Professor Robert Schoch

Robert M. Schoch, Profssor of Natural Science at the College of General Studies at Boston University since 1984, earned his Ph.D. in geology and geophysics at Yale University.  His interests include geology, paleontology, evolution, environmental science, ancient Egypt, geoarchaeology, and prehistoric/ancient cultures around the world.  In 1990 Prof. Schoch won the Peyton Ricter Award for interdisciplinary teaching.

Email Robert Schoch or visit www.robertschoch.com

Horns, Tusks, & Flippers: The Evolution of Hoofed Mammals, wWritten with Donald Prothero, using an approach based on cladistics, the authors consider both living and extinct ungulates. This is a much-needed resource for specialists in the fields of paleontology, zoology, ecology, and evoluntionary biology, as well as for general readers interested in learning more about the story of life on earth.

Another recent book is Voyages of the Pyramid Builders: The True Origins of the Pyramids From Lost Egypt to Ancient America.

Written with Robert Aquinas McNally, the book is described as a startling and dramatic new view of our ancient past ... We associate pyramids with ancient Egypt. But pyramids are not uniquely Egyptian -- and therein lies a great mystery.

Pyramids and pyramid-like structures can be found all over the globe, built by cultures that span vast distances of geography and time. They appear in the ancient African kingdom of Kush, along the Nile ... in Mesopotamia and Sumeria ... in England and Ireland ... in India and throughout Southeast Asia ... in ancient China ... in Peru's coastal and Andean regions ... in the ancient Olmec and Mayan realms of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador ... in pre-Columbian Illinois... and elsewhere.

How can it be that a form as distinctive as the pyramid was built in such widely separated locales? Was it merely coincidence? Or was there another force at work?

In "Voyages of the Pyramid Builders:" Boston University professor Robert M. Schoch -- one of the world's preeminent geologists in recasting the date of the Great Sphinx -- suggests that there was, indeed, another force at work.

In his eye-opening new book, Dr. Schoch argues that these far-flung pyramids share a common ancestor long lost to history: a primordial pyramid-building civilization that once navigated the seas and spread its way of life around the globe.

Meticulously researched and dramatically written, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders lays out, step by step, a fascinating new theory of how the Old World and the New World met:

• Evidence that the Egyptian pyramids at Giza (or portions of them) and certain associated structures were built earlier than conventionally believed
• The significance of the striking similarities between pyramid cultures in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, despite the long distances of land and sea between
• The rituals, beliefs, and stories that underlie the pyramids
• How ancient peoples emigrated from the Old World into the New World
• How pyramid builders entered the New World from the west and influenced the rising civilizations of Central and South America
• How the pyramid builders sailed
• A theory that ancient peoples may have migrated across vast distances in response to catastrophic encounters with comets
• The possible existence of a lost pyramid-building civilization in the period before 3,500 B.C., the generally accepted date for humankind's earliest taste of civilization
• What it means to know that the high civilizations of our planet may have been interconnected for much longer than we imagined.

Voyages of the Pyramid Builders also includes a special appendix, "Redating the Great Sphinx of Giza," in which Dr. Schoch provides his most recent and persuasive evidence that the Sphinx is much older than we think.

For anyone who is interested in ancient Egypt, past cultures, prehistory, early migrations, paradigm shifts, and the origins of civilization, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders is a groundbreaking reinterpretation of how we understand our ancient past.

Professor Schoch has written previously about ancient civilization. Here are some comments from the jacket of Voices of the Rocks:

Could the Egyptian Sphinx have been built many centuries earlier than conventional history would have us believe? Could the great natural disasters that propelled the evolution of life on Earth have played a dominant role as well in the rise and fall of civilizations? Could Earth have been home to civilizations far greater in number — and far older — than orthodox researchers have suspected? In Voices of the Rocks, Dr. Robert Schoch examines these and other crucial questions about our past and shows how the answers can guide us in the future.

In 1990, Robert Schoch, a scientist and tenured university professor, traveled to Egypt and conducted geological testing to evaluate the accepted date for the construction of the Great Sphinx of Giza. His research revealed that the Sphinx is actually thousands of years older than previously supposed, a discovery that upended the standard history of ancient Egypt.

Following the intellectual trail uncovered by his redating of the Sphinx, Schoch became convinced that we are in the midst of a profound scientific paradigm shift. The predominant notion that our species inhabits a slow-changing, steady-state planet is falling by the wayside. Instead, we are coming to see that the history of Earth, all living beings, and human civilizations comprises a series of stops and starts, in which equilibrium abruptly ends during a sudden severe catastrophe like the extraterrestrial impact that initiated the extinction of the dinosaurs. Meteors, asteroids, and comets are only one potential source of such disasters, which also include shifts in Earth's axis, movements of the continents, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes.

According to Dr. Schoch, Earth's long, catastrophic history has obscured and obliterated evidence of lost civilizations. But the traces remain for those who know where to look and what to look for. At its core, Voices of the Rocks is the story of Schoch's own search, his fascinating discoveries, and the warnings we must heed if we wish to survive whatever catastrophes the future has in store for us.

Robert M. Schoch, PhD, is associate professor of science at the College of General Studies, Boston University. Dr. Schoch has been quoted extensively in the media for his work on the Sphinx, and he was featured on “The Mystery of the Sphinx,” hosted by Charlton Heston.