The Holocene MysteryWe terrestrials are occasionally reminded of our participation in the greater cosmic reality. This eight-thousand-mile diameter spherical rock is rotating, revolving, and racing through space, along with all the other objects ‘out there’, and when their defined tracks intersect, the consequences are usually catastrophic. The depth of time apparent in the geological stratigraphy of planet Earth exposes clues to repeated events that are capable of resetting Life’s clock. Among other explorations throughout these pages, we will evaluate the most recent ‘zeroing’, a mere 11,500 years ago, when the sudden and controversial termination of the Pleistocene [glacial] Epoch promoted a species of vulnerable but intelligent predators to the head of the food chain – we human Homo Sapien-sapiens, and inaugurated the Holocene [entirely recent] Epoch. Although we know that the shift to our modern inter-glacial calm included some violent episodes of catastrophe, many of the puzzle pieces that might complete the story have not been flipped over, or are not even out of the box. Referred to here as the “Holocene Mystery”, we are pursuing a line of investigation that peers beyond the bounds of endogenic [from within the Earth] processes, and supposes that a global-scale calamitous event would be capable of creating the conditions required to collectively explain the evolutions that transpired. Within this narrow geologic time-frame, the extinction of numerous species of ‘Mega-Beasts’, the demise of the Paleolithic ‘Clovis Culture’[old stone age people], the remodeling of countless waterways and sudden filling of inland lakes, plus the as-yet-unexplained drastic temperature fluctuations and accelerated melting phases of the continental ice sheets were all practically simultaneous.
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Several of the transition lines dividing the well-established periods on the geologic time-scale are now believed to be contemporaneous with substantial impacts into the Earth by objects from space. The shift from the Cretaceous to the Tertiary, known as the ‘K-T Boundary’ event, is linked with a shock into the Gulf of Mexico at the Yucatan Peninsula’s northwestern coast that terminated the Mesozoic, knocking out the age of the dinosaurs. However, it took ten years after the identification of the iridium-laced strata and extra-terrestrial markers to discover the candidate crater and establish general acceptance of the revolutionary conclusions.The most recent epochal transition has provided another horizon of evocative traces, and the idea of a responsible ‘Clovis Comet’ was presented through papers at the American Geophysical Union in 2007. But again, without distinct connection to a verified crater, the theory has garnered minimal support from the scientific peers and actually a great deal of vehement dissension. What physical proof remains when huge chunks of ice from space crash into an immense hunk of ice covering a continent? Is it possible that the confirmations are right in front of us, but we haven’t developed the perspective to ‘see’ them? Are ideas being clung to that no longer support the weight of new evidence? To explicate the extensive suite of features, are hypothetical dams being artificially bolstered beyond their power to retain water? Blazing visitors from space and their effects on terra-firma characterize a ‘Geocosmic Wreck’. Could developing an understanding of the catastrophic outcomes “when Earth and space collide” clarify the resolution of this ‘Holocene Mystery’? |
For more views of the extinct mega-mammals, with scale men, see: MEGA-BEASTS Extinction