If you look at the map, you can easily notice the amazing similarity of the coastlines of Africa and South America, Australia and Africa, Australia and the Indian subcontinent - as if the fragments of a single whole were pulled away by an unknown force and separated by the ocean expanses …
The English philosopher Francis Bacon was probably the first to notice the similarity between the outlines of the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America. In 1620, he published his observations in the book New Organon, without giving them, however, any explanation.
And in 1658, Abbot F. Place put forward a hypothesis that the Old and New Worlds were once one continent, but separated after the Flood. This point of view was accepted by the scientific world of Europe. And two hundred years later, in 1858, the Italian Antonio Sin der Pellegrini tried to reconstruct the original position of the continents and drew a map where Afro-America was united into one continent.
The idea of "continental drift" was finally formulated by the German scientist Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist by profession. In 1915, after five years of research, he published a work entitled "The Origin of Continents and Oceans", in which, on the basis of geological, geographical and paleontological data, he proved that once on Earth there was only one continent composed of granite rocks, to which Wegener gave the name Pangea (from the Greek words "pan" - universal and "Gaia" - Earth), and only one ocean - Panthalassa ("thalassa" in Greek - sea). According to A. Wegener, about 250-200 million years ago, Pangea split into separate blocks under the influence of the Earth's rotation force, and the further action of the Earth's rotational forces "pushed" them apart,As a result, these blocks made of granite “drifted” over the denser layers of the earth's mantle - basalts.
"Wild Fantasy"! This was the verdict of the majority of scientists in the world to Wegener's hypothesis. According to opponents, the movement of continental masses has not been recorded by science, Wegener was unable to explain the reasons for the continental drift and the nature of the moving forces. Hoping to find new evidence for his hypothesis, Wegener went to Greenland in 1930 and died there …
… Forty years later, at the Tokyo United Oceanographic Assembly, the continental drift hypothesis was officially recognized by the overwhelming majority of geologists and geophysicists of the world.
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Later studies showed that Wegener was absolutely right. He even managed to pinpoint the exact date of the collapse of Pangea - 225 million years ago. Initially, Pangea split into two supercontinent - Laurasia (northern) and Gondwana (southern), which also divided the single ocean Pantallassu into the Pacific Ocean and the Tethys Ocean. If the first one still exists, then Tethys died about 6-7 million years ago, and its remnants today are the Mediterranean, Black, Azov, Caspian and Aral seas. Further fragmentation of continents caused by violent tectonic processes led to the emergence of modern continents and oceans.
And were there any other continents besides the existing ones?
… “The young man Tea Waka said:
- Our land used to be a big country, a very big country.
Kuukuu asked him:
- Why did the country become small? Tea Waka replied:
Uwoke lowered his staff on it. He lowered his staff to the area of Ohiro. Waves rose, and the country became small …"
This is the story of the natives of Easter Island; cited in A. Kondratov's book "Mysteries of the Great Ocean", some consider it to be an indirect confirmation of the fact that the Pacific Ocean continent existed on the site of the present-day Pacific Ocean and died millions of years ago. Its remains can be found today in America, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica.
But why in the memory of the inhabitants of the islands of Polynesia are the legends about the land submerged still preserved? Why do the same legends exist about two other hypothetical continents - Atlantis and the Arctic?
It is possible that the process of the death of the ancient continents ended relatively recently and has survived in the historical memory of mankind …
“The chief noticed that his land was slowly sinking into the sea. He gathered his servants, men and women, children and old people, and put them on two large boats. When they reached the horizon, the chief saw that all the land, with the exception of a small part of it called the Maori, was submerged."
Many such stories are known, and they were recorded not only on Easter Island. By the way, the opinion has been repeatedly expressed that the colossal buildings of Easter Island are the remnants of a civilization that once existed on the Pacifid. The famous Soviet geologist Academician V. A. Obruchev wrote in 1956: “It can be argued that in the warm equatorial belt of the Earth, mankind, even at a time when both circumpolar regions were still covered with snow and glaciers, reached a high cultural development, beautiful temples were built for deities; pyramids as tombs for kings, and stone statues were erected on Easter Island to guard against some kind of enemies. And an interesting question arises: was the death of other cultures and their structures caused by some kind of catastrophe? We have to remember that the ice age,who created huge masses of snow and ice on the Earth in both polar belts, gradually weakened under the influence of the Sun and could not but cause some catastrophes.
In 1997, American geologists discovered new traces of the Pacifida. It has long been noticed that some geological fragments of Alaska, California, and the Rocky Mountains do not correspond in composition to the structure of the American continent. The same atypical forms are found in Australia, Antarctica and other continents and islands adjacent to the Pacific Ocean.
These geological anomalies are associated with the collapse of the southern supercontinent of Gondwana, which once included Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, as well as Hindustan and Madagascar. Another part of this continent was the Pacifida, which disintegrated into small fragments. Parts of the Pacifida spread like a wide fan to other continents. Geological studies have shown that about a hundred million years ago, fairly large fragments of the Pacifida were attached to the western coast of North and South America - in the regions of Alaska, California and Peru. Other fragments of the Pacifida were flooded, and some of them connected with Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand.
Geologists believe that the Pacifida was the first to "break away" from ancient Gondwana, and the disintegration of the Pacifida was facilitated by active geological processes that took place on the globe in the region of the present Pacific Ocean about 150-100 million years ago.
Studies of the deceased Pacifida shed light on the problems of evolution and "drift" of continents, as well as on the mechanism of the oceans.