Chapter V of Immanuel Velikovsky’s Earth in Upheaval is entitled Tidal Wave. The six sections of this chapter review the scientific evidence for catastrophic floods and mega-tsunamis in the Earth’s recent past. The first section, Fissures in the Rocks, examines several examples from across the globe of a strange phenomenon in which mounds of ill-assorted bones were deposited in caves and fissures. These bones are too young to have been fossilized or to have eroded away. Invariably they comprise bones of species that are still extant or that only recently became extinct. What do these ossiferous caves and fissures tell us of the Earth’s recent history?
In this section, Velikovsky’s principal source is the British geologist Joseph Prestwich. In his published papers in this field, however, Prestwich was always careful to review the relevant literature, citing dozens of other scholars. The only reference in this section that does not cite a work by Prestwich alludes to an article by the French geologist Marcel de Serres on the ossiferous breccia discovered on a mountain near Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort in the department of Gard in the south of France—and even this was inspired by one of Prestwich’s citations.
Joseph Prestwich
Joseph Prestwich was a wine merchant and a leading geologist of the Victorian era. His 1859 paper on the assemblage of early stone tools discovered in gravel beds at Saint-Acheul in the north of France is considered a landmark in the development of archaeology as a rigorous science. The Acheulean tools proved that humans had coexisted with mammoths and other extinct megafauna in a period much more remote than that generally assigned for the appearance of the human species on the Earth.
Velikovsky, however, is much more interested in the papers Prestwich published in the final decade of his life, when he had retired from his post as Professor of Geology at Oxford. These papers were mostly concerned with deposits of the Quaternary—ie Post-Glacial—Period, including palaeolithic flint assemblages. He also theorized about the raised beaches and rubble-drift of the south of England and their relation to recent changes of sea level. His latest publications were Collected Papers on Some Controverted Questions of Geology, and On Certain Phenomena Belonging to the Close of the Last Geological Period and on Their Bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood. Joseph Prestwich died in 1896 at the age of eighty-four.
In 1892, when he was one month short of his eightieth birthday, Prestwich read a paper before the Geological Society of London. He had been a fellow of the society for almost sixty years and had served as its President from 1870 to 1872. The subjects of his paper were the raised beaches and the so-called rubble-drift that could be found on the south coast of England and along the shores of the Bristol Channel:
The first distinctive but purely local name applied to this drift was given at Brighton by Mantell, who termed it the ‛Elephant Bed,’ as it contained the remains of the Mammoth. De la Beche applied the term ‛Head’ to a similar angular detritus overlying the Raised Beaches of Devon and Cornwall. Godwin-Austen adopted the same term, but gave it an extension inland beyond the limits of the Beaches. Murchison looked upon the Head as merely one form of a drift which he took to be general over the whole of the South of England, and in which he included other so-called post-Glacial Drifts. To this he gave the name of ‛the angular Flint-drift.’ For convenience’ sake I shall, in speaking of this drift, use the term Head or Rubble-drift, meaning both that portion lodged on the Raised Beaches and that which exists independently in other areas. (Prestwich 1892:264)
Later in this paper, Prestwich reviews what these and other geologists theorized concerning the origin of this rubble-drift. After systematically refuting each of them in turn, he then presents his own hypothesis:
The points on which all the geologists who have treated of this drift in any form agree are:—
1. The angularity and sharpness of the harder constituent debris. 2. The derivation of all the materials from the higher ground behind the Raised Beaches. 3. The absence of marine and fluviatile shells. 4. The occasional presence of mammalian bones and land-shells. 5. The want of regular stratification.
It is obvious from the above that we may at once dismiss marine and fluviatile agency, and although subaerial agency has its claims, it is clear that it fails in many essential particulars. We require a cause that will not only account for all the above-named results, but one that also must not involve other consequences at variance with the assumed cause. The cause I would suggest is not free from difficulties, especially in connexion with the subsequent distribution of life. These, however, need separate enquiry, and are not, I am satisfied, incapable of solution. On the other hand, my hypothesis will, I think, be found to answer, in the purely geological and physical points, to all the conditions of the case. (Prestwich 1892:329)
Prestwich’s hypothesis was that the rubble-drift was created as a consequence of a wide submergence of the land beneath the sea:
I am therefore led to suppose that a submergence of the land which, judging from the heights at which the Rubble-drift is found, could not have been less than 1000 feet [300 m], followed immediately upon the epoch of the low-level valley drifts and the Caves. There is little or nothing to show as a direct consequence of the submergence. The land over which the waters spread seems to have undergone but trifling alteration or denudation. The Raised Beaches exhibit in consequence thereof no apparent erosion, and the Blown Sands only slight denudation; and this may be due to the impact of the Head. It is even difficult to say whether their irregular thickness and eroded surface resulted during the submergence or emergence of the land. I can only conclude that the submergence was slow and gradual, yet sufficiently rapid to prevent wave-action from removing the whole of the Blown Sands, or from forming terraces, which it would have done had the fall been prolonged or subject to long interruptions. For the same reason no portion of the strand was washed on to the land. (Prestwich 1892:331-332)
Prestwich acknowledges one problem with this hypothesis:
The absence of marine shells in the submerged land may seem a difficulty. Had the submergence been of long duration, a marine fauna would necessarily have established itself; and I can only account for its absence by supposing that re-elevation followed, after but a short interval, on the previous subsidence: The physical results of that elevation are sufficiently definite to justify our assumption, and are explanatory of the conditions under which it was in all probability effected. (Prestwich 1892:332)
Prestwich also rebuts the claim that the action of ice sheets can account for the presence of the rubble drift:
In the above remarks I do not overlook the effects of denudation by ice-action, but this preceded by a long period of time the introduction of the Rubble-drift, which was the result of agencies independent of, and subsequent to any visible exhibition of ice-action ... That the submergence is of very late geological date is evident from the fact that no beds intervene between the Rubble-drift and the recent alluvium of our rivers, notwithstanding that the conditions of land and sea were, in many instances, favourable for their development. (Prestwich 1892:342)
Although Velikovsky cites this paper in the opening paragraph of this section of Earth in Upheaval, his first quotation is taken from another of Prestwich’s papers in this field, On the Evidences of a Submergence of Western Europe and of the Mediterranean Coasts at the Close of the Glacial or So-called Post-Glacial Period, and Immediately Preceding the Neolithic or Recent Period, which was presented to the Royal Society of London in March 1893 and published the following year in the society’s Philosophical Transactions. In this paper, Prestwich presents evidence from across Western Europe and the Mediterranean coasts of post-glacial submergence similar to that found in southern Britain:
In a paper read before the Geological Society early this year, I gave the evidence—the result of personal observation—which led me to conclude that the South of England had been submerged to the depth of not less than about 1000 feet between the Glacial (or Post-glacial) and the recent or Neolithic periods. That evidence was based upon the characters, physical and palaeontological, of a peculiar superficial drift, for which I proposed the term of “Rubble-drift,” to distinguish it from the valley, marine, and glacial drifts of the same districts. Under this term I include various detrital deposits to which different designations have been attached. Amongst the more important of these are the drift called “ head” over the Raised Beaches of the Channel and the Ossiferous Fissures of South Devon ... In the present paper my object will be to show that the phenomena on which I relied as proofs of submergence in England, extend likewise over large continental areas. (Prestwich 1894:904)
The area in which Prestwich observed these phenomena include France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, Italy, Sicily, Malta, Carniola [Slovenia], Istria, Dalmatia, Greece, Crete, Turkey, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Northern Syria, Palestine, Tangier, Oran, Algeria, Constantine, Tunis, Tripoli, and Egypt.
Ossiferous Fissures
Of all the geological and archaeological features investigated by Joseph Prestwich, the ones that lend the greatest support to Velikovsky’s catastrophist theories are the ossiferous fissures and ossiferous caves, as they were known. Prestwich discusses these remarkable deposits briefly in his paper on the Raised Beaches and Rubble-Drift:
The connexion of the Rubble-drift with the Caves and Ossiferous Breccia of the Plymouth district is not so apparent as in Gower, though there is reason to suspect its existence. It is difficult to say how far some of the ossiferous fissures of Oreston and Cattedown may have served as caves, but there can be little doubt that the rock-fragments and bones now filling them were carried in from the outside at a time subsequent to the habitation of the Caves, if these ever existed. There are differences of opinion as to the manner in which the filling-in was effected, yet all observers agree in the essential points, namely, that the condition of the bones is very different from those found in Caves, and that they were brought in with the Rubble by natural causes, not by hyaenas or other beasts of prey.
The materials filling the fissures are all of local origin—limestone, clay, and sand. The limestone is in pieces and blocks of various sizes, which are all angular; a few fragments of slate and quartz-pebbles are also occasionally met with. There has since been a large infiltration of carbonate of lime, which has often cemented the whole into a hard compact breccia. The bones are found from time to time in patches, both in the consolidated and unconsolidated portions. Many of them are uninjured, and those which are broken have sharp unworn fractures. None are rolled, and none show traces of gnawing. Some are very much decomposed and fragile, others retain a good deal of animal matter. The fissures in the limestone are sometimes vertical, at other times they are inclined or horizontal, and often extremely irregular. Owing to this, cavities were occasionally left in the mass of the breccia, some of which still remain open, while others have been filled by the intrusion of sand and clay, or calcite. The remains of the animals found in these fissures belong to—
Elephas primigenius.
Hippopotamus major.
Rhinoceros tichorhinus.
Rhinoceros megarhinus.
Equus caballus.
Bison priscus.
Bos longifrons.
Bos primigenius.
Cervus capreolus.
Cervus tarandus.
Sus scrofa.
Felis leo (F. spelæa).
Canis lupus.
Canis vulpes.
Hyæna crocuta (H. spelæa)
Mustela erminea.
Ursus arctos.
Ursus ferox.Similar fissures occur near Chudleigh, and in other limestone districts. (Prestwich 1892:319)
However, Prestwich’s explanation of how these deposits were formed falls well short of the requirements of Velikovsky’s catastrophism:
I have given the reasons which lead me to suppose that the submergence was effected with extreme slowness, so as to disturb but little the surface of the land. Under such conditions, the land-animals would, as the waters rose, gradually retire to the higher grounds of the district, and, when these sank below the level of the flood, would be eventually drowned. Their bodies in some cases may have been carried by currents to a distance and lost, and in others they may have decayed and fallen in fragments to the bottom without travelling far from the spot. Where they fell on an old disintegrated land-surface, they would share with the debris in the displacement and drifting which that debris afterwards underwent. (Prestwich 1892:338)
Prestwich’s hypothesis, then, is that the animals were drowned by the submergence of the land, while the subsequent re-emergence of the land washed their bones into low-lying caves and fissures. The problem with this hypothesis is that there is no reason why the land-animals would not have continued to migrate northwards to higher ground as more of the southern coast of Britain became submerged. Why would they simply remain where they were and drown? The only plausible answer is that the submergence of the land (or the irruption of the sea) was sudden and caught them by surprise—like the Siberian mammoths that were flash-frozen in ice with food still in their mouths.
Prestwich returns to the extraordinary phenomenon of ossiferous fissures in his 1894 paper on the post-glacial submergence of Western Europe and the Mediterranean coasts:
The faunal débris of this drift also differs essentially in its main characteristics from that of the other drift deposits. There is an entire absence both of marine and fluviatile shells; the remains found in it are those of land animals and land shells alone, with traces of land plants, such remains in fact as could have been derived from a land, and from a land surface only ... Another feature to be noted, is that the bones of the Mammalia (which belong to the ordinary Quaternary group), are distinguished by their very fragmentary state and by the absence of wear, whether of the broken fragments or of the entire bones, as well as by their freedom from all traces of gnawing conditions in marked contrast with those presented by the bones of the caves, which have commonly been gnawed by predaceous animals, and with those of the fluviatile deposits which are usually more or less worn ...
Taking all these facts into consideration, the only agent which appears to me capable to have produced such results, is that of an upheaval of a submerged land following upon a wide-spread submergence. This upheaval by displacing the superincumbent body of water, would give rise, as shown in a paper by the late Mr. W. Hopkins, of Cambridge, to divergent effluent currents, which would sweep down from the higher to the lower levels the debris of the submerged surface. Such would have happened, if after a temporary submergence the land had again been upheaved, and the former levels approximately restored. (Prestwich 1894:905-906)
Prestwich discusses ossiferous fissures not only in southern Britain but also in France, Gibraltar, Corsica, Sardinia, Italy, Malta, Carniola, Istria, Dalmatia, Greece, Palestine, and North Africa.
Prestwich repeats his claim that the initial submergence was slow and gradual, but once again he fails to explain how a slow and gradual submergence of the land would have drowned so many animals of more than a dozen species (Prestwich 1894:906). His hypothesis requires that the submergence be too gradual to induce the animals to migrate to higher ground, but also too rapid to give them time to save themselves once they become aware of what is happening (Van Riper 4). Nor does Prestwich explain the mechanism which caused the land to become submerged. He never makes it clear whether he envisaged a subsidence of the land itself, or an irruption of the sea over the land due to a rise in sea-level. Today, the consensus is that the latter did actually occur, due to the melting of the ice sheets. The subsequent re-elevation of the land above sea-level is now explained in terms of post-glacial rebound—a slow elevation of the land after the huge pressure of the overlying ice sheets was removed.
Nevertheless, Prestwich aligns himself unashamedly with the Catastrophists when he rebuts the counter-arguments of the Uniformitarians in the concluding pages of his paper:
Those who hold uniformitarian views will object to the want of known precedents and to the exceptional character of the agency proposed. In this difficulty I cannot share. I must repeat what I have long contended for, that it is impossible to suppose that our very limited experience—say of 2000 years—could furnish us with standards applicable to the comparatively illimitable past. In fact, those that are relied on depend upon unstable conditions and are liable to vary with every passing century. While admitting the permanence of the laws of Nature, it is impossible, under the conditions through which this globe has passed, to suppose that at all former periods the effects, which have resulted from the operation of those laws, though equal in kind, were equal in degree. As in other similar questions, we must judge of the hypothesis not by an à priori assumption, but by the agreement of the consequences which it involves with the facts, and by the extent to which it satisfies the various conditions of the problem. (Prestwich 1894:980-981)
Prestwich concludes this paper by reaffirming the relative recentness of these events:
Another important conclusion hinges upon this question. I have before pointed out the bearing that the position of the Rubble-drift should have in limiting our estimate of the time elapsed since the close of the Glacial period. In a paper already referred to I had shown cause why that time was not to be measured by Dr. Croll’s reckoning of 80,000 years, as not being supported by the facts of geology ... on Croll’s hypothesis, Man must have remained comparatively stationary during a vastly long period ... How can we, then, believe that Man, who had showed himself thus progressive early in the Quaternary period, could towards its close have remained for say 70,000 years without further progress than that shown by Man of the early Stone period. There is certainly nothing to represent geologically that long period of time, nor have biologists been able to detect any essential structural differences between Palaeolithic Man and Neolithic Man in support of such a conclusion. All the evidence tends, on the contrary, to prove that late glacial (or post-glacial) Man, together with the great extinct Mammalia, came down approximately to within some 10,000 to 12,000 years of our own times, and that the Rubble-drift marks the stroke of the pendulum when the Glacial period came to a close, and the Neolithic age commenced. (Prestwich 1894:983-984)
The Tradition of the Flood
In 1895, Prestwich returned to the subject of the ossiferous fissures and the widespread submergence that occurred across the European and North African landmasses at the end of the last Ice Age. His final publication, which appeared just one year before his death, was entitled On Certain Phenomena Belonging to the Close of the Last Geological Period and on their Bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood. Sixteen of the twenty citations Velikovsky makes in this section are taken from this book.
In the preface of this book, Prestwich acknowledges once again the catastrophist nature of his hypothesis and even apologizes for them:
It may be thought by many of my geological friends that the hypothesis put forward involves too much catastrophic action. There is however, I consider, sufficient evidence to warrant the inferences I have drawn from the facts described, as well as reason to believe that the Tradition could not have had its origin otherwise than in an event of a very exceptional and extraordinary character—far more so than any that could have resulted from ordinary river floods. It seemed also to me impossible to account for the special geological phenomena on which the hypothesis is based by any agency of which our time has afforded us experience, so that we must judge of the cause of their origin by the results as they are now to be observed and interpreted, and not by any assumed postulates. (Prestwich 1895:vi)
As the name suggests, this work presents Prestwich’s hypothesis that the large-scale submergence of land in the post-glacial era may be the source of the traditional stories of a global Flood—particularly the Biblical and Babylonian traditions:
... a Submergence of the vast extent described would be not only in accordance with the magnitude of the recorded catastrophe, but, having also been looked upon as miraculous and in a religious aspect, would account for the deeper and more lasting impression produced on those peoples who had at the time cognisance of the disaster. Nor would it accord less well with the remoteness of the event, the dimness of the tradition, and the growth of its allegorical accompaniments. (Prestwich 1895:76)
The Last Catastrophist
Prestwich’s catastrophist credentials were clearly laid out in his short paper The Position of Geology, which first appeared in 1893 in Volume 34 of the monthly review The Nineteenth Century. Prestwich’s paper is bookended by the following comments:
The position of geology in this country at the present time, more especially as relates to the later geological periods, is anomalous and possibly without precedent. On one side its advance is barred by the doctrine of Uniformity, and on the other side by the teaching of Physicists. The former requires that everything should be regulated by a martinet measure of time and change. It asserts that the vast changes on the earth’s surface, effected during long geological periods, are to be measured by the rate at which similar but minor changes are effected in the present day, and that the agencies now modifying the surface have been alike, in every respect, in all past time. It is true that no restriction is placed on the extent of the changes, but such prolonged time is insisted on for their accomplishment as to destroy the value of the concession. Not that time is in itself a difficulty, but a time-rate, assumed on very insufficient grounds, is used as a master-key, whether or not it fits, to unravel all difficulties. What if it were suggested that the brick-built Pyramid of Hawara had been laid brick by brick by a single workman? Given time, this would not be beyond the bounds of possibility. But Nature, like the Pharaohs, had greater forces at her command to do the work better and more expeditiously than is admitted by Uniformitarians ...
... It would be an unfortunate day for any science to have free discussion and inquiry barred by assumed postulates, and not by the ordinary rules of evidence as established by the facts, however divergent the conclusions to which those facts lead may be from the prevailing belief. In any case it must be remembered that no hypothesis can be true which does not satisfy the conditions both of the geological phenomena and of the physical laws.
The foregoing remarks are intended to apply mainly to questions connected with the more recent geological periods. The older epochs have happily been treated as beyond the barriers, and consequently Geologists have there enjoyed and made good use of their greater freedom. It is to be hoped that, when the phenomena of these later periods are judged of by the evidence of facts rather than by rules, they will receive more independent interpretations—interpretations that may escape the dwarfing influence of Uniformitarianism. (Prestwich 1893:551 ... 559)
In a recent talk by the historian A Bowdoin Van Riper, in which he dispassionately reassesses the late work of Joseph Prestwich, the eminent geologist is referred to as The Last Catastrophist (Van Riper 1).
And Finally
In the 1977 Pocket Books edition of Earth in Upheaval which I am using, there are two notable misprints in this section:
Page 47, Line 37: Prestwich’s “Montagne de Santenay”—a flat-topped hill near Chalons-sur-Saône has become Mont de Sautenay—a flat-topped hill near Chalon-sur-Saône.
Page 48, Footnote 9: the second and third lines have been interchanged.
The first of these two typographical errors also occurs in the original 1955 Doubleday First Printing, so it may be Velikovsky’s misspelling, though the simplest explanation is that the original typesetter inserted an “n” upside down in the composing stick. The second typo is not present in the original edition.
And that’s a good place to stop.
References
- Hugh Chisholm (editor), The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, Eleventh Edition, Volume 22, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1911)
- Sidney Lee (editor), Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement, Volume 22, The Macmillan Company, New York (1909)
- Joseph Prestwich, The Raised Beaches, and ‘Head’ or Rubble-drift, of the South of England: Their Relation to the Valley Drifts and to the Glacial Period; and on a Late Post-Glacial Submergence, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, Volume 48, Pages 263-343, Geological Society of London, London (1892)
- Joseph Prestwich, The Position of Geology, in James Knowles (editor), The Nineteenth Century, Volume 34, Pages 551-559, Marston and Company, London (1893)
- Joseph Prestwich, On the Evidences of a Submergence of Western Europe and of the Mediterranean Coasts at the Close of the Glacial or So-called Post-Glacial Period, and Immediately Preceding the Neolithic or Recent Period, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Volume 184, Pages 903-984, The Royal Society, London (1894)
- Joseph Prestwich, On Certain Phenomena Belonging to the Close of the Last Geological Period and on their Bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood, Macmillan and Co, London (1895)
- Marcel de Serres, Note sur de Nouvelles Breches Osseuses Découvertes sur la Montagne de Pédémar dans les Environs de Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort (Gard), Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France, Volume 15, Pages 233-236, Société Géologique de France, Paris (1858)
- A Bowdoin Van Riper, The Last Catastrophist: Joseph Prestwich and the Submergence of Western Europe, History of Science Society, Pittsburgh (2003)
- Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval, Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, New York (1955, 1977)
Image Credits
- Immanuel Velikovsky: Donna Foster Roizen (photographer), © Frederic Jueneman, Creative Commons License
- Joseph Prestwich: Popular Science Monthly, Volume 52, D Appleton and Company, New York (1898), Public Domain
- Raised Beaches and Rubble Drift in Southern Britain: Joseph Prestwich, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, Volume 48, Plate VIII, Geological Society of London, London (1892), Public Domain
- Rubble-Drift at Whitesands Bay, St Davids, Wales: © Brian John (photographer), Fair Use
- Map of Europe and the Mediterranean (Prestwich 1894:Plate 33): West, Newman & Co (lithographers), Public Domain
- Ossiferous Fissure at the Cattedown Bone Caves in Devon: © The Devon Karst Research Society, Fair Use
- Gorham’s Cave Complex, Gibraltar: © Visit Gibraltar, Creative Commons License
- Creag nan Uamh Bone Caves, Scotland: © Dougie Strang, Fair Use
- Raised Beach at Prawle Point, Devon: © Edmund Shaw, Creative Commons License
- The Position of Geology: Henry Richard Hope-Pinker (sculptor), Oxford University Museum, © Pruneau (photographer), Creative Commons License
