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Quote by Graham Hancock

“Around 12,800 years ago, it was as though an enchantment of ice had gripped the earth. In many areas that had been approaching terminal meltdown full glacial conditions were restored with breathtaking rapidity and all the gains that had been made since the LGM were simply stripped away: 'Temperatures ... fell back on the order of 8-15 degrees centigrade ... with half this brutal decline possibly occurring within decades. The Polar Front in the North Atlantic redescended to the level of Cabo Finisterre in northwest Spain and glaciers readvanced in the high mountain chains. With respect to temperature the setback to full glacial conditions was nearly complete ...' For human populations at the time, in many except the most accidentally favoured parts of the world, the sudden and inexplicable plunge into severe cold and aridity must have been devastating. And in the Karakoram-Himalayan region, as in other glaciated areas, it is very likely that it was accompanied by a significant readvance of the ice-cap that previously had been in recession for some 7000 years.”

Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

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Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

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Author

Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock is a British writer known for his research into ancient civilizations and mysterious phenomena. His works delve into the mysteries of human history and culture, including ancient Egypt, the Maya, and Atlantis. more

“We know from Glenn Milne's inundation data that Gozo and Malta were indeed one big island during the Ice Age, down to approximately 13,500 years ago, and that they did not take on their present form as an archipelago of three islands (with little Comino in between) until around 11,000 years ago. Accordingly, if the medieval tradition of Malta and Gozo as one big island is not a complete invention -- and why should it be? -- then, 'fantastic' though it may seem, it somehow preserves a memory of Malta as it appeared more than 11,000 years ago. It is well known that most medieval mapmakers were only copyists reproducing older maps and [...] I believe we cannot exclude the possibility that the single large island called Gaulometin of Galonia leta that has somehow survived on certain medieval maps may indeed be a representation of Malta in a much earlier time. A mental leap is required in order even to consider such a possibility. It is necessary to set aside all preconceptions about the past, and all unexamined notions of how societies evolve. Above all, we have to rid ourselves of the ingrained conviction that (despite some setbacks) the basic story of human civilization has been steadily and reassuringly onwards and upwards from the very beginning. It may not have been so. There may be tremendous gaps, of which we are blissfully unaware, in the evidence presently available to us concerning the origins and progress of civilization. In particular, there has been no sustained or serious search for very ancient underwater ruins along the millions of square kilometres of continental shelves flooded at the end of the Ice Age. So it is possible, and within the bounds of reason, that a civilization of some sort might have flourished during the closing millennia of the Ice Age and might not yet have been detected by archaeologists. A civilization not necessarily at all like our own but still advanced enough to have mastered complex skills such as seafaring and navigation (that do not call for a large material or industrial base) and to have left behind memories of the world as it looked before the flood and at various stages during the rising of the seas. The sort of civilization, perhaps, that would have built with megaliths and aligned them with navigational precision to the path of the sun. Maybe even a civilization that measured the earth, mapped it and netted it with a latitude and longitude grid. Until such a lost civilization has been entirely ruled out -- and we are far from that -- it is rational to keep our minds open to the possibility, however extraordinary it may seem, that certain ancient maps have indeed carried down to us broken images of the antediluvian world.”

Progress Heritage Ice Age Cataclysm Lost Civilizations Ice Age Civilizations Deluges Underwater Ruins

Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

Source: Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

“Europe lost many trees or their close relatives that today are only found native in the warm-temperate-subtropical ‘evergreen forests’ of south-eastern China or eastern North America (Combourieu-Nebout et al. 2015). These were largely replaced in Europe by trees of the temperate ‘mixed mesophytic forest’. Many taxa had already disappeared at the beginning of the Quaternary (e.g. Liquidambar, Meliosma, Pseudolarix false larch, Stewartia), while others survived longer (e.g. Liriodendron, Magnolia, Taxodium, Sequoia, Phellodendron cork tree, Tsuga, Carya) to vanish finally from Europe during the course of the early- or mid-Quaternary (Willis and McElwain 2014, Combourieu-Nebout et al. 2015, Birks and Tinner 2016).”

Trees Ice Age

Author:Frank Krumm

“As a result, the distribution maps for plant species don't look the same from interglacial to interglacial. Each climate change creates a new map, with new communities of species living together. Whole suites of species do not pick up en masse and decorously tiptoe south, making sure to keep together. It is rather mad scramble - albeit in geological time. Some of today's ecosystems have not fully bounced back from the last glaciation. One analysis suggested that thirty-six of fifty-five European tree species studied had still not spread out to the edges of their possible ranges. Beech trees are notoriously poky. In North-America they are still moving west across Michigan's Upper Peninsula.”

Ice Age Glacials Interglacials Recolonization

Book:Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World

Source: Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World

“To understand where things went wrong, we have to go back 15,000 years to the end of the last ice age. Up until then the planet had been sparsely populated and people banded together to stave off the cold. Rather than a struggle for survival, it was a snuggle for survival in which we kept each other warm.”