Page 217 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Inevitably the first consequence was a precipitous rise in sea levels,
perhaps as much as 350 feet. Islands and land bridges disappeared and
45
vast sections of low-lying continental coastline were submerged. From
time to time great tidal waves rose up to engulf higher land as well. They
ebbed away, but in the process left unmistakable traces of their presence.
In the United States, ‘Ice Age marine features are present along the Gulf
coast east of the Mississippi River, in some places at altitudes that may
exceed 200 feet.’ In bogs covering glacial deposits in Michigan,
46
skeletons of two whales were discovered. In Georgia marine deposits
occur at altitudes of 160 feet, and in northern Florida at altitudes of at
least 240 feet. In Texas, well to the south of the farthest extent of the
Wisconsin Glaciation, the remains of Ice Age land mammals are found in
marine deposits. Another marine deposit, containing walrus, seals and at
least five genera of whales, overlies the seaboard of the north-eastern
states and the Arctic coast of Canada. In many areas along the Pacific
coast of North America Ice Age marine deposits extend ‘more than 200
miles inland.’ The bones of a whale have been found north of Lake
47
Ontario, about 440 feet above sea level, a skeleton of another whale in
Vermont, more than 500 feet above sea level, and another in the
Montreal-Quebec area about 600 feet above sea level.
48
Flood myths from all over the world characteristically and recurrently
describe scenes when humans and animals flee the rising tides and take
refuge on mountain tops. The fossil record confirms that this did indeed
happen during the melting of the ice sheets and that the mountains were
not always high enough to save the refugees from disaster. For example,
fissures in the rocks on the tops of isolated hills in central France are
filled with what is known as ‘osseous breccia’, consisting of the
splintered bones of mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses and other animals.
The 1430 feet peak of Mount Genay in Burgundy ‘is capped by a breccia
containing remains of mammoth, reindeer, horse and other animals’.
49
Much farther south, so too is the Rock of Gibraltar where ‘a human molar
and some flints worked by Paleolithic man were discovered among the
animal bones.’
50
Hippo remains, together with mammoth, rhinoceros, horse, bear, bison,

postglacial life fully established by 14,500 years ago. In Lithuania another bog
developed as early as 15,620 years ago. These two dates taken together are rather
suggestive. A bog can develop much faster than a forest. First, however, the ice must
disappear. And let us not forget that there was a great deal of ice.’
45 Ice Ages, p. 11, Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch, p. 117, Path of the Pole, p. 47.
46 R. F. Flint, Glacial Geology and the Pleistocene Epoch, 1947, pp. 294-5.
47 Ibid., p. 362.
48 Earth in Upheaval, p. 43; in general, pp. 42-4.
49 Ibid., p. 47. Joseph Prestwich, On Certain Phenomena Belonging to the Close of the
Last Geological Period and on their Bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood, Macmillan,
London, 1895, p. 36.
50 On Certain Phenomena, p. 48.

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