Blavatsky Net
Foundation

Blavatsky Net - Theosophy

Atlantis - the Ice Age

As suggested in the previous letter, we need to examine the usefulness of the ice-age theory in explaining the facts on the ground - in particular, the erratics, striations, polished surfaces, and till. Because of the critical nature of this material, it is a little longer than usual.

However there is a shocking question to be asked before that - did the ice-age as commonly taught actually happen - or not?

The standard proposal is that a massive ice sheet covered the top of the globe reaching from the north pole down to say New York City and down to the straits of Gilbraltar. The Northern version is presented as more extensive than a Southern polar cap.

A first and perhaps prime fact you need to know is that ice does not go uphill. Water doesn't and ice doesn't and glaciers don't. Even over level ground ice doesn't go very far. Specifically it goes up to 7 miles on level ground. Ice just can't push ice further than that. If pressure is applied to push more than 7 miles worth of ice then it gets crushed or melts instead.

"If a solid be so heavy and so big that it requires more than a certain force to move it, it will crush rather than move, that is to say, the whole thrust will be dissipated by the object being reduced to pulp, or even liquid, which will flow away rather than move en masse." [ Howorth, H.H. 1905 Ice or Water? vol 1, p383]

A look at the map shows that the ice would have to be pushed much farther than 7 miles.

With just this info you can see, the ice-age didn't happen!

In the early 1800's the proponents of the ice-age were aware that if there were a massive ice sheet then there would of necessity have been very large mountains at the North Pole, from which the ice could have slid down to cover a large part of the earth. They must have been very high mountains, right? Science was in fact so sure of this that those polar mountains were assumed to have existed without any doubt.

Here is the catch. Science has now examined the North Pole for those huge mountains and there has not been a trace found of them!

It gets worse. It was not long before science found evidence that there had been an "interglacial" period when it was warm. Then more interglacial periods were found. The proposed length of the pleistocene finally reached over 2 million years for its assumed length. For each interglacial period it was assumed those polar mountains dropped in height. Then they went back. So what we actually have is yo-yo polar mountains bobbing up and down over 2 million years. They had to be there. Yet now there is not a trace of them.

Are you doubting yet the ice-age?

The ice-age was first presented with much credit by Agassiz in 1840. He studied the Alps. There was something he did not know that we now know. The Alps did not attain the bulk of their current height until the end of the ice-age! Now they are some 15,000 feet high. Prior to that rise they were only some 2,000 to 3,000 feet.

Also the mountains of Scandinavia - important shedders of ice in the theory - did not have their current altitude during the ice age. In general the ice age theorists were assuming that the current topography was the one in effect during the pleistocene event. But as I have indicated earlier their assumption of a constant topography is very seriously in error. What does this do to the ice-age theory? Are you beginning to wonder why you have not heard these simple facts?

There are numerous other smaller issues.

The erratics are often sharp edged. This means that their dislocation occurred quickly. That dislocation was not caused by the slow grinding of glaciers.

In many places there was supposed to have been glacier action but it is absent.

For example, in Siberia and Alaska, in places where ice is thought to have passed by, there are still standing thin rock pinnacles. Thick ice would have ground them to a pulp and not left them standing.

There are broken stumps and roots of large trees that are frozen into position along with their original leaves, flowers, and fruits. Thick passing ice would have swept them away instead. But they are still standing. North of Siberia many thousands still stand.

In Arctic Canada there are marine shells found at high altitudes. If a glacier had placed by there as asserted then the shells would have been crushed.

There are many instances of areas that ice theorists claim have been glaciated but evidence of that glaciation cannot be found. For example, there should be glacial deposits on the floor of the Barents Sea, north of Norway. But none have ever been found.

In several cases in the North Sea, if the glaciation had come from Scandinavia as claimed we would see evidence of movement from North East to South West. Instead the evidence shows movement from North West to South West.

Many mountains and hills in the northern hemisphere have their northern sides only scored and striated from top to bottom. So we are to believe that as ice slowly climbed up the surface (which it can't do) it left these marks but on the other side, perhaps going down fast gravel and till that is on the northern and northwestern side of mountains appears to be "plastered up" against the hillsides with "great force". The boulders are rammed into the hillsides.

So we have places that the ice is claimed to have reached but never did. We have the opposite. We have erratics in places where the theory says the ice never reached! For example, there are large erratics in the Sahara Desert, on the Mongolian plains, and in subtropical Uruguay.

Here is another kind of problem:

" Eroded and fragmentary shells occur within the 'drift' deposits on Moel Tryfaen, a mountain in North Wales rising 1,300 ft (400m) above sea level. Perplexingly the species represented include not only northern but also temperate and southern forms adapted to very varied habitats. Some required deep and others shallow water, some sandy and others muddy water, and some were peculiar to shingly and others to a bare rocky environment." p 46 Cataclysm.

Ice would not have brought together such a collection. (Of course water might have.)

In others cases we have to ask, why are there erratics at the top of the mountains but not on the lower ground?

Let that rest the case. The 2 million year long Pleistocene Epoch (ice-age) did not happen.
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You may find this passage from Cataclysm! to be particularly helpful in offering an informed modern perspective:

"More up-to-date views of the Ice Age world, in discarding the near-hemispheric ice-sheets of the earlier theorists, have replaced those with a series of much smaller fluctuating ice-sheets radiating out from separate northern ice domes, with ice-free regions, some little more than corridors, existing between them. The retention of the term 'glacial', initially devised to accurately reflect the nature of the icy model postulated by nineteenth century glacialists, and its application to modern Ice Age concepts, although technically correct, unfortunately still tends to perpetuate a false (the discarded) panorama for interested modern lay-readers as yet familiar only with the older nineteenth century Ice Age doctrines. Certainly very few of the multitude of facts and details nullifying the earlier views which we are about to review have percolated down to them. ... Accordingly, much of what follows, though factually correct, may at first seem not merely novel but startling and perhaps even disturbing, as cherished conventions fracture and totter." p 39 Cataclysm (www.seekerbooks.com/atlantis/cataclysm/index.htm#1879181428)

To put it more succinctly "... the notion of the Ice Age can never have been more than a grand illusion". p 39 Cataclysm.

Let me add one little oddity to this list. There does appear to have been a significant drop in temperature at 10,000BC along with some ice formation from 10,000 BC to 8,000 BC. Particulates in the air may have caused this. Ironic that the extra ice that did form was just after the end of the ice age.
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At this point it may be useful to note a quote from HPB. She says at SDii71:

"Moreover, what matters it that science places the birth of man in the "pre- or post- glacial drift," if we are told at the same time that the so-called "ice age" is simply a long succession of ages which "shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the human or Recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time." The later "rule" only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that "even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finmark."

Now if you read that carefully - rereading it as necessary - she is not supporting the ice age! Instead she is mocking it! She is saying that if the reasoning of the scientist's is correct then we are still in the ice age.

But she is even more striking. She says the 'so-called "ice age" '. Why does she say the "so-called"? Generally in a context such as this, that is what people say to indicate they disbelieve in some alleged thing. Now the next and related point. Those quotes around "ice age" are hers. Why does she put the term "ice age" in quotes?? There is no obvious reason except that she knows that there is something inaccurate about it.

So a question is raised. Does she warrant another vindication for knowing that the ice age as commonly considered, did not happen? Is it surprising she said this? How did she know?
______

Where does this leave us? First, the ice-age as commonly conceived did not happen. Secondly, if it had happened - even to the extend commonly conceived - it still would be inadequate to explain all of the facts on the ground - the erratics, striations, polished surfaces and till. So then where are we?

Back to square one. Science has some fast talking to do.

Reed Carson