Could Antarctica have been ice-free when the earth was much warmer 8000 years ago?

Holocene Temperature Variations from 12,000 years ago to the present (2004). This image is an original work created for Global Warming Art and is in the public domain. It was retrieved from Wikipedia Commons.

On the right, you’ll see a graph showing the temperature of the earth over the last 12,000 years. “BP” means “Before Present.” 

I went looking for this information as part of my research for the End of the World 2012 Movie, because I wanted to see if there was a time when the earth was much warmer than it is now.And it was–8,000 years ago. 

Could the earth been warm enough at that time to melt the miles-thick ice cap on Antarctica?

If so, could ancient sailors have mapped Antarctica at that time and could that map have been incorporated into the Piri Reis map? 

In the End of the World 2012 Movie, I am showing how there have been previous “end of the world” scenarios, or anyway, end of the world as we presently know it. Logically, the earth could go through another “end of the world” scenario if it has done so before.

Australian archeologist believes the Piri Reis map shows Antarctica ice-free

The author of the Ancient Destructions blog site, Peter “Mungo” Jupp, believes  the Piri Reis map shows Antarctica ice-free. There is some controversy. Others believe the part of the map that could be Antarctica is actually the southeastern coast of South America.

Interestingly, the Ancient Destructions blog site includes a copy of a letter from Harold Z. Ohlmeyer Lt. Colonel, USAF Commander, who is writing to author Charles Hapgood saying that Colonel Ohlmeyer agrees that the Piri Reis map shows part of the coast of Antarctica before it was covered with ice.

That’s great–that a USAF Lt. Colonel would validate the Antarctica details of the Piri Reis map. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap. This part of Antarctica ice free. The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick. We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.

Harold Z. Ohlmeyer Lt. Colonel, USAF Commander

The Ancient Destructions blog site also has a video on it that you might enjoy. I like that Peter “Mungo” Jupp is an Australian archaeologist and therefore he’s close to Antarctica.

As before, I am interested in the Piri Reis map, because, if it shows Antaractica ice free, it means that someone somewhere in humanity’s past, had to have been there when Antarctica was ice-free. Could there have been a pole shift? Did the earth’s crust shift, move Antarctica from a location in a more temperatue area of the globe down to the pole? Was there an extreme climate change? Could this happen again?

2012 preview? Eyewitness accounts of the Tunguska comet/meteoroid impact in Siberia

The Southern swamp—the epicenter of the Tunguska explosion, in 2008. View from a helicopter. Photo by Vladimir Rubtsov, taken at June 30, 2008. Source: Rubtsov (2009), p. 2. This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.

I am impressed with the devastation that still exists at the epicenter of the Tunguska Event in Siberia. At the right, please find a photograph taken in 2008 from a helicopter showing how the impact area is still devoid of trees.

On the other hand, it is a swamp. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any trees. In any case, this helicopter photograph is a good example of the effect of the largest comet/meteoroid explosion in recorded history  100 years later.

I’m looking at previous end of the world scenarios for inclusion in my End of the World 2012 Movie. And, I’m also just interested in what eyewitnesses had to say about the event. For example, in a Wikipedia article called Tunguska Event, S. Semenov says that:

The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn’t bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres.

Also, Chuchan of Shanyagir tribe said that: 

We had a hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt strong wind. Chekaren said, ‘Can you hear all those birds flying overhead?’ We were both in the hut, couldn’t see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again, this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered.

Piri Reis Map could point to an ice-free Antarctica in antiquity

Map of the world by Ottoman admiral Piri Reis, drawn in 1513.Only half of the original map survives and is held at the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul.The map synthesizes information from twenty maps, including one drawn by Christopher Columbus of the New World. This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. It is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

The oldest known map of the world was compiled by Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. He used 10 Arabian sources, 4 maps of India from the Portuguese, and a map of the New World made by Christopher Columbus to compile his map. The map is drawn on gazelle skin.

Only the Western third of the map has survived. It lay undisturbed in the Topkapi Sarayi Library until German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissman discovered it in 1929. According to an online Wikipedia article, Piri Reis Map: 

Amateur historian Gavin Menzies claims in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered America that the southern landmass is indeed the Antarctic coastline and was based on earlier Chinese maps. According to Menzies, Admiral Hong Bao charted the coast over 70 years before Columbus as part of a larger expedition under the famous Chinese explorer and admiral Zheng He to bring the world under China’s tribute system.

I became interested in the Piri Reis map while researching background information for my End of the World 2012 Movie. I thought that if the Piri Reis map showed the Antarctica coastline, it meant that one of the sources used in compiling the map had to have been made during the time Antarctica was free of the mile thickness of ice covering it now. If so, it would show evidence of the world undergoing previous cataclysmic events. Perhaps, a pole shift?

Tunguska comet impact in Siberia created a mini end of the world event

Fallen trees at Tunguska, 1927. This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. This work is in the public domain in Russia.

 On June 30, 1908, a 330-foot comet or meteoroid exploded over the Tunguska River in Siberia, Russia. The 10 to 15 megatons of TNT explosion felled an estimated 80 million trees.

I’ve been researching historical “end of the world” scenarios for my End of the World 2012 Movie. The Tunguska event is the largest comet impact in recorded human history. The shock wave of the blast would likely have registered 5 on the Richter Scale.

If this explosion had occurred over a large metropolitan area, the city would have been destroyed.

Nonetheless, native tribespeople the Evensk, and Russian settlers, who lived in the area, reported seeing a column of light, almost as bright as the sun, moving across the sky accompanied by a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses said that:

The sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of kilometres away. 

Tunguska Event

2012 end of the world in history: dinosaur extinction and Chicxulub Yucatan comet

Badlands near Drumheller, Alberta, where erosion has exposed the KT boundary. From Wikipedia Commons: This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Glenlarson at the english wikipedia project. This applies worldwide.

In editing the End of the World 2012 movie, I’m at the place where I’m looking at previous end of the world scenarios, specifically where I intereview physicist Dr. William Petrachenko on the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Dr. Petrachenko works in the field of geophysics.

It turns out that the dinosaur extinction is associated with a worldwide characteristic in rock strata called the Cretaceous Tertiary Layer or Boundary or K – T Boundary. (This has recently been amended to the K-Pg or Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary.) Coincidentally, the K-T Boundary occurs at about 65 million years ago.

As Dr. Petrachenko explains in the movie, at the K-T Layer, scientists have found a higher concentration than is usually found on earth of Iridium. Since comets and asteroids have high concentrations of iridium, the scientists theorized that a huge extraterrestrial object must have hit the earth about 65 million years ago and that the debris or ejecta from the impact would have been carried in the atmosphere all around the earth and fell to the surface creating the K-T Boundary.

Since the extinction of the dinosaurs and this comet/asteroid impact occurred at about the same time–65 million years ago–scientists hypothesized that the comet/asteroid impact led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In the photo, above right, rocks above the K-T Boundary are much darker than the lighter-colored rocks below the K-T Boundary. The iridium is found in a narrow band, not visible in this long distance photo, between the two layers.

In the End of the World 2012 Movie, we visit Chicxulub, Yucatan, where the comet exploded 65 million years ago. For more information on the K-T Boundary/K-Pg Boundary, Iridium and the Chicxulub Impact, please see the Wikipedia article, Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.

Mercury Retrograde in Leo is about to begin!

Amazingly, this appears to be a Mercury Retrograde I’m going to love. Usually Merc Retro periods can be amazingly frustrating as far as communication goes, which includes means of communications such as computers, software, and cell phones.

OK, already my desktop computer has gone south. Also, I spent one extremely frustrating day in which I never did figure out why one line among many lines in a PhotoShop image would not show up when I placed the photo into my End of the World 2012 Movie. In the end, I figured out how to show what I wanted to show in another way. Finally, (old wives’ tale: bad luck comes in threes), the third thing: my cell phone modem that connects me to the internet not only would not connect, but it turned out that the cell phone tower needed to be repaired which kept me www-less for a day.

So, I must admit, I have had some Mercury Retrograde-type problems already and Mercury was only in pre-retrograde. The closest planet to the sun has almost stopped moving today and is supposed to begin retrograde motion in a couple of days.

July 15th to August 8th, 2012 Mercury in Leo (retrograde) remind us what we truly love. This respite cycles you back to your own unique story. It’s time to journal, and reflect on your ambitions, how you shine, and what you long to create.

Some serendipity happens that puts you in the spotlight. You reconfirm your talent for leading and encouraging others. You help someone see their own uniqueness. Children, or another kind of pride and joy — like your artistic creation — becomes a preoccupation. This could be time to revive a creative idea, give yourself a pep talk, and make plans to bring it to fruition.

Mercury Retrograde 2012

Only three Maya “books” or codices survived the Spanish conquest of Yucatan

A page from the Dresden Codex showing images from Maya civilization. ~ from Wikipedia commons–this image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

The Maya, an indigenous people of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico plus Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, made folding books written on the inside bark of certain types of fig trees.

Called “codices” (codex in the singular), many were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors and priests.

For example, in July of 1562, Bishop Diego de Landa ordered the destruction of all of the codices in the state of Yucatan.

De Landa also destroyed a Maya temple in Izamal, using the stones from the temple to make an elegant convent, which we visit in the Yucatan Travel Movie. Izamal is a gorgeous colonial city only about an hour and a half drive from Chichen Itza and well worth the visit.

The three codices that survived the Spanish conquest are named by the location of the museum where they presently reside.

• The Dresden Codex, is housed in Germany, is made of 74 pages (39 leaves written on both sides), contains descriptions of rituals and astrological information on eclipses of the sun and moon as well as the cycles of Venus.
• To my way of thinking, the Paris Codex, in France, is the most interesting since it deals with the Maya calendar and includes prophecies for various tuns and Katuns.
• The Madrid Codex is the longest at 112 pages and is housed in Spain. Researchers believe it was put together quickly after the Spanish conquest.

Occasionally, hopelessly decayed codices are found in Maya ruins:

Given the rarity and importance of these books, rumors of finding new ones often develop interest. Archaeological excavations of Maya sites have turned up a number of rectangular lumps of plaster and paint flakes, most commonly in elite tombs. These lumps are the remains of codices where all the organic material has rotted away. A few of the more coherent of these lumps have been preserved, with the slim hope that some technique to be developed by future generations of archaeologists may be able to recover some information from these remains of ancient pages.

Maya Codices

Could Doggerland have been Atlantis?

According to an online CBS News – Science article, the underwater land between England and France as well as the land between Scotland and Denmark, were above water until about 5,500 BC. At that time, rising sea levels and a tsunami submerged all of the land except for the remaining British Isles.

Dr. Richard Bates, geophysicist at St. Andrews University in Scotland, says that the now-submerged land provided food for both hunters and gatherers. What’s really exciting is that:

Among fossilized evidence of mammoths and large game animals, divers have found harpoons, flint tools and suspected burial sites they say belonged to residents of the submerged settlement more than 12,000 years ago.

Doggerland, northern Europe’s own lost city of Atlantis, discovered off Scotland

More on the Lost City of Atlantis or What? Doggerland? Submerged off the coast of Scotland

Oil and gas companies searching for fuel below the seafloor are coming up with evidence of a land that was once above water.

For years, fishermen have been dredging up bones in the North Sea.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that geophysicist Richard Bates of the Department of Earth Sciences in St. Andrews, Scotland and his research team are finding promising clues of:

“. . . what may be burial sites, stone monuments, and even mass mammoth graves, which would be evidence of ice age hunting.”

Doggerland, Europe’s lost city of Atlantis discovered