Frozen Atlantic

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.

The new Google Earth beta 5 shows suboceanic surfaces that could have risen above a 300 meter sea level sinking due to ice sequestered in Ice Age glaciers.

Note the -200 meter reading on the contour surrounding the currently above water Rockall Islet.

And.. who knows how much northern Ireland was depressed by the weight of it’s glacial ice cap?
Therefore how much nearby heights may have see-sawed even higher than they now appear?

Therefore a greater chance there was a significant landfall that could be made by Solutrean canoeists island-hopping toward the ice cap edge SOUTH of Iceland. Fishing the rich marine life; pulling up their skin curraghs to sleep on flat ice, occasionally.

Looking beneath the ocean’s surface to bathymetric data shown on Google Earth we can see a reef or volcanic rise surrounding the Rockall crag west of Ireland. Is this the fabulous, vanished Tirna_nog, or the Blessed Isle?

Drawing a contour around the area of same color = same depth gives shape to the idea that with lower sea level, a surface 2/3 the size of present-day Ireland would be available for some span of post-IceAge geologic time to develop vegetation, potable water sources, and provide a platform for terrestrial life - ie. passing Stone Age canoeists questing westward for new living space and naive animals unfamiliar with their hunter’s ways.

The question of “how deep” remains. A 300 meter maximum reduction in sea level due to water being locked up in Ice Age ice is suggested several places in “the literature”. Commercial trawling reports, the Irish Porcupine soundings and the like have that approximate depth on these banks, currently. So at least SOME land surrounding the presently visible Rockall should have surfaced.

Slowly we dredge details out of the complexity. West of Ireland there IS a rock outcrop set about with reefs - Rockall.

It is the shoaling upper crust of a great undersea bank, probably of volcanic origin. With any reduction in sea level a more extensive island would be revealed. 1917 reports claimed seeing some small island at that time.

Ice ages lock up sea water in landmass glaciers. Sea level DROPS and Solutrean culture groups could have island-hopped toward Iceland and eventually carried their spear-point traditions to the Meadowcroft site in Pennsylvania (and others).

But.. Professor Brian Fagan in his 2006 Fish from the Sea recounts small boat sailing north from Ireland, past the Faeros etc. and catching prevailing Easterly winds to get blown to Iceland. Probably that’s how Irish monks got there in the 800’s to greet the enslaving Vikings when they arrived about 1000 A.D.

Issues generate opponents. Type in a 2 word issue to see arguments around it. Like maybe global cooling maybe.

Give it some time and space, CruxLux - “light on the nexus of issues” is just getting started.

My Sunday A.M. moral instruction comes from the weekly Prince Valient comic strip.

www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/pvaliant/about.htm OR read about it on Wikipedia.

Being speculative fiction about past days the story line is free to suggest an entirely new “frozen” sea surface that men might traverse or live upon. Far south of any ice edge Prince Valient’s ship has been caught up in the vegetation choked Sargasso Sea. Today there appeared Neandertal survivors “snowshoeing” across this semi-solid seascape.

Apparently this is a region of refuge for a relict population squeezed out of Europe by incoming Cro-Magnons now developed into Prince Valient and his like. Or did the Ice Age, in ancient time, force a marine adaptation on a population that lost the happy hunting ground of glacial Europe?

It will take weeks to get the gist of this plot innovation, and digest it.

I’m no graphics whiz, so this clumsily superimposed image of the WRONG side of K2, with shadow cast over the WRONG valley system will have to do for my reaction to the climbing tragedy this summer.

Ave, salve, vale..

Currently, recently, the difference between sea level at different spots in the North Atlantic can be seen by colors on the map. Yellow/Red = 10 cm or less high; Blue/Violet = 5 cm lower than the ideal geodeisic oceanic surface.

Seen in AccuWeather Climate Change blog.

This seems a not unlikely route of ocean crossing, seen from the vantage point of the Pole.