WEBVTT - The Sunken Lands, Part 3 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:14.720 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.959 My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:20.600 And we're back with part three in our series called 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:24.440 the Sunken Lands, about places on Earth that were relatively 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:28.160 recently solid land but are now covered by the waters. 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:33.080 In the previous two parts of this series, we discussed myths, legends, 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:37.080 and obsolete theories of sunken lands, including the most popular 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:41.800 drowned civilization Atlantis, an advanced island state discussed in the 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.720 writings of Plato, which the majority of experts on the 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:48.279 original sources seem to think is best interpreted as a 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:51.919 fictional setting used to illustrate a point in Plato's writings, 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:55.440 rather than a reference to a real place that actually existed. 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:57.920 But of course that does not stop the many Atlantis 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.440 hunters of the Internet. 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:02.800 Right, and it doesn't stop the human imagination which has 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:06.960 gone wild with the concept, as we discussed in many 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.480 responsible ways and occasionally irresponsible with as well. 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:13.960 Right. So, we also talked about the very real sunken 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.400 land mass now known as dogger Land, which was a 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:22.959 vast plane connecting Great Britain to mainland Europe during and 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:27.520 for several thousand years following the Last Ice Age. Doggerland 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:32.119 is a fascinating mystery that archaeologists and other scientists are 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:35.520 learning more about all the time. But one of the 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:39.360 most intriguing things that we've learned is that this drowned 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.880 world was not only inhabited by humans for the few 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.880 thousand years after it began warming at the beginning of 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:50.200 the Holocene. It was something many experts have described it 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:54.280 as something of a paradise, rich with resources and possibly 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.960 one of the most densely populated places in Middle Stone 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:01.920 Age Europe. But of course it was eventually smothered underneath 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:06.360 rising seas and also battered by a colossal tsunami from 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:10.840 an underwater landslide around sixty two hundred BCE. After that, 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.919 we talked about cases of alleged vanishing islands in the Pacific, 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:18.639 including reasons for thinking that some of these accounts are genuine. 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.320 One example that you brought up rob is the island 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:26.799 of Tao Nimanu, a former island described in the oral 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:30.720 traditions of some of the Solomon Islanders, which allegedly sank 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:33.560 beneath the waves in a rapid seismic event, so that 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:38.120 this happened suddenly and some people barely escaped in canoes. 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.200 And according to the sources we were looking at last time, 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:44.400 it is thought that this probably did actually happen. 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:47.200 Yeah, Yeah, that seems to be the consensus. 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.200 Though there are of course many other examples of alleged 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:54.280 vanishing islands, being more likely just cases of mistaken identification. 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.520 In the first instance, probably we discussed reasons for possibly 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:04.320 mistakings thing for an island, maybe visual illusions like Fata Morgana, 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:07.359 or being mistaken about where you are when you see 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:11.000 an actual island, or mistaking patches of things floating in 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:14.040 the water for land. One example we talked about was seaweed, 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:18.959 another was volcanic pummice rafts, and then everybody's favorite, the 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.960 possibility that somebody could mistake white oily scum left over 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:28.120 after seasonal worm sex as some indication of a land mass. 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:29.880 It's absolutely in the mix. 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:32.760 Now I wanted to talk about another example of a 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.200 quite real sunken land that we have tons of evidence for. 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:39.840 Many people were probably thinking about it when we were 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:43.200 talking about dogger Land, because this is perhaps at least 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:47.280 to north Americans the even more famous sunken Land bridge 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.960 between two continental masses, and that would be the submerged 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:55.680 plains of Beringia. This refers to an area of the 0:03:55.720 --> 0:04:00.360 globe between northwestern North America, including Alaska and north west 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.480 Canada on one side, and northeastern Russia on the other. 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:09.800 And it is now thought that during the Late Pleistocene, 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:13.880 so the Last Ice Age, huge expanses of what are 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.919 now the Bearing Sea, the Bearing Straight and the Chuckchi 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:23.719 Sea were lands exposed by dropping sea levels. So the 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:27.600 geological story of Beringia has some things in common with 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:31.160 the story of Doggerland, which we talked about previously. The 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:35.280 lower sea levels of the Pleistocene were associated with massive 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:40.000 glacier formation. During the last glacial maximum, roughly twenty thousand 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:43.880 years ago, about twenty five percent of the Earth's land 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:47.680 surface and about eight percent of its total surface was 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.040 covered in ice, and global sea level was like four 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:54.520 hundred feet lower than it is today. It's hard to 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.520 imagine the amount of ice unless maybe you have been 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:01.680 to Antarctica or something. Yeah, And at that time, much 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:06.000 of North America, basically almost all of the current area 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:10.719 of Canada, especially east of the rocky mountains, but reaching 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:14.279 as far south as Ohio and Indiana in the United States. 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:17.279 All of that was covered in an ice formation known 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:21.040 as the Laurentide ice Sheet, which at its greatest extent 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.880 was more than thirteen million square kilometers and at its thickest, 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:28.520 probably near the middle, may have been up to three 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.360 thousand meters tall, which is almost two miles high of ice. 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:36.840 It's kind of hard to imagine. Again, and during this 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.839 time of lower sea levels, it has long been thought 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:44.480 that the much of the exposed land of Beringia probably 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.960 was some kind of step tundra environment, a sort of cold, 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:54.000 arid grassland. But at the end of the Pleistocene, roughly 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:57.320 ten to twelve thousand years ago, the earth began to warm, 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:01.719 ice melted, and sea levels rose. And these were the trends, 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:04.720 of course that eventually covered doggerland and water, and the 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:08.800 same happened to the exposed lands of Beringia. Now there 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.120 is no land bridge connecting North America to Asia, but 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.320 at the time there was, it served as an important 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:20.560 corridor of exchange between the continents, with evidence showing that plants, animals, 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:23.480 and people spread through and across it. Now a lot 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.760 of people probably know that the Beringia land Bridge plays 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:30.880 a role in several of the current competing major theories 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.000 of how people came to occupy the Americas, though there 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:38.560 are of course competing explanations even within that space. For example, 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.680 the question of whether the first people to come to 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.760 North America traveled by land and found a way south 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.720 through an ice free inland corridor, and if they did 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:52.640 that at what time, or whether those people migrated along 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:56.440 the coastline of Beringia mostly traveling by boat, surviving along 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:58.560 the way with the help of kelp forests and other 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:01.840 coastal resources. So there are still lots of open questions 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:03.240 in that debate. 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.960 But we know this was the corridor for the exchange 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:11.200 of many different species, and we've discussed some examples of 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.440 this on the show before, ranging from you know, of course, 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:18.960 human beings, to also things like species of camel. 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:20.679 And other things that I didn't even think about until 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:22.680 I was reading for this episode, like the gray Wolf, 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:25.960 the exchange of the wolf. Yeah, Now, an interesting thing 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:30.880 I was thinking about was a similarity with dogger Land. 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:35.400 As we mentioned with dogger Land, the phrase land bridge 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:39.640 can potentially be deceptive. On one hand, it does sort 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:43.480 of accurately describe what happens when sea levels drop and 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:46.640 a ground corridor is established between two land masses that 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.440 used to be and or would later be separated by water. 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:54.320 On the other hand, the term bridge kind of creates 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:59.000 the impression of a transitional space that one merely crosses 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:01.480 to get from one's to the other. Like you don't 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:03.840 build a house in the middle of a bridge. Well, 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:06.120 I guess you might if it's one of those bridges 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:08.800 with all buildings on it in Italy or France or wherever. 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:11.080 But but you know what I mean, most of the time, 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:13.160 you don't set up camp in the middle of a bridge. 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:15.280 Yeah, yeah, I mean I think this is this is 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.000 this is a concept that always kind of comes to 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.240 mind whenever I'm reading about land bridges. On some level, 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.320 you're imagining it as a situation where like the wolves 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.680 and the camels are like, hey, guys, there's a temporary 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.840 passage between these two land masses. Let's all go get 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:32.600 at it, and you know, everybody rushes to get from 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:34.240 one side to the other, and then the land bridge 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:34.920 goes away. 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.800 Right, So that can be kind of deceptive. In the 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.680 case of dogger Land, we know that not only was 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:45.359 the now flooded land inhabited by Neanderthals and later Mesolithic 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:49.520 Homo sapiens during its brief warm period, for the few 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.400 thousand years between the end of the Pleistocene and the 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.560 time it was under the water, it was probably one 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:59.400 of the most resource abundant places in Europe, and as 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:01.000 I said Earl, it may have been one of the 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:04.720 most densely populated as well. So with that in mind, 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.360 to what extent could we also think of Beringia more 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:12.280 as a destination in itself, a place to be, rather 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.920 than just a way to get somewhere. Well, In fact, 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:18.600 we know that it was a habitat environment for many 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:21.680 terrestrial plants and animals, and so the real question is 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:24.800 to what extent this would be true for people as well. 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:29.000 So I came across one paper from twenty fourteen raising 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:33.160 a few lines of evidence for thinking that the large 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:37.160 now submerged plane in the middle of the Bearing Land 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:42.720 Bridge was actually a relatively habitable refuge for plants, animals, 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:46.160 and people during the last glacial maximum, and may have 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:50.719 been home to an isolated population of Native American ancestors 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:54.600 for thousands of years. So the paper is called out 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.960 of Beringia question Mark, published in the journal Science in 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:02.840 twenty fourteen by Hafak, Elias and O'Rourke, and one of 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:06.080 the core pieces of evidence here is a sampling of 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:10.080 mitochondrial DNA from more than six hundred Native American people 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:15.200 in the present, most of whom shared unique mitochondrial DNA 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:20.160 mutations not shared by their closest relatives in Asia, indicating 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:23.720 that most likely they can trace their ancestry back to 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.559 a group of people that was living isolated from people 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.160 in the rest of Asia for thousands of years, perhaps 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:35.240 ten thousand years or so, before spreading across the continents 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.480 of North and South America. And if this is in 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.960 fact the case, where would this population of people be living, 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:46.600 perhaps in a region of Beringia that supported long term settlement. 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:49.520 Now you might think, but wait a minute, it wasn't 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:53.520 Beringia too cold and arid and free of resources. Not 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:59.520 necessarily palaeoecological evidence is showing that parts of central Beringia 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:02.840 may have actually been more rich and plant and animal 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:08.000 resources that would potentially support continued human habitation. And this 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.920 evidence includes things cited by these authors like sediment cores 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:13.840 that you would take from the bottom of the bering Sea. 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.920 So you like core out an area of the sediment 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:20.320 strata there and see what's in it. And it turns 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:24.040 out these sediment samples contain remnants of pollen and other 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:29.600 plant matter and insects that indicate that while outer regions 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:33.319 of Beringia may have been more inhospitable and arid, very 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:38.199 like dry cold step lands, the central lowlands of Beringia 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.400 may very well have had plenty of animal populations for 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:46.000 hunting and especially important woody plants which could have been 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:48.760 used as fuel for fires. And as we know, wood 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:52.360 is a big deal there there was not a whole 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:54.880 lot of wood available in the Arctic at the time 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:59.360 due to the extent the extent of the glaciers, and 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.600 fuel for fire can make the difference between a place 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.240 being able to sustain human life or not. 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.080 So already we're painting an entirely different picture of a 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:11.400 quote unquote land bridge than I think a lot of 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:12.720 us might have had in our head. 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.440 Right so to quote lead author John Hoffecker, who is 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.240 a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, speaking to 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:22.720 Live Science, he said, quote the central part of Beringia 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:25.920 was probably the mildest, most comfortable place to live at 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:29.840 high latitudes during the last glacial maximum. It is the 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.280 most logical place for a group of people to hunker down, 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:38.360 and the term used for this area is a glacial refugium, 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:43.040 a place where organisms can survive despite hostile conditions in 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.720 the surrounding areas. So this might have been a sort 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:51.920 of warmer, milder, wetter area in the middle of very cold, dry, 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:56.839 or glaciated areas that would be able to maintain all 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:00.400 of this diversity of species like shrub tree that you 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.240 could burn for wood, and animals that could sustain human hunting, 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:08.840 and possibly people living there for thousands of years. So 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:13.360 the idea of many millennia of people living isolated in 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.439 this refugium is sometimes referred to as the Bringian stand 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:21.520 still hypothesis. And though it's not meant to I feel 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:24.640 like this is another one where the word choice brings 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:28.200 some of the wrong connotations, because stand still kind of 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.680 like bridge it to me, at least, it implies a 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:35.840 connotation that like, these people would have been trying to 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:39.440 get somewhere and then they were stalled or delayed, rather 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.360 than this is simply where and how people were living 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:44.319 their lives just like anywhere else on earth. 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:47.400 Yeah again, because you're talking about thousands of years here, 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:50.400 You're not talking about again, this brief opportunity to move 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:52.440 from point A to point B. It is instead the 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.880 emergence of a point C. At least, I feel like 0:13:55.960 --> 0:14:01.360 the historical perspective we have often leads to misconceptions like this, 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.840 Like when you look back through history, we know or 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:09.520 simply have an idea, right or wrong, of what happened 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:13.960 before and after a period of time. And with that 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:17.199 historical perspective, I think we often have a hard time 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:22.600 understanding that people within that period probably did not think 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:27.720 of themselves as transitional between two things, but were trying 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:31.120 to live their lives like anyone else. And you know, 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:33.600 I was having the same pattern of thoughts about Doggerland, 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.960 like we now know that it was really only this 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.680 lush buffet of a world for a few thousand years 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:43.120 in Doggerland, But to the people living there it was 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.400 it was probably just home, right, Yeah, I mean to 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:48.800 your point, like this was to them, to them, this 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:52.160 was the world. You know. They not to discount the 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:56.120 possibility that they had some oral traditions or so forth 0:14:56.240 --> 0:14:59.760 of the places they came from or the world before. 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:04.400 But you know it'skew. You know, hindsight is twenty twenty 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:08.120 and that certainly applies to our understanding of history. 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:10.520 I guess the other way of looking at it is 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:14.160 that on a on a long enough timescale, all people 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.320 living in all places at all times are living in 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:18.640 transitional points. 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:22.600 Yes, that's interesting to think about because it kind of 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:25.040 comes back to what we discussed in previous episodes about 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:29.680 golden ages, lost golden ages, the thing that we're trying 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:34.160 to reclaim or trying to find again. You know, that 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:36.440 also kind of loses side of the fact that life 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:41.880 is continually a state of change and there it's always 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:45.360 in a state of transition, and you know, it reminds me. 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:47.960 I forget what talk this was, but there was a 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.000 talk that Terrence McKenna gave where he used the line 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:53.160 and if something needs to be done, you will find 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:56.760 yourself doing it, which I think I forget the exact 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.560 context of it, but you know, it kind of speaks 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:04.720 to to how human beings have survived and grown and 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.280 expanded so much over the course of their existence. They 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.280 have expanded into new areas, they have left areas, they 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:15.480 have changed, they have rolled with the punches of transition. 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.200 But at the same time, you know, created these stories 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:23.680 and looked back longingly at supposed better times, whether or 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:25.040 not they were actually better. 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:28.280 That's a good point. But to come back to the 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:31.960 Barringian standstill hypothesis, it is important to remember that this 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:35.360 is just a hypothesis. Like it would need more direct 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:40.080 evidence in its favor, such as especially archaeological discoveries, which 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:43.120 had not been found at the time this article was published, 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.720 and I looked around and couldn't find any evidence of 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:51.280 archaeological discoveries backing it up since then, and critics of 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:54.040 this hypothesis argue that not only do we not have 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:58.280 archaeological evidence, we probably should expect to have found some 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:01.800 by now, since not all all of this territory is underwater, 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.399 though a lot of it is. But either way so 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:07.760 we don't know. This is an idea, it may or 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:10.760 may not be correct. But if this idea is correct, 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:14.400 once the surrounding glaciers began to melt, the ideas that 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:18.399 the Beringian people probably expanded their territory and then moved 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:21.359 on down the coastline and into the interior of the 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:25.159 North American continent and spread on from there. But the 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.840 ultimate point about the land being that much like Doggerland, 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:33.679 this is an area that was land when the glaciers 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.280 were at their peak, when the water was locked in 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:39.040 the ice, and so there were these vast stretches of 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.680 plains that are now buried beneath the sea. And there's 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.120 probably a lot more that we could know about them 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.040 more easily if it were not underneath the sea, and 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.360 we could, you know, just go around and do digs 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:54.880 and look for palaeontological remains, you know, animal remains, plant remains, 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:58.160 and see if we could find human tools and remains 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.520 what people were doing in these places. But it's again 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:05.040 more challenging because of the water covering things. 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:10.120 Now, yeah, well that's fascinating Again. That kind of essentially 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:12.800 kind of turns over the loose idea that I had 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:15.879 in my head of land bridges. So this might be 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:29.600 an interesting general topic to come back to in the future. Now, 0:18:29.720 --> 0:18:32.600 in all this talk of sunken lands and lost islands 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:35.480 in particular that we got into in the last episode, 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:38.280 I thought it might be fun to explore something that 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:42.520 lines up with this concept in a unique way and 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:47.120 that is the topic of atolls or atolls you apparently 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.040 can say it both ways, and hey, I might just 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:53.040 say it both ways. This we proceed here. So these 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:57.040 are essentially coral reefs in circling a lagoon. They're not 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:03.359 always circular, but there are some stunning examples of circular atolls. 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:06.679 And you've you've probably seen pictures of these. There are 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:10.920 numerous examples of them. The big Blue Hole Belize is 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:15.960 one that is commonly mentioned and commonly photographed. But it's like, yeah, 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:19.280 you have this circular reef islands and then in the 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:22.000 middle more water. So it looks like, you know, this 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:25.639 looks like something is missing, right, And this has certainly 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.959 invited curiosity over the many years here as long as 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:33.240 people have been encountering them, because it raises the question 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:36.320 how did they form? This was actually a question that 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.199 none other than Charles Darwin considered on the voyage of 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:44.879 the Ahms Beagle during the eighteen thirties. So when I 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:48.119 was reading about that, I had to pull open his book, 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:51.200 The Voyage of the Beagle, And yeah, he gets into 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:53.040 this at one point and he writes about some of 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:55.879 the theories of the day that he was less convinced 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.120 by So the first idea he brings up is that 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.960 quote coral bil building animals instinctively built up their great 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:07.600 circles to afford themselves protection in the inner parts. So 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:10.639 that would seem to imply that, yeah, you have coral 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:14.199 is like growing up from the seabed and building a 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:16.840 great ring so that they can have like a protected 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:20.679 area in the middle. And on this theory, he points 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:24.280 out that, Okay, coral don't thrive within the atl lagoon, 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:27.400 and this would be a case in which quote many 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:31.280 species of distinct genera and families are supposed to combine 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:34.760 for one end, and of such a combination not a 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:37.639 single instance can be found in the whole of nature. 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:41.679 M Okay, so the creatures forming the reef would have 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.440 to be all working together to protect this inner area. 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:47.600 But also he points out, like, you don't really see 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:50.320 the coral doing much in the inner area. It's not 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:52.679 like they're, oh, that's the place where they keep all 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.119 their soft parts. They're just not really in there. 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:58.800 Yeah. And then additionally, where else in the natural world 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:03.840 do we see this kind of like cross genera cooperation 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:06.159 going on. I mean, I guess you could you know, 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:08.000 there's some little instances here and there where you talk 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.879 about it, you know, prey animal communication and alerting, you know, 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:14.239 generally to the idea of predators in their myths, But 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.280 something a lot on the scale of this, he argues, 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:17.840 we don't. 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:18.719 Really see it, okay. 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:22.919 The next theory he mentions is that atolls are based 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:26.440 on submarine craters, and he points out that this doesn't 0:21:26.480 --> 0:21:29.080 hold up when you look at all the examples in 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:31.959 the world that were known at the time. It just 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.600 simply doesn't account for everything. Another idea that he explores 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:38.240 is the idea that coral edges were exposed to the 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:41.560 outer sea and along these edges grew up more quickly. 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:45.320 But as with theory one, the question remains, what did 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:48.920 they grow on? He stresses that rebuilding corals cannot live 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:52.440 at great depth, and therefore, like what would grow up 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:54.840 then to be doesn't make sense that they would they 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:57.080 would start deep down and then grow up because we 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:00.000 know that these corals that live near the surface don't 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:01.960 in the deep water, right. 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:05.560 So it's only in the shallow. Living corals only live 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:08.840 in these areas that are already shallow for some reason, 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:12.120 Like it's like it's almost an island right right. 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:14.920 And it's worth noting that there are deep water corals, 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:19.320 and they do produce deep sea reefs, but it's structurally different, apparently. 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.200 So he writes at fair length about all of this 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:26.399 and about what he thinks is happening. And here's a 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:30.199 section that more or less encapsulates it. Quote, as the 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.639 barrier reef slowly sinks down, the corals will go on 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:38.280 vigorously growing upwards. But as the island sinks, this would 0:22:38.280 --> 0:22:42.200 be the island around which the reef is formed. He continues, 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:45.280 The water will gain inch by inch on the shore, 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:50.280 the separate mountains first forming separate islands within one great reef, 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:54.400 and finally the last and highest pinnacle disappearing. The instant 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:57.960 this takes place, a perfect atoll is formed. I have said, 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:01.480 removed the high land from within the an encircling barrier reef, 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:04.640 and an atoll is left. And the land has been removed. 0:23:04.800 --> 0:23:07.280 We can now perceive how it comes that atolls, having 0:23:07.320 --> 0:23:11.560 sprung from encircling barrier reefs, resemble them in general size form, 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:13.879 in the manner in which they are coupled together, and 0:23:13.960 --> 0:23:17.280 in their arrangement in single or double lines. For they 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:21.200 may be called rude outlined charts of the sunken islands 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:22.520 over which they stand. 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:25.960 M okay. So the idea there would be a volcanic 0:23:26.080 --> 0:23:32.000 island that forms, it gradually begins to sink, but as 0:23:32.040 --> 0:23:34.600 it is sinking, the barrier reef is built up to 0:23:34.800 --> 0:23:37.360 encircle it in the shallow water around it, and that 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:41.000 height comes up as the central island just continues to 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:43.919 go down. So an atoll, to come back to the 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:48.920 idea of sort of transitional landforms, is somewhere in between 0:23:49.600 --> 0:23:54.320 a volcanic island and eventually fully sunken island. 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:57.199 Right. And in this case, yeah, the volcanic island is 0:23:57.240 --> 0:24:00.119 no longer active and it is falling away. Meanwhile the 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:02.119