Theos-Talk Archives (June 2005 Message tt00173)

 It has been said that 'A hypothesis that is appealing for its unity 
or simplicity acts as a filter, accepting reinforcement with ease 
but tending to reject evidence that does not seem to fit.' Some 
proponents of plate tectonics have admitted that in the late 1960s a 
bandwagon atmosphere developed, and that data that did not fit into 
the new plate-tectonics model were not given sufficient 
consideration, resulting in a disturbing dogmatism. In the words of 
one critic, geology has become 'a bland mixture of descriptive 
research and interpretive papers in which the interpretation is a 
facile cookbook application of plate-tectonics concepts . . . used 
as confidently as trigonometric functions' [1]. A modern geological 
textbook acknowledges that 'Geologists, like other people, are 
susceptible to fads' [2].
V.A. Saull pointed out that no global tectonic model should ever 
be considered definitive, since geological and geophysical 
observations are nearly always open to alternative explanations. He 
also stated that even if plate tectonics were false, it would be 
difficult to refute and replace, for the following reasons: the 
processes supposed to be responsible for plate dynamics are rooted 
in regions of the earth so poorly known that it is hard to prove or 
disprove any particular model of them; the hard core of belief in 
plate tectonics is protected from direct assault by auxiliary 
hypotheses that are still being generated; and the plate model is so 
widely believed to be correct that it is difficult to get 
alternative interpretations published in the scientific literature 
[3].
The plate-tectonics hypothesis has faced growing criticism as 
the number of observational anomalies has increased. It will shown 
below that plate tectonics faces some fundamental -- and in fact 
fatal -- problems. 




Plate tectonics -- a failed revolution

Plates in motion?
According to the classical model of plate tectonics, lithospheric 
plates move over a relatively plastic layer of partly molten rock 
known as the asthenosphere (or low-velocity zone). The lithosphere, 
which comprises the earth's crust and uppermost mantle, is said to 
average about 70 km thick beneath oceans and to be 100 to 250 km 
thick beneath continents. A powerful challenge to this model is 
posed by seismic tomography, which produces three-dimensional images 
of the earth's interior. It shows that the oldest parts of the 
continents have deep roots extending to depths of 400 to 600 km, and 
that the asthenosphere is essentially absent beneath them. Seismic 
research shows that even under the oceans there is no continuous 
asthenosphere, only disconnected asthenospheric lenses. 
The crust and uppermost mantle have a highly complex, irregular 
structure; they are divided by faults into a mosaic of separate, 
jostling blocks of different shapes and sizes, and of varying 
internal structure and strength. N.I. Pavlenkova concludes: 'This 
means that the movement of lithospheric plates over long distances, 
as single rigid bodies, is hardly possible. Moreover, if we take 
into account the absence of the asthenosphere as a single continuous 
zone, then this movement seems utterly impossible' [1]. Although the 
concept of thin lithospheric plates moving thousands of kilometers 
over a global asthenosphere is untenable, most geological textbooks 
continue to propagate this simplistic model, and fail to give the 
slightest indication that it faces any problems. 




 

Figure 1. Seismotomographic cross-section showing velocity structure 
across the North American craton and North Atlantic Ocean. High-
velocity (colder) lithosphere, shown in dark tones, underlies the 
Canadian shield to depths of 250 to 500 km. (Reprinted with 
permission from Grand [2]. Copyright by the American Geophysical 
Union.)

The driving force of plate movements was initially claimed to be 
mantle-deep convection currents welling up beneath midocean ridges, 
with downwelling occurring beneath ocean trenches. Plate 
tectonicists expected seismotomography to provide clear evidence of 
a well-organized convection-cell pattern, but it has actually 
provided strong evidence against the existence of large, plate-
propelling convection cells in the mantle. The favored plate-driving 
mechanisms at present are 'ridge-push' and 'slab-pull', but their 
adequacy is very much in doubt. 
Thirteen major plates are currently recognized, ranging in size 
from about 400 by 2500 km to 10,000 by 10,000 km, together with a 
proliferating number of microplates (over 100 so far). Plate 
boundaries are identified and defined mainly on the basis of 
earthquake and volcanic activity. The close correspondence between 
plate edges and belts of earthquakes and volcanoes is therefore to 
be expected and can hardly be regarded as one of the 'successes' of 
plate tectonics! A major problem is that several 'plate boundaries' 
are purely theoretical and appear to be nonexistent, including the 
northwest Pacific boundary of the Pacific, North American, and 
Eurasian plates, the southern boundary of the Philippine plate, part 
of the southern boundary of the Pacific plate, and most of the 
northern and southern boundaries of the South American plate. 




Continental drift
Geological field mapping provides evidence for horizontal crustal 
movements of up to several hundred kilometers. Plate tectonics, 
however, claims that continents have moved up to 7000 km or more 
since the alleged breakup of Pangaea. Satellite measurements of 
crustal movements have been hailed by some geologists as having 
proved plate tectonics. Such measurements provide a guide to crustal 
strains, but do not provide evidence for plate motions of the kind 
predicted by plate tectonics unless the relative motions predicted 
among all plates are observed. However, many of the results have 
shown no definite pattern, and have been confusing and 
contradictory, giving rise to a variety of ad-hoc hypotheses. For 
instance, distances from the Central South American Andes to Japan 
or Hawaii are more or less constant, whereas plate tectonics 
predicts significant separation. The practise of extrapolating 
present crustal movements tens or hundreds of millions of years into 
the past or future is clearly a hazardous exercise. 
A 'compelling' piece of evidence that all the continents were 
once united in one large landmass is said to be the fact that they 
can be fitted together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. However, 
although many reconstructions have been attempted, none are entirely 
acceptable. In the Bullard et al. computer-generated fit, for 
example, there are a number of glaring omissions. The whole of 
Central America and much of southern Mexico -- a region of some 
2,100,000 km² -- has been left out because it overlaps South 
America. The entire West Indian archipelago has also been omitted. 
In fact, much of the Caribbean is underlain by ancient continental 
crust, and the total area involved, 300,000 km², overlaps Africa. 
The Cape Verde Islands-Senegal basin, too, is underlain by ancient 
continental crust, creating an additional overlap of 800,000 km². 
Several major submarine structures that appear to be of continental 
origin are also ignored, including the Faeroe-Iceland-Greenland 
Ridge, Jan Mayen Ridge, Walvis Ridge, Rio Grande Rise, and the 
Falkland Plateau. 




 

Figure 2. The Bullard fit. Overlaps and gaps between continents are 
shown in black. (Reprinted with permission from Bullard et al. [3]. 
Copyright by The Royal Society.) 

Like the Bullard fit, the Smith & Hallam reconstruction of the 
Gondwanaland continents tries to fit the continents along the 500-
fathom (1-km) depth contour on the continental shelves. The South 
Orkneys and South Georgia are omitted, as is Kerguelen Island in the 
Indian Ocean, and there is a large gap west of Australia. Fitting 
India against Australia, as in other fits, leaves a corresponding 
gap in the western Indian Ocean. Dietz & Holden based their fit on 
the 2-km depth contour, but they still have to omit the Florida-
Bahamas platform, ignoring the evidence that it predates the alleged 
commencement of drift. In many regions the boundary between 
continental and oceanic crust appears to occur beneath oceanic 
depths of 2-4 km or more, and in some places the ocean-continent 
transition zone is several hundred kilometers wide. This means that 
any reconstructions based on arbitrarily selected depth contours are 
flawed. Given the liberties that drifters have had to take to obtain 
the desired continental matches, their computer-generated fits may 
well be a case of 'garbage in, garbage out'.
The curvature of continental contours is often so similar that 
many shorelines can be fitted together quite well even though they 
can never have been in juxtaposition. For instance, eastern 
Australia fits well with eastern North America, and there are also 
remarkable geological and paleontological similarities, probably due 
to the similar tectonic backgrounds of the two regions. The 
geological resemblances of opposing Atlantic coastlines may be due 
to the areas having belonged to the same tectonic belt, but the 
differences -- which are rarely mentioned -- are sufficient to show 
that the areas were situated in distant parts of the belt. H.P. 
Blavatsky regarded the similarities in the geological structure, 
fossils, and marine life of the opposite coasts of the Atlantic in 
certain periods as evidence that 'there has been, in distant pre-
historic ages, a continent which extended from the coast of 
Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands and 
North Africa, and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France' 
[4].
One of the main props of continental drift is paleomagnetism -- 
the study of the magnetism of ancient rocks and sediments. For each 
continent a 'polar wander path' can be constructed, and these are 
interpreted to mean that the continents have moved vast distances 
over the earth's surface. However, paleomagnetism is very unreliable 
and frequently produces inconsistent and contradictory results. For 
instance, paleomagnetic data imply that during the mid-Cretaceous 
Azerbaijan and Japan were in the same place! When individual 
paleomagnetic pole positions, rather than averaged curves, are 
plotted on world maps, the scatter is huge, often wider than the 
Atlantic. 
One of the basic assumptions of paleomagnetism is that rocks 
retain the magnetization they acquire at the time they formed. In 
reality, rock magnetism is subject to modification by later 
magnetism, weathering, metamorphism, tectonic deformation, and 
chemical changes. Horizontal and vertical rotations of crustal 
blocks further complicate the picture. Another questionable 
assumption is that over long periods of time the geomagnetic field 
approximates a simple dipole (N-S) field oriented along the earth's 
rotation axis. If, in the past, there were stable magnetic anomalies 
of the same intensity as the present-day East Asian anomaly (or 
slightly more intensive), this would render the geocentric axial 
dipole hypothesis invalid.
The opening of the Atlantic Ocean allegedly began in the 
Cretaceous by the rifting apart of the Eurasian and American plates. 
However, on the other side of the globe, northeastern Eurasia is 
joined to North America by the Bering-Chukotsk shelf, which is 
underlain by Precambrian continental crust that is continuous and 
unbroken from Alaska to Siberia. Geologically these regions 
constitute a single unit, and it is unrealistic to suppose that they 
were formerly divided by an ocean several thousand kilometers wide, 
which closed to compensate for the opening of the Atlantic. If a 
suture is absent there, one ought to be found in Eurasia or North 
America, but no such suture appears to exist. Similarly, geology 
indicates that there has been a direct tectonic connection between 
Europe and Africa across the zones of Gibraltar and Rif on the one 
hand, and Calabria and Sicily on the other, at least since the end 
of the Paleozoic, contradicting plate-tectonic claims of significant 
displacement between Europe and Africa during this period.
India supposedly detached itself from Antarctica sometime during 
the Mesozoic, and then drifted northeastward up to 9000 km, over a 
period of up to 200 million years, until it finally collided with 
Asia in the mid-Tertiary, pushing up the Himalayas and the Tibetan 
Plateau. That Asia happened to have an indentation of approximately 
the correct shape and size and in exactly the right place for India 
to 'dock' into would amount to a remarkable coincidence. There is, 
however, overwhelming geological and paleontological evidence that 
India has been an integral part of Asia since Precambrian time. If 
the long journey of India had actually happened, it would have been 
an isolated island-continent for millions of years -- sufficient 
time to have evolved a highly distinct endemic fauna. However, the 
Mesozoic and Tertiary faunas show no such endemism, but indicate 
instead that India lay very close to Asia throughout this period, 
and not to Australia and Antarctica. It would appear that the 
supposed 'flight of India' is no more than a flight of fancy!
It is often claimed that plate-tectonic reassemblies of the 
continents can help to explain climatic changes and the distribution 
of plants and animals in the past. However, detailed studies have 
shown that shifting the continents succeeds at best in explaining 
local or regional climatic features for a particular period, and 
invariably fails to explain the global climate for the same period. 
A.A. Meyerhoff et al. showed in a detailed study that most major 
biogeographical boundaries, based on floral and faunal 
distributions, do not coincide with the partly computer-generated 
plate boundaries postulated by plate tectonics. The authors 
comment: 'What is puzzling is that such major inconsistencies 
between plate tectonic postulates and field data, involving as they 
do boundaries that extend for thousands of kilometers, are permitted 
to stand unnoticed, unacknowledged, and unstudied.' Before their 
study was published by the Geological Society of America, a group of 
earth-science graduates was invited to study the manuscript. They 
became deeply disturbed by what they read, and commented: 'If this 
global study of biodiversity through time is correct, and it is very 
convincingly presented, then a lot of what we are being taught about 
plate tectonics should more aptly be called "Globaloney" ' [5].
It is unscientific to select a few faunal identities and ignore 
the vastly greater number of faunal dissimilarities from different 
continents which were supposedly once joined [6]. The known 
distributions of fossil organisms are more consistent with an earth 
model like that of today than with continental-drift models. Some of 
the paleontological evidence appears to require the alternate 
emergence and submergence of land dispersal routes only after the 
supposed breakup of Pangaea. For example, mammal distribution 
indicates that there were no direct physical connections between 
Europe and North America during Late Cretaceous and Paleocene times, 
but suggests a temporary connection with Europe during the Eocene. A 
few drifters have recognized the need for intermittent land bridges 
after the supposed separation of the continents. Various oceanic 
ridges, rises, and plateaus could have served as land bridges, as 
many are known to have been partly above water at various times in 
the past. There is growing evidence that these land bridges formed 
part of larger former landmasses in the present oceans (see below).
The present distribution of land and water is characterized by a 
number of notable regularities. First, the continents tend to be 
triangular, with their pointed ends to the south. Second, the 
northern polar ocean is almost entirely ringed by land, from which 
three continents project southward, while the continental landmass 
at the south pole is surrounded by water, with three oceans 
projecting northward. Third, the oceans and continents are arranged 
antipodally -- i.e. if there is land in one area of the globe, there 
tends to be water in the corresponding area on the opposite side of 
the globe. 
The Arctic Ocean is precisely antipodal to Antarctica; North 
America is exactly antipodal to the Indian Ocean; Europe and Africa 
are antipodal to the central area of the Pacific Ocean; Australia is 
antipodal to the North Atlantic; and the South Atlantic corresponds -
- though less exactly -- to the eastern half of Asia.* Only 7% of 
the earth's surface does not obey the antipodal rule. If the 
continents had slowly drifted thousands of kilometers to their 
present positions, the antipodal arrangement of land and water would 
have to be regarded as purely coincidental. The antipodal 
arrangement of land and seas reflects the tetrahedral plan of the 
earth. If one corner of the tetrahedron is placed in Antarctica, at 
the south pole, the other three lie in three vast blocks of very 
ancient, Archean rocks in the northern hemisphere: the Canadian 
shield, the Scandinavian shield, and the Siberian shield, and the 
three edges correspond to the three roughly meridional lines running 
through the three pairs of continents: North and South America, 
Europe and Africa, Asia and Australia.** 



*Rupert Sheldrake likens the earth to a developing organism, and 
says that the existence of an ocean at the north pole and a 
continent at the south pole may be the culmination of a 
morphogenetic process: 'Such a morphological polarization of a 
spherical body is very familiar in the realm of biology; for 
example, in the formation of poles in fertilized eggs' (The Rebirth 
of Nature, Bantam, 1991, p. 161).
**J.W. Gregory suggested that in the Upper Paleozoic the tetrahedron 
was the other way up, with one corner at the north pole. Instead of 
a continuous southern ocean-belt separating triangular points of 
land, there was then a southern land-belt, supported by three great 
equidistant cornerstones: the Archean blocks of South America, South 
Africa, and Australia.



 

Figure 3. The antipodal arrangement of land and sea. (Reprinted with 
permission from Gregory [7]. Copyright by the Royal Geographical 
Society.)

Another significant fact is that the triple points formed 
where 'plate boundaries' (i.e. seismic belts) meet coincide very 
closely with the vertices of an icosahedron, which, like the 
tetrahedron, is one of the five regular polyhedra or Platonic 
solids. This, too, would be a remarkable coincidence if 'plates' had 
really changed their shape and size to the extent postulated in 
plate tectonics. 




 

Figure 4. Major seismotectonic belts/'plate boundaries' (broken 
lines) compared with an icosahedron. (Reprinted with permission from 
Spilhaus [8]. Copyright by the American Geophysical Union.)



Seafloor spreading and subduction
According to the seafloor-spreading hypothesis, new oceanic crust is 
generated at midocean ridges by the upwelling of molten material 
from the earth's mantle, and as the magma cools it spreads away from 
the flanks of the ridges. The horizontally moving plates are said to 
plunge back into the mantle at ocean trenches or 'subduction zones'. 
The ocean floor is far from having the uniform characteristics 
that conveyor-type spreading would imply. The mantle is asymmetrical 
in relation to the midocean ridges and has a complicated mosaic 
structure independent of the strike of the ridge. N.C. Smoot and 
A.A. Meyerhoff showed that nearly all published charts of the 
world's ocean floors have been drawn deliberately to reflect the 
predictions of the plate-tectonics hypothesis, and the most accurate 
charts now available are widely ignored because they do not conform 
to plate-tectonic preconceptions [9]. Side-scanning radar images 
show that the midocean ridges are cut by thousands of long, linear, 
ridge-parallel fissures, fractures, and faults. This strongly 
suggests that the ridges are underlain at shallow depth by 
interconnected magma channels, in which semi-fluid lava moves 
horizontally and parallel with the ridges rather than at right-
angles to them.
The oldest known rocks from the continents are just under 4 
billion years old, whereas -- according to plate tectonics -- none 
of the ocean crust is older than 200 million years (Jurassic). This 
is cited as conclusive evidence that oceanic crust is constantly 
being created at midocean ridges and consumed in subduction zones. 
There is in fact abundant evidence against the alleged youth of the 
ocean floor, though geological textbooks tend to pass over it in 
silence.
Scientists involved in the Deep Sea Drilling Project were 
apparently motivated by a strong desire to confirm seafloor 
spreading. They have given the impression that the basalt (layer 2) 
found beneath the sedimentary sequences (layer 1) at the bottom of 
many deep-sea drillholes is basement, with no further, older 
sediments below it. Yet in some cases there is clear evidence that 
the basalt is a later intrusion into existing sediments. The ocean 
floor needs to be drilled to much greater depths -- up to 5 km -- to 
see whether there are Triassic, Paleozoic, or Precambrian sediments 
below the so-called basement.
Plate tectonics predicts that the age of the oceanic crust 
should increase systematically with distance from the midocean ridge 
crests. However, the dates exhibit a very large scatter. On one 
seamount just west of the crest of the East Pacific Rise, the 
radiometric dates range from 2.4 to 96 million years. Although a 
general trend is discernible from younger sediments at ridge crests 
to older sediments away from them, this is in fact to be expected, 
since the crest is the highest and most active part of the ridge; 
older sediments are likely to be buried beneath younger volcanic 
rocks. The basalt layer in the ocean crust suggests that magma 
flooding was once ocean-wide, but volcanism was subsequently 
restricted to an increasingly narrow zone centered on the ridge 
crests. Such magma floods were accompanied by progressive crustal 
subsidence in large sectors of the present oceans, beginning in the 
Jurassic. 




 

Figure 5. A plot of rock age vs. distance from the crest of the Mid-
Atlantic Ridge. (Reprinted with permission from Meyerhoff et al., 
1996a, fig. 2.35. Copyright by Kluwer Academic Publishers.)

The numerous finds in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans 
of rocks far older than 200 million years, many of them continental 
in nature, provide strong evidence against the alleged youth of the 
underlying crust. In the equatorial segment of the Mid-Atlantic 
Ridge numerous shallow-water and continental rocks, with ages up to 
3.74 billion years have been found. A study of St. Peter and Paul's 
Rocks at the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge just north of the 
equator, turned up an 835-million-year rock associated with other 
rocks giving 350-, 450-, and 2000-million-year ages, whereas 
according to the seafloor-spreading model the rock should have been 
35 million years.
Rocks dredged from the Bald Mountain region just west of the Mid-
Atlantic Ridge crest at 45°N were found to be between 1690 to 1550 
million years old. 75% of the rock samples consisted of continental-
type rocks, and the scientists involved commented that this was 
a 'remarkable phenomenon' -- so remarkable, in fact, that they 
decided to classify these rocks as 'glacial erratics' and to give 
them no further consideration. Another way of dealing 
with 'anomalous' rock finds is to dismiss them as ship ballast. 
However, the Bald Mountain locality has an estimated volume of 80 
km³, so it is hardly likely to have been rafted out to sea on an 
iceberg or dumped by a ship! In another attempt to explain away 
anomalously old rocks and anomalously shallow or emergent crust in 
certain parts of the ridges, some plate tectonicists have put 
forward the contrived notion that 'nonspreading blocks' can be left 
behind during rifting, and that the spreading axis and related 
transform faults can jump from place to place.
Strong support for seafloor spreading is said to be provided by 
marine magnetic anomalies -- approximately parallel stripes of 
alternating high and low magnetic intensity that characterize some 
70% of the world's midocean ridges. According to the plate-tectonic 
hypothesis, as the fluid basalt welling up along the midocean ridges 
spreads horizontally and cools, it is magnetized by the earth's 
magnetic field. Bands of high intensity are believed to have formed 
during periods of normal magnetic polarity, and bands of low 
intensity during periods of reversed polarity. However, ocean 
drilling has seriously undermined this simplistic model.
Correlations have been made between linear magnetic anomalies on 
either side of a ridge, in different parts of the oceans, and with 
radiometrically-dated magnetic events on land. The results have been 
used to produce maps showing how the age of the ocean floor 
increases steadily with increasing distance from the ridge axis. As 
indicated above, this simple picture can be sustained only by 
dismissing the possibility of older sediments beneath the 
basalt 'basement' and by ignoring numerous 'anomalously' old rock 
ages. The claimed correlations have been largely qualitative and 
subjective, and are therefore highly suspect. More detailed, 
quantitative analyses have shown that the alleged correlations are 
very poor. A more likely explanation of the magnetic stripes is that 
they are caused by fault-related bands of rock of different magnetic 
properties, and have nothing to do with seafloor spreading. 




 

Figure 6. Two views of marine magnetic anomalies. Top: a textbook 
cartoon. (Reprinted with permission from McGeary & Plummer [2]. 
Copyright by The McGraw-Hill Companies.). Bottom: magnetic anomaly 
patterns of the North Atlantic (Reprinted with permission from 
Meyerhoff & Meyerhoff, 1972. Copyright by the American Geophysical 
Union.)

A remarkable fact concerning oceanic magnetic anomalies is that 
they are approximately concentric with respect to Archean 
continental shields (i.e. continental nuclei more than 2.5 billion 
years old). This implies that instead of being a 'taped record' of 
seafloor spreading and geomagnetic field reversals during the past 
200 million years, most oceanic magnetic anomalies are the sites of 
ancient fractures, which partly formed during the Proterozoic and 
have been rejuvenated since. The evidence also suggests that Archean 
continental nuclei have held approximately the same positions with 
respect to one another since their formation -- which is utterly at 
variance with continental drift. 
Benioff zones are distinct earthquake zones that begin at an 
ocean trench and slope landward and downward into the earth. In 
plate tectonics, these deep-rooted fault zones are interpreted 
as 'subduction zones' where plates descend into the mantle. They are 
generally depicted as 100-km-thick slabs descending into the earth 
either at a constant angle, or at a shallow angle near the earth's 
surface and gradually curving round to an angle of between 60° and 
75°. Neither representation is correct. Benioff zones often consist 
of two separate sections: an upper zone with an average dip of 33° 
extending to a depth of 70-400 km, and a lower zone with an average 
dip of 60° extending to a depth of up to 700 km. The upper and lower 
segments are sometimes offset by 100-200 km, and in one case by 350 
km. Furthermore, deep earthquakes are disconnected from shallow 
ones; very few intermediate earthquakes exist. Many studies have 
found transverse as well as vertical discontinuities and 
segmentation in Benioff zones. The evidence therefore does not favor 
the notion of a continuous, downgoing slab. 




 

Figure 7. Cross-sections across the Peru-Chile trench (left) and 
Bonin-Honshu arc (right), showing earthquake centers. (Reprinted 
with permission from Benioff [10]. Copyright by the Geological 
Society of America.) 

Plate tectonicists insist that the volume of crust generated at 
midocean ridges is equaled by the volume subducted. But whereas 
80,000 km of midocean ridges are supposedly producing new crust, 
only 30,500 km of trenches exist. Even if we add the 9000 km 
of 'collision zones', the figure is still only half that of 
the 'spreading centers'. With two minor exceptions, Benioff zones 
are absent from the margins of the Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and 
Southern Oceans. Africa is allegedly being converged on by plates 
spreading from the east, south, and west, yet it exhibits no 
evidence whatsoever for the existence of subduction zones or newly 
forming mountains belts. Antarctica, too, is almost entirely 
surrounded by alleged 'spreading' ridges without any corresponding 
subduction zones, but fails to show any signs of being crushed. It 
has been suggested that Africa and Antarctica may remain stationary 
while the surrounding ridge system migrates away from them, but this 
would require the ridge marking the 'plate boundary' between Africa 
and Antarctica to move in opposite directions simultaneously!
If up to 13,000 kilometers of lithosphere had really been 
subducted in circum-Pacific deep-sea trenches, vast amounts of 
oceanic sediments should have been scraped off the ocean floor and 
piled up against the landward margin of the trenches. However, 
sediments in the trenches are generally not present in the volumes 
required, nor do they display the expected degree of deformation. 
Scholl & Marlow, who support plate tectonics, admitted to 
being 'genuinely perplexed as to why evidence for subduction or 
offscraping of trench deposits is not glaringly apparent' [11]. 
Plate tectonicists have had to resort to the highly dubious notion 
that unconsolidated deep-ocean sediments can slide smoothly into a 
Benioff zone without leaving any significant trace. Subduction along 
Pacific trenches is also refuted by the fact that the Benioff zone 
often lies 80 to 150 km landward from the trench; by the evidence 
that Precambrian continental structures continue into the ocean 
floor; and by the evidence for submerged continental crust under the 
northwestern and southeastern Pacific, where there are now deep 
abyssal plains and trenches.
An alternative view of Benioff zones is that they are very 
ancient contraction fractures produced by the cooling of the earth. 
The fact that the upper part of the Benioff zones dips at less than 
45° and the lower part at more than 45° suggests that the 
lithosphere is under compression and the lower mantle under tension. 
Since a contracting sphere tends to fracture along great circles, 
this would account for the fact that both the circum-Pacific 
seismotectonic belt and the Alpine-Himalayan (Tethyan) belt* lie on 
approximate circles. 


*The Alpine-Himalayan belt stretches from the Mediterranean to the 
Pacific, and is also visible in Central America. Some earth 
scientists believe it was once global in extent. Blavatsky says that 
the Himalayan belt does indeed encircle the globe, either under the 
water or above (The Secret Doctrine, 2:401fn).



Emergence and submergence

Vertical tectonics
The theosophical tradition teaches that the earth's crust is 
constantly rising or sinking, usually slowly but at times with 
cataclysmic intensity. There is a constant alternation of land and 
water: as one portion of the dry land is submerged, new land emerges 
elsewhere. Blavatsky writes: 


Elevation and subsidence of continents is always in progress. The 
whole coast of South America has been raised up 10 to 15 feet and 
settled down again in an hour. Huxley has shown that the British 
islands have been four times depressed beneath the ocean and 
subsequently raised again and peopled. The Alps, Himalayas and 
Cordilleras were all the result of depositions drifted on to sea-
bottoms and upheaved by Titanic forces to their present elevation. 
The Sahara was the basin of a Miocene sea. Within the last five or 
six thousand years the shores of Sweden, Denmark and Norway have 
risen from 200 to 600 feet; in Scotland there are raised beaches 
with outlying stacks and skerries surmounting the shore now eroded 
by the hungry wave. The North of Europe is still rising from the sea 
and South America presents the phenomenon of raised beaches over 
1,000 miles in length, now at a height varying from 100 to 1,300 
feet above the sea-level. On the other hand, the coast of Greenland 
is sinking fast, so much so that the Greenlander will not build by 
the shore. All these phenomena are certain. Why may not a gradual 
change have given place to a violent cataclysm in remote epochs? -- 
such cataclysms occurring on a minor scale even now (e.g., the case 
of Sunda island with 80,000 Malays*).[1] 
*A reference to the massive eruption in 1883 of the volcano on the 
island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait. It created a tsunami, or 
giant sea wave, that swept away more than 30,000 people on the 
islands of Java and Sumatra. 

Blavatsky also quotes the following from a contemporary scientist: 


forces are unceasingly acting, and there is no reason why an 
elevating force once set in action in the centre of an ocean should 
cease to act until a continent is formed. They have acted and lifted 
out from the sea, in comparatively recent geological times, the 
loftiest mountains on earth. . . . [S]ea-beds have been elevated 
1,000 fathoms and islands have risen up from the depths of 3,000 
fathoms . . . [2] 
The existence of former continental landmasses in the present oceans 
may be at odds with plate-tectonic dogma but, as shown below, it is 
supported by mounting evidence.
Classical plate tectonics seeks to explain all geologic 
structures primarily in terms of simple horizontal movements of 
lithospheric plates -- their rifting, extension, collision, and 
subduction. But random plate interactions are unable to explain the 
periodic character of geological processes, i.e. the geotectonic 
cycle, which sometimes operates on a global scale. Nor can they 
explain the large-scale uplifts and subsidences that have 
characterized the evolution of the earth's crust, especially those 
occurring far from 'plate boundaries' such as in continental 
interiors, and vertical oscillatory motions involving vast regions. 
The presence of marine strata thousands of meters above sea level 
(e.g. near the summit of Mount Everest) and the great thicknesses of 
shallow-water sediment in some old basins indicate that vertical 
crustal movements of at least 9 km above sea level and 10-15 km 
below sea level have taken place. 
Major vertical movements have also occurred along continental 
margins. For example, the Atlantic continental margin of North 
America has subsided by up to 12 km since the Jurassic. In Barbados, 
Tertiary coals representing a shallow-water, tropical environment 
occur beneath deep-sea oozes, indicating that during the last 12 
million years, the crust sank to over 4-5 km depth for the 
deposition of the ooze and was then raised again. A similar 
situation occurs in Indonesia, where deep-sea oozes occur above sea 
level, sandwiched between shallow-water Tertiary sediments.
The primary mountain-building mechanism in plate tectonics is 
lateral compression caused by collisions -- of continents, island 
arcs, oceanic plateaus, seamounts, and ridges. In this model, 
subduction proceeds without mountain building until collision 
occurs, whereas in the noncollision model subduction alone is 
supposed to cause mountain building. As well as being mutually 
contradictory, both models are inadequate, as several supporters of 
plate tectonics have admitted. The noncollision model fails to 
explain how continuous subduction can give rise to discontinuous 
mountain building, while the collision model is challenged by 
occurrences of mountain building where no continental collision can 
be assumed, and it fails to explain contemporary mountain-building 
activity along such chains as the Andes and around much of the rest 
of the Pacific rim. 
Asia supposedly collided with Europe in the late Paleozoic, 
producing the Ural mountains, but abundant geological field data 
demonstrate that the Siberian and East European (Russian) platforms 
have formed a single continent since Precambrian times. One 
geological textbook admits that the plate-tectonic reconstruction of 
the formation of the Appalachian mountains in terms of three 
successive collisions of North America seems 'too implausible even 
for a science fiction plot'. C.D. Ollier states that fanciful plate-
tectonic explanations ignore all the geomorphology and much of the 
known geological history of the Appalachians. He also says that of 
all the possible mechanisms that might account for the Alps, the 
collision of the African and European plates is the most naive [3].
The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau were supposedly uplifted 
by the collision of the Indian plate with the Asian plate. However, 
this fails to explain why the beds on either side of the supposed 
collision zone remain comparatively undisturbed and low-dipping, 
whereas the Himalayas have been uplifted, supposedly as a 
consequence, some 100 km away, along with the Kunlun mountains to 
the north of the Tibetan Plateau. River terraces in various parts of 
the Himalayas are almost perfectly horizontal and untilted, 
suggesting that the Himalayas were uplifted vertically, rather than 
as the result of horizontal compression. 
There is ample evidence that mantle heat flow and material 
transport can cause significant changes in crustal thickness, 
composition, and density, resulting in substantial uplifts and 
subsidences. This is emphasized in many of the alternative 
hypotheses to plate tectonics. Plate tectonicists, too, increasingly 
invoke mantle diapirism and related upwelling processes as a 
mechanism for vertical crustal movements. 
Plate tectonics predicts simple heat-flow patterns around the 
earth. There should be a broad band of high heat flow beneath the 
full length of the midocean rift system, and parallel bands of high 
and low heat flow along the Benioff zones. Intraplate regions are 
predicted to have low heat flow. The pattern actually observed is 
quite different. There are criss-crossing bands of high heat flow 
covering the entire surface of the earth. Intra-plate volcanism is 
usually attributed to 'mantle plumes' -- upwellings of hot material 
from deep in the mantle. The movement of plates over the plumes is 
said to give rise to hotspot trails (chains of volcanic islands and 
seamounts). Such trails should therefore show an age progression 
from one end to the other, but good age progressions are very rare, 
and a large majority show little or no age progression. H.C. Sheth 
has argued that the plume hypothesis is ill-founded, artificial, and 
invalid, and has led earth scientists up a blind alley [4]. 
A major new hypothesis of geodynamics is surge tectonics, which 
rejects both seafloor spreading and continental drift [5]. Surge 
tectonics postulates that all the major features of the earth's 
surface, including rifts, foldbelts, metamorphic belts, and strike-
slip zones, are underlain by shallow (less than 80 km) magma 
chambers and channels (known as 'surge channels'). Seismotomographic 
data suggest that surge channels form an interconnected worldwide 
network, which has been dubbed 'the earth's cardiovascular system'. 
Active surge channels are characterized by high heat flow and 
microearthquakes. Magma from the asthenosphere flows slowly through 
active channels at the rate of a few centimeters a year. This 
horizontal flow is demonstrated by two major surface features: 
linear, belt-parallel faults, fractures, and fissures; and the 
division of tectonic belts into fairly uniform segments. The same 
features characterize all lava flows and tunnels, and have also been 
observed on Mars, Venus, and several moons of the outer planets.
Surge tectonics postulates that the main cause of geodynamics is 
lithosphere compression, generated by the cooling and contraction of 
the earth.* As compression increases during a geotectonic cycle, it 
causes the magma to move through a channel in pulsed surges and 
eventually to rupture it, so that the contents of the channel surge 
bilaterally upward and outward to initiate tectogenesis. The 
asthenosphere (in regions where it is present) alternately contracts 
during periods of tectonic activity and expands during periods of 
tectonic quiescence. The earth's rotation, combined with 
differential lag between the more rigid lithosphere above and the 
more fluid asthenosphere below, causes the fluid or semifluid 
materials to move predominantly eastward. 


*Earth scientists hold widely divergent views on the changes in size 
that the earth has undergone since its formation. From a 
theosophical perspective, after its formation in an ethereal state 
some 2 billion years ago, the earth gradually physicalized and 
contracted to some extent. This downward arc of the earth's 
evolution came to an end a few million years ago, and the upward arc 
of reetherealization began. The earth may be expected to expand 
slightly as the forces of attraction begin to relax. 



The continents
It is a striking fact that some nine tenths of all the sedimentary 
rocks composing the continents were laid down under the sea [6]. The 
continents have suffered repeated marine inundations, but because 
the seas were mostly shallow (less than 250 m), they are described 
as 'epicontinental'. Marine transgressions and regressions are 
usually attributed mainly to eustatic changes of sea level caused by 
alterations in the volume of midocean ridges. T.H. Van Andel points 
out that this explanation cannot account for the 100 or so briefer 
cycles of sea-level changes, especially since transgressions and 
regressions are not always simultaneous all over the globe. He 
proposes that large regions or whole continents must undergo slow 
vertical movements. He admits that such movements 'fit poorly into 
plate tectonics', and are therefore largely ignored [7]. 




 

Figure 8. Maximum degree of marine inundation for each Phanerozoic 
geological period for the former USSR and North America. The older 
the geological period, the greater the probability of the degree of 
inundation being underestimated due to the sediments having been 
eroded or deeply buried beneath younger sediments. (Reprinted with 
permission from Hallam [8]. Copyright by Nature.)



 

Figure 9. Sea-level changes for six continents. For each time 
interval, the sea-level elevations for the various continents differ 
widely, highlighting the importance of vertical tectonic movements 
on a regional and continental scale. (Reprinted with permission from 
Harrison et al. [9]. Copyright by the American Geophysical Union.)

Van Andel asserts that 'plates' rise or fall by no more than a 
few hundred meters -- this being the maximum depth of 
most 'epicontinental' seas. However, this overlooks an elementary 
fact: huge thicknesses of sediments were often deposited during 
marine incursions, often requiring vertical crustal movements of 
many kilometers. Sediments accumulate in regions of subsidence, and 
their thickness is usually close to the degree of downwarping. In 
the unstable, mobile belts bordering stable continental platforms, 
many geosynclinal troughs and circular depressions accumulated 
sedimentary thicknesses of 10 to 14 km, and in some cases of 20 km. 
Although the sediments deposited on the platforms themselves are 
mostly less than 1.5 km thick, here too sedimentary basins with 
deposits 10 km or even 20 km thick are not unknown. 
Subsidence cannot be attributed solely to the weight of the 
accumulating sediments because the density of sedimentary rocks is 
much lower than that of the subcrustal material; for instance, the 
deposition of 1 km of marine sediment will cause only half a 
kilometer or so of subsidence. Moreover, sedimentary basins require 
not only continual depression of the base of the basin to 
accommodate more sediments, but also continuous uplift of adjacent 
land to provide a source for the sediments. In geosynclines, 
subsidence has commonly been followed by uplift and folding to 
produce mountain ranges, and this can obviously not be accounted for 
by changes in surface loading. The complex history of the 
oscillating uplift and subsidence of the crust appears to require 
deep-seated changes in lithospheric composition and density, and 
vertical and horizontal movements of mantle material.
In regions where all the sediments were laid down in shallow 
water, subsidence must somehow have kept pace with sedimentation. In 
eugeosynclines, on the other hand, subsidence proceeded faster than 
sedimentation, resulting in a deep marine basin several kilometers 
deep. Examples of eugeosynclines prior to the uplift stage are the 
Sayans in the Early Paleozoic, the eastern slope of the Urals in the 
Early and Middle Paleozoic, the Alps in the Jurassic and Early 
Cretaceous, and the Sierra Nevada in the Triassic. Although plate 
tectonicists often claim that geosynclines are formed solely at 
plate margins at the boundaries between continents and oceans, there 
are many examples of geosynclines having formed in intracontinental 
settings. 




The oceans
In the past, sediments have been transported to today's continents 
from the direction of the present-day oceans, where there must have 
been considerable areas of land that underwent erosion. For 
instance, the Paleozoic geosyncline along the seaboard of eastern 
North America, an area now occupied by the Appalachian mountains, 
was fed by sediments from a borderland ('Appalachia') in the 
adjacent Atlantic. Other submerged borderlands include the North 
Atlantic Continent or Scandia (west of Spitsbergen and Scotland), 
Cascadia (west of the Sierra Nevada), and Melanesia (southeast of 
Asia and east of Australia). A million cubic kilometers of Devonian 
sediments from Bolivia to Argentina imply an extensive continental 
source to the west where there is now the deep Pacific Ocean. During 
Paleozoic-Mesozoic-Paleogene times, the Japanese geosyncline was 
supplied with sediments from land areas in the Pacific.
When trying to explain sediment sources, plate tectonicists 
sometimes argue that sediments were derived from the existing 
continents during periods when they were supposedly closer together. 
Where necessary, they postulate small former land areas 
(microcontinents or island arcs), which have since been either 
subducted or accreted against continental margins as 'exotic 
terranes'. However, mounting evidence is being uncovered that favors 
the foundering of sizable continental landmasses, whose remnants are 
still present under the ocean floor.
Oceanic crust is regarded as much thinner and denser than 
continental crust: the crust beneath oceans is said to average about 
7 km thick and to be composed largely of basalt and gabbro, whereas 
continental crust averages about 35 km thick and consists chiefly of 
granitic rock capped by sedimentary rocks. However, ancient 
continental rocks and crustal types intermediate between 
standard 'continental' and 'oceanic' crust are increasingly being 
discovered in the oceans, and this is a serious embarrassment for 
plate tectonics. The traditional picture of the crust beneath oceans 
being universally thin and graniteless may well be further 
undermined in the future, as seismic research and ocean drilling 
continue. 




 

Figure 10. Worldwide distribution of oceanic plateaus (black). 
(Reprinted with permission from Storetvedt,1997. Copyright by 
Fagbokforlaget and K.M. Storetvedt.)

There are over 100 submarine plateaus and aseismic ridges 
scattered throughout the oceans, many of which were once above 
water. They make up about 10% of the ocean floor. Many appear to be 
composed of modified continental crust 20-40 km thick -- far thicker 
than 'normal' oceanic crust. They often have an upper 10-15 km crust 
with seismic velocities typical of granitic rocks in continental 
crust. They have remained obstacles to predrift continental fits, 
and have therefore been interpreted as extinct spreading ridges, 
anomalously thickened oceanic crust, or subsided continental 
fragments carried along by the 'migrating' seafloor. If seafloor 
spreading is rejected, they cease to be anomalous and can be 
interpreted as submerged, in-situ continental fragments that have 
not been completely 'oceanized'.
Shallow-water deposits ranging in age from mid-Jurassic to 
Miocene, as well as igneous rocks showing evidence of subaerial 
weathering, were found in 149 of the first 493 boreholes drilled in 
the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. These shallow-water 
deposits are now found at depths ranging from 1 to 7 km, 
demonstrating that many parts of the present ocean floor were once 
shallow seas, shallow marshes, or land areas [10]. From a study of 
402 oceanic boreholes in which shallow-water or relatively shallow-
water sediments were found, E.M. Ruditch concluded that there is no 
systematic correlation between the age of shallow-water 
accumulations and their distance from the axes of the midoceanic 
ridges, thereby disproving the seafloor-spreading model. Some areas 
of the oceans appear to have undergone continuous subsidence, 
whereas others experienced alternating episodes of subsidence and 
elevation. The Pacific Ocean appears to have formed mainly from the 
late Jurassic to the Miocene, the Atlantic Ocean from the Late 
Cretaceous to the end of the Eocene, and the Indian Ocean during the 
Paleocene and Eocene [11]. This corresponds closely to the 
theosophical teachings on the submergence of Lemuria in the Late 
Mesozoic and early Cenozoic, and the submergence of Atlantis in the 
first half of the Cenozoic [12]. 
Geological, geophysical, and dredging data provide strong 
evidence for the presence of Precambrian and younger continental 
crust under the deep abyssal plains of the present northwest 
Pacific. Most of this region was either subaerially exposed or very 
shallow sea during the Paleozoic to early Mesozoic, and first became 
deep sea about the end of the Jurassic. Paleolands apparently 
existed on both sides of the Japanese islands, and they were 
submerged during Paleogene to Miocene times. There is also evidence 
of paleolands in the southwest Pacific around Australia and in the 
southeast Pacific during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic.
Oceanographic and geological data suggest that a large part of 
the Indian Ocean, especially the eastern part, was land (called by 
some scientists 'Lemuria') from the Jurassic until the Miocene. The 
evidence includes seismic and pollen data and subaerial weathering 
which suggest that the Broken and Ninety East Ridges were part of an 
extensive, now sunken landmass; extensive drilling, seismic, 
magnetic, and gravity data pointing to the existence an Alpine-
Himalayan foldbelt in the northwestern Indian Ocean, associated with 
a foundered continental basement; data that continental basement 
underlies the Scott, Exmouth, and Naturaliste plateaus west of 
Australia; and thick Triassic and Jurassic sedimentation on the 
western and northwestern shelves of the Australian continent with 
characteristics pointing to a western source. 




 

Figure 11. Former land areas in the present Pacific and Indian 
Oceans. Only those areas for which substantial evidence already 
exists are shown. Their exact outlines and full extent are as yet 
unknown. G1 -- Seychelles area; G2 -- Great Oyashio Paleoland; G3 -- 
Obruchev Rise; G4 -- Lemuria; S1 -- area of Ontong-Java Plateau, 
Magellan Sea Mounts, and Mid-Pacific Mountains; S2 -- Northeast 
Pacific; S3 -- Southeast Pacific including Chatham Rise and Campbell 
Plateau; S4 -- Southwest Pacific; S5 -- area including South Tasman 
Rise; S6 -- East Tasman Rise and Lord Howe Rise; S7 -- Northeast 
Indian Ocean; S8 -- Northwest Indian Ocean. (Reprinted with 
permission from Dickins [13]. Copyright by J.M. Dickins.)

In the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, modified continental 
crust (mostly 10-20 km thick) underlies not only ridges and plateaus 
but most of the ocean floor; only in deep-water depressions is 
typical oceanic crust found. Since deep-sea drilling has shown that 
large areas of the North Atlantic were previously covered with 
shallow seas, it is possible that much of the North Atlantic was 
continental crust before its rapid subsidence. Lower Paleozoic 
continental rocks with trilobite fossils have been dredged from 
seamounts scattered over a large area northeast of the Azores, and 
the presence of continental cobbles suggests that the area concerned 
was a submerged continental zone. Bald Mountain, from which a 
variety of ancient continental material has been dredged, could 
certainly be a foundered continental fragment. In the equatorial 
Atlantic, continental and shallow-water rocks are ubiquitous. 




 

Figure 12. Areas in the Atlantic Ocean for which past subsidence has 
been established. Subsided areas are shaded. (Reprinted with 
permission from Dillon [14]. Copyright by the AAPG, whose permission 
is required for further use.)

Subaerial deposits have been found in many parts of the midocean 
ridge system, indicating that it was shallow or partially emergent 
in Cretaceous to Early Tertiary time. Blavatsky says that the Mid-
Atlantic Ridge formed part of an Atlantic continent. She writes: 


Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root-Race, not 
only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but 
extended in the shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round 'South 
Africa' (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the 
Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh water deposit called 
the Wealden -- which every geologist regards as the mouth of a 
former great river -- is the bed of the main stream which drained 
northern Lemuria in the Secondary Age. The former reality of this 
river is a fact of science -- will its votaries acknowledge the 
necessity of accepting the Secondary-age Northern Lemuria, which 
their data demand? Professor Berthold Seeman not only accepted the 
reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded Australia and 
Europe as formerly portions of one continent -- thus corroborating 
the whole 'horse-shoe' doctrine already enunciated. No more striking 
confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that the 
ELEVATED RIDGE in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which 
runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point 
near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then 
shifts almost at right angles to proceed in a SOUTH-EASTERLY line 
toward the African coast, whence it runs on southward to Tristan 
d'Acunha [da Cunha]. This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic 
continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the 
reality of a submarine horse-shoed junction with a former continent 
in the Indian Ocean.[15] 
Since this was written (in 1888), ocean exploration has confirmed 
that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge does indeed continue around South Africa 
and into the Indian Ocean. 
Blavatsky reported that in the ocean depths around the Azores 
the ribs of a once massive piece of land had been discovered, and 
quoted the following from Scientific American: 'The inequalities, 
the mountains and valleys of its surface could never have been 
produced in accordance with any known laws from the deposition of 
sediment or by submarine elevation; but, on the contrary, must have 
been carved by agencies acting above the water-level.' She adds that 
at one time necks of land probably existed knitting Atlantis to 
South America somewhere above the mouth of the Amazon, to Africa 
near Cape Verde, and to Spain [16]. 
After surveying the extensive evidence for large continental 
land areas in the present oceans in the distant past, J.M. Dickins, 
D.R. Choi and A.N. Yeates concluded: 


We are surprised and concerned for the objectivity and honesty of 
science that such data can be overlooked or ignored. . . . There is 
a vast need for future Ocean Drilling Program initiatives to drill 
below the base of the basaltic ocean floor crust to confirm the real 
composition of what is currently designated oceanic crust.[17] 
As stated in theosophical literature, 'hidden deep in the unfathomed 
ocean beds' there may be 'other, far older continents whose strata 
have never been geologically explored' [18].
Some islands have apparently sunk as recently as late 
Pleistocene time. For instance, M. Ewing reported prehistoric beach 
sand in two deep-sea core samples brought up from depths of 3 and 
5.5 km on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, over 1000 km from the coast. In 
one core there were two layers of sand which were dated, on the 
basis of sedimentation rates, at 20,000-100,000 years and 225,000-
325,000 years [19]. R.W. Kolbe reported finds of numerous freshwater 
diatoms in several cores on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, over 900 km from 
the coast of Equatorial West Africa. He stated that one possible 
explanation is that the areas concerned were islands 10-12,000 years 
ago, and the diatoms were deposited in lake sediments which later 
sank beneath 3 km of seawater. He argued that this was far more 
plausible than the theory that turbidity currents had carried the 
diatoms 930 km along the sea bottom then upwards more than 1000 km 
to deposit them on top of a submarine hill [20]. The Atlantis 
seamount, located at 37°N on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has a flat top 
at a depth of about 180 fathoms, covered with cobbles or current-
rippled sand. About a ton of limestone cobbles was dredged from its 
summit, one of which gave a radiocarbon age of 12,000 +/- 900 years. 
According to B.C. Heezen and his colleagues, the limestone was 
probably lithified above water, and the seamount may therefore have 
been an island within the past 12,000 years [21]. 
According to modern theosophy, Poseidonis -- Plato's 'Atlantis' -
- was an island about the size of Ireland, situated in the Atlantic 
Ocean opposite the strait of Gibraltar, and sank in a major 
cataclysm in 9565 BC [22]. Former exploration geologist Christian 
O'Brien believes that Poseidonis was a large mid-Atlantic ridge 
island centred on the Azores [23]. By contouring the seabed, he 
found that the Azores were separated and surrounded by a net of 
submarine valleys that had all the hallmarks of having once been 
river valleys on the surface. He concluded that the island had 
originally measured 720 km across from east to west, and 480 km from 
north to south, with high mountain ranges rising over 3660 metres 
above sea level. Before or during its submergence, it tilted by 
about 0.4° with the result that the south coast sank about 3355 
metres but the north coast only some 1830 metres. Only the mountain 
peaks remained above the waters, and now form the ten islands of the 
Azores. O'Brien thinks the island could have sunk within a period of 
a few years or even months, and points out that six areas of hot 
spring fields (associated with volcanic disturbances) are known in 
the mid-Atlantic ridge area, and four of them lie in the Kane-
Atlantis area close to the Azores. Further surveys and core samples 
are required to test O'Brien's hypothesis. 




 

Figure 13. Christian O'Brien's reconstruction of Poseidonis. 



Conclusion
When plate tectonics -- the reigning paradigm in the earth sciences -
- was first elaborated in the 1960s, less than 0.0001% of the deep 
ocean had been explored and less than 20% of the land area had been 
mapped in meaningful detail. Even by the mid-1990s, only about 3 to 
5% of the deep ocean basins had been explored in any kind of detail, 
and not much more than 25 to 30% of the land area could be said to 
be truly known. Scientific understanding of the earth's surface 
features is clearly still in its infancy, to say nothing of the 
earth's interior.
V.V. Beloussov held that plate tectonics was a premature 
generalization of still very inadequate data on the structure of the 
ocean floor, and had proven to be far removed from geological 
reality. He wrote: 


It is . . . quite understandable that attempts to employ this 
conception to explain concrete structural situations in a local 
rather than a global scale lead to increasingly complicated schemes 
in which it is suggested that local axes of spreading develop here 
and there, that they shift their position, die out, and reappear, 
that the rate of spreading alters repeatedly and often ceases 
altogether, and that lithospheric plates are broken up into an even 
greater number of secondary and tertiary plates. All these schemes 
are characterised by a complete absence of logic, and of patterns of 
any kind. The impression is given that certain rules of the game 
have been invented, and that the aim is to fit reality into these 
rules somehow or other. (Beloussov, 1980, p. 303) 
Plate tectonics certainly faces some overwhelming problems. Far 
from being a simple, elegant, all-embracing global theory, it is 
confronted with a multitude of observational anomalies, and has had 
to be patched up with a complex variety of ad-hoc modifications and 
auxiliary hypotheses. The existence of deep continental roots and 
the absence of a continuous, global asthenosphere to 'lubricate' 
plate motions, have rendered the classical model of plate movements 
untenable. There is no consensus on the thickness of the 'plates' 
and no certainty as to the forces responsible for their supposed 
movement. The hypotheses of large-scale continental drift, seafloor 
spreading and subduction, and the relative youth of the oceanic 
crust are contradicted by a considerable volume of data. Evidence 
for substantial vertical crustal movements and for significant 
amounts of submerged continental crust in the present-day oceans 
poses another major challenge to plate tectonics. Such evidence 
provides increasing confirmation of the periodic alternation of land 
and sea taught by theosophy.