THE RIDDLE of PREHISTORIC BRITAIN Comyns Beaumont excerpts

CHAPTER I

THE WEATHER AND EARTHQUAKES ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES FEW persons realise perhaps how absolutely dependent are all forms of life upon the incidence of weather. Give us too much air and we experience raging storms and hurricanes which destroy the crops and cause misery and destitution to millions. Give us too little air and animals and plants languish or die, drought is experienced with its attendant ills, and unless fresh air cleanses the fœtid atmosphere there results suffocation and loss of life. Therefore the problem of the cause of our atmosphere, its eccentricities and peculiarities, the production of great or blazing heat waves and the apparent lack of any systematic explanation of the reason of depressions or anti-cyclones is one of paramount importance. 2. We know that air is composed of various gases, mainly nitrogen and oxygen, and that if we are taken out of our element we die. What we do not know is where this air comes from, forming as it does a sort of cushion between the world and outer space. It must be evident that our air or atmosphere requires frequent renovation and recruitment. We cannot suppose that during the myriads of years before and since individual existence first began on this earth the atmosphere has remained a stable force, for the merest reflection must show it to be an impossibility, and it must be renewed on many occasions. Indeed, everybody who gives the question any thought must recognise that the incidence of great gales and tempests, when the elements wage furious war together, presupposes the introduction of new atmospheric forces in some manner as yet unaccounted for by any method of scientific research. 3. The idea that rain is caused by the absorption of moisture drawn from the oceans and seas attracted by the sun's rays is one lacking scientific proof. If such were the case the natural inference would be that rain clouds would be regularly formed and would fall incessantly like a waterfall, and on such a theory the tropics, where the heat and consequently any attraction is greatest, should experience the most consistent and continuous rainfall, whereas we know that except for the rainy season the tropical and sub-tropical belts of the earth are rainless as a general rule and in some parts, as in Egypt and Peru, without rain always. It is evident that another reason must be sought to explain the incidence of weather conditions. Meteorologists teach that solar radiation is directly or indirectly responsible for most of our weather variations, because they assume that this radiation, together with the earth's rotation, is the cause of practically the whole of our atmospheric circulation and the phenomena of cyclones and anti-cyclones, winds and storms, resulting therefrom. It does not explain the facts at all, for the

sun's rays are constant and unvarying except in so far as big sunspots may temporarily affect radiation, but there are periods when during a maximum of sunspots the weather is steady and settled, and there are other occasions when sunspots are at a minimum and the weather has been marked by a succession of great storms. Whatever effect sunspots may or may not exert upon the sun's radiation it cannot justly be said that they go the first step towards solving the problem. 3A. It must appear, with due respect, that meteorologists are chasing a chimera. The weather, reflecting atmospheric conditions, is, it can be shown, only a part of meteorology closely interconnected with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. That is to say, when we have solved the true causes of both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which are in their turn the effect of certain unknown causes, the mystery of the earth's atmosphere, storms, rain and depressions will be solved also.

CHAPTER XI

WHERE THE COMET FELL GEOLOGISTS' STRANGE IDEAS ON THE DRIFT AGE THERE is little in common with the views of geologists in regard to

the Drift, and the conclusions reached in this work. Much as astronomers talk lightly of a comet having an orbit of 100,000 years, so do geologists talk of an Ice Age or several Ice Ages, with sub-tropical interludes between, and ascribe a period of anything up to 600,000 years for the prevalence of this Ice Age, associated with the Drift. It was a sudden and violent episode which in the main lasted only a few hours, although its active effects continued more or less intermittently for a great period. It is difficult to see how any geologists can place a term to it, since their whole assumption is based on an initial fallacy. A writer in recent years, discussing the new theories on geology, says that a leading Swedish geologist has produced overwhelming evidence of an Ice Age in Scandinavia not more than 15,000 years ago, and traces of a smaller, minor one about 5,000 years back. 165. The old idea still prevails. To account for phenomena otherwise inexplicable they assume that the northern parts of Europe after enjoying a mild, warm, and sub-tropical climate, experienced an age of violent storms, floods and bitter cold, whereby the British Isles and large

parts of the Continent were buried under vast accumulations of ice. This Ice Age was succeeded by another period of warmth and sub-tropical produce, all the different varieties of animals, birds, insects, trees, flowering plants and vegetables having miraculously survived these extremes. Once more there fell—some say several times—the icy mantle over continents and once more the various types survived. Some geologists credit the Ice Age with three periods, others six or more, and some do not hesitate to spread this extraordinary period over hundreds of thousands of years. All these theories are based on the assumption of geologists that the Drift deposits were brought in some way connected with ice, and all their theories are accordingly governed by this view.

CONCLUSIONS 190. With these words I bring to a conclusion an investigation which will have performed far more than I dare hope should it succeed in crystallising thought into a consideration of problems that may appear at first sight new and revolutionary but are in truth of extreme antiquity, being the revived knowledge of our remote ancestors. In attempting to solve the Riddle of the Earth we come truly into proximity with the Creator, for what are meteors or comets but His messengers, directed by one great and mighty Will? It has been suggested in these pages that not only are we in contact with Providence who makes and unmakes worlds, continents, islands, civilisations and rulers, as He sees fit, but that cometary gases projected into our atmosphere may and do affect the public health, and perhaps the minds of men sufficiently receptive. It has been shown how tremendous a part the meteor or comet plays in the laws of evolution, as the male principle, that begets, whilst the volcano is the receptive principle, the mother of us all, and like a mother instinctively senses the dangers threatening her offspring which she seeks to avert. 192. In all these questions meteorology provides the key. If through eternity we may point to one unchanging and immutable centre of stability, never altering, never deviating in so far as it may be perceptible throughout the ages of the world, it is the Pole of the Ecliptic. If it be as contended in the preceding pages of this work that all great cometary or meteoric impacts come from the direction of the Ecliptic Pole, then it follows that the various linear arrangements of volcanoes and mountain ranges may be determined with comparative accuracy according to the lines of direction they follow. 193. Less fortunate than Tahiti was another land whose geological classification probably dates from the old Red Sandstone epoch. No one can study the classic descriptions of the Hyperborean Continent without

recognising the fact that it represented the Atlantis of Plato, the land of Cronus or Saturn, and that it lay in the Atlantic. Disagreement may exist as to the actual location of this land, some placing it in one place others at another, but it certainly did exist traditionally in the Atlantic Ocean. To many the most important points in Plato's account of Atlantis is that it was the mother both of Egyptian and of Athenian civilisation "For there was a time, Solon," said the priest of Sais, in Egypt, "when the city which is now Athens was first in war, and was pre-eminent for the excellence of her laws, and is said to have performed the noblest deeds, and to have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of heaven. Minerva founded your city a thousand years before ours. . . ."* He went on to say of Atlantis that "afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of rain all your warlike men in a body sunk into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared and was sunk beneath the sea." 196. The same event is recorded in the ancient legends of the Aztecs of Mexico and other Central American peoples, as gathered by the earliest Spanish invaders. They said they had come long ago from "Aztlan," where there was a great capital (Tula, Tulan or Tollan) containing streets, palaces, pyramids, rivers, canals, and a volcano. Before the destruction of this land, which was foretold by their prophets, a series of plagues occurred almost identical with those related as happening to Pharaoh and his people. Aztlan enjoyed a beautiful and temperate climate, possessed woods and fruit, flowers and birds, streams and lakes. "In a single day all was lost," say the Aztec traditions, "even the mountains sank into the water."