was the hissing of steam. All living things, all plant life, were blotted out. Only the
naked soil remained, but like the sky itself the earth was no more than cracks and
crevasses.
And now all the rivers, all the seas, rose and overflowed. From every side waves
lashed against waves. They swelled and boiled slowly over all things. The earth
sank beneath the sea ...
Yet not all men perished in the great catastrophe. Enclosed in the wood itself of
the ash tree Yggdrasil—which the devouring flames of the universal conflagration
had been unable to consume—the ancestors of a future race of men had escaped
death. In this asylum they had found that their only nourishment had been the
morning dew.
Thus it was that from the wreckage of the ancient world a new world was born.
Slowly the earth emerged from the waves. Mountains rose again and from them
streamed cataracts of singing waters.27
The new world this Teutonic myth announces is our own. Needless to say,
like the Fifth Sun of the Aztecs and the Maya, it was created long ago and
is new no longer. Can it be a coincidence that one of the many Central
American flood myths about the fourth epoch, 4 Atl (‘water’), does not
install the Noah couple in an ark but places them instead in a great tree
just like Yggdrasil? ‘ 4 Atl was ended by floods. The mountains
disappeared ... Two persons survived because they were ordered by one
of the gods to bore a hole in the trunk of a very large tree and to crawl
inside when the skies fell. The pair entered and survived. Their offspring
repopulated the world.’28
Isn’t it odd that the same symbolic language keeps cropping up in
ancient traditions from so many widely scattered regions of the world?
How can this be explained? Are we talking about some vast, subconscious
wave of intercultural telepathy, or could elements of these remarkable
universal myths have been engineered, long ages ago, by clever and
purposeful people? Which of these improbable propositions is the more
likely to be true? Or are there other possible explanations for the enigma
of the myths?
We shall return to these questions in due course. Meanwhile, what are
we to conclude about the apocalyptic visions of fire and ice, floods,
volcanism and earthquakes, which the myths contain? They have about
them a haunting and familiar realism. Could this be because they speak
to us of a past we suspect to be our own but can neither remember
clearly nor forget completely?
27 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, pp. 275-7.
28 Maya History and Religion, p. 332.
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Chapter 26
A Species Born in the Earth’s Long Winter
In all that we call ‘history’—everything we clearly remember about
ourselves as a species—humanity has not once come close to total
annihilation. In various regions at various times there have been terrible
natural disasters. But there has not been a single occasion in the past
5000 years when mankind as a whole can be said to have faced
extinction.
Has this always been so? Or is it possible, if we go back far enough,
that we might discover an epoch when our ancestors were nearly wiped
out? It is just such an epoch that seems to be the focus of the great
myths of cataclysm. Scholars normally attribute these myths to the
fantasies of ancient poets. But what if the scholars are wrong? What if
some terrible series of natural catastrophes did reduce our prehistoric
ancestors to a handful of individuals scattered here and there across the
face of the earth, far apart, and out of touch with one another?
We are looking for an epoch that will fit the myths as snugly as the
slipper on Cinderella’s foot. In this search, however, there is obviously no
point in investigating any period prior to the emergence on the planet of
recognizably modern human beings. We’re not interested here in Homo
habilis or Homo erectus or even Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. We’re
interested only in Homo sapiens sapiens, our own species, and we haven’t
been around very long.
Students of early Man disagree to some extent over how long we have
been around. Some researchers, as we shall see, claim that partial human
remains in excess of 100,000 years old may be ‘fully modern’. Others
argue for a reduced antiquity in the range of 35-40,000 years, and yet
others propose a compromise of 50,000 years. But no one knows for
sure. ‘The origin of fully modern humans denoted by the subspecies
name Homo sapiens sapiens remains one of the great puzzles of
palaeoanthropology,’ admits one authority.1
About three and a half million years of more or less relevant evolution
are indicated in the fossil record. For all practical purposes, that record
starts with a small, bipedal hominid (nicknamed Lucy) whose remains
were discovered in 1974 in the Ethiopian section of East Africa’s Great
Rift Valley. With a brain capacity of 400cc (less than a third of the modern
average) Lucy definitely wasn’t human. But she wasn’t an ape either and
she had some remarkably ‘human-like’ features, notably her upright gait,
and the shape of her pelvis and back teeth. For these and other reasons,
1 Roger Lewin, Human Evolution, Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, 1984, p. 74.
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her species—classified as Australopithecus afarensis— has been accepted
by the majority of palaeoanthropologists as our earliest direct ancestor.2
About two million years ago representatives of Homo habilis, the
founder members of the Homo line to which we ourselves belong, began
to leave their fossilized skulls and skeletons behind. As time went by this
species showed clear signs of evolution towards an ever more ‘gracile’
and refined form, and towards a larger and more versatile brain. Homo
erectus, who overlapped with and then succeeded Homo habilis,
appeared about 1.6 million years ago with a brain capacity in the region
of 900cc (as against 700cc in the case of habilis).3 The million or so years
after that, down to about 400,000 years ago, saw no significant
evolutionary changes—or none attested to by surviving fossils. Then
Homo erectus passed through the gates of extinction into hominid
heaven and slowly—very, very slowly—what the palaeoanthropologists
call ‘the sapient grade’ began to appear:
Exactly when the transition to a more sapient form began is difficult to establish.
Some believe the transition, which involved an increase in brain size and a
decrease in the robustness of the skull bones, began as early as 400,000 years
ago. Unfortunately, there are simply not enough fossils from this important period
to be sure about what was happening.’4
What was definitely not happening 400,000 years ago was the emergence
of anything identifiable as our own story-telling, myth-making subspecies
Homo sapiens sapiens. The consensus is that ‘sapient humans must have
evolved from Homo erectus’,5 and it is
true that a number of ‘archaic
sapient’ populations did come into existence between 400,000 and
100,000 years ago. Unfortunately, the relationship of these transitional
species to ourselves is far from clear. As noted, the first contenders for
membership of the exclusive club of Homo sapiens sapiens have been
dated by some researchers to the latter part of this period. But these
remains are all partial and their identification is by no means universally
accepted. The oldest, part of a skullcap, is a putative modern human
specimen from about 113,000 BC.6 Around this date, too, Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis first appears, a quite distinct subspecies which most of
us know as ‘Neanderthal Man’.
Tall, heavily muscled, with prominent brow ridges and a protruding
face, Neanderthal Man had a bigger average brain size than modern
humans (1400cc as against our 1360cc).7 The possession of such a big
brain was no doubt an asset to these ‘intelligent, spiritually sensitive,
2 Donald C. Johanson and Maitland C. Eddy, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind,
Paladin, London, 1982, in particular, pp. 28, 259-310.
3 Roger Lewin, Human Evolution, pp. 47-49, 53-6; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 6:27-8.
4 Human Evolution, p. 76.
5 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 18:831.
6 Human Evolution, p. 76.
7 Ibid., p. 72.
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resourceful creatures’8 and the fossil record suggests that they were the
dominant species on the planet from about 100,000 years ago until
40,000 years ago. At some point during this lengthy and poorly
understood period, Homo sapiens sapiens established itself, leaving
behind fossil remains from about 40,000 years ago that are undisputably
those of modern humans, and supplanting the Neanderthals completely
by about 35,000 years ago.9
In summary, human beings like ourselves, whom we could pass in the
street without blinking an eyelid if they were shaved and dressed in
modern clothes, are creatures of the last 115,000 years at the very
most—and more probably of only the last 50,000 years. It follows that if
the myths of cataclysm we have reviewed do reflect an epoch of
geological upheaval experienced by humanity, these upheavals took place
within the last 115,000 years, and more probably within the last 50,000
years.
Cinderella’s slipper
It is a curious coincidence of geology and palaeoanthropology that the
onset and progress of the last Ice Age, and the emergence and
proliferation of modern Man, more or less shadow each other. Curious
too is the fact that so little is known about either.
In North America the last Ice Age is called the Wisconsin Glaciation
(named for rock deposits studied in the state of Wisconsin) and its early
phase has been dated by geologists to 115,000 years ago.10 There were
various advances and retreats of the ice-cap after that, with the fastest
rate of accumulation taking place between 60,000 years ago and 17,000
years ago—a process culminating in the Tazewell Advance, which saw the
glaciation reach its maximum extent around 15,000 BC.11 By 13,000 BC,
however, millions of square miles of ice had melted, for reasons that have
never properly been explained, and by 8000 BC the Wisconsin had
withdrawn completely.12
The Ice Age was a global phenomenon, affecting both the northern and
the southern hemispheres; similar climatic and geological conditions
therefore prevailed in many other parts of the world as well (notably in
eastern Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and South America). There was
massive glaciation in Europe, where the ice reached outward from
Scandinavia and Scotland to cover most of Great Britain, Denmark,
Poland, Russia, large parts of Germany, all of Switzerland, and big chunks
8 Ibid., p. 73.
9 Ibid., p. 73, 77.
10 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 12:712.
11 Path of the Pole, p. 146.
12 Ibid., p. 152; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 12:712.
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of Austria, Italy and France.13 (Known technically as the Wurm Glaciation,
this European Ice Age started about 70,000 years ago, a little later than
its American counterpart, but attained its maximum extent at the same
time, 17,000 years ago, and then experienced the same rapid withdrawal,
and shared the same terminal date).14
The crucial stages of Ice Age chronology thus appear to be:
1 around 60,000 years ago, when the Wurm, the Wisconsin and other
glaciations were well under way;
2 around 17,000 years ago, when the ice sheets had reached their
maximum extent in both the Old World and the New;
3 the 7000 years of deglaciation that followed.
The emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens thus coincided with a lengthy
period of geological and climatic turbulence, a period marked, above all
else, by ferocious freezing and flooding. The many millennia during
which the ice was remorselessly expanding must have been terrifying and
awful for our ancestors. But those final 7000 years of deglaciation,
particularly the episodes of very rapid and extensive melting, must have
been worse.
Let us not jump to conclusions about the state of social, or religious, or
scientific, or intellectual development of the human beings who lived
through the sustained collapse of that tumultuous epoch. The popular
stereotype may be wrong in assuming that they were all primitive cave
dwellers. In reality little is known about them and almost the only thing
that can be said is that they were men and women exactly like ourselves
physiologically and psychologically.
It is possible that they came close to total extinction on several
occasions during the upheavals they experienced; it is also possible that
the great myths of cataclysm, to which scholars attribute no historical
value, may contain accurate records and eyewitness accounts of real
events. As we see in the next chapter, if we are looking for an epoch that
fits those myths as snugly as the slipper on Cinderella’s foot, it would
seem that the last Ice Age is it.
13 John Imbrie and Katherine Palmer Imbrie, Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery, Enslow
Publishers, New Jersey, 1979, p. 11.
14 Ibid., p. 120; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 12:783; Human Evolution, p. 73.
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Chapter 27
The Face of the Earth was Darkened
and a Black Rain Began to Fall
Terrible forces were unleashed on all living creatures during the last Ice
Age. We may deduce how these afflicted humanity from the firm evidence
of their consequences for other large species. Often this evidence looks
puzzling. As Charles Darwin observed after visiting South America:
No one I think can have marvelled more at the extinction of species than I have
done. When I found in La Plata [Argentina] the tooth of a horse embedded with the
remains of Mastodon, Megatherium, Toxodon, and other extinct monsters, which
all co-existed at a ve
ry late geological period, I was filled with astonishment; for
seeing that the horse, since its introduction by the Spaniards in South America,
has run wild over the whole country and has increased its numbers at an
unparalleled rate, I asked myself what could have so recently exterminated the
former horse under conditions of life apparently so favourable?1
The answer, of course, was the Ice Age. That was what exterminated the
former horses of the Americas, and a number of other previously
successful mammals. Nor were extinctions limited to the New World. On
the contrary, in different parts of the earth (for different reasons and at
different times) the long epoch of glaciation witnessed several quite
distinct episodes of extinction. In all areas, the vast majority of the many
destroyed species were lost in the final seven thousand years from about
15,000 BC down to 8000 BC.2
At this stage of our investigation is it not necessary to establish the
specific nature of the climatic, seismic and geological events linked to the
various advances and retreats of the ice sheets which killed off the
animals. We might reasonably guess that tidal waves, earthquakes,
gigantic windstorms and the sudden onset and remission of glacial
conditions played their parts. But more important—whatever the actual
agencies involved—is the stark empirical reality that mass extinctions of
animals did take place as a result of the turmoil of the last Ice Age.
This turmoil, as Darwin concluded in his Journal, must have shaken ‘the
entire framework of the globe’.3 In the New World, for example, more
than seventy genera of large mammals became extinct between 15,000
BC and 8000 BC, including all North American members of seven families,
and one complete order, the Proboscidea.4 These staggering losses,
1 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Penguin, London, 1985, p. 322.
2 Quaternary Extinctions, pp. 360-1, 394.
3 Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of
Countries Visited during the Voyage of HMS Beagle Round the World; entry for 9 January
1834.
4 Quaternary Extinctions, pp. 360-1, 394.
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involving the violent obliteration of more than forty million animals, were
not spread out evenly over the whole period; on the contrary, the vast