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The Pleistocene

It was one-million-and-six-hundred-thousand years ago. The Quaternary Period began. And it would last to modern times. And at one-point-six-million years ago, the first epoch of the Quaternary, the Pleistocene, began. And the Pleistocene was also called the Great Ice Age, although the Earth was already in the midst of an ice age.
     And evolution took one step forward. And ape-men spent more time on land than in the trees. And homo erectus, the upright-walking proto-man, emerged on Earth about this time.³⁴³
     And it happened that some birds evolved to giant forms. Certain condors were the largest flying birds on Earth. But even larger were some flightless birds, such as the elephant bird of Madagascar: It was about three meters tall and weighed nearly half a ton. Even its eggs were huge: ten kilograms. And in Australia, New Guinea and adjacent islands ran birds a meter to two meters long. And the brown ones were the emus, while the black ones with the colored heads were cassowaries. But the tallest bird to ever be was dinornis maximus: In New Zealand did this three-and-a-half-meter flightless moa dwell. And the elephant bird and dinornis maximus lived almost unto this day: But in the second half of the second millennium AD, after man arrived in Madagascar and New Zealand, these two giant birds did go extinct.
     And in North America, the descendants of pliohippus, which were the zebra, ass and modern horse, all died and disappeared. But these three did survive in Africa and in Eurasia. And in the second millennium AD, Spaniards traversing the Atlantic Ocean would reintroduce the horse to North and South America.
     And many mammals grew thicker fur to fight the colder climate. And the pigs with dense hair were the peccaries. And there appeared one type of woolly elephant with a pair of enormous³⁴⁴ curving, heavy tusks. And four meters tall, this creature was a mammoth. And mammoths lived in northern Asia, North America and Europe. And in Eurasia there emerged rhinoceroses with heavy coats of fur. And later, a Stone Age artist would etch images of these woolly creatures on a wall inside a cave. Then twenty years thereafter would the caveman die. And much later in the Pleistocene would the woolly rhinoceroses go extinct. But in the cave the illustrations would live on. And in modern times, archaeologists would discover the woolly rhinos and the art.

The Old Testament                                       599

     And in South America dwelt macrauchenia, the bio-freak of mammals: It had the neck of a giraffe, a truck like that of a small elephant, the body of a camel and the legs of a rhinoceros. And this animal was huge – three meters long, three meters tall.
     And some edentates evolved to giant forms. And crawling over land were turtle-like glyptodons with shells four meters wide. And some giant ground sloths grew six meters long and weighed three tons. And they were larger than most elephants.
     And large mammals also occupied the more temperate regions of the Earth. And there were bison, giant wild hogs, ground sloths, giant beavers, hippopotamuses, elephants and mastodons. And mammal evolution seemed to follow the path of reptile evolution of the Mesozoic – again bigger seemed equivalent to "better."

Chapter II: A Glacial Maximum

Now the gravitational interplay of Earth and Sun and Moon has perturbed the motion of the Earth throughout all time. And at this point in geo-history, this disturbance had made the orbit of the Earth a bit more circular. And when near the perihelion, the Earth received less light from Sun. And the Earth cooled down a bit. And so the northern and the southern polar caps grew larger. And the larger caps, being white, reflected well the sunlight. And the reflected light went into heat in air, which rose up through the atmosphere and into outer space. Thus Earth retained less heat. And Earth cooled down some more. And the polar caps grew larger.
     And since the polar snow and ice kept the Arctic and Antarctic regions cold, a large temperature difference existed between the tropics and the poles. And this created swift air currents. And the rain cycle thus sped up. In the polar regions, it snowed instead of rained, and snow accumulated quickly. And falling rains elsewhere washed great quantities of CO₂ out of the atmosphere. And the amount of carbon-dioxide gas decreased. And with less greenhouse gas, Earth retained less heat. And the temperature of Earth descended even more.³⁴⁵
     And snow and ice did pile up. And white mountains of the snow and ice were made. And the "ice-snow mountains" grew to heights of several thousand meters in Canada, northern Russia, northern Europe, Greenland and Antarctica. And because air was colder at the higher elevations, the snow melted very little during summer. And the polar caps grew even thicker.

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     And in many places on the Earth, snow accumulated in the mountains. And for example, the Rockies, Alps, Andes and many other ranges did fill up with snow, which persisted through the summers. And even mountains in China, Central America, New Zealand, Mexico, Tasmania and southern Africa had glaciers all year round.
     And in winter in the northern hemisphere, glaciers grew and headed south. And in the United States, they reached Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Iowa, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Oregon and Idaho. And in Eurasia, glaciers covered Germany, England, Poland, northern Russia and Siberia. And the southern tip of South America was also under ice.
     And so it came to pass that glaciers covered forty-five-million square kilometers of land – one-third the land of Earth. And five per cent of Earth’s water was in ice. And the oceans were one-hundred meters lower than in modern times. And ice piled up so much that continental crust below the ice sank several hundred meters.
     A glacial maximum in the Great Ice Age was taking place.
     And it happened to be springtime. And by a haphazard act of Nature, winter ice high in a mountain trough had made a dam – above the ice there lay a lake. And in effect, the ice was holding back the waters of the lake. And a month went by. And when ice in the ice dam melted some, the ice dam grew too thin and broke. And water from the lake rushed down the mountain side – it was an avalanche not of snow but ordinary water. And the water poured into the valley down below. And suddenly the valley was a lake. And another month went by. And the flooded valley drained and once again was dry.
     And elsewhere on the Earth, the springtime melting of the snow and ice unleashed great floods.
     And glaciers in the mountains retreated during summer. And glaciers during winter grew and slid down mountain slopes. And they grew down along the paths of least resistance, descending as white arms of snow from peaks. At lower elevations, the white arms spread to long white fingers. And as the ice and snow descended, the sides of mountains wore away. And valley regions in the mountains got deeper and got rounder. Thus geo-processes carved U-shaped valleys in the sides of mountains.
     And in the northern hemisphere, glaciers continued spreading south. And ice by rubbing stones did polish them. And some rocks became embedded in the ice. And as the ice advanced, the rocks in ice moved forth. And some rocks were transported lengthy distances. At the same time, rocks embedded in the underside of glaciers scratched the rocks in earth. Thus scratches in Earth’s rocks told stories of the glaciers’ motions.

The Old Testament                                       601

     And glaciers wore away the surfaces of rocks and stones. And pieces broke. And clay, grains, chips and pebbles were mixed with bits of rock and boulders. And these were till, the debris from ice erosion. And conglomerate rock, which formed from till when it was pressed together, was provided with a name. And tillite was its name. Thus till and tillite were the telltale signs of glaciation.
     And in many places, vegetation froze and subsequently died in ice. And the advancing ice drove animals away from favored habitats, forcing them to migrate to the milder climatic regions of the Earth. And for the good land that remained, the animals did battle. And life verily did suffer. And the number of animals on Earth declined.
     And when summer came, ice melted and made water. And the water rushed down the slopes of mountains, sometimes passing over ledges. Earth’s mountains were full of lakes and waterfalls.
     And sediments were deposited each summer in the glacial lakes. And each winter did the lakes freeze over. And a series of yearly sedimentary layers were made. And these were varves.
     Now water, or H₂O, consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. And know thee and all around thee that water can be heavy or be light. Heavy water contains a heavy oxygen-eighteen nucleus, an isotope of oxygen. And light water, which is normal water, contains a normal oxygen-sixteen nucleus.³⁴⁶ Now most ocean water is normal water. But small quantities of ocean water are of the heavy type. And because the molecules of heavy water verily are heavier, they move more slowly. And because they move more slowly, their evaporation rate is lower. Thus when ocean water evaporates, it is mostly normal water that does enter air. And since it is the water vapor in the air that snows down upon the polar caps, the polar caps – being predominantly normal ice – have very little heavy ice. Now since normal water more readily evaporates, more heavy water is left behind in oceans. So during this glacial maximum, water in the ocean had more heavy H₂O. And to make their shells, shellfish processed the oxygen in ocean water, combining it with calcium and carbon. Thus during this glacial maximum, the shells weighed slightly more, for they contained more oxygen-eighteen. And when the shellfish died, their shells settled on the ocean floor and made a layer of sediments, which later turned to limestone. Thus during the glacial maximum, the limestone of the Earth was heavier, for it contained more oxygen-eighteen.

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³⁴⁶ In other words, the heavy water molecule weighs more because it has two extra neutrons in the oxygen-atom’s nucleus.

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Chapter III: A Glacial Minimum

And eighty-thousand years went by. Now it had come to pass that the motion of the planets and the Moon had perturbed the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, making it a tiny bit less circular. And when near the perihelion, the Earth received more light from Sun. And during this time, the northern and the southern polar caps did shrink somewhat. And the brown earth around the melted regions did absorb sunlight. Thus Earth retained more heat. And so the Earth did warm a little – the temperature of Earth increased one-half degree. And the polar caps got even smaller.
     And with less snow and ice at polar regions, the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles decreased. And air currents in the atmosphere blew a little slower. And since warm moist air was being uplifted not as often as before, it rained a little less. And carbon-dioxide-gas removal by Earth’s rain proceeded at a slower pace. And the amount of atmospheric CO₂ increased, thereby helping Earth retain its heat. And Earth’s temperature inched up a little more.
     And as ice and snow melted in the higher elevations, the height of ice-snow mountains dropped. And since air was warmer at the lower elevations, the next layer of ice and snow melted even quicker.
     And in the temperate zones, the amount of snow declined in mountain ranges. And snow was also disappearing from the mountains in the equatorial regions of the Earth. And in summer in the northern hemisphere, the glaciers did retreat. And brown land appeared where white snow once had been. And it seemed as if brown ground were moving north. And soon grass occupied that wet brown earth. Brown regions turned to green. And small bushes, plants and trees shot up. And animals moved in, inhabiting the land.
     And after twenty-thousand years, the glaciers retreated to the Arctic Circle. And only the Arctic Ocean, Greenland and the northern part of Canada were under ice.
     And the average temperature of Earth attained a local maximum – it was a few degrees warmer than in modern times.
     A glacial minimum in the Great Ice Age was taking place.
     And the water from melted snow made rivers overflow. And continents were flooded for a while, but eventually they drained. And this water was recycled to the oceans. Now because this continental water was mainly normal water, the heavy water in the oceans was diluted. And the percentage of oxygen-eighteen in the seas went down. Likewise the fraction of oxygen-eighteen in shells and ocean sediments went down.
     And after ice had melted, turned to water and drained away, a heavy weight was taken off the chests of continental crust. And the crust in Canada, northern Europe and Siberia rose several hundred meters.

The Old Testament                                       603

Chapter IV: The Variations in Glaciations

And more or less each one-hundred-thousand years would Earth’s orbit vary from an almost perfect circle. Thus glacial maximums would happen roughly every hundred-thousand years. Thus glacial minimums would happen roughly every hundred-thousand years. Now of these one-hundred-thousand years, extensive glaciations would endure for eighty-thousand years, while "warm" interglacial periods would occupy the remaining twenty-thousand years, during which green grass would spread in northern regions of the Earth. And furthermore, Earth’s spinning axis would precess with time, and its angle to the solar-system plane would change. And these variations would affect the climate, causing additional small changes in Earth’s temperature. And these changes would combine with those created by the variations of Earth’s orbit shape. And so, some glaciations would be more intense than others. And between two-million years BC and the Holocene, Earth would undergo twenty major glaciations and a dozen minor ones.
     Now in Central China during glacial maximums, it was relatively cold and dry. And strong winds blew the Gobi-Desert dust and sand, some of which had originated from erosion by the glaciers; the name for such windblown dust was loess. And plateaus of loess formed. And some loess settled on surrounding hills. Now Central China during glacial minimums was relatively warm and wet. And ordinary soil was piled onto loess. Thus the variations in the glaciations created alternating layers of soil and loess. And a record of the times was made in earth in hills in Central China.
     And during glacial minimums, sea level rose one-hundred meters. And during glacial maximums, sea level dropped one-hundred meters. And the fluctuations in the level of the sea played havoc with Earth’s ocean life. And cnidarians, coral reefs, mollusks, bryozoans and crustaceans sometimes ended up on land or deep below the sea, and subsequently died.
     Now in modern times, scientists would drill the sea floors, remove some cores of ocean crust and analyze them. And the levels of oxygen-eighteen in shells and limestone would be measured. And scientists would drill into the polar caps of northern Canada, Antarctica and Greenland. And columns of ice would be removed. And the ice would be examined for its dust content, for its oxygen-eighteen levels, for its composition, for its ice-snow patterns, and for other indicators of Earth’s past. And air bubbles trapped in ice would be time capsules: They would be examined for their carbon-dioxide content and for percentages of certain other molecules. And the sedimentary rocks of Earth would be inspected. And ancient pollen, loess, varves and tillite would be found. And transported boulders, scratched rocks and polished stones would also be discovered. And from all this information, the variations in Earth’s climate for the Pleistocene and Holocene would be deduced.
     Now it came to pass that vast glaciers entered lowlands in the central part of North America, where weak rocks lay. And ice pushed away the rock and sediments, thereby carving out enormous basins in the Earth. And for innumerous millenniums, the ice lay frozen there. And when the ice did finally retreat, it left the basins bare. And water from runoff and from rain did fill the lowland region. And several lakes were made. They were Lake Ontario, Lake Huron, Lake Superior, Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.

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     And elsewhere around the World did glaciers carve out basins. And from these basins, other lakes were made.
     Now giant mammals found it difficult adapting to the fluctuating climate. And glyptodonts died out. And the number of ground sloths, giraffes, wild hogs, rhinoceroses, giant beavers, bison, hippopotamuses, elephants and mastodons declined – from time to time, a frigid mass of air swept over Earth and left a herd of mammals dead. And other creatures also died.
     Now at this time, it came to pass that homo erectus evolved into the homo sapiens, the species now called man.³⁴⁷ And so man emerged and dwelt in the land of the living. And man multiplied his numbers, spreading to all four corners of the World. And man went out to dominate the land.

Chapter V: The Earth Gets a Little Warmer

It was sixteen-thousand years BC. The last great glaciation climaxed: From this point on, the Earth would warm. Now since the sea was one-hundred meters lower than the level of today, the continents were larger – more margins were exposed to air and dry. And during the next eight-thousand years, glaciers would disappear from northern parts of the United States. And several thousand years thereafter, glaciation in the southern half of Canada would cease. And in north Eurasia, ice would similarly retreat.

Chapter VI: Massive Growth and
the Last Mass Extinction

And in the warmer weather, man felt comfortable – life was no longer cruel, harsh and cold. And man began to multiply more rapidly. And homo sapiens numbered in the millions.
     And to feed himself, man hunted mammals, birds and other creatures. And man learned to hunt efficiently. And for example, pits were dug in earth and covered with branches, leaves and parts of trees. And unsuspecting animals fell in. Or near a cliff, a long line of men raised their weapons high and hollered at a herd of grazing buffalos. And instantly, the animals were panic stricken, darting off in one direction as a group – they fled in a stampede. And they ran and ran, until suddenly, the plateau was no more. And the first row of buffalos did see the cliff and try to stop. But the buffalos behind them would not stop. And bodies tumbled head over heels into the depths below. And hours later did men skin the beasts. And they would use the hides for clothes and tents. And men would also eat the meat.

The Old Testament                                       605

     Now mostly, man hunted out of hunger – he had to feed himself. And under "natural law," there is no sin in this. But some men hunted for sadistic pleasure, killing because they liked to kill.³⁴⁸ And in the providence of Nature, these men were committing sin.³⁴⁹
     And homo sapiens could not control themselves – they copulated frequently. And they did so because Nature instilled in them the great desire to do so. And man procreated man, multiplying his numbers manyfold. And man went out in all directions seeking habitats in all of Earth. And the four corners of the compass did he occupy.

(And a voice spake, saying,
"By being less, ye shall be more.")
But no one heard these words.

     And with his newly acquired hunting skills, man could kill the biggest of Earth’s creatures. With man around, being bigger was not better, for the biggest animals were often easiest to kill. And they were the most desired, for they had more meat and hide. And with a weapon in his hand, man felt invincible, like unto a god. But man was not a god, for in the eyes of Nature, some men were committing sin.

Thus man trespassed against his faunal kin.

     And the ground sloths went extinct. But those that lived in trees were beyond the reach of hands and spears; they survived. And many species of mammoths, mastodons and giant beavers disappeared forever from the Earth. And dozens of other large majestic mammals went extinct.

And the silent voice of Nature
cried out in words of grief.
Her voice was not heard.
A silent voice cannot be heard.

     And to kill for food and meat is one thing. But to kill and to destroy for pleasure is another. And to kill and destroy something that can never be again is the greatest sin of all.
     And man continued the wanton executions. And Nature’s "children," the animals, were killed in hordes.
     And so the final mass-extinction episode in geo-history began.

(And a voice spake, saying,
"Woe unto them that join house to house,
that lay field to field,
till there be no place,
that they may be placed alone
in the midst of the Earth.")

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³⁴⁸ And at the same time, there were others who used wooden staffs and watched over flocks of sheep.
³⁴⁹ Since Nature is basically neutral, the concept of sin in this context technically does not make sense. However, if one imposes man’s moral view of things, the idea of sin in the natural world does have meaning.

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     And in the Late Pleistocene, man cultivated plants, vegetables and trees in organized arrangements in the earth. And this was farming. And man made "slaves" of animals: This was called domestication. And pigs were put in sties. And cows were put in barns. And cattle were contained on ranches with barb wire. And sheep and goats were similarly roped off. And cats and dogs were taken in as pets. And camels, mules and donkeys found crates and boxes on their backs. And horses were employed for riding. And oxen were employed for pulling. And so on.

(And a voice spake, saying,
"Are ye not thy mammals’ keepers?")

     And the number of homo sapiens increased. Now the situation was like an unrestrained explosive growth of cells. The homo sapiens were as malignant cells; the host was Earth.³⁵⁰ It was a cancer in its early stage. And like a living organism, Earth at this stage possessed a tumor which was small and hardly could be felt. But when unchecked, such a malignancy can grow and grow. And eventually, it can consume its host.
     Henceforth, human growth would go unchecked. And the density of human beings would sky rocket. And people would battle over land. And people would claim all land. And except in Antarctica, which was desolate and under snow, by the twentieth century, every foot of land would be owned by an individual, a government or an institution.

(And a voice spake, saying,
"For what shall it profit man
if he shall gain the world
and lose his own soul?")

     And the extinction of the mammals by man would continue in the first two millenniums AD, as witnessed in the following:
     The last small North African elephants would be killed by man in the second century AD. And the last American mastodon would be exterminated in the fourth century AD. And the last large African bush elephant would die at the hand of man in the twentieth century AD.³⁵¹
     And some men in hunting for fun and sport would overkill. And for example, in modern times, deer in Europe would be decimated.
     And buffalo and bison would be butchered.

(And a voice spake, saying,
"He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man.")

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³⁵⁰ With the exception of size, cells being much smaller than human beings, the analogy with a cancer is almost perfect: In a typical dictionary, a cancer is defined as an uncontrolled harmful growth in an otherwise healthy body.
³⁵¹ Of the three-hundred known species of the proboscideans, only two exist today: elephas maximus and loxodonta africana. Of the extinct species, dozens have disappeared because of man.

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     And man would even battle man. And this also would be sin. And wars often would be fought for land – the history books would list accounts of countless senseless wars. Europeans would fight Europeans. Asians would fight Asians. And the Europeans and the Asians would engage each other in some wars. And Europeans would set sail and come to North America. And they would bring diseases, guns and horses. And native American Indians would become sick and often die. And with tomahawks and bows and arrows, the Indians would fight the battles and be killed. And almost all the Indians would die. And there would be more wars – World-War-One and World-War-Two and post-World-War-Two-type wars.
     Thus animals would man kill. Thus mammals would man kill. Thus humans would man kill.
     And in modern times, the extinctions would continue: And in the year one-thousand-seven-hundred-forty-one AD, the Steller’s sea cow would be discovered near some islands in the Bering Sea. And these ten-meter-giant creatures would be among the most mild-mannered mammals. And unfortunately for them, they would be not afraid of man. And when hunters came, the inoffensive creatures would not flee. And they would be an easy prey. And so the sea cows would be killed by greedy Russian sealers for their food, their meat being especially tasty to the palate. And for seventeen years, they would be slaughtered unremittingly. And in the year one-thousand-seven-hundred-sixty-eight, the killing would finally be stopped. But it would stop not because man realized what he was doing or that the sea cows were in pain – it would stop because the last Steller’s sea cow would be slain.
     And the tarpan, the gray wild horse of southern Russia, would perish in the nineteenth century AD. And the Przewalski’s horse, a small reddish-brown wild horse, would last be seen on the border of Mongolia and China in the year nineteen-sixty-eight – later, it would be unknown whether it was alive or dead.
     And the enumeration of victims could go on and on. The list is very long.³⁵²
     And in the twentieth century, man would attack pests with pesticides. And man would attack trees through deforestation. And man would attack insects with insecticides. And man would man attack. And when this happened systematically to a culture or a race, it would be genocide.

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³⁵² It has been estimated that the number of species that have gone extinct because of man is in the thousands. Most of these extinctions were not deliberate; they resulted because of the spread of humans throughout the world, occupying the majority of the fertile habitats. The human-induced extinction rate at the onset of the third millennium is about one species per year.

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     And in the near future, the extermination of Earth’s children will go on, for man cannot stop it. Man knows that a problem does exist, but his numbers are too great. With billions of humans on the Earth, it is too late.
     And the Great Eye observed the Earth from far away and saw disease. Earth, the living creature, had a cancer, an uncontrollable growth of parasitic cells. At the death of Christ, the Great Eye saw a two-hundred-million cells. At a thousand years AD, the Great Eye saw three-hundred-million cells. In eighteen-hundred-fifty, the cell-count reached a billion. At the onset of the third millennium, it was six-billion. The cancer cell was man; the host was Earth. And so Earth had billions of inhabitants consuming what it had to give. And the Great Eye saw that the surface of the Earth was scarred with man-made buildings, roads, plowed lands, airports and countless other structures. Disfigured was the face of Earth.
     The cancer has put great demands on Earth.³⁵³ It has weakened and has started to consume the Earth. And like all cancers which are not arrested it will destroy its host unless measures are employed. Both the cancer and the body are at stake.
     And what can Nature do? Nature cannot stop the killing. Nature instilled in man the instincts that make man act the way he does. In this sense, it is Nature’s fault. In this sense, Nature indirectly is responsible: Nature and evolution through survival principles made the desires and the wants. And now the rules cannot be changed. Homo sapiens are creatures copulating uncontrollably, producing offspring at enormous rates. The laws of evolution thus must run their course.³⁵⁴

Chapter VII: The End of the Pleistocene

It was eight-thousand years BC. The Pleistocene was over. The Holocene began. In geological terms, the time was almost now. The Earth was still alive. The next ten-thousand years would constitute the Recent. What happened in the Recent is well known.
     And a line in time was drawn. And it was declared that that which was before the line was old. And that which was beyond the line was new. And that which was old was written in a book. And that book was named The Old Testament.

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³⁵³ Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the middle of the nineteenth century, man and his machines have poured enough carbon dioxide into the air to increase atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels by twenty-five per cent. The temperature of Earth has gone up one-half degree Celsius. By tinkering with the atmosphere, man has begun to twiddle Earth’s thermostat in an unpredictable and potentially dangerous way.
³⁵⁴ One can only wait until the climax of the crisis finally is reached. Perhaps the quality of life will drop so dramatically that rigorous self-imposed population controls will be put in place. Or perhaps man will turn on man, and kill himself in mass destruction. This would be a final holocaust. And it would terminate the mass extinction caused by man. And then perhaps in the aftermath, one male and one female will remain and will be waiting for the ark. And this will give humanity another start.