This Erratic Planet is a book of vital importance to the future of our species. Drawing on a staggering range of references across disciplines including geology, astronomy, archaeology and palaeontology, Ian Rankin' outlines his radical ideas about the worlds past. Contrary to conventional scientific thinking , the evidence he has examined has convinced him that the history of our planet is not one of gradual change, as proposed by Darwin's theory of evolution, but a story of successive, yet systematic, global catastrophes. These have wiped almost all trace of previous civilisations from the face of the Earth. xml:namespace prefix o ns "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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These catastrophes, known as pole shifts, derive from the unstable nature of the solar system, which is the subject of the book's second part.