One poorly explored topic
in the geological sciences is that of catastrophic land subsidence.
I have argued in previous posts that an event that I have named the
Pleistocene Nonconformity around 12900 BP was responsible for
shifting the upper crust of the earth around thirty degrees south
from the present North Pole to the center of Hudson Bay. This is a
pretty extravagant claim but as it turns out, the alternative once
clearly thought trough is even more extravagant. We will leave that
for now, but a search of my blog under Pleistocene Nonconformity will
do it.
A consequence of this
proposition is pretty simple. On the American part of the movement
arc the lands north of the equator stretched and the lands south of
the equator compressed. In Asia we had the reverse. The lands north
of the equator compressed and the lands south of the equator
stretched. It is pretty obvious what happened on the compression
parts of the movement arc. The Andes and the Himalayas were given a
super thrust that increased their height.
Do note that the actual
amount of compression was quite small. The shrinkage may have been
less that several miles. Earth has experienced far worse though
hopefully in slow motion.
What this all implies
though is an equal magnitudinal subsidence on the other side of each
crossing of the equator. In the Americas we have a good candidate in
Cuba which sits athwart the movement arc and unexpectedly at right
angles to the compression event. The same holds true near India were
we have a submerged mountain chain as large as Japan in the Indian
Ocean sitting opposite the Himalayas at a right angle.
It is noteworthy that a
pretty detailed cultural record exists in Indian scripture that not
only describes the upheavals but also adds plenty of additional
detail.
What is not so obvious is
that it also took time for the lands to settle down. Thus there was
plenty of detail that is not understood yet. This included the rise
of new river systems and additional subsidence as the elastic
underpinnings of the crust itself readjusted.
Let us now set that aside
and retreat to something we all can agree on. The Hudson Bay Basin
has rebounded at least three hundred meters as the ice was removed.
This rebound has been countered by some form of major elastic flow
from an area close but that was capable of subsiding. The North
Atlantic is the only such area available. Thus the argument that
parts of the mid ocean ridge subsided cannot be dismissed. Not all
of this subsidence would have occurred early on but much later and it
is certainly plausible that it occurred in historic times.
What this means is that
the two principal subsidence events from cultural sources have
legitimate geological explanations and can be located and have been
located.
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