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The Mysterious Origins of Man: Atlantis, Mammoths, and Crustal Shift Copyright © 1996 by Paul Heinrich [Last Update: June 3, 1996] The last segment of The Mysterious Origins of Man (MOM) concerns the claims of Rand Flem-Ath and Graham Hancock that an unknown advanced civilization existed on the Antarctica continent and was destroyed by cataclysmic shifting of the crust of the Earth. Rand and Rose Flem-Ath in their book When the Sky Fell claim that the lost advanced civilization of Graham Hancock was Atlantis based upon a very liberal, loose, and speculative interpretation of the myth of Atlantis as told by Plato. Regardless of whatever a person chooses to call it, the main claim is that the remains of advanced, lost technological civilization lie buried beneath Antarctica. As asked by Charlton Heston, if such a civilization existed, why have the ruined cities, infrastructure, and other artifacts of a lost advanced civilization that made the source maps for the Piri Reis, Oronteus Finaeus, and Buache maps and inspired megalithic architecture not been found? According to MOM, Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods) and Rand Flem-Ath, the solution is that the remains of this civilization lie buried beneath the Antarctic ice cap where it was destroyed and buried by earth crustal displacement. In MOM, Graham Hancock notes that currently Antarctica is a virtually uninhabitable frozen wasteland. He then asks; How could any civilization have survived there only 12,000 years ago? The Mammoth Myths of MOM Then Mr. Hancock claims that the discovery of a small woolly mammoth frozen in ice in Russia in 1977 by a bulldozer operator is a clue to the answer of the above question. Concerning this topic, Mr. Hancock made this claim and Mr. Heston provides the details. Almost immediately, MOM either omits or provides false information concerning this mammoth. The details provided by Mr. Heston and the pictures accompanying his narration clearly identify this find as a baby mammoth, called either Dima or the Kirgilyakh Mammoth (Lister and Bahn 1994, p. 48-49, Uraintseva 1993, p. 44-66). First, MOM fails to mention that Dima was dated at 41,000+/-900 B.P. (Uraintseva 1993). Furthermore, its claim that this mammoth was found in a block of dirty ice is incorrect and misleading. Dima was found partially mired in gravelly loams and buried by a gravelly debris flow. Later, two intersecting ice veins formed within these fluvial (riverine) sediments of Terrace III. Finally, Dima was greatly malnourished at the time of her death and heavily infested by intestinal parasites which explains why she became mired in the sediments (Shilo et al. 1983, Uraintseva 1993). Therefore, Dima is much too old to be any sort of evidence for a cataclysm around 12,000 B.P. In fact, as documented by Shilo et al. (1983) and Uraintseva (1993), the sediments containing Dima are of noncatastrophic fluvial (riverine) origin and contain, as does her gut, pollen from a variety of tundra types and localized larch forests. There is absolutely no evidence of temperate or tropical plants associated with this mammoth. Referring to the time of an alleged cataclysm, 12,000 B.P., Mr. Hancock in MOM continues: A kind of zone of death all over the northern hemisphere, northern Siberia, and northern Canada. We find the frozen carcasses of hundreds of thousands of large mammal species. The "zone of death" mentioned above is a melodramatic exaggeration that has no basis in fact. First, their claim that hundreds of thousands of frozen carcasses have been found is simply incorrect. At most, only a few tens of frozen carcasses have been documented in all of Siberia and Alaska. In Canada, the frozen mammal material found consists of scraps of hide and muscle found attached to bones. All of these "frozen carcasses" that have been carefully examined show evidence of decomposition, scavenging, or both prior to be buried, e.g. Gutherie (1990). Also, the sediments in which these carcasses occur are clearly of noncatastrophic origin (Gutherie 1990, Lister and Bahn 1994, Pewe 1975, Uraintseva 1993). Additional information can be found at: Woolly Mammoths: Evidence of Catastrophe? by Sue Bishop and P. R. Burns at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mammoths.html Radiocarbon dates for such carcasses of mammoths, horses, and bison compiled in the above talk.origins FAQ, Pewe (1975), and Uraintseva (1993) clearly show that the majority of these frozen remains greatly predate 12,000 B.P., the date of the catastrophe alleged by MOM, by a few to tens of thousands of years. Thus, these "frozen carcasses" fail to be credible evidence of any catastrophe around 12,000 B.P. Then Mr. Hancock in MOM further claimed; When their stomachs contents are examined, as they have been, they are found to have been grazing on warm weather vegetation. Yet, they are now positioned extremely close to the North Pole. Numerous studies of the pollen and vegetable remains found in the stomachs clearly prove these clai...

MOM and Atlantis, Mammoths, and Crustal Shift