Our Incredible Shrinking Planet

Post Script

Postscripts are usually at the end of a book, this one isn’t. I’ve slipped it in here because you can do so in this age of computers and it’s relevant to our current accelerating times.

It’s the end of September 2014 and the world has just experienced the most extraordinary 40 days and 40 nights that I have witnessed in my lifetime, emphasising what I am claiming in this book. I was about to send this manuscript to my editors when I realised just how strange and eventful the last few weeks have been. It started in late August with a swarm of 1,600 earthquakes within 48 hours around the Bardarbunga stratovolcano in Iceland. Only a couple of years earlier the nearby Eyjafjallajokull volcano had choked the northern airways with ash creating an inconvenience for all concerned, so the area has been under scrutiny ever since and this recent activity generated immediate attention.

Within a couple of weeks three fissures melted through the ice of the overlying glacier and were continuously erupting. Throughout September there were over 25,000 recorded earthquakes with daily Magnitude M5 earthquakes shaking Iceland. On the 24th September a M6 quake surprised Californians in the Napa Valley and at the same time an M7 shook Central Peru. There had been an M6.7 in Chile the day before and an M6.6 the day before that in Valparaiso. A M6.6 had rocked Indonesia on the 10th and an M7 hit Guam on the 17th. In the 10 years since 2004 we’ve had 17 earthquakes over M8 which is triple the annual rate of the 20th Century. Earlier this year Chile experienced an M8.8, a 6.9 and another five over M6.1 in quick succession.

In late September 25,000 people were evacuated from beneath the erupting Mayon volcano in the Philippines as its almost perfect cone bulged and distorted indicating a major eruption was imminent. Meanwhile a huge volcano in Rabaul New Guinea was erupting and Mt. Kilauea, which has been continuously erupting since 1983, was issuing lava at an accelerating rate and consuming even more houses in Hawaii. Today there are over 40 volcanoes currently erupting and many, many more under the cover of the oceans pouring red hot magma into the Earth’s climatic system. On 24th of August two 747 cargo plane pilots reported an enormous red glow in the ocean in an area 15 kilometres square over the tectonic fault line near the Russian Peninsula of Kamchatka. It’s still unknown what caused this phenomenon, but an underwater volcano is most likely. Search: ‘Red glow in ocean.’

The premise of this book is that the Earth is heating due to its contraction in size from its increasing mass and gravity and that the evolution of our civilisation is also driven by the heat that this process generates. So you can imagine my interest when in this same period of abnormal tectonic activity we also saw the trouble in Ukraine escalate to full scale war, Israel and Palestinian Gaza restart their warring, the ‘accidental’ downing of a civilian Malaysian aircraft with 298 souls onboard and the terrible beheadings and acts of terrorism by the rapidly growing Islamic State. Then President Obama of the U.S.A. welcomed a ‘broad coalition’ of countries to confront the Jihad extremists in Syria and Iraq. What’s this the start of? And to top off this month of global accelerated evolution President Putin told the West to back off over the Ukraine conflict. He raised the spectre of nuclear war for the first time in 20 years by reminding us all that Russia has more nuclear weapons than he can point a gun at. Just to make sure we all understood the situation Russia conducted a test of its Bulava intercontinental nuclear missile in mid September. This thing has 100 times the power of the last bomb dropped in anger and Russia has hundreds of them.

Then Scotland almost leaves the United Kingdom while the weather of September kept up the spate of global flooding by inundating Pakistan, the U.S.A., India, the Philippines, Bosnia and Serbia. On the 18th of September the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the worst epidemic since the Spanish Influenza, was declared a threat to international peace and security by the United Nations Security Council. By late September, Ebola had managed to reach the U.S.A., Mt. Ontake in Japan erupted killing dozens of hikers on its slopes and thousands of students in Hong Kong were holding a mass rally and blocking all traffic by sitting down in the city streets. They were demanding a major political reform from the Chinese government. As this amazing month drew to an end 35,000 walrus were massing on an island beach in Alaska and the same was happening on a beach in Russia. The walrus were mostly distressed females and their calves and were huddling together in a state of mass trauma. These giants normally breed on the floating ice flows while using them as platforms to dive and hunt from in shallow waters near the coast, but the Arctic ice is retreating northward into waters too deep to dive. With no available food the walrus are coming ashore to even worse prospects and wondering who moved the cheese? The ocean in these regions is now three degrees warmer than average and the ice is vanishing. The walrus are stressed and massing together in trepidation. This is a new phenomenon and a clear indication of global warming. Our oceans are currently the hottest that we have ever recorded.

Why are the seas boiling hot? Asked the walrus in Alice’s Wonderland.

It’s been quite an eventful month on many fronts. Do you also get the feeling that more than just the climate is heating up and that something’s currently happening to the evolution of both our planet and our culture?

What on Earth Happened 5,200 Years Ago?

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Winston Churchill

Something happened 5,200 years ago that shook our planet to the core. The geological and historical evidence is there and we ignore it at our peril.

The ancient Hindus of India, the Chinese, Hebrews, Sumerians, Greeks, Norse, Aztecs, Irish, American Indians, Polynesians, the Egyptians and many others all have legends of a time their ancestors suffered a devastating calamity, when the destruction of their civilisations was so complete that there were only a handful of survivors.

One of the mysteries puzzling our historians is why all of these civilisations commenced at a common date seemingly from scratch, yet they did so with prior knowledge and skills that are not found in their earlier archaeological record. It was as if these civilisations all popped into existence at the same time with readymade language, arts and civil skills in fresh new locations. Their legends, which to this day are unfortunately regarded as myths, also share common threads. They tell how their previous civilisations were destroyed in a terrible event when ‘the Earth shook, when the stars moved, the sun was blocked out and flooding was total.’ The similarities

continue, in that all was lost and only a few of their ancestors survived in boats or clinging to debris. They tell how the survivors eventually managed to restart their civilisations in new areas utilising their existing knowledge. Survivors related a common theme in their stories for their future generations of conditions before the tragedy as warmer, more abundant and generally better than their present day.

We have this same account in our oldest history book in the stories of Noah’s Deluge and the Garden of Eden, both of which have the convenient religious rationale of ‘see what can happen if you’re naughty’ for the Church to capitalise on ever since, nevertheless they both tell of the destruction of a previous warmer more bountiful age.

If a dozen major civilisations have the same legends and commencement dates it’s difficult to put it down to coincidence and it’s more likely that their stories are accounts of an event that they had in common. Academia put these accounts down to myths and fables, but what do historians want, a photograph, or a televised report on the news? If the destruction was as total as described, then how are these people going to pass on their information if not in stories?

I propose that prior to 5,200 years ago these civilisations were flourishing in lush abundant areas near the sea and river mouths for ease of agriculture, trade, fishing and commerce. Conditions were warm and the rainfall plentiful, temperatures were rising, but from generation to generation they hardly noticed the looming changes. Everything was going along nicely how could all this possibly change they would have thought, just as we do today! They had civil law and order, flourishing economies, writing, agriculture, buildings and systems, life was good. Then one day the Earth trembled violently as a terrible tectonic event shook the planet. Earthquakes raged to such an extent that the stars seemed to move, the sun’s radiation was blocked by volcanic ash and the seas washed over the mountains. This is legend speak for tsunamis washed high into the land where no one would have believed they could reach. The tsunamis and tides washed away their fragile buildings which were strategically built in the right place for trade and transport, but in the wrong place for tectonic events. Their world radically changed as a volcanic winter set in for several years. Weather cycles were interrupted, climatic systems changed, crops failed and there were famines, blight and plagues. Grassy savannah turned to desert and lush ‘Gardens of Eden’ became barren as rainfall declined and fell elsewhere. Every form of life struggled in the cold, dim light and many civilisations were forced to migrate and rebuild in more suitable places. Coastlines were altered, some lands sank, other areas rose, nowhere remained the same and conditions were never as good as before. This event gave rise to the common lament of the elders that before the disaster we lived in a better, warmer land of plenty. Naturally in these times of superstition the disaster was attributed to the anger of the Gods.

I believe the date of 3,200 B.C. is the best approximation of this disaster. It reflects the common commencement date of the various civilisations mentioned and it’s the time of the carbon dating of plants recently released by the tropical Qori Kalis Glacier high in the Andes Mountains. These plants were recovered from the retreating glacier after being continuously covered and preserved by ice for 5,200 years. Before this they were growing in warm conditions in the mountains at a temperature that has not been equalled until the late 20th Century. Something happened 5,200 years ago that caused them to be suddenly engulfed by an advancing glacier and not released until our time.

The ancient’s common disaster theme is one of flooding. There are several reasons for this and they are ever more apparent to us today. Flooding rapidly and dramatically kills the greatest number of people of any natural disaster. Drought is nearly as bad in death rates, but its effects are slow and many escape by moving elsewhere. Flooding is instant and decimating. The most calamitous disasters in our time have been the tsunamis in Japan, Indonesia and New Guinea and the storm flooding in New Orleans, Australia, Bangladesh, the U.K. and Bosnia. Flooding is still the one disaster your insurance company will try to leave out of your policy, so read the fine print. One of our earliest confrontations with flooding occurred when the Mediterranean Sea broke through the Bosporus submerging the early settlements surrounding the lake that became the Black Sea around 5,000 B.C. as the sea level rose after the last ice age. The inhabitants were forced to evacuate and this was probably the start of the Legend of Flood that has been with us ever since. It’s also possible that there was an even earlier event when the rising seas broke through the Straits of Gibraltar to create the Mediterranean Sea which would also have been a lake surrounded by early Stone Age settlements. We love to live near the river mouths and seaside for convenience, but the ever rising seas keep chasing us further inland. The continuing contraction of the planet due to its increasing gravity and the melting of ice as the planet warms both cause ocean levels to continually rise. This is why there are sunken cities all over the world. Every civilisation old and new has stories of land lost to rising seas, tsunamis, storm surges and sudden downpours. It’s no wonder that every culture has a flood myth. They are obviously not all about the same flood, but there certainly is a common thread about a particularly violent event in everyone’s prehistory accompanied by a sudden and lasting climate change.

Evidence for a major tectonic event around 3,200 B.C. :-

Professor Lonnie Thompson has found plants protruding from the retreating Qori Kalis Glacier in the tropical ice cap of Quelccaya in Peru. The plants, a type of hardy moss, were thawing and starting to rot having been encased in glacial ice for 5,200 years. These plants could not have been exposed at any time since or they would have rotted away. They still grow in the area, but not above 4,600 metres. Professor Thompson’s samples were found at an altitude of 5,000 metres which implies the Andes Mountains were thrust 400 metres higher in a sudden tectonic event. Conditions must have altered rapidly, much faster than a glacier can move in order for temperatures to suddenly drop and snap freeze the moss plants around 3,200 B.C. Search: ‘Serendipitous Science Qori Kalis Glacier’ for pictures of moss and Oetzi.

On the other side of the globe another retreating glacier near the Italian and Austrian border recently released a perfectly preserved Stone Age man, since named ‘Oetzi.’ He too has been carbon dated to be 5,200 years old. His story provides us with the same clues as the moss in Peru. When he died from an arrow in the back he was frozen before he could decay. He could not have been exposed since because he is perfectly preserved, which implies that the planet’s temperatures have not been as high as today at any time since he died. It also indicates that the temperature change was sudden enough to freeze him within days of his death, as with the Peruvian moss.

The Irish Oak tree ring record shows a particularly severe winter in what appears to be 3,199 B.C. which could have been because of a volcanic ash cloud surrounding the globe from an eruption the year before, probably in the volcanic hot spot of Iceland.

Around 3,200 B.C. the Sumerian civilisation in Mesopotamia (Iraq) commenced in the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Sumerians were possibly migrants from the north seeking a warmer climate having been driven south by the cold conditions bought on by a volcanic winter.

The Hebrews are excellent record keepers and have one of the oldest continually used calendars. It commences in 3,760 B.C. making 2014 the year 5,774 in their calendar. Their start date of 3,760 B.C. predates the proposed tectonic event of 3,200 B.C. by around 600 years, which would represent some of their history before the calamity they describe as the Great Flood of Noah when conditions were good, but mankind was sinful. The human sin story is simply an added element to justify God’s wrath, after all, in these superstitious times they had to have a reason for the disaster. The Torah and the Bible are historical books of both belief and legend, but I firmly believe that all legends are based on facts that we can glean from the stories if we read between the religious and moral themes and colourful drama. We should be impressed by the record of a flood that was momentous enough to make the lasting impression that it has. The Great Deluge aligns with much other flood evidence considerably adding to the burden of proof of a colossal tectonic event around 3,200 B.C.

A common theme in these ancient legends, other than Noah’s, is that the flood water was not from excessive rainfall, but from ‘below’ implying that the seas rose and tsunamis raged ‘when the seas flowed over the mountains.’ There are flood legends from all quarters of the world and for a comprehensive list of over 200 see ‘Flood Stories from Around the World’ by Mark Isaak on the internet and Wikipedia’s List of Flood Legends.

The Mayan’s kept remarkably accurate astronomical observations. Their calendar starts at 3,113 B.C. with an account of the destruction of a previous age of plenty by earthquake and flooding. Again the devastation was so complete that there were only a few survivors to resume their culture. The Mayan calendar runs in cycles of 5,200 years which they call ages. The now infamous end of their last age in 2012 A.D. has come and gone and we all survived. However, the Mayans didn’t claim that all ages ended in disaster, only that the last one did ‘when the Earth shook and the seas washed over the mountains, when the stars moved in the sky and the sun failed to shine.’ The Mayan start date of 3,113 B.C. would be a few years after the disaster giving them time to resettle and get organised, again making the 3,200 B.C. date plausible.

The Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Mayan and Greek cultures also appeared at a common time to the Sumerians. They all had the trappings of advanced civilisations, astronomy, writing, calendars, taxation, bookkeeping, laws, astrology, monumental public buildings, intensive agriculture, metallurgy and organised priest hoods. A common synchronising event would explain why these cultures commenced at virtually the same time at such advanced stages. They were not starting from scratch, they were recommencing in new locations.

An ancient Chaldean text relates the stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter, men tread the path of Hel [their goddess of death] and heaven is cloven. The sun darkens, Earth in ocean sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire’s breath assails the all nourishing, towering fire plays against heaven itself. This surely is describing a major tectonic upheaval. The legend of the Chaldean hero Utnapishtim who survived the flood with his family predates the story of Noah by many years and has enough similarities that it’s clearly the source of the biblical epic and describes the same event. Archaeologists have found huge flood deposits in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers dating to around 3,000 B.C.

The Chinese Longshan culture started around 3,000 B.C. and has a legend of nationwide flood disasters in its prehistory. Like endless boiling water, the flood is pouring forth destruction. Boundless and overwhelming, it overtops hills and mountains. Rising, ever rising, it threatens the very heavens. How the people must be groaning and suffering. These colourful descriptions in the ancient’s histories are not your everyday accounts of flooding; they are of an extreme event.

The start date of the Hindu calendar is 3,102 B.C. The Indian Hindu culture considers this date a restarting of their culture, because they too have legends of a previous age of plenty that ended in a catastrophe.

The 3,200 B.C. dating of an abrupt cold period in the Irish Oaks is also found in German tree ring chronology when European glaciers began to advance southward as the temperatures plummeted and froze poor Oetzi the Stone Age man.

Data from oxygen isotope readings in the Huascaran Glacier in Peru indicate abrupt cooling at the same time as indicated by a sulphate spike in the Greenland ice core data. Both coincide with a rise in the Dead Sea of over 100 metres and heavy flooding of the River Jordan. Signs of major flooding, climate change, migrations and new settlements can be found all over the world dating to around 3,200 B.C.

In the reshaping of the planet’s climate patterns the Sahara’s rainfall dropped dramatically around 3,000 B.C. finalising its transition to a desert from a sandy grassy savannah where elephants, giraffes and crocodiles once lived. These animals were recorded by Stone Age man in caves and on rock walls in the area. Climate change is nothing new.

The North Sea was once a land bridge between Britain, Finland and France that archaeologists call Doggerland. Sea levels constantly rose for a few thousand years after the end of the last ice age when the polar caps started to melt and Doggerland slowly became awash. Total inundation took many centuries and the land finally disappeared completely when tsunamis washed away the remaining evidence in a tectonic event, possibly associated with the event of 3,200 B.C. Many tree trunks and Stone Age relics have been bought to the surface in fishing trawler nets from the depths of the North Sea, which today is still rising and eroding into the eastern coastline of Britain.

Niagara Falls on the St. Lawrence River is a relatively young feature. Its age can be calculated from the rate it erodes its way upstream into North America at approximately a metre a year. There are factors that vary its erosion rate such as the volume of water flowing downstream, the gradient of the land and the durability of the rock strata that the falls are cutting through. When all variables are considered Niagara Falls must be between 5,000 and 5,500 years old. A geological upheaval in 3,200 B.C. could be responsible for lifting the North American continental plate upward in order for the St. Lawrence River to have something to start falling over and cut back through to create this famous landmark.

In Alaska, Siberia and the Aleutian Islands there are piles of frozen detritus, icy muck full of the bones of masses of mammoths, mastodons, prehistoric bears, sloths, camels, horses, wolves and bison extending for hundreds of kilometres mixed with fossilised tree trunks. Many are found in attitudes of sudden death. There are mammoths with buttercups still in their mouths, snap frozen in an instant and pushed into heaps as if by a giant bulldozer. They date to around 12,000 years ago and are probably the result of a tectonic catastrophe and enormous tsunamis that piled the bodies high on the beaches. Over 100 species of mega fauna in the higher latitudes and giant kangaroos, wombats, sabre toothed tigers, tortoises, rhinos, beavers and armadillos in the warmer climes were sent to extinction by the effects of these events. The recent loss of so many species that died in tragic circumstances and left us easily carbon datable material is undeniable proof the world is subject to sudden catastrophic events of apocalyptic proportions. Do we take heed of such serious recent events? We do not, in fact we barely recognise that they ever happened, which is ironic in light of our usual concern for our own welfare.

There are several ancient records from the times before the catastrophe we know as the Great Deluge, that the year once contained 360 days. Many today believe our ancestors were just doing a little bit of creative rounding for mathematical convenience, but the problem is that they took astronomical observations very seriously back then and were exceptionally accurate. They could count the days precisely by watching the movement of the stars, so I believe we should also take these accounts seriously. The sky was their television, it foretold the weather, of impending disasters, it was an aid to navigation and portrayed the seasons. It was their story book of heroes and myths told in the stars. They watched the planets move, comets and meteors light up the night and the phases of the moon, while their wise men predicted the future by what they saw in the heavens. The average layman back then was a thousand times better acquainted with the celestial sphere than his counterpart today and they certainly knew how many days there were in a year! So the problem is where did these extra days come from? The Earth could have moved into a greater orbit giving us a few more days, but this is virtually impossible. Gravity would not let this happen, an outside force would have to be involved which seems highly unlikely, but the planet could however be forced to spin faster. A meteor or asteroid impact has been suggested, but an impact great enough to do so would have obliterated all life on the planet. However, a collapse and contraction of the Earth’s crust would cause it to spin faster due to the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum in the same way a spinning ice skater spins faster when she pulls her outstretched arms in close to her body. The extra 5.25 days we now enjoy, which the ancient Egyptians knew were additions, gave them special names and believed that they were unlucky, could be the result of a series of particularly severe tectonic events in our prehistory. Our ancestor’s legends tell of colossal events that shook the world to its core in their prehistory and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake was able to alter the length of the Earth’s day by a fraction of a second, so it can happen!

There is evidence in ancient coral ring data that billions of years ago the Earth’s year once consisted of between 385 to 410 days. If this is the case then the Earths’ orbit would have been greater than today and not that the Earth is slowing in its rotation. In the Universe gravity forces everything to fall down, go inward, contract, gain in mass and become denser which results in faster rotation. This is why the ultimate in compacted masses like neutron stars and pulsars are not only dense beyond belief, a matchbox full of neutron star would weigh millions of tons, but spin at up to 30,000 revolutions per minute! It is the natural progression of everything in the Universe to become denser and spin faster. If the Earth ever had a year of 410 days millions of years ago the reason it is less today would be because it now has a closer, faster orbit around the sun having been drawn inward at some point. A collision with a large proto-planet could be the cause and is discussed later. The point here is that if before the disaster of 3,200 B.C. the year was one of 360 days, a feasible reason for the extra days would be a 1.5% increase in the rotational rate of the planet caused by crustal collapse in a series of colossal tectonic events.

The event or series of events that caused the abrupt climate change 5,200 years ago was great enough to effectively cool the planet for many years. It decimated civilisations around the world with earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, global winters and famine, but was not quite severe enough to send the Earth back into an ice age, that event is still to come.

We are currently exceeding the global temperature as at the time prior to the last major release of energy from within the planet, when Oetzi the Iceman and the Peruvian moss were both alive and well.

We know that Stone Age man lived in Europe and the Middle East for many thousands of years and we have found hundreds of Neolithic (New Stone Age) settlements and structures like Stonehenge, Newgrange and the Carnac Stones. We have also found their burial sites and implements, but until the discovery of the ancient Gobekli Tepe site we have not found any indication of organised civilisations prior to the Bronze Age. Then, all of a sudden around 3,200 B.C. a dozen fully functional major civilisations popped into existence at almost the same time. Our academics tell us that there are no traces of these civilisations at earlier times, but that’s not what these old civilisations repeatedly tell us in their legends. They clearly state that although all was destroyed when their world was turned upside down, the survivors restarted their civilisations in new locations and that conditions were never as good as the good old days of abundance. Therefore they must have existed before the disaster, it’s just that we can find no traces of them, but isn’t that exactly what they were trying to tell us in their legends, that the event was so bad that all traces from before are gone!?

Our academics emphatically tell us that it’s not possible for advanced civilisations to have existed prior to the Bronze Age and legends of disaster and earlier golden times are just myths and mumbo jumbo, but then Gobekli Tepe was discovered and upset their apple cart. It is now proven beyond doubt that there were civilised communities up to 6,000 years earlier than previously thought, but the reason why there are so few traces of their existence does not seem to concern academia.

The intriguing archaeological find at Gobekli Tepe on the Anatolian Plains of Turkey has upended traditional archaeology which has always maintained that Stone Age men were hunter gatherers. They lived in humpies and caves prior to our current civilisation, which supposedly started in Mesopotamia and Egypt around 5,000 years ago. This has always been taught as fact despite the obvious weathering and erosion of the Sphinx in Egypt which implied a much older construction date. Arabic legends state that the Great Pyramid was there long before the Great Flood. What would Arab scribes know, they only lived there, while our illustrious academics were from Oxford and Cambridge and read lots of books written by each other.

Gobekli Tepe is over 11,000 years old! This makes it 6,000 years older than Stonehenge and the current erroneous date for the construction of the Great Pyramid and Gobekli Tepe is clearly built and decorated by an advanced civilisation. 6,000 years is a long, long time in the history of civilisations, it more than doubles the time span of the currently accepted period of our own in one step and yet we know nothing about these previous times.

Archaeology has a couple of golden rules, one is that the older stuff is buried underneath the younger stuff and the other is that buildings develop from basic to advanced as cultures reach their zenith. The Great Pyramid was the tallest building in the world until the Eiffel Tower was built in the 19th Century and it’s still to this day, the most massive building on the planet. Yet there it sits at the proposed dawn of our civilisation, a historical paradox that breaks all the rules. What a building to kick start a civilisation with! Or could it be the culmination of an earlier civilisation’s architecture? This would make more sense, after all the Arabs always said it was there before the Great Flood and the weathering and erosion of the Sphinx also reflects a much greater age than it’s currently credited with.

At Gobekli Tepe archaeologists have unearthed standing stones 5 metres high weighing many tons decorated with animal carvings in what is now the world’s oldest building. The site is on a hill overlooking the surrounding once