The following link is a very short, concise, scientific analysis of the relationship of Mars and Earth prior to seven hundred B.C. http://www.creationism.org/patten/PattenMarsEarthWars/index.htm .

While the book is posted on a religious website the book itself IS NOT a religious work! Not a all! This is very strictly a scientific view of unclear and widely speculated history. Donald W. Patten, the author, was a professional geologist and his co-writer, Samuel R. Windsor was an engineer. This is not a faith based work.

This book, the Mars-Earth Wars, is very much hand in hand with Velikovsky's apprehension of cosmic upheaval in recently recorded historical times.

In a nutshell, for some thousands of years Mars was docked in a very long elliptical orbit that circled the sun closely at one extreme and touched the orbit of a small planet which occupied what is presently the asteroid belt outside of Mars.

Every fifty-four years, like fine clockwork, Mars would pass between the moon and the Noah's flood side of the Earth and then fifty-four years later it would similarly pass the other side of Earth. The complete cycle was one hundred eight years. This passage on the Noah side was the dreaded Day of the Lord when the mountains shook, the land trembled and the seas were tossed about in their basins and dragged upon the land. The event was commemorated by a mandated, annual, solemn celebration known as the Passover. ( I'm not sure but I think that even today the Jews use a three hundred sixty day year in some religious traditionalisms.)

It would seem that the new and bright and shinning Venus perturbed celestial precision. It appears to have wandered about the solar system for a while before contesting with Mars. It would further appear that Venus worked havoc on the Earth and on Earth's orbit before being consigned to it's present bottomless pit, or stable orbit, whichever one might choose to call it.

The balance of the system being thrown, Mars became docked in it's present orbit in an electrically discharged state but not before a Roche limit encounter with the small planet located at the present asteroid belt. While there was no collision, the small planet was nonetheless shattered by Mars greater gravity and Mars suffered some damage from debris.

This culmination of the battle of the heavenly hosts seems to be about two thousand seven hundred years ago. This lines up very well with geological evidence that the Earth magnetic field has been degrading significantly to it's present extreme low level over about that same period of time. If one hypothesizes that a planet is a spherical conductor bearing charge and electrostatic-electromagnetic field and electrically isolated in a near vacuum then it may be that two such planets, in regular randevu, recharge each other and thus maintain high electromagnetic field potential. This might portend that a suitable planet be undocked soon for benefit of Earth. Such an encounter would last for a few days at most, that being a mere twinkling of the eye in the cosmic scheme of things. Additionally, with a full charge the Earth's magneto sphere should healthy for about a thousand years in regard to the decay curve.

If Earth should be recharged then the potential for orbit and time displacement becomes a question, again.

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: ""About twenty-seven hundred years ago an event
: occurred which left every nation on earth scrambling to
: re-establish a valid and workable calendar. "":
: ^^^^^^^^^^ What was this event?? ^^^^^^^^

: And our calendars, didn't they begin a lot earlier with the
: Sumerians?? They used the phases of the moon, counting 12
: lunar months as a year..... The Egyptians went on to invent
: a year of 365 days divided into three seasons, each of
: which consisted of four months of 30 days each.
: ...