The Causes of Temperature (Geophysics)

[Ishmael]

THE HYPERBOREANS: HUMAN ORIGINS PART V ADDENDUM

We have talked much about adaptation to the northern interglacial pole and the traits this environment encouraged in human beings. The traits can be identified by extrapolation from existing populations: Those aspects of human nature that tend to increase in expression among existing populations with their proximity to the pole.

Some of these traits are egalitarianism, peacefulness, impulse-control, anticipation of the future, creativity, and general intelligence. I might also mention a theory of mind that generally assumes the best of others (though this may be subsumed within the category of "egalitarianism").

What are the primary characteristics of the northern environment and how might these characteristics encourage these traits?

The pole has two primary characteristics that set it apart from other environments, both are seasonal. Darkness and cold (the latter being a function of the former, via plants). Much of the animal life that lives in this environment have clear adaptations to these characteristics.

The primary adaptation is migration.

Many of the animals that live in the north live there only during summer months. In winter, most of those that can move south, do.

The secondary adaptation is hibernation.

Most of the animals that live in the north, and cannot migrate out, shut themselves down during winter months.

Now; imagine a creature in the north that, for reasons unknown, is genetically unable to develop effective hibernation and, for reasons unknown, is physically impeded from leaving.

It isn't difficult to imagine that development of the traits listed above might be the only means by which such an organism could survive. If it were the only creature so inherently handicapped, it would also account for why it, virtually alone, developed these traits.

I say virtually alone because many of these traits, in rudimentary form, are present in other creatures. Pack animals have community and some exhibit signs of egalitarianism. I would argue that, in so far as any creature exhibits such traits, it is a descendant of a beast exposed to the north.

I suspect that these traits can be detected to a higher degree in existing animal populations with routine exposure to the north. I think particularly of Wolves, which have communities so well structured and organized as to appear almost human.

Compare wolf packs with Lion prides and note the differences. They will prove stark.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

That is extremely interesting. It is, I suppose, obvious when you picture the leader of the pack turning round and saying, "OK, chaps, start digging." On the other hand I do have some sort of picture of families of furry things snug in a den somewhere.

But let's widen it out a bit. You can't have pack animals in an arctic or near-Arctic habitat. There is not sufficient sustenance for herbivores gathered together, and not enough prey animals to support more than a 'lone wolf' type carnivore. On the other hand wolves themselves have a decidedly 'northern' aspect and considerable numbers of reindeer can graze on the grass beneath the snow.

But hibernation is not necessarily to do with cold anyway. Anytime there is a seasonal dearth of food, hibernating would be useful. And seasonal dearth is more the rule than the exception.

And to what extent are human beings 'pack animals'? I would think that is the rule rather than the exception. Though I suppose an element of choice is available when you've got a bit of a brain on you.

[Mick Harper]

It occured to me you might have a look at marsupial and placental versions of the same general animal. (This popped into my head because of the Tasmanian wolf.)

Orthodoxy calls this 'parallel evolution' because, for them, the split between marsupial and placental mammals occurred long before the possibility of wolves evolving. But your version allows a little more flexibility.

The whole idea of parallel evolution has always struck me as farfetched because of the infinite fashionings available from evolution, and as evidenced from the several million 'platforms' we can observe either in the world around us or from fossils.

But then again I might be a victim of the human tendency to call unfamiliar animals by familiar names.

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

THE HYPERBOREANS: HUMAN ORIGINS PART VI: REVIEW

What we have established thus far:

Hyperborea: General Principles

• Temperature on Earth is always a function of atmospheric depth, which is determined by the presence of active plant life.
  
• The activity of plants is a function of sunlight. Plants can be active only where and when the sun shines (plants also have difficulty growing on unstable surfaces but it is plausible that these difficulties may be overcome, given sufficient time).
  
• In inter-glacial periods, plants grow in great abundance everywhere, which increases overall global temperature, eliminating icecaps. Plants grow in the polar regions too but are active only seasonally.
  
• Polar regions experience long periods of darkness during which plants cannot operate. This effects a seasonal reduction in temperature in these regions regardless of the overall temperature of the planet.
  
• Inter-glacial periods are the norm: The resting-point of planet Earth.
  
• During inter-glacial periods, the temperature of the equatorial zone may reach extremes incompatible with certain forms of life, particularly warm-blooded life; just as the polar zones are presently impenetrable to cold-blooded life forms. This creates a barrier between the northern and southern hemispheres through which many forms of life cannot pass.
  
• Glacial periods can only be possible if precipitated by a global collapse in plant life. That Earth has experienced glacial periods is evidence that plant life has collapsed on a colossal scale. That Earth has experienced repeated, periodic glacial periods is evidence of repeated, periodic catastrophe.
  
• Shifts in the location of the poles may be associated with these catastrophes or with the subsequent recovery period.
  
• Inter-glacial periods are periods of evolution, as life expands toward the polar zones. Glacial periods are periods of extinction, as life contracts toward the equatorial zone.
  
• Most meaningful evolution on Planet Earth has occurred in the polar regions during inter-glacial periods.
  
• Over time, life forms on plant Earth have become increasingly cold adapted, consistent with a general trend toward lower temperatures. This suggests that the abundance of plant life has experienced a general decline in addition to periodic catastrophe.

Hyperboreans: General Principles

• Human beings are a cold-adapted species. While all life presently on Earth is to some extent cold-adapted in its evolutionary history, human beings are among those species that experienced radical change during the latest inter-glacial period or periods.
  
• During this latest inter-glacial period, humans in the northern hemisphere were unable to reach the southern hemisphere (as were many other warm-blooded species). Various groups of humans settled into ecological niches associated with bands of latitude.
  
• Human civilization, and the character traits associated with civilization, were birthed during the last great inter-glacial period when a large number of humans settled in the northern polar region, despite its seasonal hostility.
  
• The polar zone, though subjected to periodic cold and darkness, enjoyed the advantage of relative sterility, in terms of disease. Bacteria, and the insects on which it thrives, was there greatly reduced (as it is today).
  
• During this latest inter-glacial period, those most northern human beings "transformed from a naked creature that could use simple throwing weapons (spears with stone tips), into fully-clothed creatures who had mastered complex weaponry and machinery with a fully-functional textile industry."
  
• These "Hyperborieans" likely mastered stellar navigation, however, their range was limited, as the ecological zones beyond the polar zone grew increasingly hostile to them in terms of the bacteriological environment.
  
• Hyperborean civilization collapsed at the onset of the last glacial period (an extinction period).
  
• During that ice-age, the Hyperboreans, along with other northern species) moved southward. This move was enabled by a general drop in global temperature but also necessitated by the ecological collapse of the northern environment (it being swallowed up by ice-caps).
  
• Hostile bacteria limited the Hyperboreans to coastal environments. Even there, disease decimated their numbers (the far north being a uniquely sterile environment). These same diseases all but eliminated any possibility of their penetrating continental interiors (these coast line settlements would later be swallowed up by the sea, when the ice caps melted).
  
• Wherever they settled, the Hyperboreans adapted by interbreeding with local, more robust human populations.
  
• Human beings present on the Earth today are mixtures of various local stock with Hyperboreans. No pure Hyperboreans survive. They, and all other human species existent at that time, went extinct during this most-recent glacial period. However; the vast majority of the genetic makeup of humans today is Hyperborean in origin.
  
• All these changes took place north of the equator. "For generations after the northern polar zone became uninhabitable, the equator itself continued to prove impenetrable to the Hyperborean genome."

[Ishmael]

THE HYPERBOREANS: HUMAN ORIGINS PART VI

[Ishmael]

THE HYPERBOREANS: HUMAN ORIGINS PART VI: Continued...

I do not mean, of course, that the Aborigines and Marsupials are holdovers from the same time period. This is obviously not the case as the Aborigines are placental creatures. What I do mean is that both types have managed to find themselves isolated in the same territory as the last redoubt of their kind. They found themselves isolated together there in this same age only because humans managed to spread more rapidly and to a greater extent than had any other species before them. This was true of the early humans of the early inter-glacial period but even more so true of modern humans of the post-glacial world.

The "civilized" human beings of the post-glacial world (our own era) proved far more efficient at rapidly spreading themselves globally than did any other species before them: Humans from the north raced over the same territory in centuries that had taken placental mammals millennia to conquer, catching up with marsupials on the continent of Australia.

But they caught-up there also with something more interesting than Kangaroos.

What they found, in the aborigines of Australia, were humans who had not been influenced by exposure to the polar zone during the last inter-glacial period.

The Aborigines of Australia are humans much as they were prior to the last interglacial period. These are the last remnants of the kind of creature we once were, before the torrid zone arose at the equator and separated the humans of the north from the humans of the south. These last of the southerly humans, due to the geographical composition of the southern hemisphere, never had opportunity to migrate to a polar zone and were thus never subjected directly to its influence, nor subjected indirectly to the influence of those humans that migrated to the polar zone.

This is why the Aborigines never adopted clothing and never developed even simple machinery. When discovered, they lived as once did our ancestors: Wearing no clothes and utilizing no weapons more sophisticated than those that could be hurled from their hands.

These are not the only differences between them and the rest of the human race. To this day, the humans of the north that settled in Australia heap scorn upon the Aborigines, regarding them often as little more than beasts. Until 1967, Aborigines in Australia were officially classed as "wildlife."

To this day, many Australians (indeed, many people the world over) have a visceral reaction of disgust both toward the behavior of aborigines and toward even their physical appearance. It is often difficult to perceive them as human.

My own view that Aborigines represent an isolated pocket of a primitive human type is not novel. Many have suggested it. Culturally, I have zero doubt of it. However; the genetic studies are unclear.

I have read recently that the Aborigines are more genetically related to Europeans than they are to Black Africans. Assuming these results have not been manipulated to suit the liberal morals of our age, I suggest that this is attributable to interbreeding; for contact between Europe and Australia may have occurred far earlier than is presently believed (a topic I hope to raise in the Mud Flood thread). Regardless; what is happening in Australia is a process similar to what happened in the northern hemisphere when the Hyperboreans first came south: Northern genes eventually mix with those of the local, robust populations. This time, however, due to advances in modern medicine, the mixing is less driven by necessity and may take far longer to fully effectuate.

[Ishmael]

THE HYPERBOREANS: HUMAN ORIGINS PART VI: Continued...

The simple model of the Hyperborean Hypothesis has the Earth divided at the middle during the long inter-glacial period preceding the last ice age. This divide separated humans in the northern hemisphere from humans in the southern hemisphere, Australian aborigines being the last remaining population of true southerly humans. Those humans in the north alone had access to a polar zone and migrated there in great numbers, though other humans remained at various latitudes closer to the equatorial zone.

Humans in the polar zone were deeply altered by this exposure, developing there every characteristic we today recognize as prerequisites to civilization. When the last ice age began, these humans were forced southward to spread over the whole world, surviving only by interbreeding with other, more robust local humans.

That is the basic model and it works well to account for the general characteristics of various human groups. However; there is much evidence to suggest that the real story is far more complex.

The Aborigines of Australia may be identified as a southerly human population by their lack of clothing and lack of even simple machinery. However; there are many more human groups nearly so primitive. Are we to conclude that the Hyperboreans headed south during the ice age armed only with fish hooks and bows? Outside of Europe and the Orient, that's about all the technology we have any real evidence for. Could these primitives really be descendants of the Hyperboreans?

And though Aborigines are virtually unique in their preference for total nudity, other human groups are certainly less demure about nakedness than typical Londoners (or even Sweeds). Brazilian tribes often make due with little more than a cord of string to restrain their erections. Assuming the Brazilians are not themselves South American "Abos" and share our northerly ancestry, this hardly fits our model of southward-moving shy Hyperboreans ashamed to go about without their furs and frocks.

It is obvious that the simple model, though perhaps useful in accounting for human origins in broad strokes, doesn't do well in accounting for the details. If everyone is a Hyperborean, why doesn't everyone act like one?

[Ishmael]

THE HYPERBOREANS: HUMAN ORIGINS PART VII

One of the great anomalies of history is the shockingly vacant nature of much of the southern hemisphere into the near-modern age.

Watching recently a documentary on South Africa, I was confronted once again with the surprising fact that, when the Dutch first settled there in the 18th century, they found no "Blacks." The land was empty but for a small number of hunter-gatherer "bushmen," more closely related to Indonesians than to "Black Africans." While the Dutch were settling the cape and moving north, the Blacks were settling the coasts and moving south. Where the two groups met is still identifiable today and is even now called "the border."

The same phenomenon is seen in the vast South Pacific. Oddly, the Polynesians were spreading from island to island at about the same time the Europeans were sailing round the horn in whaling ships. Captain Cook was beaten to Hawaii by the Polynesians who killed him only by perhaps a couple of centuries at best.

We can understand why it might have taken Europeans so long to move below the equator (simple distance from their indigenous lands being the principle factor) but what could have kept the Blacks out of South Africa? It certainly wasn't the Bushmen. And what kept the Polynesians out of the South Pacific?

The Hyperborean Hypothesis posits a barrier of high temperature existing at the equator during the last great inter-glacial period. However; the emergence of the ice-caps could have been made possible only by a dramatic reduction in temperature globally, which must have eliminated any such barrier. The global south should have been accessible to humans as soon as the ice-age began.

Nevertheless; this same Hyperborean Hypothesis obviously draws inspiration from the writing of the ancients who testified that, within their living experience, the southern hemisphere was inaccessible to them due to the presence of a "torrid zone" at the equator. The settlement patterns of the modern age appear to attest to the accuracy of their reporting. The whole phenomenon uncomfortably suggests the persistence of an equatorial barrier into near historical times: A barrier that sheltered southern Africa and the South Pacific from those humans in the northern hemisphere.

The clear implication of this conclusion is that the torrid zone barrier, which the Hyperborean Hypothesis posits to have existed during the last inter-glacial period, either survived into near-modern times or was revived sometime after it failed when the ice-age began.

There is some climate-related evidence for a revival of the torrid zone: We have the tantalizing "record" of what scholars call the "Medieval Warm Period."

The pattern of colonization of the global south hints of the possibility that this so-called warm period was longer-lasting than climate science acknowledges and might it have been warmer still than now believed.

Let us assume so and see if we might make better sense of human population distribution world wide.

[Mick Harper]

[Ishmael]