American geologist, associate professor of natural sciences in the College of General Studies at Boston University, with a doctorate in geology and geophysics from Yale. From 1990 he examined the Great Sphinx enclosure at Giza at the invitation of the writer John Anthony West and concluded that its weathering profile had been cut by rain, which would place the original carving at 7000 to 5000 BC. He presented the finding to the Geological Society of America in 1991 and defended it against the Egyptologist Mark Lehner at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992. Schoch’s own claim is narrower than the use later made of it: he argues for an earlier date and a culture capable of stone-cutting, not for a lost high technology, and has said so in print. His later work proposes a solar outburst at the end of the last Ice Age as the catastrophe behind sites such as Gobekli Tepe.
Connections
Sphinx Water Erosion Hypothesis · Graham Hancock · Robert Bauval