The ancient "myths", and drawings for that matter, point to a time when there were some really unusual events seen by early Man on the earth and in the heavens. If only half of what they recorded is anywhere near accurate, they lived in a strange world.
I've done some scouting around the web in search of something that would indicate these strange events could even be occurring in cycles. And if so, how long that cycle might be. As you might suspect there's little hard science on the subject; that I could find at least.
Selections from Immanuel Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision (1950)
In the manuscripts of Avila and Molina, who collected the traditions of the Indians of the New World, it is related that the sun did not appear for five days, a cosmic collision of stars preceded the cataclysm; people and animals tried to escape to mountain caves. ‘Scarcely had they reached there, when the sea, breaking out of bounds following a terrifying shock, began the rise of the pacific coast. But as the sea rose, filling the valleys and the plains around, the mountain of Ancasmarca rose too, like a ship on the waves. During the five days that this cataclysm lasted, the sun did not show its face and the earth remained in darkness
http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/JNHDA/wic.htm