My first article is about the end of the last Ice Age in Europe, its effects on the MeditteranianSea and early Civilization. It may be possible to tie together a number of legends, archeologicalartifacts, geology and meterology in a new comprehensive explantion that could ignite newresearch, debates and solutions to the mysteries of civilization's origins and fates.
But before we get into a deeper discussion lets get into Atlantis a little deeper.
This new Metacreation page by
Chris Casady
has a great Mini Movie on Atlantis.
Evidence from Danish lake sediments shows that the last ice age ended in Europe about 10,500 years ago. Polen analysis of these muds showed abrupt warming. The ice age ended abruptly and probably that spring was much warmer and full of flowers. The trigger mechanism for the spectacular end of ice ages has now been discovered. During the ice ages, the ocean is just cold enough to create methane ice at about 600 meters depth along the continental slope sediments. At these temps and pressures methane can form methane ice similar to what exists on jupiter! This ice is very unstable and if the water warms just a little, perhaps just a little less cloud cover or a little more greenhouse gas, it can catastrophically melt and release 1000 times the normal amount of methane. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and it rapidly warms the earth. This leads to catastrophic melting of the glaciers. For some reason, the ice age ended in Europe later than in N. America by 350 years. The warming and the rise in sea level came in stages and coupled with the uplift of the land, created marine terraces along much of the worlds coastlines. The fiords began to flood and other coastal changes were spectacular. Climactic changes swept Europe.
But in southern Europe the climate was much different. Drill cores from the Meditterranian Sea floor are composed of playa gypsum! The Meditterranian Sea was dry and surrounded by steep cliffs with oases along the base where rivers had eroded deep canyons. Various civilizations existed around the dry sea at these oases. The Egyptians, Isrealis, Greeks and Atlantians were the main civilizations. They were about to be almost wiped out by the great flood, survive only in legend and then rise again to create some of the greatest civilizations.
At the west end of the Meditterranian the narrow land strip connecting Africa and Spain was a very special geographic situation. The Atlantic Ocean on the west and 2,000 foot cliffs on the east side. This would have been an incredible focus of trade and civilization. The best of Europe and Africa meeting and enjoying the great beaches and weather. The Atlantians were doing very well at Gilbraltar. But things changed quickly, and the Atlantic began to rise higher each summer. The end of Atlantis came suddenly when this thin strip of land was breached. It must have been incredible to see a great civilization suddenly swept over the 2,000 foot waterfalls! Total destruction must have been swift and complete. The Meditterranian Sea filled in very rapidly. Traders spread the story rapidly around the basin, and it was handed down through generations of Greeks. The old Greek civilization was completely destroyed also, but ultimately the few survivors created of one of the world's greatest civilizations.
The oasis at the old lower Nile delta was especially spectacular. The Egyptians may have been quite advanced and prosperous there. The Egyptians who survived along the Nile built the Sphinx on higher ground. The Sphinx is now believed to be very old and carved long before the pyramids. It has evidence of rain erosion not found on other monuments. It existed through a different wetter climate that existed before the pyramids. It inspired future generations to build even greater monuments and civilizations. Perhaps remnants of the Atlantian civilization's knowledge was incorporated into the surviving Meditterranian civilizations.
Most living along the floor of the Meditterranian Sea were killed in this incredible flood. It's possiblr that the Israelis were living along the lower parts of the western slopes of Isreal at the time of Noah. He built the ark and was ready for the greatest flood in history. Noah was one of the few to survive. He floated up and out of the way of the destruction and restarted the Isreali civilization. This flood was one of the greatest turning points in human history.
Floods of various types occured around the world as the glaciers rapidly retreated. Another spectacular flood occured in the Indus Valley of Pakistan. The melting of the glaciers in the western Himalayas destroyed the ancient Indus civilization. They had built vast brick cities, roads and water channels. It was completely flooded and buried under tens of feet of mud along the entire river. Some sites have been dug up, but most of this civilization remains 50 feet under modern Pakistan. Unfortunately no one has been able to decipher their symbolic language. The complete story of this great civilization will have to wait until another "Rosetta Stone" is found.
Flood stories are part of most culture's history around the world. It affected everyone. The climatic changes are recorded in all types of land and oceanic sediments where preservation was good. The lessons are important and have profound implications for modern mankind. The current debate about "Global Warming" is very intense. The graphs of the rise of temperature since the industrial revolution show an increasing curve of over a degree centigrade. This graph looks impressive in it's context, but it isn't very impressive in the context of ice ages to interglacial changes. Since we are in the height of an interglacial period and most of the methane ice has melted, we might not be able to change the climate as much as we think. We might be able to spike it a little bit, but we are not able to create the spectacular warmings that occured 10 to 14 thousand years ago. That warming of tens of degrees centigrade in magnitude was caused by a thousand times the current greenhouse gases.
Nevertheless, a couple of more degrees could cause severe consequences. There are still glaciers to melt and probably some more methane ice to melt. We live in an extremely delicate interdependent civilization. Any disruption to our agricultural systems, coastal developments, weather patterns etc. will cause great economic changes and dislocations. If this occurs too rapidly we will not be able to adjust smoothly. This could lead to more wars. If the temperature spikes up it might also spike down rapidly also, as was seen in the records of previous interglacials. Increases in the cloud cover due to increased evaporation from a warmer ocean can rapidly cool the air in certain locations. Europe is extremely vunerable to cooling. Other areas seem to be experiencing drought and desertification. We have seen a rapid increase in the size and severity of the world's deserts. They are expanding and life there is almost impossible now. Any climactic fluctuations are dangerous for our present systems and we should be very careful. More research is needed.
Some greenhouse gases are more dangerous than others. The freons and complex chemicals are probably the worst. Bromines are probably second and methane third. Fourth is carbon dioxide. Although many times weaker, it is the most abundant. The methane from livestock is tremendous and can be detected from space. Methane from oil and gas production is also significant. These two sources are still small compared to methane ice, but they are powerful greenhouse gases even at current levels. The feons and bromines are the easiest to control and we could reduce them to minimal levels without major changes to civilization. They are also bad for the ozone layer and that risk is not worth taking any longer. Changes in the levels of methane up or down, animal or oil based, would be extremely disruptive to civilization. Are the wealthiest nations going to continue to expand production of these gases while they try to limit the poorer nations from reaching their level of production?
The expanding knowledge about the climactic history of the earth and it's relationship to civilization will continue to be an exciting arena of discovery and debate. Hopefully, we will find out the information we need to make intelligent and fair decisions about how to proceed, before our current civilizations have fates similar to the previous ones.