Please read Earth In Upheaval by Immanuel Velikovsky. Read the whole book, not just reviews of the book. Velikovski concluded, - based upon extensive research by hundreds of geologists, archeologists, paleontologists and other scientists - that every 3,500-4,000 the earth is subjected to cataclysmic changes. Quoting the author:

"The evidence is also overwhelming that the great global catastrophes were either accompanied or caused by shifting of the terrestrial axis or by a disturbance in the diurnal and annual motions of the earth. The shifting of the axis could not have been brought about by internal causes, as the proponents of the Ice Age theory in the nineteenth century assumed it was; it must have occurred, and repeatedly, under the impact of external forces.

Thus for the geological evidence we came to the conclusion to which we had also arrived traveling the road of historical and literary traditions of the peoples of the world - that the earth repeatedly went through cataclysmic events of a global scale, that the cause of these events was an extraterrestrial agent, and that some of these cosmic catastrophes took place only a few thousand years ago."

When you read the book, you may disagree with some of Velikovsky’s conclusions, but I doubt that you will be able to criticize the quality of his research.