Atlantis Beneath the Ice Page 19

  CONTINENTAL DRIFT AND PLATE TECTONICS

  In 1915 Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) introduced a radical new idea to geologists.7 Noticing how Africa and South America seemed to be two pieces of an ancient puzzle, he suggested that the continents had drifted apart over millions of years. The idea was greeted with scorn by geologists, who called it “geo-poetry.”

  For almost half a century the idea lay dormant until discoveries in the 1950s transformed the theory into what is known as plate tectonics. The new science of paleomagnetism began to support Wegener’s idea that there had once been a single continent that had drifted apart. In 1953, geomagnetic dating proved that India has once been in the southern hemisphere—a fact that Wegener had predicted. Today ice ages and plate tectonics are fundamental components of modern geology.

  SOLAR TYPHOONS

  In 2001, with the publication of The Atlantis Blueprint in the United States, Rand began correspondence with Jared Freedman, who suggested a mechanism for earth crust displacements. Freedman is a computer professional and inventor who worked with electromagnets. He is aware that the earth itself is a gigantic magnet possessing a metal core. When any magnet passes through an electromagnetic field, heat is generated. In an article titled “Solar Typhoons and Earth Crust Displacements,” he wrote, “If the Earth’s magnetic field received such a tremendous distortion of its magnetic field, over a prolonged period of time, it would generate immense amounts of heat within the Earth’s core as the Earth spun through the force that was causing the magnetic field disruption. The only force that can collapse the Earth’s magnetic field is the Sun’s magnetic field.”8

  In the article, Freedman noted that the sun has climatic variations of its own, but because of the immense size of the broiling star, they happen over longer periods of time. Solar storms can theoretically last for “days, weeks, or even more.” If the earth passes through electromagnetic waves coming from the sun, then force would be applied steadily to one of the poles. That energy would be carried into the Earth’s core where it could liquefy the solid nickel. Flows of metal to the earth’s surface could transform the asthenosphere from a sluggish tar into a liquid. He wrote, “Perhaps it is not the disruptions of the Earth’s core that cause fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field, but rather disruptions of the Earth’s magnetic field cause fluctuations in the Earth’s core.”9

  There are several advantages to Freedman’s theory. Einstein had doubted that the weight of the earth’s ice sheets would be sufficient to dislodge the crust. He also doubted that an abrupt shift of the entire axis was the explanation because any force that could accomplish that would probably shatter the planet into thousands of pieces. What he sought was a steady force applied for a sustained period to the earth’s crust.

  Freedman’s theory addresses all these problems and also provides a mechanism for stopping the displacements. Once the earth leaves the path of the electromagnetic storm, it cools, turning the liquid-like asthenosphere once again into a tarry substance, which prevents the crust from shifting any farther.c

  2012

  In his article, Freedman also mentioned the cataclysms predicted for the year 2012.

  A blast of energy was emitted that was strong enough to collapse the Earth’s magnetic field on April 11th and 12th of 2001. Luckily, these missed us. As you know, the sun goes though 11-year cycles, and these cycles correspond to the Mayan calendar. Every 11 years, as the sun flips its magnetic field, it winds up the big magnetic field within the Sun. Some say that every 11 years, the repercussions of the Sun field flip are stronger, with this year being the biggest display of solar activity ever in recorded history. From what I understand, the Mayan calendar says this age will end in the year 2012, which is a Sun magnetic field flip solar cycle year.10

  There have been more than one thousand such “flips” since the last earth crust displacement, making the odds that 2012 will see an earth crust displacement at least one thousand to one against.

  While Freedman’s concept of a solar typhoon provides a compelling mechanism for earth crust displacements, we are not supporters of the idea that the Mayan calendar predicts such a catastrophe. We note that Hapgood believed that earth crust displacements take five or six thousand years to happen. He never connected his idea with the Mayan calendar. This, however, has not stopped opportunists from claiming so in the latest orgy of scare mongering and exploitation aimed at selling books, DVDs, or television programs.

  Because we believe that displacements correlate to times when the earth’s tilt is at its maximum of 24.4° (as in 9600 BCE), we do not expect another earth crust displacement for at least another 29,500 years. Neither Hapgood nor Einstein ever suggested that there would be an earth crust displacement in 2012.

  CRUST OR AXIS SHIFT?

  As noted in chapter 9, Professor Emeritus W. Woelfli of the Institute for Particle Physics in Zürich and Professor W. Baltensperger of the Brazilian Center for Physics Research in Rio de Janeiro suggested in a series of articles from 2006 to 2008 that the earth experienced a radical change in its axis 11,500 years ago.

  This was based on compelling evidence demonstrating temperate conditions in Siberia during the last ice age. They concluded that Siberia’s latitude must have been “lower before the end of the Pleistocene”11 in order to explain the existence of mammoths and humans who lived at 71° N during an ice age.

  The physicists propose that an unknown planet was destroyed 11,500 years ago when it plunged into the sun after passing by Earth. As this gigantic planet passed by Earth, it caused our world to twist and turn in response to gravitational forces, dramatically altering the location of Earth’s axis. They propose that before this catastrophic axis change the North Pole was located at central Greenland. The new position of the axis (in today’s Arctic Ocean) resulted in North America being moved farther from the pole and Siberia being dragged into the Arctic Circle.12

  These two scientists—though not geologists—are attempting to use an axis shift theory to explain a real problem. They are to be applauded, but their theory falls short. A central Greenland pole cannot explain the vast Cordilleran Ice Sheet that was located on the west coast of North America.d The pole would be too far away (see figure 13.1).

  Some physicists might reply that the overall world temperature was lower. But that explanation faces the daunting problem of how to get enough evaporation in the tropics to create the amount of moisture needed in the atmosphere in order to create snow.

  The theory of earth crust displacement, however, can explain all these anomalies. Looking at the map of North America in Figure 10.2, we see that before 91,600 BCE the Arctic Circle was centered in the Yukon. All of Alaska, British Columbia, and parts of Washington and Idaho were under ice. The Cordilleran Ice Sheet was the remnant of that polar zone. Figure 10.3 shows Greenland and Europe within the polar zone from 91,600 to 50,600 BCE. And in Figure 10.4, we see Greenland and most of North America within the polar zone from 50,600 to 9600 BCE. The configuration of ice age North America’s vast ice sheets (see figure 10.1) was the natural consequence of the previous positions of the polar zone.e

  Future research may take the theory of earth crust displacement in unexpected directions, just as happened to Agassiz’s theory of catastrophic ice ages or Wegener’s theory of continental drift. The theory is young and waits a new generation unencumbered by the current fixations of geology.

  What we are dealing with is not just another lost civilization, it is a lost advanced culture, one possessing scientific knowledge that we have yet to comprehend. Who knows what problems might be solved by the discovery of the lost sciences of Atlantis? And one can only wonder about the lost art, sculpture, and architecture lying beneath the ice. Whoever takes up the search should remember that the remains of Atlantis might cradle an unimaginable heritage.

  Figure 13.1. An axis shift centered on Greenland (upper circled cross) can explain the ice sheets on Greenland and eastern Canada (within dotted lines), which also would have covered par
ts of Europe, but it cannot explain the existence of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Idaho (dotshaded area). Earth crust displacement theory proposes that the Arctic Circle was centered on the Hudson Bay (lower circled cross). This would account for not only the formation of the ice sheets on Greenland and eastern Canada but also the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. Drawing by Rand Flem-Ath and Rose Flem-Ath.

  But already the promise of treasure of another sort—minerals, fishing grounds, unique laboratory conditions—have led to polite grumbling around the negotiating table as claim and counterclaim to slices of the last continent are argued.

  We surely must proceed with caution if we decide to disturb this pristine place. Behind the deceptively rigid white mask lies a continent that is home to many forms of life bound in a delicate chain vulnerable to the brutal mechanics of technology.

  It is ironic that beneath Antarctica—center of one of our most dramatic environmental alarms, the depletion of the ozone layer—may lie the smothered evidence of the most overwhelming environmental disaster.

  Beneath the splendor of the Southern Lights, human garbage already scums the gleaming snow and the giant skeleton remains of machinery rusts against the horizon. Plastic containers float in the black sea and dynamite blasts rip through the eternal silence. This place offers great promise and a great opportunity—maybe a last chance for human beings to touch with some dignity, some sensitivity, the creatures that still live there. Perhaps this unique exploration, unlike so many of the others we have seen in these pages, can be tempered with mercy. We might start by declaring Antarctica an international park, the responsibility of us all. We could use only the most sophisticated, least intrusive, instruments to peer beneath the ice. If evidence of civilization is found, a surgical probe could be made. We would hold our breath as we waited to glimpse the ancient city locked in ice.

  The quest would be reborn.

  Our past and future would meet.

  Science and myth might merge.

  POSTSCRIPT TO THE NEW EDITION

  We’re very proud that the first edition of When the Sky Fell is one of the few books to be found in the libraries of all seven continents—including an Australian base in Antarctica! Even more rewarding has been the opportunity to introduce the idea of Atlantis in Antarctica to the popular imagination, triggering the talents of artists, musicians, and other writers.

  The mail regularly brings paintings, sketches, and poems from talented amateurs and tempered professionals, all keen readers whose muse was awoken by When the Sky Fell.

  Clive Cussler gave us Atlantis Found (and a kind e-mail), in which James-Bond-like superhero Dirk Pitt travels to Antarctica and fights neo-Nazi villains over the remains of Atlantis. Later, Cussler teamed with Paul Kemprecos to write Pole Shift, a novel that envisioned terrorists who are hell-bent on artificially displacing the earth’s crust. Stel Pavlou created the exciting Decipher, in which Richard Scott travels the world cracking ancient hieroglyphics, including those found in the city of Atlantis two miles beneath the ice of Antarctica.

  Thomas Greanias wrote Raising Atlantis, in which an astroarchaeologist teams with a Vatican linguist on a quest to find Atlantis in Antarctica. In 2007, a book by Jeremy Robinson, Antarktos Rising, imagined a present-day Earth crust displacement that frees Antarctica from the polar zone, revealing the formerly iced continent and awakening the hibernating civilization that lies beneath.

  On television, the long-running science fiction series Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007) and its spinoff, Stargate Atlantis (2004–2009), both assumed a close connection between Atlantis and Antarctica. This connection yielded an unexpected invitation to Hollywood, complete with a personal tour of the old MGM studio, which was a fun surprise not often imagined while one is hunched over a manuscript for long hours checking for typos!

  On the big screen, AVP: Alien vs Predator (2004) and AVPR: Alien vs Predator—Requiem (2007) were both predicated on the idea that Antarctica was once the site of an advanced civilization. And Rand’s expertise on Charles Hapgood was tapped for the recent film 2012.

  As for music, the Canadian rockers Atlantis Blueprint are enjoying success. And in Australia, the group When the Sky Fell continues to gather fans.

  Tom Miller’s evocative painting of scientists retrieving artifacts from beneath Antarctica’s ice was inspired by When the Sky Fell and was featured on the cover of the bestselling issue of Atlantis Rising magazine.

  Over the years many people have written to share their thoughts and ask questions. Thank you. At times this has been a raucous debate. Fortunately, most people “get it” that in the end it is how we treat each other that counts. Scoring intellectual points never needs to exclude common courtesy and goodwill.

  We continue to welcome your input and look forward to our evolving adventure together at www.flem-ath.com.

  AFTERWORD

  By John Anthony West

  An afterword presupposes that readers have already read the book under discussion—apart from that minority of browsers who like to nibble fore and aft before biting into the bait.

  If you have indeed read this book through, you may have come to the same conclusion I have: the evidence assembled by the Flem-Aths is compelling.

  Anyone reading or researching deeply into the distant past soon comes up against glaring anomalies in the currently accepted scenario of pre-history. Deluge myths are universal around the world, and the mythologies of widely separated peoples tell, over and over again, variations of the same story of global cataclysm. Plato’s infamous Atlantis legend, in all its precise detail, sits there, thumbing its nose at all those modern attempts to write it off as still another instance of the inflamed and disordered ancient imagination.

  Beginning with Cuvier back in the eighteenth century, a succession of daring intellectual explorers have been braving the disapproval—sometimes the opprobrium and derision—of their academic colleagues, trying to account scientifically for these anomalies and to write the true scenario of the shattering events responsible for all those myths and legends.

  The situation is like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces originally missing. Early attempts to assemble the puzzle ended up with more holes than pictures and were relatively easy to ignore or dismiss. But as modern science develops, new pieces to the puzzle keep turning up. Successive attempts to put the whole picture together grow increasingly cogent.

  The Flem-Aths are perhaps the most persuasive and daring of the contemporary “Atlantologists.” Underpinned by the absolutely irrefutable fact of mass mammal extinctions around 10,000 BCE and the precise, detailed, and no less irrefutable testimony of the Piri Reis’s and other maps of the pre-catastrophe world, the picture becomes increasingly coherent. A spectrum of relevant disciplines—geology, paleoclimatolgy, cartography, astronomy, comparative religion—all contribute to the puzzle, and Hapgood’s earth crust displacement theory seems to provide the modus operandi that accounts for the whole, huge, worldwide scenario in a single stroke.

  Will the Flem-Aths’ contemporary portrait finally take root and prevail? It is a big question. All of our human distant past hangs in the balance, along with the true story of the evolution of human civilization on earth.

  APPENDIX

  A GLOBAL CLIMATIC MODEL

  for the Origins of Agriculture and the Sequence of Pristine Civilizations

  This is the original text submitted in the spring of 1981 to The Anthropological Journal of Canada and accepted for publication. It contains more information than the edited and published text (see Flem-Ath, “Global Modal”) and appears here in full for the first time.

  ABSTRACT

  A climatic model orders archaeological evidence on the origins of agriculture and the sequence of independent civilizations on a global scale.

  Why did agriculture become the preferred means of subsistence following the termination of the Pleistocene? Why did the civilizations of the New World take so much longer to evolve despite th
e fact that their early agricultural experiments are contemporary with those of the Old World? This paper will attempt to shed light on these problems with the aid of the little-known climatic model of Hapgood1 in conjunction with the stress model of Harris.2

  Cohen3 has argued, quite rightly, that it is no longer adequate to explain the “where” and the “when” of agricultural origins but to address ourselves to the more important question of “why?” Why did mankind, in both the Old and New Worlds, almost simultaneously shift from their highly successful and traditional subsistence of hunting and gathering to agriculture? Why were certain areas of the world more suitable to this adaptation than others? Any theory, which attempts a global approach to this problem, must confront the question of “why” in such a manner as to illuminate the data concerning the “where” and “when” of the origins of agriculture.

  Global theories, which have addressed this problem, have fallen into three categories: the diffusion models; the population/ecological models; and what I term the “traditional” climatic models. Why have these models failed to account for major significant archaeological evidence?

  The fact that “. . . all agricultural origins fall about 10,000 ± 2000 years ago,”4 well before the first civilizations, coupled with the evidence demonstrating more than one center of early agricultural experimentation5 has seriously undermined the concept of diffusion as an important model for the origins of agriculture. Until a theory is developed which can overcome these two problems the theory of diffusion will remain untenable as a global model.a

  Cohen attempted to apply a population/ecological model on a global scale. Following Boserup6 who first put forward the idea of population density as a causal feature of technological change, thus reversing the traditional Malthusian model, Cohen argued that population growth worldwide reached a saturation level, which in turn created a stress condition, forcing the adoption of agriculture as a new strategy of food supply. This thesis suffers from three very serious drawbacks: first, it flies in the face of anthropological data, which, as shown, indicate that hunter-gatherers normally maintain equilibrium with their environments;7 second, given that the population of density of the Old World was significantly greater than the New World, Cohen’s theory fails to explain why the ecological thresholds were reached at the same time; and finally it does not address itself to the evidence of Vavilov,8 which shows a direct correlation between high altitudes and the centers of agriculture. In short, although Cohen has addressed the problem of “why,” his model does not shed light on the “when” and “where” aspects of the problem.