December 5, 2023 • 40 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the world of lost islands and forgotten continents, in both actual geologic history and the mists of the human imagination.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
And we're back with part three in our series called
the Sunken Lands, about places on Earth that were relatively
recently solid land but are now covered by the waters.
In the previous two parts of this series, we discussed myths, legends,
and obsolete theories of sunken lands, including the most popular
(00:37):
drowned civilization Atlantis, an advanced island state discussed in the
writings of Plato, which the majority of experts on the
original sources seem to think is best interpreted as a
fictional setting used to illustrate a point in Plato's writings,
rather than a reference to a real place that actually existed.
But of course that does not stop the many Atlantis
(00:58):
hunters of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Right, and it doesn't stop the human imagination which has
gone wild with the concept, as we discussed in many
responsible ways and occasionally irresponsible with as well.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Right. So, we also talked about the very real sunken
land mass now known as dogger Land, which was a
vast plane connecting Great Britain to mainland Europe during and
for several thousand years following the Last Ice Age. Doggerland
is a fascinating mystery that archaeologists and other scientists are
(01:32):
learning more about all the time. But one of the
most intriguing things that we've learned is that this drowned
world was not only inhabited by humans for the few
thousand years after it began warming at the beginning of
the Holocene. It was something many experts have described it
as something of a paradise, rich with resources and possibly
(01:54):
one of the most densely populated places in Middle Stone
Age Europe. But of course it was eventually smothered underneath
rising seas and also battered by a colossal tsunami from
an underwater landslide around sixty two hundred BCE. After that,
we talked about cases of alleged vanishing islands in the Pacific,
(02:15):
including reasons for thinking that some of these accounts are genuine.
One example that you brought up rob is the island
of Tao Nimanu, a former island described in the oral
traditions of some of the Solomon Islanders, which allegedly sank
beneath the waves in a rapid seismic event, so that
this happened suddenly and some people barely escaped in canoes.
(02:38):
And according to the sources we were looking at last time,
it is thought that this probably did actually happen.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, Yeah, that seems to be the consensus.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Though there are of course many other examples of alleged
vanishing islands, being more likely just cases of mistaken identification.
In the first instance, probably we discussed reasons for possibly
mistakings thing for an island, maybe visual illusions like Fata Morgana,
or being mistaken about where you are when you see
an actual island, or mistaking patches of things floating in
(03:11):
the water for land. One example we talked about was seaweed,
another was volcanic pummice rafts, and then everybody's favorite, the
possibility that somebody could mistake white oily scum left over
after seasonal worm sex as some indication of a land mass.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's absolutely in the mix.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Now I wanted to talk about another example of a
quite real sunken land that we have tons of evidence for.
Many people were probably thinking about it when we were
talking about dogger Land, because this is perhaps at least
to north Americans the even more famous sunken Land bridge
between two continental masses, and that would be the submerged
(03:51):
plains of Beringia. This refers to an area of the
globe between northwestern North America, including Alaska and north west
Canada on one side, and northeastern Russia on the other.
And it is now thought that during the Late Pleistocene,
so the Last Ice Age, huge expanses of what are
(04:14):
now the Bearing Sea, the Bearing Straight and the Chuckchi
Sea were lands exposed by dropping sea levels. So the
geological story of Beringia has some things in common with
the story of Doggerland, which we talked about previously. The
lower sea levels of the Pleistocene were associated with massive
(04:35):
glacier formation. During the last glacial maximum, roughly twenty thousand
years ago, about twenty five percent of the Earth's land
surface and about eight percent of its total surface was
covered in ice, and global sea level was like four
hundred feet lower than it is today. It's hard to
imagine the amount of ice unless maybe you have been
(04:57):
to Antarctica or something. Yeah, And at that time, much
of North America, basically almost all of the current area
of Canada, especially east of the rocky mountains, but reaching
as far south as Ohio and Indiana in the United States.
All of that was covered in an ice formation known
as the Laurentide ice Sheet, which at its greatest extent
(05:21):
was more than thirteen million square kilometers and at its thickest,
probably near the middle, may have been up to three
thousand meters tall, which is almost two miles high of ice.
It's kind of hard to imagine. Again, and during this
time of lower sea levels, it has long been thought
that the much of the exposed land of Beringia probably
(05:45):
was some kind of step tundra environment, a sort of cold,
arid grassland. But at the end of the Pleistocene, roughly
ten to twelve thousand years ago, the earth began to warm,
ice melted, and sea levels rose. And these were the trends,
of course that eventually covered doggerland and water, and the
same happened to the exposed lands of Beringia. Now there
(06:08):
is no land bridge connecting North America to Asia, but
at the time there was, it served as an important
corridor of exchange between the continents, with evidence showing that plants, animals,
and people spread through and across it. Now a lot
of people probably know that the Beringia land Bridge plays
a role in several of the current competing major theories
(06:30):
of how people came to occupy the Americas, though there
are of course competing explanations even within that space. For example,
the question of whether the first people to come to
North America traveled by land and found a way south
through an ice free inland corridor, and if they did
that at what time, or whether those people migrated along
(06:52):
the coastline of Beringia mostly traveling by boat, surviving along
the way with the help of kelp forests and other
coastal resources. So there are still lots of open questions
in that debate.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
But we know this was the corridor for the exchange
of many different species, and we've discussed some examples of
this on the show before, ranging from you know, of course,
human beings, to also things like species of camel.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
And other things that I didn't even think about until
I was reading for this episode, like the gray Wolf,
the exchange of the wolf. Yeah, Now, an interesting thing
I was thinking about was a similarity with dogger Land.
As we mentioned with dogger Land, the phrase land bridge
can potentially be deceptive. On one hand, it does sort
(07:39):
of accurately describe what happens when sea levels drop and
a ground corridor is established between two land masses that
used to be and or would later be separated by water.
On the other hand, the term bridge kind of creates
the impression of a transitional space that one merely crosses
to get from one's to the other. Like you don't
(08:01):
build a house in the middle of a bridge. Well,
I guess you might if it's one of those bridges
with all buildings on it in Italy or France or wherever.
But but you know what I mean, most of the time,
you don't set up camp in the middle of a bridge.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think this is this is
this is a concept that always kind of comes to
mind whenever I'm reading about land bridges. On some level,
you're imagining it as a situation where like the wolves
and the camels are like, hey, guys, there's a temporary
passage between these two land masses. Let's all go get
at it, and you know, everybody rushes to get from
one side to the other, and then the land bridge
(08:34):
goes away.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Right, So that can be kind of deceptive. In the
case of dogger Land, we know that not only was
the now flooded land inhabited by Neanderthals and later Mesolithic
Homo sapiens during its brief warm period, for the few
thousand years between the end of the Pleistocene and the
time it was under the water, it was probably one
(08:55):
of the most resource abundant places in Europe, and as
I said Earl, it may have been one of the
most densely populated as well. So with that in mind,
to what extent could we also think of Beringia more
as a destination in itself, a place to be, rather
than just a way to get somewhere. Well, In fact,
(09:16):
we know that it was a habitat environment for many
terrestrial plants and animals, and so the real question is
to what extent this would be true for people as well.
So I came across one paper from twenty fourteen raising
a few lines of evidence for thinking that the large
now submerged plane in the middle of the Bearing Land
(09:37):
Bridge was actually a relatively habitable refuge for plants, animals,
and people during the last glacial maximum, and may have
been home to an isolated population of Native American ancestors
for thousands of years. So the paper is called out
of Beringia question Mark, published in the journal Science in
(09:58):
twenty fourteen by Hafak, Elias and O'Rourke, and one of
the core pieces of evidence here is a sampling of
mitochondrial DNA from more than six hundred Native American people
in the present, most of whom shared unique mitochondrial DNA
mutations not shared by their closest relatives in Asia, indicating
(10:20):
that most likely they can trace their ancestry back to
a group of people that was living isolated from people
in the rest of Asia for thousands of years, perhaps
ten thousand years or so, before spreading across the continents
of North and South America. And if this is in
fact the case, where would this population of people be living,
(10:42):
perhaps in a region of Beringia that supported long term settlement.
Now you might think, but wait a minute, it wasn't
Beringia too cold and arid and free of resources. Not
necessarily palaeoecological evidence is showing that parts of central Beringia
may have actually been more rich and plant and animal
(11:02):
resources that would potentially support continued human habitation. And this
evidence includes things cited by these authors like sediment cores
that you would take from the bottom of the bering Sea.
So you like core out an area of the sediment
strata there and see what's in it. And it turns
out these sediment samples contain remnants of pollen and other
(11:24):
plant matter and insects that indicate that while outer regions
of Beringia may have been more inhospitable and arid, very
like dry cold step lands, the central lowlands of Beringia
may very well have had plenty of animal populations for
hunting and especially important woody plants which could have been
(11:46):
used as fuel for fires. And as we know, wood
is a big deal there there was not a whole
lot of wood available in the Arctic at the time
due to the extent the extent of the glaciers, and
fuel for fire can make the difference between a place
being able to sustain human life or not.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
So already we're painting an entirely different picture of a
quote unquote land bridge than I think a lot of
us might have had in our head.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Right so to quote lead author John Hoffecker, who is
a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, speaking to
Live Science, he said, quote the central part of Beringia
was probably the mildest, most comfortable place to live at
high latitudes during the last glacial maximum. It is the
most logical place for a group of people to hunker down,
(12:33):
and the term used for this area is a glacial refugium,
a place where organisms can survive despite hostile conditions in
the surrounding areas. So this might have been a sort
of warmer, milder, wetter area in the middle of very cold, dry,
or glaciated areas that would be able to maintain all
(12:56):
of this diversity of species like shrub tree that you
could burn for wood, and animals that could sustain human hunting,
and possibly people living there for thousands of years. So
the idea of many millennia of people living isolated in
this refugium is sometimes referred to as the Bringian stand
(13:17):
still hypothesis. And though it's not meant to I feel
like this is another one where the word choice brings
some of the wrong connotations, because stand still kind of
like bridge it to me, at least, it implies a
connotation that like, these people would have been trying to
get somewhere and then they were stalled or delayed, rather
(13:39):
than this is simply where and how people were living
their lives just like anywhere else on earth.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah again, because you're talking about thousands of years here,
You're not talking about again, this brief opportunity to move
from point A to point B. It is instead the
emergence of a point C. At least, I feel like
the historical perspective we have often leads to misconceptions like this,
Like when you look back through history, we know or
(14:06):
simply have an idea, right or wrong, of what happened
before and after a period of time. And with that
historical perspective, I think we often have a hard time
understanding that people within that period probably did not think
of themselves as transitional between two things, but were trying
(14:27):
to live their lives like anyone else. And you know,
I was having the same pattern of thoughts about Doggerland,
like we now know that it was really only this
lush buffet of a world for a few thousand years
in Doggerland, But to the people living there it was
it was probably just home, right, Yeah, I mean to
your point, like this was to them, to them, this
(14:48):
was the world. You know. They not to discount the
possibility that they had some oral traditions or so forth
of the places they came from or the world before.
But you know it'skew. You know, hindsight is twenty twenty
and that certainly applies to our understanding of history.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
I guess the other way of looking at it is
that on a on a long enough timescale, all people
living in all places at all times are living in
transitional points.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yes, that's interesting to think about because it kind of
comes back to what we discussed in previous episodes about
golden ages, lost golden ages, the thing that we're trying
to reclaim or trying to find again. You know, that
also kind of loses side of the fact that life
is continually a state of change and there it's always
(15:41):
in a state of transition, and you know, it reminds me.
I forget what talk this was, but there was a
talk that Terrence McKenna gave where he used the line
and if something needs to be done, you will find
yourself doing it, which I think I forget the exact
context of it, but you know, it kind of speaks
to to how human beings have survived and grown and
(16:04):
expanded so much over the course of their existence. They
have expanded into new areas, they have left areas, they
have changed, they have rolled with the punches of transition.
But at the same time, you know, created these stories
and looked back longingly at supposed better times, whether or
not they were actually better.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That's a good point. But to come back to the
Barringian standstill hypothesis, it is important to remember that this
is just a hypothesis. Like it would need more direct
evidence in its favor, such as especially archaeological discoveries, which
had not been found at the time this article was published,
and I looked around and couldn't find any evidence of
(16:47):
archaeological discoveries backing it up since then, and critics of
this hypothesis argue that not only do we not have
archaeological evidence, we probably should expect to have found some
by now, since not all all of this territory is underwater,
though a lot of it is. But either way so
we don't know. This is an idea, it may or
(17:07):
may not be correct. But if this idea is correct,
once the surrounding glaciers began to melt, the ideas that
the Beringian people probably expanded their territory and then moved
on down the coastline and into the interior of the
North American continent and spread on from there. But the
ultimate point about the land being that much like Doggerland,
(17:28):
this is an area that was land when the glaciers
were at their peak, when the water was locked in
the ice, and so there were these vast stretches of
plains that are now buried beneath the sea. And there's
probably a lot more that we could know about them
more easily if it were not underneath the sea, and
we could, you know, just go around and do digs
(17:49):
and look for palaeontological remains, you know, animal remains, plant remains,
and see if we could find human tools and remains
what people were doing in these places. But it's again
more challenging because of the water covering things.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Now, yeah, well that's fascinating Again. That kind of essentially
kind of turns over the loose idea that I had
in my head of land bridges. So this might be
an interesting general topic to come back to in the future. Now,
(18:29):
in all this talk of sunken lands and lost islands
in particular that we got into in the last episode,
I thought it might be fun to explore something that
lines up with this concept in a unique way and
that is the topic of atolls or atolls you apparently
can say it both ways, and hey, I might just
(18:50):
say it both ways. This we proceed here. So these
are essentially coral reefs in circling a lagoon. They're not
always circular, but there are some stunning examples of circular atolls.
And you've you've probably seen pictures of these. There are
numerous examples of them. The big Blue Hole Belize is
(19:11):
one that is commonly mentioned and commonly photographed. But it's like, yeah,
you have this circular reef islands and then in the
middle more water. So it looks like, you know, this
looks like something is missing, right, And this has certainly
invited curiosity over the many years here as long as
people have been encountering them, because it raises the question
(19:33):
how did they form? This was actually a question that
none other than Charles Darwin considered on the voyage of
the Ahms Beagle during the eighteen thirties. So when I
was reading about that, I had to pull open his book,
The Voyage of the Beagle, And yeah, he gets into
this at one point and he writes about some of
the theories of the day that he was less convinced
(19:55):
by So the first idea he brings up is that
quote coral bil building animals instinctively built up their great
circles to afford themselves protection in the inner parts. So
that would seem to imply that, yeah, you have coral
is like growing up from the seabed and building a
great ring so that they can have like a protected
(20:16):
area in the middle. And on this theory, he points
out that, Okay, coral don't thrive within the atl lagoon,
and this would be a case in which quote many
species of distinct genera and families are supposed to combine
for one end, and of such a combination not a
single instance can be found in the whole of nature.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
M Okay, so the creatures forming the reef would have
to be all working together to protect this inner area.
But also he points out, like, you don't really see
the coral doing much in the inner area. It's not
like they're, oh, that's the place where they keep all
their soft parts. They're just not really in there.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah. And then additionally, where else in the natural world
do we see this kind of like cross genera cooperation
going on. I mean, I guess you could you know,
there's some little instances here and there where you talk
about it, you know, prey animal communication and alerting, you know,
generally to the idea of predators in their myths, But
something a lot on the scale of this, he argues,
(21:17):
we don't.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Really see it, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
The next theory he mentions is that atolls are based
on submarine craters, and he points out that this doesn't
hold up when you look at all the examples in
the world that were known at the time. It just
simply doesn't account for everything. Another idea that he explores
is the idea that coral edges were exposed to the
outer sea and along these edges grew up more quickly.
(21:42):
But as with theory one, the question remains, what did
they grow on? He stresses that rebuilding corals cannot live
at great depth, and therefore, like what would grow up
then to be doesn't make sense that they would they
would start deep down and then grow up because we
know that these corals that live near the surface don't
in the deep water, right.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
So it's only in the shallow. Living corals only live
in these areas that are already shallow for some reason,
Like it's like it's almost an island right right.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And it's worth noting that there are deep water corals,
and they do produce deep sea reefs, but it's structurally different, apparently.
So he writes at fair length about all of this
and about what he thinks is happening. And here's a
section that more or less encapsulates it. Quote, as the
barrier reef slowly sinks down, the corals will go on
(22:33):
vigorously growing upwards. But as the island sinks, this would
be the island around which the reef is formed. He continues,
The water will gain inch by inch on the shore,
the separate mountains first forming separate islands within one great reef,
and finally the last and highest pinnacle disappearing. The instant
(22:54):
this takes place, a perfect atoll is formed. I have said,
removed the high land from within the an encircling barrier reef,
and an atoll is left. And the land has been removed.
We can now perceive how it comes that atolls, having
sprung from encircling barrier reefs, resemble them in general size form,
in the manner in which they are coupled together, and
in their arrangement in single or double lines. For they
(23:17):
may be called rude outlined charts of the sunken islands
over which they stand.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
M okay. So the idea there would be a volcanic
island that forms, it gradually begins to sink, but as
it is sinking, the barrier reef is built up to
encircle it in the shallow water around it, and that
height comes up as the central island just continues to
go down. So an atoll, to come back to the
(23:43):
idea of sort of transitional landforms, is somewhere in between
a volcanic island and eventually fully sunken island.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Right. And in this case, yeah, the volcanic island is
no longer active and it is falling away. Meanwhile the
coral is alive and it's building up.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Hm. That makes sense, was he right?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, it's interesting so that this is generally referred to
as the subsistence model, and it does. It seems like
it's very much in the mix today. You certainly see
it sided all over the place, and it pops up
in textbooks and so forth. But not everyone loves it.
And there are some very vocal experts who who say
(24:29):
this is really this really doesn't explain everything, and we
ultimately need to look maybe more at another theory, or
ultimately look at sort of a host of theories, and
that maybe we should get away from the idea that
one theory in general is going to explain every formation
like this that we find in the world's oceans. There's
another key formation theory called the antecedent Karst model, and
(24:53):
this one proposes that dropping sea levels that this has
to do with like cyclical changes sea level over time.
It proposes that dropping sea levels expose the top of
a flat topped bank of carbonate rocks. And then while
this is exposed again for you know, like with our
land Bridge model, not for just a couple of days,
(25:15):
but for an extended period of time, rain water steadily
pools in the flat topped bank and dissolves some of
the carbonate, forming a depression. Eventually, sea levels rise again
and fresh coral builds up top this raised circular edge.
Again roughly speaking, it doesn't have to be anything remotely
resembling a perfect circle, but then the coral builds up
(25:37):
on this raised circular edge of the depression. This forms
the atoll according to this theory. So again it has
a lot to do with cyclical changes in sea level.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Oh okay, so much. Kind of like how a cave
is formed in limestone by like rain water coming down
or you know, water rushing through and dissolving some of
the sediment rock and eventually forming a cave. Here, the
idea would be that in the times, when a seamount
(26:08):
or island top is exposed by lowering sea levels, the
rainwater comes down and sort of it dissolves it in
kind of the same way that rainwater dissolves a cave cavity,
and it lowers the central area of the island. But
of course the coral is still building up the reef
all around that central raised area.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, that's my understanding of this. Alexander Witz wrote a
great article about the antecedent cars model back in twenty
twenty one for Noble magazine and was then reprinted on Smithsonian,
where you can also find it. So I was reading
about that here, and the author makes several key points
that I wanted to draw out for this discussion. First
(26:48):
of all, the author writes that experts that generally agree
that Darwin got it wrong with his theory, they also
admit that he crafted a very insightful theory for the
day given in the limited amount of data. Also, some
reefs may have still formed via the method that Darwin
is describing here, such as some atolls found in Tahiti.
(27:13):
And in any case, they often stress that we shouldn't
look maybe for one unifying theory for atoll formation, because
there may ultimately be a handful of explanations in the mix,
including things like tectonic forces and wave action.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Ah, that's a good point. Yeah, there could be multiple
mechanisms creating similar looking formations.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah. The author also points out that understanding the varying
reasons in play also helps us to understand which atolls
are most at risk from climate change and rising sea levels.
The author writes, quote, in the absence of humans, atolls
can grow at a rate much faster than that of
sea level rise. But people have degraded natural atolls by
(27:53):
introducing pollution and waste, altering the water table, and adding
concrete and asphalt that smothers the underlying coral. The Maldives
in the Indian Ocean face a future of flooding, water contamination,
and erosion that threaten its tourism and fishery industries. The Maldives,
by the way, according to the article may have formed
more due to the action of waves wave based erosion
(28:15):
than by the clarsification theory was that I was talking
about earlier, at least according to one study. But to
come back to just the topic of sunken lands and
sunken islands in general, yeah, I think atolls fit into
the concept. Though. The added discussion and or disagreement concerns
exactly how central exposed land masses may have formed and
(28:37):
or fallen away, and you know, to what extent it
involves things essentially, you know, rising from the ocean or
then sinking back below the depths. Because both Darwin and
the carciification theories entail a central exposed land mass or
island around which the coral builds.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
I mean, part of me would wonder if you could
just to some extent tell the difference between these by
looking at the kind of rock, because in Darwin's theory,
for example, if the idea is that the island is
volcanic in origin, wouldn't you be mainly looking at volcanic
rock leftover in the middle, Whereas if it's a kars
process you would be looking at sedimentary rock in the middle.
(29:19):
Am I wrong about that?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
The article I said, it does go into more detail
about this, and yeah, it's my understanding that a lot
of what we know now it does hinge upon geologic
evidence that we just that Darwin wasn't exposed to and
did not have back in the day, And so we
do know a lot more about what sorts of rocks
are underlying any given land mass that we're discussing.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
So I guess if the karsification explanation has come more
into favor, that would suggest that more often the coral
atoll is found around a like a limestone formation rather
than a volcanic rock formation.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
That would seem to be the case. But again, based
on what I was reading, it sounds like it is
maybe a suite of the theories that we might turn
to as opposed to again one unifying theory for all
of these atolls. Now, as we touched on during the
(30:22):
first episode, I wanted to come back around to this
because water levels don't only rise due to geologic events
and storms and global warming. It also occurs when humans
build dams to form artificial lakes. Well, I mean, I
guess you could maybe make an argument for beavers as well,
but especially humans. That's true, humans can pour concrete. But
(30:46):
you know this allows humans to otherwise manipulate rivers and lakes,
and it's worth stressing that in addition to hydroelectricity. And
you'll know this if you've ever visited a dam and
gone through like a you know the educational portion of
the dam in addition to producing electricity. Another major reason
for dams is to often detame rivers that periodically endanger
(31:06):
neighboring and low lying areas. But in doing so, in
creating lakes, we of course sometimes sink formerly inhabited lands,
both ancient and modern. And of course this has taken
place all over the world. There are so many examples
that we could turn to, but I thought I might
highlight some examples that stood out to me, and of
course if any others come up, we may bring them
(31:28):
up later and certainly and feel free to write in
about examples that come to your mind. But one that
is often mentioned is, of course the site of Abu
Simbel in Egypt. This was an ancient rock cut temple
complex near the current Egyptian Sudanese border, and it dates
back to the thirteenth century bcee. This site was threatened
(31:50):
by Lake Nasser. This is the Aswan Dam reservoir during
the twentieth century, but in nineteen sixty eight it was
actually really located to another site, so massive relocation effort
to move everything to a higher elevation further away from
the water. Another famous dam, of course, is the Three
(32:11):
Gorgeous Dam in China, that also entailed a great deal
of relocation from the area to be flooded in terms
of like the lake that's going to build up, but
also the river itself. And this also included something called
White Crane Ridge. It's an archaeological site. The inscriptions here
date back to the Tung dynasty and provide detailed water
(32:33):
level records on the Yangzi River, some I think one
two hundred years worth of data based on what I
was reading. Some of the carvings were relocated, but others
remain in a special underwater museum constructed prior to the flooding.
So you apparently this is underneath the river, so you
apparently take an escalator down from a facility by the
(32:55):
river bank through some tunnels to reach the museum. WHOA
Another example from China that I ran across is Lions
City or Hieching in eastern China. It's an example of
an Eastern Han dynasty city that is now under the
waters of a man made lake. This is Thousand Island Lake.
(33:15):
This was flooded in the mid twentieth century as well,
when most of these projects are taking place around the world,
and it has apparently become a tourism destination, at least
for very experienced divers. I read that it's not really
the kind of thing that casual divers are going down for,
but experienced divers have sought this out, and you can
find some images online of various sort of you know,
(33:35):
haunting underwater remnants of this place.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
As a creature of East Tennessee, I grew up with
a lot of consciousness of the idea of lands flooded
by the creation of dams, specifically with TVA hydro Electric.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, the Tennessee Valley Authority a right, Yeah, things like
Kentucky Lake. There are always a lot of you know these.
Anytime you have a big lake like this, there's going
to be some sort of a relocation effort that has
to take place, and I feel like inevitably you're gonna
have some things left behind beneath the water and on
top of what's actually underneath the water, You're gonna have
stories about what maybe underneath the water, you know, tales
(34:13):
of lost towns and so forth.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
I think I used to have dreams when I was
little of finding houses submerged underneath the lake.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah. Yeah, And this sort of thing has been explored
in media, pops up in the Coen Brothers or brother
Where Art thou and so forth, And I think ultimately
wherever you're listening to this show, you probably don't have
to go too far to find an example of some
sort of an artificial lake, and there may be stories
about like the impact of creating that lake.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Of course, you kind of alluded to this earlier. But
one of the interesting things about the flooding of these
river values by the creation of dams is that often
one of the purposes of it is to prevent uncontrolled flooding.
I know this is it's fundamentally changed what the Nile
River valley is that they put all these dams in
because there used to be this uncontrolled seasonal flooding of
(35:07):
the Nile that was just part of life in Egypt.
And now that in some ways the water level of
the Nile has been to some degree broad under human control.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, and so you see this sort of thing all over.
I have to say, though, I wasn't familiar with this
example un till I started doing research here. There's perhaps
fewer examples, few examples that are as stunning as this.
But there's a town in northern Italy, or a village
in northern Italy by the name of Kuran, and it's
apparently pretty famous for there a lot of images of this,
(35:38):
but I wasn't familiar with it. But this is another
case where they had to relocate the town to a
higher elevation, as the original site was flooded in nineteen
fifty so most of the city was abandoned and demoed first,
except for a lone fourteenth century church and its bell tower.
The bell tower still sticks out of the water in
(35:59):
rather surrealistic fashion. You'll find images of it where it's
just like, oh, here's the mountains, there's a lake, and
here is a bell tower sticking out of it. I mean,
some of these images don't even look real. It looks
like some sort of obvious photoshop, but it is. These
are legitimate. There are other images of the lake frozen
over and here is the bell tower emerging from the ice.
(36:20):
Sometimes you see images where people have ventured out onto
the ice close to it in.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Some of the pictures. I just looked up pictures of it,
and in a lot of them, there seems to be
a color gradient on the tower as it sticks up,
like the stone is a little paler for most of
the way up, and then there will be a lower
area where the stone is darker. And I don't know
if this is the reason, but I wonder if that's
you know, it's literally just from the water level going
up and down, and so you can see where the
(36:46):
water has been on the on the height of the stone.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, I believe that is the case. I've read that
during the spring, when the water is at its lowest,
you can apparently see more of the ruins. But yeah,
I encourage everyone to look up in this because it's
pretty impressive. And you can't have something in like this
in the world, of course without it inspiring some level
of superstition and in fiction. And sure enough, there is
(37:12):
an Italian supernatural TV drama about this town, or at
least I don't know if it's about the set in
the town and invokes the idea of the town. It
is called Kuron. It's apparently I think it's on Netflix.
I don't know if that's like, if that's in the States,
or if that's just in Italy or other international markets.
But c r in. If anyone out there has seen it,
do write in and let us know. I'm wondering how
(37:35):
they I mean, there's so many directions you can go in.
You're talking about an abandoned underwater church, like that's perfect.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Well, not to spoil the fun, but to be clear,
I think they removed the church. It's just the tower
that's there, right, or at least in the pictures I've seen.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I'm uncertain about that. There may be some ruins down there.
But then again, if you're making a supernatural drama TV show,
why not have the church down there? You can have
whatever you like down there. Merphult going to church, ghosts, raiths,
I don't know. There's so many directions.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Oh, it's like the pious undead that we talked about.
Was it last year or the year before? All the
revenants are going to church?
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, yeah, and there this is like a rich folkloric
region of Europe too that we're talking about. So there's
so many ideas you could pull in, you know, ideas
that predate the creation of man made lakes for sure.
I also want to point out worth looking up or
images of the Quran coat of arms because I'm not
I'm not sure on the exact history of this, like
(38:37):
when they changed it or adapted it, but the coat
of arms depicts the tower, the bell tower, emerging from
the water. Mm hm, so pretty cool. If you have
visited this location, right in and let us know, because
I'd love to hear your first person account of this
haunting bell tower. All right, we're going to gohead and
leave it there, but yeah, go ahead and write in
if you have any thoughts on anything we've discussed so
(38:58):
far in this series. Just a reminder that Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with core
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Mondays, usually
in an artifact or monster fact episode on Wednesdays, and
on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If
you use social media, you can follow us at any
of your favorite social media sites, I think, unless we're
(39:21):
not on that site, but we're on a few of them,
so you know, to have a look around. Maybe you
can find us. If you're on Instagram, you can find
us at STBYM podcast.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
To follow us on MySpace. Huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
And we're back with part three in our series called
the Sunken Lands, about places on Earth that were relatively
recently solid land but are now covered by the waters.
In the previous two parts of this series, we discussed myths, legends,
and obsolete theories of sunken lands, including the most popular
(00:37):
drowned civilization Atlantis, an advanced island state discussed in the
writings of Plato, which the majority of experts on the
original sources seem to think is best interpreted as a
fictional setting used to illustrate a point in Plato's writings,
rather than a reference to a real place that actually existed.
But of course that does not stop the many Atlantis
(00:58):
hunters of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Right, and it doesn't stop the human imagination which has
gone wild with the concept, as we discussed in many
responsible ways and occasionally irresponsible with as well.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Right. So, we also talked about the very real sunken
land mass now known as dogger Land, which was a
vast plane connecting Great Britain to mainland Europe during and
for several thousand years following the Last Ice Age. Doggerland
is a fascinating mystery that archaeologists and other scientists are
(01:32):
learning more about all the time. But one of the
most intriguing things that we've learned is that this drowned
world was not only inhabited by humans for the few
thousand years after it began warming at the beginning of
the Holocene. It was something many experts have described it
as something of a paradise, rich with resources and possibly
(01:54):
one of the most densely populated places in Middle Stone
Age Europe. But of course it was eventually smothered underneath
rising seas and also battered by a colossal tsunami from
an underwater landslide around sixty two hundred BCE. After that,
we talked about cases of alleged vanishing islands in the Pacific,
(02:15):
including reasons for thinking that some of these accounts are genuine.
One example that you brought up rob is the island
of Tao Nimanu, a former island described in the oral
traditions of some of the Solomon Islanders, which allegedly sank
beneath the waves in a rapid seismic event, so that
this happened suddenly and some people barely escaped in canoes.
(02:38):
And according to the sources we were looking at last time,
it is thought that this probably did actually happen.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, Yeah, that seems to be the consensus.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Though there are of course many other examples of alleged
vanishing islands, being more likely just cases of mistaken identification.
In the first instance, probably we discussed reasons for possibly
mistakings thing for an island, maybe visual illusions like Fata Morgana,
or being mistaken about where you are when you see
an actual island, or mistaking patches of things floating in
(03:11):
the water for land. One example we talked about was seaweed,
another was volcanic pummice rafts, and then everybody's favorite, the
possibility that somebody could mistake white oily scum left over
after seasonal worm sex as some indication of a land mass.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's absolutely in the mix.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Now I wanted to talk about another example of a
quite real sunken land that we have tons of evidence for.
Many people were probably thinking about it when we were
talking about dogger Land, because this is perhaps at least
to north Americans the even more famous sunken Land bridge
between two continental masses, and that would be the submerged
(03:51):
plains of Beringia. This refers to an area of the
globe between northwestern North America, including Alaska and north west
Canada on one side, and northeastern Russia on the other.
And it is now thought that during the Late Pleistocene,
so the Last Ice Age, huge expanses of what are
(04:14):
now the Bearing Sea, the Bearing Straight and the Chuckchi
Sea were lands exposed by dropping sea levels. So the
geological story of Beringia has some things in common with
the story of Doggerland, which we talked about previously. The
lower sea levels of the Pleistocene were associated with massive
(04:35):
glacier formation. During the last glacial maximum, roughly twenty thousand
years ago, about twenty five percent of the Earth's land
surface and about eight percent of its total surface was
covered in ice, and global sea level was like four
hundred feet lower than it is today. It's hard to
imagine the amount of ice unless maybe you have been
(04:57):
to Antarctica or something. Yeah, And at that time, much
of North America, basically almost all of the current area
of Canada, especially east of the rocky mountains, but reaching
as far south as Ohio and Indiana in the United States.
All of that was covered in an ice formation known
as the Laurentide ice Sheet, which at its greatest extent
(05:21):
was more than thirteen million square kilometers and at its thickest,
probably near the middle, may have been up to three
thousand meters tall, which is almost two miles high of ice.
It's kind of hard to imagine. Again, and during this
time of lower sea levels, it has long been thought
that the much of the exposed land of Beringia probably
(05:45):
was some kind of step tundra environment, a sort of cold,
arid grassland. But at the end of the Pleistocene, roughly
ten to twelve thousand years ago, the earth began to warm,
ice melted, and sea levels rose. And these were the trends,
of course that eventually covered doggerland and water, and the
same happened to the exposed lands of Beringia. Now there
(06:08):
is no land bridge connecting North America to Asia, but
at the time there was, it served as an important
corridor of exchange between the continents, with evidence showing that plants, animals,
and people spread through and across it. Now a lot
of people probably know that the Beringia land Bridge plays
a role in several of the current competing major theories
(06:30):
of how people came to occupy the Americas, though there
are of course competing explanations even within that space. For example,
the question of whether the first people to come to
North America traveled by land and found a way south
through an ice free inland corridor, and if they did
that at what time, or whether those people migrated along
(06:52):
the coastline of Beringia mostly traveling by boat, surviving along
the way with the help of kelp forests and other
coastal resources. So there are still lots of open questions
in that debate.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
But we know this was the corridor for the exchange
of many different species, and we've discussed some examples of
this on the show before, ranging from you know, of course,
human beings, to also things like species of camel.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
And other things that I didn't even think about until
I was reading for this episode, like the gray Wolf,
the exchange of the wolf. Yeah, Now, an interesting thing
I was thinking about was a similarity with dogger Land.
As we mentioned with dogger Land, the phrase land bridge
can potentially be deceptive. On one hand, it does sort
(07:39):
of accurately describe what happens when sea levels drop and
a ground corridor is established between two land masses that
used to be and or would later be separated by water.
On the other hand, the term bridge kind of creates
the impression of a transitional space that one merely crosses
to get from one's to the other. Like you don't
(08:01):
build a house in the middle of a bridge. Well,
I guess you might if it's one of those bridges
with all buildings on it in Italy or France or wherever.
But but you know what I mean, most of the time,
you don't set up camp in the middle of a bridge.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think this is this is
this is a concept that always kind of comes to
mind whenever I'm reading about land bridges. On some level,
you're imagining it as a situation where like the wolves
and the camels are like, hey, guys, there's a temporary
passage between these two land masses. Let's all go get
at it, and you know, everybody rushes to get from
one side to the other, and then the land bridge
(08:34):
goes away.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Right, So that can be kind of deceptive. In the
case of dogger Land, we know that not only was
the now flooded land inhabited by Neanderthals and later Mesolithic
Homo sapiens during its brief warm period, for the few
thousand years between the end of the Pleistocene and the
time it was under the water, it was probably one
(08:55):
of the most resource abundant places in Europe, and as
I said Earl, it may have been one of the
most densely populated as well. So with that in mind,
to what extent could we also think of Beringia more
as a destination in itself, a place to be, rather
than just a way to get somewhere. Well, In fact,
(09:16):
we know that it was a habitat environment for many
terrestrial plants and animals, and so the real question is
to what extent this would be true for people as well.
So I came across one paper from twenty fourteen raising
a few lines of evidence for thinking that the large
now submerged plane in the middle of the Bearing Land
(09:37):
Bridge was actually a relatively habitable refuge for plants, animals,
and people during the last glacial maximum, and may have
been home to an isolated population of Native American ancestors
for thousands of years. So the paper is called out
of Beringia question Mark, published in the journal Science in
(09:58):
twenty fourteen by Hafak, Elias and O'Rourke, and one of
the core pieces of evidence here is a sampling of
mitochondrial DNA from more than six hundred Native American people
in the present, most of whom shared unique mitochondrial DNA
mutations not shared by their closest relatives in Asia, indicating
(10:20):
that most likely they can trace their ancestry back to
a group of people that was living isolated from people
in the rest of Asia for thousands of years, perhaps
ten thousand years or so, before spreading across the continents
of North and South America. And if this is in
fact the case, where would this population of people be living,
(10:42):
perhaps in a region of Beringia that supported long term settlement.
Now you might think, but wait a minute, it wasn't
Beringia too cold and arid and free of resources. Not
necessarily palaeoecological evidence is showing that parts of central Beringia
may have actually been more rich and plant and animal
(11:02):
resources that would potentially support continued human habitation. And this
evidence includes things cited by these authors like sediment cores
that you would take from the bottom of the bering Sea.
So you like core out an area of the sediment
strata there and see what's in it. And it turns
out these sediment samples contain remnants of pollen and other
(11:24):
plant matter and insects that indicate that while outer regions
of Beringia may have been more inhospitable and arid, very
like dry cold step lands, the central lowlands of Beringia
may very well have had plenty of animal populations for
hunting and especially important woody plants which could have been
(11:46):
used as fuel for fires. And as we know, wood
is a big deal there there was not a whole
lot of wood available in the Arctic at the time
due to the extent the extent of the glaciers, and
fuel for fire can make the difference between a place
being able to sustain human life or not.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
So already we're painting an entirely different picture of a
quote unquote land bridge than I think a lot of
us might have had in our head.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Right so to quote lead author John Hoffecker, who is
a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, speaking to
Live Science, he said, quote the central part of Beringia
was probably the mildest, most comfortable place to live at
high latitudes during the last glacial maximum. It is the
most logical place for a group of people to hunker down,
(12:33):
and the term used for this area is a glacial refugium,
a place where organisms can survive despite hostile conditions in
the surrounding areas. So this might have been a sort
of warmer, milder, wetter area in the middle of very cold, dry,
or glaciated areas that would be able to maintain all
(12:56):
of this diversity of species like shrub tree that you
could burn for wood, and animals that could sustain human hunting,
and possibly people living there for thousands of years. So
the idea of many millennia of people living isolated in
this refugium is sometimes referred to as the Bringian stand
(13:17):
still hypothesis. And though it's not meant to I feel
like this is another one where the word choice brings
some of the wrong connotations, because stand still kind of
like bridge it to me, at least, it implies a
connotation that like, these people would have been trying to
get somewhere and then they were stalled or delayed, rather
(13:39):
than this is simply where and how people were living
their lives just like anywhere else on earth.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah again, because you're talking about thousands of years here,
You're not talking about again, this brief opportunity to move
from point A to point B. It is instead the
emergence of a point C. At least, I feel like
the historical perspective we have often leads to misconceptions like this,
Like when you look back through history, we know or
(14:06):
simply have an idea, right or wrong, of what happened
before and after a period of time. And with that
historical perspective, I think we often have a hard time
understanding that people within that period probably did not think
of themselves as transitional between two things, but were trying
(14:27):
to live their lives like anyone else. And you know,
I was having the same pattern of thoughts about Doggerland,
like we now know that it was really only this
lush buffet of a world for a few thousand years
in Doggerland, But to the people living there it was
it was probably just home, right, Yeah, I mean to
your point, like this was to them, to them, this
(14:48):
was the world. You know. They not to discount the
possibility that they had some oral traditions or so forth
of the places they came from or the world before.
But you know it'skew. You know, hindsight is twenty twenty
and that certainly applies to our understanding of history.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
I guess the other way of looking at it is
that on a on a long enough timescale, all people
living in all places at all times are living in
transitional points.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yes, that's interesting to think about because it kind of
comes back to what we discussed in previous episodes about
golden ages, lost golden ages, the thing that we're trying
to reclaim or trying to find again. You know, that
also kind of loses side of the fact that life
is continually a state of change and there it's always
(15:41):
in a state of transition, and you know, it reminds me.
I forget what talk this was, but there was a
talk that Terrence McKenna gave where he used the line
and if something needs to be done, you will find
yourself doing it, which I think I forget the exact
context of it, but you know, it kind of speaks
to to how human beings have survived and grown and
(16:04):
expanded so much over the course of their existence. They
have expanded into new areas, they have left areas, they
have changed, they have rolled with the punches of transition.
But at the same time, you know, created these stories
and looked back longingly at supposed better times, whether or
not they were actually better.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That's a good point. But to come back to the
Barringian standstill hypothesis, it is important to remember that this
is just a hypothesis. Like it would need more direct
evidence in its favor, such as especially archaeological discoveries, which
had not been found at the time this article was published,
and I looked around and couldn't find any evidence of
(16:47):
archaeological discoveries backing it up since then, and critics of
this hypothesis argue that not only do we not have
archaeological evidence, we probably should expect to have found some
by now, since not all all of this territory is underwater,
though a lot of it is. But either way so
we don't know. This is an idea, it may or
(17:07):
may not be correct. But if this idea is correct,
once the surrounding glaciers began to melt, the ideas that
the Beringian people probably expanded their territory and then moved
on down the coastline and into the interior of the
North American continent and spread on from there. But the
ultimate point about the land being that much like Doggerland,
(17:28):
this is an area that was land when the glaciers
were at their peak, when the water was locked in
the ice, and so there were these vast stretches of
plains that are now buried beneath the sea. And there's
probably a lot more that we could know about them
more easily if it were not underneath the sea, and
we could, you know, just go around and do digs
(17:49):
and look for palaeontological remains, you know, animal remains, plant remains,
and see if we could find human tools and remains
what people were doing in these places. But it's again
more challenging because of the water covering things.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Now, yeah, well that's fascinating Again. That kind of essentially
kind of turns over the loose idea that I had
in my head of land bridges. So this might be
an interesting general topic to come back to in the future. Now,
(18:29):
in all this talk of sunken lands and lost islands
in particular that we got into in the last episode,
I thought it might be fun to explore something that
lines up with this concept in a unique way and
that is the topic of atolls or atolls you apparently
can say it both ways, and hey, I might just
(18:50):
say it both ways. This we proceed here. So these
are essentially coral reefs in circling a lagoon. They're not
always circular, but there are some stunning examples of circular atolls.
And you've you've probably seen pictures of these. There are
numerous examples of them. The big Blue Hole Belize is
(19:11):
one that is commonly mentioned and commonly photographed. But it's like, yeah,
you have this circular reef islands and then in the
middle more water. So it looks like, you know, this
looks like something is missing, right, And this has certainly
invited curiosity over the many years here as long as
people have been encountering them, because it raises the question
(19:33):
how did they form? This was actually a question that
none other than Charles Darwin considered on the voyage of
the Ahms Beagle during the eighteen thirties. So when I
was reading about that, I had to pull open his book,
The Voyage of the Beagle, And yeah, he gets into
this at one point and he writes about some of
the theories of the day that he was less convinced
(19:55):
by So the first idea he brings up is that
quote coral bil building animals instinctively built up their great
circles to afford themselves protection in the inner parts. So
that would seem to imply that, yeah, you have coral
is like growing up from the seabed and building a
great ring so that they can have like a protected
(20:16):
area in the middle. And on this theory, he points
out that, Okay, coral don't thrive within the atl lagoon,
and this would be a case in which quote many
species of distinct genera and families are supposed to combine
for one end, and of such a combination not a
single instance can be found in the whole of nature.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
M Okay, so the creatures forming the reef would have
to be all working together to protect this inner area.
But also he points out, like, you don't really see
the coral doing much in the inner area. It's not
like they're, oh, that's the place where they keep all
their soft parts. They're just not really in there.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah. And then additionally, where else in the natural world
do we see this kind of like cross genera cooperation
going on. I mean, I guess you could you know,
there's some little instances here and there where you talk
about it, you know, prey animal communication and alerting, you know,
generally to the idea of predators in their myths, But
something a lot on the scale of this, he argues,
(21:17):
we don't.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Really see it, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
The next theory he mentions is that atolls are based
on submarine craters, and he points out that this doesn't
hold up when you look at all the examples in
the world that were known at the time. It just
simply doesn't account for everything. Another idea that he explores
is the idea that coral edges were exposed to the
outer sea and along these edges grew up more quickly.
(21:42):
But as with theory one, the question remains, what did
they grow on? He stresses that rebuilding corals cannot live
at great depth, and therefore, like what would grow up
then to be doesn't make sense that they would they
would start deep down and then grow up because we
know that these corals that live near the surface don't
in the deep water, right.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
So it's only in the shallow. Living corals only live
in these areas that are already shallow for some reason,
Like it's like it's almost an island right right.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And it's worth noting that there are deep water corals,
and they do produce deep sea reefs, but it's structurally different, apparently.
So he writes at fair length about all of this
and about what he thinks is happening. And here's a
section that more or less encapsulates it. Quote, as the
barrier reef slowly sinks down, the corals will go on
(22:33):
vigorously growing upwards. But as the island sinks, this would
be the island around which the reef is formed. He continues,
The water will gain inch by inch on the shore,
the separate mountains first forming separate islands within one great reef,
and finally the last and highest pinnacle disappearing. The instant
(22:54):
this takes place, a perfect atoll is formed. I have said,
removed the high land from within the an encircling barrier reef,
and an atoll is left. And the land has been removed.
We can now perceive how it comes that atolls, having
sprung from encircling barrier reefs, resemble them in general size form,
in the manner in which they are coupled together, and
in their arrangement in single or double lines. For they
(23:17):
may be called rude outlined charts of the sunken islands
over which they stand.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
M okay. So the idea there would be a volcanic
island that forms, it gradually begins to sink, but as
it is sinking, the barrier reef is built up to
encircle it in the shallow water around it, and that
height comes up as the central island just continues to
go down. So an atoll, to come back to the
(23:43):
idea of sort of transitional landforms, is somewhere in between
a volcanic island and eventually fully sunken island.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Right. And in this case, yeah, the volcanic island is
no longer active and it is falling away. Meanwhile the
coral is alive and it's building up.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Hm. That makes sense, was he right?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, it's interesting so that this is generally referred to
as the subsistence model, and it does. It seems like
it's very much in the mix today. You certainly see
it sided all over the place, and it pops up
in textbooks and so forth. But not everyone loves it.
And there are some very vocal experts who who say
(24:29):
this is really this really doesn't explain everything, and we
ultimately need to look maybe more at another theory, or
ultimately look at sort of a host of theories, and
that maybe we should get away from the idea that
one theory in general is going to explain every formation
like this that we find in the world's oceans. There's
another key formation theory called the antecedent Karst model, and
(24:53):
this one proposes that dropping sea levels that this has
to do with like cyclical changes sea level over time.
It proposes that dropping sea levels expose the top of
a flat topped bank of carbonate rocks. And then while
this is exposed again for you know, like with our
land Bridge model, not for just a couple of days,
(25:15):
but for an extended period of time, rain water steadily
pools in the flat topped bank and dissolves some of
the carbonate, forming a depression. Eventually, sea levels rise again
and fresh coral builds up top this raised circular edge.
Again roughly speaking, it doesn't have to be anything remotely
resembling a perfect circle, but then the coral builds up
(25:37):
on this raised circular edge of the depression. This forms
the atoll according to this theory. So again it has
a lot to do with cyclical changes in sea level.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Oh okay, so much. Kind of like how a cave
is formed in limestone by like rain water coming down
or you know, water rushing through and dissolving some of
the sediment rock and eventually forming a cave. Here, the
idea would be that in the times, when a seamount
(26:08):
or island top is exposed by lowering sea levels, the
rainwater comes down and sort of it dissolves it in
kind of the same way that rainwater dissolves a cave cavity,
and it lowers the central area of the island. But
of course the coral is still building up the reef
all around that central raised area.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, that's my understanding of this. Alexander Witz wrote a
great article about the antecedent cars model back in twenty
twenty one for Noble magazine and was then reprinted on Smithsonian,
where you can also find it. So I was reading
about that here, and the author makes several key points
that I wanted to draw out for this discussion. First
(26:48):
of all, the author writes that experts that generally agree
that Darwin got it wrong with his theory, they also
admit that he crafted a very insightful theory for the
day given in the limited amount of data. Also, some
reefs may have still formed via the method that Darwin
is describing here, such as some atolls found in Tahiti.
(27:13):
And in any case, they often stress that we shouldn't
look maybe for one unifying theory for atoll formation, because
there may ultimately be a handful of explanations in the mix,
including things like tectonic forces and wave action.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Ah, that's a good point. Yeah, there could be multiple
mechanisms creating similar looking formations.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah. The author also points out that understanding the varying
reasons in play also helps us to understand which atolls
are most at risk from climate change and rising sea levels.
The author writes, quote, in the absence of humans, atolls
can grow at a rate much faster than that of
sea level rise. But people have degraded natural atolls by
(27:53):
introducing pollution and waste, altering the water table, and adding
concrete and asphalt that smothers the underlying coral. The Maldives
in the Indian Ocean face a future of flooding, water contamination,
and erosion that threaten its tourism and fishery industries. The Maldives,
by the way, according to the article may have formed
more due to the action of waves wave based erosion
(28:15):
than by the clarsification theory was that I was talking
about earlier, at least according to one study. But to
come back to just the topic of sunken lands and
sunken islands in general, yeah, I think atolls fit into
the concept. Though. The added discussion and or disagreement concerns
exactly how central exposed land masses may have formed and
(28:37):
or fallen away, and you know, to what extent it
involves things essentially, you know, rising from the ocean or
then sinking back below the depths. Because both Darwin and
the carciification theories entail a central exposed land mass or
island around which the coral builds.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
I mean, part of me would wonder if you could
just to some extent tell the difference between these by
looking at the kind of rock, because in Darwin's theory,
for example, if the idea is that the island is
volcanic in origin, wouldn't you be mainly looking at volcanic
rock leftover in the middle, Whereas if it's a kars
process you would be looking at sedimentary rock in the middle.
(29:19):
Am I wrong about that?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
The article I said, it does go into more detail
about this, and yeah, it's my understanding that a lot
of what we know now it does hinge upon geologic
evidence that we just that Darwin wasn't exposed to and
did not have back in the day, And so we
do know a lot more about what sorts of rocks
are underlying any given land mass that we're discussing.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
So I guess if the karsification explanation has come more
into favor, that would suggest that more often the coral
atoll is found around a like a limestone formation rather
than a volcanic rock formation.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
That would seem to be the case. But again, based
on what I was reading, it sounds like it is
maybe a suite of the theories that we might turn
to as opposed to again one unifying theory for all
of these atolls. Now, as we touched on during the
(30:22):
first episode, I wanted to come back around to this
because water levels don't only rise due to geologic events
and storms and global warming. It also occurs when humans
build dams to form artificial lakes. Well, I mean, I
guess you could maybe make an argument for beavers as well,
but especially humans. That's true, humans can pour concrete. But
(30:46):
you know this allows humans to otherwise manipulate rivers and lakes,
and it's worth stressing that in addition to hydroelectricity. And
you'll know this if you've ever visited a dam and
gone through like a you know the educational portion of
the dam in addition to producing electricity. Another major reason
for dams is to often detame rivers that periodically endanger
(31:06):
neighboring and low lying areas. But in doing so, in
creating lakes, we of course sometimes sink formerly inhabited lands,
both ancient and modern. And of course this has taken
place all over the world. There are so many examples
that we could turn to, but I thought I might
highlight some examples that stood out to me, and of
course if any others come up, we may bring them
(31:28):
up later and certainly and feel free to write in
about examples that come to your mind. But one that
is often mentioned is, of course the site of Abu
Simbel in Egypt. This was an ancient rock cut temple
complex near the current Egyptian Sudanese border, and it dates
back to the thirteenth century bcee. This site was threatened
(31:50):
by Lake Nasser. This is the Aswan Dam reservoir during
the twentieth century, but in nineteen sixty eight it was
actually really located to another site, so massive relocation effort
to move everything to a higher elevation further away from
the water. Another famous dam, of course, is the Three
(32:11):
Gorgeous Dam in China, that also entailed a great deal
of relocation from the area to be flooded in terms
of like the lake that's going to build up, but
also the river itself. And this also included something called
White Crane Ridge. It's an archaeological site. The inscriptions here
date back to the Tung dynasty and provide detailed water
(32:33):
level records on the Yangzi River, some I think one
two hundred years worth of data based on what I
was reading. Some of the carvings were relocated, but others
remain in a special underwater museum constructed prior to the flooding.
So you apparently this is underneath the river, so you
apparently take an escalator down from a facility by the
(32:55):
river bank through some tunnels to reach the museum. WHOA
Another example from China that I ran across is Lions
City or Hieching in eastern China. It's an example of
an Eastern Han dynasty city that is now under the
waters of a man made lake. This is Thousand Island Lake.
(33:15):
This was flooded in the mid twentieth century as well,
when most of these projects are taking place around the world,
and it has apparently become a tourism destination, at least
for very experienced divers. I read that it's not really
the kind of thing that casual divers are going down for,
but experienced divers have sought this out, and you can
find some images online of various sort of you know,
(33:35):
haunting underwater remnants of this place.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
As a creature of East Tennessee, I grew up with
a lot of consciousness of the idea of lands flooded
by the creation of dams, specifically with TVA hydro Electric.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, the Tennessee Valley Authority a right, Yeah, things like
Kentucky Lake. There are always a lot of you know these.
Anytime you have a big lake like this, there's going
to be some sort of a relocation effort that has
to take place, and I feel like inevitably you're gonna
have some things left behind beneath the water and on
top of what's actually underneath the water, You're gonna have
stories about what maybe underneath the water, you know, tales
(34:13):
of lost towns and so forth.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
I think I used to have dreams when I was
little of finding houses submerged underneath the lake.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah. Yeah, And this sort of thing has been explored
in media, pops up in the Coen Brothers or brother
Where Art thou and so forth, And I think ultimately
wherever you're listening to this show, you probably don't have
to go too far to find an example of some
sort of an artificial lake, and there may be stories
about like the impact of creating that lake.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Of course, you kind of alluded to this earlier. But
one of the interesting things about the flooding of these
river values by the creation of dams is that often
one of the purposes of it is to prevent uncontrolled flooding.
I know this is it's fundamentally changed what the Nile
River valley is that they put all these dams in
because there used to be this uncontrolled seasonal flooding of
(35:07):
the Nile that was just part of life in Egypt.
And now that in some ways the water level of
the Nile has been to some degree broad under human control.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, and so you see this sort of thing all over.
I have to say, though, I wasn't familiar with this
example un till I started doing research here. There's perhaps
fewer examples, few examples that are as stunning as this.
But there's a town in northern Italy, or a village
in northern Italy by the name of Kuran, and it's
apparently pretty famous for there a lot of images of this,
(35:38):
but I wasn't familiar with it. But this is another
case where they had to relocate the town to a
higher elevation, as the original site was flooded in nineteen
fifty so most of the city was abandoned and demoed first,
except for a lone fourteenth century church and its bell tower.
The bell tower still sticks out of the water in
(35:59):
rather surrealistic fashion. You'll find images of it where it's
just like, oh, here's the mountains, there's a lake, and
here is a bell tower sticking out of it. I mean,
some of these images don't even look real. It looks
like some sort of obvious photoshop, but it is. These
are legitimate. There are other images of the lake frozen
over and here is the bell tower emerging from the ice.
(36:20):
Sometimes you see images where people have ventured out onto
the ice close to it in.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Some of the pictures. I just looked up pictures of it,
and in a lot of them, there seems to be
a color gradient on the tower as it sticks up,
like the stone is a little paler for most of
the way up, and then there will be a lower
area where the stone is darker. And I don't know
if this is the reason, but I wonder if that's
you know, it's literally just from the water level going
up and down, and so you can see where the
(36:46):
water has been on the on the height of the stone.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, I believe that is the case. I've read that
during the spring, when the water is at its lowest,
you can apparently see more of the ruins. But yeah,
I encourage everyone to look up in this because it's
pretty impressive. And you can't have something in like this
in the world, of course without it inspiring some level
of superstition and in fiction. And sure enough, there is
(37:12):
an Italian supernatural TV drama about this town, or at
least I don't know if it's about the set in
the town and invokes the idea of the town. It
is called Kuron. It's apparently I think it's on Netflix.
I don't know if that's like, if that's in the States,
or if that's just in Italy or other international markets.
But c r in. If anyone out there has seen it,
do write in and let us know. I'm wondering how
(37:35):
they I mean, there's so many directions you can go in.
You're talking about an abandoned underwater church, like that's perfect.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Well, not to spoil the fun, but to be clear,
I think they removed the church. It's just the tower
that's there, right, or at least in the pictures I've seen.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I'm uncertain about that. There may be some ruins down there.
But then again, if you're making a supernatural drama TV show,
why not have the church down there? You can have
whatever you like down there. Merphult going to church, ghosts, raiths,
I don't know. There's so many directions.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Oh, it's like the pious undead that we talked about.
Was it last year or the year before? All the
revenants are going to church?
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, yeah, and there this is like a rich folkloric
region of Europe too that we're talking about. So there's
so many ideas you could pull in, you know, ideas
that predate the creation of man made lakes for sure.
I also want to point out worth looking up or
images of the Quran coat of arms because I'm not
I'm not sure on the exact history of this, like
(38:37):
when they changed it or adapted it, but the coat
of arms depicts the tower, the bell tower, emerging from
the water. Mm hm, so pretty cool. If you have
visited this location, right in and let us know, because
I'd love to hear your first person account of this
haunting bell tower. All right, we're going to gohead and
leave it there, but yeah, go ahead and write in
if you have any thoughts on anything we've discussed so
(38:58):
far in this series. Just a reminder that Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with core
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Mondays, usually
in an artifact or monster fact episode on Wednesdays, and
on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If
you use social media, you can follow us at any
of your favorite social media sites, I think, unless we're
(39:21):
not on that site, but we're on a few of them,
so you know, to have a look around. Maybe you
can find us. If you're on Instagram, you can find
us at STBYM podcast.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
To follow us on MySpace. Huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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