Coastal Journey
Our solar system is not a perfect clock. There have been 16 ice ages in the past million years.
“Small variations in the tilt of the Earth on its axis and variations in the planet’s elliptical path around the sun are all that is necessary to plunge the planet in and out of the freezer. ” Tim Flannery.
Some 120,000 years ago, modern humans migrated out of Africa, and we kept going, first into the middle east, then on to southeast Asia, with a detour down into Australia, then up the eastern Pacific to the Bering Strait, and finally into North America. By 15,000 year ago, we reached the tip of South America.
We evolved in Africa, from a hairy, tree climbing, social primate ancestor. Somehow, over time, we lost most of our hair, gained a lining of body fat, developed upright walking, a descended larynx that enabled speech, special sweat glands for thermal regulation, and a diving reflex for swimming. We became like sea mammals, more suited for water than the forest or savannah. Dolphins are our close cousins in intelligence and communication, the whale is the only other mammal to have menopause. Where and when this happened is a mystery. The Afar Triangle of northeast Africa, on the way out of Africa, may have been a vast, flooded wetlands. We may have had to swim our way out of Africa.
We followed the coastlines, along the beaches and up rivers, as sea gatherers and fishermen. Food was plentiful, rich in value, and easy to harvest. The travel and protection were easier. We love the beach to this day.
Our journey was during a perilous geologic time. A warming earth was melting ice, rising sea levels, lifting and shifting tectonic plates, causing earthquakes and volcanoes. Released by the loss of the weight of the great ice sheets as they melted, continental plates heaved up, and the moon pulled stronger on the increasing tidal waters. The Pacific tectonic plate, being the largest and the thinnest – only 2.5 miles thick – moved and cracked the most, aggravating the ‘ring of fire’ of volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunami’s that pound all the coasts of the Pacific Ocean.
As modern humans arrived along the South East Asian coast, some 70,000 years ago, the shallow, continental Pacific Sundra shelf waters were flooding, and a great volcano – perhaps the greatest ever volcano – Toba – in Indonesia on the island of Sumatra, erupted. The massive blast of volcanic dust blackened the sky, creating a volcanic winter and mass extinction. Human life all the way back to northern Africa was nearly extinguished.
The surviving humans were pushed inland and north, and eventually into the New World. Floods, tidal waves, receding waters, and exploding volcanoes filled their prehistoric consciousness. This has carried on to our day, in the creation stories of the world, told by their descendants.
The myths are not myths, they are history.
In the beginning the world was in water, and there was darkness. And then light came to the sky, and then the sun appeared and separated the earth from the sky.
