CATASTROPHES: THE DILUVIAL EVIDENCE
by Trevor Palmer, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Paper presented at the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies
Silver Jubilee Conference he;d at Easthamstead Park, 19 September 1999
SUMMARY
Flood myths are found throughout the world. As late as the seventeenth century, one particular flood myth, that involving Noah, was regarded as the literal truth by almost everyone in Europe. In contrast, for most of the twentieth century, very few scientists have been prepared to even consider the possibility that floods or other catastrophes may have occurred on a global scale. Now that we can examine the evidence with greater objectivity, it is abundantly clear that, although the continents have not been covered by water during the time that
humankind has lived on the Earth, there have nevertheless been some large-scale catastrophic floods. Two periods of particular interest from this point of view are the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and the beginning of the Late Holocene. Many questions still remain unanswered
about the events at these times.
THE ANCIENT WORLD
According to the book of Genesis, God breathed life into Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, on the sixth day of Creation. Just nine generations later, corruption had become so widespread that God brought about the Flood, when "the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days", and "all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered." However, Noah, who was an exception to the general rule of wickedness, had been warned about the coming deluge. This enabled his family to build a large boat, the Ark, on which to sail on the waters. Hence they survived the Flood, the only humans to do so [1].
The story of Noah is just one of over 500 flood myths from around the world, many of which similarly involve a man and a woman escaping by boat. Amongst these is the one told in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, where the hero, Uta-Napishtim, was warned by Ea, God of the
Waters, about the coming deluge. Others include a Greek myth, where the survivors were Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha [2].
As well as legends of a catastrophic flood, there are other widespread myths where the Earth suffered near destruction by fire. An example is one from Greece in which Phaeton took the Sun-chariot and drove it too close to the Earth, scorching the surface, until Zeus cast a
thunderbolt and caused Phaeton to fall to his death. According to the philosopher Plato (c429-347 B.C.), the basis of the Phaeton myth was one of a series of cosmic disturbances which caused periodic catastrophes on Earth [3].
The origins of myth and legend are far from certain, and may not be the same in every case. Hence, it remains possible that some stories may, to a greater or lesser extent, have a factual basis. Indeed, from locations described by Homer, archaeologists such as Heinrich Schliemann and Wilhelm Dörpfeld have found extensive evidence of pre-classical civilisations [4,5].
In most ancient traditions, catastrophes were associated with divine displeasure. In Genesis, as we have seen, God caused Noah's Flood because of the increasingly wicked behaviour of humankind. Similarly, in Greek mythology, Zeus regularly killed people with thunderbolts, as
in the Phaeton myth, whilst Poseidon was inclined to cause great storms or floods when annoyed [2,5].
Such floods had undoubtedly occurred. By the time of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the evidence of marine fossils in outcrops of rock made it clear that at least part of what was now land had once been covered by sea.In his Meteorologica, Aristotle wrote that there were periodic
transpositions of land and sea, but generally those occurred too slowly and over too long a time interval for anyone to notice them happening. Nevertheless, on rare occasions a great winter could occur, bringing protracted heavy rainfall and causing devastating floods, such as that
of Deucalion [6,7].
RENAISSANCE AND RESTORATION TIMES
When Christianity was established in Europe, the Church exercised almost complete control over academic thought for many centuries. At this time, it would have been heretical to deny the testimony of the Bible, that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, having been
created around 4004 B.C., and that there had been a single major cataclysm, the Deluge in the time of Noah. In the early sixteenth century it was still generally accepted that all marine fossils found inland had been carried there by Noah's Flood, although Leonardo da
Vinci and others argued that this was impossible, in view of the transient nature of the supposed event and the thickness of the fossil beds. The land must have risen in places, changing the shoreline in significant fashion, just as Aristotle had suggested [7].
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, various theories of the formation and development of the Earth were put forward by men who were known as cosmogonists. In 1669, the Danish naturalist, Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686) produced a theory to explain the landscape of Tuscany in which the Flood played a prominent but far from unique role. Other features included the elevation of land in some locations because of precipitation of sediments from the waters, and its lowering elsewhere as a consequence of the collapse of caverns under the ground [7,8].
Later, several English cosmogonists put forward models which tried to reconcile observations with the teachings of the Church. The system of Thomas Burnet (1635-1715), dating from the 1680s, had some features in common with that of Steno, but instead of relying on rain and
subsidence to cause the Flood, it suggested that the appearance of wide cracks in the Earth's surface allowed water to be forced upwards from underground stores. As was inevitable in the seventeenth century, Burnet started with the assumption that the Biblical record was essentially true, and then sought natural explanations for the events described. He was not prepared to accept that the waters causing the Flood had been created miraculously by God. However, they must have come from somewhere, so the interior of the Earth seemed the most
likely possibility [7-9].
WILLIAM WHISTON (1666-1753) who succeeded Isaac Newton in the chair of mathematics at Cambridge University, agreed partially with Burnet. He thought that some of the waters of the Flood might have been released from the interior of the Earth, but he considered that the major proportion had fallen as rain derived from the vapors in the tail of a passing comet. These ideas were presented in a book published in 1696. Whiston was aware that comets moved about the Sun in elliptical orbits of high eccentricity, because John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, had made detailed observations of the comet of 1680. Also, Edmond Halley
had deduced that the comet of 1682 (which subsequently took his name) had the same orbit as those of 1531 and 1607, and predicted, correctly as it turned out, that it would return in 1758. He was less accurate in his calculations of the periodicity of the 1680 comet, but these led
Whiston to believe that it could have made an earlier visit in 2342 B.C., around the time the Flood was thought to have occurred, on the basis of internal evidence from the Bible [7,10].
Whiston was eventually dismissed from his post for, amongst other reasons, indicating that global catastrophes, past and future, might be caused by natural phenomena. Halley was similarly censured for suggesting to the Royal Society of London in 1694 that the story of
Noah's flood might be an account of a cometary impact [11-13].
Meanwhile, on the continent of Europe, the German mathematician and philosopher, Baron Gottfried von Leibniz (1646-1716), believed that the Earth was formed by condensation of cosmic matter, so it would initially have been very hot, and hence in a fluid-like state. He
proposed that, as it cooled, a crust formed which later cracked on occasions to release flood water from within the Earth, each time depositing a layer of sediment [14].
The French naturalist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1708-1788) suggested that the "days" of creation in Genesis were not meant to be taken literally. It made more sense, he thought, to regard them as periods of unspecified but great length. Buffon calculated that
if, as he personally supposed, the Earth had been formed by a collision between the Sun and a comet, it could have cooled down sufficiently within 35,000 years to allow condensation of atmospheric water vapor to form a universal ocean. Further cooling over many thousands of years caused cavities to appear in the Earth's surface, through which sea water drained until it reached its present level. As volcanoes began to erupt, the continents appeared and valleys were gouged out by ocean currents [7,14].
Buffon's contemporary, Benoit de Maillet, believed that erosion of the earliest mountains by the action of the ocean over a timescale of millions of years was an important factor in producing sediment from which new mountains could be made [7,12].
Theories that a universal ocean once contained in solution all the material that later formed the Earth's crust were generally labelled as "Neptunist". In contrast, the "Plutonist" theory of James Hutton (1726-1797) maintained that some rocks, such as granite, were not
sedimentary, but had been produced by volcanic action. That view eventually prevailed but, to start with, Neptunism was the more popular theory. The most influential advocate of Neptunist views was Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-1817), a German geologist. In Werner's theory,
precipitation of dissolved material took place over long periods of time, first forming primitive rocks such as granite, and then, as erosion of these began to contribute to the process, deposits such as limestones and slates. Later, when mechanical deposition became more significant than chemical precipitation, came the laying down of chalk and other fossil-rich rocks [9,14,15].
As field evidence accumulated, various British cosmogonists produced theories which attempted to be consistent with the new findings, yet retain a place for Noah's flood. By the end of the eighteenth century it was clear that, even if the Flood had occurred, it could only have been one of many factors responsible for the formation of features at the Earth's surface [7].
In France, Buffon, remained the dominant figure right up to his death in 1788. However, a new generation of naturalists was emerging, and these sought a fresh approach to science. One of the chief critics of Buffon's style was Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) [14,16].
NINETEENTH CENTURY CATASTROPHISTS
Although most pre-nineteenth century cosmogonists, including Buffon, used rational methods, their arguments were often speculative and philosophical. In contrast, one of Cuvier's guiding principles was to avoid unwarranted speculation. After Buffon's death, Cuvier quickly
established a reputation as a gifted scientist, particularly in the field of comparative anatomy. In 1812, he published the results of a detailed investigation of the geology of the Paris basin, carried out over many years in collaboration with the mining engineer and mineralogist, Alexandre Brongniart.
It seemed clear to Cuvier that there had been several sudden advances and retreats of the sea.
Alternating layers of saltwater and freshwater deposits rested on a thick bed of chalk, whilst overlying the stratified rocks in valley bottoms was a layer of loose material which he termed "detrital silt". The changes between successive periods of rock formation were linked to
major catastrophes (which Cuvier called révolutions) for, on each occasion, almost all the animals and plants then living were annihilated. In the aftermath, new types emerged, according to the evidence of the fossils found in the rocks. The scale was such that the
processes involved must have affected an area far greater than just the Paris basin, perhaps even covering the whole world. As an indication of the speed of action of the most recent of the révolutions, if not the others, Cuvier drew attention to the discovery of unputrified carcasses of large extinct mammals such as mammoths, in frozen lands to the north, reports of which had reached Paris in 1807.
Later, in 1829, Léonce Élie de Beaumont (1798-1874) suggested a possible mechanism for the révolutions, arguing that even if the Earth was cooling slowly and gradually as Buffon had proposed, and that the reduction in volume led to mountain building, then this latter process was still likely to occur in an episodic and catastrophic fashion, with upheavals of submerged land [16-18].
Cuvier took great care to keep his science and religion separate. In Britain during the same period, such an attitude would have been mostunusual, for many professional scientists were clergymen. Indeed, this was still a requirement for obtaining a senior post at either Oxford or
Cambridge. So, for example, at Cambridge, the Rev. Adam Sedgwick was Professor of Geology, whilst at Oxford, the Rev. William Buckland was Reader in the same subject. Buckland and Sedgwick were keen to operate as true scientists, independent of the Church. However,
as a consequence of their background, they began with an assumption that fieldwork would rapidly confirm the essential features of the Genesis account [16,18,19].
Early in his career, Buckland interpreted a widespread layer of loam and gravel, corresponding to Cuvier's "detrital silt", as the product of the universal deluge in the time of Noah. He was concerned that the immense depths of deposits beneath this layer suggested that the Earth
must be very old, with Creation taking far longer than the six days mentioned in the Bible. Nevertheless, the evidence for the deluge itself seemed clear enough. Fossils found in mud deposits in caves throughout Europe must have been of animals trapped by the rising flood
water. During his inauguration as Reader in 1819, Buckland argued, "The grand fact of a universal deluge at no very remote period is proved on grounds so decisive and incontrovertible, that had we never heard of such an event from Scripture or any other authority, Geology of itselfmust have called in the assistance of some such catastrophe" [15,18,20].
The case was presented in detail in his Relics of the Flood, published in 1823. Without question, this book avoided speculation, concentrating instead on empirical evidence which seemed to show that a single, major flood had taken place. At the time, Sedgwick supported Buckland's views.
However, it soon became apparent that the loam and gravel layer was restricted to northern latitudes, so was not universal. Also, further investigation showed that the fossils in the various caves did not all come from the same period. Buckland announced in 1836 that he no longer believed in a single, universal flood. Five years earlier, Sedgwick had done the same during an address to the Geological Society of London. Admitting that he and his colleagues had been led astray by their expectation of finding evidence of Noah's flood, Sedgwick said,
"There is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established - that the vast masses of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period" [15,18,20]
However, although Buckland, Sedgwick and others came to reject the idea of a single Flood, they continued to find the evidence strongly suggestive of the involvement of cataclysmic forces. It was just that these had acted on more than one occasion, just as Cuvier had
concluded. All the geologists were impressed by the large erratic boulders (i.e. ones foreign to the region) found scattered over much of Europe and North America, and by the loam and gravel deposits which lay as a mantle in northern regions. In an attempt to explain the origin of
these features, theories of tidal waves were developed from the "cooling Earth" scenario of Élie de Beaumont [15,18,20].
UNIFORMATARIANISM
Nevertheless, only a few years later, catastrophic diluvialism was a spent force. This was because Charles Lyell (1797-1875) established what he termed the "uniformitarian" view that the only significant processes bringing about changes to the Earth's surface were ordinary,
everyday ones, acting gently but persistently over very long periods of time.
Also, it became accepted, largely because of the work of Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), a Swiss naturalist and catastrophist, who moved to the United States in 1846, that the erratic boulders and drift deposits had been carried by glaciers during an `Ice Age', not by tidal waves
[15,18,21].
The concept of Ice Ages became a part of the uniformitarian consensus, on the assumption that the environmental changes associated with them occurred in a gradual fashion. Lyell's uniformitarianism, which was gradualism by another name, ruled without serious challenge for a century or more [9,15,18].
TWENTIETH CENTURY CATASTROPHISTS
Possible catastrophist scenarios, often speculative in nature, continued to be put forward, to little effect.
For example, Hugh Auchincloss Brown (1879-1975), an engineer who graduated from Columbia University, proposed in a private publication of 1948 that the tilt of the Earth's axis could change in catastrophic fashion, the disturbances being triggered by the weight of polar ice. Ten years later, CHARLES HAPGOOD, a science historian from Keene State College, New Hampshire, began to argue for a similar theory, in which only the crust moved, not the whole Earth. However, these ideas, whether they were right or wrong, made little impression on orthodox scientific thought [7,22].
Scenarios based on extraterrestrial impacts fared no better. That was hardly surprising, given that the starting point in many cases was the assumption that some myths and legends were based on catastrophes of cosmic origin, which was not regarded as a serious possibility by
University-based academics.
One of those who interpreted a myth as an actual event was the Jesuit scholar, Franz Xavier Kugler (1862-1929). Using several ancient sources, Kugler argued in 1927 that Phaeton was a
very bright object which had appeared in the sky several hundred years before the founding of Rome, eventually falling to Earth as a shower of large meteorites, causing catastrophic fires and floods, particularly in Africa [11,23].
Another catastrophist of the period was the British journalist, COMYNS BEAUMONT, who argued in a 1932 book that comets were planets which had been displaced from their natural orbits. According to Beaumont, cometary heads tended to disintegrate, forming meteors, which usually
crashed into the Sun. Some, however, were intercepted by the Earth, with catastrophic consequences.
Beaumont saw the widespread loam and gravel deposits of the northern latitudes as being evidence of an impact, associating the event with the Phaeton myth and the floods of both Noah and Deucalion. Since Orosius placed the Deucalion Flood 810 years before the founding of Rome, Beaumont estimated that the impact had occurred around 1560 B.C. [24].
Moving forward two decades, we come to a rather better-known catastrophist, IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY (1895-1979). In 1950, this Russian-born psycho-analyst, then living in America, launched a comprehensive assault on the uniformitarian consensus when he proposed
a highly-controversial scenario in his book, "Worlds in Collision". On the basis of ancient records and myths from around the world, Velikovsky argued that the most recent of a series of global catastrophes of extraterrestrial origin was initiated when Venus was ejected from the core of Jupiter as a comet (i.e. as a body with a substantial tail), and passed very close to the Earth around 1450 B.C., giving rise to the Phaeton myth, and causing catastrophic events such
as the plagues of Egypt and the flood of Deucalion [25].
As to catastrophes in earlier times, Velikovsky summarised his ideas from an unpublished book in the journal, Kronos, in 1979, suggesting that because myths often refer to a Golden Age associated with the figure known in Roman mythology as Saturn, the Earth might originally
have been a satellite of the planet bearing that name. Events related to its subsequent escape from Saturn's influence caused the flood of Noah [26].
Partly because of an attempt by some American academics to suppress Velikovsky's writings, they stimulated considerable interest in the subject of global catastrophes affecting the Earth. Also, many people, particularly young ones, were enthused by Velikovsky's exortations not
to accept orthodox opinions as a matter of course. So, for example, in an address given in 1953 to the graduate college forum of Princeton University, and included as a supplement to his 1956 book, "Earth in Upheaval", Velikovsky repeatedly urged members of his audience to "dare"
to formulate their own views [23,27].
[EPG- and I have my own view. "Catastrophism" is a load of shit]
A variety of writers, including scientists and other mainstream scholars, eventually made a serious effort to assess Velikovsky's work. In 1973, Glasgow University archaeologist, Euan Mackie, wrote in New Scientist that, regardless of whether Velikovsky's scenario seemed
plausible, he had formulated hypotheses which should be tested in the normal way. In the following year, together with Harold Tresman, Brian Moore, and Martin Sieff, Mackie became a founding member of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS), an organization designed to
provide a forum for this to happen [28,29].
Twenty five years further on, as the SIS celebrates its silver jubilee, various aspects of catastrophism, although not Velikovsky's specific theories, have become incorporated into mainstream science.
However, at the time the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies was formed, the gradualist paradigm was supremely dominant, as it had been throughout the previous hundred years, and any attempts to suggest catastrophist mechanisms for events in geology or evolution were viewed with great suspicion in orthodox academic circles and generally ignored.
Exactly the same applied to catastrophist explanations for events in ancient history, particularly ones in the Middle East. Rightly or wrongly, such arguments were generally seen as moves to provide support for a literal interpretation of the Bible [18,28].
When the British archaeologist, Sir LEONARD WOOLEY, excavated the ancient Sumerian city of UR, in what is now southern Iraq, between 1928 and 1934, he found a 3 metre thick layer of alluvial silt on top of the levels of the Ubaid Period (conventionally dated to around 4000 B.C.)
and beneath the first traces of the succeeding Uruk Period. To some, including Woolley himself, this seemed like evidence for the flood of Noah. However, no other sites were found to show similar alluvial deposits during the Ubaid Period. On the other hand, at the nearby city
of SHURUPPAK (the modern Fara), there was evidence of a flood during the Early Dynastic Period, around 2750 B.C., and an alluvial deposit dating from around the same time was found at another Sumerian site, the city of KISH. However, no serious investigation took place as to
whether there had been a widespread flood in Sumer during the Early Dynastic Period, as this would have smacked of unfashionable "Biblical Archaeology". Instead, it was often suggested that accounts of some strictly localised events in the region, caused by the Tigris and/or
Euphrates bursting their banks, at different times and in different places, might have been used mistakenly by later generations as the basis for both the Uta-Napishtim and the Noah stories [30,31].
ICE AGES
Moving forward to the present day, let us try to disregard the prejudices of the past and ask the question: is there any geological evidence for a world-wide flood? The answer is a categoric "No!", in terms of all the continents being covered by water, as described in
Genesis. From the time animals began living on the land, the closest we have been to that situation was probably during the Late Cretaceous Period, when large parts of North America, Africa and Eurasia were covered by shallow seas. That was the time when the chalk now familiar to us from the cliffs and uplands of southern England and northern France was formed from the shells of sea-creatures. The same chalk rocks also underlie the entire Paris basin, as described by Cuvier. However, the Late Cretaceous was over 65 million years ago, according to generally accepted dates, long before human beings were on the scene to formulate flood myths [32,33].
At the end of the Cretaceous Period, sea-levels fell markedly, draining the shallow epicontinental seas. That was the time of the famous K-T event, when a large asteroid or comet of around 10 kilometres in diameter struck Mexico, a million cubic kilometres of lava poured out over central India, and many species of animals, including all the dinosaurs, became extinct. Apart from another wave of extinctions during the Eocene-Oligocene transition around 35 million years ago, when sea levels were again very low, it is generally thought that the next major crisis was a series of Ice Ages which spanned the Pleistocene Epoch, beginning around 2 million years ago and ending around 11,500 years ago. This was the period which produced the loam and gravel layer much investigated by nineteenth century
catastrophists, as we have already noted [18,33,34].
In the prevailing gradualist scenario, the advance and retreat of the glaciers was thought, from ideas suggested by the Scottish "independent thinker", James Croll, and developed by the Serbian physicist, Milutin Milankovitch, to be related to a slow tumble of the Earth about its
axis of rotation [15,18].
In contrast, various writers have suggested that the impact of a large asteroid could initiate or terminate an Ice Age, depending on the circumstances [18,35-38].
An Ice Age could also be caused by a sustained period of smaller impacts, together with atmospheric dusting, perhaps linked to the disintegration of a giant comet, as in the hypothesis put forward by the British astronomers, Victor Clube and Bill Napier. Clube and Napier believe that Comet Encke, the asteroid Oljato and the Taurid meteors are the remnants of a giant comet, and extrapolations backwards from present orbits indicate that the break-up may have occurred about 9,500 years ago. However, the giant comet may have influenced the Earth for thousands of years prior to this, causing an atmospheric dust-cloud which had largely cleared by the time that Encke split from Oljato.
Indeed, ice core studies have indicated that there was a great deal of dust deposited during the last 10,000 years of the Pleistocene.Furthermore, this has the same chemical content as dust recovered from peat moss in the Tunguska region, where another fragment of the same
cometary system may have struck in 1908. However, much more evidencewill need to be produced if the Clube/Napier explanation for Ice Ages is to become established [13,18,39].
On the other hand, no rival theory can provide, in itself, a satisfactory explanation. Even if the Milankovitch theory, favoured by gradualists, could explain the fluctuations of the ice sheets during the Pleistocene, it says nothing about why we must go back 250 million
years to the Permian Period to find the next most recent Ice Age.
Moreover, a recent detailed study of prehistoric climate changes at Devil's Hole, Nevada, has shown that not even in the Pleistocene Epoch does the Milankovitch theory provide a good explanation for the sequence of events, at least at this particular location. A similar
problem applies to theories involving isolated extraterrestrial impacts, since the best evidence for a major impact event is at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago, when no Ice Age occurred [12,15,18].
Vulcanism is another factor which may have contributed to atmospheric cooling in the Pleistocene, because it undoubtedly occurred in extensive fashion at the time. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that the Toba super-eruption in the East Indies took place close to the
onset of the most recent of the Pleistocene Ice Ages, the Würm, 75,000 years ago. On the other hand, the extensive vulcanism of the Late Cretaceous did not lead to an Ice Age.
Plate tectonics seems to provide at least a partial explanation for the Permian and the previous
(Ordovician) glaciation, for continents apparently drifted over the poles at these (and only these) times during the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Eras. Land at or near a pole would have provided a platform for snow to settle on, reducing temperatures by reflecting the Sun's
rays back into space. It would also have facilitated the spreading of ice-sheets, for these form and spread more easily over land than over sea. However, Antarctica moved into a position over the South Pole during the Eocene Epoch, long before the start of the first Pleistocene
Ice Age, and it is still there today, after the termination of the last of them [18,33,40].
[ Ice Ages are not caused by impacts - EPG]
Thus it seems likely that a proper explanation for Ice Ages must involve the interplay of several factors from a list including asteroid impacts, vulcanism, atmospheric dust, continental drift and Milankovitch cycles. They were clearly complex events [18].
[Yes they are - EPG.]
Moreover, regardless of the causes of Ice Ages, even the effects seem much less straightforward than generally supposed. For example, the glaciations of the northern hemisphere were not simply times when the polar ice cap expanded in fairly regular fashion: Siberia and Alaska, areas now noted for their long, cold, winters, remained largely
ice-free when much of northern Europe, Greenland and Canada was covered by an ice sheet to a depth of 2-3 km. Also, as noted by Cuvier, unputrefied carcasses of mammoths, dating from the Late Pleistocene, have been found in Siberia, even in regions within the Arctic circle,
where no large wild animals live today. In those times, in contrast, sufficient vegetation must have been available, at least during the summer months, to provide sustenance for herds of grazing animals. When the mammoths died, temperatures must have been falling rapidly, even
though the final Ice Age of the Pleistocene, and the epoch itself, was drawing to a close. It is difficult to come up with an explanation which is entirely satisfactory.
[It sure is. Particularly when different idiots are trying to yell you down. - EPG]
Even if the mammoths died during a late cooling episode, it still has to be considered strange that, as temperatures subsequently rose very significantly elsewhere, they and the land which previously supported them remained in a permanently frozen state [18,22,41].
Elsewhere, when the ice-sheets melted at the end of the Pleistocene, the release of the stored-up water led to a rise in sea-level of over 100 metres. For many years, it was generally assumed that this had been a gradual, even-paced process. However, it now seems that the
deglaciation, and associated changes in the oceans, took place in rapid fashion [18,42,43].
Some have even challenged the generally-held view that worldwide temperatures had been falling from the Middle Miocene, about 18 million years ago, all the way through to the onset of the Pleistocene glaciations. They have suggested that the freezing and thawing episodes
which occurred around 12,000 years ago were not a continuation of previous trends, nor did they take place over a long timescale. So, for example, the retired British geologists, DEREK ALLAN and BERNARD DELAIRr, argued in their 1995 book "When the Earth Nearly Died" that
catastrophic events, including an increase in the axial tilt of the Earth, occurred around 11,500 years ago. The catastrophes were caused by the close passage of a sizeable cosmic body (which gave rise to the Phaeton legend) and the actual impact of a number of smaller
companions. According to Allan and Delair, these could all have been products of the Vela supernova explosion, which at the time was thought to have occurred in a part of the Galaxy close to our Solar System between 14,300 and 11,000 years ago, although it now seems that it
might have happened much more recently than that, around 700 years ago [41,44].
Whatever their origin, the extraterrestrial bodies generally struck the Earth whilst travelling in a northeast to southwesterly direction from Alaska to South America. As evidence, Allan and Delair drew attention to the presence of innumerable oval lakes with a NE/SW orientation
along the supposed path [18,41].
In the view of Allan and Delair, these events also caused extensive vulcanism, together with hurricanes and massive floods. As a consequence of the increased tilt of the Earth, there would have been a change towards colder climates at high latitudes, exacerbated by the
dust cloud resulting from impacts and volcanoes. So, the polar ice caps would have expanded, and flood water which could not immediately drain back to the sea might have been trapped as ice. In this view, therefore, as with that of the catastrophist diluvialists of the early
nineteenth century, the "erratic" boulders and the loam and gravel deposits of northern regions owed more to transport by flood water than by glaciers.
To Allan and Delair, this scenario is more plausible than the conventional paradigm in its explanation of the frozen mammoths of Siberia, the even more extraordinary "muck" deposits of Alaska, which contain animal remains, molluscs, vegetation, ice and volcanic ash in a
frozen, tangled mass, and the similar mixed deposits stuffed into caves at more southerly latitudes [18,27,41].
Velikovsky's Saturn hypothesis, which has been developed by Dwardu Cardona, David Talbott and Ev Cochrane, amongst others, would also seem to require a short, catastrophic transition between the Golden Age and present-day conditions, with no obvious space for glaciations of long duration [45-47].
Yet another viewpoint on what happened during the Late Pleistocene was provided by the American science historian, Charles Hapgood. As we saw earlier, Hapgood argued that the entire crust of the Earth must, on occasions, have suffered slippage relative to the core. That would, of course, have brought some new areas into polar regions, with others being moved away from them. Moreover, if a crustal dislocation brought land over a pole, where previously there had been just frozen water, then the ice-cap would expand, and vice versa [18,22,48-50].
Geologists have generally been of the opinion that the forces required to bring about a crustal dislocation would be so great as to rule out the possibility of such an event. However, Hapgood countered that there were, nevertheless, good reasons for thinking that such slippages had
actually occurred. On the assumption that the magnetic poles never stray far from the axis of rotation, he argued that palaeomagnetic evidence showed that the location of the geographical polar regions had changed over 200 times during the course of the Earth's history, some
of these changes being far too dramatic to be explained by the normal processes of continental drift. So, around 80,000 years ago, an area of the Yukon district of Canada lay over the North Pole, to be replaced within a few thousand years by a region of the North Atlantic between
Greenland and Norway. By around 50,000 years ago, the pole was locatedin the vicinity of Hudson Bay, Canada, before moving to its present position between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago. Similar events took place in the southern hemisphere, the South Pole moving to its present position on the main Antarctic continent from an area between Wilkes Land and Western Australia [22].
According to this hypothesis, therefore, Canada and the USA moved awayfrom the North Pole at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, whilst Siberia moved closer to the polar region. This would explain why the northern ice cap receded at this time, as the pole was no longer sited within a continent, and why frozen mammoths have been found in Siberia. At the
opposite end of the Earth, Antarctica moved over the South Pole, so the southern ice cap would then have expanded [22].
However, results of recent studies of ancient climates, based on oxygen isotope determinations, appear to support the more conventional view of the Pleistocene Ice Ages, rather than the "single-recent-catastrophe" hypothesis or the "crustal-displacement" theory.
Water contains two isotopes of oxygen, the lighter one (oxygen-16) evaporating more easily
than the heavier one (oxygen-18). When temperatures are low and ice-sheets are spreading, trapping, as frozen snow, water taken by evaporation from the oceans, the oxygen-16/oxygen-18 ratio of the water remaining in the oceans will be relatively low. Conversely, when temperatures are high, and more water is being returned to the oceans from ice-sheets than is being removed by evaporation, the oxygen-16/oxygen-18 ratio will be relatively high. The same ratios would be found in the shells of creatures living in the seas at the time, so the measurement of oxygen isotope ratios in marine fossils gives an indication of the ocean temperature when they were living. Similar conclusions can also be drawn from oxygen isotope ratios in the individual layers of the northern and southern ice-sheets, for it is thought that each layer was formed from the compressed snows of a single year.
Oxygen isotope ratios in the shells of microfossils in deep-sea cores from the North Atlantic have demonstrated temperature fluctuations throughout the Pleistocene, with even the highest average temperatures of these times being far lower than the typical temperatures of the Miocene. A correlation has also been demonstrated between climatic events in the North Atlantic and ones from China. Comparisons of Antarctic and Greenland climates over the past 100,000 years suggest that the same glacial-interglacial sequences took place in both polar
regions, and these were consistent with temperature changes in the oceans.
Although there were some variations in timing between different locations, possibly due to the effects of ocean currents, there were no times when climatic trends in Greenland and Antarctica were moving consistently in opposite directions, which might have been expected if the crustal-displacement theory was correct. Furthermore, ice cores from different parts of Antarctica all show a generally upward drift in temperatures between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, the period during which, according to Hapgood, the continent moved over the south pole,
so all three sites should have become significantly colder, not warmer [33,42,51,52].
Therefore, despite some anomalous features, which have still to be explained, and concerns about the nature of some of the evidence, this, in the main, continues to indicate that a number of major cooling episodes, affecting climate in all parts of the world, occurred at
intervals throughout the Pleistocene Epoch [18,53].
Extinctions of animal species indeed occurred throughout the Pleistocene, but were particularly marked at or near its conclusion, during the transition to the Holocene. As a whole, the LATE PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTIONS were minor compared to some earlier mass extinctions, such as those at the ends of the Permian and Cretaceous Periods, but large land animals were profoundly affected. North America lost threequarters of its large animals, 33 genera of them, between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago. In South America, 46 genera disappeared at around the
same time, and extinctions of large animals also occurred in other places, including Siberia, as we have already noted [18,54,55].
All of this is generally agreed, the major ongoing argument being about the reasons for the extinctions. Whatever causal mechanisms may have been involved, major environmental changes undoubtedly took place over the period in question. The Late Pleistocene extinctions in North America were synchronous with the retreat of the ice sheet north of the Great Lakes, and with the replacement of spruce woodland and tundra by pine and deciduous species. Similar associations of extinctions with climatic changes are found throughout the world. Even in Australia, where the extinctions occurred earlier than elsewhere, between 26,000 and 15,000 years ago, the death of the giant marsupials was synchronous with a long period of heat and drought [54-56].
However, another factor which cannot be ignored is the emergence of humankind, and its spread into new areas. Although there are hints that there may have been isolated settlements in the New World at an earlier time, it seems clear that the main wave of settlers crossed from Asia into Alaska by means of a land bridge less than 30,000 years ago, when sea-levels were low as a result of water being trapped as ice, and spread over the northern and southern continents, reaching the southern tip of Chile about 10,000 years ago. The Clovis stone-age culture of southwestern USA was well-established around 11,000 years ago, some sites showing strong evidence of the systematic butchering of large animals. Similarly, humans may have reached Australia shortly before the times of the extinctions there, although that is less certain
[18,54-56].
Arguments are still going on about the relative merits of climatic change and hunting as explanations for the late Pleistocene extinctions. However, it is reasonable to conclude that both must have played a part [54,55].
HOLOCENE CATASTROPHES
Inevitably, catastrophic floods occurred as the ice melted and the Holocene Epoch began. So, for example, the retreat of the glaciers removed the barrier which previously held back a large volume of water in western Montana, causing devastating flooding of a wide area of the
Columbia Plateau beneath the glacial lake, and gouging out deep channels in the scablands of eastern Washington. This happened not once, but several times, as conditions fluctuated.
When, in the 1920s, the Chicago geologist, HARLEN BRETZ, first suggested that the channels
of the Washington scablands had been created by catastrophic floods, he was attacked by his professional colleagues for challenging theassumptions of the gradualist orthodoxy. For example, James Gilluly maintained that the channels could have been by produced by floods of a similar magnitude to ones which still occured in the region. That, however. is no longer seen to be the case, given the short time-scale, and also (a fact not known at the time), a source for the catastrophic flood-water in glacial Lake Missoula. It is now believed that channelled scablands were also produced by waters released in similar catastrophic fashion from other glacial lakes in the western United States, such as Lake Bonneville, Utah. As the American ice continued to melt, a super-lake, Algonquin, was formed in the northeast. This consisted of the present Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron, but occupied a much greater area [57,58].
Low-lying regions throughout the world were flooded as sea-levels rose. Sometimes there was a long delay between cause and effect, increasing the catastrophic nature of the latter. So, for example, although it had generally been assumed that the Black Sea expanded in area and volume in a gradual fashion after the end of the Pleistocene, with excess water flowing in from the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean Sea and the Bosporus as the ice melted, it now seems that the Black Sea was sealed off from the Mediterranean by a natural dam in the Bosporus region which eventually burst around 5600 B.C.. Water then rushed into the Black Sea, flooding over 150,000 square kilometres of its low-lying coastal regions within a period of a year or so. Evidence for this was presented by geologists WILLIAM RYAN and WALTER PITMAN, of Columbia University, in their 1999 book, "Noah's Flood". Previously, the Black Sea
had been an oxygen-rich, freshwater lake, but the incoming salt-water sank to the bottom, causing anoxic conditions in the depths, a situation which still exists today. Radiocarbon dating studies on cores taken from the bed of the Black Sea at various locations have shown that oxygen-dependent shellfish living in deep water all became extinct around 5600 B.C., whilst salt-water molluscs made their first appearance in the Black Sea at exactly the same time.
Ryan and Pitman argued that recollections of this catastrophic flooding, passed on by
people who managed to escape and migrate towards Mesopotamia, gave rise to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and, in turn, to the Genesis story of Noah and his family. That remains controversial, but the evidence for the event itself is strong [59,60].
During the 1980s, archaeological, environmental and geological evidence for a world-wide catastrophic event around 2300 B.C. was presented in the pages of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies Review by an American engineer, MOE MANDELKEHR.
At the Second Society for Interdisciplinary Studies CAMBRIDGE CONFERENCE in 1997, social historian BENNY PEISER, of Liverpool John Moores University, summarised the results of a survey he had made of some 500 reports of civilization collapse and climate change at around the time of Mandelkehr's postulated catastrophe, most of which supported his case. According to the evidence presented, there was a change to generally drier conditions around 2300 B.C., with a lowering of the water-level in lakes and oceans, and reduced river discharge. On the other hand, it appears that there were flood disasters in China, northern India, Greece, Australia and the USA at about this time [61,62].
Mandelkehr believes that the catastrophic events around 2300 B.C. were caused by an encounter between the Earth and a cluster of cosmic bodies, the breakdown products of a giant comet, as in the Clube-Napier hypothesis. Others have also cited evidence for the impact of one or more extraterrestrial objects at this time. Proof is still some way off, but it seems likely that there was a single causal mechanism for the various geological and environmental changes which took place, and an encounter with a disintegrating comet is certainly a plausible
explanation.
At the Second Society for Interdisciplinary Studies Cambridge Conference, Bill Napier pointed out that the impact into an ocean of even a relatively small cosmic body, around 200 metres in diameter, would result in devastating floods in coastal regions, through the action of tidal waves [39,63-65].
Geological evidence for a global catastrophe around 1450 B.C., as proposed by Velikovsky, is less convincing than for one around 2300 B.C.. Much of the evidence for catastrophes which Velikovsky presented in "Earth in Upheaval", such as the Alaskan "muck" deposits, was actually
associated with the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Although Velikovsky suggested otherwise, the end of the Pleistocene is generally thought to have ended 8,000 years before the time of his supposed Venus catastrophe. It seems that there may have been localised catastrophes
around 1450 B.C., but nothing more than that [27,66].
CONCLUSION
Whilst there is no geological evidence at any time for a worldwide flood on the scale described in Genesis, there are abundant indications of widespread floods and other catastrophes during the period humans have been living on the Earth, in particular during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition around 11,500 years ago, and near the beginning of the Late Holocene, around 2300 B.C.. There are a large number of unanswered questions about events at both of these times.
Hopefully we shall not have to wait until the golden jubilee of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in 2024 before we get satisfactory answers to them.
Professor Trevor Palmer is Head of the Department of Life Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Mathematics at Nottingham Trent University. He is the Chairman of the Society for
Interdisciplinary Studies and the author of CONTROVERSY -CATASTROPHISM AND EVOLUTION: THE ONGOING DEBATE (Plenum Company: New York/London, 1998)
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Copyright 1999, Trevor Palmer - posted here with permission
With only one more post on this crap to come, uni.
