posted on May, 29 2004 @ 02:12 AM
I just came up with a new idea- secondary tektonics.
The background is what I've been saying for a while: After glaciers receded the weight distribution on the surface of the earth changed signifantly
and the crust began to recover from the depressions made my glaciers All of this caused a crustal displacement and either simultaneously ruptured
large aquifers (perhaps water bearing regions that had been under sea before the displacement?) which had been pressurized by long periods under
pressure and heat from the earth with no ability to vent, or alternately, which pushed those water tables closer to the core so that they now began to
build pressure and ruptured sometime afterward.
Either way, there is a tendency to think of a crustal displacement as smooth because the crust is moving as a whole at a level beaneath the plates.
However there is a buiildup of momentum that is going to stop, and if the plates are overlapping, sliding under and over one another, the stop is
going to produce a rapid burst of tektonic progress.
This explains why we find relatively recent historical objects miles under the earth- because the surface in some places was churned violently,
raising mountains instantly, and depositing the contents of one plate in the base of the newly formed mountain, under the other plate.
An iceage, a flood that re-distributed areas of dry land, and an upheaval that changed elevations, influenced the location of seas further, and
churned the surface of the Earth- Would you really expect to find much after that?
After this, humans were pressed to near extinction- people dwelling in existing mountains, as hinted at by Plato's dialogues, would have had the best
odds, because they're above the floods, they wouldn't be targets of any war waged in the desperate days before and after the cataclysm, and being on
a piece of ground that can't be swallowed by another plate. So barbarians were the chief survivors, and they end up taking in the survivors of the
great societies, who set them straight and cause the greeks, egyptians, phoenecians, etc to begin developing.
There really ought to be a book exploring the idea. What if a war eliminated our major cities. No power, no communication, no universities. Survivors
find the un-nuked expanses of the American mid west, and try to impart all human knowledge on to trailer trash to rebuild the world. But nuclear
winter makes survival more important than rebuilding. Food comes before mining, etc. They learn some, but not everything, they buld some, but not
much. Now the glaciers melt and the crust shifts. the mid-west is on the equator but FAR inland, so the weather and vegitation is sporadic. The hudson
bay is innow in the tropics though. Survivors of the several cataclysms wander from their trailer park to a logging down near the bay. Now the
mediocre students of a random sample of our original civilization are teaching another group of primitives- a bunch of highschool drop out lumberjacks
who lived like savages before and after the war. They learn metallurgy and many useful skills, and they start building. Physics, literature,
chemistry, algebra/trig, calculus, astronomy, and other sciences don't really take. So we are starting all over again from the iron age... literature
has gone back to campfire stories- physics is back to simple non-understanding acceptance of gravity, although the people know what great things are
possible and have vague ideas of how it works. "If you split atoms you get tons of power... so how do we find an atom?". The first thing we might do
is try to rebuild familiar wonders. Let's try to copy a nuclear plant- i saw one once. The big concrete domes are memorable, so those get built, and
they remember that there were steam towers and all so they try to build that, but the idea of how to split an atom never really comes back, so
eventually the "Great Domes" become a mysterious ancient wonder- nobody can figure out what they were for. Sort of like the pyramids, and of course
ancients stories remain about what they are supposed to do- how Bubba Trismegius built them to steal energy from special rocks, and nobody remembers
that they never worked.