Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we are back with
Speaker 3: the fourth and final part in our series called the
Speaker 3: Sunken Lands, about places on Earth that relatively recently used
Speaker 3: to be dry land but are now covered by water.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: In previous parts of the series we talked about, of course,
Speaker 3: legendary lands of this sort Atlantis and other fictional or
Speaker 3: mythical sunken civilizations. And sorry to be a bummer to
Speaker 3: the many Atlantis hunters out there, but yes, it does
Speaker 3: seem like the experts on the original sources that this
Speaker 3: story comes from, namely a couple of dialogues of Plato,
Speaker 3: think that it probably is a fictional invention and not
Speaker 3: a reference to a real place that existed. But that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that there are not lands that have been
Speaker 3: within the history of the human species submerged by water.
Speaker 3: In fact, we know of some examples of places that
Speaker 3: were both inhabited by humans and sunk under the water,
Speaker 3: not really anything like was described in the Atlantis story,
Speaker 3: but there are examples of the sunken land masses of
Speaker 3: Beringia and dogger Land, which during and briefly after the
Speaker 3: Last Ice Age formed land bridges between North America and
Speaker 3: Asia and Great Britain and continental Europe perspectively. We also
Speaker 3: talked about vanished islands in the Pacific. Some of these
Speaker 3: supposedly vanished islands are probably a result of errors in
Speaker 3: their original reporting, but others are places that probably actually
Speaker 3: did vanish or sink beneath the water due to cataclysmic
Speaker 3: seismic activity. We also talked about atolls, how they're formed,
Speaker 3: and where their central islands went. There was a hypothesis
Speaker 3: that Darwin had about this going all the way back
Speaker 3: to his voyage on the Beagle. There are new ideas
Speaker 3: related to karsification and the dissolution of carbonate rock or
Speaker 3: limestone when it's exposed over the surface of the sea,
Speaker 3: dissolution by rain water, and then also finally, in the
Speaker 3: last episode, we talked about places that have been flooded
Speaker 3: by damming, the damming of freshwater resources, damming rivers and
Speaker 3: streams to end up submerging areas that used to be
Speaker 3: exposed land now under lakes.
Speaker 2: Now A quick note on just the idea of sunken
Speaker 2: islands and sunken lands. We had a listener ask about
Speaker 2: this and discord. So I want to just briefly point
Speaker 2: out that, especially in our discussion of atolls in the
Speaker 2: last episode, the terms sunk in or to sink may
Speaker 2: ultimately be too simplistic for these discussions because they're all
Speaker 2: very based on the human perspective of what's going on.
Speaker 2: And in any case, we're talking about situations that may
Speaker 2: entail both rising and lowering sea levels, as well as
Speaker 2: land that is pushed up and or created by volcanic, organic,
Speaker 2: or seismic forces, and land that lowers sometimes beneath water
Speaker 2: level due to erosion, seismic forces, etc. So just in
Speaker 2: all cases, just keep in mind that, yeah, sunk in
Speaker 2: sinking maybe doesn't fully capture the picture of what's going on.
Speaker 3: Well. Actually, as luck would have it, I do want
Speaker 3: to get to one example of actual sinking of lands
Speaker 3: in just a bit here. So in the background of
Speaker 3: discussing these historical cases of landscapes covered by rising seas,
Speaker 3: there is the knowledge that most of us have now
Speaker 3: that relatively rapid increases in sea level are happening right
Speaker 3: now and will continue in the coming decades due to
Speaker 3: climate change, due to the warming of the seas the
Speaker 3: melting of glaciers. Sea level changes have happened on Earth before,
Speaker 3: but one thing that's different now is how much of
Speaker 3: the physical infrastructure and culture of modern human civilization was
Speaker 3: designed on the assumption of current sea levels staying where
Speaker 3: they are. Whole cities, whole countries even are threatened by
Speaker 3: rising waters because they have been built without those rising
Speaker 3: waters in mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of the very places we've discussed, at least
Speaker 2: in passing in these episodes, like the Maldives, are greatly
Speaker 2: threatened by these rising sea waters.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, But of course this applies to coastal settlements
Speaker 3: all over the world, on every continent on Earth, though
Speaker 3: though in different ways. Not every coastal settlement will be
Speaker 3: affected the same, and I want to get to some
Speaker 3: of that variance in just a bit here. But as
Speaker 3: a baseline, I thought we should look at how much
Speaker 3: are sea levels expected to rise in the next century
Speaker 3: or so. That depends on a number of variables, but
Speaker 3: I was looking at the most recent ipc SA report,
Speaker 3: which had put together a series of estimates. First of all,
Speaker 3: they look at the question of what is happening to
Speaker 3: global mean sea level right now, what has already happened
Speaker 3: in the traceable recent past, whatever happens in the future.
Speaker 3: One thing we know for certain is that the sea
Speaker 3: level is already rising and has already risen, and the
Speaker 3: rate at which it rises will very likely accelerate in
Speaker 3: the future. Based on our best measurements averaged over different
Speaker 3: time periods, we can see that sea levels have risen
Speaker 3: over over the past century, and the basically the more
Speaker 3: recent the chunk of time you look at, is the
Speaker 3: faster they're rising. So the IPCC report points out that
Speaker 3: sea levels rose about one point four millimeters per year
Speaker 3: if you look at the time period nineteen oh one
Speaker 3: to nineteen ninety If you shift more recently and look
Speaker 3: at nineteen seventy to twenty fifteen, it's two point one
Speaker 3: millimeters per year. If you just look at nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: three to twenty fifteen, it's three point two millimeters per year.
Speaker 3: If you just look at two thousand and six to
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, it's three point six millimeters per year. So
Speaker 3: the later the period of the last century you look at,
Speaker 3: the more it is rising per year. Now you might
Speaker 3: reasonably wonder how do you actually measure sea level down
Speaker 3: to the millimeter? Like the top of the water is
Speaker 3: always moving, so that's a reasonable question. What methods do
Speaker 3: you have to know that the average level of the
Speaker 3: sea is rising. There are a couple of major metrics
Speaker 3: here cited, and I didn't fully know how these worked beforehand,
Speaker 3: so I thought this was interesting. One method used is
Speaker 3: tide gauges. These systems have been used in some form
Speaker 3: to record sea levels for hundreds of years, or at
Speaker 3: least going back I think to the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: though now they've changed form to incorporate different types of
Speaker 3: sensors and computers and other modern components, but they still
Speaker 3: have some things in common. So the old method here
Speaker 3: was that they would use a device called a stilling well,
Speaker 3: and this was basically a pipe about a foot wide
Speaker 3: that would be plunged down into the water from a
Speaker 3: place called a tide station, essentially a house built out
Speaker 3: on a dock, and this pipe would still the water
Speaker 3: around a floating device. The float would be suspended down
Speaker 3: into the well by a wire, and then that wire
Speaker 3: would be attached at the other end to a recording device,
Speaker 3: which might be something like a pin that would mark
Speaker 3: the water level automatically on a paper strip. So the
Speaker 3: float floats on the top of the water. As the
Speaker 3: water rises, the pin moves and marks that level on
Speaker 3: the paper strip. As the water goes down, the pin
Speaker 3: moves again, and then these marks were analyzed and averaged
Speaker 3: together to form a picture of the tidal variance and
Speaker 3: the average sea level over time. This method changed so
Speaker 3: that the data could be fed directly into computers and
Speaker 3: these tide stations also they had measuring staffs as well.
Speaker 3: You've probably seen things like this somewhere around the coast before,
Speaker 3: where it's just like a stick poking out of the water.
Speaker 3: It's basically a ruler, you know, It's got height markings
Speaker 3: on them, and then the operators could visually observe the
Speaker 3: staff and compare that to the mechanical readings from the
Speaker 3: float device. Now, tide gauges still exist and they still
Speaker 3: make readings, but they've got new system new types of
Speaker 3: sensors today to get their readings from. Modern tide gauges
Speaker 3: tend to use acoustic sounding tubes instead of a float
Speaker 3: and distilling well, so the acoustic sounding tube will admit
Speaker 3: will emit a sound wave from a fixed height and
Speaker 3: then wait for it to bounce off of the water's
Speaker 3: surface and come back. And the time to return of
Speaker 3: the signal allows you to calculate the height of the
Speaker 3: water across the tidal variants. So you can put in
Speaker 3: place these tide gauges in coastal environments all around the
Speaker 3: world and average them out to try to get some
Speaker 3: information about what the global sea levels are doing all
Speaker 3: around the world. And if you look at that information,
Speaker 3: it shows yes, indeed the sea levels have been rising.
Speaker 3: They've been rising over the last century along the lines
Speaker 3: of the measurements I mentioned a minute ago. But if
Speaker 3: you're able, you'd also want to compare that data to
Speaker 3: other sources of information to make sure you're getting the
Speaker 3: most accurate possible average. So there is another method is used,
Speaker 3: and that is altimetry. This is the use of satellite
Speaker 3: based tools called radar altimeters to measure the height of
Speaker 3: the sea. Basically, you can know the altitude of a
Speaker 3: satellite with a high degree of precision. You can track
Speaker 3: that with instruments like laser range rangefinders, like you bounce
Speaker 3: a laser off the satellite, so you can tell pretty
Speaker 3: much exactly how high it is. And then with that
Speaker 3: information in mind, you can use a satellite to send
Speaker 3: out a microwave pulse toward the Earth. That pulse bounces
Speaker 3: off of the surface of the ocean and then bounces
Speaker 3: back to the satellite and hits a return sensor, and
Speaker 3: then the satellite measures the time of the round trip
Speaker 3: between the emitter and the surface of the ocean to
Speaker 3: get a very precise measurement of the distance between the
Speaker 3: satellite and the water, which, again in combination with the
Speaker 3: precisely known altitude of the satellite, can be used to
Speaker 3: measure the level of the sea. And of course radar
Speaker 3: altimetry can be used to measure average sea level changes
Speaker 3: over time and get global averages and stuff, but it
Speaker 3: can be also used I thought this was interesting to
Speaker 3: measure variations in the height of the water around the
Speaker 3: world at the same time. So a kind of crazy
Speaker 3: thing about the ocean is that it is not at
Speaker 3: the same height everywhere on Earth all the time. That
Speaker 3: seems counterintuitive because you think of water and a container
Speaker 3: like a bowl or something eventually finding you know, finding
Speaker 3: its own level. It kind of levels out. But across
Speaker 3: the world's oceans there are peaks and valleys that arise
Speaker 3: in certain places at certain times, and so one example
Speaker 3: we're all familiar with is the tide. You know, the
Speaker 3: tide is caused mainly by gravity, by the gravitational influence
Speaker 3: of the moon, but also the Sun. But there are
Speaker 3: other factors that can cause local and sometimes temporary high
Speaker 3: and low altitudes of seawater as well. I was reading
Speaker 3: a report from NASA Earth Observatory about this and it
Speaker 3: mentioned friction caused by wind on the surface of the water,
Speaker 3: So like wind sort of dragging the water around and
Speaker 3: piling it up in certain places. I guess that's a
Speaker 3: crude way of describing it, but that is sort of
Speaker 3: what happens. There are also Coriolis effects and ocean currents,
Speaker 3: and there are also effects of variations in atmospheric pressure,
Speaker 3: so you know, the atmosphere pushing the surface of the
Speaker 3: water down in regions where the pressure is high and
Speaker 3: so forth. And we can measure these altitude variations across
Speaker 3: the ocean with the help of satellite based radar altimetry.
Speaker 3: As just one example of the variance in the height
Speaker 3: of the oceans around the world. According to NASA, the
Speaker 3: sea level in the Pacific Ocean is generally higher than
Speaker 3: the Atlantic Ocean, roughly twenty centimeters or about eight inches higher.
Speaker 3: How is that possible, Well, the volume of seawater is
Speaker 3: not static. Changes in the temperature and salinity of seawater
Speaker 3: affect its density, so warmer water generally is less dense,
Speaker 3: it takes up more space per unit of mass. The
Speaker 3: Pacific is on average warmer, so its volume is greater,
Speaker 3: and thus Pacific sea levels are higher, and other factors
Speaker 3: contribute like this as well. This kind of variation is
Speaker 3: actually acknowledged in the IPCC report where they say, quote
Speaker 3: sea level rise is not globally uniform and varies regionally.
Speaker 3: Thermal expansion, ocean dynamics, and land ice loss contributions will
Speaker 3: generate regional departures of about plus or minus thirty percent
Speaker 3: around the global means sea level rise, and those regional
Speaker 3: variations in changes in sea level I want to come
Speaker 3: back to that in a minute.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Of course, we all know the main cause of the
Speaker 3: current warming that is driving sea level rise is, of
Speaker 3: course what the IPCC report calls anthropogenic forcing. This means
Speaker 3: results of human activity, primarily the changing of the composition
Speaker 3: of the atmosphere it to trap more heat This is
Speaker 3: the famous greenhouse effect. Putting more things like carbon methane
Speaker 3: into the atmosphere increases the heat trapping potency of the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: It traps more heat the earth worms. So we know
Speaker 3: sea levels have been rising and they will continue to rise,
Speaker 3: but how much and how fast they rise is highly
Speaker 3: variable from our current point of view. So there are
Speaker 3: some estimates based on current data. According to the IPCC
Speaker 3: predictions relative to the mean sea level in the period
Speaker 3: from nineteen eighty six to two thousand and five, they
Speaker 3: predict that the global mean sea level will rise probably
Speaker 3: somewhere between zero point four to three meters or about
Speaker 3: one point four feet to zero point eight four meters,
Speaker 3: which is about two point eight feet, by the year
Speaker 3: twenty one hundred, and then due to a cascade of factors,
Speaker 3: sea levels will continued to rise for centuries after that,
Speaker 3: and we'll probably stay higher for thousands of hyears. Now,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't hang on those exact numbers too much because
Speaker 3: those are estimates. There are also averages of estimates, and
Speaker 3: I've seen other reports with different estimates, especially at the
Speaker 3: high end of like how bad could it possibly get
Speaker 3: if we just keep increasing more and more greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 3: But the important thing to note is that the high
Speaker 3: and low end projections here are dependent on the variable
Speaker 3: of human activity. So if we continue increasing the concentration
Speaker 3: of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we're somewhat closer to
Speaker 3: the top end of that range, and the low end
Speaker 3: is feasible if we drastically reduce greenhouse gas output and
Speaker 3: factor in some kind of negative emissions as well, such
Speaker 3: as massive natural or artificial carbon sequestration, and natural carbon
Speaker 3: sequestration would be trapping carbon in things like plants, forests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as is. I've heard a lot of experts
Speaker 2: say it's not that there isn't room for optimism in
Speaker 2: all of this, but the optimism does not come without action, Right,
Speaker 2: there are definite steps that need to be taken. We
Speaker 2: can't just be like, ah, it might be, it might
Speaker 2: be okay, maybe it's just gonna be the lower We'll
Speaker 2: just we'll roll the dice and see, like that's not
Speaker 2: how it's going to work out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. The lower end of the prediction
Speaker 3: range there is based on an assumption of action. If
Speaker 3: humanity does something to massively reduce the contribution to global
Speaker 3: warming through greenhouse gases, So in that case, yes, we
Speaker 3: could limit it to the lower levels of sea level rise.
Speaker 3: But to be clear, some amount of sea level rise
Speaker 3: at this point has already happened and is basically locked in.
Speaker 3: The question is how much worse will it get? And
Speaker 3: that outcome is clearly dependent to a large extent on
Speaker 3: what we do. But in most plausible scenarios we can
Speaker 3: expect somewhere between something like one and three feet of
Speaker 3: global sea level rise by the end of this century.
Speaker 3: Now I mentioned there are other estimates I've come across.
Speaker 3: Some of these are specifically focused on like certain countries
Speaker 3: or regions, or might might be drawing on some emphasizing
Speaker 3: different data sources or something. But another estimate I came
Speaker 3: across was a twenty twenty two joint report by NASA,
Speaker 3: the NOAA, and several other federal agencies of the US
Speaker 3: government called Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for
Speaker 3: the United States. This was an update to a previous
Speaker 3: report from twenty seventeen, and this report quote concludes that
Speaker 3: sea level along US coast lines will rise ten to
Speaker 3: twelve inches or twenty five to thirty centimeters on average
Speaker 3: above today's levels by twenty fifty, so that's predicting roughly
Speaker 3: a foot of increase by the middle of the century.
Speaker 3: Also on the more dire end, this one was predicting
Speaker 3: much higher levels of sea level rise at the basically
Speaker 3: at the letter rip scenario. It's just like do nothing
Speaker 3: scenario by the end of this century. If you want
Speaker 3: to experiment with the findings of this report, it actually
Speaker 3: has an online mapping tool you can look up you
Speaker 3: and mess around with yourself, called the Interagency Sea Level
Speaker 3: Rise Scenario Tool. You can google that and mess with
Speaker 3: it yourself if you want. Now, there are a couple
Speaker 3: of major contributors to the actual physical causes of sea
Speaker 3: level rise due to a warming climate. One of them
Speaker 3: is melting ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets. We've already
Speaker 3: talked about the role of melting ice in the sea
Speaker 3: level increases at the end of the Pleistocene, which were
Speaker 3: responsible for inundating Doggerland and Beringia, But there's still a
Speaker 3: lot of ice on Earth left to melt. Another important
Speaker 3: cause of sea level rise is the thermal expansion of water.
Speaker 3: Remember what I was talking about a minute ago, with
Speaker 3: the difference in the height of the Pacific Ocean versus
Speaker 3: the Atlantic Ocean. One factor there being that the Pacific
Speaker 3: Ocean waters on average are warmer. This stacks on top
Speaker 3: of the melting, but as water heats up, it becomes
Speaker 3: less dense and takes up more space. Warmer water takes
Speaker 3: up more space per unit of mass, so warmer oceans
Speaker 3: will be taller. And the thermal expansion of water plays
Speaker 3: a role already in a number of different phenomena that
Speaker 3: happened within the ocean, for example in the in the
Speaker 3: creation of ocean currents and in stratification of water levels
Speaker 3: within the ocean. Like warmer water floats on top of
Speaker 3: colder water, but anyway, as the Earth warms, the water
Speaker 3: thermally expands also, so that contributes to the sea level
Speaker 3: being higher. Now, what does this actually mean for the
Speaker 3: everyday life of people living in low lying coastal areas
Speaker 3: of planet Earth. I think one thing people sometimes like,
Speaker 3: if you haven't read much about this, you might have
Speaker 3: trouble imagining the form exactly this will take. Like you're
Speaker 3: just imagining the sea rising in a kind of static way,
Speaker 3: Like you know, it's either dry land or it's underwater.
Speaker 3: What's in between? There actually is something in between, which
Speaker 3: is frequent flooding. The way many people will probably experience
Speaker 3: sea level rise at first is an increase in the
Speaker 3: frequency and destructiveness of extreme weather events that are dependent
Speaker 3: on sea level for the amount of damage they cause.
Speaker 3: So a person who lives in a low lying coastal
Speaker 3: city will start dealing with storm related floods on a
Speaker 3: more and more frequent basis. What used to be a
Speaker 3: once in a century flood will become a regular occurrence,
Speaker 3: until at some point the flooding becomes so common that
Speaker 3: people may start to simply consider a place uninhabitable. And
Speaker 3: this happens before that place is more or less permanently underwater,
Speaker 3: But that eventually happens too. Of course, this kind of
Speaker 3: flooding and water encroachment, it comes with all kinds of
Speaker 3: consequences of massive economic damage, destruction of property, destruction of life, livelihoods,
Speaker 3: displacement of people, and all of the downstream effects of that.
Speaker 3: But another factor people might not think about are the
Speaker 3: effects of the ingress of salt water into places with
Speaker 3: freshwater resources, like into river deltas and so forth. Of course,
Speaker 3: this can have negative effects on habitats and wildlife, but
Speaker 3: also on agriculture and groundwater and all that. You don't
Speaker 3: want to salt your earth. But to come back to
Speaker 3: an issue I raised earlier, an interesting factor contributing to
Speaker 3: the coming inundation of coastal areas and especially coastal cities,
Speaker 3: is that not only are sea levels definitely rising around
Speaker 3: the globe and differently in different places, in some places
Speaker 3: the ground is literally sinking. The lands are not just
Speaker 3: metaphorically sunken because the water covers them, they are quite
Speaker 3: literally directly sunken. The land is going down. So you
Speaker 3: might have a coastal city that is experiencing more and
Speaker 3: more frequent flooding during storm surges as the sea grows taller,
Speaker 3: But also the ground level of the city is several
Speaker 3: millimeters lower every year, which makes the relative sea level
Speaker 3: rise even worse. Now, how is that possible? Well, there
Speaker 3: are multiple causes, but I was reading about this in
Speaker 3: a major One of the causes seems to be the
Speaker 3: extraction of ground water from underlying aquifers. Especially you're extracting
Speaker 3: it faster than those aquifers are replenished, and as the
Speaker 3: water is extracted, it creates these voids underground. These voids
Speaker 3: grow the soil gets compressed, especially if you're putting a
Speaker 3: bunch of heavy stuff on the soil, such as a
Speaker 3: city like building on top of it, and then that
Speaker 3: compressing of the ground and the compressing into the voids
Speaker 3: below essentially means the city literally starts to sink. And
Speaker 3: this is happening to cities all around the world. I
Speaker 3: was reading a really interesting article that addresses this issue.
Speaker 3: It's in Wired by Matt Simon called sea level rise
Speaker 3: be catastrophic and unequal. So this article is emphasizing again
Speaker 3: that the global means sea level rise estimates are averages.
Speaker 3: In specific places, the problem could be not as bad
Speaker 3: or much much worse. Simon writes, quote Galveston, Texas, where
Speaker 3: the land is slumping, could see almost two feet of
Speaker 3: rise by the year twenty fifty. Meanwhile, Anchorage, Alaska could
Speaker 3: see eight inches of sea level drop thanks to the
Speaker 3: fact that its land is actually rising following the departure
Speaker 3: of long gone glaciers. So why is Galveston, Texas sinking
Speaker 3: relative to the sea level, he says, Mainly, there are
Speaker 3: two causes here, and they're both related to the extraction
Speaker 3: of liquids from underground reservoirs. One is the extraction of
Speaker 3: water and the other is oil extraction of oil. And
Speaker 3: this is true in many places as a result of
Speaker 3: the combination of global sea level rise and land subsidence.
Speaker 3: Some of the areas of the world that are going
Speaker 3: to be the hardest hit by the greatest relative local
Speaker 3: sea level rise are on the Gulf Coast of the
Speaker 3: United States, the Gulf Coast, because they're suffering both of
Speaker 3: these at the same time. The land is going down
Speaker 3: and the sea is coming up. Simon in this article
Speaker 3: quotes a guy named Bob Stokes who is president of
Speaker 3: the conservation nonprofit called the Galveston Bay Foundation, and he
Speaker 3: tells a story that I thought was wild. So this
Speaker 3: is Stokes talking in the article. He says, quote, the
Speaker 3: numbers I'm going to give you are are going to
Speaker 3: be hard to believe. But there is an area in
Speaker 3: Baytown where there is a big Exxon mobile industrial plant
Speaker 3: that sank about eleven feet in a period of fifty
Speaker 3: or sixty years because they were unsustainably pulling water out
Speaker 3: of there. There was a nice and upper middle class
Speaker 3: subdivision where all the Exxon executives lived that ultimately had
Speaker 3: to be condemned because water was lapping up the foundations
Speaker 3: of these houses, So there water and oil being extracted
Speaker 3: from below. The land is sinking and the sea is
Speaker 3: coming up. Meanwhile, with the example of Anchorage, Alaska, this
Speaker 3: is typical of many areas on the southern coast of
Speaker 3: Alaska where the ground is rising due to glacial retreat.
Speaker 3: This is called glacial isostatic adjustment, and Simon uses the
Speaker 3: analogy of when you get up off of a memory
Speaker 3: foam mattress and that mattress gradually fills in the dent
Speaker 3: you left with your body. That's kind of what the
Speaker 3: land does when a glacier retreats. When a glacier melts away,
Speaker 3: it sort of bounces back up. So areas where the
Speaker 3: land is rising relative to the sea are going to
Speaker 3: be on average hit less by global mean sea level increases,
Speaker 3: and areas where the land is literally sinking, such as
Speaker 3: in many cities on the Gulf Coast, they're going to
Speaker 3: be hit harder than average. And there are a lot
Speaker 3: of sinking cities, not just on the Gulf Coast, but
Speaker 3: according to the map included all along the US East coast. Now,
Speaker 3: this article goes on to talk about other factors contributing
Speaker 3: to the regional variation in the effects of sea level
Speaker 3: rise as well, such as local characteristics of water. You know,
Speaker 3: warmer waters, as we said earlier, usually mean higher sea levels,
Speaker 3: but also more storm surge and things like that. But
Speaker 3: important thing to remember at the end of this projections
Speaker 3: are variable. At this point, some amount of sea level
Speaker 3: rise is locked in, but humanity has power over how
Speaker 3: much worse the problem gets, and the recipe for minimizing
Speaker 3: damage to world civilization is reducing greenhouse gases in the
Speaker 3: atmosphere as much as possible, stop adding them, and to
Speaker 3: the extent possible, take them out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, the natural environment is maguable, as we've discussed,
Speaker 2: and humanity has tremendous power and tremendous will. We see
Speaker 2: that in the degree to which we have and are
Speaker 2: changing things. But that power and will can also be
Speaker 2: applied to changing the ways that we are interacting with
Speaker 2: the natural world for the better. But again, it does
Speaker 2: require action. It doesn't require just setting back and hoping
Speaker 2: that it will be better or pretending that the problem
Speaker 2: does not exist.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 2: All right, So this is the fourth part of our series,
Speaker 2: and we could honestly easily keep going, but we can't
Speaker 2: because they've got some Christmas stuff to do next week.
Speaker 2: So in this last section, I'd like to refer to
Speaker 2: the ancient Hindu Hindu epic the Ramayana, which I do
Speaker 2: want to add a note. I've brought this up in
Speaker 2: the show, but I've brought the topic up on the
Speaker 2: show before, but I don't know that I've been using
Speaker 2: the proper pronunciation. I may have said it wrong in
Speaker 2: the past, in which case my apologies. But the Ramayana,
Speaker 2: which chronicles the life of King Rama or Ram, an
Speaker 2: incarnation of Vishnu. If if you're not familiar with the story,
Speaker 2: there are lots of ins and outs. It's essentially the
Speaker 2: story of this of this mythical king, this divine king's life.
Speaker 2: But there's perhaps the most famous plot line in there
Speaker 2: is that his wife Sita is kidnapped by the ten
Speaker 2: headed demon King of Ravana, who takes her away to
Speaker 2: the land of Lanka, provoking a great war to reclaim her. So,
Speaker 2: of course Rama has to assemble the troops. He has
Speaker 2: to gather his forces, and this includes various figures and factions,
Speaker 2: including a people known as the Vanara. In short, the
Speaker 2: Vanara are the monkeys if you've seen illustrations of the
Speaker 2: Ramayana before, you've you know, some of the related traditions.
Speaker 2: You've you've probably seen images of these various monkey troops
Speaker 2: aiding Rama. And of course you may be familiar with Hahneman,
Speaker 2: the most famous of the Vannara. This is, you know,
Speaker 2: the tireless friend to Rama and his you know, his
Speaker 2: key champion and a very powerful entity that is, I
Speaker 2: believe the son of a wind deity in some traditions. So,
Speaker 2: but I was looking in the into the venera a
Speaker 2: bit more. And according to the author Nanditha Krishna in
Speaker 2: the book Sacred Animals of India, which I've referred to
Speaker 2: in the past, the Sanskrit word for primate is actually
Speaker 2: copy but the word used in the Ramayana Venara essentially
Speaker 2: translates to people of the forest, with Vana being forest
Speaker 2: and Nara being men. Interesting, yeah, the author writes that
Speaker 2: this term probably never actually meant monkey. In fact, in Jainism,
Speaker 2: the Venara are described as a forest dwelling tribe of people,
Speaker 2: and elsewhere in the Hindu epic the Mahabarata, they are
Speaker 2: also discussed as such, contributing to this kind of mythic
Speaker 2: transformation from perhaps, you know, some sort of forest dwelling people,
Speaker 2: too intelligent humanoid primates. It might have been that these people,
Speaker 2: to whatever extent you know, they were real. They may
Speaker 2: have been worshippers of a primate themed deity, or they
Speaker 2: might have used some sort of primate themed totem of
Speaker 2: some sort, or some sort of totem system, But the
Speaker 2: author stresses that it could also be neither of these.
Speaker 2: We just don't know, And so the Venar include several
Speaker 2: important individuals that pop up in the epic. There's Mighty Haneman,
Speaker 2: as we already noted, most famous of them all. There's
Speaker 2: King Sogriva, and there's also a pair of twins known
Speaker 2: as Nala and Nila. And the twins ate is especially
Speaker 2: important because Rama must deliver his army across the waters
Speaker 2: to the island fortress of Lanka in order to reclaim
Speaker 2: his bride, and so, as the epic describes, they have
Speaker 2: to create a bridge, and this is where Nala and
Speaker 2: sometimes Nila depending on the version, becomes essential. This is
Speaker 2: a quote from the Ramayana. In translation of course, quote
Speaker 2: a bridge was thrown by Nala or the narrow sea
Speaker 2: from shore to shore. They crossed to Lanka's Golden town,
Speaker 2: where Rama's hands smote Ravi down.
Speaker 3: A bridge was thrown. Wow, how do you throw a bridge?
Speaker 2: Well, this is where this sort of things get get interesting,
Speaker 2: dissecting all of this, because the accounts apparently vary. In
Speaker 2: some cases, the resulting bridge that gets thrown or constructed
Speaker 2: is in fact a great bridge that it's you know,
Speaker 2: something built. It's constructed. It's perhaps made it would at
Speaker 2: the base and then become stone further up. You know,
Speaker 2: it is like a huge megalwork that connects one land
Speaker 2: to the next so that the army can march over it.
Speaker 2: Other times it's described more as I mean, it's still
Speaker 2: something that's constructed, but with a lot more magic involved.
Speaker 2: Like there are stories about the Varna using floating stones
Speaker 2: to build this bridge, throwing the stones in the water,
Speaker 2: and in some cases these are stones that kind of
Speaker 2: float on their own already. But then there are other
Speaker 2: accounts where like there's a certain amount of monkey trickiness.
Speaker 2: It's involved, like they do something like I think the
Speaker 2: account that I was reading, one of the accounts is
Speaker 2: that they were like throwing holy items into the water,
Speaker 2: and the gods said Okay, that's that nothing. The monkey's
Speaker 2: throwing the water can sink. Everything has to float. We
Speaker 2: can't have the stuff sinking to the bottom. And then
Speaker 2: they starts throwing the stones in and they kind of
Speaker 2: find a loophole to build the bridge.
Speaker 3: Brilliant leve a loophole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but at any rate, there's no like one way.
Speaker 2: Apparently there are different accounts, different stories, but we end
Speaker 2: up with the idea of a bridge one way or another.
Speaker 2: This is Rama's bridge or the Rama sit to now,
Speaker 2: especially since this has already come up in this series
Speaker 2: we're doing, and I know some of you are thinking
Speaker 2: about those floating pumice rocks and wondering if observations of
Speaker 2: this phenomenon might have influenced the myth making or if
Speaker 2: this has anything to do with it, And apparently this
Speaker 2: has been discussed those the number of criticisms emerge concerning
Speaker 2: like the lack of such stones in areas that are
Speaker 2: discussed as possibly linking up with the area where this
Speaker 2: great bridge could have been or it's supposed to have been.
Speaker 2: More on that in a second. And then of course
Speaker 2: you get into some other situations too, like it's one
Speaker 2: thing for you could I guess you could say, like
Speaker 2: the idea could be passed on and then could spill
Speaker 2: over into some myth making. But could you actually build
Speaker 2: a bridge using pumice stones? I think there's significantly less
Speaker 2: evidence for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, would they support your weight? I mean I would
Speaker 3: think it'd be more like the you know, the ball pit.
Speaker 3: You kind of fall in between them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think they're also just more convincing ideas
Speaker 2: regarding all of this. So, of course, the big questions
Speaker 2: here would be, Okay, first of all, did something even
Speaker 2: remotely like the events of this Hindu epic ever take place?
Speaker 2: And if so, where did it take place? Where would
Speaker 2: this bridge have been, and what land masses would it
Speaker 2: have been linking. So, versions of question one, to be clear,
Speaker 2: turn up in all religions, and they're often asked with
Speaker 2: different objectives in mind. Very broadly speaking, some researchers seek
Speaker 2: to prove religious accounts correct by finding corroborating evidence in archaeology, history,
Speaker 2: and geology, while others seek to employ religious text to
Speaker 2: it to better understand human and geologic history. Again, very
Speaker 2: broadly speaking, because you can wind up with a little
Speaker 2: bit of column A and column B and vice versa.
Speaker 2: And human motivations are ultimately complicated, but it also means
Speaker 2: that these sorts of discussions can generate strong emotions as well.
Speaker 2: So I would suppose we should stress something that we
Speaker 2: often touch on, that mythology is not fiction, even if
Speaker 2: it is not objective reality. Not to say that it
Speaker 2: is necessarily completely removed from objective reality, but it's kind
Speaker 2: of this third category between the two that can still
Speaker 2: empower us on multiple levels and give life meaning without
Speaker 2: being like one to one with the objective world.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I've often spoken this opinion with reference to
Speaker 3: things like the creation story told in Genesis or something that.
Speaker 3: Are you sure that the people who first wrote this
Speaker 3: story even necessarily meant it to be taken as a literal,
Speaker 3: factual account.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, it kind of comes back to
Speaker 2: some of the things we're discussing just concerning some of
Speaker 2: these ideas of different lost islands and so forth. It's like,
Speaker 2: we always want to find that one reason, that one explanation,
Speaker 2: and you know, oftentimes, especially when we're dealing with things
Speaker 2: like this, that are concepts that exist not only in
Speaker 2: one human imagination, but in multiple human imaginations spread out
Speaker 2: across different communities and cultures over long stretches of time,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of room for various influences to shape
Speaker 2: the final form of the thing. So anyway, coming to
Speaker 2: this idea of a bridge, where would you possibly look
Speaker 2: for evidence of this? So a lot of it comes
Speaker 2: down to the possible location of the island of Lanka.
Speaker 2: And there's a great deal of scholarship on this question alone,
Speaker 2: with the prime candidate seeming to be the island of
Speaker 2: Sri Lanka. The Maldives, Sumatra, and even Madagascar have also
Speaker 2: been discussed. But and of course conspiracy minded folks are
Speaker 2: not above suggesting Atlantis. That it was Atlantis, but it was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was not Atlantis. So for for our purposes here,
Speaker 2: we're going to focus mostly on Sri Lanka, as that's
Speaker 2: where there's some really interesting evidence to discuss, and that
Speaker 2: seems to where to be where a lot of the
Speaker 2: energy seems to be going. Sri Lanka is easily spotted
Speaker 2: on any map, separated from the Indian Peninsula by the
Speaker 2: Gulf of Manar and the Palk Strait. It has been
Speaker 2: inhabited by humans since prehistoric times, and so it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's been it's been presented and There's there's additional evidence
Speaker 2: to support this idea as well that we don't have
Speaker 2: time to get into. But a lot of people make
Speaker 2: the case that Sri Lanka was Lanka, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: how would you get an army, an ancient army, uh,
Speaker 2: supernatural otherwise from point A to point B. Well, this
Speaker 2: is of course where the bridge comes in. And of course,
Speaker 2: in the context of a mythic story, you know, the
Speaker 2: bridge doesn't have to be anything that corresponds with actual
Speaker 2: geology or time specific technology. I mean, people can imagine
Speaker 2: bridges spanning impossible distances, that sort of thing. I think
Speaker 2: all that goes without saying, and there's plenty of things
Speaker 2: that happen in the Hindu epics that are inherently supernatural.
Speaker 2: But attempts to nail down a possible actual bridge to
Speaker 2: Sri Lanka would constitute either a manufactured bridge and or
Speaker 2: a naturally occurring bridge. It's the idea of at least
Speaker 2: some level of naturally occurring bridge. This is where it
Speaker 2: gets really interesting because there is a chain of limestone
Speaker 2: shoals between Minar Island off the northwest coast of Sri
Speaker 2: Lanka and Ramaswaram Island off the southeast coast of India,
Speaker 2: interconnected with sandbanks. It all forms a thirty mile or
Speaker 2: forty eight kilometer long quote unquote bridge and it is
Speaker 2: shallow enough to pose a navigational hazard to ship.
Speaker 3: Oh okay. So it's almost like if you know, if
Speaker 3: the water levels were a little bit lower or something
Speaker 3: were piled up here, you can imagine something like a
Speaker 3: bridge emerging.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And so this and this is something that
Speaker 2: has captivated the human imagination for a while and cause
Speaker 2: people to, you know, logically, wonder could this be what
Speaker 2: the epics are talking about? So this is also commonly
Speaker 2: known as Adams Bridge. The name linked to an Islamic
Speaker 2: tradition and I think sometimes a Christian tradition as well,
Speaker 2: that holds that Adam's Peak on Sri Lanka is where Adam,
Speaker 2: the first human and Abrahamic traditions fell to earth, and
Speaker 2: the mountain in question here is also sacred in Hinduism.
Speaker 2: But anyway, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that
Speaker 2: these shoals and sandbars constitute a former land bridge, Though
Speaker 2: estimated dates vary, cartographical records suggests that it may have
Speaker 2: been whole and even traversible until the year fourteen eighty
Speaker 2: and the beginning in fourteen eighty you might have had
Speaker 2: a series of storms that ended up washing sections of
Speaker 2: it away, storm breaches that end up making taking away
Speaker 2: this portion of it in another portion, until you're left
Speaker 2: with something that is no longer traversible.
Speaker 3: Ah. Well, so that is much more recent than any
Speaker 3: of the than the land bridges we've been talking about
Speaker 3: in the other episodes of like the or the so
Speaker 3: called land bridges, the former areas of dogger Land and Boringia,
Speaker 3: which are that are now underwater and have been for
Speaker 3: many thousands of years. This is just a question of
Speaker 3: a few centuries comparatively very recent, if true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, though of course there are all sorts of
Speaker 2: questions that arise in this, like is it too recent,
Speaker 2: is it something that would be something that might have
Speaker 2: emerged and then resemble something from pre existing mythology, or
Speaker 2: as indeed, as many people you know believe, is it
Speaker 2: evidence of something that is described in the Hindu epics.
Speaker 2: So it's fascinating to think about those things, and also
Speaker 2: thinking about like reports of it being traversible from centuries past,
Speaker 2: like to what extent can we trust those we've already
Speaker 2: talked about whole islands that have been cataloged due to
Speaker 2: various errors or sort of sing deciding to err on
Speaker 2: the side of caution when identifying things that could be
Speaker 2: a navigational hazard to ships and so forth. But at
Speaker 2: any rate, there is evidence of something here, and there
Speaker 2: are various theories about its natural formation. They ranged from
Speaker 2: tectonic forces to coral sand trapping, water, current movements of sand,
Speaker 2: and so forth. So there is this idea that it
Speaker 2: could have been certainly a naturally occurring opportunity that could
Speaker 2: have been augmented them by human beings to some degree,
Speaker 2: which I don't think is all that outrageous, at least
Speaker 2: if you consider like small scale efforts to shore up
Speaker 2: or repair individual segments in a chain like this, and
Speaker 2: then on top of that, I mean, ancient peoples were
Speaker 2: certainly capable of larger scale engineering projects as well, though
Speaker 2: based on the sources I was looking at, I don't
Speaker 2: think there's any strong scientific evidence for the idea that
Speaker 2: it was largely constructed or that it was constructed entirely.
Speaker 2: But again, this is an area of controversy. So setting
Speaker 2: aside how it came to be, we can be reasonably
Speaker 2: sure that remnants that the remnants we see here do
Speaker 2: constitute a one time land bridge that in its current
Speaker 2: form is no longer traversible, likely due to changes in
Speaker 2: sea level and storm activity some combination of the two.
Speaker 2: And there have been proposals to dredge more of it
Speaker 2: out in order to improve navigation by boat. But this
Speaker 2: is controversial both due to environmental reasons but also to
Speaker 2: religious objections. And you also see proposals to rebuild the
Speaker 2: bridge quote unquote, and this would be a project that
Speaker 2: would have tremendous religion just significance, as well as of
Speaker 2: course just being like a major avenue of transportation between nations.
Speaker 2: By the way, we won't really have we don't have
Speaker 2: time to go into this one. But I also wanted
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that there is a mythical continent named Kumari
Speaker 2: condom linked in some traditions to ideas like Limuria that
Speaker 2: have been It would have been situated in the Indian Ocean.
Speaker 2: It would have allegedly hosted an ancient Tamil civilization, and
Speaker 2: I think it's generally described as a Tamilized take on
Speaker 2: the concept of Limuria. So, you know, a fairly recent
Speaker 2: idea in the Grand scheme of things. But then in
Speaker 2: the twentieth century the idea ends up being taken up
Speaker 2: by Tamil revivalists, and so it has remained since that
Speaker 2: point a culturally charged idea as well, which kind of
Speaker 2: takes us back to a lot of what we were
Speaker 2: talking about just in general, about the idea of sunken lands,
Speaker 2: whether real or mythological, even fictional, and how the classifications
Speaker 2: may shift over time, and how they can become important,
Speaker 2: they can become vitally important, they can be things that
Speaker 2: are sought after not only as a way to sort
Speaker 2: of understand mysteries about the natural world, such as how
Speaker 2: similar species can be found on two sides of a
Speaker 2: vast ocean, but also in trying to make connections that
Speaker 2: aid in the conceptualization of one's worldview, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, I think maybe that spells the end of our
Speaker 3: exploration of sunken lands. But this has been a really
Speaker 3: interesting journey to go on with you, Rob.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot and I would love to learn
Speaker 2: some more from listeners out there if you have some
Speaker 2: additional examples of anything we've discussed in the categories we've
Speaker 2: discussed in these episodes. If you have some firsthand knowledge
Speaker 2: or observations you'd like to share about the various places
Speaker 2: we've discussed, all of that is fair game and we
Speaker 2: would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we
Speaker 2: do mail. On Wednesdays there tends to be a short
Speaker 2: form artifactor monster Fact episode, and on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema. I should point out I
Speaker 2: do not think we've done an Atlantis movie on Weird House.
Speaker 2: I know we've had some flooding occur in some of
Speaker 2: the shows we've watched, but I don't recall Atlantis popping up.
Speaker 2: I could be wrong. There's a submerged city or two.
Speaker 2: I think a few submerged lands.
Speaker 3: I watched a movie a few years back that's about
Speaker 3: just like there's like a hurricane and a flood, and
Speaker 3: it's just about a bunch of gators getting in somebody's house.
Speaker 2: I forget what it was called. It was pretty funny,
Speaker 2: like they're coming up the stairs, that sort of thing
Speaker 2: swimming up the stairs, you know.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm trying to look it up. It's not Gator
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy six, so that has Burt Reynolds in it,
Speaker 3: and now I kind of kind of need to see it.
Speaker 3: Oh it might it might not be about alligators, might
Speaker 3: be about a guy called Gator.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, this is this is also a fair
Speaker 2: game as well for anyone who wants to and if
Speaker 2: you have suggestions for Atlantis based movies, sunken world movies
Speaker 2: that we can discuss in Weird House Cinema, well we'd
Speaker 2: love to get those as well.
Speaker 3: Oh, I found what it was. It's called crawl. It
Speaker 3: starts in a crawl space and then the house is
Speaker 3: full of gators as it floods.
Speaker 2: That's what it is, all right, that sounds great.
Speaker 3: It's great. Okay, anyway, huge, thanks as always to our
Speaker 3: excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to
Speaker 3: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 3: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 3: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 3: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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