I would like to ask you to use your imagination and take a brief trip into space with me. We need to travel to a place where we can orbit this planet we live on. What we can see from space is evidence that a large amount of meteorites have struck this planet. Winds, rain, melting snow and ice however, have had the effect of eroding away much of the damage caused by those meteorites. In spite of that erosion, we can still see massive impact craters on this planet when viewed from space. From the evidence we can see, we know that this planet went through a severe meteorite bombardment at one time in the not too distant past.
As we travel beyond the Earth we see that the moon was also the recipient of a great meteorite battering. There are areas on its surface, especially on the dark side, that are so pock marked with craters that it is nearly impossible to count them or to see where some craters begin and others end. The reason we see those craters so easily is because there is no atmosphere or moisture on the moon. It is deathly still and what happened thousands of years ago looks like it happened only recently because nothing erodes its surface.
Continuing our journey away from this planet we look around us and see that the other planets and moons in this solar system we live in have also been struck by a great amount of space debris. Saturn captured some of this debris and formed it into a beautiful ring that encircles the planet. Venus is shrouded in a cloud cover, but by using radar imaging we can see that it also shows extensive crater damage. We are prevented from seeing the surfaces of some planets, but those planets and moons we can see have all been heavily impacted by high velocity material.
When we travel through the solar system we live in we come to what has been labeled the Kuiper Belt, named after its discoverer the Dutch astronomer Gerald Kuiper. The Kuiper Belt is a tremendous ring of debris that encircles the Sun; just outside the orbit of Neptune. Most Kuiper Belt objects are very small and only a very few observations of them have been made. This debris ring is about 30 AU from the Sun and extends out for another 20 AU.
One AU, or astronomical unit, is equal to the distance the center of the Earth is from the center of the Sun. More precisely that would be a distance of 92,955,887 miles which makes the Kuiper Belt a little over 2.75 billion miles from the Sun.
Further out we find what is known as the Oort Cloud; another tremendous ring of debris that also encircles the Sun. When Jan Oort was studying where comets came from, he believed they appeared to come equally from all directions. As he studied the paths they took throughout the solar system he figured they were coming from an area 50 AU away from the sun, or just past the Kuiper Belt. This area he called the Oort Cloud. Although a distinction is made between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud it is possible that they are actually part of the same debris field and are only separated from each other in the same way that the rings of Saturn are all part of the same debris field with separation between those rings.
Where did all of this debris come from? That has been a matter of debate since it was first discovered. Some people believe there was once a planet in our solar system that was in orbit where the debris belts are found. Those same people believe it was totally destroyed when it was directly struck by another planet sized object traveling through space and the result of that collision is all of the debris that fills the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.
That collision would have resulted in debris being flung into the planets and moons of the solar system and could also have been responsible for the massive number of craters that we are aware of throughout the solar system.
I am one of those who believe in that way of thinking and I believe the Earth itself was involved as a result of that collision. I also believe that the planet Mars, as well as the other planets in our solar system were involved in that galactic collision.
Mars has always been described through recorded history as being an aggressor. It was a god of war to the Greeks, a planetary body that was always interfering in the peaceful orbital paths of the other planetary "gods" in this solar system.
We have rather convincing evidence of Mars, at one time, having a great amount of water on its surface. Where that great amount of water went to is a matter of speculation to many scientists. Some people believe the planet absorbed it like a sponge or that it has evaporated into space. For now, I would like you to imagine Mars with water on its surface.
The surface gravity of Mars is only one third that of the Earth. A person who weighs 180 pounds on the Earth would weigh only 67 pounds on Mars. Earth is also roughly twice the size of Mars.
Imagine if you will, a large, planetary object of dense material, with features like those of Mars, striking the Earth in the condition I have described it in before the flood; a soft shelled, water-saturated surface with a layer of water under that surface.
Those of you with ballistics experience have seen the effect of a high-speed projectile striking soft, moist material and the damage it can do as it penetrates that soft surface. It makes quite a mess of the object being struck, to say the least. The object being struck, because of the hydraulic action of the wet material, will quite effectively explode from the force of the shock. That is what I propose happened to this planet around 4,300 years ago. That explosive force affected not only this planet but also the planet that struck us, with an equal amount of devastation.
By studying the geology of this planet we can see that the area of impact most likely occurred in the area we now call the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean is where you will find the lowest point on the Earth, Challenger Deep, located approximately 1,200 miles east of the Philippines. The Pacific is also the most volcanic active area in the world. That area of the world was effectively smashed back into the surface of the molten core of this planet; resulting in the great amount of volcanic and seismic activity that we see today. It is interesting to note that the lowest point on Earth, Challenger Deep, is located just 4,250 miles south east of the highest point on Earth, Mt. Everest in the Himalayas. You will see the significance of that fact in just a moment. You will also be able to understand why there is so much exposed granite in the areas that border the Pacific Ocean. Granite is solidified material that directly came from the molten core of the earth.
It is my personal belief that his planet of ours was at one time much more massive than it is now. Its size was drastically reduced however when it was struck by another large object traveling through our solar system. A tremendous amount of resulting carnage from the solid material and water exploding from this planet and the other planet upon impact, was hurled into space, immediately froze solid and struck the moon and outer planets in a devastating barrage.
Some of the ejected material from that planetary collision was then trapped in orbit around the other planets of this solar system as they continued to orbit the sun. Much of the remaining debris was then captured by the sun’s gravity and trapped within the two massive rings of debris that now circle the sun which we call the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.
The Earth itself became and still is the recipient of meteorites that were originally a part of its own composition and the material from the other planet that collided with us. This material continues to orbit the sun and occasionally enters into the pathway of our orbit. Some of it also still comes and goes through our solar system that we observe as comets, dirty snowballs in space; snowballs made from the water and solid materials that once made up this huge planet we call Earth.
The Bible describes the flood by saying, “…the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened.” – Genesis 7:11.
Imagine having the large quantities of moisture that made up the protective cloud layer in the upper atmosphere, immediately fall to the surface of this planet, all at once, as a Mars sized object penetrated and disrupted that atmosphere, dragging the cloud moisture in the atmosphere with it. Also, imagine what would happen if the planetary object that struck this Earth also had water on its surface but had only one-third the gravity of the Earth. What would happen to the water on that “weaker” planet? It would naturally and irresistibly be attracted to the Earth because of its stronger gravitational pull. That water would then fall to the surface of this planet in a deluge never before witnessed and would be quite devastating to say the least. It would be a huge wall of water, falling to the surface of this planet like a wave from above.
If Mars was the planet involved then that could explain the absence of water on its surface when it is evident that there was water there at one time in the recent past. What the chemical makeup of the water on Mars was like is something we will never know until we have the opportunity to test the materials of Mars where the presence of water is evident. Speaking of testing the materials of Mars; you will notice, when looking at photographs of Mars, that there are also dark colorations across the face of the red planet. It is my personal belief that the material of those dark areas are the remains of at least one collision with our planet at some time in the not too distant past.
As the planet that struck our Earth penetrated the soft, moist, outer surface of the Earth, a tremendous amount of material was ejected onto the surface of this planet, into its atmosphere and on into space. It also penetrated the layer of water under the solid surface of the Earth and, judging by the amount of granite that can be found on the surface of our planet, it is also evident that the molten core of this planet was significantly breached as well.
Water, when struck with great force, will “explode” or completely scatter/disperse, like balls from a well struck billiard rack. The hydraulic action of the water layer, being struck as it was, caused the water under the Earth to expand violently in what I think of as an global, underground tsunami. The effects of that rapid expansion were too much for the surface of the Earth to contain. As a result, the solid surface of the planet cracked open in many places when the surface was heaved upward by that huge underground wave as it traveled away from the point of impact.
Water from the expanding underground water layer exploded through those cracks and over the surface of the planet in many places; the heavy fractured shell, on some areas of the planet, then obeyed the laws of gravity and fell in on itself, forcing even more water out onto the surface of the planet. “The fountains of the great deep were broken up” and effectively inundated the land. When the surface of the earth was created in the first place the solid material within the water gradually rose to the waters surface a molecule or particle at a time; compression then packed that material together into a heavy, miles-thick mass that was layered and interwoven, giving that entire land mass a rigidity that prevented its sinking down through the water below it. When the surface of the earth was broken up it was impossible for the salt enriched water to continue supporting the massive weight that had been slowly developing and bonding together above it. The great oceans of the world were created at that time.
As for the object that struck and glanced off of this Earth; it continued to disturb the atmosphere of dense cloud cover of water that enshrouded this planet; it would also have left behind a tremendous amount of its own surface material as the Earth’s gravity attracted it to itself like a magnet. We are familiar with the reddish/orange color of the surface of Mars. If Mars has struck this planet then there would naturally be reddish/orange material left behind and we do find that same colored material in various places of the Earth. It has also been found on the moon, of all places. Some of that orange soil was brought back from the Taurus-Littrow landing site by the Apollo 17 crewmen. The following is a description I found on the WWW regarding the discovery of that orange soil.
"It's orange!" astronaut Harrison (Jack) Schmitt exclaimed as he stood on the rim of Shorty Crater. Schmitt, the only geologist to explore the Moon in person, was traveling across the lunar surface in the lunar rover with Eugene Cernan on December 1972. They discovered the deposit of orange soil just as mission control was telling them to return to the lunar lander. The soil they discovered became known as "the Apollo 17 orange soil," The orange soil had been buried beneath lava flows until an impact formed Shorty Crater. The impact blasted a crater 110 meters across and about 20 meters deep.
Schmitt took samples of the orange soil with a scoop and by hammering a pipe into the surface. When the pipe was removed it contained 71 centimeters of soil and had preserved the layering in the soil. Two days later Schmitt and Cernan left the Moon, carrying 110.5 kilograms of rock and dirt with them, including the samples from Shorty Crater. Scientists studied the samples of the orange soil and discovered that it was permeated with orange and black spheres. The orange ones were made of glass rich in titanium oxide (TiO2). The black ones were partly crystallized. Because one of the minerals in them was opaque, the glass appears black. There is strong debate concerning the origin of the orange soil.
When the other planet collided with this planet, material from the Earth was pushed ahead of the planet that struck it, in the same way that dirt is pushed ahead of a bulldozer. From the evidence we can see around us today the object that collided with us was traveling in a somewhat northwesterly direction and the blow our Earth received was a glancing one and not a direct head on collision, as I will explain shortly.
Material from that collision was scattered over the surface of this Earth and was also pushed up, onto what we now know as the continent of Asia, into one of the largest mountain areas this Earth has ever known. That area is still the highest area on this planet and is known as the Himalayan Mountain Range.
There is a cave system near Beijing, China called Choukoutien that has yielded many archaeological discoveries, including Peking Man.
The fossils of Choukoutien were found buried in a reddish mixture of clay and sand. The fossils and clay mixtures were deposited at the same time. This reddish clay and sand mixture is found all over northern China and I believe it was left, or deposited there, as the planet that struck our planet separated from the Earth after its collision in the area we now know as the Pacific Ocean, south and east of the land now known as China.
The following are a few direct quotes concerning this reddish mixture that has been found, not only in northern China but also in other areas around the world. Because of the high nickel and iron content of this material, it is considered to be of extraterrestrial origin.
"P. Teilhard de Chardin and C. C. Young came to the conclusion that the reddish coloration 'can neither be a quality inherited from the original material of which the loams are composed, nor a condition brought about by slow chemical processes long after their formation.' In other words, the widespread coloration was from some outside or unexplained origin. All they could come up with is that some violent change in climate was the cause of the color change and that it occurred 'immediately before the deposition of red loams - or soon after the deposition.' - J. S. Lee, The Geology of China, pp. 202, 368, 371.
"Similar observations were made in other parts of the world Drift, the displacement of which is attributed to the ice cover, is often found tinted a reddish color. R. T. Chamberlin, looking for the origin of this hue, offered the hypothesis that granite pebbles were decomposed, the liberated iron staining the drift reddish." - Chamberlin in Man and Science, ed. Moulton, p. 92.
When H. Pettersson of the Oceanographic Institute examined red clay from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, he discovered that "…the abysmal clay contains layers of ash and a high content of nickel, almost completely absent in the water." - H. Pettersson, "Chronology of the Deep Ocean Bed," Tellus (Quarterly Journal of Geophysics), I (1949).
Pettersson concluded that the origin of the nickel and iron in the clay was the result of a tremendous shower of meteorites and that it was of recent origin.
When we consider the collision of this world with a planet like Mars and the evidence of possibly another encounter with the same orbiting body during the time of the Exodus we can begin to understand the origins of this metallic dust that has been found in the red clays of the Pacific Ocean, on the drift of the Western Hemisphere and discovered in the Choukoutien caves of China. During the time those metallic deposits were made there was a tremendous change in the climate as well.
When the object that struck the Earth at the area now known as the Pacific Ocean, glanced off the Earth and continued into space, a massive volume of material, both solid and liquid, was violently scattered into space as a result of that violent impact and separation. Debris was strewn everywhere. Any liquid material that was thrown into space was immediately flash frozen as it hit the -455 degree Fahrenheit harshness of the black void of space.
As the material of this Earth was scattered far and wide into space there would also have to have been a certain amount of planetary life, both flora and fauna, that was ejected into space along with all of the water, dirt and rocks that made up that debris. I am not going to speculate as to whether or not any of that planetary life was human or not. Given the area of impact and the area where humanity is said to have had its beginning, there had to have been some animal life that became the first unfortunate "astronauts" into space. It would be very fascinating, to say the least, to be able to completely explore the surface areas of the Moon and Mars. What might we find there besides meteorites? How about exploring the rings of Saturn, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud? What might we find there among all the debris?
Returning to the time of the Genesis flood…because of that planetary impact there is now a tremendous amount of water completely awash on the surface of this planet. Scripture says that the waters rose to a height of twenty-five feet above the highest surfaces of the Earth. – Genesis 7:20. Because the original created surface of the earth was a result of a bringing together of solid material through chemical separation then the material that formed on the surface would not have reached the heights that we are presently familiar with...at the time of creation there would not have been the massive mountains we see around us today. The surface of the earth, during the time of this flood, has now been pushed up, pressed together, folded over, turned upside down, collapsed and inundated with water. It is now time for all of this water to obey the laws of gravity and find the lowest point it can on this Earth. Erosion like has never been seen before is the result and we can clearly see the evidence of that erosion throughout the world, from the Columbia River basin drainage to the Grand Canyon, to the Himalayas, to the karst topography of every continent in the world and other areas this author is not even aware of.
Evolutionists tell us that the erosion we see on this planet is the result of eons of time and weather battering the surface. We can now see that the massive erosion that is evident can also have easily happened in an extremely short, devastating period of time.
What about all of the living creatures that inhabited this planet during this cataclysmic time? Unfortunately for those creatures, there was nowhere to hide. As the biblical account of that time describes it, "And all flesh died that moved on the earth; birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, all that was on the dry land died. So he destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground; both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. According to scripture, only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. "And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days." - Genesis 7:21-24.
With all of the death and destruction happening on this planet in such a short time there has to be evidence of some kind that verifies what we have just been told. If there is no evidence of massive erosion and death then the book of Genesis is wrong. However, if there is evidence to be found for that catastrophic event then it follows reason that we need to reconsider some of the science of evolution and the millions of years for the history of mankind that we have been taught all of our lives.
As planetary proof of the Genesis destruction of all life, I would like to present the following as evidence. Trust me; there is much, much more information out there that supports the narrative of the biblical flood. When it comes right down to it, it all depends on what you choose to believe. It also depends on why you choose to believe what you believe. Is it because of what someone else has taught you, is it because of your faith, fear, apathy, doctrine? Or could it be because you just do not like the idea that you might be wrong?...
I am going to place before you the sequence of discoveries that follow as geological evidence in favor of what can only be considered proof of a fairly recent worldwide cataclysm. For the most part I will let this documented evidence speak for itself.
"In 1797 the body of a mammoth, with flesh, skin, and hair, was found in northeastern Siberia, and since then bodies of other mammoths have been unearthed from the frozen ground in various parts of that region. The flesh had the appearance of freshly frozen beef." - Observation of D. F. Hertz, in B. Digby, The Mammoth, p. 9. Many more buried and "flash frozen" mammoths have since been discovered.
"It is therefore absolutely necessary to believe that the bodies were frozen up immediately after the animals died, and were never once thawed, until the day of their discovery" - D. Gath Whitley, "The Ivory Islands in the Arctic Ocean," Journal of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, Vol. XII, p. 35.
In some mammoths, even the eyeballs were still preserved.
"The encasing in ice of huge elephants, and the perfect preservation of the flesh, shows that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter's night, and knew no relenting afterward." - J. D. Dana, Manual of Geology (4th ed.), p. 1007.
"The contents of the stomachs have been carefully examined; they showed the undigested food, leaves of trees now found in Southern Siberia, but a long way from the existing deposits of ivory. Microscopic examination of the skin showed red blood corpuscles, which was a proof not only of a sudden death but that the death was due to suffocation either by gases or water, evidently the latter in this case. But the puzzle remained to account for the sudden freezing up of this large mass of flesh so as to preserve it for future ages." - Whitley, Journal of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, Vol. XII, p. 56.
Hippopotamus inhabit the larger rivers and marshes of Africa. The bones of hippopotami can be found in the soil of Europe as far north as Yorkshire in England. Lemming and reindeer bones were found together with the bones of cave lions and hyena at Bleadon in Somerset. - W. B. Dawkins, Proceedings of the Geological Society, p. 190.
Hippopotamus, bison and musk sheep were found together with worked flint in the gravel of the Thames Valley. - James Geikie, Prehistoric Europe, p. 137; Dawkins, Cavehunting, p. 416.
Reindeer from snow-covered Lapland and hippopotamus from the tropical Congo River are found together on the British Isles and in France.
"In New Siberia [Island], on the declivities facing the south, lie hills 250 or 300 feet high, formed of driftwood. Other hills on the same island, and on Kotelnoi, which lies further to the west, are heaped up to an equal height with skeletons of pachyderms [elephants, rhinoceroses], bisons, etc., which are cemented together by frozen sand as well as by strata and veins of ice." - G. A. Erman, Travels in Siberia, Vol. II, pp. 376, 383.
"On Kotelnoi Island…neither trees, nor shrubs, nor bushes exist…and yet the bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, and horses are found in this icy wilderness in numbers which defy all calculation." - Whitley, Journal of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, Vol. XII, p. 56.
In the narrow openings of the rocks of Plymouth, England, on the Channel, there is an interesting discovery. Openings of different widths in limestone formations are filled, not only with rock fragments that are angular and sharp, but also with bones of animals - mammoth, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, horse, polar bear and bison. These bones are "broken into innumerable fragments. No skeleton is found entire. The separate ones, in fact, have been dispersed in the most irregular manner, and without any bearing to their relative position in the skeleton. Neither do they show wear, nor have they been gnawed by beasts of prey, though they occur with the bones of hyaena, wolf, bear and lion." - Prestwich, On Certain Phenomena Belonging to the Close of the Last Geological Period and on Their Bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood. (London: Macmillan and Co.), pp. 25, 26.
There are other places in Devonshire and in Pembrokeshire in Whales, where there are large masses of broken bones and stones in the openings of limestone. This material consists of angular rock fragments and "broken and splintered" bones with sharp fractured edges in a "fresh state," and in "splendid condition," showing no traces of gnawing. - Prestwich, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, XLVIII, P. 336.
Openings in the rocks, not only in England, but also all over Western Europe, are packed with the bones of animals, some of which belong to extinct animals. Mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave lion, reindeer, horses, wolves, bears, horses, oxen, deer, panther, lynx, hyena, wild boar, red deer, fallow deer, ibex and rabbit. All these animals were found together in various combinations and all of them died at the same time. "Their bones are mostly broken and splintered into innumerable sharp fragments. None are worn or rolled, nor are any of them gnawed." - Prestwich, On Certain Phenomena, p. 47; Iden, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, p. 935.
These are bones of animals that had evidently not been devoured by beasts of prey. These animals were evidently crushed against the rocks by an avalanche of water that carried them from a great distance and broke their bones inside their bodies. That is the reason why the bones are not water-worn. These animals were all smashed together; then sand, rocks and silt covered them over.
Masses of bones have also been found in The Rock of Gibraltar at an elevation of 1,370 feet above the sea. A human molar, some flints, as well as broken pieces of pottery were discovered among the animal bones in some of the crevices of the Rock. - Prestwich, On Certain Phenomena, p. 48.
Other areas of bone accumulation are also found on Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, in Europe, on the British Isles, throughout the United States and China.
In the village of Choukoutien, near Peking in northern China, in caverns and in fissures in rocks, a great mass of animal bones was found.
"The most astonishing fact was the discovery of this unimaginable wealth of bones of fossil animals (Weidenreich). These rich ossiferous deposits occur in association with human skeletal remains.
"As Weidenreich began his studies, other amazing, nearly unexplainable features appeared." The fractured bones of seven human individuals were found there. "A European, a Melanesian, and an Eskimo type lying dead in one close-knit group in a cave, on a Chinese hillside! Weidenreich marveled." - R. Moore, Man, Time, and Fossils, pp. 274, 275.
Those who found these conglomerations of bones in the Chinese cave were amazed by the types of animals found, all massed together in a common "grave". The bones of these animals belonged to animals that lived on the tundra, or a cold/wet climate. They also came from creatures that inhabited the steppes, or prairies/dry areas; from the jungles what were of a warm/humid climate and they were strangely mixed together. There were mammoths, buffaloes, ostriches, arctic animals and creatures of every kind that left their teeth, claws and bones in one huge mixture. Although there are similar finds in other places throughout the world the people who are examining this find in China think of it as being enigmatic.
In the Victorian cave near Settle, in western Yorkshire, 1,450 feet above sea level, under 12 feet of red clay deposit containing some well-scratched boulders, were found numerous remains of mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bison, hyena and other animals.
In northern Wales in the Vale of Clwyd, there are many caves where the remains of hippopotamus are found together with mammoth, rhinoceros and cave lions. In the cave of Cae Gwyn in the Vale of Clwyd, it was found that the bones had been violently disturbed by water action. The floor of the cavern was covered afterwards by red clays and sand containing foreign pebbles.
In Michigan, USA, the skeletons of two whales were discovered. Bones of whale have also been found 440 feet above sea level, north of Lake Ontario; the skeleton of another whale was found in Vermont, USA more than 500 feet above sea level. - Dana, Manual of Geology, p. 983.
The remains of another whale were found in the Montreal, Canada area, about 600 feet above sea level. - Dunbar, Historical Geology, p. 453.
A species of whale bones, Zeuglodon, are found in great numbers in Alabama, USA and other states on the Gulf. The bones of those whales covered the fields to such an extent and were "so much of a nuisance on the top of the ground that the farmers piled them up to make fences." - George McCready Price, Common-Sense Geology, pp. 204, 205.
A story of sudden death and immediate burying of fossil fish is seen in the red sandstone of Scotland, in the limestone of Monte Bolca in Lombardy, in the bituminous slate of Mansfield in Thuringia and in the coal formations of Saarbrucken on the Saar, "the most celebrated deposits of fossil fishes in Europe". These fossil fish are also found in the calcareous slate of Solenhofen, in the blue slate of Glaris, in the marlstone of Oensingen in Switzerland and of Aix in Provence. These are only a few of the better-known sites in Europe.
In North America, you will find similar strata, "packed full of splendidly preserved fishes" in the black limestone of Ohio, USA, Michigan, USA, in the Green River bed of Arizona, USA, in the diatom beds of Lompoc, California, USA and in many other locations.
"All these fishes must have died suddenly and have been speedily buried in the limestone sediment then in the course of deposition. From the fact that certain individuals have even preserved traces of color upon their skin, we are certain that they were entombed before decomposition of their soft parts had taken place." - W. Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy (Philadelphia), p. 101.
O. Heer of Zurich published a work of his on the fossil plants of the Arctic; he identified plant remains found in northern Greenland as magnolia and fig trees, among other species. - Archibald Geikie, Text-Book of Geology, p. 869.
Evidently, forests filled with tropical trees, including fruit trees, grew in the northern latitudes of what we now know as the cold Arctic region; an area now subject to the cold of a polar night that continues for months.
Spitsbergen Archipelago is located in the Arctic Ocean at 78 deg. 56 min. north latitude. It was there that O. Heer identified 136 species of fossil plants. Among the plants he identified were hazels, firs, cypresses, elms and water lilies.
In northern Spitsbergen there is a bed of black and lustrous coal 25 to 30 feet thick. It is covered with black shale and sandstone that is mixed with fossilized land plants. "When we remember that this vegetation grew luxuriantly within 8 deg 15 min of the North Pole, in a region which is in darkness for half of the year and is now almost continuously buried under snow and ice, we can realize the difficulty of the problem in the distribution of climate which these facts present to the geologist." - O. Heer, Flora Arctica Fossilis: Die fossile Flora der Polarlander.
Some time in the past fig palms bloomed in the Arctic Circle. There was a forest of Sequoia gigantean, the giant trees of California that grew from the Bering Strait to areas north of Labrador.
It is generally assumed, because of how the world is today, that the period we call the ice age, began in the northern and southern poles of the earth and spread, over long periods of time, toward the equatorial regions. The Ice Age theory, developed by Louis Agassiz in 1840 has since become outdated. New discoveries have revealed a wealth of information showing just the opposite to be true.
Soon after the historic meeting at which the Ice Age theory was accepted by the majority of the members of the Geological Society, R. I. Murchison went to Russia, where he had been invited by Czar Nicholas I to make a geological survey of his empire.
Murchison traveled across the land of Russia doing his best to validate Agassia's ice age theory. There he saw erratic boulders scattered over the Russian plains. He also found very large blocks of stone in Finland and in the northern provinces of Russia; but they grew smaller in size the farther south he went. He believed the distribution of that material was due to the action of a wall of water that came down from the north or northwest. As it did so it spread rock fragments along the way. He also noticed that the irregular boulders he found in the Carpathian Mountains were not from the local area but were instead from the Scandinavian area.
"The piles of stone, sand, clay and gravel which are spread out in such enormous masses over the low countries of Russia, Poland and Germany, a vast portion, by far the greater part…has been transported by aqueous action, consequent of powerful waves of translation and currents occasioned by relative and often paroxysmal changes of the level of sea and land." - R. I. Murchison, The Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains, I (London), p. 553.
"Seeing that there are no mountains whatever from which a glacier can ever have been propelled in southern Sweden, Finland, or north-eastern Russia and yet that these regions are powerfully abraded, scored and polished,". - R. I. Murchison, The Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains, I (London), p. 554. Murchison concluded that the remains of what he found over the flat countries he had examined were the results of an ocean that had broken out of its bounds and had left behind a tremendous amount of debris and rolled stone.
Murchison made a point of saying, "Siberia is entirely free from erratic blocks, though environed on three sides by mountains." - R. I. Murchison, The Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains, I (London), p. 553.
In 1865, Agassiz went to equatorial Brazil, one of the hottest places in the world. While he was there he found all the effects he had earlier claimed to the action of glacial ice. When this discovery was made, even those who agreed with him on his Ice Age theory began to question what he had found. Evidence of an enormous amount of ice in the tropics, on the very equator? It was all there, drift accumulations, scratched rocks, erratic boulders, fluted valleys and the smooth surface of tillite. There had to have been ice to carry and polish the rocks and land of that area; the whole area must have gone through an ice period. How could a tropical region be covered by ice?
Later, a discovery from the equator of Africa showed the same markings and gave proof that not only Africa, at the equator, but also Madagascar, had at one time been under a sheet of ice and that it had moved from the equator towards the higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The ice covered the tropical equator and moved towards the South Pole.
The same evidence of an ice age was also found in British Guiana, another of the hottest places on earth; as well as in India where it appears that the ice had moved from the equator towards the northern latitudes. If that is the case then it would had to have moved uphill, from the lowlands of India towards the foothills of the Himalayas.
"South America bears evidence of glaciation in Argentina and southeastern Brazil, even within 10 degrees of the equator. In the northern hemisphere, peninsular India, within 20 degrees of the equator, was the chief scene of glaciation, with the ice flowing north [or from the tropics to higher latitudes]." - C. O. Dunbar, Historical Geology, pp. 298, 299. "The icecap covered practically all of southern Africa up to at least latitude 22 degrees S and also spread to Madagascar." - C. O. Dunbar, Historical Geology, p. 298.