Roots of Cataclysm

Sound Bite

In Roots of Cataclysm, a journalist launches an investigation into the mysteries of the Ice Ages and the first human settlements of the New World. He finds that conventional doctrine is in conflict with the historical data. He presents a useful and easy-to-follow introduction to geology and what is known about pre-history in setting the context for his investigation. He shows that the geology, geography and climatology of the last Ice Age offer evidence that suggests there could indeed have been a land bridge - or a route for island-hoppers - to the place we dream of as Atlantis.

About the Book

The author proposes that geopulsation of the earth together with tectonic shifts and catastrophic volcanoes could have created a land bridge connecting Europe to the mid-Atlantic; and he explores what that could mean for the origins of pre-Columbian American civilizations. Specifically, he traces the Atlantis legend in relation to the explosion of a supervolcano in the Atlantic in the 17th century BC.While it is based mainly on scientific evidence rather than folklore and legend, the book is engaging and written in an appealing style that makes science accessible to all.

Introduction

The unwritten past does not decipher easily. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself could not have conjured up a detective story more intriguing than the prehistory of human kind on planet Earth. Or one with a more devious plot line. It is a tale of paradoxes, shifting premises, missing clues and false trails, of vanishing victims and mysterious strangers who intrude unannounced.

The initial prehistoric settlement of the New World, for instance, only grows murkier and more controversial as our 'enlightened' era progresses. Taking on the question, it soon comes clear that no resolution is likely without first de-scrambling the quandaries still surrounding the geography and climatology of the last Ice Age. It is our lack of understanding of the real Pleistocene environment that has, more than anything else, befogged the problem of the First Americans.

Once these geo-climatic factors are brought into focus, the whole knot begins to unravel ' not only the tangle of Native American origins but a number of associated enigmas as well, including one of the oldest and most baffling of all: the legend of the Lost Atlantis. The questions of how we humans came to be where we are, and what we are, has a natural fascination for most of us. But the trail grows rapidly faint. Following the historical footsteps back to the Nile and Euphrates valleys soon leads us to the barrier of universal illiteracy, a time when no one on Earth could read or write. Yet beyond this barrier is more than 99 percent of the human experience. In this wordless realm, where only stones and bones are left to speak, the difficulties in deciphering the human adventure are compounded a hundred times.

Yet because of this, because there is more mystery and uncertainty, prehistory is, in ways, more fascinating than written history. Moreover, what happened in this veiled arena of remote antiquity is much more basic to our destiny than the campaigns of ancient Mediterranean kings.

Mankind has only recently become conscious of the fact that there is something of import behind the curtain of non-literacy. Only lately have we been driven to probe behind it and devise ingenious techniques to aid in the probes. But the effort so far has produced as many questions as answers. First we were confronted with incomprehensible but undeniable evidence that a quarter of our world was not very long ago covered with masses of ice a mile thick. Hardly had we begun to accept this incredibility than we encountered others even more baffling.

Of late, within the past few decades, geologists have accepted the stunning notion that the continents are not permanently fixed but actually migrate about the surface of the earth ' a concept that seemed almost laughable within the memory of many of us. Worst of all, no explanation for this enigmatic phenomenon really works. Once confident that we could easily explain the peopling of the New World, we now find aspects of this settlement that cannot be made to jibe with the accepted Bering Straits theory of approach. Recent finds in both North and South America virtually vaporize current dogma on this issue.The genesis of the pre-Columbian American civilizations has become a matter of increasing uncertainty as new discoveries suggest exotic influences from unknown directions.

More consternation is produced by strange myths and legends from the dim dawn of history: stories such as that of Atlantis, which seem at once to demand and defy explanation. We are further bemused by the fact that some of these tales ' those of Troy and of the Minoan kings, for example ' have been found to contain more truth than fantasy. Meanwhile, geologists have lately established that planet Earth is periodically afflicted by violent geological events exponentially beyond the intensity of anything in our written records. With the discovery of supervolcanoes ' so vast that they are only perceptible from the air ' the sudden destruction of large areas, a la Atlantis, is much less far-fetched than we thought. Our planet is nowhere near as stable as has been assumed.

Confronted by all this confounding testimony about our own antiquity, we may be excused the suspicion that some factor of key consequence has been omitted from the equation, that some touchstone of prehistory has gone undiscovered....

Table content

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. PORTENTS OF ATLANTICA

A Troublous Link

Mankind in the New World

Into the Mid-Wisconsin

The News from North America

CHAPTER 2. DIFFICULTIES WITH DOGMA

Tribal Roots

A Gnashing of Teeth

Dissenting Voices

The Testimony of the Tools

CHAPTER 3. A BRIDGE BETWEEN WORLDS

How Deep the Ocean?

Siberian Bones

CHAPTER 4. THE ICE AGE AND ROTATIONAL VARIATION

An Unilluminating Litany

The Geopulsation Solution

Cracking the Code

Days Long Gone

Recent Confirmations

CHAPTER 5. THE MECHANISM OF GEOPULSATION

The Power of Precession

Where Are We?

The Volcano Age

Check the Temperature

A Footnote on the Future

CHAPTER 6. DOWN TO EARTH

CHAPTER 7. INTIMATIONS OF TRAVERSABILITY

The Amerindian Adam

Maritime Man and the Atlantic Archipelago

Weatherwise?

The Solutrean Trek

The Strange Case of the Welsh Indians

The Madoc Fancy

The Red Paint People

Arrival of the Asians

A Change of Classification?

Faunal Interchange

CHAPTER 8. THE SHADOW OF ATLANTIS

Where in the World?

More Remote Prospects

The Azores

Can You Get There From Here?

A Yellow Light

CHAPTER 9. THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED

What Lies Beneath

The Casualty Count

Plain Confusion

Some Less Famous Places

The Time Warp

CHAPTER 10. THE SCEPTERED ISLE

Backtracking the Beakers

Fact or Fiction?

Perspectives in Stone

The Sardinian Manifestation

From Out of the West

The Exploits of Athens

CHAPTER 11. BLOOD AND FEATHERS

By the Book

The Final Flame-out

Egypt Stands Alone

The Tale of Troy

Academic Follies

Echoes in Time

CHAPTER 12. THE ATLANTIC CONNECTION

Diffusionism 101

The Enigmatic Olmecs

On the Banks of the Chattahoochee

Sail On!

The Inevitability of Regress

CHAPTER 13. CREEPING CONTINENTS

The Mystery Mechanism

Immovable Objects, Inconceivable Forces

The Search for Alternatives

CHAPTER 14. THE PULSATION SOLUTION

The Mechanism of Creep

This Not So Solid Earth

APPENDIX I

Diagrams A and B

APPENDIX II. REFERENCES TO ATLANTIS IN PLATO'S TIMAEUS

APPENDIX III. REFERENCES TO ATLANTIS IN PLATO'S CRITIAS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX