The Pleistocene Extinction

atlantisquest ^

[Spok]

And how long will it be until some liberal bastion of higher learning gets a million dollar grant to prove that it was caused by second hand cigarette smoke??

[the-ironically-named-proverbs2]

Velikovsky wrote a whole book on this subject in 1955 and doesn't get even one word of mention in this article. Read Earth in Upheaval (if you can find a copy- it took me 6 months to find a used copy). He covers everything in this article and more. From the article:

"Massive piles of mastodon and sabre-toothed tiger bones were discovered in Florida (Valentine, 1969).

From Velikovsky (Earth in Upheaval, p151):

" On the Atlantic coast of Florida, at Vero in the Indian River region, in 1915 and 1916, human remains were found in association with the bones of Ice Age (pleistocene) animals, many of which either became extinct, like the saber-toothed tiger, or have disappeared from the Americas, like the camel.

The find caused immediate excitement amoung geologists and anthropologists. Beside the human bones pottery was found, as well as bone implememnts and worked stone. Ales Hrdlicka, of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D.C., a renowned anthropologist (who generally opposed the view that man existed in America in the Ice Age), wrote that the "advanced state of culture, such as that shown by the pottery, bone implements, and worked stone brought from a considerable distance, implies a numerous population spread over large areas, acquainted thoroughly with fire, with cooking food, and with all the usual primitive arts"; the human remains and relics could not be of an intiquity "comparable with that of fossil remains with which they are associated." He also published the opinion of W.H. Holmes, head curator of the Department of Anthropology of the United States National Museum, who investigated the pottery obtained by Hrdlicka from Vero. These were bowls "such as were in common use amoung the Indian tribes of Florida." When compared with vessels from Florida earth mounds, "no significant distinction can be made; in material, thickness of walls, finish of rim, surface finish, color, state of preservation, and size and shape," the vessels "are identical." There thus appears " not the least ground in the evidence of the specimens themselves for the assumption that the Vero pottery pertains to any other people than the mound-building Indian tribes of Florida of the pre-Columbian time."

But the bones of the man and his artifacts (pottery) were found amoung the extinct animals. The discoverer of the Vero deposits, E.H. Sellards, state geologist of Florida and a very capable paleontologist, wrote in the debate that ensued: "That the human bones are fossils normal to this stratum and contemporaneous with the associated vertibrates is determined by their place in the formation, their manner of occurance, their intimate relation to the bones of other animals, and the degree of mineralization of the bones." This "degree of mineralization of the human bones is identical with that of the associated bones of the other animals." In his view the evidence obtained " affords proof that man reached America at an early date and was present on the continent in association with a Pleistocene (Ice Age) fauna." Anthropologists of the Hrdlicka school would not accept this, claiming a late arrival of man on the American continent, and the presence of pottery was in their view proof of a late date for the human bones. The human sculls, though fossilized, did not differ from the skulls of the Indians today.

In 1923-29, thirty-three miles north of Vero, in Melbourne, Florida, another such association of human remains and extinct animals was found, "a remarkably rich assemblage of animal bones, many of which represent species which became extinct at or after the close of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) epoch." The discoverer, J.W. Gidley, of the United States National Museum, established unequivocally that in Melbourne - as in Vero- the human bones were of the same stratum and in the same state of fossilization as the bones of the extinct animals. And again human artifacts were found with the bones. The "projectile points, awls, and pins" found with the human bones at Melbourne as well as at Vero are of the same workmanship as those unearthed in early Indian sites, two thousand of which are known in the area.

All these and other considerations of an anthropological as well as geological nature, being summed up, prove in the opinion of I. Rouse, a recent analyst of the much-debated fossils of Florida, that "the Vero and Melbourne man should have been in existance between 2000 B.C. and the year zero A.D." This does not solve the problem of the association of extinct animals and man who lived between two and four thousand years ago, in the second and first millennia before the present era.

There is no proper way out of this dillemma, other than the assumption that now extinct animals still existed in historical times and that the catastrophe which overwhelmed man and animals and annihilated numerous species occured in the second or first millennium before the present era.

The geologists are right: the human remains and artifacts of Vero and Melbourne in Florida are of the same age as the fossils of the extinct animals.

The anthropologists are equally right: the human remains and artifacts are of the second or first millennium before the present era.

What follows? It follows that the extinct animals belonged to the recent past. It follows also that some paroxysm of nature heaped together these assemblages; the same paroxysm of nature may have destroyed numerous species so that they became extinct. "

[SoCal Pubbie]

Now it's time for a shameless plug! I am in the early stages of designing an exhibit of fossils to be shown at the Old County Courthouse Museum in Santa Ana, California starting in early February. It will consist of fossils uncovered during the building of the Eastern Transportation Corridor. It will include earlier Cretaceous samples such as a dinosaur called the Hadrasaur, and many newer ones like whales, Megladon sharks, mammoths, mastodons, American lions, Desmostylus (a kind of early hippo), and various plants. Just about very period from 100 million years ago through the ice age will be represented. If you live in Southern California please come see it!

[headsonpikes]

See RightWhale's #65.

One does not have to accept Velikovsky's hypotheses to be intrigued by his data base. Evidence is overwhelming that catastrophic events have happened relatively recently, and more can be expected in the not distant future.

The Uniformitarians are dead dead dead, but the PEers never acknowledge Velikovsky's work - too embarrassing, I guess. ;^)

[null and void]

Will do!

[the-ironically-named-proverbs2]

The interesting thing about the Florida evidence is that it ties historically modern man with these events and fossils of supposedly 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. I actually saw a show recently on the Discovery channel (IIRC) that actually dated the extinction of the saber toothed tiger as recently as 2000 years ago in North America.

A link that I googled up on the human fossils in Florida: http://www.rootsweb.com/~flindian/veroman.htm

FYI, in case you've never read it, Velikovski's Earth in Upheaval is not about theory- it's a book full of physical evidence and footnotes. I was amazed at the amount of evidence he compiled that I had never even heard of. I did a lot of on-line searching to check the existence of some of it (since everyone says he's a crackpot) and was able to corroborate much of it (the existence of it at least- not necessarily the dating).

Embarrasing indeed.

[headsonpikes]

I read Velikovsky 35-40 years ago. Ages in Chaos, Worlds in Collision, and Earth in Upheaval are each intriguing. His vivid descriptions of these bone and carcass masses convinced me that catastrophic events on a planetary scale did, indeed, occur within historical memory, however much fragmented and mythologized.

His accounts of comets and planets swerving around like bump-a-cars I found somewhat less compelling.

I've always enjoyed autodidactic outsiders...if one can avoid agreeing with their conclusions, they usually present at least a fresh perspective on subjects normally rigidly disciplined by an Establishment of some kind.

Oswald Spengler is another iconoclast worth reading, if you can avoid being ensnared by his goofy, romantic German metaphysics.

Spengler's perspective on the Culture that produced Mohammad and Islam is well worth reading.

[headsonpikes]

"...with Mantle-type mineralogy...formation appears to take place at mantle depths."

Well, the diamonds therein are formed from subducted carbon, hundreds of kilometers deep, apparently.

And what physics would drive these extraordinary kimberlitic events, given an expanding earth?

'Chaotically-emplaced breccia' hardly captures the unique nature of these mini-volcanos.

[Bob J]

A near miss with a very large comet or planet like object would answer a lot of questions. Huge tides causing worldwide tsunamis, shifting of Earth's axis as well as it's solar orbit, tremendous volcanic activity spewing toxins and smoke into the sky obliterating the sun and causing "nuclear winter". If this object was accompanied by large asteriods with one or two hitting the earth, it explains quite a bit.

[Bob J]

Consider a planet size body at the moon's distance. It could create tidal actions several hundred feet high. As the earth rotated, these tides and subsequent tsunamis would repeat on roughly a 24 hour basis for as long as it's proximity created gravitational forces.

As far as whether it is on a solar rotation...who knows. It is possible for a planet with an extremely large ellipse and long rotational cycle (say 50-100k years) to appear to astronomers as an object outside our SS speeding away from earth. In that case, making a close encounter with earth on it's loop back around the sun would be stricly coincidental.

As far as seaweed and clamshells, those are constituents of the tidal plane and I would expect them to be deposited within several thousand feet of the seashore or less. Even under this theory of repeated tidal tsumnamis caused by the near miss of a planet, the entire tidal cycle would take 24 hours to complete. If we assume (for no particular reason) a 200 foot difference between normal and high tide, that would amount to about 8 feet per hour. Pretty significant but no flash floods. That would come when the rising tide breached natural terrain barriers and flowed in all at once to lower elevation areas.

It is interesting to note some of the similarities with the flood theory. I read a theory that at one time the Mediterranean (and maybe the Black and Baltic Seas) were shall fresh water lakes and some cataclysm causing sea levels to rise several hundred feet overflowed the natural barrier that existed between what is today the Rock of Gibralter and Morroco, flooding them with sea water and creating a huge opening that only widened as the sea level dropped.

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this ping list.

[SevenDaysInMay]

I never understood how those guys always ran on new tires. Mine have all shown frightful weathering in 5 years or so.

BTW, shoot for radiators and then fuel tanks. Use enough gun and enough ammunition.

[FreeLibertarian]

Please add me to your ping list.
Thank you in advance.

[null and void]

You do know that silane is pyrophoric, don't you?

[farmfriend]

Consider yourself added. Thank you.

[headsonpikes]

An extremely intriguing hypothesis! I'm in no position to flatly contradict you - I will consult with a couple of my geologist pals. ;^)