Before I heard of flat earth, I was into the heresy of Coherent Catastrophism, which was itself a prototype of theories of world age resets.
Worlds in Collision was published in 1950. Mainstream science dealt harshly with its writer, Immanuel Velikovsky.
IV was a friend of the plagiarist pseudoscientist Einstein. Not a flatearther at all.
Velikovsky collected biblical and pagan myths of the Great Flood and the great reset of earth, which he claimed was caused by the comet Venus.
Yes, comet.
We can admire Velikovsky's scholarship without buying his conclusions.
This excerpt from his book may be the most scary scenario of a previous world in collision. The sky fell in ancient times. The sky is the dome. Firmament.
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https://www.bibliotecapleyades…encia_velikovsky06_03.htm
THE COLLAPSED SKY
The rain of meteorites and fire from the sky, the clouds of dust of exogenous origin that drifted low, and the displacement of the world quarters created the impression that the sky had collapsed.
The ancient people of Mexico referred to a world age that came to its end when the sky collapsed and darkness enshrouded the world.
Strabo relates, in the name of Ptolemaeus, the son of Lagus, a general of Alexander and founder of the Egyptian dynasty called by his name, that the Celti who lived on the shores of the Adriatic were asked by Alexander what it was they most feared, to which they replied that they feared no one, but only that the sky might collapse.
The Chinese refer to the collapse of the sky which took place when the mountains fell. Because mountains fell or were leveled at the same time when the sky was displaced, ancient peoples, not only the Chinese, thought that mountains support the sky.
"The earth trembled, and the heavens dropped...the mountains melted," says the Song of Deborah. "The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved," says the psalmist.
The tribes of Samoa in their legends refer to a catastrophe when "in days of old the heavens fell down." The heavens or the clouds were so low that the people could not stand erect without touching them.
The Finns tell in their "Kalevala" that the support of the sky gave way and then a spark of fire kindled a new sun and a new moon. The Lapps make offerings accompanied by the prayer that the sky should not lose its support and fall down. The Eskimos of Greenland are afraid that the support of the sky may fail and the sky fall down and kill all human beings; a darkening of the sun and the moon will precede such a catastrophe.
The primitives of Africa, in eastern as well as western provinces of the continent, tell about the collapse of sky in the past. The Ovaherero tribesmen say that many years ago "the Greats of the sky" (Eyuru) let the sky fall on the earth; almost all the people were killed, only a few remained alive. The tribes of Kanga and Loanga also have a tradition of the collapse of the sky which annihilated the human race. The Wanyoro in Unyoro likewise relate that the sky fell on the earth and killed everybody: the god Kagra threw the firmament upon the earth to destroy mankind.
The tradition of the Cashinaua, the aborigines of western Brazil, is narrated as follows:
"The lightnings flashed and the thunders roared terribly and all were afraid. Then the heaven burst and the fragments fell down and killed everything and everybody. Heaven and earth changed places. Nothing that had life was left upon the earth."
In this tradition are included the same elements: the lightnings and thunderings, "the bursting of heaven," the fall of meteorites. About the change of places between heaven and earth there is more to say, and I shall not postpone the subject for long."......
