The Arctic Home in the Vedas c6.3

c6.3

WE have seen that in the Pleistocene period there was great elevation and submergence of land accompanied by violent changes in the climate, over the whole surface of the globe. Naturally enough the severity of the Glacial period must have been very intense within the Arctic circle, and we shall be perfectly justified in supposing that geographical changes like the elevation and depression of land occurred on a far more extensive scale in regions round about the Pole than anywhere else. This leads us to infer that the distribution of land and water about the Pole during the Inter-Glacial period must have been different from what it is at present. Dr. Warren, in his *Paradise Found*, quotes a number of authorities to show that within a comparatively recent geological period a wide stretch of Arctic land, of which Novaia Zemlia and Spitzbergen formed a part, had been submerged; and one of the conclusions he draws from these authorities is that the present islands of the Arctic ocean, such as the two mentioned above, are simply mountain-tops still remaining above the surface of the sea which has come in and covered up the primeval continent to which they belonged. That an extensive circumpolar continent existed in Miocene times seems to have been conceded by all geologists, and though we cannot predicate its existence in its entirety during the Pleistocene period, yet there are good reasons to hold that a different configuration of land and water prevailed about the North Pole during the Inter-Glacial period, and that, as observed by Prof. Geikie, the Palæolithic man, along with other Quarternary animals, freely ranged over the whole of the Arctic regions in those times. Even now there is a considerable tract of land to the north of the Arctic circle, in the old world, especially in Siberia, and there is evidence to show that it once enjoyed a mild and temperate climate. The depth of the Arctic ocean to the north of Siberia is, at present, less than a hundred fathoms, and if great geographical changes took place in the Pleistocene period, it is not unlikely that this tract of land, which is now submerged, may have been once above the level of the sea. In other words, there are sufficient indications of the existence of a continent round about the North Pole before the last Glacial period.