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.Owing to the confusion in the conventional chronology, the Chaldean writings of theNeo-Babylonian Empire are ascribed to early centuries and an imaginary empire.$ Quoted from my Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History, published as an advancesummary of Ages in Chaos, and referred to in the foregoing footnote.W.F.Libby and his associates at the University of Chicago have developed the radiocarbonmethod of dating organic matter.Wood from under the foundation of the "Hittite" fortress ofAlisar in Asia Minor turned out to be seven to eight hundred years younger than conventionalchronology would allow, thus giving full support to my dating.Hittite history, interwoven withEgyptian history of the New Kingdom, cannot be shortened without at the same time shorteningthe history of Egypt.The age of pieces of wood from the tombs of the Old and Middle Kingdomsin Egypt also proved to be in harmony with my reconstruction.However, for the decisive period* that of the New Kingdom no radiocarbon analysis has been made.Arctic Ocean in the north and the Kolyma in the east.'*'In Worlds in Collision, p.329, I expressed my belief that human settlements would be discovered"farther to the north on the Kolyma or Lena rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean.*'On the lower Lena, north of the confluence with Viliy, inside the polar circle, monuments arefound of a characteristic culture; outstanding finds were made near the lake Yolba, not far fromJigansk.As soon as the archaeologists started a methodic investigation of the area, in Yakutsk itself wasfound a workshop of an ancient metallurgist in which, at the end of the second millennium beforethe present era, he made bronze axes similar to the axes manufactured about that time in theNear Hast and in Europe."In the Yakutsk taiga two and a half [or three] thousand years ago, there already lived artisans inmetals who were able to extract copper from ore, to melt it and pour it into forms, and to makeaxes, beautiful bronze tips for the spears, knives and even swords." 6These relics of a civilization in the taiga of northeastern Siberia imply that the climate changedthere in the age of advanced man.Before the ice froze the region, voracious members of theelephant family roamed there in large herds.Recent Finds in GeologyArchaeological evidence of continental upheavals in the second millennium having beenpresented in detail by Schaeffer, the evidence of geology and paleontology called for elucidation.To this I have dedicated a special work, now close to completion, and since it will be publishedbefore very long, I shall refer here only briefly to some of this material.5 A.P.Okladnikov, "Excavations in the North" in Po Sledam Drevnikh Kultur (Vestiges ofAncient Cultures), Gosudarstvenoye Isda-telstvo Kurturno-Prosvetitelnoy Literatury, 1951.«Ibid.A little over a decade ago it was observed that the gold-digging hydraulic giants in the FairbanksDistrict in Alaska, sluicing out miles-long cuts, opened great hecatombs of animals."Theirnumbers are appalling.TheyBronze Age may have been well on its way in the centers of ancient civilization.Palms were found to have grown in northern Greenland, where now for half a year there isdarkness and it is permanently cold.At some time in the remote past corals grew in Spitsbergen,and sequoia forests in Alaska*, and it was early understood that the terrestrial axis must havechanged its position.Airy, Lord Kelvin, George Darwin, and many others, including Schiaparelliand Simon Newcomb, participated in a long debate on the astronomical and geologicalpossibility of a sudden change in the direction of the terrestrial axis, a debate that waserroneously thought to have been started as a consequence of Worlds in Collision.It wasunderstood that such a change must have taken place unless the strange finds are to be leftwithout explanation.The theory of drifting continents, offered as a substitute, was rejected formany reasons.Jeffreys showed that the mobile force invoked by Wegener is one hundred billiontimes too small to move the continents.Eddington thought that possibly only the crust, in itsentirety, moved, and the axis of the core was left unchanged in direction.But the mobile force heinvoked the tidal inequalities of lunar origin would not have moved the latitudes out of theirplaces, the directional pull being east-west.W.B.Wright, in his The Quaternary Ice Age (2nd ed., 1937), says that during geological historythere occurred many changes in the position of the climatic zones on the surface of the earthwhich cannot be explained except by a shifting of the axis or a displacement of the pole from itspresent position.But what could have brought about a change in the inclination of the terrestrial axis to the planeof the ecliptic? I discussed this question in the closing pages of Worlds in Collision andsuggested the entrance of the earth into a strong magnetic field.The newly developed science of paleomagnetism brought, and daily continues to bring,confirmation of the fact that lavas and igneous rocks in all parts of the world are reverselymagnetized.But what is even more startling is to find that the reversely magnetized rocks are ahundred times more strongly magnetized than the earth's magnetic rield could have causedthem to be.H.Manley, in his review, writes:"It may seem strange that a rock, which is made magnetic by the earth's field" should become sostrongly magnetized "compared with the generating force.This is one of the most astonishingproblems of paleomagnetism." *Manley also refers to the tests made years ago by G.Folgheraiter and P.L.Mercanton on theclay of ancient Etruscan vases.They were found to have been fired when the vases were closerto the south magnetic pole; their position during the firing is known, because of the flow of theglaze; and the magnetic dip or inclination of the clay is found.Manley writes: "This implies that inthe sixth century B.C.the earth's magnetic field was reversed in the Central Mediterraneanarea." He speaks also of a general "reversal in historical times, 2500 years ago," that must becleared up by additional research.Knowing from my study of ancient literary sources the proper time of exogenous disturbances interrestrial rotation, I suspected an inaccuracy in the last sentence of an otherwise well-writtenarticle by Manley! the reversal must have occurred in the eighth century and again in thebeginning of the seventh century ( 687).I was gratified to find, in the original publication ofProfessor Mercanton, to whom I directed my inquiry, that the vases with reversed polarity datefrom the eighth century.I expect that, should the research be extended to vases dating from the end of the MiddleKingdom in Egypt (circa 3500 years ago), other periods of "unnatural" polarity would bedetermined in Egypt and elsewhere [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]