Emilio Spedicato (1945- ) was born in Milan. He graduated in physics and is now working in numerical analysis and applied mathematics. He has held a full professorship at Bergamo University since 1984. In addition to his more conventional academic 
pursuits, he also researches ‘non-standard models of planetary evolution and non-standard interpretation of myth and ancient religions.’
Spedicato has developed a list(a) of ‘54 theses for reconstructing Earth and human history during the catastrophic period 9500 to 700 BC’. This list is partly based on the work of Velikovsky, DeGrazia and Ackerman and is intended to be the basis of a larger work in book form. Some of his ideas will be seen as highly controversial such as the genetic manipulation of humans by extraterrestrial visitors. He locates the Garden of Eden and the ‘creation’ of Adam and Eve in the Hunza valley of modern Pakistan(e).
He ventured into further controversial territory with his support for an updated version of Hörbiger’s moon capture theory(f) and endorsement for pole shifts(g) after long periods of stability following encounters with large extraterrestrial bodies. He considers the last of these to have taken place in the 10th millennium BC.
Spedicato, in a series of papers delivered to the Atlantis Conference on Melos in 2005, linked the biblical Exodus with the Flood of Deucalion, which he dates as 1447 BC(d). He contended that these events were connected with the explosion of a large extraterrestrial body over Southern Denmark remembered in Greek tradition as Phaëton.
Atlantis has not escaped Spedicato’s attention and he has put forward the Caribbean island of Hispaniola as the home of Atlantis(b), specifically suggesting that Lake Enriquillo in the Cul-de-Sac Depression, which runs from Haiti across the border into the Dominican Republic. Spedicato accepts the possibility of the destruction of Atlantis around 9600 BC and has written an interesting paper(c) that links its demise of Atlantis with a direct asteroidal impact or a close encounter with a planet-sized body.
(a) http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/ep8/ep8-spedic.htm
(b) http://www.unibg.it/convegni/NEW_SCENARIOS/Abstracts/Spedicato.htm
(c) http://www.ecn.org/cunfi/spedicgalact.pdf
(d) http://www.2008-paris-conference.org/mapage13/deucalione-testo-inglese-1-.pdf
(e) http://www.2007-kandersteg.q-conferences.com/geographyandnume/index.html
(f) http://aisberg.unibg.it/bitstream/10446/316/1/WPMateRi05(2008)SpedicatoPetruzzi.pdf
(g) http://www.unibg.it/dati/bacheca/63/21825.pdf
