How, for instance, is it possible for humans to have flourished on the Arctic coast of Russia in the middle of the last Ice Age?  Check out the implications of the Yana site.

Or how did a young man make his way to the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island in the Alaskan panhandle some 10,000 years ago? And why does the DNA evidence point to South America, not Asia, as the lad’s homeland. Check out the implications of On Your Knees Cave.

At Kuk in the central highlands of New Guinea something remarkable happened around the time of the fall of Atlantis.

And why were there humans on the high elevation Tibean Plateau during the last Ice Age. That has long thought to be impossible.

These are some of the topic covered in our new book Atlantis Beneath the Ice.

It starts with a drought that feels like Lucifer has arrived to take his revenge. It’s driven by a curse that cuts through the population like a scythe, taking no prisoners. It ends with one woman clinging to survival at the edge of the world. A woman who has left a dead body sprawled across her kitchen floor. Time is on nobody’s side. (Canada Arts Council Winner)

Click on cover to buy COLLAPSE

In 1922, Mahatma Gandhi, about to be sentenced to six years in prison, said to the judge:

“Since you have done me the honor of recalling the trial of the late Lokamaya Gangadhar Tilak, I just want to say that I consider it the proudest privilege and honor to be associated with his name.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak forged the tactic of passive resistance as a means of overthrowing British rule in India. He was held in such esteem that Gandhi used the title “Lokamaya” (“Beloved Leader of the People”) when referring to him. Tilak earned his title while imprisoned in 1897 for seditious writings. The British hoped to curb his role in the rising tide of Indian nationalism by locking him up. The harsh conditions of his Bombay cell took their toll. Tilak’s health waned. Fearing that his death in custody might spark a general uprising, the British moved the “Beloved Leader of the People” to a safer prison in Poona. Helped by donations of fruit and vegetables Tilak partially recovered his health. But soon a new hunger overtook him – the need for intellectual stimulation. Relief came from an unlikely quarter: England.

Tilak had published a respected work on India’s oldest texts, the Vedas, and Sanskrit scholars at Oxford and Cambridge were outraged by his imprisonment and treatment. Professor F. Max Muller, the world’s leading authority on the Vedas, was successful in having Tilak’s case reviewed by Queen Victoria. She shortened his sentence and granted him a reading light in his cell. Denied access to newspapers or any other current material, Tilak used this “privilege” to continue his studies of the Vedas.

Upon his release Tilak retired to the mountains to rest at a favorite family retreat. In 1903 his great work, The Arctic Home in the Vedas, was published. In it he argued that the remains of an island paradise could be found beneath the Arctic Ocean:

“It was the advent of the Ice Age that destroyed the mild climate of the original home and covered it into an ice-bound land unfit for the habitation of man.”

Tilak summarized a key passage in the oldest saga of Iran, the Zend-Avesta:

“Ahura Mazda warns Yima, the first king of men, of the approach of a dire winter, which is to destroy every living creature by covering the land with a thick sheet of ice, and advises Yima to build a Vara, or an enclosure, to preserve the seeds of every kind of animal and plant. The meeting is said to have taken place in the Airyana Vaêjo, or Paradise of the Iranians.”

Tilak chose the Arctic Circle as the location of the lost island paradise because he was influenced by the whole earth theory of the founder of Boston University, William Fairfield Warren.

Warren believed that the polar paradise was destroyed when a critical temperature drop resulted in a worldwide geological upheaval. A huge mass of the earth’s interior collapsed inward, pulling sections of the planet’s crust with it. The ocean rushed to drown the sunken areas. The globe then cooled – suffocating the original island paradise in snow and ice.

. . . .

The theory of a collapsing polar crust has been falsified by modern exploration of the Arctic Ocean floor.

We suggest that the evidence that Tilak culled from reading the Vedas points to Antarctica as the site of the lost island paradise covered in snow and ice. Please see Earth Crust Displacement and Atlantis in Antarctica or Atlantis Books.

Rand

Critics of earth crust displacement (ECD) have frequently tried to belittle Albert Einstein’s enthusiastic support for Charles Hapgood’s theory of earth crust displacement. If the theory of earth crust displacement is silly, as the ECD critics imply, then does that make Professor Einstein silly? They don’t want to say that. So instead they try to put words into Einstein’s mouth. They say Albert Einstein was not a geologist and if he had lived that he would have recognized that the theory of plate tectonics superseded Hapgood’s theory. They falsely assume that Hapgood’s theory is in conflict with plate tectonics. On page 3 of the first edition of When the Sky Fell we explained the actual relationship between plate tectonics and earth crust displacements:

“Plate tectonics and earth crust displacement both share the assumption of a mobile crust. The ideas are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary. Plate tectonics explains long-term, slow changes like mountain building, volcanic activity, and local earthquakes. Earth crust displacement accepts that these processes are gradual but posits a much more dramatic and abrupt movement of the crust that can explain different problems such as mass extinctions, glaciation patterns, and the sudden rise of agriculture.”

Moreover, Albert Einstein did not have to be a geologist to understand that Hapgood’s theory was addressing significant, long-standing, unsolved problems. For instance, the rapid, violent melting of the former ice sheet on North America some 11,600 years ago is something that plate tectonics is incapable of explaining. But there is even a more serious objection to the assumption that you have to be trained in the field of geology in order to be able to make contributions to the field. Alfred Wegner, the early pioneer of plate tectonics, was trained as an astronomer not a geologist. Under the criteria that the ECD critics make about Albert Einstein, Alfred Wegner wasn’t qualified to create his theory. Looking at the history of science in a broader perspective we see that Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions demonstrates again and again that major paradigm shifts are typically initiated by investigators untrained in the field where they make their breakthroughs.

While Albert Einstein may not have the geological credentials demanded by ECD critics, the other prominent scientist who ALSO wrote a Foreword to Hapgood’s book most certainly did. It is curious that ECD critics fail to report Professor Kirtley Mather’s support for Hapgood’s theory of earth crust displacement.

Kirtley F. Mather (1888-1978) was one of the most prominent geologists of the twentieth century. He was the Head of the Geology Department at Harvard University and served as the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected four times to be the President of the American Academy of Arts and Science. He was one of the few scientists who stood up to Joseph McCarthy. He prepared the geological deposition for Clarence Darrow in the famous “Scope’s Monkey Trial” when the theory of evolution was challenged in the courts. Stephen Jay Gould regarded Professor Mather as his mentor. In his Foreword to Hapgood’s book, Mather wrote:

“The numerous unsolved problems to which Mr. Hapgood directs attention should be the subjects of intensified debate among scientists in very part of the world.”

Both Mather and Einstein knew something of the philosophy of science. They understood that the unsolved problem is the basic unit of scientific exploration. Theories are like nets designed to capture and explain problems. Hence the importance that Mather gave to the earth crust displacement theory’s ability to address “numerous unsolved problems.”

A brief look at some of the chapter titles of Hapgood’s Path of the Pole demonstrates the unsolved problems that he was addressing:

• Chapter 2: The Failure to Explain the Ice Ages.
• Chapter 3: The Failure to Explain Climatic Change.
• Chapter 5: The Violent Life of the Great Ice Sheet.
• Chapter 6: The Sudden Melting of the Ice Sheet.
• Chapter 10: The Extinction of the Mammoths and the Masodons.
• Chapter 11: The Evidence of Violent Extinction in South America.

None of these problems can be adequately explained by plate tectonics. That doesn’t mean that plate tectonics is wrong. It simply means that in order to address serious unsolved problems, like those listed above, we need an additional theory of how the earth works. Plate tectonic explains gradual changes and earth crust displacement explains abrupt changes. “The ideas are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary.”

In his second reply (24 November 1952) to Hapgood, Einstein wrote that the idea of earth crust displacement should not be ruled out “apriori” just because it didn’t fit with what we wanted to believe about the earth’s past. What was needed, Einstein claimed, was solid “geological and paleontological facts.”

For six months, Hapgood gathered geological evidence to support the idea of an earth crust displacement. On the 3rd of May 1953 he forwarded thirty-eight pages of this evidence to Einstein. Central to his argument was Hapgood’s evidence that Lesser Antarctica was ice-free at the same time that North America lay smothered in ice. Einstein responded (8 May 1953):

“I find your arguments very impressive and have the impression that your hypothesis is correct. One can hardly doubt that significant shifts of the crust have taken place repeatedly and within a short time.”
He urged Hapgood to follow up on evidence of “earth fractures”. A month later
(11 June 1953) Hapgood sent Einstein forty-two pages of evidence on earth fractures and the evolution of the ice sheets.
Einstein wrote (17 December 1953) Hapgood urging him to address the “centrifugal momentum” problem. Hapgood responded with four pages on this problem and thirty-seven pages of “paleontological evidence” including the frozen mammoths of Arctic Siberia. Einstein was now convinced. On the 18th of May 1954, Einstein wrote a very favorable foreword for Hapgood’s book EARTH’S SHIFTING CRUST: A KEY TO SOME BASIC PROBLEMS OF EARTH SCIENCE (published in 1958 by Pantheon Books, New York). The Foreword begins:

“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. … 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.”
Hapgood and Einstein continued to correspond and finally met in January of 1955.
Einstein’s last letter was dated the 9th of March 1955 just weeks before the great physicist died on the 18th of April 1955.

Einstein’s Archives are held in Jerusalem (with copies at Princeton) where they hold the record of an unique and unheralded collaboration on the theory of earth crust displacement.

We began corresponding with Hapgood in 1977.

See Atlantis Books.

Click on Cover. Or visit Atlantis Books.

Red = Tibetan Plateau

Yellow = Yana in “Arctic Siberia”

The Tibetan Plateau is on average 4500 meters above sea level and it often called “the roof of the world.” It is an extremely cold environment. Today the average summer temperatures range between 5 and 10 degrees C and in the winter it is usually 40 degrees below zero C.[1]

Until 2002 earth scientists believed that the first humans to arrive on the cold barren Tibetan Plateau only arrived there about 4000 years ago.[2] Then two scientists from the University of Hong Kong found the footprints and markings of at least six people who had stepped in mud some 20,000 years ago. Five years later, more scientists confirmed the evidence and claimed the humans were living on the Tibetan Plateau during height of the Ice Age. This evidence does not fit with anything earth scientists can currently explain.

This anomaly is easily explained once we realize that the Tibetan Plateau, like the Ice Age settlement in “arctic” Siberia at Yana, were, before the last displacement of the crust, some 30 degrees further south than they are today. Indeed, Lhasa, the capital of Tibet was on the equator when the North Pole was centered on the Hudson Bay.

[1] Yuan et. al. “New Evidence for Human Occupation of northern Tibetan Plateau, China, during the Late Pleistocene,” Chinese Science Bulletin, 2007 (also on the web).

[2] Ball, Philip “Humans dwelt in Ice-Age Tibet”, Nature, “Update” 27 March 2002.

At Kuk in the central highlands of New Guinea something remarkable happened around the time of the fall of Atlantis. So momentous are these discoveries that the area has been designated a World Heritage Site. [1]

New Guinea is the third largest island in the world after Antarctica and Greenland. A mysterious land, Europeans did not penetrate its central highlands until the 1930s and only then using air power.

New Guinea has been occupied for at least 40,000 years.[2] During the first 30,000 years the people lived by hunting and gathering. But then abruptly, around 10,000 years ago, they suddenly moved into the highlands, taking with them plants that had always been cultivated at sea level. They cleared the land and systematically drained a swamp that eventually would become the birthplace of several important domesticated crops, most notably bananas and sugar cane.

Why would people who had been living as hunters and gatherers for thousands of years suddenly climb high up to the central plateau of New Guinea, drain a swamp and plant bananas, a crop that can take twenty years to become viable?

Why would people who had been perfectly adapted to the land for 30,000 years suddenly abandon their long-established and successful means of subsistence and opt for agriculture?

And why did they find it necessary to leave the coastal regions at all?

These questions haunted the Australian archaeologist, Jack Golson, who has spent a life-time trying to solve this New Guinea riddle. [3] Golson and his partner on the quest, Phillip Hughes, became convinced of the radical idea that Kuk was deliberately created as a cradle for agriculture. At an early stage they made the remarkable discovery of a “palaeochannel” a sophisticated landscaping device for draining swamp to create tillable land. [4]

Once again, the occurrence of an earth crust displacement makes sense of the sudden appearance of these advanced tools.

Kuk lies at an altitude of 1,560 meters, making the temperature there several degrees cooler than the hot lowlands where its transplanted wild plants originated.

When it moved some 20 degrees closer to the equator as a result of the earth’s crust shifting around 9600 BC, the sudden rise in annual temperatures forced the New Guineans to adapt. Their obvious solution was to move to the highlands. For every 150 meters they climbed the temperature dropped by one degree.[5] At 1500 meters they could re-establish their settlements and enjoy the temperatures that had previously prevailed at sea level.

But there is something more here than just the adoption of agriculture by people who had lived by hunting and gathering for 30,000 years. We see the invisible hand of the remnants of an advanced civilization that sought to recreate the preconditions for a rebooting of civilization. It was the water management skills of the survivors of Atlantis that were used to drain the highland swamp and it was their botanists who recognized bananas and sugar as crops that could reboot agriculture. Banana trees can take twenty years to ripen before they yield their fruit. The drained swamp, the water cannels, the sudden adoption of agriculture are expected features if survivors of Atlantis made their way to New Guinea.

[1] Muke, John, Tim Denham, and Vagi Genorupa “Nominating and Managing a World Heritage Site in the highlands of Papua New Guinea” World Archaeology, 3, issue 3, September 2007, 324-338.

[2] Denham, Tim “Envisaging Early Agriculture in the Highlands of New Guinea” in Lilley, Ian (Editor) Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands, Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, N.J., 2006, 162.

[3] Denham, Tim “Food for Thought”, Nature Australia, 28, issue 4, 2005.

[4] One of their students, Tim Denham, was not convinced that the “palaeochannel” was in fact man-made. He undertook tests that called into question the artificial attributes of the channel. Nevertheless, whether it was by design or just good luck, the people of the highlands of New Guinea made very constructive use of a land that was once a swamp.  And they certainly did become very effective water manipulators as time went on.

[5] Temperature drops as one goes up in altitude varying from 1 degree Celsius in “dry” areas to half a degree in “damp’ areas for each 150 meters.  In the case of Kuk, the temperature is around 6-10 degrees Celsius cooler than temperatures at sea level.