Man and the Glacial Period

Now, it is well known that the earth and the solar system in their onward progress pass through trains of meteorites. The tails of some of the comets are indeed pretty clearly proved to be streams of ponderable matter, through which, from time to time, the minor members of the solar system plunge, and receive some accession to their bulk and weight. The shooting-stars, which occasionally attract our attention in the sky, mark the course of such meteorites as they pass through the earth’s atmosphere, and are heated to a glow by the friction with it. It has been suggested, therefore, that the sun itself may at times have its amount of heat sensibly affected by such showers of meteorites or asteroids. Upon this theory the warm period of the Tertiary epoch, for instance, may have been due to the heat temporarily added to the sun by impact with minor astronomical bodies. When, afterwards, it gradually cooled down, receiving through a long period no more accessions of heat from that source, the way was prepared for the colder epoch of the Glacial period, which, in turn, was dispelled by fresh showers of meteorites upon the sun, sufficient to produce the amelioration of climate which we experience at the present time.

As intimated, this theory is closely allied to the preceding, the principal difference being that it limits the effects of the supposed cause to the solar system, and looks to our sun as the varying source of heat-supply. It has the advantage over that, however, of possessing a more tangible vera causa. Meteorites, asteroids, and comets are known to be within this system, and have occasional collisions with other members of it. But the principal objection urged against the preceding theory applies here, also, with equal force. The accumulations of ice during the Glacial period were not determined by latitude. In North America the centre of accumulation was south of the Arctic Circle—a fact which points clearly enough to some other cause than that of a general lowering of the temperature exterior to the earth.

The same objections would bear against the theory ably set forth by Mr. Sereno E. Bishop, of Honolulu, which, in substance, is that there may be considerable variability in the sun’s emission of heat, owing to fluctuations in the rate of the shrinkage of its diameter, brought about by the unequal struggle between the diminishing amount of heat in the interior and the increasing force of the gravitation of its particles, and by the changes in the enveloping atmosphere of the sun, which, like an enswathing blanket, arrests a large portion of the radiant heat from the nucleus, and is itself evidently subject to violent movements, some of which seem to carry it down to the sun’s interior. Unknown electrical forces, he thinks, may also combine to add an element of variability. These supposed changes may be compared to those which take place upon the surface of the earth when, at irregular intervals, immense sheets of lava, like those upon the Pacific coast of North America, are exuded in a comparatively brief time, to be succeeded by a long period of rest. The heat thus brought to the surface of the earth would add perceptibly to that radiated from it into space in ordinary times. Something similar to this upon the sun, it is thought, might produce effects perceptible upon the earth, and account for alternate periods of heat and cold.

A fourth astronomical theory is that there has been a shifting of the earth’s axis; that at the time of the Glacial period the north pole, instead of being where it now is, was somewhere in the region of central Greenland. This attractive theory has been thought worthy of attention by President T. C. Chamberlin and by Professor G. C. Comstock,[DS] but it likewise labours under a twofold difficulty: First, the shifting of the poles observed (450 feet per year) is too slight to have produced the changes within any reasonable time, and it is not likely to have been continuous for a long period. But still more fatal to the theory is the fact that the warm climate preceding the Glacial period seems to have extended towards the present north pole upon every side; a temperate flora having been found in the fossil plants of the Tertiary beds in Greenland and northern British America, as well as upon Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen.

A fifth astronomical theory, and one which has of late years been received with great favour, is that so ably advocated by the late Dr. James Croll and by Professor James Geikie. Following the suggestions of the astronomer Adhémar, these writers have attempted to show that not only one Glacial epoch, but a succession of such epochs, has been produced in the world by the effect of the changes which are known to have taken place in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit when combined with the precession of the equinoxes—another calculable astronomical cause.

It is well known that the earth’s orbit is elliptical; that is, it is longer in one direction than in the other, so that the sun is one side of the centre. During the winter of the northern hemisphere the earth is now about three million miles nearer the sun than in the summer; but the summer makes up for this distance by being about seven days longer than the winter. Through the precession of the equinoxes this state of things will be reversed in ten thousand five hundred years; at which time we shall be nearer the sun during our northern summer, and farther away in winter, our winter then being also longer than our summer. Besides, through the unequal attraction of the planets the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit periodically increases and diminishes, so that there have been periods when the earth was ten million five hundred thousand miles farther from the sun in winter than in summer; at which times, also, the winter was nearly twenty-eight days longer than the summer. Such an extreme elongation of the earth’s orbit occurred about two hundred and fifty thousand years ago.

It is easy to assume that such a change in astronomical conditions would produce great effects upon the earth’s climate; and equally easy to connect with those effects the vast extension of ice during the Glacial period. Since, also, this period of extreme eccentricity terminated only eighty thousand years ago, the close of the Glacial period would, perhaps, upon Mr. Croll’s theory, be comparatively a recent event; for if the secular summer of the earth’s eccentricity lags relatively as far behind the secular movements as the annual summer does behind the vernal equinox, we should, as Professor Charles H. Hitchcock suggests, have to place the complete breaking up of the Ice period as late as forty thousand years ago.[DT]

We have no space to indicate, as it deserves, the comparative merits and demerits of this ingenious theory. It would, however, be a great calamity to have geologists accept it without scrutiny. It is, indeed, a part of the business of geologists to doubt such theories until they are verified by a thorough examination of all accessible terrestrial evidence bearing upon the subject. There is no reason to question the reality of the variations in the relative positions of the earth and the sun assumed by Mr. Croll; though there may be serious doubt whether the effects of those changes upon climate would be all that is surmised, since equal amounts of heat would fall upon the earth during summer, whether made longer or shorter by the cause referred to. During the short summers the earth is so much nearer the sun that it receives each season absolutely as much heat as it does during the longer summers, when it is so much farther away from the sun. Thus the theory rests at last upon the question what would become of the heat reaching the earth in these differing conditions. It is plausibly urged by Mr. Croll that when a hemisphere of the earth is passing through a period of long winters the radiation of heat will be so excessive that the temperature would fall much below what it would during the shorter winters; and so ice and snow would accumulate far beyond the usual amount. It is also supposed that the effect of the summer’s sun in melting the ice during the short summer would be diminished through natural increase of the amount of foggy and cloudy weather.

Adhémar’s theory is supposed by Sir Robert Ball, Royal Astronomer of Ireland, to be considerably re-enforced by a discovery which he has made concerning the distribution of heat upon the earth during the seasons culminating in the summer and winter solstices. Croll had assumed, on the authority of Herschel, that a hemisphere of the earth during the longer winter in aphelion would receive the same actual amount of heat which would fall upon it during the shorter summer in perihelion; whereas, according to Dr. Ball’s discovery, “of the total amount of heat received from the sun on a hemisphere of the earth in the course of a year, sixty-three per cent is received during the summer and thirty-seven per cent during the winter.”[DU] When, therefore, the summers occur in perihelion the heat is more intense than Croll had supposed, and, at the same time, the winters occurring in aphelion are more deficient in heat than he had assumed. This discovery of Dr. Ball will not, however, materially affect the discussion of Croll’s theory upon its inherent merits, since it is simply an intensification of the causes invoked by him. We will therefore let it stand or fall in the light of the general considerations hereafter to be adduced.

The aid of theoretical consequent changes in the volume of the Gulf Stream, and in the area of the trade-winds, has also to be invoked by Mr. Croll. The theory likewise receives supposed confirmation from facts alleged concerning the present climate of the southern hemisphere which is passing through the astronomical conditions thought to be favourable to its glaciation. The antarctic continent is completely enveloped in ice, even down to the sixty-seventh degree of latitude. A few degrees nearer the pole Sir J. C. Boss describes the ice as rising from the water in a precipitous wall one hundred and eighty feet high. In front of such a wall, and nearly twenty degrees from the south pole, this navigator sailed four hundred and fifty miles! Voyagers, in general, are said to agree that the summers of the antarctic zone are much more foggy and cold than they are in corresponding latitudes in the northern hemisphere; and this, even though the sun is 3,000,000 miles nearer the earth during the southern summer than it is during the northern.

Another direction from which evidence is invoked in confirmation of Mr. Croll’s theory is the geological indications of successive Glacial epochs in times past. If there be a recurring astronomical cause sufficient of itself to produce Glacial periods, such periods should recur as often as the cause exists; but glaciation upon the scale of that which immediately preceded the historic era could hardly have occurred in early geological time without leaving marks which geologists would have discovered. Were the “till” now covering the glaciated region to be converted into rock, its character would be unmistakable, and the deposit is so extensive that it could not escape notice.

In his inaugural address before the British Association in 1880, Professor Ramsey, Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, presented a formidable list of glacial observations in connection with rocks of a remote age.[DV] Beginning at the earliest date, he cites Professor Archibald Geikie, one of the most competent judges, as confident that the rounded knobs and knolls of Laurentian rocks exposed over a large region in northwestern Scotland, together with vast beds of coarse, angular, unstratified conglomerates, are unquestionable evidences of glacial action at that early period. Masses of similar conglomerates, resembling consolidated glacial boulder-beds, occur also in the Lower Silurian formation at Corswall, England. In Dunbar, Scotland, Professor Forbes also found, in formations of but little later age than the Coal period, “brecciated conglomerates, consisting of pebbles and large blocks of stone, generally angular, embedded in a marly paste, in which some of the pebbles are as well scratched as those found in medial moraines.” In formations of corresponding antiquity the geologists of India have found similar boulder-beds, in which some of the blocks are polished and striated.

Still, this evidence is less abundant than we should expect, if there had been the repeated Glacial epochs supposed by Mr. Croll’s astronomical theory; and it is by no means impossible that the conglomerates of scratched stones described by Professor Ramsey in Great Britain, and by Messrs. Blandford and Medlicott in India, may have resulted from local glaciers coming down from mountain-chains which have been since removed by erosion or subsidence. We are not aware that any incontestable evidence has been presented in America of any glaciation previous to that of the Glacial period.

Upon close consideration, also, it appears that Mr. Croll’s theory has not properly taken into account the anomalous distribution of heat which we actually find to take place on the surface of the earth. He has done good service in showing what an enormous transfer of heat there is from the southern to the northern Atlantic by means of the Gulf Stream, estimating that the heat conveyed by the Gulf Stream into the Atlantic Ocean is equal to one fifth of all possessed by the waters of the North Atlantic; or to the heat received from the sun upon a million and a half square miles at the equator, or two million square miles in the temperate zone. “The stoppage of the Gulf Stream would deprive the Atlantic of 77,479,650,000,000,000,000 foot-pounds of energy in the form of heat per day.”

Among the objections which bear against this ingenious theory is one which will appear with great force when we come to discuss the date of the Glacial period, when we shall show that even Professor Hitchcock’s supposition that the lingering effects of the last great eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, continued down to forty thousand years ago, is not sufficient to account for the recentness of the close of the period as shown by abundant geological evidence. It is certainly not more than ten or fifteen thousand years ago that the ice finally melted off from the Laurentian highlands; while on the Pacific coast the period of glaciation was still more recent.

From inspection of the accompanying map the main point of Mr. Croll’s reasoning may be understood. It will be seen that the direction of the currents in the central Atlantic is largely determined by the contour of the northeastern coast of South America. From some cause the southeast trade-winds are stronger than the northeast, and their force is felt in pushing the superficial currents of warm water farther north than Cape St. Roque, the eastern extremity of Brazil. As the direction of the South American coast trends rapidly westward from this point to the Isthmus of Panama, the resultant of the forces is a strong current northwestward into the cul-de-sac of the Gulf of Mexico, from which there is only the one outlet between Cuba and the peninsula of Florida. Through this the warm water is forced into the region where westerly winds prevail, and spreads its genial influence far to the northward, modifying the climate of the British Isles, and even of far-off Norway.

But why are the southeast trade-winds of the Atlantic stronger than the northeast? The ultimate reason, of course, is to be found in the fact that the northern hemisphere is warmer than the southern. The atmosphere over the northern-central portion of the Atlantic region is more thoroughly rarefied by the sun’s heat than is that over the region south of the equator. The strong southeast trades are simply the rush of atmosphere from the South Atlantic to fill the vacuum caused by the heat of the sun north of the equator.

But, again, why is this? Because, says Mr. Croll, we are now in that stage of astronomical development favourable to the increased warmth of the northern hemisphere. In the northern hemisphere the summers are longer than the winters. Perihelion occurs in winter and aphelion in summer. This is the reason why the North Atlantic is warmer than the South Atlantic, and why the trade-winds of the south are drawn to the north of the equator. Ten thousand five hundred years ago, however, the conditions were reversed, and the greater rarefaction of the atmosphere would have taken place south of the equator, thus drawing the trade-winds in that direction.

By again inspecting the map, one will see how far-reaching the effect on the climate of northern countries this change in the prevalences of the trades would have been. Then, instead of having the northwest current leading along the northeast coast of South America into the Gulf of Mexico augmented by the warm currents circulating south of the equator, the warm currents of the north would have been pushed down so far that they would augment the current running to the southwest beyond Cape St. Roque, along the southeast shore of South America; thus the northern portion of the Atlantic, instead of robbing the southern portion of heat, would itself be robbed of its warm currents to contribute to the superfluous heat of the South Atlantic.

This theory is certainly very ingenious. There is a weak point in it, however. Mr. Croll assumes that when the winters of the northern hemisphere occur in aphelion, they must necessarily be colder than now. But, evidently, this assertion implies a fuller knowledge than we possess of the laws by which the heat received from the sun is distributed over the earth.

For it appears from observation that the equator is by no means so hot now as, theoretically, it ought to be, and that the arctic regions are not so cold as, according to theory, they should be, and this in places which could not be affected by oceanic currents. For example, at Iquitos, on the Amazon, only three hundred feet above tide, three degrees and a half south of the equator, and more than a thousand miles from the Atlantic (so that ocean-currents cannot abstract the heat from its vicinity), the mean yearly temperature is but 78° Fahr.; while at Verkhojansk, in northeast Siberia, which is 67° north of the equator, and is situated where it is out of the reach of ocean-currents, and where the conditions for the radiation of heat are most favourable, and where, indeed, the winter is the coldest on the globe (January averaging—56° Fahr.), the mean yearly temperature is two degrees and a half above zero; so that the difference between the temperature upon the equator and that at the coldest point on the sixty-seventh parallel is only about 75° Fahr.; whereas, if temperature were in proportion to heat received from the sun, the difference ought to be 172°. Again, the difference between the actual January temperature on the fiftieth parallel and that upon the sixtieth is but 20° Fahr., whereas, the quantity of solar heat received on the fiftieth parallel during the month of January is three times that received upon the sixtieth, and the difference in temperature ought to be about 170° Fahr. upon any known law in the case.

Woeikoff, a Russian meteorologist, and one of the ablest critics of Mr. Croll’s theory, and to whom we are indebted for these facts, ascribes the greater present warmth of the northern Atlantic basin, not to the astronomical cause invoked by Mr. Croll, but to the relatively small extent of sea in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere. The extent and depth of the oceans of the southern hemisphere would of themselves give greater steadiness and force to its trade-winds, and lead to a general lowering of the temperature; so that it is doubtful if the astronomical causes introduced by Mr. Croll, even with Dr. Ball’s re-enforcement, would produce any appreciable effect while the distribution of land and water remains substantially what it is at the present time.

Still another variation in the astronomical theory has been set forth and defended by Major-General A. W. Drayson, F. R. A. S., instructor in the Royal Military School at Woolwich, England. He contends that what has been called the precession of the equinoxes, and supposed to be “a conical movement of the earth’s axis in a circle around a point as a centre, from which it continually decreases its distance,”[DW] is really a second rotation of the earth about its centre. As a consequence of this second rotation, he endeavours to show that the inclination of the earth’s axis varies as much as 12°; so that, whereas the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and the tropics extend to only about 23° from the poles and the equator, respectively, about thirteen thousand five hundred years ago they extended more than 35°; thus bringing the frigid zones in both cases 12° nearer the equator than now. This, he contends, would have produced the Glacial period at the time now more generally assigned to it by direct geological evidence.

The difficulty with this theory, even if the mathematical calculations upon which it is based are correct, would be substantially the same as those already urged against that of Mr. Croll. It is specially difficult to see how General Drayson would account for the prolonged temperate climate in high northern latitudes during the larger part of the Tertiary epoch.

It will be best to turn again to the map to observe the possible effect upon the Gulf Stream of a geological event of which we have some definite evidence, and which is adduced by Mr. Upham and others as one of the important probable causes of the Glacial period, namely, the subsidence of the Isthmus of Panama and the adjacent narrow neck of land connecting North with South America. It will be seen at a glance that a subsidence sufficient to allow the northwest current of warm water, pushed by the trade-winds along the northeast shore of South America, to pass into the Pacific Ocean, instead of into the Gulf of Mexico, would be a cause sufficient to produce the most far-reaching results; it would rob the North Atlantic of the immense amount of heat and moisture now distributed over it by the Gulf Stream, and would add an equal amount to the northern Pacific Ocean, and modify to an unknown extent the distribution of heat and moisture over the lands of the northern hemisphere.

The supposition that a subsidence of the Isthmus of Panama was among the contributing causes of the Glacial period has been often made, but without any positive proof of such subsidence. From evidence which has recently come to light, however, it is certain that there has actually been considerable subsidence there in late Tertiary if not in post-Tertiary times. This evidence is furnished by Dr. G. A. Maack and Mr. William M. Gabb in their report to the United States Government in 1874 upon the explorations for a ship-canal across the isthmus, and consists of numerous fossils belonging to existing species which are found at an elevation of 150 feet above tide. As the dividing ridge is more than 700 feet above tide, this does not positively prove the point, but so much demonstrated subsidence makes it easy to believe, in the absence of contradictory evidence, that there was more, and that the isthmus was sufficiently submerged to permit a considerable portion of the warm equatorial current which now passes northward from the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico to pass into the Pacific Ocean.

An obvious objection to the theory of a late Tertiary or post-Tertiary subsidence of the Isthmus of Panama presents itself in the fact that there is at present a complete diversity of species between the fish inhabiting the waters upon the different sides of the isthmus. If there had been such a subsidence, it seems natural to suppose that Atlantic species would have migrated to the Pacific side and obtained a permanent lodgment there, and that Pacific species would have found a congenial home on the Atlantic side. It must be confessed that this is a serious theoretical difficulty, but perhaps not insuperable. For it is by no means certain that colonists from the heated waters of the Caribbean Sea would become so permanently established upon the Pacific side that they could maintain themselves there upon the re-establishment of former conditions. On the contrary, it seems reasonable to suppose that upon the re-elevation of the isthmus the northern currents, which would then resume their course, would bring back with them conditions unfavourable to the Atlantic species, and favourable to the competing species which had only temporarily withdrawn from the field, and which might now be better fitted than ever to renew the struggle with their Atlantic competitors. It is by no means certain, therefore, that with the re-establishment of the former conditions there would not also be a re-establishment of the former equation of life upon the two sides of the isthmus.

Mr. Upham’s theory involves also extensive elevations of land in the northern part of America; in this respect agreeing with the opinions early expressed by Professors J. D. Dana and J. S. Newberry. Of the positive indications of such northward elevations of land we have already spoken when treating in a previous chapter of the fiords and submerged channels which characterise northern Europe and both the eastern and the western coasts of North America. But in working out the problem the solution is only half reached when we have got the Gulf Stream into the Pacific Ocean, and the land in the northern part of the continents elevated to some distance above its present level. There is still the difficulty of getting the moisture-laden currents from the Pacific Ocean to carry their burdens over the crest of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains and to deposit them in snow upon the Laurentian highlands. An ingenious supplement to the theory, therefore, has been brought forward by Professor Carpenter, who suggests that the immense Tertiary and post-Tertiary lava-flows which cover so much of the area west of the Rocky Mountains were the cause of the accumulations of snow which formed the Laurentide Glacier. This statement, which at first seems so paradoxical as to be absurd, appears less so upon close examination.

The extent of the outflows of lava west of the Rocky Mountains is almost beyond comprehension. Literally, hundreds of thousands of square miles have been covered by them to a depth in many places of thousands of feet. These volcanic eruptions are mostly of late date, beginning in the middle of the Tertiary and culminating probably about the time of the maximum extent of the Laurentide Glacier. Indeed, so nearly contemporaneous was the growth of the Laurentide Glacier with these outflows that Professor Alexander Winchell had, with a good deal of plausibility, suggested that the outflows of the eruptions of lava were caused by the accumulation of ice over eastern British America. His theory was that the three million cubic miles of ice which is proved to have been abstracted from the ocean and piled up over that area was so serious a disturbance of the equilibrium of the earth’s crust that it caused great fissures to be opened along the lines of weakness west of the Rocky Mountains, and pressed the liquid lava out, as the juice is pressed out of an orange in one place by pressing upon the rind in another.

Professor Carpenter’s view is the exact reverse of Professor Winchell’s. Going back to those orographic changes which produced the lava-flows and the elevation of the northern part of British America, he thinks the problem of getting the moisture transferred from the Pacific Ocean to the Canadian highlands is solved by the lava-flows west of the Rocky Mountains. This immense exudation of molten matter was accompanied by an enormous liberation of heat, which must have produced significant changes in the meteorological conditions.

The moisture of the atmosphere is precipitated by means of the condensation connected with a lowering of its temperature. Ordinarily, therefore, when moist winds from an oceanic area pass directly over a lofty mountain-chain, the precipitation takes place immediately, and the water finds its way back by a short course to the sea. This is what now actually occurs on the Pacific coast. The Sierra Nevada condense nearly all the moisture; so that very little falls on the vast area extending from their summits eastward to the Rocky Mountains. All that region is now practically a desert land, where the evaporation exceeds the precipitation. In Professor Carpenter’s view the heat radiated from the freshly exuded lava is supposed to have prevented the precipitation near the coast-line, and to have helped the winds in carrying it farther onward to the northeast, where it would be condensed upon the elevated highlands, upon which the snows of the great Laurentide Glacier were collected.

It is not necessary for us to attempt to measure the amount of truth in this subsidiary hypothesis of Professor Carpenter, but it illustrates how complicated are the conditions which have to be considered before we rest securely upon any particular hypothesis. The unknown elements of the problem are so numerous, and so far-reaching in their possible scope, that a cautious attitude of agnosticism, with respect to the cause of the Glacial period, is most scientific and becoming. Still, we are ready to go so far as to say that Mr. Upham’s theory comes nearest to giving a satisfactory account of all the phenomena, and it is to this that Professor Joseph Le Conte gives his cautious approval.

Summarily stated, this theory is, that the passage from the Tertiary to the Quaternary or Glacial period was characterised by remarkable oscillations of land-level, and by corresponding changes of climate, and of ice-accumulation in northern regions; that the northern elevation was connected with subsidence in the equatorial regions; that these changes of land-level were both initiated and, in the main, continued by the interior geological forces of the globe; but that the very continental elevation which mainly brought on the Glacial period added at length, in the weight of the ice which accumulated over the elevated region, a new force to hasten and increase the subsidence, which would have taken place in due time in the natural progress of the orographic oscillations already begun. Professor Le Conte illustrates the subject by the following diagram, which, for simplicity’s sake, treats the Glacial epoch as one; the horizontal line, A B, represents time from the later Pliocene until now; but it also represents the present condition of things both as to land-level and as to ice-accumulation. The full line, c d e, represents the oscillations of land (and presumably of temperature) above and below the present condition. The broken line represents the rise, culmination, and decline of ice-accumulation. The dotted line represents the crust-movement as it would have been if there had been no ice-accumulation.

Succession of Epochs, Glacial and Fluvial Deposits, and
Changes in Altitude and Climate, during the Quaternary Era.

It is seen from the diagram that the ice-accumulation culminated at a time when the land, under the pressure of the ice-load, had already commenced to subside; and that the subsidence was greatest at a time when the pressure had already begun to diminish. But the fact that the land, after the removal of the ice-load, did not return again to its former height in the Pliocene, is proof positive that there were other and more fundamental causes of crust-movement at work besides weighting and lightening. The land did not again return to its former level because the cycle of elevation, whatever its cause, which commenced in the Pliocene and culminated in the early Quaternary, had exhausted itself. If it had not been for the ice-load interfering with and modifying the natural course of the crust-movement determined previously and primarily by other and probably internal causes, the latter would probably have taken the course represented by the dotted line. It would have risen higher and culminated later, and its curve would have been of simpler form.

We append a carefully prepared table by Mr. Warren Upham, showing the probable changes in altitude and climate during the Quaternary era.[DX]