Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979) was a controversial author of several books suggesting a radical interpretation of history. In his best-selling book, Worlds in Collision (1950), he argues that the Earth and other planets, had been subject to cosmic catastrophes in historical times, that had been recorded in the oral traditions, myths and legends of the peoples of the world. His 1956 book Earth in Upheaval describes geological evidence that he says supports the idea of global catastrophes in prehistorical and historical times. In Ages in Chaos (1952), Velikovsky writes of parallels he found between biblical and Egyptian history from the Exodus to the early Divided Monarchy era, that initiated a debate on the chronologies of ancient history, and three more books, Oedipus and Akhnaton (1960), Peoples of the Sea (1977), and Ramses II and His Time (1978).
:”I came upon the idea that traditions and legends and memories of generic origin can be treated in the same way in which we treat in psychoanalysis the early memories of a single individual. I spent ten years on this work. I found that the collective memory of mankind spoke of a series of global catastrophes that occurred in historical times. I believed that I could even identify the exact times and the very agents of the great upheavals of the more recent past. The conclusions at which I arrived compelled me to cross the frontiers into various fields of science, archaeology, geology, and astronomy”.Immanuel Velikovsky, “Supplement: Worlds in Collision in the Light of Recent Finds in Archaeology, Geology, and Astronomy ” Earth in Upheaval, 1956