Robert Schoch
Robert Schoch | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1949 (age 76–77) |
| Residence | Boston, MA, United States |
| Nationality | USA |
| Alma mater | George Washington University, Yale University |
| Known for | Sphinx water erosion hypothesis |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Geology, Geophysics |
| Institutions | Boston University |
Robert Milton Schoch (born 1949) is an American geologist and geophysicist who is an Associate Professor of Natural Sciences in the College of General Studies at Boston University. He is best known for the Sphinx water-erosion hypothesis, the proposal that the Great Sphinx of Giza is considerably older than its conventionally accepted date. As a geologist and geophysicist, Schoch has been instrumental in spurring renewed attention to the interrelationships between geological and astronomical phenomena, natural catastrophes, and the early history of civilization.
Biography
Education
Schoch earned a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and a Bachelor of Science in Geology from George Washington University in 1979. He went on to receive Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Geology and Geophysics from Yale University, completing his PhD in 1983. His doctoral dissertation concerned the systematics, functional morphology, and macroevolution of the extinct mammalian order Taeniodonta, and his early academic work was in vertebrate paleontology.
Career
Schoch has taught at Boston University since 1984, where he is an Associate Professor of Natural Sciences in the College of General Studies. His undergraduate teaching spans biology, geology, and environmental science. He is the author or co-author of numerous scientific and popular books, and a genus of extinct mammals, Schochia, was named in his honor in 1993.
Sphinx water erosion hypothesis
Beginning around 1990, Schoch developed and expanded the Sphinx water-erosion hypothesis. Examining weathering patterns on the walls of the Sphinx enclosure, he argued that the deep, rounded vertical fissures were produced by prolonged rainfall rather than by wind and sand. On this basis, and drawing on seismic studies conducted around the base of the monument and elsewhere on the Giza Plateau, Schoch proposed in 1991 that the core body of the Great Sphinx was originally carved considerably earlier than the conventionally accepted date in the reign of the pharaoh Khafre (c. 2500 BC), suggesting an origin in the range of roughly 10,000-5,000 BC, when the region experienced a wetter climate.
The hypothesis is disputed by mainstream Egyptology and much of the geological community, which continue to date the Sphinx to the Old Kingdom and attribute its weathering to other processes. Critics, including the archaeologist Mark Lehner, have argued that a single weathering profile is insufficient to overturn the broader archaeological and historical evidence for the monument's date. Schoch has continued to defend and develop the hypothesis in subsequent publications.
Work
In addition to his Sphinx research, Schoch has written on the relationship between astronomical events and the early history of civilization. In his later work, particularly Forgotten Civilization (2012), he advances the view that intense solar activity, including major solar outbursts and associated plasma phenomena, played a significant role in the end of the last ice age and the disruption of early human cultures, and he considers the implications of such events for the future.
Books
- Phylogeny Reconstruction in Paleontology (1986)
- Stratigraphy: Principles and Methods (1989)
- Voices of the Rocks (1999)
- Voyages of the Pyramid Builders (2003)
- Horns, Tusks, and Flippers: The Evolution of Hoofed Mammals (2003, with Donald R. Prothero)
- Pyramid Quest (2005)
- The Parapsychology Revolution (2008)
- Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future (2012; revised and expanded 2nd edition, 2021)
- Origins of the Sphinx (2017, with Robert Bauval)
Honors
- The extinct mammalian genus Schochia was named in his honor in 1993.
External links
- Official website
- Robert M. Schoch at Wikipedia