Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and GravelDonnelly, Ignatius
Science
Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Comets; Drift
"Some fifteen or twenty days subsequent to the first finding, at a
depth of _twenty-four feet below the surface_, other bones were
found--a thigh-bone and a portion of the vertebra, and several pieces
of _charred wood, the bones apparently belonging to the first-found
skeleton_. In both cases the bones rested on a fibrous stratum,
suspected at the time to be a fragment of coarse matting. This lay
upon a floor of soft _but solid iron-ore_, which retained the imprint
of the fibers. . . .
"The indications are that the filled cavity had originally been a
sort of cave, and that the supposed matting was more probably a layer
of twigs, rushes, or weeds, which the inhabitants of the cave had
used as a bed, as the fiber
{p. 130}
marks cross each other irregularly. The ore-bed in which the remains
were found, and part of which seems to have formed after the period
of human occupation of the cave, lies in the second (or saccharoidal)
sandstone of the Lower Silurian."
Note the facts: The remains of this man are found separated--part are
eighteen feet below the surface, part twenty-four feet--that is, they
are _six feet apart_. How can we account for this condition of
things, except by supposing that the poor savage had rushed for
safety to his shallow rock-shelter, and had there been caught by the
world-tempest, and _torn to pieces_ and deposited in fragments with
the _débris_ that filled his rude home?
In California we encounter a still more surprising state of things.
The celebrated Calaveras skull was found in a shaft _one hundred and
fifty feet deep_, under five beds of lava and volcanic tufa, and four
beds of auriferous gravel.
The accompanying cut represents a plummet found in digging a well in
the San Joaquin Valley, California, _thirty feet below the surface_.
###
PLUMMET FROM SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, CAL.
Dr. Foster says:
"In examining this beautiful relic, one is led almost instinctively
to believe that it was used as a plummet, for the purpose of
determining the perpendicular to the horizon [for building
purposes?]; . . . when we consider its symmetry of form, the contrast
of colors brought out by the process of grinding and polishing, and
the delicate drilling of the hole through a material (syenite) so
liable to fracture, we are free to say it affords an exhibition of
the lapidary's skill superior to anything yet furnished by the Stone
age of either continent."[1]
[1. "The Prehistoric Races of the United States," p. 55.]
{p. 131}
In Louisiana, layers of pottery, _six inches thick_, with remnants of
matting and baskets, were found _twelve feet below the surface_, and
underneath what Dr. Foster believes to be strata of the Drift.[1]
I might fill pages with similar testimony; but I think I have given
enough to satisfy the reader that man _did_ exist before the Drift.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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