Australia

89:5.4The taste for hu­man flesh grows. Hav­ing been started through hunger, friend­ship, re­venge, or re­li­gious rit­ual, the eat­ing of hu­man flesh goes on to ha­bit­ual can­ni­bal­ism. Man-eat­ing has arisen through food scarcity, though this has sel­dom been the un­der­ly­ing rea­son. The Es­ki­mos and early An­don­ites, how­ever, sel­dom were can­ni­bal­is­tic ex­cept in times of famine. The red men, es­pe­cially in Cen­tral Amer­ica, were can­ni­bals. It was once a gen­eral prac­tice for prim­i­tive moth­ers to kill and eat their own chil­dren in or­der to re­new the strength lost in child­bear­ing, and in Queens­land the first child is still fre­quently thus killed and de­voured. In re­cent times can­ni­bal­ism has been de­lib­er­ately re­sorted to by many African tribes as a war mea­sure, a sort of fright­ful­ness with which to ter­ror­ize their neigh­bors.

59:1.15370,000,000 years ago the great and al­most to­tal sub­mer­gence of North and South Amer­ica oc­curred, fol­lowed by the sink­ing of Africa and Aus­tralia. Only cer­tain parts of North Amer­ica re­mained above these shal­low Cam­brian seas. Five mil­lion years later the seas were re­treat­ing be­fore the ris­ing land. And all of these phe­nom­ena of land sink­ing and land ris­ing were un­dra­matic, tak­ing place slowly over mil­lions of years.

59:1.17360,000,000 years ago the land was still ris­ing. North and South Amer­ica were well up. West­ern Eu­rope and the British Isles were emerg­ing, ex­cept parts of Wales, which were deeply sub­merged. There were no great ice sheets dur­ing these ages. The sup­posed glacial de­posits ap­pear­ing in con­nec­tion with these strata in Eu­rope, Africa, China, and Aus­tralia are due to iso­lated moun­tain glaciers or to the dis­place­ment of glacial de­bris of later ori­gin. The world cli­mate was oceanic, not con­ti­nen­tal. The south­ern seas were warmer then than now, and they ex­tended north­ward over North Amer­ica up to the po­lar re­gions. The Gulf Stream coursed over the cen­tral por­tion of North Amer­ica, be­ing de­flected east­ward to bathe and warm the shores of Green­land, mak­ing that now ice-man­tled con­ti­nent a ver­i­ta­ble tropic par­a­dise.

59:2.3340,000,000 years ago there oc­curred an­other ex­ten­sive land sink­ing ex­cept in Asia and Aus­tralia. The wa­ters of the world’s oceans were gen­er­ally com­min­gled. This was a great lime­stone age, much of its stone be­ing laid down by lime-se­cret­ing al­gae.

59:3.9280,000,000 years ago the con­ti­nents had largely emerged from the sec­ond Sil­urian in­un­da­tion. The rock de­posits of this sub­mer­gence are known in North Amer­ica as Ni­a­gara lime­stone be­cause this is the stra­tum of rock over which Ni­a­gara Falls now flows. This layer of rock ex­tends from the east­ern moun­tains to the Mis­sis­sippi val­ley re­gion but not far­ther west ex­cept to the south. Sev­eral lay­ers ex­tend over Canada, por­tions of South Amer­ica, Aus­tralia, and most of Eu­rope, the av­er­age thick­ness of this Ni­a­gara se­ries be­ing about six hun­dred feet. Im­me­di­ately over­ly­ing the Ni­a­gara de­posit, in many re­gions may be found a col­lec­tion of con­glom­er­ate, shale, and rock salt. This is the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of sec­ondary sub­si­dences. This salt set­tled in great la­goons which were al­ter­nately opened up to the sea and then cut off so that evap­o­ra­tion oc­curred with de­po­si­tion of salt along with other mat­ter held in so­lu­tion. In some re­gions these rock salt beds are sev­enty feet thick.

59:4.5Five mil­lion years later the land ar­eas of North and South Amer­ica, Eu­rope, Africa, north­ern Asia, and Aus­tralia were briefly in­un­dated, in North Amer­ica the sub­mer­gence at one time or an­other be­ing al­most com­plete; and the re­sult­ing lime­stone lay­ers run from 500 to 5,000 feet in thick­ness. These var­i­ous De­vo­nian seas ex­tended first in one di­rec­tion and then in an­other so that the im­mense arc­tic North Amer­i­can in­land sea found an out­let to the Pa­cific Ocean through north­ern Cal­i­for­nia.

59:4.7Fol­low­ing these sub­mer­gences, many of the shore lines were con­sid­er­ably el­e­vated so that the ear­lier de­posits were cov­ered by mud or shale. There is also a red sand­stone stra­tum which char­ac­ter­izes one of the De­vo­nian sed­i­men­ta­tions, and this red layer ex­tends over much of the earth’s sur­face, be­ing found in North and South Amer­ica, Eu­rope, Rus­sia, China, Africa, and Aus­tralia. Such red de­posits are sug­ges­tive of arid or semi­arid con­di­tions, but the cli­mate of this epoch was still mild and even.

59:5.4210,000,000 years ago the warm-wa­ter arc­tic seas cov­ered most of North Amer­ica and Eu­rope. The south po­lar wa­ters in­un­dated South Amer­ica and Aus­tralia, while both Africa and Asia were highly el­e­vated.

60:1.4Over Eu­rope, es­pe­cially Ger­many and Rus­sia, may be found de­posits of this pe­riod. In Eng­land the New Red Sand­stone be­longs to this epoch. Lime­stone was laid down in the south­ern Alps as the re­sult of a sea in­va­sion and may now be seen as the pe­cu­liar dolomite lime­stone walls, peaks, and pil­lars of those re­gions. This layer is to be found all over Africa and Aus­tralia. The Car­rara mar­ble comes from such mod­i­fied lime­stone. Noth­ing of this pe­riod will be found in the south­ern re­gions of South Amer­ica as that part of the con­ti­nent re­mained down and hence pre­sents only a wa­ter or ma­rine de­posit con­tin­u­ous with the pre­ced­ing and suc­ceed­ing epochs.

60:3.1665,000,000 years ago there oc­curred one of the great­est lava flows of all time. The de­po­si­tion lay­ers of these and pre­ced­ing lava flows are to be found all over the Amer­i­cas, North and South Africa, Aus­tralia, and parts of Eu­rope.

61:1.13Con­sid­er­able foraminiferal lime­stone was de­posited in Eu­ro­pean wa­ters. To­day this same stone is el­e­vated to a height of 10,000 feet in the Alps, 16,000 feet in the Hi­malayas, and 20,000 feet in Ti­bet. The chalk de­posits of this pe­riod are found along the coasts of Africa and Aus­tralia, on the west coast of South Amer­ica, and about the West In­dies.

61:1.14Through­out this so-called Eocene pe­riod the evo­lu­tion of mam­malian and other re­lated forms of life con­tin­ued with lit­tle or no in­ter­rup­tion. North Amer­ica was then con­nected by land with ev­ery con­ti­nent ex­cept Aus­tralia, and the world was grad­u­ally over­run by prim­i­tive mam­malian fauna of var­i­ous types.

61:2.335,000,000 years ago marks the be­gin­ning of the age of pla­cen­tal-mam­malian world dom­i­na­tion. The south­ern land bridge was ex­ten­sive, re­con­nect­ing the then enor­mous Antarc­tic con­ti­nent with South Amer­ica, South Africa, and Aus­tralia. In spite of the mass­ing of land in high lat­i­tudes, the world cli­mate re­mained rel­a­tively mild be­cause of the enor­mous in­crease in the size of the tropic seas, nor was the land el­e­vated suf­fi­ciently to pro­duce glaciers. Ex­ten­sive lava flows oc­curred in Green­land and Ice­land, some coal be­ing de­posited be­tween these lay­ers.

61:4.3For a short time all the land of the world was again joined ex­cept­ing Aus­tralia, and the last great world-wide an­i­mal mi­gra­tion took place. North Amer­ica was con­nected with both South Amer­ica and Asia, and there was a free ex­change of an­i­mal life. Asi­atic sloths, ar­madil­los, an­telopes, and bears en­tered North Amer­ica, while North Amer­i­can camels went to China. Rhinoceroses mi­grated over the whole world ex­cept Aus­tralia and South Amer­ica, but they were ex­tinct in the West­ern Hemi­sphere by the close of this pe­riod.

61:5.3The great ice sheets of this pe­riod were all lo­cated on el­e­vated high­lands, not in moun­tain­ous re­gions where they are found to­day. One half of the glacial ice was in North Amer­ica, one fourth in Eura­sia, and one fourth else­where, chiefly in Antarc­tica. Africa was lit­tle af­fected by the ice, but Aus­tralia was al­most cov­ered with the antarc­tic ice blan­ket.

61:1.945,000,000 years ago the con­ti­nen­tal back­bones were el­e­vated in as­so­ci­a­tion with a very gen­eral sink­ing of the coast lines. Mam­malian life was evolv­ing rapidly. A small rep­til­ian, egg-lay­ing type of mam­mal flour­ished, and the an­ces­tors of the later kan­ga­roos roamed Aus­tralia. Soon there were small horses, fleet-footed rhinoceroses, tapirs with pro­boscises, prim­i­tive pigs, squir­rels, lemurs, opos­sums, and sev­eral tribes of mon­key­like an­i­mals. They were all small, prim­i­tive, and best suited to liv­ing among the forests of the moun­tain re­gions. A large os­trich­like land bird de­vel­oped to a height of ten feet and laid an egg nine by thir­teen inches. These were the an­ces­tors of the later gi­gan­tic pas­sen­ger birds that were so highly in­tel­li­gent, and that one­time trans­ported hu­man be­ings through the air.

64:1.5Dur­ing most of the ice age Eng­land was con­nected by land with France, while later on Africa was joined to Eu­rope by the Si­cil­ian land bridge. At the time of the An­donic mi­gra­tions there was a con­tin­u­ous land path from Eng­land in the west on through Eu­rope and Asia to Java in the east; but Aus­tralia was again iso­lated, which fur­ther ac­cen­tu­ated the de­vel­op­ment of its own pe­cu­liar fauna.

60:2.2The largest of the di­no­saurs orig­i­nated in west­ern North Amer­ica. These mon­strous rep­tiles are buried through­out the Rocky Moun­tain re­gions, along the whole of the At­lantic coast of North Amer­ica, over west­ern Eu­rope, South Africa, and In­dia, but not in Aus­tralia.

61:3.6The huge ele­phants of this and sub­se­quent pe­ri­ods pos­sessed large brains as well as large bod­ies, and they soon over­ran the en­tire world ex­cept Aus­tralia. For once the world was dom­i­nated by a huge an­i­mal with a brain suf­fi­ciently large to en­able it to carry on. Con­fronted by the highly in­tel­li­gent life of these ages, no an­i­mal the size of an ele­phant could have sur­vived un­less it had pos­sessed a brain of large size and su­pe­rior qual­ity. In in­tel­li­gence and adap­ta­tion the ele­phant is ap­proached only by the horse and is sur­passed only by man him­self. Even so, of the fifty species of ele­phants in ex­is­tence at the open­ing of this pe­riod, only two have sur­vived.

61:4.4In gen­eral, the life of the pre­ced­ing pe­riod con­tin­ued to evolve and spread. The cat fam­ily dom­i­nated the an­i­mal life, and ma­rine life was al­most at a stand­still. Many of the horses were still three-toed, but the mod­ern types were ar­riv­ing; lla­mas and gi­raf­fe­like camels min­gled with the horses on the graz­ing plains. The gi­raffe ap­peared in Africa, hav­ing just as long a neck then as now. In South Amer­ica sloths, ar­madil­los, anteaters, and the South Amer­i­can type of prim­i­tive mon­keys evolved. Be­fore the con­ti­nents were fi­nally iso­lated, those mas­sive an­i­mals, the mastodons, mi­grated ev­ery­where ex­cept to Aus­tralia.

57:8.21The in­creas­ing down­thrust of the Pa­cific Ocean op­er­ated fur­ther to up­thrust the con­ti­nen­tal land mass. Eu­rope and Africa be­gan to rise out of the Pa­cific depths along with those masses now called Aus­tralia, North and South Amer­ica, and the con­ti­nent of Antarc­tica, while the bed of the Pa­cific Ocean en­gaged in a fur­ther com­pen­satory sink­ing ad­just­ment. By the end of this pe­riod al­most one third of the earth’s sur­face con­sisted of land, all in one con­ti­nen­tal body.

58:4.3500,000,000 years ago prim­i­tive ma­rine veg­etable life was well es­tab­lished on Uran­tia. Green­land and the arc­tic land mass, to­gether with North and South Amer­ica, were be­gin­ning their long and slow west­ward drift. Africa moved slightly south, cre­at­ing an east and west trough, the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin, be­tween it­self and the mother body. Antarc­tica, Aus­tralia, and the land in­di­cated by the is­lands of the Pa­cific broke away on the south and east and have drifted far away since that day.