these heights, one may ask, rise up to bring about their earlier
glaciation, sink down again to induce interglacial conditions, and
once more become uplifted at the succeeding cold epoch, to subside
eventually in order to cause a final retreat of their glaciers?
But the climatic changes to be accounted for were in all probability
more numerous and complex than those just referred to. Competent
observers have adduced unmistakable evidence of three epochs of
glaciation in the Alpine Lands of Europe. And we are not without
distinct hints that similar changes have taken place in northern and
western Europe. Nor in this connection can we ignore the evidence of
several interglacial episodes which Mr. Chamberlin and others have
detected in the glaciated tracts of North America. Even this is not
all, for the upholders of the "earth-movement hypothesis" have still
further to account for the climatic oscillations of post-glacial times.
If it be hard enough to allow the possibility of one great movement
of elevation having affected so enormous an area of our hemisphere,
if we find it extremely difficult to believe either that one such
widespread movement, or that a multitude of local movements, each more
or less independent of the other, could have lifted the glaciated
regions successively within reach of the snow-line--we shall yet find
it impossible to admit that such remarkable upheavals could be repeated
again and again.
We seem driven to conclude, therefore, that the "earth-movement
hypothesis" fails to explain the phenomena of Pleistocene times. One
cannot deny, indeed, that glaciation might be induced locally by
elevation of the land. It is quite conceivable that mountains now
below the limits of perennial snow might come to be ridged up to such
an extent as to be capable of sustaining snow-fields and glaciers.
And such local movements may possibly have happened here and there
during the long-continued Pleistocene period. But the glacial phenomena
of that period are on much too grand a scale and far too widely
distributed to be accounted for in that way. And if the occurrence
of even one glacial epoch cannot be thus explained, we may leave the
supporters of the "earth-movement hypothesis" to show us what light
is thrown by their urim and thummim on the origin of succeeding
interglacial and glacial climates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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