Atlantis is a given name for a civilization that inhabited many
islands and coastal regions
Atlantis: The Scientific
Evidence
by Robert Bruce Baird
The impact of the ice ages
and inter-glacial effects on the rise and fall of ocean levels and
the earth readjustments to the departure of the ice cap cannot be
overlooked in the human historical picture. Research in the area is
far greater than in the recent past and we can learn what might have
happened to earlier civilizations on earth. Atlantis is a given name
for a civilization that inhabited many islands and coastal regions,
in my mind. The idea of one central location makes little sense when
one considers such things as Ice Ages and changes in the flow of the
Gulf Stream and climate that resulted. Because it lasted for from
30,000 to 100,000 years and may have co-existed with other
civilizations rising and falling it is most inauspicious to debate
one specific time when it was in Tara or Crete or the Azores or
Bimini or even Finias. That seems to be the usual debate among the
over 25,000 books written about just this one lost civilization. As
long as people don't integrate all facts they inevitably just come
up with theories to fit pet or prevailing concepts. In Gateway to
Atlantis, 'The Search for the source of a lost Civilization' we
see a far better scholar who is doing the right kind of
investigation. Mapping of the ocean bottoms and geological
understandings as well as studying glacial deposits and tree rings
gives a better picture of history than history books.
"In 1960 a scientific paper
by Wallace S. Broecker and his colleagues Maurice Ewing and Bruce C.
Heezen, of Lamont Geological Observatory at Columbia University,
Palisades, New York, appeared in the 'American Journal of Science'.
Entitled 'Evidence for an Abrupt Change in Climate close to 11,000
years ago', it advanced the theory that a 'number of geographically
isolated systems suggested that the warming of world-wide climate
which occurred at the close of Wisconsin glacial times was extremely
abrupt. (3)
By examining sediment cores
taken from various deep-sea locations, Broecker and his team were
able to demonstrate that around c. 9000 BC. the surface water
temperature of the Atlantic Ocean increased by between six and ten
degrees centigrade, (4) enough to alter its entire ecosystem. More
significantly, it was found that the bottom waters of the Cariaco
Trench in the Caribbean Sea, off Venezuela, suddenly stagnated, {The
Gulf Stream being sent back south from hitting the land around the
Azores when the water level was lower suddenly started warming the
Iceland and British Isles regions, again.} showing that an abrupt
change in water circulation had taken place coincident to the
warming of the oceans. (5) Additionally, the silt deposits washing
into the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi Valley abruptly halted
and were retained in the delta and valleys, as the waters from the
glacier-bound Great Lakes switched direction and began draining
through the previously frozen northern outlets. (6) With extreme
rapidity, the water levels of these lakes shrank from maximum
volume, down to the much lower level they occupy today. (7)
Among the data drawn on by
Broecker and his team to make their findings was the work conducted
in 1957 by Cesare Emiliani of the Department of Geology at the
University of Miami. He found that deep-sea cores displayed clear
evidence of an abrupt temperature turn around in 9000 BC. was
responsible for the other changes set out by Broecker et al. (8)
However, since other cores examined by Emiliani had not shown the
same rapid transition, he decided that the anomalous cores lacked
vital sediment layers covering a period of several thousand years of
ecological history, and so dismissed them as unreliable. (9) Yet
Broecker and his colleagues disputed Emiliani's interpretation of
the results. They could find no reason to suppose that key sediment
layers could have been lost in the manner suggested. As a
consequence, they reinstated Emiliani's controversial findings as
crucial evidence of a major shift in oceanic temperatures around
11,000 years ago. (10)
Although Broecker et al
seemed keen to promote a date of c. 9000 BC for the rapid transition
from glacial to post-glacial ages, there are indications that this
event did not occur until a slightly later period. At least three
lake sites in the Great Basin region revealed carbon-14 dates around
8000 BC for a maximum water level shortly 'before' they experienced
a sudden desiccation after the withdrawal of the ice sheets. (11) In
addition to this, marine shells from the St. Lawrence Valley, which
provided evidence of an invasion of seawater coincident to a rapid
ice retreat, frequently produced dates 'post' 9000 BC. (12)
Broecker and his colleagues
accepted the presence of these much lower dates and suggested that
the whole matter was complicated by the fact that there had been an
estimated 200-year resurgence of glacial conditions, known as the
Valders re-advance, around the mid-ninth millennium BC. They
therefore acknowledged that their own findings might in fact relate
to the recession of the ice fields after this time, bringing the
dates of their suggested 'major fluctuation in climate' and the
'sharp change in oceanic conditions' down to well below c. 9000 BC.
(13)
THE EVIDENCE OF POLLEN SPECTRA
Further evidence that
dramatic changes accompanied the transition from glacial to
post-glacial ages came from the work of Herbert E. Wright Jnr, of
the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, (14) and J Gordon Ogden III of the Department of Botany
and Bacteriology at the Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware. (15)
Both examined the pollen spectra range from sediment cores taken
from various lake sites in the Great Lakes area and found they
provided clear evidence of an abrupt shift in flora at the end of
glaciation. The spruce forests that had thrived in the cold harsh
climate for many thousands of years were supplanted swiftly, first
by pine and then by mixed hardwood forests, such as birch and oak.
Deciduous trees, as we know, only thrive in a warmer climate.
The significance of these
findings is the acceleration at which this transition took place. In
an article for the journal 'Quaternary Paleoecology' in 1967, Ogden
pointed out that some pollen spectra samples showed a 50 per cent
replacement from spruce to pine occurring in just 10 centimeters of
sediment. (16) In one sample taken from a site named Glacial Lake
Aitken in Minnesota, the transition from 55 per cent to 18 per cent
spruce pollen occurred in only 7.6 centimeters of sediment, re-
presenting a deposition corresponding to just 170 years. (17) The
problem here is that conventional geologists and paleoecologists
consider that the transition from glacial to post-glacial ages
occurred over several 'thousand' years, not just a few hundred {The
time it takes for one or two trees to live and die.} years.
These findings so baffled
Ogden that he was led to comment: 'The only mechanism sufficient to
produce a change of the kind described here would therefore appear
to be a rapid and dramatic change in temperature and/or
precipitation approximately 10,000 years ago.' (18)
What kind of climatic
'event' might have been responsible for this 'rapid and dramatic
change in temperature' {Could this relate to the buttercups found
frozen and undigested in Mammoth mouths of the Arctic?} in the
American Midwest, sometime around c. 8000 BC? Had it been a
consequence of the proposed comet impact that devastated the western
hemisphere during this same epoch?
The knowledge that some 65
million years ago the Cretaceous period had been abruptly brought to
a close by just such an impact has softened the most stubborn of
minds concerning such a possibility. Broecker himself, in an article
written for 'Scientific American' in 1983, now accepted that
asteroid or comet impacts might be responsible for the instigation
and termination of glacial ages. (19)
This is indeed what Emilio
Spedicato has suggested as the mechanism behind the revolution in
climate and ocean temperature experienced during this period…" (20)
We will return to
implications related to this and the work of Mr. Collins throughout
this encyclopedia as we develop real history from actual facts
rather than the Bible Narrative. It should be evident that these
climate changes had significant impacts on society and created a
loss of culture and technology in certain areas of the world. There
were probably people who took advantage of these spiritual and other
perceptions that resulted as well.
Robert Bruce Baird is the
author of Diverse Druids, World-Mysteries.com guest 'expert' and
columnist for The ES Press Magazine. His
Collective Works on CD (20 books including an enclopedia) are
now available from Amazon.com.
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