Page 207 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

resourceful creatures’ and the fossil record suggests that they were the
8
dominant species on the planet from about 100,000 years ago until
40,000 years ago. At some point during this lengthy and poorly
understood period, Homo sapiens sapiens established itself, leaving
behind fossil remains from about 40,000 years ago that are undisputably
those of modern humans, and supplanting the Neanderthals completely
by about 35,000 years ago.
9
In summary, human beings like ourselves, whom we could pass in the
street without blinking an eyelid if they were shaved and dressed in
modern clothes, are creatures of the last 115,000 years at the very
most—and more probably of only the last 50,000 years. It follows that if
the myths of cataclysm we have reviewed do reflect an epoch of
geological upheaval experienced by humanity, these upheavals took place
within the last 115,000 years, and more probably within the last 50,000
years.

Cinderella’s slipper

It is a curious coincidence of geology and palaeoanthropology that the
onset and progress of the last Ice Age, and the emergence and
proliferation of modern Man, more or less shadow each other. Curious
too is the fact that so little is known about either.
In North America the last Ice Age is called the Wisconsin Glaciation
(named for rock deposits studied in the state of Wisconsin) and its early
phase has been dated by geologists to 115,000 years ago. There were
10
various advances and retreats of the ice-cap after that, with the fastest
rate of accumulation taking place between 60,000 years ago and 17,000
years ago—a process culminating in the Tazewell Advance, which saw the
glaciation reach its maximum extent around 15,000 BC. By 13,000 BC,
11
however, millions of square miles of ice had melted, for reasons that have
never properly been explained, and by 8000 BC the Wisconsin had
withdrawn completely.
12
The Ice Age was a global phenomenon, affecting both the northern and
the southern hemispheres; similar climatic and geological conditions
therefore prevailed in many other parts of the world as well (notably in
eastern Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and South America). There was
massive glaciation in Europe, where the ice reached outward from
Scandinavia and Scotland to cover most of Great Britain, Denmark,
Poland, Russia, large parts of Germany, all of Switzerland, and big chunks

8 Ibid., p. 73.
9 Ibid., p. 73, 77.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 12:712.
10
11 Path of the Pole, p. 146.
12 Ibid., p. 152; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 12:712.

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