Pages 17-18
Charles Darwin, who denied the occurrence of
continental catastrophes in the past, in a letter to Sir Henry
Howorth admitted that the extinction of mammoths in Siberia was
for him an insoluble problem. J.D. Dana, the leading American
geologist of the second half of the last century, wrote:
"The
encasing in ice of huge elephants, and the perfect preservation
of the flesh, shows that the cold finally became suddenly
extreme, as of a single winter's night, and knew no relenting
afterward."
In the stomachs and between the teeth of the
mammoths were found plants and grasses that do not grow now in
northern Siberia. "The contents of the stomachs have been
carefully examined; they showed the undigested food ... which
was a proof of a sudden death."
Comment
Just before the last shift of the Polar Axis
in about 1587 BCE, the North Pole was located in the Atlantic
Ocean between Spain and Québec. At that time northern Siberia
had a tropical and subtropical climate. Since the Polar Axis shifted
within a single day's time, these elephants were immediately frozen
solid in their now-frigid new polar environment.
In fact, as I
have seen on television from time to time, these animals were
so perfectly preserved, that even after thousands of years, it
was possible for some of their discoverers to actually cook and
eat this "fresh-frozen" meat!
*
Pages 30-31
The ravages of no disease, however, virulent,
could explain some of the phenomena in this arena of death [in
Scotland]. Rarely does disease fall equally on many different
genera at once, and never does it strike with instantaneous suddenness;
yet... so suddenly did the agency [of destruction] perform its
work that its victims were fixed in their first attitude of surprise
and terror...
"From the fact that certain individuals have
even preserved traces of colour upon their skin, we are certain
that they were entombed before decomposition of their soft parts
had taken place."
*
Pages 50-51
And what is no less surprising, the northern
part of Greenland, according to the concerted opinions of glaciologists,
was never glaciated. ...
"The islands of the Arctic Archipelago,"
writes another scientist, "were never glaciated. Neither
was the interior of Alaska," ...
But why the polar lands
were not glaciated during the Ice Age was never explained. Greenland
presents still another enigma ...
In the 1860s, O. Heer of Zurich
published his classical work on fossil plants of the Arctic; he
identified the plant remains of the northern parts of Greenland
as magnolia and fig trees, among other species. Forests of exotic
trees and groves of juicy subtropical plants grew in the land
that lies deep in the cold Arctic and is immersed in a continuous
polar night of six months' duration.
Comment
First of all, let me state that I am not going
to include the sources for various quoted materials that Dr. Velikovsky
has cited. If you wish to pursue his writings in greater depth,
you are urged to obtain your own copy of this book.
As for Greenland, currently its larger end
is in the north and its smaller, more pointed end is in the south.
When the North Pole was located in the South Atlantic Ocean, and
the South Pole located in Micronesia, 8787-5187 BCE, then Greenland
would have been right on the Equator. The island would be reversed
north-south, with the Equator running through the larger south
and the pointed north at a latitude of modern Florida, where magnolia
and fig trees abound.
*
Page 54
There was no ice cover in the Gulf States [of
North America].
Comment
The Gulf Coast States do not lie within the
immediate influence of any Polar Ice-Cap Zone. They are located
directly between the North Atlantic North Polar Zone and a cyclical
South Polar Zone in the eastern Pacific Ocean, off the southwest
coast of Mexico. Thus, the Gulf States would never be glaciated,
as they lie along the Cairo-Oceania Polar Pivotal Equator.
For more information about the Cairo-Oceania
Polar Pivotal Equator, please see
Polar
Axial Displacement, a separate essay in this series. However,
it is worth noting here that all those areas along this Polar
Pivotal Equator perhaps are the safest areas for civilization.
The geologically notable so-called "Driftless Zone"
of Wisconsin also falls along this Polar Pivotal Equator.
*
Page 66
It is asserted that since before the age of
man -- since late Tertiary times and through the time of the Great
Ice Age in Europe and America -- northern China experienced "progressive
desiccation interrupted by pluvial intervals". Arid conditions
prevailed over northern China and "the general absence of
ice-sculptured features" led the naturalist (J.S. Lee) to
the conclusion that in northern China, as in northern Siberia,
there were no glacial conditions and no formation of ice cover.
Comment
It has been approximately 18,000 years (5 X
3,600) since the North Polar Zone was located over what is now
China. Since the North Pole shifts in a clockwise direction with
respect to the Great Pyramid of Egypt, it can be hypothesized
that when it shifts the next time, around 2012 CE, the new North
Pole will once again be in China, with the new South Pole located
in the vicinity of Santiago de Chile.
Over this past 18,000 years,
China has experienced 5 different northern and southern latitudinal
geographical positions; thus, China experienced "progressive
desiccation interrupted by pluvial intervals".
*
Pages 94-95
Several theories have been offered to explain
the prodigious quantity of sand in the Sahara. "The theory
of marine origin is now no longer tenable." The sand, it
was found, is of recent origin. It is assumed that when a large
part of Europe was under ice, the Sahara was in a warm and moist
temperate zone; later the soil lost its moisture and the rock
crumbled to sand when left to the mercy of the sun and the wind.
How long ago was it that conditions in the
Sahara were suitable for human occupation? Movers, the noted Orientalist
of the last century, author of a large work on the Phoenicians,
decided that the drawings in the Sahara were the work of the Phoenicians.
It was likewise observed that on the drawings discovered by Barth
the cattle wore discs between their horns, just as in Egyptian
drawings.
Also, the Egyptian god Set was found pictured on the
rocks. And there are rock paintings of war chariots drawn by horses
"in an area where these animals could not survive two days
without extraordinary precautions".
The extinct animals in the drawings suggest
that these pictures were made sometime during the Ice Age; but
the Egyptian motifs in the very same drawings suggest that they
were made in historical times.
Comment
When the previous North Pole was located in
the North Atlantic between Europe and Canada, south of Greenland,
western Europe and eastern North America would have experienced
an "Ice Age", since they would have been located along
the fringes of the Polar Zone, at about the same distance from
the Pole as central Alaska and Hudson Bay are located today; and
parts of these areas are heavily glaciated. (The South Pole of
the same epoch was located off the southern coast of Australia,
with all of Australia under the ice.)
When Europe was experiencing its "Ice
Age", the continent of Africa stretched north and west of
Cairo, not west and south as it does today. All of what is now
the Sahara Desert would have been NORTH of Cairo, with Morocco
located as close to the fringes of glaciation as western Europe.
The Sahara Desert would have had a classically temperate climate
like that of modern North America or Europe, where there are millions
of horses.
*
Page 109
A true theory of the origin of ice ages, whether
resorting to astronomical, geological, or atmospheric causes must
also explain why ice ages did not occur in northwestern Siberia,
the coldest place on earth, but did occur in temperate latitudes,
and in a much more remote past in India, Madagascar, and equatorial
Brazil.
None of the theories mentioned explains these strange
facts. Hypotheses concerning warmer and colder areas in space,
or the variability of the sun as a source of energy, are especially
inadequate to account for the geographical distribution of the
ice cover. Thus the concept of ice ages, which is established
in science as one of its most definite facts, serving also as
a foundation for the theory of evolution, has no explanation itself.
... The glacial cover of the Ice Age could have been the polar
icecaps of an earlier epoch.
Thus would be explained not only
the origin of the ice cover but also the fact that its geographical
position did not coincide with the present Polar Circles.
Comment
As one can read, my Theory of
Polar
Axial Displacement is based upon the idea that the Great Pyramid
of Egypt was built at the Pivotal Point for the North Polar Axis
Belt. That is an "occult" idea to some extent; although
it has been demonstrated time and again by numerous Egyptologists,
such as Peter Tompkins in his acclaimed book Secrets of
the Great Pyramid, that if one draws a north-south longitude
through the Great Pyramid and the present North and South Poles,
that line divides the Earth into equal quantities of land and
water.
Since it is quite illogical and irrational to assume that
Pharaoh Khufu only by chance walked out into the Giza Plain, chose
a random site for his "burial chamber", and JUST SO
HAPPENED to select a location that divides the Earth in such a
"scientific" fashion, the conclusion is forced, therefore,
that whoever really built the Pyramids put them there to
"mark the spot" of this important geological Polar Pivotal
Axis!
However, because of the "occult"
nature of my supposition, Dr. Velikovsky would never have agreed
with it. He would have made these axis changes more "random"
and "unpredictable" than I have done. To me, though,
it is far more than coincidental that in every instance where
we have "northern" "Ice Ages", they are equally
distant from the Giza Pyramids.
There is absolutely no evidence
from any source that Egypt experienced an "Ice Age"!
Thus, it was significant that the Egyptian priests informed Solon
(recorded in Plato's Timaeus & Critias) that
Egypt is never destroyed by these floods and fires that occur
at long intervals of time and preserved the most ancient records
of any nation on Earth.
But back to the matter at hand, when the North
Pole is located in the upper South Atlantic Ocean between northeastern
Brazil and Nigeria, extreme northeastern Brazil would actually
have been within the North Polar Zone, with other parts of Brazil
bordering the fringes of the zone, as southern Alaska does today.
Extreme western Africa would have also experienced an "ice
age" at this time, 8787-5187 BCE.
When the North Pole was
last located in South Africa (and the South Pole near Hawaii),
then Madagascar would have been glaciated. And when the North
Pole was previously located in China or the northern Indian Ocean,
then parts of India would have experienced glaciation during both
epochs.
*
Page 157
The recent field work in the Alps revealed
that numerous glaciers there are no older than 4,000 years. This
startling discovery made the following statement necessary:
"A
large number of the present glaciers in the Alps are not survivors
of the last glacial maximum, as was formerly universally believed,
but are glaciers newly created within roughly the last 4,000 years."
Comment
During the last Polar Period, when the North
Pole was located in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Alps Mountains
would have been south of places like France, England, Belgium
and so on. Their sheer height would have blocked the warm tropical
winds from Africa and the Middle East from reaching these very
northern latitudes. Similarly in North America, the Appalachian
and even the Rocky Mountains would have produced a comparable
effect.
Thus, these fringes of the past Polar Epoch could have
been affected quite more severely than we see today in the northern
plains of Canada and Siberia, for example. But following the Polar
Axis Shift around 1587 BCE, with the shift to our present locations,
all that old ice would have melted. Eventually, new glaciers would
have formed in the highest elevations of the Alps Mountains.
Hence,
it is stated that they are no older than about 4,000 years -
more accurately, no older than 3,600 years!
*
Page 165
Explorations conducted in various countries
combined also to demonstrate that,
"the ice age itself was
not so remote as it had seemed to be, and that in fact the post-glacial
'geology' of Europe was partly contemporaneous with the 'history'
of Egypt."
Comment
Once again here, we find the conflict between
the geological dating of these changes and seemingly "contradictory"
historical evidence. The reason that geologists and other scientists
went to such great lengths to attack Dr. Velikovsky was that they
absolutely refused - for whatever reason or vested interest -
to agree that any "cosmic catastrophe" involving
a Polar Axis Shift could have occurred during historical times.
Perhaps they are afraid that it might happen again, that they
might die in such an event? I can see no other reason for these
scientists to be so stubborn in maintaining their inaccurate dating
methods.
*
Page 171
Coincident tectonic, high-water, and climatic
catastrophes thus brought havoc to the entire area investigated,
from Norway to the Jura, the Alps, and the Tyrol, tearing out
valleys, overturning lakes, annihilating human and animal life,
suddenly changing the climate, replacing forests with bogs, and
doing this at least twice in Subboreal time, the period that is
estimated to have lasted from about the year -2000, or possibly
from a date closer to the middle of the second millennium before
our present era, to -800 or -700.
These climatic and tectonic
catastrophes precipitated the wanderings of hordes of destitute
human beings, including, after the last catastrophe, Celts and Cimbrians. The migrants came to desolate lands from other, faraway
regions, probably equally fearfully devastated.
Comment
Dr. Velikovsky made a misstatement in the above.
It is clear from the totality of his research that he did not
suggest that an actual Polar Axis Shift occurred around 700 BCE,
just a more minor catastrophe. Thus, the reference to "at
least twice in Subboreal time" must actually indicate the
Polar Axis Shift of 5187 BCE which preceded by 3,600 years the
shift of 1587 BCE.
*
Page 188
The evidence of this and preceding chapters
should not be interpreted as proving that there were global catastrophes
only in the first and second millennia before the present era;
but as substantiating the claim that in those times, too, there
were global disturbances: these were actually the last in a line
that goes back to much earlier times.
*
Pages 112-113
"Mathematicians may seem to geologists
almost churlish in their unwillingness to admit a change in the
earth's axis. Geologists scarcely know how much is involved in
what they ask. They do not seem to realize the vastness of the
earth's size, or the enormous quantity of her motion. When a mass
of matter is in rotation about an axis, it cannot be made to rotate
about a new one except by external force.
Internal changes cannot
alter the axis, only the distribution of matter and motion about
it. If the mass began to revolve about a new axis, every particle
would begin to move in a different direction. What is to cause
this? ... Where is the force that could deflect every portion
of it, and every particle of the earth into a new direction of
motion?"
The question centers, then, on the forces that
could cause such a shift.