rocks and minerals

61:7.1Through­out the glacial pe­riod other ac­tiv­i­ties were in prog­ress, but the ac­tion of the ice over­shad­ows all other phe­nom­ena in the north­ern lat­i­tudes. No other ter­res­trial ac­tiv­ity leaves such char­ac­ter­is­tic ev­i­dence on the to­pog­ra­phy. The dis­tinc­tive boul­ders and sur­face cleav­ages, such as pot­holes, lakes, dis­placed stone, and rock flour, are to be found in con­nec­tion with no other phe­nom­e­non in na­ture. The ice is also re­spon­si­ble for those gen­tle swells, or sur­face un­du­la­tions, known as drum­lins. And a glacier, as it ad­vances, dis­places rivers and changes the whole face of the earth. Glaciers alone leave be­hind them those tell­tale drifts—the ground, lat­eral, and ter­mi­nal moraines. These drifts, par­tic­u­larly the ground moraines, ex­tend from the east­ern seaboard north and west­ward in North Amer­ica and are found in Eu­rope and Siberia.

60:3.1470,000,000 years ago the crustal dis­tor­tions con­nected with the max­i­mum el­e­va­tion of the Rocky Moun­tain re­gion took place. A large seg­ment of rock was over­thrust fif­teen miles at the sur­face in British Columbia; here the Cam­brian rocks are obliquely thrust out over the Cre­ta­ceous lay­ers. On the east­ern slope of the Rocky Moun­tains, near the Cana­dian bor­der, there was an­other spec­tac­u­lar over­thrust; here may be found the pre­life stone lay­ers shoved out over the then re­cent Cre­ta­ceous de­posits.

98:5.3The Mith­raic cult por­trayed a mil­i­tant god tak­ing ori­gin in a great rock, en­gag­ing in valiant ex­ploits, and caus­ing wa­ter to gush forth from a rock struck with his ar­rows. There was a flood from which one man es­caped in a spe­cially built boat and a last sup­per which Mithras cel­e­brated with the sun-god be­fore he as­cended into the heav­ens. This sun-god, or Sol In­vic­tus, was a de­gen­er­a­tion of the Ahura-Mazda de­ity con­cept of Zoroas­tri­an­ism. Mithras was con­ceived as the sur­viv­ing cham­pion of the sun-god in his strug­gle with the god of dark­ness. And in rec­og­ni­tion of his slay­ing the myth­i­cal sa­cred bull, Mithras was made im­mor­tal, be­ing ex­alted to the sta­tion of in­ter­ces­sor for the hu­man race among the gods on high.

57:8.11This en­tire age was char­ac­ter­ized by fre­quent and vi­o­lent storms. The early crust of the earth was in a state of con­tin­ual flux. Sur­face cool­ing al­ter­nated with im­mense lava flows. Nowhere can there be found on the sur­face of the world any­thing of this orig­i­nal plan­e­tary crust. It has all been mixed up too many times with ex­trud­ing lavas of deep ori­gins and ad­mixed with sub­se­quent de­posits of the early world-wide ocean.

58:7.1The vast group of rock sys­tems which con­sti­tuted the outer crust of the world dur­ing the life-dawn or Pro­tero­zoic era does not now ap­pear at many points on the earth’s sur­face. And when it does emerge from be­low all the ac­cu­mu­la­tions of sub­se­quent ages, there will be found only the fos­sil re­mains of veg­etable and early prim­i­tive an­i­mal life. Some of these older wa­ter-de­posited rocks are com­min­gled with sub­se­quent lay­ers, and some­times they yield fos­sil re­mains of some of the ear­lier forms of veg­etable life, while on the top­most lay­ers oc­ca­sion­ally may be found some of the more prim­i­tive forms of the early ma­rine-an­i­mal or­gan­isms. In many places these old­est strat­i­fied rock lay­ers, bear­ing the fos­sils of the early ma­rine life, both an­i­mal and veg­etable, may be found di­rectly on top of the older un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated stone.

58:7.6This stone layer, the old­est fos­sil-bear­ing stra­tum in the crust of the earth, has been crum­pled, folded, and grotesquely twisted as a re­sult of the up­heavals of earth­quakes and the early vol­ca­noes. The lava flows of this age brought much iron, cop­per, and lead up near the plan­e­tary sur­face.