One of Velikovsky’s most fundamental and radical premises was that cosmic catastrophes occurred within the memory of mankind, and even within the period of recorded human history. In this spirit he presented, especially in Earth in Upheaval (1955), manifold proofs that the mass extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene took place no more than a few thousand years ago, with much of the evidence pointing to 1500 or 1400 BC as the cut-off point. In my own writings, and especially in The Genesis of Israel and Egypt (first published in 1997), I have presented much further evidence in support of this contention, and have argued, along with Gunnar Heinsohn, that high civilization – in the Americas, the Middle East, India and China – arose immediately after the selfsame event which decimated the Pleistocene wildlife. Indeed, it was this very catastrophe which provided much of the impetus for the rise of these cultures.
The evidence for an extremely recent end to the Pleistocene may be broadly divided into two main categories:
(a) Geological and topographical.
(b) Archaeological and historical.
Velikovsky’s works, especially Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval, are absolutely packed full of both the above types of evidence; and it would be impossible to do justice to all of it in a short article. Here I shall confine myself to a brief overview of what Velikovsky presented, plus some of the material that he missed. Let’s look first at the geological and topographical material.
In Earth in Upheaval Velikovsky noted that many of the lakes in the Great Basin of California and Oregon, which have no outlet to the sea, were formed only three or four thousand years ago. Yet these saline basins, which are regarded as the remnants of a once large glacial lake called Chewaucan, also contain, in their sediments, the remains of now extinct Pleistocene creatures. He quotes W. van Winkle of the United States Geological Survey, who investigated the salt content of Abert and Summer lakes: “A conservative estimate of the age of Summer and Abert Lakes, based on their concentration and area, the composition of the influent waters, and the rate of evaporation, is 4,000 years.” (Walton van Winkle, “Quality of the Surface Waters of Oregon,” U.S. Geological Survey, Water Supply Paper 363 (Washington, 1914)).
Lake Owens lies to the east of Sequoia National Park in California. It too has no outlet. H. S. Gale analyzed the water of the lake and of the river for chlorine and sodium and “came to the conclusion that the river required 4200 years to supply the chlorine present ain the lake and 3500 years to supply the sodium.” However, as Velikovsky notes, “Ellsworth Huntington of Yale found these figures too high, because no allowance was made for greater rainfall and ‘freshening of the lake’ in the past, and consequently he reduced the age of the lake to 2500 years …” (Earth in Upheaval, p. 149)
The Pyramid and Winnemucca Lakes of the Great Basin in Nevada, which formerly were part of a vast inland stretch of water named Lake Lahontan, were similarly examined for their chlorine and sodium content; and these too gave very recent dates. According to J. Claude Jones the Truckee River, which feeds the two lakes, could have supplied the chlorine content in 3,881 years, whilst “A similar calculation, using sodium instead of chlorine, gave 2447 years necessary.” (Ibid.) In Velikovsky’s words, “…these conclusions require that the age of the mammals of the Ice Age, found in the deposits of Lake Lahontan, be not greater than the age of the lake. This means that the Ice Age ended only twenty-five to thirty-nine centuries ago.” In addition, “Jones checked the figures from the rate of accumulation of chlorine and sodium as brought in by the Truckee River, with other methods, such as the accumulation of chlorine in lakes during the thirty-one years that had passed since the analysis made by Russell, and also the rate of concentration of salts by evaporation, and each time reached the result that the entire history of the Pyramid and Winnemucca lakes ‘is within the last 3000 years.’” (Ibid., pp. 149-50).
Bones of horses, elephants, camels, and other creatures of the Pleistocene, were found in the Lahontan sediments, as was a spear point of human manufacture. (I. Russell, U.S. Geological Survey, Monograph 11, p. 143) On the basis of these findings Jones came to the conclusion that the extinct animals lived in North America until historical times. This was an unusual statement and, as Velikovsky notes, it was opposed at first on the ground that his interpretation was “obviously erroneous, since [it] led him to the conclusion that the mastodon and the camel lived in North America into historical times.” (Brooks, Climate through the Ages (2nd ed., 1949) p. 346)
In Earth in Upheaval Velikovsky discussed the origin of the idea of a ten- to twenty-thousand year old end to the Pleistocene. The man to first suggest such a remote date was, predictably enough, Charles Lyell, who initially based his conclusions on the topography of Niagara Falls. It is widely agreed that this mighty cataract only appeared at the end of the Pleistocene, or end of the Ice Age. As the water pours over the precipice it cuts into the sedimentary rock at the base, pushing the falls further and further back every year. Following a well understood procedure, Lyell reasoned that the end of the Ice Age could be determined with accuracy if we knew the rate at which the torrent cuts into the rock. Consulting a local, Lyell was informed that the Falls retreat at the rate of three feet per year. Lyell however refused to believe this, reasoning that local rustics are prone to exaggeration. He therefore produced his own “estimate” for the rate of erosion at one foot per annum. From this he concluded that the Falls were over thirty-five thousand years old. “Since then,” Velikovsky notes, “this figure has often been mentioned in textbooks as the length of time from the end of the glacial period.” And is so mentioned to this day. Yet the dishonesty of this is illustrated by the fact that the rate of recession of the Falls is now known to be 3.8 feet per annum (actually greater than the rustic who spoke to Lyell claimed); and that, on the strength of this information, the age of the Upper Great Gorge “is calculated as somewhat more than four thousand years – and to obtain even this figure we have to assume than the rate of recession has been constant, although we know that discharge has in fact varied greatly during post-glacial times.” (Flint, Glacial Geology and the Pleistocene Epoch, p. 382) The writer of the above words was aware however that, as the Glacial Period ended the flow of water would have been much greater, and that consequently the rate of erosion must have been swifter in the past. As such, the age of the Upper Great Gorge at Niagara Falls would probably be something between 3,000 and 3,500 years.
It is generally agreed that the present Polar Icecaps date only from the end of the Pleistocene. A great variety of evidence shows that, at the height of the Pleistocene the Arctic and Antarctic regions had temperate climates. Indeed, all the data seems to show that some cataclysmic event simultaneously exterminated the Pleistocene fauna and made the Polar regions frigid. This cataclysm was marked by titanic tidal waves, which swept over the continents. It was an extremely recent event. To this day innumerable sea mammals and fish of every variety – of modern species – are found frozen on the Antarctic Continent. Often these bodies, mummified by the cold, are hundreds of miles from the sea and hundreds of metres above sea level. One such cadaver was encountered by David Attenborough during the filing of his BBC documentary series “Life in the Freezer,” in the 1990s. In a region of the continent devoid of ice – owing to the high velocity winds, Attenborough came across, amidst the rocks and boulders, a frozen seal. Although he remarked on how excellently the body had been preserved by the extreme cold, he failed to ask the obvious question: How did it get there?
The bones of whales and other sea creatures, often of modern species, but often too of species that only became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, are in fact encountered in Glacial or even Post-glacial deposits throughout the globe. Frequently these occur many hundreds of miles from the ocean and many hundreds of metres above sea-level. This was the case, for example, at etc.
As noted above, a whole variety of evidence suggests that both the Antarctic and Arctic Icecaps are no older than three or four thousand years. Thus for example during the Byrd Expedition of 1947-48, Dr Jack Hough took three cores from the bottom of the ocean off the Ross Sea. These showed layers of fine sediment typical of temperate climate: the type of sediment normally carried down by rivers from ice-free continents. When this material was dated using the ionium method of radioactive dating at the Carnegie Institution, it was revealed that the most recent of the sediments dated to about 6,000 years ago. (Jack Hough, “Plesitocene Lithology of Antarctic Ocean Bottom Sediments,” Journal of Geology, Vol. 58, pp. 257-9). This was corroborated by Reginald Daly in Earth’s Most Challenging Mysteries (Nutley, NJ., 1975) pp. 227 and 264), who states that, “Carbon 14 dating shows that Antarctica’s ice is less than 6,000 years old. Holmes writes, ‘Algal remains, dated at 6,000 BP [ie. 4000 BC] have been found in the latest terminal moraines.’ (Principles of Geology, p. 718) This shows that Antarctica must have been sufficiently free from ice for green algae to grow 6,000 years ago.”
The above then is a small sample of the geographical, palaeontological and topographical evidence. I emphasize that it is a small sample, and could be quite easily expanded a hundred fold. The archaeological and historical evidence is in the same category, and of it too I can only present here a small sample.
There is a huge amount of evidence to indicate the contemporaneousness of pottery-making man and the mammoths. For example, at Vero and Melbourne in Florida, excavators discovered the partly fossilized bones of numerous Pleistocene creatures along with decorated pottery, of a variety that did not differ significantly from the pottery recovered from the mound- and barrow-building cultures of the southern United States, which are generally dated to the first millennium BC. Again, George F. Carter drew attention to the Native American traditions which seemed to recall the mammoth. According to Carter, “The Indian descriptions are very graphic. They surely were describing elephants. (mammoths, mastodons and elephants are lumped together). One legend says that the agricultural Indians complained bitterly to the Great Spirit against the mammoth damaging their corn fields. The Great Spirit then killed them off by hurling thunderbolts at them. This was told to Thomas Jefferson in Washington and Cotton Mather in New England, and that is just what is portrayed [on relics found] in Bucks County and Holly Oaks specimens. Now why would the Indians invent a tale like that? And how could they describe the elephant as to size, trunk, tusks and all if they had never seen one?” (Carter, “The Mammoth in American Epigraphy,” Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications (Vol. 18), 1989, p. 213) Carter also noted, “A very late kill of a mastodon in Ecuador.” We are told that the mastodon was cooked in place by heaping earth over it, and the building of huge fires to cook the creature in an earth over effect. We hear that “The earth [that] heaped the carcasses contained potsherds … This places the kill to within the pottery period of that area and a very early date would be 3000 BC. Since some of the pottery was said to be decorated, a later date is quite possible.” (Carter, “A Note on the Elephant in America,” Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications (Vol. 18), 1989, p. 90)
Is it possible that the mammoth and other Pleistocene creatures were alive in 3000 BC or even more recently?
In my Genesis of Israel and Egypt, and in various other places, I have shown that the cataclysm which annihilated the Pleistocene megafauna, and which was clearly recalled by ancient peoples of the New World and the Old, must have occurred very close to 1400 BC. This cataclysm, universally referred to as the Flood, was associated with the Morning Star by the peoples of the Americas, and likewise with the goddess Ishtar or Venus (ie the Morning Star) by the peoples of the Old World. In the Old World the archaeological signature of this catastrophe is the great Flood stratum discovered by Leonard Woolley underneath the city of Ur in Lower Mesopotamia. Beneath the Flood, Woolley found the remains of a relatively primitive culture named ‘Ubaid, which nevertheless produced a basic form of hand-crafted and incised pottery. The cultures which appeared above the Flood were profoundly influenced by the catastrophe, and their literature and religious iconography show that the impulse to propitiate the angry sky-gods was extremely important in the building of shrines and temples for sacrifice. Traditions from the Americas speak of exactly the same thing.
We may say then that the mammoths and the other Pleistocene creatures co-existed with early man as he moved towards civilization. Both in the Americas and in the Old World human beings, in some areas at least, were already living in settled farming or fishing communities and producing basic types of pottery. Cities and towns did not yet exist, nor was there any large-scale shrine or temple-building. These things however did appear in the immediate aftermath of the cataclysm which destroyed the Pleistocene creatures, probably no more than a few decades after.
