Cactusjumper wrote
Roy,
Here seems to be a pretty good argument against the existence of Atlantis:
"But this and other catastrophes, which must have taken place during the earth's most recent past, since otherwise Plato's account could not have been so clear, must be geologically demonstrable and have left some traces on the globe. With this in view, a close examination was made of the Atlantic Ocean. In the eastern part, that is to say, where Atlantis is supposed to have lain, the ocean bed consists of an 11,500feet-thick layer of so-called pelagic red clay, a deposit composed mainly of the red shells of dead animal plankton. Since it is known that such a deposit takes a thousand years to reach a thickness of three-tenths of an inch, it follows that 500 million years would be needed to produce a sediment 11,500 feet thick. Unfortunately, therefore, there is no place for Atlantis here. And likewise, there is no place here for a moon that rose up out of the Ocean. For samples drawn up from the bed of the Ocean show irrefutably an alternation of plankton that requires cold water with plankton that only lives in warm water. In other words, these samples, which mirror the coming and going of the ice ages, show that the sediment strata have been entirely undisturbed. They could not have remained undisturbed, however, if the tremendous lunar spring tides of glacial cosmogony had really taken place during the prehistoric past. The sediment strata would show lasting traces of disturbance."
Source: Conquest of Man, Page 29
Yes that would seem to be a good argument against the existence of Atlantis, and yet it is based on an assumption (that the pelgic red clay beds
would show the disturbance and could thus be pinpointed like tree rings) which is not a proven fact.
To be fair, remember that was written in
1974, when the current dogma concerning climate changes (and for that matter, geologic changes, geographic change etc) were all extremely gradual. The idea of rapid climate changes, much less geographic change in a cataclysmic way, was viewed as impossible and heretical, even ridiculous. To some degree this attitude was due to a rather anti-Biblical bias among some scholars, who seem to have viewed any claim of a cataclysmic, sudden change to either climate or geography as someone claiming the Old Testament is literally true. In recent decades the evidence has swung the argument in the opposite direction - not that extremely slow, gradual change does not occur, clearly it does, but that cataclysmic, sudden changes also occur, and more frequently than is comfortable for the "old school" scholars.
We have covered part of this aspect before, but in particular the gigantic floods due to the release of huge ice dams in North America (and Asia) currently being termed "Meltwater Pulses" have been "discovered". Here is one example of an explanation, which I will add some further explanation for our readers
Meltwater discharge of the last deglaciation led to remarkable sea-level rise. Therefore, the reconstructed sea-level change from geological records is usually used to trace the rate and process of ice sheet melting. The last deglaciation extended from ~21 to ~6 ka B.P., *** corresponding with a sea-level rise of 120 m. with an average rate of 8 mm/a. In nature, sea-level does not rise at a constant rate. Coral records from the Barbados island cleraly demonstrate that the last deglaciation was punctuated by two episodes of accelrated ice sheet melting and rapid sea-level rising, viz MWP-1A (Melt-Water-Pulse) and MWP-1B intervals.
Chinese Science Bulletin, Sept 20008, Vol 53, No 18 pp 2868
***Where this extract says "~21 to ~6 ka BP" this means about 21000 to about 6000 years before present date; MWP obviously means Melt Water Pulse, which is what the geologists are calling the mass releases of melted ice which had formed gigantic inland lakes in North America and Asia; where it says "120 m" this means 120 meters or about 393 FEET of sudden sea level rises, and the part which says "8mm/a" means 8 millimeters per year, or just over three tenths of an inch rise as an average, but this is an averaged figure, the sea level rise was NOT at a constant rate but very erratic with those two huge increases which correspond to the two melt water pulses, as documented in the Barbados island coral formations. Coral only forms at a set depth in the sea, so when the sea level changes suddenly, if it is too deep, coral stops forming where it had been and starts growing in the new area of the sea where the depth is right.
For our readers, the Discovery channel recently had an interesting article presenting a simplified case saying that Atlantis could be real:
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/c...u find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco