Most of the legendary sunken continents are far from us - be it Atlantis, Lemuria or Pacifis. Another thing is Arctida, otherwise - Hyperborea.
Why did the Arctic freeze?
Arctic. The land of the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean, hummocks, permafrost, an abundance of snow and monstrous cold weather. A majestic silence reigns over the endless white expanses, broken only by the rare rumble of breaking ice, the roar of a polar bear, the mysterious crackling of cold layers of snow, or the unassuming song of a reindeer breeder and the barking of his sled dogs.
Like a magnet, it attracts courageous pioneers and adventurers striving to reach the alluring North Pole or "jump" over it from the mainland to the mainland either by plane, or by snowmobiles, or by dogs, or by skiing, or even on foot. The mysteries of the Arctic constantly attract the attention of scientists, science fiction writers, mystics.
On the map of the current state of the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, the outlines of a huge plateau with a coastline indented by river valleys are clearly visible.
Meanwhile, the Arctic has not always been so cold. The finds of paleobotanists indicate that once upon a time magnolias and viburnum bushes bloomed beyond the Arctic Circle, cypresses and plane trees, chestnuts and poplars grew. In Greenland, at 70 degrees north latitude, vines bore fruit, and thermophilic vegetation was found even at 82 degrees north latitude.
The debate about what caused the once warm Arctic to freeze has been going on for a long time. Many different hypotheses have been put forward, but today all participants in the debate about the causes of the glaciation of the Arctic agree that its climate change began about 10 million years ago. The very first impetus to the glaciation of the Arctic
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Ki gave rise to the glaciation of Antarctica, located at the opposite point of the globe. The inclusion of the giant Antarctic "refrigerator" gave impetus to the general cooling. Floating ice appeared in the Arctic Ocean four million years ago. And he really became "ice-cold."
About three million years ago, the Arctic began to operate its own "refrigerator" - Greenland, and after it Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago were covered with ice. The polar cap grew, and then glaciers spread across the Northern Hemisphere, capturing millions of square kilometers of water and land: the era of the great glaciations of the Earth began.
Martian climate
“During the era of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere it was much colder than now,” wrote S. V. Tormidiaro in the article "Arctida As It Is". - What should have happened in such conditions with the Arctic Ocean? It began to freeze, and its drifting ice welded into a single motionless plate tens of meters thick.
This gigantic ice land welded the northern continents, and in the center of it a great polar anticyclone was established, much more powerful than the one that now stands in Antarctica. Cold air began to "slide" to the south, but under the influence of the Earth's rotation it moved to the west - this is how that constant east wind was formed, which we again know from the sixth continent.
And in the upper layers of the atmosphere, a so-called reverse suction funnel is created. And it was this gigantic "vacuum cleaner" that began to "throw" particles suspended in dry air, distributing them over the ice shell. Indeed, just at that time, and not only in the Arctic, but also in the middle latitudes, a tremendous accumulation of wind dust took place, which formed the loess deposits known in geology (loess is a soil-forming loose rock) of Europe.
This is how Arctida was born. The picture turns out, of course, unearthly: a whole supercontinent with an almost Martian climate lies in a huge space. Calculations show that the extreme temperature difference in its center could reach 150-180 degrees."
Endless dry steppes covered northern Eurasia at that time. Dust clouds swirled over the dry permafrost steppes of Europe, Siberia, and North America. And, of course, this dust was carried through the upper layers of the atmosphere into the Arctic and fell there on the sea ice. At first, it was just a bloom, but then it began to turn into increasingly thickening layers of loess.
In summer, from a cloudless sky, the Arctic sun began to shine around the clock, not setting for four months. Temperatures rose sharply, especially on the dark ground. This created ideal conditions for the growth of grasses, because ice lay shallow under the earth layer, which slightly thawed and moistened the soil of the ice-loess continent - Arctida, capable of feeding huge herds of large animals: mammoths and rhinos, musk oxen and horses, Arctic bison, saigas, yaks, not to mention countless small animals.
Of course, the abundant pastures with numerous herds grazing on them attracted the attention of primitive people. Traces of primitive hunters who inhabited the north of Europe and Siberia tens of thousands of years ago were discovered by Soviet archaeologists far beyond the Arctic Circle. Moreover, with new discoveries, the boundaries of human habitation in the Arctic moved back centuries in time and to the North Pole in space.
In the 1980s, experts did not exclude that, after Spitsbergen and Wrangel Island, sites of primitive people would be opened in Franz Josef Land, the New Siberian Islands, and Severnaya Zemlya. After all, the legends recorded by Russian researchers in the 18th-19th centuries among the inhabitants of the polar shores of Eastern Siberia speak of some peoples and tribes who moved from the mainland to the ocean, to the islands.
In those distant primitive times, the level of the World Ocean was below the modern one by about 200 meters. The developed shelf of the Arctic Ocean served as an extension of the Eurasian land mass, giving it a tangible increase of several million square kilometers.
A significant part of these territories was covered by glaciers, but at the same time more and more rivers of Siberia, flowing into the Arctic Ocean, then flowed much further north, along the territories of the present shelf of the Kara, East Siberian and other seas. So, the flooded channel of the Yenisei River has been traced at least to a depth of 100 meters.
Was Meru a type?
The myths of the peoples of the world keep many strange legends about these lands and the people who inhabited them. Yu - the hero of the Chinese epic - once got lost and went north. There he came across a flat plain without a single tree. Neither the chirping of birds nor the voices of animals could be heard. The whole area, as far as the eye could see, was cut by rivers and rivers and streams flowing into them.
People were sitting, lying or walking on the banks. As much as Yu looked, he could not see any huts or houses. The land has not been sown. Don't graze livestock. It turned out that there was no need for plowing and grazing. Water served as food for people: it was nourishing, sweet, aromatic and, in addition, intoxicating. After drinking, people went into a rage, began to sing and dance, and when tired, they fell asleep so that, when they woke up, they could bask, drink and dance again.
The people of India called these places "the land where bliss is eaten." The climate here is mild - neither cold nor hot, the land is covered with forests and abundant in fruits, rich in herds of antelopes and flocks of birds. Many daredevils strove to get into this happy abode; some heroes and sages were carried there on the wings by the divine bird Garuda.
Losers became victims of terrible monsters on the outskirts of the sacred mountain in the area of desert and darkness. Directly at the North Pole, under the North Star, the Mahabharata places "immeasurably high, unprecedented anywhere in the worlds" beautiful Mount Meru.
According to Hindu mythology, at the time of the exploits of the heroes of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, a race of half-humans, half-monkeys, the Vanaras, lived on Earth. In the seventh book of the Ramayana, it is said that they once lived on the slopes of the sacred Mount Meru.
On its peaks is the abode of the gods, and besides them, asuras, kinnaras, gandharvas, snakes, heavenly nymphs and many birds live here. The myth about the drink of immortality - amrita - even indicates the exact height of Mandara, one of the peaks of Meru - 11,000 yojanas, which approximately corresponds to 176,000 kilometers. It is clear that this is an excessive mythical exaggeration. But did the mythical Meru have a real prototype?
It is easy to understand that Arctida's ice shell could not withstand the monstrous weight of the many kilometers mountain. However, the underwater Lomonosov Ridge runs in the immediate vicinity of the North Pole. To the southwest, parallel to it, is the Mendeleev Ridge. The minimum depth above the Lomonosov ridge is 954 meters.
It rises 3300-3700 meters above the surrounding areas of the ocean floor. On the tops of both ridges, wide terraces were found, most likely formed by waves. Flat-topped mountains, guyots, and sunken volcanic islands were found here. Dredges lifted pebbles, rubble, boulders, gravel, sand from the ridges.
The botanist Professor Tolmachev back in 1935, having studied the flora of Taimyr, Chukotka and Arctic America, came to the conclusion that there was in the past an "Arctic bridge" of land, along which the exchange of flora between the north of the European continent and Arctic America was carried out until the end of the last glaciation era.
Scientists determine the time of submersion of these ridges under water in different ways: 100 thousand years ago, 16-18 thousand years ago, 8 thousand years ago, and according to hydrobiologist Professor E. F. Guryanova and K. N. Nesis, this happened no more than 2500 years ago.
It is quite possible to assume that Meru was one of the peaks of the Lomonosov Ridge during the period of its surface existence. Of course, there is no need to talk about some fantastic height of such a mountain, but it seems that it could compete with the Ural peaks.
Andrey CHINAEV