METAMORPHIC STAR, by Dwardu Cardona
YOUNGER DRYAS
{Search results for Younger Dryas in his book. I think Cardona concluded that Saturn first flared up as a nova at the time of the Younger Dryas event. Mainstream science dated the event to about 11,000 years ago and Cardona dated it just a little later at c. 10,000 BP {8,000 BC}. I found though that there's much better evidence that the Septuagint Bible dating of the Great Flood at c. 3,300 BC is likely most accurate and that the Younger Dryas event occurred some centuries later, which, based on Michael Oard's findings, I figure likely occurred c. 2,600 B.C. (700 years after the Flood). Cardona acknowledged that dating methods are highly inaccurate, but he nonetheless seems to have figured they're only off by a few percent, whereas over 60% is much more likely. In his 5 books, Cardona didn't progress very far in his recounting of the history of the Saturn Configuration. He, Talbott and Cochrane developed the history more thoroughly in their many articles and videos, but they didn't discuss dates much and they didn't say clearly which cataclysmic events on Earth coincided with the main stages of the evolution of the Saturn Configuration. While they all seem to have accepted close to the mainstream dating of the beginning of Saturn's Golden Age and that it lasted from c. 10,000 to 5,000 BP, 5,000 years in all, I find that it likely only lasted a few centuries. In collecting all of Cardona's excerpts on the Younger Dryas below, I hope to help establish that the Golden Age did indeed begin at the Younger Dryas event. Afterward, I hope to find evidence to determine just as certainly when Saturn left the configuration and Jupiter took over and then when the configuration broke up completely and all of the planets arrived at their present orbits. Anyway, I regard almost all of the time periods described below as very inaccurate.}
__THE BLYTT-SERNANDER SEQUENCE. ... In chronological sequence {re ice cores} the resulting zones were named the Oldest Dryas, followed by the Bolling, the Older Dryas, the Allerod, and the Younger Dryas, the last of which has received the most attention. The three periods dubbed the Oldest Dryas, Older Dryas, and Younger Dryas, were named for Dryas octopetala because pollen from this Alpine flower was found in great quantity in cores said to contain ice from the Younger period in question. ... With or without the intervening colder spell of the Older Dryas, the warm stretch of the Bolling-Allerod is said to have ended abruptly, leading into the next cold period of the Younger Dryas within a decade.1 Although we do accept the sudden termination of these climatic periods, it still amazes us when glaciologists can isolate a decade within a stretch of some {supposed} 6,000 years long - in this case between the given date for the commencement of the Oldest Dryas, rounded at 19,000 years ago, through the Bolling-Allerod, and the beginning of the Younger Dryas, rounded at 13,000 years before the present.
__FIRE AND ICE. As noted, the abrupt end of the Allerod warm period was followed by the just as sudden onslaught of the Younger Dryas freezing phase. These two periods were demarcated by intense forest fires that left their charcoal signatures all over North America, Europe, Egypt, South Africa, India, and Australia.2 Such a spate of forest fires ranging over most of the world could hardly have been ignited by lightning storms unless these storms were synchronously orchestrated. But even if such lightning storms could have occurred, the sustaining of the fires they ignited across near-worldwide territories would have required equal stretches of utter woodland dryness. Since the Allerod had been warm through its entire period, it might have been enough to cause such widespread desiccation. But why, then, did these forest fires start at the period's end? And why would worldwide fires lead to a re-freezing of the land? What seems to have transpired is that the warm period of the Allerod was somehow terminated by an even hotter wave that ushered in a freezing phase. On the surface, this does not seem to make much sense. That something of the sort transpired is however indicated by the already noted Tchiglit memory concerning the frosty period that directly followed the "terrible heat wave" that was said to have exterminated a great portion of their tribesmen. Granted that this took place, how did it really come about? THE Younger Dryas. Known by different designations in different parts of Europe, sometimes even referred to as the Big Freeze, the Younger Dryas is said to have commenced around 12,900 years ago and to have lasted a mere 1,300 years. Others give 12,800 to 11,600 years before the present with an interval of 1,200 years. These years are often rounded as having been between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago.3
__PARADIGMATIC UPSETS. ... Another paradigmatic upset concerned Lake Agassiz which could not have supplied the fresh cold water that supposedly rushed into the North Atlantic via Hudson Bay at the inauguration of the Younger Dryas, since the dating of the lake's drainage had been set to "around 8,200 years ago,"4 much too late to cause the cooling in question. In fact, let's be quite honest: Despite the theories that were originally forwarded in an attempt to solve the mystery of the Younger Dryas, to say nothing of the various dates that have been supplied for the occurrence, not a single one of them ever ruled the day. {The date is actually irrelevant, since the dating method is inaccurate, so Cardona's conclusion is faulty, IMO.}
__DEATH FROM THE SKY. ... A revamped version of the supernova theory that also took account of cosmic impacts was presented at an international conference in September, 2005. The incriminated supernova, located in the constellation Gemini, 250 light-years from Earth, was said to have erupted 41,000 years ago. The debris that it hurled out is believed to have coalesced into what was described as a swarm of "low-density, comet-like objects," one of which was said to have impacted in North America about 13,000 years ago.1 With the evidence presented falling neatly into place, the renewed supernova-cum-comet proposal was so well received that, less than a year after the conference at which the overhauled theory had been presented, Firestone and West spelled it all out in a popular book which they co-authored with Simon Warwick-Smith.2 It was all there, including a slight change in the date of the eruption which was raised from the original 41,000 to 44,000 years ago - but I'm not about to quibble about that. Much like this very work and its three prequels, the authors substantiated their theory with the inclusion of various myths, especially those that told of previous "worlds" and their cataclysmic end, with fire raining from the sky, earthquakes below ground, and flooding waters in between. "The result," one reviewer wrote, "is a believable validation of intrigue and drama that puts Creationists and Scientists on equal footing."3 Not quite, but let it be. Nevertheless, the work did generate fine reviews. There were even one or two high-ranking scientists who felt compelled to give the book their vote of confidence. In a way this was good news since it served to smoothen the path others had trailed toward the acceptance of the mytho-historical record as a valid contribution to scientific investigations. As the years went by, however - and we're still not talking decades - the supernova element gradually faded into the background. In time, the comet to which it was said to have given birth, referred to by some as the Clovis Comet, came to reign supreme. For a while there were those who wavered between a meteor or an asteroid as the marauder behind the onslaught of the Younger Dryas,4 but most researchers were happy to settle on a cometary body that was said to have fragmented high up in the sky.5 More specifically, it was identified as "a three-mile-wide comet moving at 135,000 miles an hour" that "blew up over Canada with the force of a million nuclear bombs."6 I love the precision with which they can tell these things. It's almost as if they saw it all happen with their own eyes besides having had their instruments trained upon it. But never mind. It was the heat from this cometary blast that was then said to have set the forests on fire and to have melted "vast stretches of retreating glaciers," while also "kicking off a cold spell by slowing ocean currents."7 The mystery of the Younger Dryas had finally been solved! The United States would not, however, allow Canada to bask in the honor. Since one of the highest concentrations of nanodiamonds came from a site in Eastern Michigan, a locality somewhere in the Great Lakes district presented itself as a better possibility for ground zero. According to West and his colleagues, this would have been closer to present Chicago than anywhere in Canada.1 The heat generated by the impact is said to have "likely melted much of a glacier that once covered the Great Lakes region" which would have sent "a massive flood" down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, the increased fresh water of which would have shifted the currents of the Atlantic Ocean.2 While some later reports made mention of a "swarm" of comets, rather than a lone intruder,3 most continued to invoke a single body which broke up, the fragments of which scattered across the United States,4 and, according to some, even reached as far as Europe.5 "This event was large enough to directly kill most everything instantly," Firestone reported. "Those that survived would have found their food sources devastated, their water polluted, all kinds of things that would have made it difficult to go on much longer."6 Most of those who perished, it was said, were burned alive, including something like 70 percent of human beings in North America.7
__THE CHARCOAL DISPUTE. The palaeontologist Paul Koch was not convinced that there were any continental fires at the time of the supposed event, as neither was the geologist Gerta Keller.6 Others have however shown that Greenland ice cores do contain evidence of such fires "around the start of the Younger Dryas."7 With so much reliance placed on the contents of Greenland ice cores, one would have thought that the above disclosure would have ended the debate. But further analysis of the controversial charcoal was still said to show "no evidence" of the "continental scale fires" demanded by the theory.8 Where, then, could the charcoal have come from? According to the results of this new analysis, an increase in fires following normal periods of climate change is to be expected.1 But then the way some scientists think leaves one wondering. "Even if you have cometary impact data," said Wallace Broecker, "that doesn't imply they generated wild fires that killed off the mammoths" - which was then echoed by Andrew Scott who hailed from the University of London.2 Although this was a valid argument, it somehow seemed as if a cometary impact was easier to stomach than continental forest fires. What test results were said to actually indicate is that "while there was significant evidence of localized fires throughout a 5,000-year period centered around the Younger Dryas, there was no sign of a single continental-scale wildfire event."3 According to those who would have nothing to do with cometary interactions, the greatest incidence of forest fires occur "just after periods of abrupt climate change." This, it has been claimed, is because warming periods tend to "result in the death of plants and trees that more readily provide fuel."4 These critics, however, neglected to explain what could have caused these "periods of abrupt climate change." Besides, why were they concentrating on continental - by which they meant North American - fires when, as we have seen, forests had actually been ignited around this time all over the world? Never mind the heat that must have been responsible for these fires, there were actually those who claimed it was the cold that caused them. According to them, the forest fires occurred after the shift from the warm Allerod interstadial to the colder conditions of the Younger Dryas.5 It was, still according to them, the very "sudden onset" of the colder Younger Dryas that actually "caused the death of many trees" which would then somehow have been set on fire. "It is highly questionable," they went on, "that an extraterrestrial impact over North America could have caused large-scale forest fires in northwest Europe."6 But, more than that, how about the rest of the world? THE NANODIAMOND EVIDENCE Some of those who could not buy the comet theory also began to question the nanodiamond evidence. There were even some, among them nanodiamond experts, who found reason to ask whether such diamonds were really found in connection with the so-called impact layers.7 But not only were such diamonds found, they have come to light in association with Younger Dryas sediment from all over North America.8 Nor were such finds exceptional. Similar diamonds have been found in Germany and Belgium, 1 some of which are also said to come from Younger Dryas boundary layers.2
__THEORY UNDER FIRE. ... One of the objections that has been raised against the comet theory of the Younger Dryas is that the "cosmic wallop does not seem to have left behind any obvious crater."5 And: "No crater has ever been linked to the event."6 On the other hand, "given the nature of the beast," as one writer put it, should a crater be expected to be found?7 A comet that would have exploded into fragments up in Earth's atmosphere, West pointed out, is not likely to have left a crater.8 Others have argued that, even had the body in question not fractured before impacting, it would have landed on an ice sheet that could have been anywhere from one to two miles thick.9 The impact would not only have melted most of the ice, but whatever scars remained would have long disappeared with continued thawing. But would miles-thick glaciers have still been around after more than the claimed 2,000 years of warmth during the Allerod? In any case, craterless impacts are not unknown. Even hard-boiled meteorites that actually hit the ground do not always leave a crater. 10
__THE MISSING {CRATER}. ... Richard Firestone was not, however, happy with this since it would have fared much better for the theory he espoused if a crater had been formed. He thus not only went out looking for such a scar, he actually found more than one.
__THE GREAT LAKES. What Firestone had in mind were the very Great Lakes above which the comet was said to have exploded. Still believing that the "concentration of impact markers" peaks in the Lakes' vicinity, he continued to preach that the Clovis Comet exploded into fragments right above that area. And while critics continued to note that "no visible crater" exists anywhere near the Great Lakes, 1 Firestone pointed to the Lakes themselves as the scars in question. Unfortunately, he is not consistent on any of this. At one point he claims that the impact created "numerous craters that now persist at the bottom" of the Lakes. 2 At another he reduces the "numerous craters" to only "four large holes."3 These "four large holes" then turn into a single "crater" that "could easily be hiding" somewhere in the Lakes. Yet even when he could not pinpoint it, he blamed the difficulty of its detection on "the action of water" which "would have erased many of its features."4 It was then that someone must have pointed him to Charity Shoal in Lake Ontario. CHARITY SHOAL This suspicious-looking feature consists of a circular depression one kilometer (slightly over half a mile) in diameter - which is about the size of the famous Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona - and eighteen meters (some fifty-nine feet) deep, which Firestone claims to have formed "near the time" of the Younger Dryas "impact."5 That this depression may be an extraterrestrial impact crater has been known for quite Charity Shoal.
__A MATTER OF IDENTITY. As we have seen, the sudden re-cooling of the Younger Dryas was originally theorized to have been caused by a relatively close supernova. Only later was the blame shifted to a comet which was said to have been born from the previously-assumed stellar explosion. In analyzing the nature of the Carolina Bays, however, Allan and Delair could not buy the comet theory. "We now know, of course," they wrote, "that even large comets apparently lack sufficient mass to cause crustal damage like that presented by the 'Carolina Bays'." They thus considered an impactor "of meteoric origin" as being "more feasible."5 Their belief in the lack of sufficient mass in comets had to have been based on Fred Whipple's oft-repeated 1950 declaration that comets consist of conglomerated ice and rubble. William Napier, on the other hand, had no qualms about accepting a comet as the cause of the Younger Dryas episode. In his opinion, the responsible culprit was the meteoric swarm known as the Taurid Complex that resulted from the breakup of Comet Encke. Since, together with Victor Clube, he had been promoting this particular theory since the early 1980s,1 he could not allow himself, and rightly so, out of the limelight. With a slight nod toward Firestone, he not only jumped back into the fray with a new paper on the subject, but saw fit to air it on the Internet even before it was officially published by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .1 Firestone himself, who also nodded slightly toward Clube and Napier,2 was not all that certain what it was that caused the cooling of the Younger Dryas. In fact he seems to have been quite confused. By the end of 2009, he was hearkening back to the "recent near-Earth supernova" that supposedly ejected the impactor that was responsible for the event in question. But while he continued to proclaim this as a "possibility," he was also of the opinion that "no such object of sufficient density is known to be emitted by a supernova."3 And although, on a different page of the same work, he does grant that a comet might have had a possible role in the affair, he couples this with the claim that the "distribution of markers is consistent with the outburst of a meteorite."4 Confusion is then added to an already confused subject when he informs us that the "characteristics" associated with the impact markers "are inconsistent with known meteorites."5 In the end, he refers to the impactor merely as an "object," while admitting that its nature "remains a mystery." Worse still, he then confesses that "any estimate for the probability" of the event itself remains "purely speculative."6 ... Even so, too many things have been left in darkened comers by those who have been pushing the impact theory to account for the onset of the Younger Dryas.
__CONFLAGRATIONS. Although it might sound trite, in order for forests to have been set on fire at the onset of the Younger Dryas, there had to have been forests in the first place. Those who have claimed it was the cold that was really responsible for the fires1 neglected to explain how forests could have thrived in the glacial conditions they advocate. One thing they were however right about is that it's "highly questionable" that an impact over North America could have caused wide-ranging forest fires in northwest Europe.2 But, even then, they did end up minimizing the occurrence by failing to include the vast number of similar infernos that took place around the same time in the rest of the world both north and south of the equator .3 And while we're at it, neither will it do to blame this world-wide blaze on the dryness of the land. Fair enough, the previous Allerod period did dry out the land, but, as already noted, the very heat involved would have also increased evaporation from Earth's oceans which would have led to a prolonged series of rainfalls some of which fell on the very lands the forests of which went up in flames.4 What we instead proclaim is that a severe sudden heat wave set Earth's forests on fire, while the following global downpours, to say nothing of the encroaching sea waves, aided in dowsing out the conflagrations. That the sudden heat wave that caused these world-wide fires was released by proto-Saturn' s flare-up hardly needs re-stressing at this point in our scheme. Forests in the northern hemisphere would have suffered the worst since the heat from the flare-up would have impacted them directly from Earth's north polar height. Those in the southern hemisphere would have been incinerated through the heat reflected off the inner surface of the proto-Saturnian system's enveloping plasmasphere.5 Added to that would have been the frictional heat produced by Earth's rotational braking due to proto-Saturn's very flare,6 and this, too, would have induced incineration. The charcoal-containing black mats that have raised so much controversy need no further elucidation.
__THE ELECTRIC MILIEU. ... As has been noted by those immersed in plasma physics, the free electrons within such sheaths "are very effective carriers of electric current."1 But such currents are also reliant on the electrical potential of the spatial environment through which they move. A comet is thus a body - just like asteroids or meteorites - the electric charge of which reaches an imbalance as it moves deeper within the Sun's own field, causing it to electrically discharge, making its sheath to glow in what we see as its coma and luminous tail.2 It does not therefore matter what one calls terrestrial impactors or their shrapnel. It all comes down to cosmic rubble. Even so, too many things have been left in darkened comers by those who have been pushing the impact theory to account for the onset of the Younger Dryas.
__CONFLAGRATIONS. ... Richard Firestone and Allen West had been closer to the truth in their endorsement of the supernova theory that was originally proposed by the now neglected William Topping. As noted, the main evidence for this assumption came from the exotic materials that have been discovered in association with the much discussed Clovis sites, as also elsewhere. On examination, this composition was found to be similar to that contained in some of the lunar rocks recovered by the Apollo astronauts.1 This indicates that our Moon, which we claim was not yet orbiting Earth, was also bombarded by the same material, which means that, wherever the Moon had been situated, it could not have been far off. What makes this even more significant is that the potassium-40 that came to light in association with the Clovis sites was found to be "much more abundant" than that in the Solar System while being closer to what can be produced by supernovae.2 The problem that this raised was the specific supernova's 250 light-year distance, which is why the culpability of the event was shifted to its theorized cometary offspring which would have taken the required 28,000 years to bridge the gap. In our scheme, with proto-Saturn much closer to Earth, the initial cause can be dated to the very time of the climatic onset it instigated, with the exotic materials in question having been released through its sub-stellar flare.
__EXTERMINATIONS. ... In an attempt to break the deadlock, the geophysicist Luann Becker and her colleagues from the University of California at Santa Barbara began searching for Younger Dryas clues that would connect the posited cometary impact to the extermination of the mammoths.5 ... Nor were mammoths the only Pleistocene animals that survived beyond the period of the Younger Dryas. Various other fauna also made it through,9 in some cases up to 5,000 years ago, to and even later.11 Needless to say, individual beasts would have died on and off throughout the existence of their species the way modem ones continue to do at present. So keep in mind that all dates derived from individual specimens can at best tell us when that particular animal died, and not when the species it belonged to became extinct.
__CAUSE AND EFFECT. ... There is, however, more than all that to consider because, after all, the Younger Dryas is not the only re-freezing episode that sliced through the interstadials toward the end of the Pleistocene that has to be accounted for. How about the two previous Dryas events, those named the Oldest and the Older ones? Did comets also explode in Earth's atmosphere to cause our world to re-enter a deep freeze environment at each of those sudden climatic reversals? Fair enough, Firestone did attempt to take these earlier cooling episodes into account, but he waved them aside because "none [of them] were associated with major extinctions."6 It did not seem to dawn on him that that, too, cries out loud for a solution. And even then, how about the re-warming interglacials that suddenly sliced through these re-freezing episodes, the Bolling and the Allerod? Were they also caused by cometary impacts? Can cometary impacts cause a succeeding series of alternating warming and cooling episodes? Or how far can one stretch a fiction? It is not that our own hypothesis excludes cosmic impacts. On the contrary, we swear by them, even in association with the Younger Dryas - but not as its direct cause. As we had previously pointed out,7 such impacts are bound to have taken place in conjunction with proto-Saturn's outbursts, including the major flare-up that resulted from its capture by our present Sun. "Capture of a brown dwarf," according to Wallace Thornhill, "requires that the dim star accommodate to a new electrical environment within the plasma sheath of the Sun."1 When that transpires, the brown dwarf "flares and ejects matter" including small debris.2 As we noted in our previous chapter, there are, in the main, two sets of crater orientations that have been etched on the terrestrial landscape by cosmic rubble in association with the Younger Dryas: northwest to southeast and northeast to southwest. Although, as William Prouty pointed out, these variations can be accounted for by Earth's rotation,3 we have to admit that that is not enough. But when we add the additional motions involved in the event in question, these directional variations will not seem that much at odds. Among these we must definitely include proto-Saturn' s own axial speed, since that is where we claim the rubble originated from, to which we shall have to add Earth's rotational braking and, as I aim to discuss in a forthcoming volume, the erratic wobbling it experienced due to the same event. In the end it has to be admitted that, northwest to southeast or northeast to southwest, the general direction was from the north as is to be expected in accordance with our scenario.
__THE BAYS' AGE. ... While the above does not contradict the time given for the onset of the Younger Dryas, it falls somewhat short of validating it.
__THE RADIOCARBON DATING GAME. ... We can, however, point to the fact that the original date derived from European peat bogs had indicated the onset of the Younger Dryas at 11,000 years before the present.3 That date was then eclipsed by more recent ones derived from Greenland ice cores,4 which have been accepted as showing the onset of this particular Dryas somewhere between 12,800 and 12,900 years ago,5 usually rounded off to the aforementioned 13,000 years before the present. On the other hand, dates derived from the European Alps in Switzerland do not conform with those derived in North America.6 All of which rightly explains why Wallace Broecker could refer to the onset of the Younger Dryas as having occurred "within the dating uncertainty" of this radiocarbon-derived sequence.7 If nothing else, glaciologists, as well as other ologists, should long have realized that the radiocarbon dates that have been derived for the period, and event, in question are in hopeless disarray. In some cases, individual tests conducted on samples from the same specimen resulted in different dates. Take, as an example, the tissue from the famous baby mammoth paleontologists have named Dima. Soviet laboratories supplied an age of 40,000 years, but only 26,000 when dated at a center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.8 Nor were these the only divergent dates supplied in relation to the same infant pachyderm.9 Of even greater importance to our present study is the fact that radiocarbon testing of the charcoal found in association with the Carolina Bays and various Clovis sites yielded highly improbable dates some of which were as low as 6,565 years before the present. Others were even worse, producing dates hundreds of years in the future.10 There would be no point in asking which dates are correct and which are not. The only thing that came out of the situation was a power struggle fed by bickering by various authorities, which was nothing new. In fact, one of the greatest scientific debates, as Peter Ward acknowledged, has centered around the validity of radiocarbon dating.1 "[M]any carbon-14 dates recovered during the early years of the method are in error," disclosed Ward. "New methods have also called into question many dates produced more than 20 years ago [i.e., prior to 1977], dates that are absolutely crucial in identifying the killer of the Ice Age fauna."2 ... The above did not go unnoticed by Firestone who soon began to claim to have discovered "four prehistoric near earth supernovae" each of which left "a unique signature" in the "cosmogenic isotope record" which showed "a sudden increase in atmospheric radiocarbon."8 One of these increases has been tied by Firestone - who claims to have "analyzed the radiocarbon record for the past 45,000 years" - to the supernova numbered 44ka, the shrapnel from which has been calculated to have reached Earth "near the time" of the Younger Dryas episode.9 This allowed him to excuse the incongruous, not to say impossible, dates derived for the carbon samples mentioned above.• That supernovae wreak havoc with the radiocarbon in planetary atmospheres, we have no doubt. But, as we have often asked, how much more would the closer, even if less energetic, proto-Saturnian flare-up have disrupted Earth's atmospheric carbon-14 content? More than that, however, we should not lose track of the fact that all presently-accepted radiocarbon-derived dates have been dendrochronologically calibrated, even though this did not dispel the ambiguities associated with the Younger Dryas.2
__RADIOMETRIC ALCHEMY. At this point I hardly need say more on the subject of radiometric dating, but, in order to forestall the accusation of nitpicking, I will add a few more items. To begin with, although not generally known, the Younger Dryas has led to a series of propositions that were piled on top of earlier suppositions, with agreements by some, but not by others, in an altercation that had not subsided at the time these words were written.1 What is highly interesting is that most of this debate has ranged around the different dates that have been furnished for the onset, the duration, and termination of the event in question. Even the best of authorities have had to admit that the "dating evidence" concerning this particular episode is at best "fragmentary and far from certain in many areas."2 ... Even when it comes to the very Younger Dryas of our concern, dates around our benchmark figure are referred to by European researchers as "the well-known" radiocarbon plateau "where calibration is almost meaningless."9 "Single dates or periods defined by terminal dates," it has been judged, "are estimated dates" and "only rarely can you say with precision and accuracy that an event or series of events began or ended in that year."10 ... As James Adovasio rightly proclaimed, the "date's main claim is that it is a nice round number."3 He himself presented this "round number" as the date for the start of the Holocene,4 that is the end of the Younger Dryas. In our case, we have been presenting that benchmark figure as the approximate date of proto-Saturn's flare-up, which would have ushered in, rather than ended, that particular period. But what of all these dates? When it comes to specificity, they're all hanging in mid air. The uncalibrated dates for the duration of the Younger Dryas have been calculated as stretching from 11,000 to 10,000 years ago, which figures have been calibrated to 12,900 years before the present for the inception of the period, and 11,500 years for its termination.5 This would give 1,400 years for its extent, but, for whatever reason, Firestone prefers an approximate 1,000 years.6 There are others who have vouched for 1,300 years,7 while authorities at the University of Michigan have cut it down to a mere 700.8 With all these dates, and various others, to say nothing of the manner in which they have been reached, as we have seen, what can one really hold on to? As we have previously indicated, it would not really matter if proto-Saturn had flared up earlier or later than 10,000 years ago. The date for this event can in fact be moved up or down the scale of ages without affecting our model. This ensues because, if our date is out of kilter, all associated dates would be out by the same amount since they've all been estimated through the same, and only, technique at our disposal.
__ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION. Way before the Clovis Comet theory came into vogue, concentration of dust in Earth's atmosphere had been given as one cause for the cooling trend of the Younger Dryas. There had, however, been no consensus as to where this dust could have come from, so there's no point in citing a long list of sources which would only add to the confusion. All that will be mentioned here is that some had claimed this dust to have come from the deserts of Asia, while others blamed it all on volcanism. What it was that caused volcanic eruptions and/or dust storms severe enough to re-freeze Earth's previous glaciated regions was never quite established. With the advent of the comet impact theory, the cooling of the land was blamed by some on the blocking of the Sun by the clouds of smoke and soot that surged up through the atmosphere from the raging forest fires we have been discussing.I Others were of the opinion that the filtering of the Sun's rays that caused the "global cooling" was due to the debris ejected by the cometary blast itself,2 or from the impacts produced by fragments from the blast.3 "The cooling," according to James Kennet, "resulted when dust from the high-pressure, high-temperature, multiple impacts was lofted into the atmosphere, causing a dramatic drop in solar radiation."4 It has additionally been claimed by others that dust and debris from the cometary outburst may have also darkened whatever ice might have remained, which darkened ice would have absorbed solar heat.5 But the only way in which they could claim that this extra heat would have led to cooling is through the change in the circling ocean currents we have already put to rest. And then, since this same debris, to say nothing of the smoke and soot from the forest fires, is declared to have also dimmed the Sun's rays, what heat could the dust-covered ice have been able to absorb? By the time the pollution would have settled on the ice, the cooling trend would already have set in. Besides, as it has been determined, but forgotten by those who wish it to be forgotten, all of the pertinent sites that have been investigated by those concerned were found to have been "ice free" at the inception of the Younger Dryas. 6 Worse still, as some have argued, the cosmic dust that would have been released by one such blast would hardly have been voluminous and dense enough to account for the weakening of the Sun's rays to the extent of re-freezing Earth's thawing regions .1 Even so, there's more to cosmic dust than that.
__SUPER-FLARING DUST. ... But that a fair amount of dust was eventually captured by Earth's gravity is quite certain. This is indicated by fluctuations in the electrical conductivity that was measured in a section of a Greenland ice core. What this revealed is that "rapid changes in the dust content of the atmosphere" took place during the very period we're concerned with.2 It was this accumulated dust in the atmosphere that would have hindered proto-Saturn' s heat from reaching the ground below. This atmospheric dust would have finally settled on the land. And this, too, is evidenced by Greenland ice cores which contain as much as 100 times more dust in Pleistocene ice than in that from later times.3 That this dust came from a polar source, rather than one located above North America's Great Lakes region, is evidenced by its accumulated amount in sediments retrieved from a Greenland lake which contained 1,000 times more cosmic dust than has been found in the oceans.4 Needless to say, the more rock-solid wreckage that gouged out the Carolina Bays and similar oriented pockmarks would have also been emitted with the dust. But would Earth's capture of cosmic dust also apply to those previous cold spells that interlaced the interglacials ahead of the Younger Dryas?
__VARIATION IN INTENSITY. ... Analyses of Greenland ice cores well indicate that these climatic variations occurred "consistently and frequently" in "periods of less than a decade, and on occasion as quickly as three years."2 While, as always, we're somewhat wary when it comes to such precision, my readers are asked to keep that in mind when others invoke thousands of years in relation to these events. That dust was involved in these climatic upsets is again verified by findings which indicate that transitions between warmer and colder periods were characterized by "abrupt fluctuations" in "dust concentrations,"3 and by further signs which show that Earth's atmosphere was less dusty during warmer periods.4 The onset of the Younger Dryas was definitely marked by a period of increased dust fall. And although this seems to have only lasted about five years, it was followed by a further stretch of fluctuating dusty and less dusty periods until the beginning of the Holocene.5 The changes in dust concentration have also been found to be partly reliant on "rapid changes in sea surface temperatures" and a "re-ordering of atmospheric circulation" which seems to have led to "increased wind speeds."6 Change of wind speeds and direction, as well as sea incursions, would have been brought about by Earth's rotational braking. And this, too, would have had a telling influence on the extent and distribution of dust in Earth's roiling atmosphere.
__EXAGGERATED SEVERITY. It is these very fluctuations in temperature and their resultant signatures on Earth's flora that has fooled many an investigator into thinking in terms of seasonality. Not only that, but, contrary to those who claim that the return to cold was more drastic in North America than elsewhere, pollen evidence has fooled others into claiming that the Younger Dryas "didn't cause significant climate change outside northern Europe."1 All of which drove Wallace Broecker to conclude, and rightly so, that while its effects were global, "the Younger Dryas was not simply a return to glacial state."2 The harshness of the Younger Dryas, it now seems, has been severely overstated. At the end of the Ice Age, sea levels rose due to the melting of glacial ice. In some areas, however, crustal rebound has been found to have exceeded sea-level rise. Among other effects, this rebound caused an area off the Greenland coast to rise above the sea and form the island of Angissoq. Former marine basins in this coastal area were thus transformed into inland island lakes.3 What is highly interesting is that, during the Younger Dryas, plants were still growing on the island.4 Furthermore, according to analyses conducted on the sediments of one of these lakes, what have been termed "Younger Dryas summer conditions" in the North Atlantic region seem to have experienced "regional and local variations" that "may have been larger than previously found from proxy data and modeling experiments."5 In fact, the interims under these "conditions" are considered to have been mild,6 even fairly warm.7 Lake productivity, including colonies of green algae,8 was not only "fairly constant," but apparently "higher" during the Younger Dryas.9 What this implies is that there was "better light conditions" at lake bottoms,10 which does not square well with a drastic lack of light. This has naturally led to the conclusion that lake temperatures had to have been warm.11 The surrounding ocean, on the other hand, was ice covered most of the time,12 but this is no different than at present despite the fact that Earth is not presently in a deep freeze. Climatic instabilities have now been found to have affected different regions,1 varying in intensity in different localities, especially between Europe and the Pacific coast of North America,2 despite those who have been led into thinking otherwise. To be sure, climatic disparities were quite drastic throughout the entire duration of the Younger Dryas.3 More than that, as our own scheme actually calls for, climatic upsets in Earth's southern hemisphere appear to have been inconsequential. Furthermore, pollen data from deep marine sediments extracted from the Cariaco Basin off the coast of Venezuela indicate that the neotropical region "was not affected by dramatic cooling" during the very Younger Dryas of our concem.4
__BACK TO WARMTH. Earth's accumulation of proto-Satum's emitted dust was not constant through its past climatic ups and downs. Although he continues to cling to the Milankovitch cycles, Gino Segre rightly informs us that changes in this accumulation "occurred quickly, in decades, and sometimes in as little as a few years."5 Others have claimed that "the cooling at the start of the Younger Dryas was gradual,"6 but it all depends what one means by "gradual." Since, as we have noted, the ancients actually remember that many of those who lived beyond the heat wave succumbed to the chilling event that followed, the inception of the cold could not have taken all that long. We also note that the boundary between the dusty ice of the Pleistocene and that of the following Holocene is abrupt, which tells us that the Younger Dryas came to just as sudden an end.7 According to just about all those who have dared to venture into this trap-laden territory, the ending of the Younger Dryas occurred in a mere 40- to 50-year period - "within a few years or decades at most"8 - with some actually vouching for an even more rapid transition of even fewer years.9 Average temperatures at the end of this period increased "by as much as seven degrees in twenty years."10 This, as Bill Bryson tells us, "doesn't sound terribly dramatic but is equiva lent to exchanging the climate of Scandinavia for that of the Mediterranean in just two decades ."1 "Locally, changes have been even more dramatic. Greenland ice cores show the temperatures there changing by as much as fifteen degrees in ten years, drastically altering rainfall patterns and growing conditions."2
__TRAUMATIC TIMES. ... By the end of 2009, however, the generally accepted date for the emergence of Clovis man was being touted as 13,000 years ago,9 with the cometary impact placed at 12,900 years before the present.to Since that only leaves 100 years for the entire duration of the Clovis culture, it doesn't seem to make much sense. We therefore turn back to Firestone who dates both the onset of the Younger Dryas and the disappearance of the Clovis culture to that very same approximate time, 12,900 years ago.1 ... Of more importance is the realization that no Clovis artifacts have yet been discovered above the black mat of charcoal that was laid down by the forest fires that took place around that time.1 This would then mean that Adovasio, who did so much to further the antiquity of Amerind ancestry in North America, must have miscalculated when he stated that Clovis man must have burst upon the scene at the beginning of the Younger Dryas.
__LIFE ON THE VERGE. ... In Europe, after "an uninterrupted development of some 30,000 years," as Johan Kloosterman noted, the Magdalenian culture came to a sudden end "accompanied by rockfalls in rockshelters and caves."6 And while he dates the disappearance of this society as having transpired during the Allerod, rather than its end, as he also does with Clovis man,7 he is still dealing with the same "major crisis in the biosphere" related to the Younger Dryas.8 And yet, in the Near East, the Kebaran culture did not only survive the calamity, it actually experienced progress. In Mallaha, on the shore of the desiccated Lake Hula in the Jordan Valley, a "decisive step" was taken by this social group that led to "a new way of life."9 Described as "an abrupt acceleration of cultural and technical development" that took place 10,000 years ago, it culminated in the more sophisticated social order which is now known as the Natufian.10 Not only was this culture responsible for constructing what might be the oldest known dwellings in the Near East, 11 but also for possibly establishing the earliest harvesting of cereals.12
__THEORY UNDER FIRE. ... To us, the entire affair is nothing but an interesting curiosity - not to say a farce - that means little since we never accepted that the onset of the Younger Dryas had been due to the impact of a single comet or its scattered fragments.
__Hypothesis 33: Mainly due to proto-Saturn's return close to its previous cooler temperature, but partly aided by the enshrouding dust that had collected in the terrestrial atmosphere, Earth was once again plunged into a colder environment, that of the Younger Dryas, which was not, however, as freezingly cold as the Ice Age out of which it had emerged.
__COSMIC FALLOUT. Cosmic dust continues to be implicated in the inception of the Younger Dryas. Elevated levels of helium-3 in sediments associated with this event have been attributed by Paul LaViolette "to a sudden influx of a large amount of cosmic dust."3 As he also indicates, Earth is still "surrounded by a dust cloud" that extends "radially outward" for a few thousand miles.4 LaViolette is also of the opinion that the mass extinctions of the Pleistocene had to have had a solar cause.5 According to him, several studies "indicate that toward the end of the ice age the Sun was far more active than it is today ."6 Citing the works of H. A. Zook and others, he presents evidence from the "tracks" that solar flares are said to have etched in lunar rocks, indicating that, around that time, "the average solar cosmic ray intensity was 50 times higher than at present," which intensity then started to decline until it reached the current level.7 This was not exactly new. As already noted, analyses of the lunar rocks recovered by the Apollo astronauts had already led to the assumption that Pleistocene fauna had succumbed to intense cosmic ray bombardment. Rather than LaViolette's more energetic Sun, however, the source of the bombardment was theorized to have been a supernova.8
__MAN ON THE MOVE. ... What is of greater importance is that the evidence does not only indicate an earlier migratory trend into North America, but the greater feasibility of such migrations via different means than had earlier been believed. How many survivors from these different societies managed to merge and blend with others at the termination of the Younger Dryas is now difficult to ascertain. But the changes that affected them following the end of that period keep receiving further validation.
__THE EMERGENCE OF RELIGION. The changes that most affected our ancestors at the end of the Ice Age and the events that followed the Younger Dryas, however, were those that took place within their own intellect. Prime among these was the embryonic emergence of religion. While, with others, Richard Rudgley places the inception of the Neolithic period at our benchmark date of 10,000 years before the present, he traces man's "artistic and religious awareness" to an earlier period, "40,000 years or so ago."5 What we accept, however, is that man's artistic nature developed long before he formulated any concepts that could be called religious. What we have been able to extract from the mytho-historical record does not allow us to push religious concepts beyond our benchmark figure. There will be those who will point to the production of ochre, said to have been utilized in religious practices, far ahead of 10,000 years ago. Yes, as we have already seen, ochre had been developed earlier than that. It should, however, be kept in mind that this coloring agent was not always, and/or strictly, used for religious purposes. Besides its utilization as a painting medium, as Rudgley himself pointed out, "ochre may have been used in the treating of animal skins and hides in order to make some rudimentary form of clothing or bedding."6