WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Sunken Lands, Part 3 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:09.080 Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:12.720 name is Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:15.720 episode of the show, an episode from the vault. This 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:19.200 is part three of the series that we started running 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:23.400 last Saturday. This is called The Sunken Lands. This episode, 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:27.479 in particular, aired originally on December fifth, twenty twenty three. 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:34.360 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:35.959 of iHeartRadio. 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:43.880 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:47.080 My name is Robert Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:49.720 And we're back with part three in our series called 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:53.600 the Sunken Lands, about places on Earth that were relatively 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:57.320 recently solid land but are now covered by the waters. 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:02.200 In the previous two parts of this series, we discussed myths, legends, 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:06.240 and obsolete theories of sunken lands, including the most popular 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:10.920 drowned civilization Atlantis, an advanced island state discussed in the 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:13.880 writings of Plato, which the majority of experts on the 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:17.400 original sources seem to think is best interpreted as a 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:21.039 fictional setting used to illustrate a point in Plato's writings, 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.560 rather than a reference to a real place that actually existed, 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:27.039 but of course, that does not stop the many Atlantis 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:29.360 hunters of the Internet. 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:31.920 Right, and it doesn't stop the human imagination which has 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:36.080 gone wild with the concept, as we discussed in many 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.880 responsible ways and occasionally irresponsible ways as well. Right. 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.399 So, we also talked about the very real sunken land 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:47.040 mass now known as dogger Land, which was a vast 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:52.200 plane connecting Great Britain to mainland Europe during and for 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:56.840 several thousand years following the Last Ice Age. Doggerland is 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:01.680 a fascinating mystery that archaeologists and other scientists are learning 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:04.960 more about all the time. But one of the most 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.799 intriguing things that we've learned is that this drowned world 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.400 was not only inhabited by humans for the few thousand 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.720 years after it began warming at the beginning of the Holocene. 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.960 It was something many experts have described it as something 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:23.800 of a paradise, rich with resources, and possibly one of 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:27.720 the most densely populated places in Middle Stone Age Europe. 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.880 But of course it was eventually smothered underneath rising seas 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:36.080 and also battered by a colossal tsunami from an underwater 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:40.400 landslide around sixty two hundred BCE. After that, we talked 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:44.600 about cases of alleged vanishing islands in the Pacific, including 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:47.720 reasons for thinking that some of these accounts are genuine. 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.480 One example that you brought up, rob is the island 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:55.919 of Taeo Nimanu, a former island described in the oral 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.760 traditions of some of the Solomon Islanders, which allegedly sang 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:04.399 the waves in a rapid seismic event. So this happened suddenly, 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.480 and some people barely escaped in canoes, And according to 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.200 the sources we were looking at last time, it is 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:13.520 thought that this probably did actually happen. 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:17.040 Yeah, Yeah, that seems to be the consensus. 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:19.320 Though there are of course many other examples of alleged 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:23.399 vanishing islands, being more likely just cases of mistaken identification 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.640 in the first instance, probably. We discussed reasons for possibly 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:33.520 mistaking something for an island, maybe visual illusions like fatimorgana, 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.480 or being mistaken about where you are when you see 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:40.160 an actual island, or mistaking patches of things floating in 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:43.160 the water for land. One example we talked about was seaweed, 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:48.080 another was volcanic pumice rafts, and then everybody's favorite, the 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:53.080 possibility that somebody could mistake white oily scum left over 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:57.280 after seasonal worm sex as some indication of a land mass. 0:03:57.600 --> 0:03:59.000 It's absolutely in the mix. 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.280 I wanted to talk about another example of a quite 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.320 real sunken land that we have tons of evidence for. 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:08.960 Many people were probably thinking about it when we were 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.360 talking about dogger Land, because this is, perhaps, at least 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:16.400 to North Americans, the even more famous sunken land bridge 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.080 between two continental masses, and that would be the submerged 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:24.839 plains of Beringia. This refers to an area of the 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:29.960 globe between northwestern North America, including Alaska and Northwest Canada 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:34.360 on one side, and northeastern Russia on the other. And 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:39.159 it is now thought that during the Late Pleistocene, so 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:43.440 the Last Ice Age, huge expanses of what are now 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:47.400 the Bearing Sea, the Bearing Strait, and the Chuckchi Sea 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:53.600 were lands exposed by dropping sea levels. So the geological 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.359 story of Beringia has some things in common with the 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.280 story of dogger Land, which we talked about previously. The 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:04.400 lower sea levels of the Pleistocene were associated with massive 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:09.120 glacier formation. During the last Glacial maximum roughly twenty thousand 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:13.039 years ago, about twenty five percent of the Earth's land 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.800 surface and about eight percent of its total surface was 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:20.200 covered in ice, and global sea level was like four 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.640 hundred feet lower than it is today. It's hard to 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:26.640 imagine the amount of ice unless maybe you have been 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:31.040 to Antarctica or something. And at that time much of 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:36.000 North America, basically almost all of the current area of Canada, 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:40.279 especially east of the Rocky Mountains, but reaching as far 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.920 south as Ohio and Indiana in the United States, all 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.600 of that was covered in an ice formation known as 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:50.560 the Laurentide ice Sheet, which at its greatest extent was 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:55.000 more than thirteen million square kilometers and at its thickest, 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:57.640 probably near the middle, may have been up to three 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.480 thousand meters tall, which is almost two miles high of ice. 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:05.919 It's kind of hard to imagine. Again, and during this 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:08.880 time of lower sea levels, it has long been thought 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:13.600 that the much of the exposed land of Beringia probably 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:18.080 was some kind of step tundra environment, a sort of cold, 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:23.120 arid grassland. But at the end of the Pleistocene, roughly 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.440 ten to twelve thousand years ago, the earth began to warm, 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:30.880 ice melted, and sea levels rose, and these were the trends, 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.839 of course, that eventually covered doggerland and water, and the 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:37.920 same happened to the exposed lands of Beringia. Now there 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:41.240 is no land bridge connecting North America to Asia, but 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.440 at the time there was, it served as an important 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:49.680 corridor of exchange between the continents, with evidence showing that plants, animals, 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.600 and people spread through and across it. Now a lot 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.919 of people probably know that the Beringia land Bridge plays 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.920 a role in several of the current competing major theories 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:03.120 of how people came to occupy the Americas, though there 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:07.680 are of course competing explanations even within that space. For example, 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:10.800 the question of whether the first people to come to 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:14.920 North America traveled by land and found a way south 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:17.880 through an ice free inland corridor, and if they did 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.760 that at what time, or whether those people migrated along 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.560 the coastline of Beringia mostly traveling by boat, surviving along 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:27.720 the way with the help of kelp forests and other 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.960 coastal resources. So there are still lots of open questions 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:32.400 in that debate. 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.080 But we know this was the corridor for the exchange 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:40.320 of many different species, and we've discussed some examples of 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.280 this on the show before, ranging from you know, of 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:47.960 course human beings to also things like species of camel. 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:49.800 And other things that I didn't even think about until 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:51.800 I was reading for this episode, like the gray wolf, 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:53.120 the exchange of the wolf. 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:53.800 Yeah. 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:57.560 Now, an interesting thing I was thinking about was a 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.600 similarity with dogger Land. As we mentioned with dogger Land, 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:08.040 the phrase land bridge can potentially be deceptive. On one hand, 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:11.240 it does sort of accurately describe what happens when sea 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.800 levels drop and a ground corridor is established between two 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.400 land masses that used to be and or would later 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:20.680 be separated by water. On the other hand, the term 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:26.520 bridge kind of creates the impression of a transitional space 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:29.520 that one merely crosses to get from one side to 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:31.880 the other. Like you don't build a house in the 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:33.760 middle of a bridge. Well, I guess you might if 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:36.400 it's one of those bridges without buildings on it in 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:39.280 Italy or France or wherever. But but you know what 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:40.920 I mean, most of the time, you don't set up 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:42.280 camp in the middle of a bridge. 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:44.400 Yeah, yeah, I mean I think this is this is 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:46.120 this is a concept that always kind of comes to 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:49.360 mind whenever I'm reading about land bridges. On some level, 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.440 you're imagining it as a situation where like the wolves 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.800 and the camels are like, hey, guys, there's a temporary 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:58.959 passage between these two land masses. Let's all go get 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:01.760 at it. And you know, everybody rushes to get from 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:03.400 one side to the other, and then the land bridge 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:04.119 goes away. 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:06.960 Right, So that can be kind of deceptive. In the 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.960 case of Doggerland, we know that not only was the 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:14.760 now flooded land inhabited by Neanderthals and later Mesolithic Homo 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:19.079 sapiens during its brief warm period, for the few thousand 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.800 years between the end of the Pleistocene and the time 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:24.719 it was under the water, it was probably one of 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:28.680 the most resource abundant places in Europe, and as I 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:30.360 said earlier, it may have been one of the most 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:34.040 densely populated as well. So with that in mind, to 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:37.719 what extent could we also think of Beringia more as 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.679 a destination in itself, a place to be, rather than 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.240 just a way to get somewhere. Well, in fact, we 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:48.400 know that it was a habitat environment for many terrestrial 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:51.040 plants and animals, and so the real question is to 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.920 what extent this would be true for people as well. 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:58.120 So I came across one paper from twenty fourteen, raising 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:02.280 a few lines of evidence for thinking that the large, 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.280 now submerged plane in the middle of the Bearing Land 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:11.840 Bridge was actually a relatively habitable refuge for plants, animals, 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:15.280 and people during the last glacial maximum and may have 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:19.880 been home to an isolated population of Native American ancestors 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:23.720 for thousands of years. So the paper is called out 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:27.080 of Beringia question Mark, published in the journal Science in 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:31.959 twenty fourteen by Hoffiker, Elias and O'Rourke, and one of 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.200 the core pieces of evidence here is a sampling of 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:39.240 mitochondrial DNA from more than six hundred Native American people 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:44.320 in the present, most of whom shared unique mitochondrial DNA 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:49.240 mutations not shared by their closest relatives in Asia, indicating 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:52.880 that most likely they can trace their ancestry back to 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.720 a group of people that was living isolated from people 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.400 in the rest of Asia for thousands of years, perhaps 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.360 ten thousand years or so, before spreading across the continents 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.600 of North and South America. And if this is in 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.120 fact the case, where would this population of people be living, 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:16.880 perhaps in a region of Beringia that supported long term settlement. Now, 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.280 you might think, but wait a minute, it wasn't Beringia 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:23.319 too cold and arid and free of resources not necessarily. 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:29.360 Palaeoecological evidence is showing that parts of central Beringia may 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.760 have actually been more rich in plant and animal resources 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:37.640 that would potentially support continued human habitation. And this evidence 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:41.160 includes things cited by these authors like sediment cores that 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:42.960 you would take from the bottom of the Bering Sea, 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:46.000 so you like core out an area of the sediment 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:49.440 strata there and see what's in it. And it turns 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:53.160 out these sediment samples contain remnants of pollen and other 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:58.720 plant matter and insects that indicate that while outer regions 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.439 of Beringia may have been more inhospitable and arid, very 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:07.439 like dry cold step lands, the central lowlands of Beringia 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:10.520 may very well have had plenty of animal populations for 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:15.120 hunting and especially important woody plants which could have been 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:17.880 used as fuel for fires. And as we know, wood 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.480 is a big deal. There there was not a whole 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:24.040 lot of wood available in the Arctic at the time 0:12:24.760 --> 0:12:28.520 due to the extent the extent of the glaciers, and 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:31.720 fuel for fire can make the difference between a place 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:35.920 being able to sustain human life or not so. 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:38.560 Already we're painting an entirely different picture of a quote 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:40.679 unquote land Bridge than I think a lot of us 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:42.439 might have had in our head right. 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.760 So to quote lead author John Hoffecker, who is a 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:49.120 professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Speaking to Live Science, 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.560 he said, quote, the central part of Beringia was probably 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:55.960 the mildest, most comfortable place to live at high latitudes 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.720 during the last glacial maximum. It is the most logical 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:03.080 place for a group of people to hunker down, and 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:07.480 the term used for this area is a glacial refugium, 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:12.160 a place where organisms can survive despite hostile conditions in 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.840 the surrounding areas. So this might have been a sort 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:21.040 of warmer, milder, wetter area in the middle of very cold, dry, 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:25.959 or glaciated areas that would be able to maintain all 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:29.520 of this diversity of species like shrub trees that you 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:33.360 could burn for wood, and animals that could sustain human hunting, 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.960 and possibly people living there for thousands of years. So 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:42.480 the idea of many millennia of people living isolated in 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:46.959 this refugium is sometimes referred to as the Barringian standstill 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:50.719 hypothesis and though it's not meant to. I feel like 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.880 this is another one where the word choice brings some 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:57.440 of the wrong connotations, because stand still kind of like 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.360 bridge it to me, at least, it implies a connotation 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:05.319 that like, these people would have been trying to get 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:08.840 somewhere and then they were stalled or delayed, rather than 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:12.079 this is simply where and how people were living their lives, 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:13.439 just like anywhere else on earth. 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:16.520 Yeah again, because you're talking about thousands of years here, 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:19.520 You're not talking about again, this brief opportunity to move 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:21.560 from point A to point B. It is instead the 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:23.120 emergence of a point C. 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:27.520 At least, I feel like the historical perspective we have 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.440 often leads to misconceptions like this, Like when you look 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:36.280 back through history, we know or simply have an idea 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:40.320 right or wrong of what happened before and after a 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:44.760 period of time. And with that historical perspective, I think 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:49.280 we often have a hard time understanding that people within 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:54.520 that period probably did not think of themselves as transitional 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.760 between two things, but were trying to live their lives 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.840 like anyone else. And you know, I was having the 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.440 same pattern of thoughts about dogger Land, like we now 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:07.160 know that it was really only this lush buffet of 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.720 a world for a few thousand years in Doggerland. But 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.280 to the people living there it was it was probably 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:14.480 just home, right. 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:17.400 Yeah, I mean to your point, like this was to them, 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.560 To them, this was the world. You know, they not 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:24.400 to discount the possibility that they had some oral traditions 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:28.000 or so forth of the places they came from or 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:32.160 the world before. But you know it E'SCW. You know, 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:35.520 hindsight is twenty twenty and that certainly applies to our 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:37.280 understanding of history. 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:39.680 I guess the other way of looking at it is 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:42.800 that on a on a long enough time scale, all 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:46.320 people living in all places at all times are living 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:47.880 in transitional points. 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.720 Yes, that's interesting to think about because it kind of 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.160 comes back to what we discussed in previous episodes about 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:58.480 golden ages, lost golden ages, the thing that that we're 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:02.080 trying to reclaim or try trying to find again. You know, 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:05.160 that also kind of loses side of the fact that 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:09.680 life is is continually a state of change and and 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:13.640 there it's always in a state of transition, and you know, 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:16.680 it reminds me, I forget what talk this was, but 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:19.080 there was a talk that Terrence McKenna gave where he 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:21.720 used the line and if something needs to be done, 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:25.160 you will find yourself doing it, which I think I 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:28.120 forget the exact context of it, but you know, it 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.920 kind of speaks to to how human beings have survived 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:35.040 and and and and grown and expanded so much over 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:39.280 the course of their existence. They have expanded into new areas, 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.280 they have left areas, they have changed, they have they 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.840 have rolled with the punches of transition. And but at 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:48.480 the same time, you know, created these these stories and 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:52.960 looked back longingly at supposed better times, whether or not 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:54.160 they were actually better. 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:57.800 That's a good point. But to come back to the 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:01.080 Barringian standstill hypothesis, it is important to remember that this 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:04.480 is just a hypothesis. Like it would need more direct 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:09.200 evidence in its favor, such as especially archaeological discoveries, which 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:12.240 had not been found at the time this article was published. 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:15.920 And I looked around and couldn't find any evidence of 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:20.399 archaeological discoveries backing it up since then, and critics of 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:23.159 this hypothesis argue that not only do we not have 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:27.399 archaeological evidence, we probably should expect to have found some 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.919 by now, since not all of this territory is underwater, 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:34.520 though a lot of it is. But either way, so 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:36.879 we don't know. This is an idea, it may or 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.880 may not be correct. But if this idea is correct, 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.520 once the surrounding glaciers began to melt, the ideas that 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:47.520 the Burringian people probably expanded their territory and then moved 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:50.480 on down the coastline and into the interior of the 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:54.280 North American continent and spread on from there. But the 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.959 ultimate point about the land being that much like Doggerland, 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:02.199 this is an area that was land when when the 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.000 glaciers were at their peak, when when the water was 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:07.480 locked in the ice, and so there were these vast 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.520 stretches of plains that are now buried beneath the sea. 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:12.639 And there's probably a lot more that we could know 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.480 about them more easily if it were not underneath the sea, 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:17.960 and we could, you know, just go around and do 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:23.200 digs and look for palaeontological remains, you know, animal remains, 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:25.840 plant remains, and and see if we could find human 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.760 tools and remains of what people were doing in these places. 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:34.160 But it's again more challenging because of the water covering things. 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:39.240 Now, yeah, well, that's fascinating. Again, that kind of essentially 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:41.920 kind of turns over this loose idea that I had 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:45.000 in my head of land bridges. So this might be 0:18:45.720 --> 0:18:58.720 an interesting general topic to come back to in the future. Now, 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:01.720 in all this talk of some lands and lost islands 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.719 in particular that we got into in the last episode, 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:07.399 I thought it might be fun to explore something that 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:11.680 lines up with this concept in a unique way, and 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:16.280 that is the topic of atolls or atalls. You apparently 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:19.159 can say it both ways, and hey, I might just 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:21.879 say it both ways this week proceed here. Uh So, 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:26.080 these are essentially coral reefs in circling a lagoon. They're 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:30.679 not always circular, but there are some stunning examples of 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:35.200 circular atolls, and you can you've you've probably seen pictures 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:39.000 of these. There are numerous examples of them. Big Blue 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:43.760 Hole Belize is one that is commonly mentioned and commonly photographed. 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:46.840 But it's like, yeah, you have this this circular reef 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:50.040 reef islands and then in the middle more water. So 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:53.360 it looks like, you know, this looks like something is missing, right, 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:58.320 And this is certainly invited curiosity over over the many 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:00.000 years here as long as people have been in calendar 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:03.720 them because it raises the question how did they form? 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:06.440 This was actually a question that none other than Charles 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.639 Darwin considered on the Voyage of the Ahms Beagle during 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:14.879 the eighteen thirties. So when I was reading about that, 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:17.800 I had to pull open his book, The Voyage of 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:21.119 the Beagle. And yeah, he gets into this at one point, 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:23.520 and he writes about some of the theories of the day 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:27.119 that he was less convinced by. So the first idea 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:30.800 he brings up is that quote, coral building, animals instinctively 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:35.080 built up their great circles to afford themselves protection in 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:38.440 the inner parts. So that would seem to imply that, yeah, 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:42.040 you have coral is like growing up from the seabed 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:45.160 and building a great ring so that they can have 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.760 like a protected area in the middle. And on this 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:52.160 theory he points out that, okay, coral don't thrive within 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:55.639 the atl lagoon. And this would be a case in 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:59.320 which quote many species of distinct genera and families are 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.440 supposed to come buind for one end, and of such 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:05.800 a combination, not a single instance can be found in 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:06.760 the whole of nature. 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:10.800 M Okay, So the creatures forming the reef would have 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:14.600 to be all working together to protect this inner area. 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:16.720 But also, he points out, like you don't really see 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:19.480 the coral doing much in the inner area. It's not 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:21.800 like they're, oh, that's the place where they keep all 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:24.240 their soft parts. They're just not really in there. 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:27.920 Yeah. And then additionally, where else in the natural world 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:33.000 do we see this kind of like cross genera cooperation 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:35.280 going on. I mean, I guess you could. You know, 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:37.119 there's some little instances here and there where you talk 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:41.040 about you know, prey animal communication and alerting, you know, 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:43.359 generally to the idea of predators in their myths, but 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:46.399 something a lot on the scale of this, he argues, 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:47.040 we don't. 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:47.840 Really see it, Okay. 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:52.000 The next theory he mentions is that atolls are based 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:55.600 on submarine craters, and he points out that this doesn't 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.560 hold up when you look at all the examples in 0:21:58.600 --> 0:22:01.080 the world that were known at the time. It just 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.720 simply doesn't account for everything. Another idea that he explores 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:07.359 is the idea that coral edges were exposed to the 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:10.720 outer sea and along these edges grew up more quickly. 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.439 But as with theory one, the question remains, what did 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:18.040 they grow on he stresses that rebuilding corals cannot live 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.560 at great depth, and therefore, like what would grow up 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:24.160 then to be, it doesn't make sense that they would 0:22:24.200 --> 0:22:26.720 start deep down and then grow up, because we know 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:29.439 that these corals that live near the surface don't thrive 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:31.160 in the deep water, right, So. 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:34.680 It's only in the the shallow. Living corals only live 0:22:34.800 --> 0:22:37.959 in these areas that are already shallow for some reason. 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:40.560 Like it's like it's almost an island. 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:43.200 Right right. And it's worth noting that there are deep 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:46.919 water corals and they do produce deep sea reefs, but 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:51.640 it's structurally different, apparently. So he writes at fair length 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:54.520 about all of this and about what he thinks is happening, 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:58.520 And here's a section that more or less encapsulates it. Quote, 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:02.399 as the barrier re slowly sinks down, the corals will 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:06.880 go on vigorously growing upwards. But as the island sinks 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:10.199 this would be the island around which the reef is formed. 0:23:10.720 --> 0:23:13.800 He continues, the water will gain inch by inch on 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:18.359 the shore, the separate mountains first forming separate islands within 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:21.520 one great reef, and finally the last and highest pinnacle 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:26.080 disappearing the instant this takes place, a perfect atoll is formed. 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:29.040 I have said, removed the high land from within the 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:32.439 an encircling barrier reef, and an atoll is left, and 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:34.879 the land has been removed. We can now perceive how 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.400 it comes that atolls, having sprung from encircling barrier reefs, 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:41.359 resemble them in general size form, in the manner in 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.199