Atlantis Beneath the Ice Read online

  The bulk of the earth’s mass lies at its center and is believed to consist of an iron-nickel alloy core surrounded by an outer liquid core. The outer core is encircled by the thickest part of the earth, a lower and upper mantle of solid rock. Above the upper mantle lies the asthenosphere, or “weak zone” (see figure 2.1). It is the mobility of the asthenosphere that makes it possible for the earth’s lithosphere (crust) to shift.

  This crust of lithosphere, which cradles the continents and ocean basins, is the thinnest layer and is the one upon which all life depends. It is divided into a series of plates that shift periodically, provoking earthquakes and volcanoes. Over millions of years, the inch-by-inch movement of these plates, explained by a theory known as “plate tectonics,” can separate continents and create mountain ranges.

  Plate tectonics and earth crust displacement both share the assumption of a mobile crust. The ideas are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary. Plate tectonics explains long-term, slow changes like mountain building, volcanic activity, and local earthquakes. Earth crust displacement accepts that these processes are gradual but posits a much more dramatic and abrupt movement of the crust that can explain different problems such as mass extinctions, glaciation patterns, and the sudden rise of agriculture. In stark contrast to plate tectonics’ slow motion of individual plates, an “earth crust displacement,” as postulated by Hapgood, abruptly shifts all the plates as a single unit. During this motion the core (the heavy bull’s eye of the planet) doesn’t change, leaving the earth’s axis unaltered.

  The consequences of a crustal displacement are monumental. As the earth’s crust ripples over its interior, the world is shaken by incredible earthquakes and floods. The sky appears to fall. Of course, the sky remains in place. It was the crust that shifted. We still speak of sunrises and sunsets even though it is the earth’s spin that creates the illusion of movement. During a displacement the sun appears to rise and set over an altered horizon until finally the crust grinds to a halt. Beneath the ocean, earthquakes generate massive tidal waves that crash against the coastlines, flooding them. Some lands are shifted to warmer climates. Others, propelled into the polar zones, suffer the direst of winters. Melting ice caps, released from the polar areas, raise the ocean’s level ever higher. All living creatures must adapt, migrate, or die.

  Roughly 11,600 years ago (9600 BCE), vast climatic changes are known to have swept over our planet. Massive ice sheets melted, forcing the ocean level to rise. Huge mammals perished in enormous numbers. There was a sudden influx of people to the Americas, and throughout the world men and women began to experiment with agriculture. Each of these critical events has become a subject of intense scientific scrutiny.

  Figure 2.2. The Arctic Circle 11,600 years ago.

  Figure 2.3. The Antarctic Circle 11,600 years ago.

  Because Hapgood’s idea can be applied to so many different problems, it constitutes a “scientific revolution.” In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a work commonly called “the most influential treatise ever written on how science does (and does not) proceed,”8 philosopher and sociologist Thomas S. Kuhn traces the characteristics of the great changes in scientific thought. Kuhn shows how a dynamic new idea can initiate a scientific revolution by solving a set of persistent, unanswered problems. When the dust settles, intellectual territory has been expanded and scientists are presented with a fresh set of problems to explore. But, ironically, the new idea that originally sparked the scientific revolution is often met with either violent controversy or smothering silence.

  New theories are more often resisted than welcomed and indeed are often ignored, only to be recognized as scientific revolutions by a new generation. The sociology of science explores this paradox. For instance, Darwin’s theory of evolution was met with great outrage, not only by the church, but by scientists as well. Copernicus was wise enough to have his theory published at the end of his life. He appreciated the dangers of his radical idea that the earth was not the center of the universe.

  Kuhn distinguishes between what he calls “normal science” and science in “crisis.” Normal science includes activities that we commonly associate with scientific achievement, such as building a bridge, launching a space shuttle, or searching for a cure for cancer. Scientists are trained to solve problems by using well-established theories. In normal science, they make a “devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education.”9 Each discipline surrounds itself with a layer of insulation from problems not perceived to be within its domain. Kuhn calls these assumptions about what are “real problems” a “paradigm,” a framework for approaching any scientific enigma.

  Kuhn argues that the acceptance of a new framework by any scientific discipline is similar to the retooling of a factory. Initially, the costs of retooling often seem to outweigh the rewards of the improved design: If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But if the competition across town is solving more problems using the new design (the new paradigm), then all manufacturers are eventually compelled to adopt the improvements.

  However, the force of competition has a less immediate impact on science than it does in the world of commerce. Only when an old paradigm’s blind spots are dissolved by a new idea do scientists begin to consider retooling their theories. Until this crisis occurs the old tools are wielded relentlessly, dull or outmoded as they are, even as they steadily lose their grip on the problem.

  We will explore several long-standing, unsolved, and ignored problems by looking at them through the fresh lens provided by the theory of earth crust displacement. We consider the unsolved problem to be the most fundamental unit of science. Theories are the nets that scientists use to capture problems and solve them. Earth crust displacement is a significant new theory because of its wide scope. It can solve a range of unsolved problems that are currently considered the isolated domain of different disciplines. For example, an odd geological mystery surrounds today’s ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. It is a fact that the land that holds the thickest ice sheets now receives the least annual snowfall. At the same time, the areas of thinnest ice receive the most annual snowfall. Current geological assumptions can’t explain this puzzle. And, more significantly, geologists have yet to come up with a single theory that can solve this long-standing unsolved problem. We will show that Hapgood’s theory can explain the distribution of ice sheets on a global scale. No other theory can come close to the scope of explanation offered by the idea of a shifting crust.

  Likewise, several competing theories have been advanced to explain the sudden mass extinctions that punctuate our planet’s history. However, when it comes to an explanation of the extinctions that happened 11,600 years ago, Hapgood’s concept can explain why mammoths became extinct in North America while elephants survived in Africa. It can account for the rates of death, continent by continent, on a global scale.

  Two other long-standing problems are seen in a new light when viewed through the lens of the earth crust displacement theory. The origins of agriculture remain a mystery and the full story behind the peopling of the Americas continues to elude the existing archaeological paradigm—and again, earth crust displacement offers answers.

  Funding also heavily influences attitudes toward new ideas. The choice of which scientific problems to pursue is seldom left to scientists themselves. They are more often than not chosen by industrial, governmental, and educational institutions. Most scientists are assigned to problems that seem solvable. Other problems simply receive no funding.

  Moreover, the scientific community shares an implicit covenant within its ranks. Separated as it is from society, it eagerly celebrates science’s success stories. Unveiling long-awaited solutions to scientific problems is a noble act. But if the general public is invited to examine a set of unsolved problems, then the scientific community becomes indignant. And indignation can rapidly lead to bitter controversy. Often a new idea is met with stony silence. That, despite the enthusiastic supp
ort of Albert Einstein is the fate that greeted Hapgood’s theory of earth crust displacement.

  With one simple idea (a shifting crust), Hapgood’s theory can simultaneously solve long-standing problems in geology, archaeology, anthropology, and paleontology. By opening new frontiers, this theory clears a whole new intellectual territory for scientists to explore.

  The quest for Atlantis has been treated as either a scientific curiosity or with great skepticism as belonging to the murky realm of fantasy. It was inevitable that a scientific revolution would be required to find the lost continent.

  We will show that there is reason to believe that we are not the first advanced civilization to inhabit our world. This recognition provides the key to unlocking one of the most compelling mysteries of all. Using the theory of earth crust displacement, we will travel across the planet as it was in 9600 BCE., watch the incredible results as the surface of the earth buckles, and share the survivors’ memories of the great flood.

  THREE

  THE WAYWARD SUN

  The sky fell. The land was not. For a very great distance there was no land. The waters of the ocean came together. Animals of all kinds drowned.

  THE CAHTO OF CALIFORNIA

  It is sunset at the camp of the tribe known as the Ute. Preparations for the annual sun dance have begun. Men and women draped in rabbitskin robes are drawn to the fire’s glow. Dishes of simmering turtle, lizard, and insects, and generous servings of berries and seed are shared around the circle.

  It is time.

  An elder rises and passes a lined hand over his buffalo-skin cloak. The children are immediately alert, their eyes wide with anticipation. Listen now, on this feast of the sun dance, to the Ute’s myth of the taming of the sun god.

  Once upon a time Ta-wats, the hare-god, was sitting with his family by the camp-fire in the solemn woods, anxiously waiting for the return of Ta-va (the wayward sun-god). Wearied with long watching, the hare-god fell asleep, and the sun-god came so near that he scorched the naked shoulder of Ta-wats. Foreseeing the vengeance, which would be thus provoked, he fled back to his cave beneath the earth.

  Ta-wats awoke in great anger, and speedily determined to go and fight the sun-god. After a long journey of many adventures the hare-god came to the brink of the earth, and there watched long and patiently, till at last the sun-god came out, and he shot an arrow at his face, but the fierce heat consumed the arrow ere it had finished its intended course; then another was sped, but that also was consumed; and another, and another, till only one remained in his quiver, but this was the magical arrow that had never failed its mark.

  Ta-wats, holding it in his hand, lifted the barb to his eye and baptized it in a divine tear; then the arrow was sped and struck the sun-god full in the face, and the sun was shivered into a thousand fragments, which fell to the earth, causing a general conflagration.

  Then Ta-wats, the hare-god, fled before the destruction he had wrought, and as he fled the burning earth consumed his feet, consumed his legs, consumed his body, consumed his hands and his arms—all were consumed but the head alone—which bowled across valleys and over mountains, fleeing the destruction from the burning earth, until at last, swollen with heat, the eyes of the god burst, and the tears gushed forth in a flood, which spread over the earth, and extinguished the fire.

  The sun-god was now conquered, and he appeared before a council of the gods to await sentence. In that long council were established the days and the nights, the seasons and the years, with the length thereof and the sun was condemned to travel across the firmament by the same trail day after day till the end of time.1

  The Ute, after whom Utah was named, were among the most warlike tribes in the American West. They fought with the Comanche, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Cheyenne for domination over hunting grounds. Young braves were taught when to attack, when to retreat, and when to find honor in vengeance. These challenges were interwoven with forceful lessons about the humbling power of nature. Tales of the hare god’s antics and the sun god’s power were much more than exciting children’s stories. The myths illustrated the critical factors a warrior must weigh in times of battle, how the seasons came to be, and why the sun follows its predictable path across the sky. This cohesive view of the world was strong glue binding the tribe together.

  This particular myth was also a reflection of the human need to create order out of nature’s chaos. The social problems of war and peace were mirrored in nature’s forces of chaos and order. Ta-wats, the hare god, is sleeping in the woods when the wayward sun provokes him by scorching his shoulder. He rises and seeks revenge on the fleeing sun god. Eventually the sun god is attacked with a magic arrow, and the explosive forces of nature are released. The sun erupts, and then a Great Flood engulfs the world. Order is restored only when a council of the gods creates predictable seasons and condemns the sun to follow an unalterable path across the heavens until “the end of time.”

  The myth of the wayward sun can also be seen as a distant echo of the last earth crust displacement. As the ground shuddered beneath them, it would have seemed to the earth’s shocked inhabitants that the sky, sun, and stars were tumbling from their place in the heavens. The violent earthquakes caused by the displacement generated great tidal waves that rolled across the ocean, smashing vulnerable coastlines. Ice caps melted, forcing the ocean level higher and higher. For many it was the end of the world. But for the survivors, it became the first day of a brand-new era.

  The German-American anthropologist Franz Boas (1858–1942) traced the mythology of the Ute to the Canadian province of British Columbia,2 where the mythological trail connected the Utes with the Kutenai and in turn the Okanagan. The Kutenai occupy territory encompassing parts of British Columbia, Alberta, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Like the Ute, the Kutenai speak of a great fire that erupted over the earth when the sun was struck by an arrow. “Coyote is envious, and shoots the sun at sunrise. His arrows catch fire, fall down, and set fire to the grass.”3 And the Kutenai speak of the fear they have that the world will come to an end when the sky loses its stability. “The Kutenai look for Polaris (the North Star) every night. Should it not be in place, the end of the world is imminent.”4

  Little is known of the origin of the Kutenai.5 They often have wavy hair, light brown skin, and slight beards.6 Their neighbors in the plains, the Blackfoot, gave them the name Kutenai, Blackfoot for “white men.”7 Boas believed that the Kutenai’s mythology linked them with their neighbors to the west, the Okanagan.8 The Okanagan called the Kutenai skelsa’ulk, meaning “water people.”9

  In 1886, the American historian Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832– 1918) related the Okanagan myth of their lost island paradise of Samah-tumi-whoo-lah.

  Long, long ago, when the sun was young and no bigger than a star, there was an island far off in the middle of the ocean. It was called Samah-tumi-whoo-lah, meaning White Man’s Island. On it lived a race of giants—white giants. Their ruler was a tall white woman called Scomalt. . . . She could create whatever she wished.

  For many years the white giants lived at peace, but at last they quarreled amongst themselves. Quarreling grew into war. The noise of battle was heard, and many people were killed. Scomalt was made very, very angry . . . she drove the wicked giants to one end of the White Man’s Island. When they were gathered together in one place, she broke off the piece of land and pushed it into the sea. For many days the floating island drifted on the water, tossed by waves and wind. All the people on it died except one man and one woman.

  Seeing that their island was about to sink they built a canoe [and] . . . after paddling for many days and nights, they came to some islands. They steered their way through them and at last reached the mainland.10

  The Okanagan and the Ute feared any dramatic change in the heavens as an ominous portent of another great flood. The fear that the sun might once again wander or the sky might fall became an obsession. The Ute related, “Some think the sky is supported by one big cottonwood tree in the west and anot
her in the east; if either get rotten, it may break and the sky would fall down, killing everybody.”11

  And the Okanagan believed that in a time to come the “lakes will melt the foundations of the world, and the rivers will cut the world loose. Then it will float as the island did many suns and snows ago. That will be the end of the world.”12

  We can barely imagine the power of the tsunamis that rolled across the earth at this time. Shipboard survivors who had escaped the doomed continent could not escape the sight of successive tidal waves destroying their homeland. It would seem to them that Atlantis had vanished beneath the ocean. This misperception distorted the fact that it was the ocean rising—not the land sinking. Atlantis never actually sank beneath the ocean. The survivors were long gone when the tidal waves subsided and the land was once again visible. But their traumatic memory of a sinking island was passed from generation to generation.

  As we move south we encounter the Washo of western Nevada, who are famous for their decorative basketry. They live on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The tribe was always small, never overhunting the earth. They ranged from a population of 900 in 1859 to just over 800 in 1980. In earlier times, their numbers may have reached 1,500.13 They are a solitary people who tell a tale of a time, long ago, when the mountains shook with volcanoes and “so great was the heat of the blazing mountains that the very stars melted and fell.”14

  Along the Gila and Salt River valleys of Arizona live the remnants of the A’a’tam tribe, who have been misnamed by outsiders not once, but twice. Because one Italian explorer sailing under the Spanish flag in 1492 didn’t know where he was, the entire native population of the Americas was christened, wrongly, Indians. And when the early missionaries demanded that the A’a’tam tribe identify themselves, they refused, answering in their native tongue with the single word pima, meaning “no.” From this exchange a misunderstanding arose that remains to this day. The missionaries took the “pima” response as an answer to their question rather than a refusal to cooperate, and so the tribe came to be known as the Pima.15