Newspapers / Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / Dec. 17, 1937, edition 1 / Page 11
Part of Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
’* :s " ■ In Ice Us days. when ■ America and Asia || uere one ronlirmous * land mas3> elephants | marched where now JB fMj rolls the Bering Sea. ?| New Discoveries of Vanished Lands By Ronald L. Ives THE prince of Atlantis, sitting sadly on the shore of Mexico, weeping for his vanished home land, may be only a novelist’s dream. Perhaps the homesick wander ings of the exiled children of Mu, after the foundering of their continent into the depths of the Pacific, never took place. Perhaps man never saw lands such as those. Vanished lands, however, are being discovered yearly by geologists. Deep under the waters of the Atlantic are canyons that could hold the Grand Can yon of Arizona with room left over Under the English channel is the valley of the ancestral Rhine. Deep in the Mediterranean Sea is the ancient har bor of Tyre. Cities under the sea are not uncommon; and man has occupied the earth for only about 1/2500 of geologic time. Great lands were en gulfed during the millions of years be fore man appeared on earth. Atlantis, perhaps, was only a myth started by Plato, but recent studies by geologists indicate that at one time, probably 300,000,000 years ago or more, when the ancestors of our common toad were the highest forms of life, there were great land areas where now is the Atlantic Ocean. Measurements of the gravity of the ocean floor, conducted in recent years, have given us some surprising facts, which may be explained by the pres ence at some great depth under the ocean of a foundered land mass. Recently, Dr. Richard M. Field, of Princeton University, suggested that un der the Atlantic there may be “a vast area of down-warped pre-Cambrian and Paleozoic geology,” perhaps as com plicated in structure as the up-warped structures of similar age (more than 300,000,000 years) on the continents. The evidence for this vast Atlantis of bygone pre-human ages is not com plete. Recent studies have supplied more facts, and more work is being done. Perhaps, if these suggestions are supported by later findings, we may find that some millions of years ago, instead of lemmings fleeing from cen tral Europe into the sea, amphibians, similar to our modern toads, migrated from Europe to America! A MERICAN geologists, studying rocks that make up our Appalachian Mountains, find that they must have been formed from materials eroded away from a mountainous land to the east —probably far to the east, in a place where the waters of the Atlantic now are. This land, called Appalachia by Charles Schuchert, eminent student of the lands of the past, may have been a part of the ancient and now sub merged Atlantic Continent. The Pacific, too, once swallowed a continent, according to legends collected by the late Col. James Churchward, who wrote a number of books in an in effectual effort to prove the former ex istence of the continent of Mu. Per haps. from the mass of evidence col lected by many workers, we may even- PIC North America today is made up of the joined fragments of the ancient continents of Cascadia, Canadia, Siouxia. Mexicoia, Antiilia, and Ap palachia. tually find evidence, in the Pacific area, of a former chain of islands which fur nished stepping stones by which ancient man crossed the Pacific. Mu, as a great continent, probably never existed, but islands in the Pacific do occasionally disappear. Only a few years ago, as tronomers planned to observe an eclipse from little Sarah Ann Island, and when they arrived at the site, with a ship load of telescopes and cameras, the is land “showed up missing.” Perhaps the nearest thing to a re enactment of the mythical foundering of Atlantis occurred in the Cook Island Group, in 1836, when Tuanaki Island suddenly sank into the Pacific, with a loss of thousands of lives. Perhaps some of the legends of lost continents originated from a similar occurrence. r PHE ruins on Easter and islands in the A South Pacific have been used as evi dence of a lost continent in that area. Now, with modern knowledge of the migrations of ancient races, and some ideas about the rising and falling of sea levels, it seems more probable that there never was, during man’s occu pance of the earth, any really great interchange of land and sea. Relatively small areas have submerged, and simi larly small areas have emerged from the sea, but the continental masses have not changed appreciably since the beginning of the Pleistocene ice age. Continental masses have divided up during geologic time, and have some times been rejoined. Much that is now land was once shallow sea, and some of our present seas were land areas at one time. Hudson Bay was, until a few million years ago, an area of dry land. Perhaps the most interesting example of a land mass that has been sea bot tom is the area known to geologists as Siouxia, and shown on ordinary maps as parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, aw ""ggggMi-- ■ wm. . ■■ ym WfA m rat .. ‘ JHi HI These giant statues set up by the long-gone inhabitants of lonely Easter Island in the South Pacific have been used as evidence of a lost continent in that area. New Mexico and Arizona. Siouxia, during the time when life was just beginning on earth, was a part of the ancient North American Conti nent. Some 500,000,000 years ago, an cient North America foundered into the Paleozoic Sea, leaving Siouxia as an island. Some millions of years later, a slight uplifting of the foundered land masses raised the little continent of Siouxia and joined it to the ancient con tinent of Canadia. Shortly after this, as geologists measure time, the lands sank again, leaving Siouxia an island continent, about one-third as large as Australia. After a few million years more, Siouxia was joined to another island continent, Mexicoia, by a slight lowering of the level of the ancient seas. While the great reptiles were evolv ing from simpler forms, Siouxia was a land mass, sometimes a part of a vast southern continent, sometimes only a small island in a slimy sea. Part of it later became a mountain range, in the same location as our present Rocky Mountains. As the great dinosaurs reached their development, little Siouxia foundered under waters of the of Lonj£ A£o Cretaceous Sea, never to appear again as Siouxia. As reptilian forms gave place to the warm-blooded mammals, lands all over the earth emerged from the sea, and Siouxia became a part of an Eocene North American Continent, which was very similar in shape to the North America of today. Now Siouxia, the little continent that was so many times submerged, lies a mile or more above sea level as a part of the great plains of the western United States. Many biologists believe that land bridges once connected the various con tinents for a few million years, allow ing various animals and plants to mi grate from one continent, to another. V 7 ANISHED land bridges in the area around the Bering Sea may explain man’s coming to the American Contin ent. Perhaps he migrated along with the Mammoth and Mastodon, when Asia became overpopulated in some era of the remote past. At the present time, our continental masses seem to be growing. North America, today, is made up of the joined fragments of the ancient continents of Cascadia, Canadia, Siouxia, Mexicoia. Antiilia, Appalachia, and perhaps others which geologists haven’t discovered yet South America and the other continents are likewise made up of fragments of older land masses, which, after un counted millions of years of independ ent existence, of growing, shrinking, submersion and reemergence from the sea, have joined together. •
Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Dec. 17, 1937, edition 1
11
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75