Page 213 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

however, is that at some point between 12-13,000 years ago a destroying
frost descended with horrifying speed upon Siberia and has never relaxed
its grip. In an eerie echo of the Avestic traditions, a land which had
previously enjoyed seven months of summer was converted almost
overnight into a land of ice and snow with ten months of harsh and
frozen winter.
24

A thousand Krakatoas, all at once

Many of the myths of cataclysm speak of times of terrible cold, of
darkened skies, of black, burning, bituminous rain. For centuries it must
have been like that all the way across the arc of death incorporating
immense tracts of Siberia, the Yukon and Alaska. Here, ‘Interspersed in
the muck depths, and sometimes through the very piles of bones and
tusks themselves, are layers of volcanic ash. There is no doubt that
coincidental with the [extinctions] there were volcanic eruptions of
tremendous proportions.’
25
There is a remarkable amount of evidence of excessive volcanism
during the decline of the Wisconsin ice cap. Far to the south of the
26
frozen Alaskan mucks, thousands of prehistoric animals and plants were
mired, all at once, in the famous La Brea tar pits of Los Angeles. Among
the creatures unearthed were bison, horses, camels, sloths, mammoths,
mastodons and at least seven hundred sabre-toothed tigers. A
27
disarticulated human skeleton was also found, completely enveloped in
bitumen, mingled with the bones of an extinct species of vulture. In
general, the La Brea remains (‘broken, mashed, contorted, and mixed in a
most heterogeneous mass’ ) speak eloquently of a sudden and dreadful
28
volcanic cataclysm.
29
Similar finds of typical late Ice Age birds and mammals have been
unearthed from asphalt at two other locations in California (Carpinteria
and McKittrick). In the San Pedro Valley, mastodon skeletons were
discovered still standing upright, ungulfed in great heaps of volcanic ash
and sand. Fossils from the glacial Lake Floristan in Colorado, and from
Oregon’s John Day Basin, were also excavated from tombs of volcanic
ash.
30
Although the tremendous eruptions that created such mass graves may
have been at their most intense during the last days of the Wisconsin,
they appear to have been recurrent throughout much of the Ice Age, not

24 Ibid., p. 256. Winter temperatures fall to 56 degrees below zero.
25 Ibid., p. 277.
26 Ibid., p. 132.
27 R. S. Luss, Fossils, 1931, p. 28.
G. M. Price, The New Geology, 1923, p. 579.
28
29 Ibid.
30 Earth In Upheaval, p. 63

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