Review—Implications—Conclusion
Of course it seems almost impossible that in 117 successive instances carbon, alternated with other rock-making minerals, could fall upon or be washed to and confined upon one small area of Earth’s surface. But to believe that those substances fell there from the sky, just like rain or snow do today, or that, after falling elsewhere, were washed to that area by running water, at least seems less difficult to believe than that swamps formed and vegetation alternately grew and perished due to alternating upheaval and subsidence of Earth’s crust at an isolated spot, repeated successively 117 times!
It is held that graphite, another form of carbon, is also of vegetable origin, like coal. Graphite is a very abundant mineral in the oldest Archean beds—beds formed long before vegetation first appeared on Earth. Hence how could graphite possibly be a product of vegetation?
In passing, it is suggested that very probably the source of asphalt, petroleum and other bituminous compounds was the primordial atmosphere. Chemists and geologists have been completely unable to determine and to agree upon their origin. Neither can they diagram the chemical reactions which would change organic matter to them. They cannot even agree as to whether those compounds are organic or mineral.
Landes, in Petroleum Geology (1951, p. 130) says:
Petroleum geologists have written more on the origin of petroleum than on any other subject. Speculation in this field was originated in the 1860’s, and the problem of origin is still with us.
V. C. Illing, in Geology of Petroleum (p. 491) says: “Each year the crop of new papers adds to the fearsome pile, threatening to bury the subject by the very dead weight of diversified opinion. . . .” Landes expresses his own belief by saying:
There can be but little doubt that the carbon and hydrogen in petroleum and natural gas were, in their initial stages, like everything else on this Earth, in solution in hot liquid rock of magma.
According to the theory the reader and this writer have been exploring, is it not more probable that petroleum and other hydro-carbons were fused, volatilized and hurled to the skies by formative heat, to revolve with numberless other minerals in Earth’s primordial atmosphere until they eventually descended, long after the “hot liquid magma” had cooled, to be accumulated among other compounds in Earth’s supercrust?
Man Saw Primordial Clouds
There are intriguing implications relating to human experiences in the theory we have explored. We have pictured a world roofed by a rapidly revolving, turbulent, hurtling cloud cover thousands of miles above in space, composed of frozen water crystals, with which were intermingled, in greater or lesser percentages, condensed particles of other minerals. This cloud cover was pictured as being similar to those which now obscure the cores of Jupiter and other planets. We theorized that the clouds slowly lost velocity due to gravitational forces and therefore inevitably drew nearer to Earth; that retardation progressed until eventually centrifugal force, generated by revolution, no longer balanced centripetal force of Earth’s gravity. We reasoned that such retardation could not progress equally throughout the clouds to the point where gravity would simultaneously triumph over the entire mass. We concluded that portions of the clouds lingered in space and did not descend to Earth until very recently. We reasoned that in some instances increments of water and other minerals in the clouds naturally must have descended in cataclysmic, destructive deluges. We concluded that such deluges account for sudden, violent changes in nature, which so evidently have occurred, with accompanying abrupt termination of various geological ages.
That ancient mankind actually saw lingering portions of those cloud canopies hurtling in space far above him, witnessed and endured the fall of increments thereof, is decisively indicated by the religions, the traditions, the superstitions, the folklore of every race of mankind on Earth. This thought may be startling to geologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, geomor-phologists, etc., who are accustomed to believe that present conditions on Earth have endured for millions of years, but evidence to support the thought is voluminous and decisive.
Collectively, experiences indelibly impressed in the memory of man indicate that global catastrophes occurred and continued into historical times. Quotations to prove the point from traditions of ancient races would fill a book. Velikovsky, in Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval, has gathered literally hundreds of such quotations gleaned from traditions and folklore of peoples all over the globe. Our own Bible can supply many such quotations. However, Velikovsky ascribes an entirely different cause to the phenomenon of catastrophes. He believes that they were caused by numerous collisions between the Earth and comets, with weird and fantastic results, including great changes in the tilt of Earth’s axis, momentary stoppages in rotation of the Earth, and whip-lashing of ocean waters over the continents. Based upon mathematical computations and observation of their effect upon planets as they pass closely, it is generally believed that the mass of comets is much too small to effect such results, even if it could be believed that collisions did occur. Some astronomers have said that cometary mass is the nearest thing to nothing which can exist and yet be visible!
Records of what primitive man saw and endured are amazingly similar, world-wide, in spite of the fact that they were handed down only by word of mouth for hundreds or thousands of years in all races—races separated and isolated from each other by wide expanses of ocean waters. As primitive man could get but occasional, dim glimpses of Sun, Moon and stars through those turbulent, rushing clouds, is it any wonder that he conjured up the host of gods and superstitions which fill the records he has left? Is it any wonder that he added considerable imagination and exaggeration as he repeated the accounts over the centuries? Evidence is convincing that increments of primitive atmospheric substances fell to Earth long after man evolved and even in very recent geologic times. Hence we are confident that it cannot be fiction alone which inspired accounts of collapsing skies, catastrophic floods, titanic tempests, “hails” of “fiery stones from Heaven,” streams of hot naphtha, showers of red ferruginous dust, of “a sticky substance” (bitumen) raining from the skies—stories which record cataclysmic violence, destruction, darkness, terror, death! Is it any wonder that primitive man ascribed such catastrophes to the wrath of the gods?