This kind of catastrophism.
Posted on 06/04/2003 3:39:25 PM PDT by blam
Mammoth herds 'roamed fertile Bering Strait in Ice Age'
Huge herds of mammoth, wild horses and bison once roamed the land bridge between North America and Siberia, new evidence suggests.
Plant fossils have shown that 24,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, dry grassland covered much of region.
The vegetation would have allowed large populations of mammals to survive all year round on the now-submerged landmass known as Beringia or the Bering Strait.
Scientists writing in the journal Nature said the animals would have been sustained by a diet rich in prairie sage, bunch grasses, and other grass-like plants.
Grant Zazula, from Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, and colleagues analysed plant fossils from three sites in Canada's frozen Yukon territory.
During the Ice Age, the area would have had vegetation similar to that in eastern Beringia.
The scientists concluded that the region would have borne a grass-dominated ecosystem known as "mammoth steppe".
They wrote: "This vegetation was unlike that found in modern Arctic tundra, which can sustain relatively few mammals, but was instead a productive ecosystem of dry grassland that resembled extant (present) subarctic steppe communities."
Story filed: 18:40 Wednesday 4th June 2003
The time line. Look at a time line. These events did not occur simultaneously.
I was once at that Dome near Tucson, where those environmentalist nut jobs locked themselves in for a year or so. As I was looking at the museum, there was a display which showed the earth temperature over a period of time going back tens of thousands of years (tree rings and Glacial ice core studies help to estimate the temperatures).
The entire curve was almost sinusodial in its pattern, with the mid point being taken as zero, the peaks were +3 F and the valleys were -3 F. Thus a swing of average temperature of 6 degrees determined warm periods from glacial periods.
As I was observing this with my wife, and two women in birkenstocks were standing next to us, I commented: "So the earth has had a period of temperature fluctuations for thousands of years. How can we be sure now that this period is one of global warming and not simply a continuation of the historical patterns?"
The two turned and looked at me, puzzled at such a question, then quickly walked away.
I was labled as a "non believer." I love to piss off the left with reasonable questions.
Does make one wonder, especially the Peri Rees(sp) map showing the land mass of the Anartica before modern times.
I found his tales of bouncing planets fascinating and amusing. It's totally against the laws of celestial mechanics, but a good fantasy writer never lets reality intrude on his creation.
No, I was thinking more about the Amur valley and Northern Siberia being a lot warmer during the Ice Ages than it is now, present temp on the level of the Ninth Bolga of Hell.
The Gulag Archipeligo mentions that prisioners working in a mine in Northern Siberia struck an "Ice Lens" full of frozen fish, which they ate with no harm to themselves. This and the frozen mammoth thing started me thinking that there was more to the Ice Ages than people are willing to admit.
And...where's Greenland? And what are those islands off the coast of S. America?
OI don't think 'they' know any more than has already been published. I don't think anyone is keeping a secret.
If you look at the progression of man and the ecosphere that gave us the present distribution of Mankind, it wouldn't have happened on a close reading of modern text books. We would still be swinging from trees on the African savanna.
The Ice Ages Happened, Elephants graised on the Barents Sea, you can buy mastidon meat in San Francisco, roasted or for Kabobs. If you look at the distribution of Ice in the Northern hemisphere there could be no Ice Free zone to let the horses out, they would be frozen in Northern Sibera.
Why was Sibera so warm, flowers in the mouth of flash frozen Mastidon and Mass under a couple of hundred feet of Ice?
I don't know what that is.
1797 - 1875 </p.
Sir Charles Lyell was born in Scotland on November 14, 1797 and died in London on February 22, 1875. He attended Oxford University at age 19. He was knighted for scientific accomplishment in 1848. He later became a Baron in 1864. He grew up the oldest of 10 children. Lyell's father was an active naturalist. Lyell had access to an elaborate library including subjects such as Geology.
When Lyell was at Oxford, his interests were mathematics, classics, the legal system (law) and geology. He attended a lecture by William Buckland that triggered his enthusiasm for geology.
Lyell originally started his career as a lawyer, but later turned to geology. His zoological skills aided in his extensive studies and observations throughout the world. He became an author of The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man in 1863 and Principles of Geology (12 editions). Lyell argued in this book that, at the time, presently observable geological processes were adequate to explain geological history. He thought the action of the rain, sea, volcanoes and earthquakes explained the geological history of more ancient times.
Lyell rebelled against the prevailing theories of geology of the time. He thought the theories were biased, based on the interpretation of Genesis. He thought it would be more practical to exclude sudden geological catastrophes to vouch for fossil remains of extinct species and believed it was necessary to create a vast time scale for Earth's history. This concept was called Uniformitarianism. The second edition of Principles of Geology introduced new ideas regarding metamorphic rocks. It described rock changes due to high temperature in sedimentary rocks adjacent to igneous rocks. His third volume dealt with paleontology and stratigraphy. Lyell stressed that the antiquity of human species was far beyond the accepted theories of that time.
Lyell was married and his wife preceded him in death. He associated with many important people and went world wide when conducting his studies of geology. Charles Darwin became his dear friend and correspondent. Darwin is quoted saying, "The greatest merit of the Principles was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind, and therefore that, when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it through his eyes."
I believe this is true today. ...and I'm a catastrophist.
our favorite!
free dixie,sw
that's good too;almost as good as DOG ( to quote Mel Gibson's character in The Patriot: DOG's a good meal!)!
free dixie NOW,sw
The two books are complementary. Certainly I'm not going to forward an explanation of why a mamoth would die and freeze in the ice, rapidly enough to preserve it as edible, even though the animal had undigested grass in it's stomach. But it's certain the cause was neither Venus nor Mars bumping into the Earth's magnetosphere as proposed and altering the axis of rotation. And definitely not within human memory. Nope. Didn't happen. Sir Isaac Newton forbids it.
Change in ocean currents, I would guess. Right now the North Atlantic is warmed by the Gulf Stream - but from what I have read about the Ice Ages, the circulation in the North Atlantic changed, blocking warm water from flowing northward. Hence the ice in Ohio and England. Likewise, a warm current could have kept Beringia ice-free.
I don't know what your background is and I'm just a layman who reads a lot about this stuff (with what little free time I have). I would love to see Velikovsky debunked but at this point I'm still keeping an open mind. My first question to you is what, of the anomalies descibed in his book, are the explanations that we have today? Why in the world are there huge masses of mammoth bones (and other animals) piled up in Alaska and Siberia, shattered and mixed in with gravel and broken trees? What of the caves in England and the other anomalies in the book?
Another thing that bothers me is why don't we learn about these anomalies? Are they really anomalies if there is evidence across the globe? I don't have the book with me to pull examples so I'm just going by memory. I'm not a Velikovsky apologist but it is interesting to me that only in his books do I hear about evidence like this.
You sound like you know what you're talking about and you seem familiar with Velikovsky so I'd love to hear what you have to say- like I say I have an open mind.
This kind of catastrophism.
Did Asteroids And Comets Turn The Tides Of Civilization?
You can speed it up by concentrating a lot of the material in a small space. Half-life is dependent on each atom by itself, though, and represents the lowest rate of natural decay.
Suprise. Those are called Carolina Bays, there are 500,000 of these along the east coast of the USA.
Mike Baillie
Discovering Archeology, July/August 1999
Moses called down a host of calamities upon Egypt until the pharaoh finally freed the Israelites. Perhaps he had the help of a comet impact coupled with a volcano. A volcano destroyed the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea (between today's Greece and Turkey) around the middle of the second millennium B.C. Researchers Val LaMarche and Kathy Hirschboeck suggest the volcano might be associated with tree-ring evidence for several years of intense cold beginning in 1627 B.C. Could that form the basis for strange meteorological phenomena recorded in the biblical book of Exodus?
In the book of Exodus, which describes events a few hundred kilometers from Santorini, we read of a pillar of cloud and fire, a lingering darkness, and the parting of the Red Sea. An enormous column of ash must have hung in the sky over the eruption (the Israelites’ “pillar of cloud by day and fire by night?”), and the volcano doubtless caused a tsunami, or tidal wave (which could have drowned a pharaoh's army). The Exodus story is traditionally dated to either the thirteenth or fifteenth century B.C. Those dates, however, depend ultimately on identifying the “Pharaoh of the Oppression,” and historians have never proven to which ruler that infamous title referred. Many biblical scholars will disagree, but I suggest that a seventeenth-century B.C. date is not impossible.
The argument can be bolstered. Equally catastrophic meteorological conditions are recorded in the Bible for the time of King David. Psalm 18, in reference to David, speaks of terrifying events: “Earth shook and trembled. The foundations of the hills moved and were shaken. ... Smoke ... fire ... darkness ... dark waters ... thick clouds of the skies ... hailstones and coals of fire.” On some chronologies, David is placed 470 years after the Exodus. The spacing between the two disastrous events recorded in Irish tree rings at 1628 and 1159 B.C. is 469 years. The Exodus story includes dust, several days of darkness, hail, dead fish, undrinkable water, cattle killed by hail, water breaking out of rocks, the earth opening, the sea parting as in a tsunami, and so on. Someone looking at the Exodus story and knowing descriptions of other distant volcanic effects might offer the possibility that the Israelites escaped from Egypt under the cover of a major natural catastrophe. There may be veiled references to comets in the biblical narrative, leading to the possibility that the Santorini eruption itself may have been triggered by a bolide (comet or asteroid) impact. David Levy, co-discoverer of the comet that bears his and Jean Shoemaker's names, has argued that the description of the “angel of the Lord in the sky over Jerusalem with a drawn sword” (1 Chronicles 21) could be a reference to a comet. The Angel of the Lord was, of course, also present at the Exodus, as it was “traveling in front of Israel's army.” Further, there are indications that as the Israelites left Egypt, the night was as bright as midday. The nights over Europe were reported to have been daytime-bright after the only known modern bolide impact, the Tunguska explosion over Siberia in 1908.
These stories raise the question of whether comets recorded by the Chinese at the start and end of the Shang Dynasty, at very near the same dates, were the same as the comets that may be recorded in the Old Testament. I believe that we know the answer: In the last five millennia, several dynastic changes and dark ages have been the direct result of impacts and/or volcanoes. The consequences of such events must have been devastating, leading to apocalyptic imagery in religious writing and predictions of the end of the world. Zachariah of Mitylene lived through the environmental disaster that began about 540 A.D. In the mid-550s, he wrote in his twelve-volume records of the trials the world had survived: “In addition to all the fearful things described above, the earthquakes and famines and wars, ... there has also been fulfilled against us the curse of Moses in Deuteronomy."“ The curse included pestilence, consumption, fever, fiery blasts from the skies, mildew, a rain of powder and dust, and darkness. The curse of Moses must have seemed an appropriate description of life after the impact of a piece of a comet.
Let's look at Venus. It allegedly was expelled from Jupiter. Now Jupiter rotation period is about 10.5 hours, the shortest of the principal planets. It is beyond reason to assume that an expelled Venus would have a near zero rotation rate. Yet that is what we observe today. The alleged changes in Earth's rotations would not absorb all of Venus' angular momentum, so where did it go? What mechanisms exist to transfer angular momentum from Venus to Earth? Both Venus and the Earth have insignificant magnetic fields, nowhere near strong enough to repel a collision, as described in Worlds. Imagine defending yourself from steel jacketed bullets by waving a refrigerator magnet around.
And Venus now has the least eccentric orbit of any body in the solar system. How? It would require the application of considerable force at it's aphelion to change it's orbit from "earth crossing 50 year eccentric" to "near perfect circle" ("sort of eccentric" for Mars).
I'm not going to calculate the forces needed, but I do believe it would require changing the speed of the planet by approximately 7 miles per second or so. I don't think any body could survive the impact needed to effect that large of a change.
No, you won't see much debunking going on here. The "anomalies" Velikovsky noted certainly cannot be explained by presuming bumper car planets. Nope.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.