Page 214 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

only in North America but in Central and South America, in the North
Atlantic, in continental Asia, and in Japan.
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It is difficult to imagine what this widespread volcanism might have
meant for people living in those strange and terrible times. But those who
recall the cauliflower-shaped clouds of dust, smoke and ash ejected into
the upper atmosphere by the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980 will
appreciate that a large number of such explosions (occurring sequentially
over a sustained period at different points around the globe) would not
only have had devastating local effects but would have caused a severe
deterioration in the world’s climate.
Mount Saint Helens spat out an estimated one cubic kilometre of rock
and was small-scale by comparison with the typical volcanism of the Ice
Age. A more representative impression would be the Indonesian volcano
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Krakatoa, which erupted in 1883 with such violence that more than
36,000 people were killed and the explosion was heard 3000 miles away.
From the epicentre in the Sunda Strait, tsunamis 100 feet high roared
across the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean, carrying steamships miles
inland and causing flooding as far away as East Africa and the western
coasts of the Americas. Eighteen cubic kilometres of rock and vast
quantities of ash and dust were pumped into the upper atmosphere;
skies all over the world were noticeably darker for more than two years
and sunsets notably redder. Average global temperatures fell measurably
during this period because volcanic dust-particles reflect the sun’s rays
back into space.
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During the episodes of intense volcanism which characterized the Ice
Age, we must envisage not one but many Krakatoas. The combined effect
would at first have been a great intensification of glacial conditions, as
the light of the sun was cut by the boiling dust clouds, and as already low
temperatures plummeted even further. Volcanoes also inject enormous
volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide is a
‘greenhouse gas’, so it is reasonable to suppose, as the dust began to
settle during periods of relative calm, that a degree of global warming
would have occurred. A number of authorities attribute the repeated
advances and retreats of the great ice sheets to precisely this see-saw
interaction between volcanism and climate.
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Global flooding

Geologists agree that by 8000 BC the great Wisconsin and Wurm ice-caps
had retreated. The Ice Age was over. However, the seven thousand years

31 Path of the Pole, p. 133, 176.
The Evolving Earth, Guild Publishing, London, 1989, p. 30.
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33 Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery, p. 64.
34 Path of the Pole, pp. 132-5.

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