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British Isles

21 paragraphs · about 7 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under British Isles, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

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.

59:3.6The great vol­canic ac­tiv­ity of this age was in the Eu­ro­pean sec­tor. Not in mil­lions upon mil­lions of years had such vi­o­lent and ex­ten­sive vol­canic erup­tions oc­curred as now took place around the Med­i­ter­ra­nean trough and es­pe­cially in the neigh­bor­hood of the British Isles. This lava flow over the British Isles re­gion to­day ap­pears as al­ter­nate lay­ers of lava and rock 25,000 feet thick. These rocks were laid down by the in­ter­mit­tent lava flows which spread out over a shal­low sea bed, thus in­ter­spers­ing the rock de­posits, and all of this was sub­se­quently el­e­vated high above the sea. Vi­o­lent earth­quakes took place in north­ern Eu­rope, no­tably in Scot­land.

59:4.8Through­out all of this pe­riod the land south­east of the Cincin­nati Is­land re­mained well above wa­ter. But very much of west­ern Eu­rope, in­clud­ing the British Isles, was sub­merged. In Wales, Ger­many, and other places in Eu­rope the De­vo­nian rocks are 20,000 feet thick.

59:5.12This epoch wit­nessed the be­gin­ning of the Vos­ges, Black For­est, and Ural moun­tains. Stumps of other and older moun­tains are to be found all over Great Britain and Eu­rope.

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.

61:4.210,000,000 years ago be­gan an age of wide­spread lo­cal land de­posits on the low­lands of the con­ti­nents, but most of these sed­i­men­ta­tions were later re­moved. Much of Eu­rope, at this time, was still un­der wa­ter, in­clud­ing parts of Eng­land, Bel­gium, and France, and the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea cov­ered much of north­ern Africa. In North Amer­ica ex­ten­sive de­po­si­tions were made at the moun­tain bases, in lakes, and in the great land basins. These de­posits av­er­age only about two hun­dred feet, are more or less col­ored, and fos­sils are rare. Two great fresh-wa­ter lakes ex­isted in west­ern North Amer­ica. The Sier­ras were el­e­vat­ing; Shasta, Hood, and Rainier were be­gin­ning their moun­tain ca­reers. But it was not un­til the sub­se­quent ice age that North Amer­ica be­gan its creep to­ward the At­lantic de­pres­sion.

61:5.4The north­ern re­gions of this world have ex­pe­ri­enced six sep­a­rate and dis­tinct ice in­va­sions, al­though there were scores of ad­vances and re­ces­sions as­so­ci­ated with the ac­tiv­ity of each in­di­vid­ual ice sheet. The ice in North Amer­ica col­lected in two and, later, three cen­ters. Green­land was cov­ered, and Ice­land was com­pletely buried be­neath the ice flow. In Eu­rope the ice at var­i­ous times cov­ered the British Isles ex­cept­ing the coast of south­ern Eng­land, and it over­spread west­ern Eu­rope down to France.

63:5.2Be­fore this ex­ten­sive ice sheet reached France and the British Isles, the de­scen­dants of An­don and Fonta had pushed on west­ward over Eu­rope and had es­tab­lished more than one thou­sand sep­a­rate set­tle­ments along the great rivers lead­ing to the then warm wa­ters of the North Sea.

63:5.3These An­donic tribes were the early river dwellers of France; they lived along the river Somme for tens of thou­sands of years. The Somme is the one river un­changed by the glaciers, run­ning down to the sea in those days much as it does to­day. And that ex­plains why so much ev­i­dence of the An­donic de­scen­dants is found along the course of this river val­ley.

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.

64:1.6950,000 years ago the de­scen­dants of An­don and Fonta had mi­grated far to the east and to the west. To the west they passed over Eu­rope to France and Eng­land. In later times they pen­e­trated east­ward as far as Java, where their bones were so re­cently found—the so-called Java man—and then jour­neyed on to Tas­ma­nia.

64:2.4Dur­ing this long pe­riod of cul­tural deca­dence the Fox­hall peo­ples of Eng­land and the Bado­nan tribes north­west of In­dia con­tin­ued to hold on to some of the tra­di­tions of An­don and cer­tain rem­nants of the cul­ture of On­a­gar.

64:2.5The Fox­hall peo­ples were far­thest west and suc­ceeded in re­tain­ing much of the An­donic cul­ture; they also pre­served their knowl­edge of flint­work­ing, which they trans­mit­ted to their de­scen­dants, the an­cient an­ces­tors of the Es­ki­mos.

64:2.6Though the re­mains of the Fox­hall peo­ples were the last to be dis­cov­ered in Eng­land, these An­don­ites were re­ally the first hu­man be­ings to live in those re­gions. At that time the land bridge still con­nected France with Eng­land; and since most of the early set­tle­ments of the An­don de­scen­dants were lo­cated along the rivers and seashores of that early day, they are now un­der the wa­ters of the En­glish Chan­nel and the North Sea, but some three or four are still above wa­ter on the En­glish coast.

64:7.17Dur­ing the pe­ri­ods of far­thest glacial ad­vance the west­ern­most of the An­don tribes came very near be­ing driven into the sea. They lived for years on a nar­row south­ern strip of the pres­ent is­land of Eng­land. And it was the tra­di­tion of these re­peated glacial ad­vances that drove them to take to the sea when the sixth and last glacier fi­nally ap­peared. They were the first ma­rine ad­ven­tur­ers. They built boats and started in search of new lands which they hoped might be free from the ter­ri­fy­ing ice in­va­sions. And some of them reached Ice­land, oth­ers Green­land, but the vast ma­jor­ity per­ished from hunger and thirst on the open sea.

80:2.4About the time of these cli­matic changes in Africa, Eng­land sep­a­rated from the con­ti­nent, and Den­mark arose from the sea, while the isth­mus of Gibral­tar, pro­tect­ing the west­ern basin of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, gave way as the re­sult of an earth­quake, quickly rais­ing this in­land lake to the level of the At­lantic Ocean. Pres­ently the Si­cil­ian land bridge sub­merged, cre­at­ing one sea of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean and con­nect­ing it with the At­lantic Ocean. This cat­a­clysm of na­ture flooded scores of hu­man set­tle­ments and oc­ca­sioned the great­est loss of life by flood in all the world’s his­tory.

80:5.8By 5000 B.C. the evolv­ing white races were dom­i­nant through­out all of north­ern Eu­rope, in­clud­ing north­ern Ger­many, north­ern France, and the British Isles. Cen­tral Eu­rope was for some time con­trolled by the blue man and the round-headed An­don­ites. The lat­ter were mainly sit­u­ated in the Danube val­ley and were never en­tirely dis­placed by the And­ites.

92:6.20An­ces­tor wor­ship one­time con­sti­tuted a de­cided ad­vance in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion, but it is both amaz­ing and re­gret­table that this prim­i­tive con­cept per­sists in China, Japan, and In­dia amidst so much that is rel­a­tively more ad­vanced, such as Bud­dhism and Hin­duism. In the Oc­ci­dent, an­ces­tor wor­ship de­vel­oped into the ven­er­a­tion of na­tional gods and re­spect for racial heroes. In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury this hero-ven­er­at­ing na­tion­al­is­tic re­li­gion makes its ap­pear­ance in the var­i­ous rad­i­cal and na­tion­al­is­tic sec­u­larisms which char­ac­ter­ize many races and na­tions of the Oc­ci­dent. Much of this same at­ti­tude is also found in the great uni­ver­si­ties and the larger in­dus­trial com­mu­ni­ties of the En­glish-speak­ing peo­ples. Not very dif­fer­ent from these con­cepts is the idea that re­li­gion is but “a shared quest of the good life.” The “na­tional re­li­gions” are noth­ing more than a re­ver­sion to the early Ro­man em­peror wor­ship and to Shinto—wor­ship of the state in the im­pe­rial fam­ily.

93:7.2The de­scen­dants of Adam­son, clus­tered about the shores of the lake of Van, were will­ing lis­ten­ers to the Hit­tite teach­ers of the Salem cult. From this one­time And­ite cen­ter, teach­ers were dis­patched to the re­mote re­gions of both Eu­rope and Asia. Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated all Eu­rope, even to the British Isles. One group went by way of the Faroes to the An­don­ites of Ice­land, while an­other tra­versed China and reached the Japanese of the east­ern is­lands. The lives and ex­pe­ri­ences of the men and women who ven­tured forth from Salem, Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and Lake Van to en­lighten the tribes of the East­ern Hemi­sphere pre­sent a heroic chap­ter in the an­nals of the hu­man race.

133:4.10To the trav­eler from Britain he said: “My brother, I per­ceive you are seek­ing for truth, and I sug­gest that the spirit of the Fa­ther of all truth may chance to dwell within you. Did you ever sin­cerely en­deavor to talk with the spirit of your own soul? Such a thing is in­deed dif­fi­cult and sel­dom yields con­scious­ness of suc­cess; but ev­ery hon­est at­tempt of the ma­te­rial mind to com­mu­ni­cate with its in­dwelling spirit meets with cer­tain suc­cess, not­with­stand­ing that the ma­jor­ity of all such mag­nif­i­cent hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences must long re­main as super­con­scious reg­is­tra­tions in the souls of such God-know­ing mor­tals.”

134:6.3There shall be wars and ru­mors of wars—na­tion will rise against na­tion—just as long as the world’s po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is di­vided up and un­justly held by a group of na­tion-states. Eng­land, Scot­land, and Wales were al­ways fight­ing each other un­til they gave up their re­spec­tive sovereign­ties, repos­ing them in the United King­dom.

Onward

Cited alongside: France, Europe, land bridges, Africa, English Channel land bridge, Germany, Greenland, ice ages