Let's consider such a phenomenon as periodic ice ages on Earth. In modern geology, it is generally accepted that our Earth periodically experiences Ice Ages in its history. During these eras, the Earth's climate becomes sharply colder, and the Arctic and Antarctic polar caps monstrously increase in size. Not so many thousands of years ago, as we were taught, vast areas of Europe and North America were covered with ice. Eternal ice lay not only on the slopes of high mountains, but also covered the continents in a thick layer even in temperate latitudes. Where the Hudson, Elbe and Upper Dnieper flow today was a frozen desert. All this looked like an endless glacier that now covers the island of Greenland. There are signs that the retreat of the glaciers was stopped by new ice masses and that their boundaries varied at different times. Geologists can determine the boundaries of glaciers. Traces of five or six successive movements of ice during the ice age, or five or six ice ages, have been discovered. Some force pushed the ice layer towards moderate latitudes. To this day, neither the reason for the appearance of glaciers nor the reason for the retreat of the ice desert is known; the timing of this retreat is also a matter of debate. Many ideas and conjectures have been put forward to explain how the Ice Age arose and why it ended. Some believed that the Sun emitted more or less heat at different times, which explained periods of heat or cold on Earth; but we do not have sufficient evidence that the Sun is such a "changing star" as to accept this hypothesis. The cause of the ice age is seen by some scientists as a decrease in the initially high temperature of the planet. Warm periods between glacial periods were associated with heat released from the supposed decomposition of organisms in layers close to the earth's surface. Increases and decreases in hot spring activity were also taken into account.

Many ideas and conjectures have been put forward to explain how the Ice Age arose and why it ended. Some believed that the Sun emitted more or less heat at different times, which explained periods of heat or cold on Earth; but we do not have sufficient evidence that the Sun is such a "changing star" as to accept this hypothesis.

Others have argued that there are colder and warmer zones in outer space. As our solar system passes through cold regions, ice moves down latitude closer to the tropics. But no physical factors have been discovered that create such cold and warm zones in space.

Some have wondered whether precession, or the slow change in direction of the Earth's axis, could cause periodic fluctuations in climate. But it has been proven that this change alone cannot be significant enough to cause an ice age.

Scientists also looked for an answer in periodic variations in the eccentricity of the ecliptic (Earth's orbit) with the phenomenon of glaciation at maximum eccentricity. Some researchers believed that winter at aphelion, the most distant part of the ecliptic, could lead to glaciation. And others believed that such an effect could be caused by summer at aphelion.

The cause of the ice age is seen by some scientists as a decrease in the initially high temperature of the planet. Warm periods between glacial periods were associated with heat released from the supposed decomposition of organisms in layers close to the earth's surface. Increases and decreases in hot spring activity were also taken into account.

There is a view that dust of volcanic origin filled the earth's atmosphere and caused isolation, or, on the other hand, the increasing amount of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere prevented the reflection of heat rays from the surface of the planet. An increase in the amount of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere can cause a drop in temperature (Arrhenius), but calculations have shown that this could not be the true cause of the ice age (Angström).

All other theories are also hypothetical. The phenomenon that underlies all these changes has never been precisely defined, and those that have been named could not produce a similar effect.

Not only are the reasons for the appearance and subsequent disappearance of ice sheets unknown, but also the geographical relief of the area covered by ice remains a problem. Why did ice cover in the southern hemisphere move from tropical Africa towards the south pole, and not in the opposite direction? And why, in the northern hemisphere, did ice move into India from the equator towards the Himalayas and higher latitudes? Why did glaciers cover most of North America and Europe, while Northern Asia was free of them?

In America, the ice plain extended to a latitude of 40° and even crossed this line; in Europe it reached a latitude of 50°, and North-Eastern Siberia, above the Arctic Circle, even at a latitude of 75° was not covered with this eternal ice. All hypotheses concerning increasing and decreasing insulation associated with changes in the sun or temperature fluctuations in outer space, and other similar hypotheses, cannot but face this problem.

Glaciers formed in permafrost areas. For this reason, they remained on the slopes of high mountains. Northern Siberia is the coldest place on Earth. Why did the Ice Age not affect this area, although it covered the Mississippi basin and all of Africa south of the equator? No satisfactory answer to this question has been proposed.

During the Last Ice Age at the peak of glaciation, which was observed 18,000 years ago (on the eve of the Great Flood), the boundaries of the glacier in Eurasia ran approximately at 50° north latitude (the latitude of Voronezh), and the boundary of the glacier in North America even at 40° (the latitude New York). At the South Pole, glaciation affected southern South America, and possibly New Zealand and southern Australia.

The theory of ice ages was first outlined in the work of the father of glaciology, Jean Louis Agassiz, “Etudes sur les glaciers” (1840). Over the century and a half since then, glaciology has been replenished with a huge amount of new scientific data, and the maximum boundaries of the Quaternary glaciation were determined with a high degree of accuracy.
However, over the entire existence of glaciology, it has not been able to establish the most important thing - to determine the causes of the onset and retreat of ice ages. None of the hypotheses put forward during this time received approval from the scientific community. And today, for example, in the Russian-language Wikipedia article “Ice Age” you will not find the section “Causes of Ice Ages”. And not because they forgot to place this section here, but because no one knows these reasons. What are the real reasons?
Paradoxically, in fact, there have never been any ice ages in the history of the Earth. The temperature and climate regime of the Earth is determined mainly by four factors: the intensity of the Sun's glow; the orbital distance of the Earth from the Sun; the angle of inclination of the Earth's axial rotation to the ecliptic plane; as well as the composition and density of the earth's atmosphere.

These factors, as scientific data show, remained stable throughout at least the last Quaternary period. Consequently, there were no reasons for a sharp change in the Earth's climate towards cooling.

What is the reason for the monstrous growth of glaciers during the Last Ice Age? The answer is simple: in the periodic change in the location of the earth's poles. And here we should immediately add: the monstrous growth of the Glacier during the Last Ice Age is an apparent phenomenon. In fact, the total area and volume of the Arctic and Antarctic glaciers have always remained approximately constant - while the North and South Poles changed their position with an interval of 3,600 years, which predetermined the wandering of the polar glaciers (caps) on the surface of the Earth. Exactly as much glacier formed around the new poles as it melted in the places where the poles left. In other words, the ice age is a very relative concept. When the North Pole was in North America, there was an ice age for its inhabitants. When the North Pole moved to Scandinavia, the Ice Age began in Europe, and when the North Pole “went” into the East Siberian Sea, the Ice Age “came” to Asia. Currently, the ice age is severe for the supposed inhabitants of Antarctica and the former inhabitants of Greenland, which is constantly thawing in the southern part, since the previous pole shift was not strong and moved Greenland a little closer to the equator.

Thus, there have never been ice ages in the history of the Earth and at the same time they always exist. Such is the paradox.

The total area and volume of glaciation on planet Earth has always been, is and will be generally constant as long as the four factors that determine the Earth's climate regime remain constant.
During the pole shift period, there are several ice sheets on Earth at the same time, usually two melting and two newly formed - this depends on the angle of crustal displacement.

Pole shifts on Earth occur at intervals of 3,600-3,700 years, corresponding to the period of Planet X's orbit around the Sun. These pole shifts lead to a redistribution of hot and cold zones on Earth, which is reflected in modern academic science in the form of continuously alternating stadials (cooling periods) and interstadials (warming periods). The average duration of both stadials and interstadials is determined in modern science to be 3700 years, which correlates well with the period of Planet X’s revolution around the Sun - 3600 years.

From academic literature:

It must be said that in the last 80,000 years the following periods (years BC) have been observed in Europe:
Stadial (cooling) 72500-68000
Interstadial (warming) 68000-66500
Stadial 66500-64000
Interstadial 64000-60500
Stadial 60500-48500
Interstadial 48500-40000
Stadial 40000-38000
Interstadial 38000-34000
Stadial 34000-32500
Interstadial 32500-24000
Stadial 24000-23000
Interstadial 23000-21500
Stadial 21500-17500
Interstadial 17500-16000
Stadial 16000-13000
Interstadial 13000-12500
Stadial 12500-10000

Thus, over the course of 62 thousand years, 9 stadials and 8 interstadials occurred in Europe. The average duration of a stadial is 3700 years, and an interstadial is also 3700 years. The largest stadial lasted 12,000 years, and the interstadial lasted 8,500 years.

In the post-Flood history of the Earth, 5 pole shifts occurred and, accordingly, in the Northern Hemisphere 5 polar ice sheets successively replaced each other: the Laurentian Ice Sheet (the last antediluvian), the Scandinavian Barents-Kara Ice Sheet, the East Siberian Ice Sheet, the Greenland Ice Sheet and the modern Arctic ice sheet.

The modern Greenland Ice Sheet deserves special attention as the third major ice sheet, coexisting simultaneously with the Arctic Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The presence of a third large ice sheet does not at all contradict the theses stated above, since it is a well-preserved remnant of the previous Northern Polar Ice Sheet, where the North Pole was located during 5,200 - 1,600 years. BC This fact is connected with the solution to the riddle of why the extreme north of Greenland today is not affected by glaciation - the North Pole was in the south of Greenland.

The location of the polar ice sheets in the southern hemisphere changed accordingly:

• 16,000 BCuh. (18,000 years ago) Recently, there has been a strong consensus in academic science regarding the fact that this year was both the peak of maximum glaciation of the Earth and the beginning of the rapid melting of the Glacier. There is no clear explanation for either fact in modern science. What was this year famous for? 16,000 BC e. - this is the year of the 5th passage through the solar system, counting from the present moment ago (3600 x 5 = 18,000 years ago). In this year, the North Pole was located on the territory of modern Canada in the Hudson Bay region. The South Pole was located in the ocean east of Antarctica, suggesting glaciation in southern Australia and New Zealand. Eurasia is completely free of glaciers. “In the 6th year of K’an, the 11th day of Muluk, in the month of Sak, a terrible earthquake began and continued without interruption until the 13th of Kuen. The Land of Clay Hills, the Land of Mu, was sacrificed. After experiencing two strong fluctuations, it suddenly disappeared during the night;the soil was constantly shaking under the influence of underground forces, raising and lowering it in many places, so that it sank; countries separated from one another, then fell apart. Unable to resist these terrible tremors, they failed, dragging the inhabitants with them. This happened 8050 years before this book was written."(“Code of Troano” translated by Auguste Le Plongeon). The unprecedented scale of the catastrophe caused by the passage of Planet X led to a very strong pole shift. The North Pole moves from Canada to Scandinavia, the South Pole moves to the ocean west of Antarctica. At the same time the Laurentian Ice Sheet begins to rapidly melt, which coincides with the data of academic science about the end of the peak of glaciation and the beginning of the melting of the Glacier, the Scandinavian Ice Sheet is formed. At the same time, the Australian and South Zealand ice sheets are melting and the Patagonian Ice Sheet is forming in South America. These four ice sheets coexist only for the relatively short time required for the previous two ice sheets to completely melt and two new ones to form.

• 12,400 BC The North Pole moves from Scandinavia to the Barents Sea. This creates the Barents-Kara Ice Sheet, but the Scandinavian Ice Sheet melts only slightly as the North Pole moves a relatively small distance. In academic science, this fact is reflected as follows: “The first signs of the interglacial (which continues to this day) appeared already 12,000 BC.”
• 8800 BC The North Pole moves from the Barents Sea to the East Siberian Sea, due to which the Scandinavian and Barents-Kara ice sheets melt, and the East Siberian Ice Sheet is formed. This pole shift killed off most of the mammoths. Quoting from an academic study: “About 8000 BC. e. sharp warming led to the retreat of the glacier from its last line - a wide strip of moraines stretching from central Sweden through the Baltic Sea basin to south-east Finland. Around this time, the disintegration of a single and homogeneous periglacial zone occurs. In the temperate zone of Eurasia, forest vegetation predominates. To the south of it, forest-steppe and steppe zones take shape.”
• 5200 BC The North Pole moves from the East Siberian Sea to Greenland, causing the East Siberian Ice Sheet to melt and form the Greenland Ice Sheet. Hyperborea is freed from ice, and a wonderful temperate climate is established in the Trans-Urals and Siberia. Aryavarta, the land of the Aryans, flourishes here.
• 1600 BC Past shift. The North Pole moves from Greenland to the Arctic Ocean to its present position. The Arctic Ice Sheet appears, but at the same time the Greenland Ice Sheet persists. The last mammoths living in Siberia freeze very quickly with undigested green grass in their stomachs. Hyperborea is completely hidden under the modern Arctic ice sheet. Most of the Trans-Urals and Siberia become unsuitable for human existence, which is why the Aryans undertook their famous Exodus to India and Europe, and the Jews also made their exodus from Egypt.

“In the permafrost of Alaska... one can find... evidence of atmospheric disturbances of incomparable power. Mammoths and bison were torn to pieces and twisted as if some cosmic hands of the gods were at work in fury. In one place... they discovered the front leg and shoulder of a mammoth; the blackened bones still held remnants of soft tissue adjacent to the spine along with tendons and ligaments, and the chitinous shell of the tusks was not damaged. There were no traces of dismemberment of the carcasses with a knife or other weapon (as would be the case if hunters were involved in the dismemberment). The animals were simply torn apart and scattered across the area like products made from woven straw, although some of them weighed several tons. Mixed in with the accumulations of bones are trees, also torn, twisted and tangled; all this is covered with fine-grained quicksand, subsequently tightly frozen” (H. Hancock, “Traces of the Gods”).

Frozen mammoths

Northeastern Siberia, which was not covered by glaciers, holds another secret. Its climate has changed dramatically since the end of the Ice Age, and the average annual temperature has fallen many degrees lower than before. The animals that once lived in the area could no longer live here, and the plants that once grew there were unable to grow here anymore. This change must have happened quite suddenly. The reason for this event is not explained. During this catastrophic climate change and under mysterious circumstances, all Siberian mammoths died. And this happened only 13 thousand years ago, when the human race was already widespread throughout the planet. For comparison: Late Paleolithic cave paintings found in caves in Southern France (Lascaux, Chauvet, Rouffignac, etc.) were made 17-13 thousand years ago.

There lived such an animal on earth - a mammoth. They reached a height of 5.5 meters and a body weight of 4-12 tons. Most mammoths died out about 11-12 thousand years ago during the last cold spell of the Vistula Ice Age. Science tells us this, and paints a picture like the one above. True, not very concerned with the question - what did these woolly elephants weighing 4-5 tons eat in such a landscape? “Of course, since they say so in books”- Aleni nods. Reading very selectively and looking at the picture provided. The fact that during the life of mammoths, birch trees grew on the territory of the current tundra (which is written about in the same book, and other deciduous forests - i.e. a completely different climate) - is somehow not noticed. The diet of mammoths was mainly plant-based, and adult males They ate about 180 kg of food every day.

At that time the number of woolly mammoths was truly impressive. For example, between 1750 and 1917, trade in mammoth ivory flourished over a wide area, and 96,000 mammoth tusks were discovered. According to various estimates, about 5 million mammoths lived in a small part of northern Siberia.

Before their extinction, woolly mammoths inhabited large parts of our planet. Their remains were found throughout the area Northern Europe, Northern Asia and North America.

Woolly mammoths were not a new species. They inhabited our planet for six million years.

A biased interpretation of the mammoth's hair and fat constitution, as well as a belief in constant climatic conditions, led scientists to the conclusion that the woolly mammoth was an inhabitant of the cold regions of our planet. But fur-bearing animals do not have to live in a cold climate. Take for example desert animals like camels, kangaroos and fennec foxes. They are furry, but live in hot or temperate climates. In fact most fur-bearing animals would not be able to survive in arctic conditions.

For successful cold adaptation, it is not enough just to have a coat. For adequate thermal insulation from the cold, the wool must be in a raised state. Unlike Antarctic fur seals, mammoths lacked raised fur.

Another factor in sufficient protection from cold and humidity is the presence of sebaceous glands, which secrete oils onto the skin and fur, and thus protect against moisture.

Mammoths had no sebaceous glands, and their dry hair allowed snow to touch the skin, melt, and greatly increase heat loss (the thermal conductivity of water is about 12 times higher than that of snow).

As you can see in the photo above, mammoth fur was not dense. By comparison, the fur of the yak (a cold-adapted Himalayan mammal) is about 10 times thicker.

In addition, mammoths had hair that hung down to their toes. But every Arctic animal has fur, not hair, on its toes or paws. Hair would collect snow on the ankle joint and interfere with walking.

The above clearly shows that fur and body fat are not evidence of adaptation to cold. The fat layer only indicates the abundance of food. A fat, overfed dog would not be able to withstand an Arctic blizzard and temperatures of -60°C. But Arctic rabbits or caribou can, despite their relatively low fat content relative to their total body weight.

As a rule, the remains of mammoths are found with the remains of other animals, such as: tigers, antelopes, camels, horses, reindeer, giant beavers, giant bulls, sheep, musk oxen, donkeys, badgers, alpine goats, woolly rhinoceroses, foxes, giant bison, lynx, leopards, wolverines, hares, lions, moose, giant wolves, gophers, cave hyenas, bears, as well as many species of birds. Most of these animals would not be able to survive in the Arctic climate. This is further evidence that Woolly mammoths were not polar animals.

A French prehistoric expert, Henry Neville, conducted the most detailed study of mammoth skin and hair. At the end of his careful analysis he wrote the following:

“It does not seem to me possible to find in the anatomical study of their skin and [hair] any argument in favor of adaptation to cold.”

— G. Neville, On the Extinction of the Mammoth, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1919, p. 332.

Finally, the diet of mammoths contradicts the diet of animals living in polar climates. How could a woolly mammoth maintain its vegetarian diet in the Arctic region, and eat hundreds of kilograms of greens every day, when in such a climate there are no greens for most of the year? How could woolly mammoths find liters of water for daily consumption?

To make matters worse, woolly mammoths lived during the Ice Age, when temperatures were lower than they are today. Mammoths would not have been able to survive in the harsh climate of northern Siberia today, let alone 13 thousand years ago, if the then climate had been much harsher.

The above facts indicate that the woolly mammoth was not a polar animal, but lived in a temperate climate. Consequently, at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, 13 thousand years ago, Siberia was not an Arctic region, but a temperate one.

“However, they died a long time ago”– the reindeer herder agrees, cutting off a piece of meat from the found carcass to feed the dogs.

"Hard"- says the more vital geologist, chewing a piece of shish kebab taken from an improvised skewer.

The frozen mammoth meat initially looked absolutely fresh, dark red in color, with appetizing streaks of fat, and the expedition staff even wanted to try eating it. But as it thawed, the meat became flabby, dark gray in color, with an unbearable smell of decomposition. However, the dogs happily ate the millennia-old ice cream delicacy, from time to time starting internecine fights over the most delicious morsels.

One more thing. Mammoths are rightly called fossils. Because nowadays they are simply dug. For the purpose of extracting tusks for crafts.

It is estimated that over two and a half centuries in northeastern Siberia, tusks belonging to at least forty-six thousand (!) mammoths were collected (the average weight of a pair of tusks is close to eight pounds - about one hundred and thirty kilograms).

Mammoth tusks DIGGING. That is, they are mined from underground. Somehow the question does not even arise - why have we forgotten how to see the obvious? Did mammoths dig holes for themselves, lie down in them for winter hibernation, and then they were covered? But how did they end up underground? At a depth of 10 meters or more? Why are mammoth tusks dug out of cliffs on river banks? Moreover, in large numbers. So massively that a bill has been submitted to the State Duma equating mammoths to minerals, as well as introducing a tax on their extraction.

But for some reason they are digging them en masse only in our north. And now the question arises - what happened that entire mammoth cemeteries were formed here?

What caused such an almost instant mass pestilence?

Over the past two centuries, numerous theories have been proposed that attempt to explain the sudden extinction of woolly mammoths. They became stranded in frozen rivers, overhunted, and fell into icy crevasses at the height of the global glaciation. But Neither theory adequately explains this mass extinction.

Let's try to think for ourselves.

Then the following logical chain should line up:

1. There were a lot of mammoths.
2. Since there were many of them, they must have had a good food supply - not the tundra, where they are now found.
3. If it was not the tundra, the climate in those places was somewhat different, much warmer.
4. A slightly different climate beyond the Arctic Circle could only exist if it was not beyond the Arctic Circle at that time.
5. Mammoth tusks, and even whole mammoths themselves, are found underground. They somehow got there, some event happened that covered them with a layer of soil.
6. Taking it as an axiom that mammoths themselves did not dig holes, this soil could only have been brought by water, first surging in and then draining.
7. The layer of this soil is thick - meters, and even tens of meters. And the amount of water that applied such a layer must have been very large.
8. Mammoth carcasses are found in very well-preserved condition. Immediately after washing the corpses with sand, they froze, which was very fast.

They froze almost instantly on giant glaciers, the thickness of which was many hundreds of meters, to which they were carried by a tidal wave caused by a change in the angle of inclination of the earth's axis. This gave rise to an unjustified assumption among scientists that the animals of the middle zone went deep to the North in search of food. All the remains of mammoths were found in sands and clays deposited by mud flows.

Such powerful mudflows are possible only during extraordinary major disasters, because at this time dozens, and possibly hundreds and thousands of animal cemeteries were formed throughout the North, in which not only the inhabitants of the northern regions, but also animals from regions with a temperate climate ended up being washed away . And this suggests that these gigantic animal cemeteries were formed by a tidal wave of incredible power and size, which literally rolled across the continents and, moving back into the ocean, took with it thousands of herds of large and small animals. And the most powerful mudflow “tongue”, containing gigantic accumulations of animals, reached the New Siberian Islands, which were literally covered with loess and countless bones of a wide variety of animals.

A giant tidal wave washed away gigantic herds of animals from the face of the Earth. These huge herds of drowned animals, lingering in natural barriers, folds of terrain and floodplains, formed countless animal cemeteries in which animals from various climatic zones found themselves mixed.

Scattered bones and molars of mammoths are often found in sediments and sediments on the ocean floor.

The most famous, but far from the largest mammoth cemetery in Russia, is the Berelekh burial site. This is how N.K. describes the Berelekh mammoth cemetery. Vereshchagin: “The yar is crowned with a melting edge of ice and mounds... A kilometer later, a vast scattering of huge gray bones appeared - long, flat, short. They protrude from the dark damp soil in the middle of the slope of the ravine. Sliding toward the water along a weakly turfed slope, the bones formed a spit-toe that protected the shore from erosion. There are thousands of them, the scattering stretches along the shore for about two hundred meters and goes into the water. The opposite, right bank is only eighty meters away, low, alluvial, behind it is an impenetrable thicket of willow... everyone is silent, depressed by what they see.”.In the area of ​​the Berelekh cemetery there is a thick layer of clay-ash loess. Signs of extremely large floodplain sediment are clearly visible. A huge mass of fragments of branches, roots, and bone remains of animals had accumulated in this place. The animal cemetery was washed away by the river, which twelve thousand years later returned to its former course. Scientists who studied the Berelekh cemetery discovered among the remains of mammoths, a large number of bones of other animals, herbivores and predators, which under normal conditions are never found in huge concentrations together: foxes, hares, deer, wolves, wolverines and other animals.

The theory of recurring catastrophes destroying life on our planet and repeating the creation, or restoration of life forms, proposed by Deluc and developed by Cuvier, did not convince the scientific world. Both Lamarck before Cuvier and Darwin after him believed that a progressive, slow, evolutionary process governs genetics and that there are no catastrophes that interrupt this process of infinitesimal changes. According to the theory of evolution, these minor changes are the result of adaptation to living conditions in the struggle of species for survival.

Darwin admitted that he was unable to explain the disappearance of the mammoth, an animal much more advanced than the elephant, which survived. But in accordance with the theory of evolution, his followers believed that the gradual subsidence of the soil forced the mammoths to climb the hills, and they turned out to be closed on all sides by swamps. However, if geological processes are slow, mammoths would not be trapped on isolated hills. Moreover, this theory cannot be true because the animals did not die from starvation. Undigested grass was found in their stomachs and between their teeth. This, by the way, also proves that they died suddenly. Further research showed that the branches and leaves found in their stomachs did not come from the areas where the animals died, but further south, more than a thousand miles away. It appears that the climate has changed radically since the death of the mammoths. And since the bodies of the animals were found undecomposed, but well preserved in ice blocks, a change in temperature must have followed immediately after their death.

Documentary

Risking their lives and exposing themselves to great danger, scientists in Siberia are searching for one single frozen mammoth cell. With the help of which it will be possible to clone and thereby bring back to life a long-extinct species of animal.

It remains to add that after storms in the Arctic, mammoth tusks are washed up on the shores of the Arctic islands. This proves that the part of the land where the mammoths lived and drowned was heavily flooded.

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For some reason, modern scientists do not take into account the facts of the presence of a geotectonic catastrophe in the recent past of the Earth. Precisely in the recent past.
Although for them it is already an indisputable fact of the catastrophe that killed the dinosaurs. But they also date this event to 60-65 million years ago.
There are no versions that would combine the temporal facts of the death of dinosaurs and mammoths - at the same time. Mammoths lived in temperate latitudes, dinosaurs - in the southern regions, but died at the same time.
But no, no attention is paid to the geographical attachment of animals from different climatic zones, but there is also a temporary separation.
There have already been many facts about the sudden death of a huge number of mammoths in different parts of the world. But here scientists again avoid obvious conclusions.
Not only have representatives of science aged all the mammoths by 40 thousand years, but they are also inventing versions of the natural processes in which these giants died.

American, French and Russian scientists conducted the first CT scans of Lyuba and Khroma, the youngest and best-preserved mammoth calves.

Computed tomography (CT) sections were presented in the new issue of the Journal of Paleontology, and a summary of the results of the work can be found on the University of Michigan website.

Reindeer herders found Lyuba in 2007, on the banks of the Yuribey River on the Yamal Peninsula. Her corpse reached the scientists almost without damage (only the tail was chewed off by dogs).

Khroma (this is “boy”) was discovered in 2008 on the banks of the river of the same name in Yakutia - crows and arctic foxes ate his trunk and part of his neck. Mammoths have well-preserved soft tissues (muscles, fat, internal organs, skin). Khroma was even found with coagulated blood in intact vessels and undigested milk in her stomach. Chroma was scanned at a French hospital. And at the University of Michigan, scientists made CT sections of animal teeth.

Thanks to this, it turned out that Lyuba died at the age of 30-35 days, and Chroma - 52-57 days (and both mammoths were born in the spring).

Both baby mammoths died after choking on mud. CT scans showed a dense mass of fine-grained deposits blocking the airways in the trunk.

The same deposits are present in Lyuba’s throat and bronchi - but not inside her lungs: this suggests that Lyuba did not drown in the water (as was previously thought), but suffocated by inhaling liquid mud. Khroma's spine was broken and there was also dirt in his respiratory tract.

So, scientists have once again confirmed our version of a global mudflow that covered the present north of Siberia and destroyed all life there, covering a vast area with “fine-grained sediments that clogged the respiratory tract.”

After all, such finds are observed over a vast territory and to assume that all the found mammoths suddenly began to fall into rivers and swamps AT THE SAME TIME is absurd.

Plus, the mammoth calves have typical injuries for those caught in a stormy mudflow - broken bones and spine.

Scientists have found a very interesting detail - the death occurred either at the end of spring or in summer. After birth in the spring, mammoth calves lived for 30-50 days before death. That is, the time of the pole change was probably in the summer.

Or here's another example:

A team of Russian and American paleontologists is studying a bison that has lain in permafrost in northeastern Yakutia for about 9,300 years.

The bison found on the shores of Lake Chukchalakh is unique in that it is the first representative of this bovid species found at such a respectable age in complete preservation - with all parts of the body and internal organs.

He was found in a supine position with his legs bent under his abdomen, his neck extended and his head lying on the ground. Usually, ungulates rest or sleep in this position, and in this position they die a natural death.

The age of the body, determined using radiocarbon analysis, is 9310 years, that is, the bison lived in the early Holocene era. Scientists also determined that his age before death was about four years. The bison managed to grow to 170 cm at the withers, the span of the horns reached an impressive 71 cm, and the weight was about 500 kg.

Researchers have already scanned the animal's brain, but the cause of its death still remains a mystery. No damage was found on the corpse, nor were there any pathologies of internal organs or dangerous bacteria.

The periods of the geological history of the Earth are epochs, the successive changes of which shaped it as a planet. At this time, mountains were formed and destroyed, seas appeared and dried up, ice ages succeeded each other, and the evolution of the animal world took place. The study of the geological history of the Earth is carried out through sections of rocks that have preserved the mineral composition of the period that formed them.

Cenozoic period

The current period of Earth's geological history is the Cenozoic. It began sixty-six million years ago and is still going on. The conventional boundary was drawn by geologists at the end of the Cretaceous period, when mass extinction of species was observed.

The term was proposed by the English geologist Phillips back in the mid-nineteenth century. Its literal translation sounds like “new life.” The era is divided into three periods, each of which, in turn, is divided into eras.

Geological periods

Any geological era is divided into periods. There are three periods in the Cenozoic era:

Paleogene;

The Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era, or Anthropocene.

In earlier terminology, the first two periods were combined under the name "Tertiary period".

On land, which had not yet completely divided into separate continents, mammals reigned. Rodents and insectivores, early primates, appeared. In the seas, reptiles were replaced by predatory fish and sharks, and new species of mollusks and algae appeared. Thirty-eight million years ago, the diversity of species on Earth was amazing, and the evolutionary process affected representatives of all kingdoms.

Just five million years ago, the first apes began to walk on land. Another three million years later, in the territory belonging to modern Africa, Homo erectus began to gather in tribes, collecting roots and mushrooms. Ten thousand years ago, modern man appeared and began to reshape the Earth to suit his needs.

Paleography

The Paleogene lasted forty-three million years. The continents in their modern form were still part of Gondwana, which was beginning to split into separate fragments. South America was the first to float freely, becoming a reservoir for unique plants and animals. In the Eocene era, the continents gradually occupied their current position. Antarctica separates from South America, and India moves closer to Asia. A body of water appeared between North America and Eurasia.

During the Oligocene epoch, the climate becomes cool, India finally consolidates below the equator, and Australia drifts between Asia and Antarctica, moving away from both. Due to temperature changes, ice caps form at the South Pole, causing sea levels to drop.

During the Neogene period, the continents begin to collide with each other. Africa “rams” Europe, as a result of which the Alps appear, India and Asia form the Himalayan mountains. The Andes and rocky mountains appear in the same way. In the Pliocene era, the world becomes even colder, forests die out, giving way to steppes.

Two million years ago, a period of glaciation began, sea levels fluctuated, and the white caps at the poles either grew or melted again. The flora and fauna are being tested. Today, humanity is experiencing one of the stages of warming, but on a global scale the ice age continues to last.

Life in the Cenozoic

The Cenozoic periods cover a relatively short period of time. If you put the entire geological history of the earth on a dial, then the last two minutes will be reserved for the Cenozoic.

The extinction event, which marked the end of the Cretaceous period and the beginning of the new era, wiped out all animals larger than the crocodile from the face of the Earth. Those who managed to survive were able to adapt to new conditions or evolved. The drift of the continents continued until the advent of people, and on those of them that were isolated, a unique animal and plant world was able to survive.

The Cenozoic era was distinguished by a large species diversity of flora and fauna. It is called the time of mammals and angiosperms. In addition, this era can be called the era of steppes, savannas, insects and flowering plants. The emergence of Homo sapiens can be considered the crown of the evolutionary process on Earth.

Quaternary period

Modern humanity lives in the Quaternary epoch of the Cenozoic era. It began two and a half million years ago, when in Africa, great apes began to form tribes and obtain food by collecting berries and digging up roots.

The Quaternary period was marked by the formation of mountains and seas and the movement of continents. The earth acquired the appearance it has now. For geological researchers, this period is simply a stumbling block, since its duration is so short that radioisotope scanning methods of rocks are simply not sensitive enough and produce large errors.

The characteristics of the Quaternary period consist of materials obtained using radiocarbon dating. This method is based on measuring the amounts of rapidly decaying isotopes in soil and rock, as well as the bones and tissues of extinct animals. The entire period of time can be divided into two eras: the Pleistocene and the Holocene. Humanity is now in the second era. There are no exact estimates yet of when it will end, but scientists continue to build hypotheses.

Pleistocene era

The Quaternary period opens the Pleistocene. It began two and a half million years ago and ended only twelve thousand years ago. It was a time of glaciation. Long ice ages were interspersed with short warming periods.

One hundred thousand years ago, in the area of ​​modern Northern Europe, a thick ice cap appeared, which began to spread in different directions, absorbing more and more new territories. Animals and plants were forced to either adapt to new conditions or die. The frozen desert stretches from Asia to North America. In some places the ice thickness reached two kilometers.

The beginning of the Quaternary period turned out to be too harsh for the creatures that inhabited the earth. They are accustomed to a warm, temperate climate. In addition, ancient people began to hunt animals, who had already invented the stone ax and other hand tools. Entire species of mammals, birds and marine fauna are disappearing from the face of the Earth. The Neanderthal man could not withstand the harsh conditions either. Cro-Magnons were more resilient, successful in hunting, and it was their genetic material that should have survived.

Holocene era

The second half of the Quaternary period began twelve thousand years ago and continues to this day. It is characterized by relative warming and climate stabilization. The beginning of the era was marked by the mass extinction of animals, and it continued with the development of human civilization and its technological flourishing.

Changes in animal and plant composition throughout the era were insignificant. Mammoths finally became extinct, and some species of birds and marine mammals ceased to exist. About seventy years ago the general temperature of the earth increased. Scientists attribute this to the fact that human industrial activity causes global warming. In this regard, glaciers in North America and Eurasia have melted, and the Arctic ice cover is disintegrating.

Ice age

An ice age is a stage in the geological history of the planet that lasts several million years, during which there is a decrease in temperature and an increase in the number of continental glaciers. As a rule, glaciations alternate with warming periods. Now the Earth is in a period of relative temperature rise, but this does not mean that in half a millennium the situation cannot change dramatically.

At the end of the nineteenth century, geologist Kropotkin visited the Lena gold mines with an expedition and discovered signs of ancient glaciation there. He was so interested in the findings that he began large-scale international work in this direction. First of all, he visited Finland and Sweden, as he assumed that it was from there that the ice caps spread to Eastern Europe and Asia. Kropotkin's reports and his hypotheses regarding the modern Ice Age formed the basis of modern ideas about this time period.

History of the Earth

The ice age the Earth is currently in is far from the first in our history. Cooling of the climate has happened before. It was accompanied by significant changes in the relief of continents and their movement, and also influenced the species composition of flora and fauna. Between glaciations there could be gaps of hundreds of thousands and millions of years. Each ice age is divided into glacial epochs or glacials, which during the period alternate with interglacials - interglacials.

There are four glacial eras in the history of the Earth:

Early Proterozoic.

Late Proterozoic.

Paleozoic.

Cenozoic.

Each of them lasted from 400 million to 2 billion years. This suggests that our ice age has not even reached its equator yet.

Cenozoic Ice Age

Animals of the Quaternary period were forced to grow additional fur or seek shelter from ice and snow. The climate on the planet has changed again.

The first epoch of the Quaternary period was characterized by cooling, and in the second there was relative warming, but even now, in the most extreme latitudes and at the poles, ice cover remains. It covers the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland. The thickness of the ice varies from two thousand meters to five thousand.

The Pleistocene Ice Age is considered to be the strongest in the entire Cenozoic era, when the temperature dropped so much that three of the five oceans on the planet froze.

Chronology of Cenozoic glaciations

The glaciation of the Quaternary period began recently, if we consider this phenomenon in relation to the history of the Earth as a whole. It is possible to identify individual epochs during which the temperature dropped especially low.

1. The end of the Eocene (38 million years ago) - glaciation of Antarctica.
2. The entire Oligocene.
3. Middle Miocene.
4. Mid-Pliocene.
5. Glacial Gilbert, freezing of the seas.
6. Continental Pleistocene.
7. Late Upper Pleistocene (about ten thousand years ago).

This was the last major period when, due to climate cooling, animals and humans had to adapt to new conditions in order to survive.

Paleozoic Ice Age

During the Paleozoic era, the Earth froze so much that ice caps reached as far south as Africa and South America, and also covered all of North America and Europe. Two glaciers almost converge along the equator. The peak is considered to be the moment when a three-kilometer layer of ice rose above the territory of northern and western Africa.

Scientists have discovered the remains and effects of glacial deposits in studies in Brazil, Africa (in Nigeria) and the mouth of the Amazon River. Thanks to radioisotope analysis, it was found that the age and chemical composition of these finds are the same. This means that it can be argued that the rock layers were formed as a result of one global process that affected several continents at once.

Planet Earth is still very young by cosmic standards. She is just beginning her journey in the Universe. It is unknown whether it will continue with us or whether humanity will simply become an insignificant episode in successive geological eras. If you look at the calendar, we have spent a negligible amount of time on this planet, and it is quite simple to destroy us with the help of another cold snap. People need to remember this and not exaggerate their role in the Earth's biological system.

Abstract: Glaciations in the history of the Earth. Contents CONTENTS 1. ANCIENT GLACIATIONS 2. LATE CENIOZOIC STAGE OF GLACATION OF THE EARTH 3. BEGINNING OF LATE CENIOZOIC GLACIAL STAGE 11 APPENDIX. 15 LIST OF REFERENCES USED: 1. ANCIENT GLACIES The study of ancient glaciations began more than 200 years ago. The traces of glaciations of the Quaternary period, the youngest stage of the Earth's history, lasting 1.8 million years, are best identified. For a long time it was believed that the latest stage of glaciation development was limited to the final part of the Quaternary period - the Pleistocene.

However, new studies have shown that the last glacial stage had a much longer duration and its origins went back to the Miocene; Accordingly, a broader term is proposed: the late Cenozoic glacial stage. This stage is not at all limited to the study of the “glaciation-life” system, since our planet experienced several more ancient glacial stages, which repeated approximately 200 - 250 million years later. In addition to the Late Cenozoic, traces of glaciations are clearly established in the Carboniferous-Permian, Early Paleozoic and Precambrian.

All these outbreaks of glacial processes are directly related to periods of intense mountain building and, thus, reflect the results of deep processes in the bowels of the Earth. Probably, glaciations were not random episodes, but quite natural milestones in the evolution of its entire nature. It is quite clear that the knowledge of glaciations largely depends on the preservation of their traces, expressed in sediments and relief.

Therefore, identifying signs of ancient glaciations is always difficult, especially in mountainous countries, where the youngest glacial deposits and landforms are predominantly represented. Typical ancient glacial deposits - tillites - are highly compacted, poorly sorted, coarse-grained clastic facies, similar to the main moraine of Quaternary glaciers.

However, tillites are often transformed under the influence of flowing waters, which was especially pronounced during the melting of ice sheets. In many countries, certain diagnostic features of ancient moraines have been established, which make it possible to confirm their glacial origin. Nevertheless, the genesis of tillites has been criticized, and their formation is attributed to turbulent flows. When substantiating ancient glaciations, significant importance is also attached to the presence of surfaces streaked with ice, boulder pavements, curly rocks, sheep's foreheads, etc. A convincing argument is the prevalence of glacial forms, as well as the presence of paragenetic complexes of glacial and periglacial (periglacial) elements in combination with finds of remains cold-tolerant plants and animals.

When identifying ancient glaciations, the degree of reliability largely depends on the geological age. For Precambrian time, signs of at least four major glacial epochs have been established, but in the most ancient rocks (more than 2.8 billion years old), due to deep metamorphization, it is difficult to identify reliable signs of glacial origin.

The age of the oldest of the ice ages - the Huronian - is about 2.3 billion years ago. It was followed by the Gneissian (950 million years), Sturtian (750 million years) and Varangian (680 - 660 million years) eras (Fig. 1). The last of them is the best studied: its traces have been found on almost all continents, including on the territory of our country. In the northern regions of Scandinavia, pavements made of boulders with clear glacial shading dating back to the Varangian era are known (Fig. 2). Sturt glacial deposits are found in Australia, China, South-West Africa and Scandinavia, Gneiss deposits are found in Greenland, Norway and Svalbard (Spitsbergen), Huronian deposits are found in Canada, South Africa and India. Precambrian glaciations did not develop in exceptional natural environments.

On the contrary, according to the ideas of A.V. Sidorenko, from the early Archean there was a fundamental commonality in the geological history of the Earth. For the Archean and Proterozoic, the same relationships of geological processes have been established as for subsequent eras. Since the oldest known rocks were formed when there was already water in the liquid phase, naturally, there is an assumption about the long development of life, as indicated by the presence of living matter in Precambrian sedimentary rocks.

This substance changed the composition of the atmosphere and transformed the geochemical environment of sedimentation. It is possible that the enhanced photosynthetic activity of primitive organisms stimulated the development of ancient glaciations.

Traces of glaciations were also found in Early Paleozoic rocks. The glacial deposits of the Sahara dating back to the Late Ordovician (460 - 430 million years ago) have been more fully studied. In some places there are typical U-shaped glacial valleys with traces of shading on the rocky ledges. In addition, water-glacial sediments and permafrost soils (stone polygons) were discovered. Late Ordovician glacial formations probably accumulated in high latitudes close to the sea coast.

The study of Late Paleozoic tillites dating back to the Carboniferous and Permian periods supported the concept of continental drift put forward by geophysicist A. Wegener in 1912. According to this concept, the vast continent of Gondwana existed for a long time, uniting South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica. Maximum glaciation occurred in the Early Permian. Then, due to the beginning of the shift of this continent to the north, almost simultaneous melting of the ice sheets occurred.

It is interesting to note that the likelihood of the development of Gondwana glaciation was noted back in the middle of the 19th century, when the theory of continental glaciation had not yet actually been developed. Let us now consider some data on glaciation in different parts of Gondwana. In South America only in the river basin. Parana glacial deposits of the late Paleozoic can be traced over an area of ​​more than 1.5 million km2. Although in many areas, especially along the foothills of the Andes, these deposits are not in their primary occurrence, during the research classic signs of glacial activity were found: main moraines, surfaces with boulder pavements, valleys carved out by glaciers, sheep's foreheads, eskers, etc. Judging by the paleobotanical According to data, these glacial formations belong to different stages of the Carboniferous period and the very beginning of the Permian period, 335 - 260 million years ago.

This was probably one of the longest glacial eras, involving at least 17 glacier movements; Ice transport prevailed from east to west.

Late Paleozoic glacial deposits of South Africa were described in 1870 when the concept of tillites of the Dvaika series was introduced and surfaces with boulder blinds, valleys filled with glacial sediments, etc. were found. In some places, signs of tillites being washed out by flowing waters were found. Thanks to detailed textural and facies studies, it was possible to identify several independent glacial lobes, some of which moved from southeastern South Africa to South America (Fig. 3). These glacial blades existed around the same time. 2.

LATE CENIOZOIC STAGE OF GLACIALIZATION OF THE EARTH

In 1856, only thanks to the introduction of radioisotope dating methods was it possible... A short period of activation of the last Valdai glaciation... G. Groswald's concept of the widespread development of glaciations on the shelves.

THE BEGINNING OF THE LATE CENIOZOIC GLACIAL STAGE

At least 10 glacial cycles have been recorded over the years. years ago. The subsequent formation of the circum-Antarctic system of sea currents... In the first half of the Cenozoic, and in particular in the Eocene, centers of glaciation...

APPLICATION

APPENDIX.Fig. 1. Ice ages in the history of the Earth (according to D. Tarling) Fig. 2. Varangian glaciation in the northern hemisphere (according to N.M. Chumakov, A. Cailleux and A.M. Spencer) 1 - Varangian ice sheet; 2 - locations of tillites; 3 - directions of ice movement Fig. 3. Reconstruction of the Gondwana continent at the beginning of the Permian period (according to W. Hamilton and D. Krinsley) 1 - glacial deposits (tillites); 2 - directions of ice movement. The diagram shows the paleolatitudes Fig. 5. Sketch of a moraine outcrop near the city of Hämenlinna in Finland (from the book by P. A. Kropotkin “Research on the Ice Age”, 1876) a - glacial rubble; b - granite mounds Fig. 6. Glacioeustatic fluctuations in the level of the World Ocean in the Late Quaternary, dashed line - the expected course of changes Table 1 Development of continental glaciation of Antarctica and its correlation with the history of the Mediterranean and Ponto-Caspian Age, million years* Antarctica Mediterranean Ponto-Caspian Pleistocene 0.7 Expansion in the marginal zone Calabrian (middle and upper Vilafranchian) Absheron (Eopleistocene) 1.85 Partial degradation in the marginal zone Piacenzo (Romanian) Akchagyl 3.3 Stabilization Tabian (Dacian) Cimmerian 5.0 Maximum continental glaciation Messinian Pontus 7.0 Consecutive growth of the Tortonian cover ( pannon) Maotis 10.5 Formation of the ice sheet Serraval Sarmat 14.0 Fig. 7. The nature of fluctuations in the thickness of the ice cover in some areas of East Antarctica (according to V.I. Bardin) a - Beardmore Glacier, Transantarctic Mountains; b – Mount Inzel, Queen Maud Land; c - Mount Collins, Prince Charles Range; 1 - 3 - stages of glaciation Modern glaciations of the Earth List of used literature: 1. Serebryanny L. R. Ancient glaciation and life.

M.: Nauka, 1980. 128 pp. – (Series “Man and the Environment”). 2. http://www.km.ru/magazin/view.asp?id= 03/25/2004 3. http://geoman.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0/s t017.shtml.

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Has the climate always been the same as it is now?

Each of us can say that the climate is not always the same. A series of dry years gives way to rainy ones; After cold winters come warm ones. But these climate fluctuations are still not so great that they could significantly affect the life of plants or animals within a short period of time. So, for example, the tundra with its polar birches, dwarf willows, mosses and lichens, with the polar animals inhabiting it - arctic foxes, lemmings (pieds), reindeer - does not develop in such a short time in those places where cooling occurs. But has it always been this way? Was it always cold in Siberia, and as warm in the Caucasus and Crimea as it is now?

It has long been known that caves in various places, including, for example, in the Crimea and the Caucasus, contain the remains of ancient human culture. There they found fragments of pottery, stone knives, scrapers and other household items, fragments of animal bones and the remains of long-extinct fires.

About 25 years ago, archaeologists under the leadership of G. A. Bonch-Osmolovsky began excavations of these caves and made remarkable discoveries. In the caves of the Baydar Valley (in Crimea) and in the vicinity of Simferopol, several cultural layers were discovered, lying one above the other. Scientists attribute the middle and lower layers to the ancient stone period of human life, when man used rough, unpolished stone tools, the so-called Paleolithic, and the upper layers to the metallic period, when man began to use tools made of metals: copper, bronze and iron. There were no intermediate layers there dating back to the New Stone period (Neolithic), i.e., to the period when people had already learned to grind and drill stones and make pottery.

Among the finds of the ancient stone period, not a single fragment of a clay shard or a single bone of a domestic animal was found (these finds were found only in the upper layers). Paleolithic man did not yet know how to make pottery. All his household items were made of stone and bone. He probably also had wooden crafts, but they have not survived. Stone and bone products were distinguished by quite a wide variety: spear and dart tips (Paleolithic man did not know bows and arrows), scrapers for leather dressing, incisors, thin flint plates - knives, bone needles.

Paleolithic man did not have domestic animals. In the remains of his fire pits, many bones of only wild animals were found: mammoth, rhinoceros, giant deer, saigas, cave lion, cave bear, cave hyena, birds, etc. But in other places, at sites of the same time, for example, at the Afontova Gora site near Krasnoyarsk, in Kostenki near Voronezh, among the animal bones, the remains of a wolf were found, which, according to some scientists, belonged to a domesticated wolf, and among the bone artifacts on Afontovaya Mountain, some turned out to be very similar to parts of modern reindeer sleds. These finds suggest that at the end of the Paleolithic, humans probably already had their first domestic animals. These animals were a dog (a domesticated wolf) and a reindeer.

When they began to carefully study animal bones from the Crimean Paleolithic caves, they made another remarkable discovery. In the middle layers, which scientists attribute to the second half of the Ancient Stone Period, in other words, to the Upper Paleolithic, numerous bones of polar foxes (Arctic foxes), white hares, reindeer, polar larks, and white partridges were discovered; now these are ordinary inhabitants of the far north - the tundra. But the climate of the Arctic, as is known, is far from being as warm as in Crimea. Consequently, when polar animals lived in Crimea, it was colder there than now. Scientists made the same conclusion after studying the coals from the fires of the Crimean Upper Paleolithic man: it turned out that northern rowan, juniper and birch served as firewood for this man. The same thing turned out to be in the sites of Upper Paleolithic man in the Caucasus, with the only difference that instead of polar animals, representatives of the taiga were found there - elk and representatives of alpine meadows - some sulfur mice (Promethean mouse), which now live high in the mountains, and in At that time they lived almost at the very shore of the sea.

Numerous remains of human camps of the Upper Paleolithic period were discovered in many other places of the Soviet Union: on the Oka River, on the Don, on the Dnieper, in the Urals, in Siberia (on the Ob, Yenisei, Lena and Angara); and everywhere at these sites, among the remains of animals, bones of polar animals were found that no longer live in these places. All this indicates that the climate of the Upper Paleolithic era was more severe than at present.

But if in those distant times it was cold even in the Crimea and the Caucasus, then what was the commotion where Moscow and Leningrad now stand? What happened at that time in northern and central Siberia, where even now in winter 40 degrees below zero is not uncommon?

Vast territories of Europe and Northern Asia were covered at that time with continuous ice, in some places reaching a thickness of two kilometers! South of Kyiv, Kharkov and Voronezh, ice descended in two giant tongues along the valleys of the modern rivers Dnieper and Don. The Ural and Altai mountains were covered with ice cloaks that descended far into the plains. The same glaciers were located in the Caucasus mountains, reaching almost to the sea. That is why those animals that now live near glaciers, high in the mountains, were found in human sites of the ancient Stone Age near the sea. Crimea at that time was a refuge for various animals. A huge glacier, advancing into the Russian plain from the north - from Finland and Scandinavia, forced the animals living there to retreat to the south. Therefore, in a small territory of Crimea there was such a mixture of steppe and polar animals.

This was the era of the Great Glaciation of the Earth.

What traces did this glacier leave?

Residents of central and northern Russia are well aware of large and small stones - boulders and pebbles, which are found in abundance in plowed fields. Sometimes these stones reach very large sizes (about the size of a house or more). For example, the base of the monument to Peter I in Leningrad was made from one such granite boulder. Some boulders are already overgrown with lichens; many of them easily crumble when struck with a hammer. This indicates that they lay on the surface for a long time. Boulders usually have a round shape, and if you look at them more closely, you can find smooth polished surfaces with grooves and scratches on some of them. Boulders are scattered even on the plains, where there are no mountains. Where did these stones come from here?

Sometimes you hear that boulders “grow” from the ground. But this is a deep misconception. One has only to dig with a shovel or look carefully in the ravines, and it will immediately become clear that the boulders are in the ground, in sand or clay. The ground will be washed away a little by the rain, the sand will be blown by the wind, and where nothing was visible last year, a boulder will appear on the surface. The next year, the soil will be washed away even more by rain and blown by the wind, and the boulder will appear larger. So they think he has grown up.

Having studied the composition of the boulders, scientists came to the unanimous opinion that the birthplace of many of them is Karelia, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. There, rocks of the same composition as the boulders form entire rocks, in which gorges and river valleys are cut. The blocks torn from these rocks represent boulders scattered on the plains of the European part of the USSR, Poland, and Germany.

But how and why did they end up so far from their homeland! Previously, about 75 years ago, they thought that where the boulders are now found, there was a sea and they were carried on ice floes, just as now in the polar ocean floating ice (icebergs), breaking away from the edge of a glacier descending into the sea, are carried away with them. blocks torn off by a glacier from rocky shores. This assumption has now been abandoned. Now none of the scientists doubts that the boulders were brought with them by a giant glacier descending from the Scandinavian Peninsula.

Having studied the composition and distribution of glacial boulders in Russia, scientists found that there were also glaciers in the mountains of Siberia, the polar Urals, Novaya Zemlya, Altai and the Caucasus. Descending from the mountains, they carried boulders with them and left them far on the plains, thus marking the paths and boundaries of their advance. Now boulders consisting of rocks from the Urals and Novaya Zemlya are found near Tobolsk, in Western Siberia, at the mouth of the Irtysh, and rocks from the lower reaches of the Yenisei are found in the center of Western Siberia, near the village of Samarovo on the Ob River. Two giant glaciers were moving towards each other at that time. One is from the Urals and Novaya Zemlya, the other is from the far north of Eastern Siberia - from the right bank of the Yenisei or Taimyr. These huge glaciers merged into one continuous ice field that covered the entire north of Western Siberia.

Encountering hard rocks on its way, the glacier polished and smoothed them, and also left deep scars and furrows on them. Such polished and furrowed rocky hills are known as “ram’s foreheads.” They are especially frequent on the Kola Peninsula, in Karelia.

In addition, the glacier captured huge masses of sand and clay and piled it all up at its edge in the form of ramparts, now overgrown with forest. Such shafts are very clearly visible, for example, in Valdai (in the Kalinin region). These are called "terminal moraines". From them you can clearly determine the edge of the former glacier. When the glacier melted, the entire territory once occupied by it turned out to be covered with clay with boulders and pebbles. This clay cloak with boulders, on which modern soil was later formed, is now being plowed open.

As we see, the traces of the once Great Glaciation of the Earth are so clear that no one doubts it. It also convinces us that the same traces are left on the earth by modern glaciers, found in many mountains both in our country and in other countries. Only modern glaciers are much smaller than the one that covered the Earth during the Great Glaciation.

Thus, the remains of animals found in the Crimea during excavations of Upper Paleolithic caves gave the correct indication that there was once a colder climate there than now.

But maybe the Crimean sites were earlier or later than the Great Glaciation? And we have a completely definite answer to this question.

The same sites as in the Crimea were found in many places covered with continuous ice during the Great Glaciation, but these sites were never discovered anywhere under glacial layers. They were found either outside the former distribution of the glacier, or (younger) within the southern part of it - in the layers lying above the glacial formations. This convincingly proves that all the studied sites date back to the era of the Great Glaciation (and some of them to the time of the melting of glaciers).

Extremely important discoveries have been made over the past ten years. On the Dnieper and on the Desna River, near Novgorod-Seversky, sites of ancient people and stone tools were found under glacial layers. The same type of sites were discovered on the Black Sea coast. This proved that man lived not only during the Great Glaciation and after it, but also before this glaciation.

Studying even more ancient layers of the earth, people also became convinced that there was a time when such trees grew in Siberia as are now found only on the Black Sea coast. Evergreen laurels, magnolias and fig trees once grew on the banks of rivers and lakes located on the site of the present Barabinsk steppe (Western Siberia). Monkeys lived in the forests of Ukraine, and in the Baikal region and the Azov steppes there were ostriches and antelopes, which are now found only in Africa and South America.

There are several hypotheses about the causes of glaciations. The factors underlying these hypotheses can be divided into astronomical and geological. Astronomical factors causing cooling on earth include:

1. Changing the tilt of the earth's axis
2. Deviation of the Earth from its orbit away from the Sun
3. Uneven thermal radiation from the Sun.

Geological factors include mountain-forming processes, volcanic activity, and continental movement.
Each of the hypotheses has its drawbacks. Thus, the hypothesis connecting glaciation with the eras of mountain building does not explain the absence of glaciation in the Mesozoic, although mountain-building processes were quite active during this era.
The intensification of volcanic activity, according to some scientists, leads to warming of the earth's climate, while others believe it leads to cooling. According to the hypothesis of continental movement, huge areas of land throughout the history of the development of the earth's crust periodically moved from a warm climate to a cold climate, and vice versa.

Over the course of the planet's geological history of more than 4 billion years, the Earth has experienced several periods of glaciation. The oldest Huronian glaciation is 4.1 - 2.5 billion years old, the Gneissian glaciation is 900 - 950 million years old. Further ice ages were repeated quite regularly: Sturt - 810 - 710, Varangian - 680 - 570, Ordovician - 410 - 450 million years ago. The penultimate ice age on Earth was 340 - 240 million years ago and was called Gondwana. Now there is another ice age on Earth, called the Cenozoic, which began 30 - 40 million years ago with the appearance of the Antarctic ice sheet. Man appeared and lives in the Ice Age. In the last few million years, the glaciation of the Earth either grows, and then large areas in Europe, North America and partly in Asia are occupied by cover glaciers, or shrinks to the size that exists today. For the last million years, 9 such cycles have been identified. Typically, the period of growth and existence of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere is about 10 times longer than the period of destruction and retreat. Periods of glacier retreat are called interglacials. We are now living in the period of another interglacial, which is called the Holocene.

The central problem of cryology of the Earth is the identification and study of the general patterns of glaciation of our planet. The Earth's cryosphere experiences both continuous seasonal and periodic fluctuations and centuries-long changes.

The answers to these questions concern not only scientists. Glaciation of the Earth is a gigantic planetary process that is of concern to all humanity. To find the answer to these questions, you need to penetrate the mysteries of glaciation, reveal the patterns of development of ice ages, and establish the main reasons for their occurrence.
The works of many outstanding scientists were devoted to solving these problems. But the complexity of the issues is so great that, according to the famous climatologist M. Schwarzbach, it is almost impossible to penetrate the mystery of glaciation.

There are many theories and hypotheses that try to solve this mystery. Without going into details of all the theories and hypotheses, we can combine them into three main groups.
Planetary - where the main reason for the onset of ice ages is considered to be significant changes occurring on the planet: shifting poles, movement of continents, mountain building processes, which are accompanied by changes in the circulation of air and ocean currents and the appearance of glaciers, atmospheric pollution by products of volcanic activity, changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide and ozone in the atmosphere .

Planetary hypotheses also include astronomical hypotheses that explain the glaciation of the planet by changes in the Earth’s orbit, changes in the angle of inclination of its axis of rotation, distance from the Sun, etc.

Solar - hypotheses and theories that explain the emergence of glacial periods by the rhythmicity of energy processes occurring in the depths of the Sun. As a result of these processes, periodic changes occur in the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth. The duration of these periods is several hundred million years, which is consistent with the periodicity of the Ice Ages.

As a first approximation, the rhythmicity of the processes of advance and retreat of glaciers within each ice age is also explained.

Space hypotheses and theories. According to them, there are cosmic factors that help explain the cyclical nature of climate change and the onset of ice ages on Earth. Such reasons may include flows of radiant energy or flows of particles that cause changes in energy processes both inside the Sun and inside the Earth, clouds of cosmic dust that partially absorb the energy of the Sun, as well as factors still unknown to us. For example, the hypothesis about the possibility of interaction of a neutrino flux with the matter of the earth's interior is of great interest. The coincidence of the period of alternation of ice ages (about 250 million years) with the period of revolution of the Solar system around the center of the Galaxy (220-230 million years) deserves close attention. Even more striking is the proximity (given the low accuracy of determining such quantities) of this period with a periodicity (about 300 million years) of waves of matter condensation in the arms of our Galaxy, which arise as a result of the ejection of gigantic masses of matter rotating at enormous speed from the center of the Galaxy. By the way, the last wave of this shock disturbance, which occurred 60 million years ago, surprisingly coincides with the geological time of the disappearance of giant reptiles at the end of the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era.

It seems that it is possible to understand and study the dynamics of climate and the occurrence of ice ages only on the basis of a synthesis of cosmic, solar and planetary factors.
A few words about the forecast of the thermal fate of the Earth, or more precisely, about the probabilistic course of thermal processes on astrophysical time scales.
Closely related to the problem of predicting the natural course of glaciation on our planet is the problem of artificially changing the planet’s climate. Scientists involved in cryology are faced with the task of establishing a threshold for the growth of energy production on Earth, beyond which changes in the physical-geographical shell that are very undesirable for humanity may occur (flooding of land during the melting of Antarctic and other glaciers, excessive increase in air temperature and thawing of the frozen strata of the Earth) .

What determines the decrease in the average temperature of the Earth?

It has been suggested that the cause is a change in the amount of heat received from the Sun. Above we talked about the 11-year periodicity of solar radiation. There may be longer periods. In this case, cold snaps may be associated with minimum solar radiation. An increase or decrease in temperature on Earth occurs even with a constant amount of energy coming from the Sun, and is also determined by the composition of the atmosphere.
In 1909, S. Arrhenius first emphasized the enormous role of carbon dioxide as a temperature regulator of surface layers of air. Carbon dioxide freely transmits the sun's rays to the earth's surface, but absorbs most of the earth's thermal radiation. It is a colossal screen that prevents the cooling of our planet. Currently, the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere does not exceed 0.03%. If this figure is halved, then average annual temperatures in temperate zones will decrease by 4-5 ° C, which could lead to the onset of an ice age.

The study of modern and ancient volcanic activity allowed volcanologist I.V. Melekestsev associated the cooling and the glaciation that caused it with an increase in the intensity of volcanism. It is well known that volcanism significantly affects the earth's atmosphere, changing its gas composition, temperature, and also polluting it with finely divided volcanic ash material. Huge masses of ash, measured in billions of tons, are ejected by volcanoes into the upper atmosphere and then carried by jet streams throughout the globe. A few days after the Bezymyanny volcano erupted in 1956, its ashes were discovered in the upper troposphere over London. Ash material released during the 1963 eruption of Mount Agung on the island of Bali (Indonesia) was found at an altitude of about 20 km above North America and Australia. Pollution of the atmosphere by volcanic ash causes a significant decrease in its transparency and, consequently, a weakening of solar radiation by 10-20% against the norm. In addition, ash particles serve as condensation nuclei, contributing to large cloud development. Increasing cloudiness, in turn, significantly reduces the amount of solar radiation. According to Brooks' calculations, an increase in cloudiness from 50 (typical for the present) to 60% would lead to a decrease in the average annual temperature on the globe by 2 ° C.