Frozen Atlantic

A timely blog could post of TRUE things most people have not yet heard about. There are many.

What about those things that MAY be true? Reviewing my tendency in this on-line Journal; I grind away at substantiating segments of a possibly only mythic Europe to North America sea crossing of the North Atlantic in the Stone Age.

It is a kind of calculus, incrementally examining slices of evidence that comes to hand.. an author’s surmise, a glimpse caught in midstream of a process depicted in animation, and other partial confirmations.

Most likely corroboration would be sunk in the sea ooze off remote coastlines.

Dynamically discovered news continue to aggregate toward a preponderance of evidence. Is my motivation for guesswork only phant’sy? Graduate students after all have the prize of a degree in view.
Unprincipled Investigators satisfy their “publish or perish” constraints by digesting subordinate’s output.
I scratch an itch / relieve a pressure, comfort myself by accumulating toward consistency in thematic apperception.

To follow the instances of my Paleocene argument a reviewer would need to see quite a few posts from my Journal, and weigh googols of similar snapshots caught in the on-line web.

Iceland to Greenland ice route briefly almost exists this mid-January.

What about in a little colder temperature regime?

Mid January still image from a 30 day loop from the 2010 Champagne-Urbana Cryosphere survey
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.color.1.html

N to S flow constantly trimming the whole Greenland ice edge back can be watched.

What about when that flow is NOT so strong?
How thick and strong a bridge may be built to Iceland’s shores?
What opportunites for marine harvesting may exist during a “January thaw”, or equivalent window??

“Begorrah ! I’ll just stroll over to Tir-na-Og”.

The thin blue line is the summer ice edge

Orange is the compiled reports of sea captains of maximum ice pack.

Yellow is the improbable “ice bridge” route from Paleolithic Iceland to North America.

Blue is the marine prey rich route after some melt back of the estimated ice edge.

Sea level was lower back then, due to water being locked up in the ice. (orange line)

Winter icepack edge would have been somewhat offshore of that edge. (blue line)

Look how much shorter the marine travel distances could have been. (deep blue sea)

Ready to follow the spring sea life west along the ice pack edge.

Iceland would have extended west a little bit, since glacial seas were smaller.

All coastal evidence of habitation is now sunk.

Skin boat marine hunters could pull their light craft up onto an ice flow. Even shelter under it from wind and storm.

(source.. a Polish parasailor’s downward looking view from about the same Latitude, but much further East)

The point is to show that even in these days (of warming), some months of some years solidly connect Iceland to Greenland with “fast ice”.

Could Solutrean Stone Age skin-boat voyagers continue after over-wintering in Iceland? On to Greenland? On to North America?

Maybe.. all evidence would be melted and sunk - long ago.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
University of Urbana-Champaign (Illinois, USA)

Wikipedia's wisdom speculates that the maximum extent of the Late Glacial Maximum's winter sea ice front in the Atlantic ocean is represented by the colored line furthest south on this graphic. (North of the Azores islands)

Summer ice is the differently colored line north of that.

Current data shows the edges fluctuate, depending on the warmth of a given year, storm frequency, etc.

The direct route for Solutrean emigration toward N. America (into the sunset) is unlikely. Coastwise hopping with sewn skin boats, surviving by predating on marine animals is shown by the segmented route.

Minimal open water sailing would be required (though how could anyone predict that ?). This might be an unlikely adventure for coastal arctic technologists to try.

“sea ice increased so much that no open water flowed around Iceland in the year 1695.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090504-sun-global-cooling.html

This was at the greatest dip in temperatures during the Maunder (sunspot) Minimum. That Little Ice Age event lasted from about 1300 A.D. to 1850 A.D.

NO sunspots now for ~ 70 of the last 90 days. About coequal with the first 100 days of the Obama administration. Hmmm.