It was an unthinkable landscape with massive torrents of water fifty to a hundred miles wide sweeping over the land. The flowing water was up to fifty feet deep in places and it swept away hills and carved out canyons. This apocalypse covered much of North America, Europe and Asia with huge amounts of life of all kinds simply drowned and swept away as well. Farther south vast areas of the Earth that hadn’t seen much rain for hundreds and hundreds of years (maybe 1,000s) were also now being swept by floods as torrential rains filled the skies lasting for month after month. Over a surprisingly short period of a thousand years the worlds ocean levels climbed by fifty to seventy five feet as the ice age glaciers rapidly began melting. This is what much of the Earth was like 13,000years ago and it lasted for 5,000 years as the planet accelerated out of the “ice age”.
A few months ago a Netflix series called Ancient Apocalypse by Graham Hancock was recommended to me. My initial impression was that it was another wild piece of speculation like Chariot’s of the Gods, but it did get me thinking. One of the more interesting things about the series is the reaction it received from the professional archaeological community, who mostly referred to it as pseudoarchaeological theories with little scientific basis.
Watching the series I found many of his claims a bit out there but it did bring a perspective to ancient history that seemed to warrant more consideration. I’m a bit of an archaeology nut but I realized that most of my knowledge is based on reading about isolated archaeological sites and cultures or fragmented generalizations. What did the transition from ice age to modern times actually look like? I had always looked at Noah’s flood as an allegory without much historical evidence but this got me thinking and I had to do some research.
I started by assembling scientific information from recognized authorities like NASA and the USGS into a chronological order. Some of what I found startled me as I realized that there wasn’t just an ice age that ended and the current Holocene Epoch begins. The transition actually had to be in a number of cataclysmic steps.
For perspective, consider the annual Alaska thaw that begins in early May as spring arrives. The melting snow and thawing ice flood valleys as streams become rivers that bulge over their banks. Between May and June the spring runoff contains enough water to cover one quarter of the entire state of Alaska to three feet deep – that’s over 145,000 square miles. Imagine multiplying this by a thousand and have it last for thousands of years! Following is my simple timeline regarding the ice age and archaeological evidence of human settlements, all based on recognized and widely accepted scientific sources. Let me know what you think.
A Chronological History Of The Ice Age And Related Human Activities
300,000 to 250,000 years ago Neanderthals established in Europe and into the Caucuses.
200,000 to 75,000 years ago Homo Sapiens are still living only in Africa.
115,000 to 11,700 years ago marks the beginning and end of the most recent Ice Age.
72,000 to 60,000 years ago Homo Sapiens start migrating out of Africa.
60,000 years ago sea level is 200 feet lower than present day.
60,000 to 50,000 years ago Homo Sapiens Spread over Europe, the Middle East, across Asia and into the Asian southern islands across land bridges.
53,000 years ago (c. 51,000 BC) Homo Sapiens establish the Indigenous Peoples culture of Australia.
40,000 years ago the last confirmed date for any known Neanderthal habitation site.
33,000 years ago the growth of Ice Age glacial ice sheets starts to accelerate.
27,000 years ago (c. 25,000 BC) Cro-magnon (Homo Sapiens) cave paintings of Altamira, Spain.
23,500 years ago ice growth reaches the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) sea level reaches 350 feet lower than present day.
23,000 years ago (c.21,000 BC) a stone wall is constructed in Theopetra Cave, Thessaly, Greece
20,000 years ago (c.18,000 BC), continental glaciers began a measurable retreat and sea level starts to rise. Earliest likely time for human migration into the Americas.
17,000 years ago, (c.15,000 BC) Lascaux Cro-magnon cave paintings, Montignac, France
15,000 years ago (c. 13,000 BC) Sea level 320 feet lower than present. Believed most active period for human migration into the Americas.
15,000 years ago (c. 13,000 BC), the Glacial Lake Missoula ice dam bursts, flooding the North American area of Southwest Canada, Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Similar floods probably occurred north of the Great Lakes and the Canadian Maritimes as well as in Siberia, Mongolia and Northern China.
15,000 years ago (c. 13,000 BC) The Iron Gates Mesolithic culture of the Danube River in Romania and Serbia maintained several villages.
14,500 to 12.900 years ago an abrupt acceleration in average temperatures occurs (2.5 to 4° C) triggering a rapidly increasing loss of glacial ice and sea level rise (1,600 years of rapid glacial melt). Sea level 250 to 200 feet lower than present levels.
12,900 to 11,700 years ago is referred to as The Younger Dryas period with a rapid decline of temperatures from 4 to 10° C resulting in new growth of glaciers and drier weather conditions over much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere and tropics.
12,500 years (c.10,000 to 11,000 BC) Stone carved structures at Göbekli Tepe, Turkey.
11,900 plus years ago (c.9,900 BC) Village of Tell Qaramel, Syria.
11,700 years ago marks the beginning of the current Holocene Epoch.
10,000 years ago (c. 8,000 BC) Sea level 150 feet lower than present.
10,000 years ago (c. 8,000 BC) stone towers of Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) West Bank.
9,000 years ago (Circa 7,000 – 5700 BC) Jiahu villages China.
7,000 years ago (Circa 5,000 BC) Sea level 40 to 50 feet below modern day level.
6,000 years ago (Circa 4,000 BC) Hal Saflieni Hypogeum Cave complex Malta.
5,500 years ago (Circa 3,500 BC) Oldest organized culture in Egypt.
5,500 years ago (Circa 3,500 BC) Beginnings of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization on Crete.
5,300 years ago (Circa 3,300 BC) The Indus Valley Civilization begins in India.
5,000 years ago (c. 3,000 BC) Stonehenge built in England.
4,500 years ago (c. 3,000 BC) seas near present level.
3,990 years ago (c. 1,990 BC) rise of the first great Egyptian Kingdom.
3,600 years ago (c. 1,600 BC) Thera (Santorini) erupts destroying much of the Minoan civilization.
3,500 years ago (c. 1,500 BC) rise of the Mycenaean civilization in Greece, which ended about 3,200 years ago.
2,800 years ago (c. 800 BC) rise of the major Greek civilizations.
Gunung Padang complex, Java, Indonesia dating not established – arguments range from 10,000 to 20,000 years old.
intend2travel.info 