Moon Cycles
- Cosmic Oceans: The Primordial Waters of Ancient Creation Myths
He further suggests that certain disasters, such as the onset of the Younger Dryas around 12,900 years ago, are connected to these cosmic cycles. He theorizes that the Earth’s movement through space influences the periodic arrival of cosmic materials, such as asteroids and comets, into the inner solar system. This process, he posits, follows a predictable rhythm, much like the precessional cycles observed in ancient traditions. Carlson contends that early civilizations recognized these patterns and attempted to warn future generations by preserving this knowledge in their myths, sacred geometries, and monumental structures.
Exposed ice sheet in the Garwood Valley of Antarctica, the type of thick sheet that would have covered huge sections of the planet following the onset of an ice age. (James O’Connor, USGS/Public Domain).
The Scarcity of Physical Evidence
One of the main challenges in proving the existence of these lost civilizations is the lack of surviving physical evidence. Carlson attributes this scarcity to the sheer magnitude of past disasters, which would hae been truly epic. If modern civilization were to face an event of similar proportions, he theorizes, much of its technological and historical record would be wiped out, leaving only scattered remnants that would be extremely difficult to find.
He illustrates this concept by pointing to modern disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. These events, though localized, caused immense destruction. Carlson extrapolates from these examples, asking what would happen if a disaster were 100 times, a 100 times, or even a 1,000 times more severe. He concludes that such large-scale catastrophes could erase nearly all traces of our civilization, burying it or sweeping it out to sea—just as he believes happened in the past, probably many times.
While discovering the remains of these ancient civilizations presents an immense challenge, Carlson is hopeful that modern tools like Google Earth will help researchers identify patterns of destruction and remnants of ancient landscapes that might otherwise go unnoticed. These tools, he argues, provide an opportunity to piece together the effects of these ancient upheavals and uncover evidence of lost worlds.
Significant Catastrophic Events in Human History
Carlson identifies several major events that he believes would have inevitably wiped out ancient human civilizations. Some of the most impactful include:
Toba Supereruption (~72,000 BP): A massive volcanic eruption in Sumatra that likely triggered a volcanic winter, reducing human populations to critically low numbers.
Heinrich Events (Various Dates): Iceberg discharges into the North Atlantic, disrupting ocean currents and triggering abrupt climate changes, occurring around 65,000, 52,000, 39,000, and 23,000 years ago.
Younger Dryas Climate Catastrophe (~12,900 to 11,700 BP): A period of severe cooling, possibly linked to a cosmic impact, which coincides with the proposed timeline for Atlantis’s destruction.
Late Wisconsin Ice Age (~26,000 BP): The peak of the last Ice Age, affecting global climate and human migration patterns.
End of the Wisconsin Ice Age (~10,000 BP): Marking the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to the rise of early agricultural civilizations.
Burckle Crater Event (~4,320 BP): A proposed meteor impact in the Indian Ocean, potentially connected to flood myths from various cultures.
Australian Megafauna Extinctions (~40,000 BP to ~26,000 BP): A mass extinction event possibly caused by a combination of human activity and climatic changes.
Greenland Blitz (~104,000 BP): A proposed climatic event that Carlson links to significant environmental shifts in the region.
Salien Climate Shift (~144,000 BP): A large-scale climate change event that he believes influenced early human development.
Osis Events (~52,000 BP and ~8,400 BP): Speculative catastrophic events that may have played a role in shaping early civilizations
Illustration from a book written in 1552 by Hans Burgkmair der Jüngere depicting the great flood written about in Genesis, which from Randall Carlson’s perspective would represent a mythologized version of a flood that wiped out civilization after the end of the last ice age. (Public Domain).
The Quest for Hidden Knowledge
Based on his decades of research, and the work of other rogue researchers like his good friend Graham Hancock, Carlson is convinced that ancient civilizations were not only aware of catastrophic cycles, but also sought to preserve their knowledge for future generations. He believes that their myths, sacred geometries, and monumental structures serve as a record of past events and a warning of periodic cosmic destruction.
With each disaster, civilizations were wiped out, forcing survivors to rebuild from a near-primitive state. Despite the loss, Randall Carlson contends that fragments of this ancient knowledge endured, passed down through traditions, oral histories, and architectural legacies. By studying geological evidence and ancient records, Carlson suggests that we may yet uncover the lost wisdom of these early civilizations, learning the secrets of creation as we anticipate and prepare for future cosmic events.
Top image: Illustration of the landscape of the great lost city of Atlantis.
Source: Soothsayer/CC BY-SA 4.0.
By Nathan Falde
