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