Floods

The greatest flood to be accepted by orthodox science may be the deluge of 14,000 years ago[†] in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia.

"It was an event that's very hard to describe- because nothing comparable has ever been seen by people," says Victor Baker, a geologist at the University of Arizona. "It's the largest flood we can document in the fossil record." At its height, he says, the water may have been 1,500 feet deep, racing along the Chuja River valley at 90 miles an hour.

Baker had been working with Alexey Rudoy, a Siberian geologist, who had argued for years that only massive flooding could have formed the oddly rippled terrain and giant bars of gravel found in the Chuja Valley and nearby regions - not glaciers, as was commonly believed.

"Near the end of the last ice age, they say, a glacier crawled out of a valley perpendicular to the Chuja Valley and cut across the latter, effectively damming it and creating a lake nearly 3,000 feet deep that held 200 cubic miles of water. Eventually that ice dam broke the lake either burst through the dam or lifted the entire glacier. Water rushed into the narrow river valley at the rate of 640 million cubic feet per second, in a deluge that probably lasted several days."

The Chuja Valley flood was just the largest of numerous ice-age inundations, says Baker. "Even the English Channel has been attributed by some to late-glacial catastrophic flood erosion," he says, "though it hasn't been proven."[34]

Meanwhile in North America:

The Missoula Floods, 16,000-14,000 years ago (Pleistocene)

Did you know that the largest floods to occur on the planet happened here? During the last ice age, ice sheets covered much of Canada. One lobe of ice grew southward, blocking the Clark Fork Valley in Idaho. This 2,000 foot (600 meters) high ice dam blocked the river, creating a lake that stretched for hundreds of miles. When the lake was full, it contained 600 cubic miles (2,500 cubic kilometers) of water. How much is that? Imagine a block of water a mile high (as high as the mountains around Bonneville Dam), a miles wide, and stretching from Bonneville Dam to San Francisco!

Eventually, water traveled under the ice dam. The water drained out of the lake in two or three days, flooding eastern Washington. The flood, moving up to sixty miles per hour, scoured out hundreds of miles of canyons called coulees, created the largest waterfall to ever exist, and left 300 foot (90 meter) high gravel bars. At Bonneville, the water crested at 650 feet (200 meters). If you look on the cliffs southeast of the dam, you will see a transmission tower (the one with three poles) that is 200 feet (60 meters) above the high water mark.

During a period of 2,500 years as many as 100 of these floods scoured the Gorge.

The source of this information is from a page at a U.S. Government website. It details the (orthodox) geologic history of the Columbia River Gorge. Like the Siberian flood, scientists describe a glacier that blocks a valley and creates a dam. However the trapped water does not freeze, it slowly builds up then bursts through the barrier of ice. This is apparently the only non-catastrophic, gradual situation they can think of!

Prior to the catastrophic floods, albeit 12-40 million years prior, this district was also host to a spectacular amount of volcanic activity. They state that 41,000 cubic miles (170,000 cubic kilometres) of lava spread to cover large parts of Oregon and Washington. This is enough to cover the entire continental USA with at least 12 metres of lava!! Elsewhere[35], sections of lava in the Columbia River area have been estimated to be 3,500 metres thick!!

If we were to disregard the dating of these events, then we have two obvious after-effects of a pole shift, one occurring directly on top of the other.

Volcanoes

An event as catastrophic as a pole shift would undoubtedly create an increase in volcanic activity. In fact, I suspect that every volcano along the “line of most movement” would have exploded. Evidence of past lava flows indicate that our current level of volcanic activity is very low, a mere whimper. In my opinion, there has been a gradual decline of activity over the last 10,000 years, as the earth’s crust has settled into its new position, and the volcanoes have slowly died down.

A shift of the crust would require some stretching and contracting due to the equatorial bulge. Any section of the crust that moved into the area of the equator would have to stretch to accommodate the bulge. On the other side of the equator, where section of the crust were moving away, there would be contraction. Distortions of this magnitude would give us the “fire” element so often part of the flood myths – volcanoes.

"In Arizona, New Mexico and southern California there are very fresh looking volcanic formations. The lava flow in the valley of the San Jose River in New Mexico is so fresh that it lends support to Indian traditions of a “river of fire” in this locality."[36]

Ten thousand years ago, volcanoes were active everywhere. Listed here are the active areas of the southern hemisphere:[37]

Nigeria Kenya Tanzania Great Rift Valley Madagascar Indian Ocean Burma

Malaysia Indonesia New Hebrides Bismarck Sea New Guinea New Zealand Solander Islands

Australia: N Queensland SE NSW West Victoria Tasmania

Antarctica: S. Ant. Peninsula Ellsworth Land Marie Byrd Land The Andes (entire) Brazil – Mato Grasso Chile (800 volcanoes)

The northern hemisphere covers pretty much everywhere except Europe.

As we can see, Chile alone had more active volcanoes back then, than the 500 the entire globe has today. Volcanoes are so sensitive that we can assume the majority of them would erupt during a pole shift situation. Our atmosphere would be filled with dust and the sun would effectively disappear from view for a few years. An example of this is the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 – this single volcano lowered the mean earth temperature by about 1ºC for several years[38], and many parts of the world lost an entire growing season. With hundreds of volcanoes erupting at once our planet would be plunged into winter, with the new poles freezing over rapidly.

The amount of dust in the air, and corresponding lack of sunlight caused by a pole shift is unpredictable, but even a layman can guess that it would be many, many times more severe than the explosion of Krakatoa. A number of doomsday researchers have pointed out how the dust would create a tragic, incredibly cold period. However, the severity may well be offset in part by the carbon dioxide that volcanoes produce. While dust will stop the sun’s rays from entering our atmosphere, carbon–dioxide will stop heat from escaping, the much discussed “greenhouse effect”. Carbon dioxide also stimulates plant growth, but only when there is sunlight as well. The climate following a pole shift is very difficult to predict. Prepare for anything.

Volcanic Gases. All magmas contain dissolved gases that are released during and between eruptive episodes. These gases are predominately steam, followed in abundance by carbon dioxide, compounds of sulfur and chlorine, and lesser amounts of other gases. While they rarely reach populated areas in lethal concentrations, sulfur dioxide can travel downwind and react with the atmosphere to form acid rain that causes corrosion and a host of other problems. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air and tends to collect in depressions, such as valleys, where it can occur in concentrations lethal enough to cause suffocation of people and animals.[39]

Seashells

In my own travels, during a visit to mountains in New Zealand, I pondered over why there should be seashells high upon them. Yes, New Zealand is a relatively new country – supposedly it slowly rose from the ocean 26 million years ago. But how are these shells, which easily break beneath my shoes, which I could easily turn into sand, still in one piece after 26 millions of years? Have they survived earthquakes and weather for such a terribly long time? Or could the islands of New Zealand have risen only 12,000 years ago?[40]

Graham Hancock found a similar situation at Lake Titicaca, on the border of Peru and Bolivia:

Though now more than two miles above sea level, the area around Lake Titicaca is littered with millions upon millions of fossilized sea shells. This suggests that at some stage the whole of the Altiplano was forced upwards from the sea-bed, perhaps as part of the general terrestrial rising that formed South America as a whole…[41]

This would be in line with orthodox scientists, who believe that this occurred very slowly 100 million years ago. But Hancock points out that many of the fish and crustacea in the lake are of a salt-water variety, as if they hadn’t had time to evolve into fresh water types. Indeed this is the only fresh water location on earth where seahorses live.

The ancient city of Tiahuanaco, is currently 12 miles distant, and 100 feet higher than the lake. Yet, this city has ruined docks, which implies that within the civilised history this area was subject to a major upheaval. It is frightening to think that there are forces that can shift landscapes two miles vertically, and this may have happened 12,000 years ago in South America.

+++++

You may have noticed that we haven’t discussed any internal forces that can make the poles shift – I don’t think there are any. The RB-Effect of James Bowles relies on the pull of the sun and the moon. I believe the required forces must come from farther away.

Extra-terrestrial forces are infinite and mostly unknown. If something out there is capable of tilting the Earth, we are yet to discover it. But there are a few clues. Global cataclysms have occurred previously, and presumably will happen again. Any prediction of when must be based on calculable processes. If the Mayan calendar proves to be prophetic, then this cosmic disturbance must be a regular and predictable occurrence, not a random collision or interaction. If evolution is caused by cosmic rays (see Chapter XX), then they must be a component of the disturbance. And if humanity manages to survive each cataclysm, the disturbance’s effect must fall a little short of total annihilation.

Charles Hapgood (1904-1982)

After graduating from Harvard, Charles Hapgood taught history at Keene State College in New Hampshire. In 1949 one of his students asked about Atlantis, and he transformed the query into a research project, questioning the gradualist rules of geology and seeking evidence of a catastrophe large enough to destroy the fabled land. For 10 years, aided by his eager students, Hapgood worked on his theory of earth crust displacement - an update of Hugh Auchincloss Brown's theory that the entire planet has previously capsized. Brown's theory simply stated that as the Antarctic polar ice cap gains weight [9], the planet becomes less stable, eventually becomes unbalanced and topples over. The relative weights are more akin to a speck of dust on an automobile tyre than anything more serious - the Antarctic icecap weighs less than one millionth of the entire planet. Hapgood doubted that an accumulation of ice at the poles was enough to tip the entire planet over. He believed that only the crust shifted.

Crustal displacement, from Hapgood's point of view, is a very violent and sudden shifting of only the "skin" of the planet Earth (the crust's thickness is only 0.005% of the equatorial diameter). This shift causes various disasters, with each disaster triggering another, and so on. Hapgood suggested that each Ice Age would not affect the whole earth at the same time, but only two regions of it - those that shifted into polar regions.

If it were only the skin that shifted, as Hapgood proposed, then the ice cap mechanism becomes more likely. However I do wonder whether this process could be infinitely repeatable, for if the poles ever ended up in oceanic areas, then sufficient ice would never be able to accumulate.

Undaunted by this lack of acclaim, he continued to work on his theory, with a major update being published in 1970, re-named The Path of the Pole. Helped by recent advances in geology, Hapgood replaced the ice cap mechanism with a trigger coming from within the Earth itself. Although he was unsure precisely what that trigger was, it was most likely something involving gravitational imbalances and centrifugal forces. In the introduction he wrote:In 1958 an in depth explanation was published in his book titled Earth's Shifting Crust, with its endorsement by Albert Einstein. Perhaps his ideas were just too radical for, despite the endorsement, and although he managed to avoid the ridicule previously allocated to Velikovsky, academics and the public alike ignored his book.

"Polar wandering is based on the idea that the outer shell of the earth shifts about from time to time, moving some continents toward and others away from the poles, changing their climates. Continental drift is based on the idea that the continents move individually... A few writers have suggested that perhaps continental drift causes polar wandering. This book advances the notion that polar wandering is primary and causes the displacement of continents.... This book will present evidence that the last shift of the earth's crust (the lithosphere) took place in recent time, at the close of the last ice age, and that it was the cause of the improvement in climate."[10]

Hapgood suggested three previous locations of the poles. The most recent North Pole is Hudson Bay, which was the epicentre of the North American ice sheet during the last Ice Age. The previous sites were in the Greenland Sea, and the Yukon district of Canada, although his evidence for these is totally dependant on radio-carbon dating.[11] Each shift was approximately 30°. These diagrams show where the previous North Poles were located, with their corresponding equators:

Yukon Greenland Sea Hudson Bay Present Pole		1. Yukon
2. Greenland Sea		3. Hudson Bay

Interestingly, the Amazon jungle has remained at the equator during each of these shifts, which may account for its enormity.

---

James Bowles

James Bowles is a retired civil engineer who worked for NASA sub-contractors on the Apollo moon program. In his bookThe Gods, Gemini, and the Great Pyramid, gives us a straightforward, easy to grasp theory on how the crust can shift.

On the day of the pig roast everything was ready. The spit mechanism was in place, the pit had been dug, there were all kinds of charcoal, and all the guests were milling about. All we needed to start the festivities was the pig and a match. So my dear wife, along with Bonny, led us into the bathroom where the pig was laying covered with ice in the bathtub. But one look at the pig and I knew we were in trouble! . I'd figured on a fifty pound pig, because that's what we'd talked about, but this had to be 100 pounds if it was an ounce..

Well now that one and a half inch of galvanized water pipe looked like a tooth pick next to the pig, but it was too late to do anything about it at this point, besides somebody had lit the charcoal.. Half way through the night, the pipe broke, and the pig fell into the fire.. Well to make a long story short, a friend of mine and I went into town and got a bigger pipe from behind the garage and put everything back together again.[11a]

The Spit Mechanism

The point is that the pipe didn't just break, it broke from fatigue.

This is torque, forces created by rotation. Bowles calls it Rotational-Bending, or the RB-Effect. If enough tension is happening within our planet, and it is constant, then one day something must give, slip or break. Everything that suffers stress will eventually crack. In our planet's case it would be the semi-plastic attachment of the crust to the asthenosphere. The stress would also create heat, and this could be a simple explanation for volcanoes - an outlet valve for all the heat created by the stresses within the earth. Bowles points out that an easy way to break a piece of wire is to bend it backwards and forwards, over and over, until it snaps. The ends of the broken wire will be quite hot - heat being a by-product of stress.

Bowles uses the analogy of cargo on a ship to further clarify his idea: When cargo is tied securely, it will ride with the ship and not come to any harm. But if the ropes are loose, and the cargo slips and slides, then damage can occur.

The earth's crust is not securely tied; rather it is connected to the core via a series of semi-plastic layers, some of which are seas of molten rock and liquid iron. The waves in the cargo analogy correspond to the gravitational pulls of the moon, sun and (to a much lesser extent) the other planets. Our situation is that we have a crust that is 99.9% securely tied to the planet's core. The sun and moon are constantly tugging away, testing the attachment. Eventually something has to give.

The centrifugal forces try to shift matter towards the equator. This is where the stress is. We talk about a pole shift, but technically it's the entire crust that shifts, around two fulcrum points, due to stresses towards the equator. I came across a science Q&A website run by NASA, and found questions regarding the number of earthquakes in Antarctica. Here are the expert's answers:

Antarctica is unusual in that there are very few earthquakes there. Of all the seven or nine continents, or of all the 7 or 25 plates (depending on how you count), it has the fewest earthquakes, and it has none of the big, damaging kind.There are very few earthquakes in Antarctica. It is one of the questions we are trying to answer out there. There are numbers of plate boundaries and we have always been astonished that we haven't seen more earthquakes. We have wanted to see them, we have tried to record them, but Antarctica is a real puzzle because there are very few earthquakes. There should be many more considering the type of plate boundaries there are, and the type of continental structures there are, but there aren't that many. We are trying to work it out. But now it is still a puzzle.

The polar regions of this globe are unaffected by the forces at work, hence very few earthquakes.

It is a puzzle if the standard continental drift model remains in use. The R-B Effect theory of Bowles declares that the closer to the equator you get, the more earthquakes there are, due to the forces of tension and compression.

When I went to high school, I was shown a trick that fascinated me. Firstly, you wedge a ballpoint pen into your desk somehow. Then you get the spring from inside a broken pen, and you stretch it out. Using this wire like a two person wood saw, you cut through the bottom of the pen's clip, and saw right through to the top of the pen. It has to be done fast. This action cuts the plastic, but friction creates heat and causes the plastic to melt together again, just behind the cutting action. The result is a pen with a surgical scar where the clip joins. I figure this is what happens to the earth when the crust slips - it breaks away, and then cements itself in place again.

In recent times orthodox scientists are re-assessing our planet's internal mechanics, and have finally started to accept pole shifts as a possibility:

July 1996: Scientists at Columbia University in New York confirmed that the earth's inner core was spinning faster than the planet itself, by approximately 1/3 of a second per day, allowing it to lap the Earth's surface approximately once every 400 years. This may help explain Earth's magnetic fields, and why they periodically reverse.

1997: Researchers at the California Institute of Technology reported that an evolutionary big bang, with relative evolutionary rates of more than 20 times normal, coincided with another apparently unique event in earth history; a 90-degree change in the direction of Earth's spin axis relative to the continents.

The poleshift began about 530 million years ago, taking roughly 15 million years to complete. [Throughout this book I ask that you ignore these large time periods, and allow that current dating techniques might, for some reason, be fallible.]

But how can the poles shift?

Rather than the Earth being a solid piece of rock, it is divided into distinct layers. We live on the outer surface of the crust, which is broken up into six main continental plates and a few smaller ones. Geologists have differing opinions on what is further below, but for our purposes this simplified model will suffice:

The inner core consists of solid iron and is surrounded by an outer core of liquid iron. The lower mantle is made of molten rock. The upper mantle and crust are solid, but only loosely connected and are able to slip and slide against each other, the least effect of which is continental drift. All layers are capable of independent movement.

Apart from being a permanent constant (orthodox gradualist view), this movement of a miniscule 1-4 cms a year could also be the low point in a fluctuating system, or the crust's momentum finally coming to a halt after a major slippage of 30 degrees, which occurred in recent times - perhaps 12,000 years ago.Directly below the Earth's crust (or lithosphere) at a depth of 50-150 kilometres is a layer called the asthenosphere. It is constructed of a low-velocity plastic material capable of flow. The crust is split into plates, and the tectonic plate theory says that these plates move individually, slipping over the hot semi-plastic asthenosphere, at a rate of 1-4 cms a year. The action of these plates pushing against each other causes mountain ranges to form, causes earthquakes and stimulates volcanic activity.

There are two ways in which the location of the poles might shift:

1. Poleshift: A sudden and radical displacement of the planet's axis of rotation (the earth tips over).

-or-

2. Poleshift: A slippage of the planet's solid crust over the molten interior - so that the polar locations change.[6]

Entire planet tipping over

The layers of the Earth remain stable, and the entire planet tips over as one unit. This could either be caused by unknown extra-terrestrial forces, or the Earth somehow becoming unbalanced. A similar unbalancing event probably happened on Mars. Along its equator is a massive volcano known as Tharsis, which is the largest known gravity anomaly in our solar system. Either this volcano formed on the equator and has remained there ever since, or, more likely, it formed elsewhere and then migrated there due to centrifugal forces. If a point on a spinning globe is much heavier than average, then centrifugal forces will try to shift that point towards the equator

If this happened to Earth then it is hard to say how fast it would shift, or what level of catastrophe would occur. It could feasibly be so slow and uneventful that we wouldn't even notice.

In 1955 Thomas Gold[7] stated that if the earth were a perfect sphere instead of a flattened spheroid, 'the smallest beetle walking over it would be able to change the axis of rotation relative to markings on the sphere by an arbitrarily large angle; the axis of rotation in space would change by a small angle only'.

Fortunately, that cannot happen, because the earth has an equatorial bulge. This gives our planet stability, in the same way that a spinning top, which is wider in the middle, manages to stay upright as long as it keeps spinning.

Made out of solid wood, a top could happily spin forever without any harm coming to it. But if it were hollow, however, and something loose was rattling around inside, then its spinning actions would eventually cause it to wear our - friction and interaction between two objects will always eventually cause fatigue and destruction. The earth, as we saw above, is not a single solid unit - it has layers that scrape against each other.

Slippage of the crust

Charles Hapgood proposed that this slippage between the top two layers of the Earth allows for the continental plates to move as a single unit, rapidly over great distances - just as the skin of an orange, if separated from the fruit's inner part, can move as one piece. The core remains where it is, and the axis and orbit of the planet remain unchanged. Orthodox science, fixating on the idea of gradualism, has chosen to ignore this idea. They have yet to disprove it.

The crust's movement over the asthenosphere would create mayhem. If the current level of volcanic and earthquake activity is caused by plates shifting 1-4 cms a year, then imagine what would happen if they shifted thousands of kilometres in less time!

In 1955, just prior to his death, Albert Einstein wrote this foreword to a book on pole shifts:

I frequently receive communications from people who wish to consult me concerning their unpublished ideas. It goes without saying that these ideas are very seldom possessed of scientific validity. The very first communication, however, that I received from Mr. Hapgood electrified me. His idea is original, of great simplicity, and - if it continues to prove itself - of great importance to everything that is related to the history of the earth's surface.. The author has not confined himself to a simple presentation of the idea. He has also set forth, cautiously and comprehensively, the extraordinarily rich material that supports his displacement theory. I think that this rather astonishing, even fascinating, idea deserves the serious attention of anyone who concerns himself with the theory of the earth's development."[8]

Some evidence of a recent poleshift

Regardless of what caused the shift, the poles would be relocated and climates everywhere would change dramatically. Lands of ice would melt and cause incredible floods. The new poles would freeze over, with the intense cold instantly killing life. Deserts would gain moisture; rainforests would dry up. Flora and fauna would need to adapt to the new conditions or become extinct.

If all the regions of our planet previously had different climates, and the transition had been violent, then we would expect some evidence to have been found. Here is a brief sample:

Frozen Muck

In Alaska thick frozen deposits of soil, boulder, plant and animal exist, commonly known as "muck". Prof. Frank C. Hibben of the University of New Mexico described these deposits:

"In many places, Alaskan muck is packed with animal bones and debris in trainload lots. Bones of mammoths, mastodons, several kind of bison, horses, wolves, bears and lions tell a story of a faunal population. within this frozen mass lie the twisted parts of animals and trees intermingled with lenses of ice and layers of peat and mosses. It looks as though in the midst of some cataclysmic catastrophe of ten thousand years ago the whole Alaskan world of living animals and plants was suddenly frozen in mid-motion like a grim charade.twisted and torn trees are piled in splintered masses . at least four considerable layers of volcanic ash may be traced in these deposits, although they are extremely warped and distorted"[14]

This suggests that although volcanoes were erupting, other forces were required to dismember these animals - with mighty floods and hurricanes being the most likely.

These pits in the heart of Los Angeles are one of the richest sources of fossils discovered to date. More than 565 species all somehow got stuck in the tar (asphalt to be precise) over tens of thousands of years, fossilising all the time. Well, that's what the experts at the George C. Page Museum would have us believe, but they fail to explain the incredible density of animals that "got stuck" there. During the first University of California excavations in 1906, they found a "bed of bones" which contained over seven hundred sabre-toothed tiger skulls. These combined with wolf skulls averaged twenty per cubic yard.[15] Almost more bones than tar. They are not the bones of animals that merely got stuck and waited to die. They are "broken, mashed, contorted and mixed in a most heterogeneous mass"[16], just like in the muck of Alaska. And we mustn't overlook the fossilised birds that have been dug up, 100,000 of them, including over 138 species, 19 of which are extinct. The George C. Page Museum suggests that the 3,000 birds that are predators and scavengers may have been attempting to feed on other trapped animals, when they themselves got stuck. As sensible as this idea sounds, it fails to explain the presence of the further 97,000 birds that were non-carnivorous. Or three species of fish!Rancho La Brea tar pits

At the end of the last ice age (circa 10,000 BC) many North American species became extinct, including: mammoths, camels, Pre-Columbian horses, ground sloths, peccaries, antelopes, elephants, rhinoceroses, giant armadillos, tapirs, sabre-toothed tigers and giant bison. All of these animals are relatively large. Did they all become trapped in pits of asphalt? Was it the warmer weather that killed them? If so, could they not have shifted north?

Or were they wiped out by a terrible catastrophe?

Frozen Mammoths

"Fossil bones are astonishingly abundant in frozen ground of Alaska, but articulated[*] bones are scarce, and complete skeletons, except for rodents that died in their burrows, are almost unknown . the dispersal of the bones is as striking as their abundance and indicates general destruction of soft parts prior to burial."[17]

Meanwhile in Siberia, mammoths were being wiped out in a similar manner. Massive graveyards of their remains have been mined for ivory tusks. It has been estimated that more than half a million tons of mammoth tusks were buried along Siberia's Arctic coastline[18], which equates to roughly five million mammoths. Several dozen frozen mammoth carcasses have been found with the flesh still intact. They died suddenly. In their stomachs can be found undigested vegetation, including grass, bluebells, wild beans and buttercups[19] - food typically available in the summer. Scientists examining them have concluded that three of the mammoths died of asphyxiation. The cause of death of the others has not been determined.

Regardless of cause, they froze within days of dying, and when unfrozen the flesh has been fresh enough to feed to dogs. With the previous pole positioned at Hudson Bay (see below), the North Siberian coastline would have had the same latitude as Japan does today, well outside of the Arctic Circle. But when the poles shifted, the climate would have rapidly changed, from a summer savannah where mammoths munched on buttercups, to a frozen wasteland.

But wait a minute; weren't the woolly mammoths suited to living in a cold climate? They are described as woolly due to their hairy coat, but this is only hair, greaseless hair. To help protect them from the cold, all of today's Arctic mammals have glands that make their hair oily to retain warmth - the mammoths had no such gland. Although thicker, a mammoth's hair is the same as that of elephants, and they live in the tropical regions. Many animals found in equatorial jungles also have thick hair, the tiger being one such example. Anyone still unconvinced could consider this - bones of tigers, rhinoceroses and antelope were found alongside the mammoths, and these are obviously not Arctic creatures.

Bone Caves

"The great problem for geological theories to explain is that amazing phenomenon, the mingling of the remains of animals of different species and climates, discovered in exhaustless quantities in the interior parts of the earth so that the exuviae of those genera which no longer exist at all, are found confusedly mixed together in the soils of the most northerly latitudes . . . The bones of those animals which can live only in the torrid zone are buried in the frozen soil of the polar regions."[20]

All around the globe there are caves which are full of bones. Many of these contain the remains of animals that would not have normally existed alongside each other. One such cave, at Oreston, near Plymouth, England contained mammoths, rhinoceroses, bears, lions and reindeer. Kent's cave in nearby Torquay yielded, amongst another things, the bones of sabre-toothed tigers.

A cave near Settle, in West Yorkshire, contains the remains of the hippo, rhino, mammoth, bison, hyena and other animals. They are buried under twelve feet of clay deposits and the cave is 1450 feet above sea level. Charles Lyell speculated that:

"The hippopotami issued from North African rivers, such as the Nile, and swam northward in summer along the coasts of the Mediterranean, or even occasionally visited islands near the shore. Here and there they may have landed to graze or browse, tarrying awhile, and afterwards continuing their course northward.. to the Somme, Thames or Severn, making timely retreat to the south before the snow and ice set in."[21]

Yet, according to his Theory of Uniformity we should be able to observe hippos doing the same thing today! So, what could have caused hippo bones to be found deep inside English caves? They may indeed have lived in England, but hippos are not known to climb mountains by choice. They could have been hiding from the cataclysm, sharing the cave with terrified hyenas and bison. Or their bodies, dismembered by a violent cataclysm, may have washed up there, as part of a concurrent great flood. It is reasonable to say that these two ideas are more sound than hippos going on a summer holiday!

In China, near the village of Choukoutien, among the animals found in caves were a porcupine, tiger, woolly rhinoceros, camel, elephant, baboon, ostrich and a species of tortoise. They are not of the same habitat - the bones have been somehow gathered up and dumped in the caves.[22] What forces of nature could do such a thing?

In Sicilian caves were found hippopotami, hyenas, lions, Megatherium, rabbits, bears and elephants.[23] On Kotelnoi Island, in the Arctic Circle above Siberia, where "neither shrubs, nor trees, nor bushes exist", are found the bones of elephants, buffaloes, horses and rhinoceroses.[24] Similar evidence is available worldwide - proof of destruction at levels we dare not imagine to be possible.

Arctic Coral and Water Lilies

Spitsbergen (now known as Svalbard) is an island in the Arctic Ocean, just eleven degrees from the North Pole, to the north of Norway. It was uninhabited until the 1890s when a mining colony was established there. For almost six months of winter there is no sunlight, yet fossilised plants have been found there, including pines, firs, elms, swamp-cypress and water lilies.[25] [26] Regardless of climate change, these cannot grow anywhere without regular sunlight. At some time in the past, Spitsbergen must have been further away from the pole. Further evidence comes from Soviet archaeologists who have discovered prehistoric cave drawings of deer and whales, as well as axes fashioned from mammoth tusks.

Reef corals have been found deep within the Arctic Circle, on the islands of Ellesmere (Canada) and Spitsbergen. Under snow now, they must have originally grown in a tropical region.[27] Coral requires a minimum temperature of 64° Fahrenheit to grow, which means either a tropical location, or somewhere outside the tropics where warm currents bring tropical waters into higher latitudes (Japan, South Africa, and Bermuda for example).[28]

At the opposite pole, Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton found coal beds within 200 miles of the South Pole. The Byrd expedition of 1935 uncovered fossils that were later identified as tree ferns, as well as the footprint of a "mammallike reptile".[29] At both ends of the globe, places which are currently the coldest on earth, we find evidence of warmth equivalent to that of latitudes at least 30 degrees closer to the equator.

The Weight of Ice

There is a lot of ice in the polar regions. Antarctica has ice kilometres deep. The weight of this ice, estimated at nineteen quadrillion[30] tons, will surely be compacting the land below, sinking it lower than before the ice existed. If this mass of ice were to have occurred anywhere else on land, a depression would result. Take a look at a map of the world and see if you can spot an area that may have sunk - a circular area, crushed down to sea level or lower. I found two that immediately stood out - Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

Hudson Bay in NorthEast Canada is a large inland sea covering 730,380 sq km, yet has a rather shallow average depth of just 130 metres. It was the epicentre of the North American ice sheet during the last Ice Age, which extended as far south as Ohio. North West of Hudson Bay the subsoil is permanently frozen. Halfway between this region and the current North Pole is Greenland, the interior of which is covered in ice all year long. This is to be expected if it was within the previous polar circle as well as the current one - it never had a chance to melt.

Hudson Bay is roughly 30 degrees south of the North Pole, and the Gulf of Mexico a similar distance south again. These spots would fit a model of regular uni-directional shifts. If the shift had a more random nature then other previous polar locations could include a large depression in Africa called the Sudan Basin. It is littered with waterways, which have no apparent connection to each other, nor with the ocean. It contains Lake Chad, which originally covered 300,000 square kilometres, but is now less than one thirtieth of that size and is still shrinking.

The first two locations just noted are diametrically opposite regions of the Southern Ocean, areas where similar depressions in land cannot occur. Opposite Lake Chad is the South West Pacific, again devoid of major land masses.

Recent Extinction of Large Quadrupeds

"True extinction (end of a phyletic lineage without phyletic replacement) has occurred throughout the history of life on earth. Among the terrestrial vertebrates, the fossil evidence suggests two striking episodes of extinction: one at the Mesozoic-tertiary transition saw the extinction of the last dinosaurs, the other at the Pleistocene-recent transition saw the sudden dramatic disappearance of large mammals in most but not all parts of the world."[31]

"We live in a zoologically impoverished world from which all the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared . yet it is surely a marvellous fact, and one that has been sufficiently dwelt upon, this sudden dying out of so many large Mammalia, not in one place only but over half the land surface of the globe."[32]

In North America an estimated 40 million animals died at the end of the last ice age (12,000 years ago). Many of the mammals became extinct, especially the larger ones. The Americas were home to a range of very large mammals, such as the Megatherium (5.5 metre ground sloth), Glyptodon (4 metre giant armadillo), mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and horses.

Gradualists, who accept that climate change could not have been the sole cause, are puzzled as to how these extinctions happened. For example, we know that post-Columbian horses thrive today in the same areas where fossils of their extinct cousins are found. The problem is made more difficult when we look at southern Africa, which contains many similar climatic zones, yet lacks the recent extinction of large mammals - large mammals that are obviously less agile than other species, less suited to sudden disasters. The Smilodon (sabre-toothed tiger) for example, while being smaller in size than the African lion, was twice as heavy[33]. Imagine if a concrete apartment building had a variety of animal species as tenants, and, as we often see on television, it was detonated. Which species could possibly survive? Giraffes? Sloths? Humans? Or smaller beings like a rat, ant or cockroach. Or in the case of a flood, which animals are unable to scale steep slopes and escape the rising waters? The poor Megatherium (which weighed 3-4 tons) would not have had a chance.

Megatherium

Glyptodon

INVESTIGATE - not online - Stuart, Anthony. 1986. "Who (or what) killed the giant armadillo?" New Scientist. 17: 29-31.

Grab a globe and find the southern coast of Nigeria. On the opposite side is Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean. If the North Pole's previous position was at Hudson Bay, then these two places are roughly the fulcrum points of the last pole shift. Place a finger at each position and see how you can swivel the North Pole to where Hudson Bay is today. This "line of most movement" continues down through the United States and along the west coast of South America, across Antarctica, the Indian Ocean, SouthEast Asia, China and Siberia. All points along this line would have shifted 30 degrees in latitude. The two fulcrum points are the only two spots on the globe that didn't change latitude. The closer to the fulcrum, the less the change. Closer to the "line of most movement" equals more change.

The extinctions of 10,000 years ago mostly occurred along the "line of most movement", along with major geology upheavals, such as the rising of the Andes mountain range. I suggest that during global cataclysms, at locations along the "line of most movement", there is a correlation between the size of animals and their extinction.

Will the world really end in 2012?

The May ans have a complex system of calendars, and each calendar has a differen t purpose. Some of the more commonly known Mayan calendars are:

• The Tzolk'in Calendar: Used primarily in crop rotation, this calendar allows one 260-day period to ready the land and one 260-day period to grow and harvest the corn. It was also considered a sacred calendar by the Mayans and determined when their rituals occurred. The Tzolk'in uses 20 days signs coupled with 13 number signs to produce the 260 uniquely identified days.
• The Haab Calendar: This calendar lasts 360 days and breaks down into 18 20-day months, with a five-day waiting period at the end that was considered extremely unlucky called the wayeb (also sometimes spelled uayeb). Similar to the Gregorian calendar we use today, the Haab calendar follows the cycle of the sun.
• The Calendar Round: The Calendar Round gave the Mayans a way to record history in longer increments. By combining the Tzolk'in and Haab calendars, they had 18,980 uniquely designated days, or in other words, 52 years.

Fifty-two years was longer than the Mayans' average life span at the time of the Calendar Round's creation. However, Mayan historians wanted to create a calendar that could be used to record history for centuries. This led to the Long Count calendar. The Long Count multiplies up from the other calendar systems and incorporates an era called the Great Cycle, which lasts approximately 5,125 years [source:Malmström]. The idea that the world is on its way to an end comes from the Long Count.

Use of the Long Count calendar dwindled after the Mayan Classic period and was apparently nonexistent by the time the Spanish arrived. Since no extant records exist for researchers to draw direct correlations, many have attempted to extrapolate from the progression of the other Mayan calendar records using logical deductions. Through this work, it's been determined that the beginning of the current Great Cycle likely fell on Aug. 11, 3114 B.C., making th e end of the Great Cycle land on -- you guessed it -- Dec. 21, 2012. (Or potentially Aug. 13 and Dec. 23, depending on how scholars calculate it.) Apocalypse aficionados and others anticipating a grand climactic change seem to be especially set on designating Dec. 21 the big day. After all, it does sound decidedly sexier to say the world might meet disaster on the winter solstice as opposed to a rather insignificant date two days later.

Regardless of this debate, the Mayan people don't actually believe the world is going to perish at the end of this cycle. In fact, they believe it's a time of great celebration and luck when the planet lasts through a full Great Cycle. And after all, it seems we've made it safely through past Great Cycles (it's debated how many cycles there have been) and the world is still turning. Also, to help put this in perspective, chances are good you own a calendar that stops short on Dec. 31 of this year -- does that strike you as a herald of disaster or just the sign of a new beginning?

Devastation Predictions: Nostrad amus Michel de Nostredame, also known as Nostradamus, was a 16th-century physician who also had a penchant for writing. He penned a series of prophecies, focusing prima rily on wars, disasters and destruction. Using metaphors and mystery, Nostradamus wrote these prophecies as quatrains, or four-line verses. His followers say he predicted the rise of Hitler, the Apollo moon landing and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. His critics say his writings are nothing more than ancient horoscopes, written to tell of events that undoubtedly will occur again and again. To find out more about Nostradamus and his prophecies, read our article on How Nostradamus Works.

Proponents of an impending December doomsday, however, believe the world will end and all living things on Earth will die. Other people believe it will signify a time of great spiritual awakening or a massive shift in global consciousness. But is this monumental turn of a vast page in the Mayan Long Count calendar really going to end the world or radically alter worldwide perspectives? Probably not. Most scholars see this theory as an example of extremists using misinformation and nonsense to cash in on the fears of others or tailor an overdue apocalyptic event to fit their own pre-existing belief system [sources: NASA, Tulane University, New York Times].

So what will happen on Dec. 21, 2012? It's likely that the day will pass with no major events at all. People may not even realize it's the projected doomsday, although that's unlikely considering how much press it will probably garner. We'll just have to wait and see what happens -- and hopefully still be here to update this article on Dec. 22, 2012.