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the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Original)

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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #90 on: July 30, 2008, 10:15:05 pm »

Herr_Saltzman

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Member # 2738

  posted 02-16-2006 11:47 AM                   
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An Evaluation of the Geological Evidence Presented By ''Gateway to Atlantis'' for Terminal Pleistocene Catastrophe
by Paul Heinrich
The book "Gateway to Atlantis", Collins (2000a), proposed that Atlantis originally lay in Hispanola, specifically Cuba with "other islands" associated with it being the "...island chains of Bahamas and Caribbean...". A significant part of his arguments involved Atlantis having been destroyed by a cataclysmic comet impact "...sometime around 8600-8500 BC...". Collins (2000a) argued in Chapters 21 and 22 that this cataclysmic comet impact ravaged Eastern Coast of the United States and possibly created two large craters on the ocean floor of the western North Atlantic. He claimed that this impact resulted in the destruction of Atlantis.

Being interested in both Holocene and Quaternary impact structures, i.e. Heinrich (2003a, 2003b), I decided that it would be interesting to evaluate this hypothesis. Because the task involved in completely researching and evaluating the "evidence" provided in Chapters 21 and 22 was quite large, and given the wildly subjective nature of interpreting oral history (from which innumerable, contradictory interpretations can be made) I focused only on the "hard" geologic evidence. The hard evidence that Collins (2000a) offered for his hypothesis for a terminal Pleistocene cosmic catastrophe consisted mainly of the "Carolina Bays", two alleged North Atlantic "deep Sea impacts"; a handful of pollen sites, the "muck" deposits in Alaska, and a Mississippi River glacial meltwater pulse reported by Emiliani et al. (1975).

Carolina Bays

Interpretations of the age and origin of the Carolina Bays played a very important role in the arguments of Collins (2000a) for a terminal Pleistocene comet impact along the East Coast of the United States. The importance of the Carolina Bays in the arguments of Collins (2000a) can be seen in the review of a lecture that Andrew Collins presented in the "Mysteries of the Past" lecture series in the 2000 "Questing Conference". A web page that was part of his web site in May 2004, Collins (2000b), stated:

"Yet the destruction of Atlantis, and its `other islands', identified as the island chains of the Bahamas and Caribbean, would appear to have begun some 500 years earlier. Sometime around 8600-8500 BC there came out of the north-eastern sky a brilliant object - a comet perhaps 100,000 times greater than the one which detonated above the tundra forests of Tunguska, Siberia, in June 1908. It passed low overhead the United States before disintegrating into millions of tiny fragments like some unimaginable millennial firework. The air shock-waves caused by the detonation and impact of these tiny pieces of the comet nucleus peppered the coastal plain, causing an estimated 500,000 elliptical craters, ranging in size from just a few hundred metres to 11 kilometres in length. Known as the Carolina Bays they extend from New Jersey down to Florida and can be found in six separate states - the greatest concentration being in the Carolinas. Each blast was like a mini nuclear explosion which caused spruce forests to be laid flat in great fan-like patterns. Two larger fragments of the comet struck the Atlantic Ocean north of Puerto Rico and east of Florida. The immense tsunami waves created by this event would have drowned the Bahamas and Caribbean, all but destroying its primitive culture and wiping out megafauna such as the giant sloth. Those who did survive reached the American mainland carrying with them a memory of this great cataclysm."

First, I found that both Muck (1977) and Collins (2000a) present a completely inaccurate depiction of the distribution of Carolina Bays as shown in Figure 1. Compilation of the distribution of Carolina Bays, as mapped by primary sources, demonstrated that the oval distribution of Carolina Bays shown by Muck (1977) and Collins (2000a) are completely wrong. Instead of these oval distributions, the Carolina Bays lie within coast-wise belts within the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal plains. They are found from southern New Jersey, a large part of Delaware, and easternmost Maryland southwest along the Atlantic coast into southern Georgia and north central Florida (Kaczorowski 1977, May and Warne 1999). Additional Carolina Bays, locally called "Grady Ponds", are found in southeast corners of Alabama and Mississippi within the Gulf of Mexico coastal plain (Otvos 1967, May and Warne 1999) (Figure 1). Neither Muck (1977) nor Collins (2000a) provide any documented evidence to support the inland occurrence of Carolina Bays as mapped in their figures.

In his figure, Collins (2000a) conflated the distribution of Carolina Bays along the coast together with a hypothesized concentration of meteorites inland of the coast, which was first interpreted by Nininger (1939) as coming from the disintegration of the meteorite that created the Carolina Bays. As shown in Figure 1 of Prouty (1952), the area inland of the Atlantic coastal plain illustrated by Collins (2000a) as containing Carolina Bays actually consists of Nininger's (1939) hypothetical area of "abundant meteorites", which lacks any Carolina Bays. Furthermore, more recent and detailed compilation of meteorite locations (Figure 2) demonstrated this hypothesized region of concentrated meteorites does not exist. Recent mapping of the distribution of meteorites showed that the distribution of meteorites within the Southeastern United States is random, without any apparent concentrations, contrary to what Nininger (1939) hypothesized. In addition, the meteorites found within the area of the hypothesized concentration of meteorites consist of a diverse mixture of stoney, stoney-iron, and iron meteorites that all differ in composition from each other to a degree that it is impossible for them to have come from the same parent body. Overall, there is a lack of any evidence for an inland concentration of meteorites associated with the Carolina Bays. As a result, the inland part of the oval mapped by Collins (2000a) for the distribution of Carolina Bays is a completely imaginary feature. Similarly, the distribution of Carolina Bays by Muck (1977), as shown in Figure 1, is completely wrong.

Similarly, neither Muck (1977) nor Collins (2000a) presented any hard evidence of Carolina Bays being found in the offshore areas that their figures indicate as containing Carolina Bays. There is simply no evidence that Carolina Bays occur as shown in their figures within the submerged surface of the continental shelves along the Atlantic Coast. The southeast edges of the distribution ellipses, which lie seaward of the continental shelf, are certainly imaginary. Thus, the offshore and inland distribution of Carolina Bays is based upon imagination, rather than any real evidence. Because of its imaginary nature, the oval distribution of Carolina Bays offers absolutely no evidence of an impact origin. Furthermore, the distribution of Carolina Bays along the Gulf of Mexico and northwestward into New Jersey, which Collins (2000a) conveniently ignored, remains unexplained by the impact hypothesis.

Another major problem for Collins (2000a) in using the Carolina Bays as evidence for a comet impact about 10,500-10,600 BP (8,500-8.600 BC), is the age of these features as indicated by radiocarbon dating, Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating, and palynology. When the data from these techniques is considered as a whole, it is quite clear that the assignment of a terminal Pleistocene age to the Carolina Bays by Collins (2000a) and other catastrophists is soundly refuted. Although he discussed this data, Collins (2000a) grossly misinterpreted them and completely ignored how they contradict his ideas.

In case of radiocarbon dates, Collins (2000a), using radiocarbon dates found in Savage (1982), acknowledged that radiocarbon dates ranging between "…c. 70,000 years and 6,000 years BP…" and "…between 18,460 and 8,355 BP." had been obtained from samples taken from the sediments filling Carolina Bays. In citing these dates, neither author seemed to have grasped a fundamental principle of geology that in order for the sediments filling a specific Carolina Bay to have accumulated within it, the Carolina Bay must have existed prior to the deposition of that sediment. If a Carolina Bay contains a layer of sediment that accumulated within it around 18,500 radiocarbon years BP that is clear and irrefutable evidence that this Carolina Bay is at least 18,500 (radiocarbon) years old.

Figure 3 illustrates a collection of radiocarbon dates yielded by samples collected from the sediments filling various Carolina Bays. Figure 3 clearly shows that there exists numerous radiocarbon dates, largely ignored by Collins (2000a), that predate the proposed timing of his terminal Pleistocene catastrophe by tens of thousands of years. These dates clearly show that the Carolina Bays are older than the terminal Pleistocene catastrophe proposed by Collins (2000a) by tens of thousands of years. Regardless of the existence of younger radiocarbon dates, the numerous radiocarbon dates older than 10,500-10,600 BP (8,500-8.600 BC) shown in Figure 3 are clear evidence that these landforms are older than proposed by Collins (2000a).

In interpreting the dates in Figure 3., a person needs to understand that the radiocarbon dates reported from Carolina Bays are minimum dates. They just represent periods of time during which conditions within and individual Carolina Bay was favorable for the preservation of organic matter. There were times when sediments accumulated within the Carolina Bays, but the organic matter was not preserved. There were times that the glacial sea level dropped to the point that many Carolina Bays dried out because of lowered ground water tables within coastal regions. During these times, older sediments within them was deflated by eolian processes and older organic matter destroyed by oxidization and weathering of the lake sediments. As a result, it is highly unlikely that organic matter dating to the exact origin of any Carolina Bay would have been preserved. Thus, the dates seen in Figure 3 are minimum dates and that the actual age of the Carolina Bays is, in fact, older than any of these dates indicate.

The Carolina Bays are so old that some samples of organic material from the sediments filling Carolina Bays have found to be older than the useful limits of radiocarbon dating. This is demonstrated by the several greater than dates illustrated in Figure 3. These radiocarbon dates, especially since they are minimum dates, clearly show that the Carolina Bays are tens of thousands of years older than 10,500-10,600 BP (8,500-8.600 BC) as argued by Collins (2000a).

In Chapter 22, "End of the Ice Age", Collins (2000a) made vague complains about the use of radiocarbon dates calibrated to calendar years. His complaint includes the obligatory, for many alternative archaeologists, and unsubstantiated comment that some sort of dark "academic bias" is somehow at work in how radiocarbon dates are calibrated / interpreted in their transformation into calendar years.

Because these and many finite radiocarbon dates demonstrate that the age of sediments filling the Carolina Bays are more than 2,000 years older then the age proposed by Collins (2000a), it is impossible for problems with the calibration of radiocarbon dates to explain why these dates completely contradict his ideas. The difference between calendar dates and radiocarbon dates is simply not enough to make many of the radiocarbon dates shown in Figure 3, either younger or contemporaneous with the 10,500-10,600 BP (8,500-8.600 BC) date for the formation of the Carolina Bays. Thus, the disputing of older radiocarbon dates on the basis of problems with radiocarbon calibration only demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of radiocarbon dating on the part of the people, who make such arguments.

Finally, Collins (2000a) failed to understand that the average, "10,500" years ago, of five radiocarbon dates given by Kaczorowski (1977) provided by Savage (1982) is a scientifically meaningless number. Individual dates from layers of sediment within a Carolina Bay specifically indicate the age of each of these layers and the oldest of these dates obviously provides only a minimum age of the Carolina Bay containing them. Averaging them together produces a date that is scientifically meaningless. Averaging these radiocarbon dates is like averaging the date when five randomly chosen states entered the United States of America (USA), and claiming that this average date is the date at which the USA was created. That Savage (1982) thought his average of radiocarbon had some sort of importance and Collins (2000a) accepted this average as having any scientific validity showed a fundamental ignorance of the part of all of them concerning how radiocarbon dates are interpreted. If anything, it appears to be a pseudo-scientific attempt by Savage (1982) to deliberately distort, in a favorable way, data that contradicted his interpretation of the origin of the Carolina Bays.
 
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