The territory of modern Russia in Quaternary times was repeatedly subjected to large-scale glaciations, separated by interglacial eras, the climate of which was close to the modern one or even warmer. Within the glacial epochs, stages were distinguished, alternating with warmings of a lower rank - interstadials. The age of the oldest ice age is about 800 thousand years. The largest glacial stage was associated with the development of the Don glaciation, which began more than 500 thousand years ago. The ice then advanced into the basins of the Oka, Don and Lower Volga up to 51° N. w. The later glaciation - Oka (more than 350 thousand years ago) was smaller and, apparently, did not extend beyond the Oka basin.

In Siberia, the maximum glaciation of the early Pleistocene was characterized by two major advances. The ice moved south to 62–64° N. sh., into the basins of the modern lower reaches of the Irtysh, the middle reaches of the Ob and Yenisei to the mouth of the Podkamennaya Tunguska; in the northeast they reached the eastern coast of the Taimyr Peninsula.

In the Middle Pleistocene, which began about 350 thousand years ago, two glacial stages are distinguished. The early one was characterized by the development of ice cover mainly in the northeast of the European part of Russia. Its boundaries are not precisely established. The younger Dnieper ice sheet developed already in the second half of the Middle Pleistocene, about 250 thousand years ago. The ice then advanced to the middle reaches of the Dnieper and the upper reaches of the Oka, mainly from the western, Scandinavian, center. The role of the Dnieper ice sheet especially increased during the second, Moscow stage of the same glaciation. Its relief-forming activity was clearly manifested in the appearance of the Smolensk-Roslavl, Tver, Klin-Dmitrov, Galich-Chukhloma uplands.

On the territory of Siberia at this time, two large sheet glaciations were known, reaching 59–60° N in Western Siberia. w. The first extensive two-phase Samara glaciation developed at approximately the same time as the Dnieper glaciation. Ice advanced onto the mainland from the shelf and penetrated south into the basins of the modern Ob and Yenisei rivers to the mouth of the Podkamennaya Tunguska. Second, the Taz glaciation is comparable in age to the Moscow stage of the Dnieper.

In the Late Pleistocene, the ice advances that followed the last, Mikulino (Kazantsev) interglacial, which ended 110–115 thousand years ago, have been studied in more detail. It is believed that the first, early Valdai ice advance was modest in size in the European part of Russia, and the ice did not extend beyond the Baltic Basin at that time. On the contrary, due to climatic reasons, glaciation of this age could have been more extensive in the Siberian region of Russia. The maximum of the last cover glaciation of the late Pleistocene - Valdai (Sartan) dates back to 20-18 thousand years ago. Then the Scandinavian glacier advanced into the territory of European Russia to the modern upper reaches of the Dnieper and Volga. In the final stages of its existence, it, like all previous ice sheets, left vast expanses of hilly-ridge relief formed by boulder loams and sands (moraine). Within the mountainous areas in the Late Pleistocene, individual glacial domes and caps formed, and in some areas, for example in Verkhoyansk, semi-cover and reticulate glaciation.

In the Asian part of Russia on the vast lowlands and plains of Western, Central and Eastern Siberia and in Eastern Europe, a region of permafrost spread south of the boundaries of the Scandinavian glacier. The first reliable traces of continuous permafrost with signs of polygonal ice wedges in Northeast Asia are known from the late Pliocene, in the rest of Siberia - from the Eopleistocene and early Pleistocene, on the East European Plain - from the Middle Pleistocene (Pechora cold stage).

In the last 250 thousand years, a clear tendency has been recorded for a reduction in the area of ​​cover glaciation during the cold stages of the Quaternary period and an increase in the area of ​​continuous permafrost (permafrost zone - underground glaciation). Maximum sizes The cryolithozone reached the end of the Late Pleistocene (Late Valdai - Sartan cold stage). At this time, the southern border of permafrost in Russia moved south of 50° N. w. Polygonal ice wedges formed everywhere here. Their thawing led to the widespread development of relict cryogenic microrelief.

During the second half of the Quaternary period (the last million years), a radical restructuring took place natural areas within natural cycles. During the optimum period of the last (Mikulino) interglacial (about 125 thousand years ago), the forest belt expanded significantly in the north and south due to the reduction, respectively, of the tundra zone, which remained only on the Arctic islands, the north and in the northern sections of the Gydan Sea, isolated as a result of the ingression of the Kazantsev Sea. peninsula and Taimyr, as well as the steppe zone.

The zone of broad-leaved forests has expanded enormously, replacing the entire subzone of coniferous-broad-leaved forests and a significant part of the southern taiga subzone. The border of the broad-leaved forest zone in the European part of Russia ran more than 500 km to the north and 200–300 km to the south of its current position. Accordingly, forest-steppes, steppes and semi-deserts shifted significantly to the south.

In high latitudes, within , the tundra gave way to forest-tundra, the landscapes of which began to approach the ocean coast. From the south, the forest-tundra subzone was adjacent to the taiga region, represented by larch forests.

To the south of the northern taiga subzone in Central Siberia there was an area of ​​cedar-pine forests, which to the east, in Central Yakutia, were replaced by pine-birch and birch-larch (on the right bank of the Lena) forests.

Landscape zoning underwent a radical restructuring during the Ice Age and especially during the phase of greatest cooling, which corresponded to the maximum in the development of glacial systems of the Valdai-Sartan age, that is, about 20–18 thousand years ago. The plant communities of the periglacial region had no modern analogues.

The forest belt has completely degraded. Taiga and broad-leaved forests ceased to exist as components of the zonal structure. Representatives of woody vegetation retained only a subordinate importance in landscape systems. Within the entire extratropical space, specific open-type landscapes, the core of which were steppe and tundra communities adapted to cold periglacial conditions, occupied a dominant position.

Author: M. Groswald
Source: almanac “Earth Sciences”, 10/1989.
Published slightly abridged.
Full version in PDF format (5Mb)

Boundaries of the Eurasian Ice Sheet

The glacial theory is 150 years old. Over the century and a half that has passed since the first treatises of glacial scientists, this theory has moved far from the ideas of its founders, it has endlessly expanded its factual base, acquired an arsenal of its own methods, been enriched with new generalizations, and freed itself from misconceptions. Its progress was facilitated by the work of dozens of outstanding researchers from many countries, among whom an honorable place belongs to our compatriots G. E. Shchurovsky, F. B. Schmidt, P. A. Kropotkin, A. P. Pavlov, and a large group of younger geomorphologists and geologists.

Covering the history of the glacial theory is not our task, but for those who are interested in it, I can recommend the book by J. Imbrie and K. P. Imbrie “Secrets of the Ice Ages.” For our purposes, it is important to emphasize the main thing: noticeable successes of Russian science in understanding the glaciations of the country’s territory were clearly evident already in the 50s-70s of the 19th century, i.e., simultaneously with the formation of the glacial theory in the West.

The following decades were marked by the development of mapping traces of glaciation on the northern plains of Russia and in its mountainous surroundings. And in the 30s the first large summary works and among them are “Geology of Siberia” by V. A. Obruchev and “The Ice Age on the Territory of the USSR” by I. P. Gerasimov and K. K. Markov. Based on the latter, a textbook for universities and pedagogical institutes, “Quaternary Geology” (1939), was created. The ideas of the books of Gerasimov and Markov influenced several generations of Soviet paleogeographers, and they have not lost their role today.

The essence of these ideas can be reduced to the following provisions. The last glaciation of Europe, and indeed all of Eurasia, was represented by one large ice sheet - the Scandinavian one. Its southeastern margin covered the Baltic states, Karelia and the Kola Peninsula, so that only the north-west of the European part of the USSR experienced intense glaciation. The traces of this glaciation - a system of parallel terminal moraine belts marking its maximum stage and several stages of decline - have a clearly defined northeastern strike and end on the seashore at the mouth of the Mezen and the Kanin Peninsula.

The existence of small ice sheets was also allowed in the Northern and Polar Urals, on the Putorana Plateau and in the Byrranga Mountains in Taimyr. Glaciation of mountain regions was also recognized - the Caucasus, Pamir, Tien Shan, Altai, Sayan Mountains, Transbaikalia and the North-East of the USSR, but it was considered mountain-valley, i.e. partial, and not continuous. Developing the ideas of some predecessors, K.K. Markov put forward a hypothesis of metachrony of the glaciations of Europe and Siberia, which assumed their non-simultaneity, even counterphase.

I.P. Gerasimov and K.K. Markov believed that neither the northeast of the Russian Plain nor the north of Western Siberia and Yakutia were subject to glaciation in the late Pleistocene. And if so, all the large northern rivers could freely flow into the Arctic Ocean, the ice did not dam them, and they did not create periglacial lakes. There was nothing to write about them: in the three volumes of the Quaternary Period, Markov and his co-authors devoted only one page to the problem of these lakes. And there we are talking about the Baltic Glacial Lake, the brainchild of the Scandinavian Shield.

And 50 years ago and much later, almost none of the experts doubted that the ancient ice sheets gravitated only towards land. Judging by the paleogeographic maps of that time, they invariably ended at the border with the oceans, and on the polar archipelagos - Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya - there were isolated ice caps. Their ice breaks were located in the centers of the islands, and the edges only slightly extended onto the surrounding shelf. The main areas of both this shelf and the deep-sea Arctic basin carried only a film of drifting pack ice.

This is exactly what Gerasimov and Markov thought, and this is not surprising: their views the best way explained the facts known at that time and most fully corresponded to the then level of glacial theory. Another surprising thing is that even now, 50 years later, their concept is undividedly supported by so many. Although the research carried out since then - geological surveys, expeditions of the Academy of Sciences and universities - has brought a huge amount of completely new knowledge.

Thus, the study of Antarctica has shown that its ice cover overlies not only land raised above sea level, but also vast areas of shelves submerged much below this level, and that large areas of the periphery of the cover, hundreds of meters thick, are now afloat . And the study of the Arctic shelves made it possible to prove that the marginal shallow seas of Northern Eurasia in the past were subject to Antarctic-type glaciations, the last of which took place in the late Pleistocene, during the Valdai cooling era.

In addition, it has now become clear that the most ancient glaciations of the Earth, the Permo-Carboniferous and Precambrian, covered not only the land of ancient continents, but also adjacent shelves and deep seas. So, complex ice sheets like the Antarctic were not an exception to the rule, but a typical phenomenon of all cold eras of the last one and a half to two billion years of Earth's history.

These provisions are a fundamental contribution to the glacial theory; their fundamental importance cannot be overestimated. However, in order to get an idea of ​​the scale of glaciation of a specific territory, something else is needed - very specific data on the distribution of glacial deposits and landforms on the plains and in the mountains, their age, traces of glacial-dammed lakes and restructuring of the river network, indicators of movement ancient ice, the magnitude of the decline in the ancient snow line and much more.

In our case, for Northern Eurasia, it was necessary, first of all, to know the geography of the boundaries of the last glaciation. A lot of materials have been accumulated on this subject; hundreds of researchers have collected them. However, for the most part they remain scattered across countless articles, maps, explanatory notes, handwritten reports, many of which until recently were classified as secret. All this had to be collected, compared, discussed with the authors, cleared of speculation, synthesized into a single picture, devoid of internal contradictions. Needless to say, this took more than a dozen years...

The appearance of man is associated with the moment of making primitive but conscious tools. Modern science determines the age of human existence to be no less than 2 million years. This period in the history of the Earth is called anthropogenic. It corresponds to the last period of the geological history of the Earth, the so-called Quaternary system, when the relief, climate, vegetation and fauna took on modern look. The Quaternary system is divided into Pleistocene and Holocene (2 million-10 thousand years ago, last 10 thousand years, respectively). The Quaternary period is characterized by a general cooling of the Earth's climate and the development of extensive continental glaciations in the Pleistocene. Modern paleoclimatology quite accurately determines the temperature regime of the Earth and its climatic characteristics, determined by many factors of a cosmic and terrestrial nature /6/. Studying temperature regime the last 2 million years in different regions of the northern hemisphere by different groups of researchers different countries and different methods led to almost identical results and made it possible to derive a climate curve divided into periods of cold weather, glaciation and warming. The set of these periods is combined into a stratigraphic scale, which has its own name in different parts of the Northern Hemisphere - Alpine, Northern European, Eastern European, Siberian /7/, North American /8/.

Graph 1 shows global temperature variations over the last 500 thousand years in Eastern Europe. A sinusoidal cyclicity of the temperature regime with a main period of approximately 100-120 thousand years is clearly visible. With this cyclicity, global glaciations of the Northern Hemisphere and warm interglacials were repeated.

Graph 1 shows global temperature variations over the last 500 thousand years in Eastern Europe. A sinusoidal cyclicity of the temperature regime with a main period of approximately 100-120 thousand years is clearly visible. With this cyclicity, global glaciations of the Northern Hemisphere and warm interglacials were repeated. Periods of warming and glaciation were accompanied by post-glacial transgressions and glacial regressions (decrease in level due to the concentration and conservation of water in cover glaciation) of the World Ocean and especially inland seas. Fluctuations in the level of the Black Sea-Caspian basin, in which the main role was played by the temperature regime of northern Eurasia, have been studied since the early Pleistocene. During the Oka glaciation, this basin experienced regression, and during the Likhvin interglacial, transgression (ancient euxine in the Black Sea and lower Khazar in the Caspian). At the same time, the connection of the Black and Mediterranean seas occurred. The Dnieper glaciation caused the Neo-Euxinian regression, which significantly reduced the surface of the Black Sea and dried up the Manych Caspian-Black Sea Strait and the Sea of ​​Azov (see Glaciation Map). During the Odintsovo interglacial, the Caspian reconnected with the Black Sea, during the Moscow glaciation it was disconnected, during the Mikulino interglacial it was connected, and during the Valdai glaciation it was disconnected. The question of connection and separation of these seas also depended on tectonic movements. Superimposed on the main temperature cycle were smaller harmonics, including those associated with the precession of the earth's axis and indicated by Tilak. It didn't change and different methods led to almost identical results and made it possible to derive a climate curve divided into periods of cold weather, glaciation and warming. The set of these periods is combined into a stratigraphic scale, which has its own name in different parts of the Northern Hemisphere - Alpine, Northern European, Eastern European, Siberian /7/, North American /8/.

Graph 2 shows the updated temperature curve of Eastern Europe over the last 100 thousand years on a thousand-year scale. A similar process occurred throughout northern Eurasia. In addition to smaller harmonics, a “dip” in the maximum cold in positive side in the middle of the Valdai glaciation.

Graph 2 shows the updated temperature curve of Eastern Europe over the last 100 thousand years on a thousand-year scale. A similar process occurred throughout northern Eurasia. In addition to smaller harmonics, a “dip” of the cold maximum in a positive direction is visible in the middle of the Valdai glaciation. Within Eastern Europe, some authors divide this glaciation into two independent ones - the Kalinin and Ostashkovo, separated by a long mega-interstadial (48-22 thousand years ago), called in some works the Mologo-Sheksna interglacial. The graph shows that during this period in Europe it was colder than at present, but comparatively low temperatures did not induce the glaciation process. The Valdai glaciation, and especially its last Ostashkov phase, caused a decrease in the level of the Black Sea to 80 m from the modern level. and different methods led to almost identical results and made it possible to derive a climate curve divided into periods of cold weather, glaciation and warming. The set of these periods is combined into a stratigraphic scale, which has its own name in different parts of the Northern Hemisphere - Alpine, Northern European, Eastern European, Siberian /7/, North American /8/.

Thus, the Mikulin interglacial is the closest interglacial in which, according to climatic parameters, humans could live in the North Pole region.

Let's turn to the Holocene. 13.5 thousand years ago, rapid warming began, accompanied by significant climatic fluctuations of the period 13.5-9 thousand years ago. Thus, over the period of 9.7-9 thousand years ago, the average temperature in northwestern Europe increased by 15 degrees. C and has reached the modern level (Graph 3). This led to intensive melting of the glaciers of the Ostashkovo glaciation, floods and the formation of the modern water system of northern Europe, the Baltic, the White Sea, the Black Sea and the Russian Plain, except for the rivers of the western Urals, where there were no glaciations. The Baltic glacial lake, whose level was above ocean level, after the breakthrough of the bridge in central Sweden 10,200 years ago, connected with the ocean, about 9,200 years ago it was isolated from the ocean due to the glacioisostatic uplift of Scandinavia, about 7,200 years ago it again connected with the world ocean as a result of transgression and tectonic movements and took modern shape. The Black Sea entered its modern boundaries, rising by 70-80 m after its “drying out” during the last glacial period. The Upper and Middle Volga water basin was finally formed. This process began after the era of maximum Dnieper glaciation. The Volga stream, which previously flowed along the Don channel, rushed almost at a right angle into the Kama, the channel of which from the junction of the Northern Uvals and the Ural ridge to the Caspian Sea has existed for millions of years. The depth of the paleo-Kama channel reached hundreds of meters, the width was up to 3.5 km. After the retreat of the ice of the Valdai glaciation, human settlement of these territories began. Graph 3 shows a detailed curve of the temperature regime of Eastern Europe over the last 10 thousand years (Holocene). A steady increase in temperature in the period 10-8 thousand years ago led to the establishment of a temperature maximum, when average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere exceeded modern ones by 1.5-2.0 degrees C, and in Eastern Europe by 2-2.5 degrees. This period, called the Atlantic, lasted until 5-4.5 thousand years ago. The level of the world's oceans and associated inland seas has risen by several meters compared to today. Coastal levels of that time with marks up to 6 m were recorded on all coasts. and islands not subject to tectonic shifts. The level of the Caspian Sea, no longer connected to the Black Sea due to the tectonic uplift of the Manych depression, increased by 8-9 m relative to the present day. The Caspian Sea was also fed by thawed Central Asian glaciers from the large Uzboy River flowing through the Karakum Desert /10/. The warming of the Atlantic period led to the melting of almost all ice sheets. Climatic changes led to a restructuring of vegetation cover and directly affected the development of the animal world. The zone of broad-leaved and coniferous forests on the Eurasian continent has spread almost everywhere to the Arctic coast, including Yakutia and Chukotka. In the last 5-thousand-year period and up to our time, relative cooling occurred (subboreal periods), followed by minor warmings that did not reach the warming of the Atlantic period. During these periods there was a latitudinal shift in the habitat various types

and representatives of flora and fauna. № The boundaries of the last two glaciations are important as landscape boundaries. As for the most ancient - Likhvin - glaciation, its traces have been preserved so poorly that it is even difficult to accurately indicate its southern border, located significantly south of the border of the Valdai glaciation.

The southern border of the Dnieper - the maximum on the Russian Rabbia - glaciation is much better traced. Crossing the Russian Plain from southwest to northeast, from the northern edge of the Bolyno-Podolsk Upland to the upper reaches of the Kama, the southern border of the Dnieper glaciation forms two tongues on the Dnieper and Oka-Don lowlands, penetrating south to 48° N. w. But this border basically remains only a geological border (the disappearance of a thin layer of moraine from the sections), which is almost not reflected in the relief and other elements of the landscape. That is why the southern border of the Dnieper glaciation is not considered as a geomorphological boundary, not only in such general reports as “Geomorphological zoning of the USSR” (1947), but also in narrower, regional works. There is even less reason to see the boundary of the Dnieper glaciation as an important landscape boundary. Based on the absence of noticeable landscape differences at the southern border of the Dnieper glacier, we, for example, during the landscape zoning of the Chernozem Center did not consider it a boundary sufficient for identifying landscape regions and, especially, provinces. The selected area of ​​the glacial right bank of the Don is isolated not in connection with the glaciation boundary, but mainly on the basis of stronger erosional dissection caused by the proximity of the area to the low base of erosion - the Don River.

The southern border of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation looks sharper on the ground. In the center of the Russian Plain, it passes through Roslavl, Maloyaroslavets, the northwestern outskirts of Moscow, Ples on the Volga, Galich on the watershed of the Kostroma and Unzha rivers. To the north and south of it, the relief forms noticeably change: the last traces of the hilly watersheds characteristic of the glacial To the north, lakes disappear, erosion development of watersheds increases.

The indicated geomorphological differences at the border of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation are reflected, in particular, in the boundaries of the geomorphological regions of the Moscow region, identified by a team of authors from Moscow State University [Dik N. E., Lebedev V. G., Solovyov A. I., Spiridonov A. I., 1949, p. 24, 27]. At the same time, the boundary of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation in the center of the Russian Plain serves as a known boundary in relation to other elements of the landscape: to the south of it, cover and loess-like loams begin to predominate in the subsoils, along with sandy woodlands, “opoles” with dark-colored forest-steppe soils appear, the degree of swampiness of watersheds, the role of oak in the composition of forests is increasing, etc. [Vasilieva I.V., 1949, p. 134-137].

However, two circumstances prevent the recognition of the boundary of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation as an important landscape boundary. Firstly, this boundary is not so sharp that it can be compared with orographic boundaries; in any case, even in the center of the Russian Plain, the contrasts in the landscape between Meshchera and the Central Russian Upland are incomparably sharper and greater than the contrasts in the landscape of the Central Russian Upland to the north and south of the border of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation. Secondly, the landscape differences observed near the southern border of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation in the Moscow region and to the southwest of it are largely due to the fact that this territory is located at a short distance from the northern border of the forest steppe zone- the main landscape boundary of the Russian Plain, characterized by a profound change in all elements of the landscape and,

understandably, >not related to the boundary of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation. North of the Volga, far from the main landscape boundary, the importance of the boundary of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation as a landscape boundary decreases even more.

Without denying the significance of the boundary of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation as a landscape boundary, we are far from overestimating it. This border represents a landscape boundary, but a landscape boundary of intra-provincial significance, delimiting not landscape provinces, but landscape regions (perhaps groups of regions); in the latter case, it acquires the meaning of a boundary delimiting subpro-vshchii (strips).

The most recent, most clearly expressed in the relief is the boundary of the last, Valdai, glaciation, passing south of Minsk, further along the Valdai Upland to the northeast to the middle reaches of the Northern Dvina and Mezen rivers. This boundary separates lacustrine-moraine landscapes of extremely recent preservation from moraine landscapes that have undergone significant processing. To the south of the border of the Valdai glacier, the number of watershed moraine lakes sharply decreases, “the river network becomes more developed and mature. The significance of the border of the last glaciation as an important geomorphological boundary is positively recognized by all researchers and finds a legitimate explanation in the different ages of geomorphological landscapes north and south of the border Valdai glacier. Is it possible, however, to see this boundary at the same time as an important landscape boundary? The geological structure (composition of bedrock, and partly Quaternary sediments) does not experience noticeable changes when crossing this boundary. climatic conditions I am macro relief forms. There are also no sharp changes in soils with vegetation: as a rule, it is not the types and varieties of soils and not plant associations that change, but their spatial combinations and groupings. In the area of ​​fresh moraine relief, the vegetation cover and soils turn out to be, in accordance with the relief, less homogeneous and more variegated than to the south of the boundary. In short, the southern border of the Valdai

of the Moscow glaciation, although more sharply expressed on the ground than the boundary of the Moscow stage of the Dnieper glaciation, is significant for the purposes of landscape zoning only as an intra-provincial - sub-provincial and regional - boundary.

Geomorphological boundaries

The boundaries of Quaternary glaciations constitute only one group of widespread geomorphological landscape boundaries. The boundaries of geomorphological regions simultaneously serve as landscape boundaries, since even small changes in relief entail corresponding changes in vegetation, soils, and microclimate. Often, landscape differences are expressed not in the appearance of new soil varieties and plant groups abroad, but in the emergence of other combinations of the same soil varieties and plant groups.

On large rivers The transition of a wide strip of terraced plains into a bedrock slope represents an important geomorphological landscape boundary. With the exceptional width of the terraces, as, for example, along the forest-steppe left bank of the Dnieper, the transition of each above-floodplain terrace to another is a landscape boundary.

In flat conditions, landscape differences are often due to the degree of erosional dissection, associated or with the ownership of the territory To different river basins, or with different distances from the same erosion base. For example, in the north of the Oka-Don lowland, undoubtedly different landscape areas are made up, on the one hand, of the Sapozhkovskaya soft-undulating moraine plain, close to the Oka (and therefore more dissected), with islands of oak forests on podzolized chernozem and gray forest-steppe soils and located on the watershed of the rivers Pairs, Mostya and Voronezh Oka-Don | watershed plain with patches of western forests on black soil, on the other.

Clearly expressed geomorphological (more precisely, geological-geomorphological) boundaries form the boundaries of young - Quaternary - transgressions. They are pro-

They walk in the north, along the shores of the White, Barents and Baltic seas, where flat coastal plains, recently freed from the sea, border on hilly glacial landscapes. In the southeast, for zoning purposes, it is necessary to keep in mind the northern and northwestern boundaries of the Caspian transgressions, in particular the X"Valynokaya, which goes north to the steppe zone inclusive.

Geomorphological and geological boundaries most often determine the boundaries of landscape areas. This is understandable, since the landscape region itself is nothing more than “a geomorphologically isolated part of the landscape province, possessing its characteristic combinations of soil varieties and plant groups” [Milkov F.N., ShbO, p. 17]. But it would be a mistake to believe that geomorphological areas must coincide with landscape areas and that it is enough to carry out a geomorphological zoning of the territory in order to thereby predetermine the landscape zoning. We explain the exact coincidence among some authors, for example A.R. Meshkov (1948), of geomorphological regions with physical-geographic ones by insufficient analysis of landscape boundaries. The point is that more than just geomorphological boundaries take part in determining the boundaries of landscape areas. In addition to the geological and geomorphological boundaries that we have already considered, others are also important, which we do not have the opportunity to touch upon here. In addition, in nature, the number of geomorphological boundaries is not limited to those boundaries that limit geomorphological regions. Therefore, it often happens that a boundary that is important for the purposes of geomorphological zoning loses its significance during landscape zoning, and a boundary that has a great impact on soils, vegetation and even climate is of secondary importance when identifying geomorphological regions.

As an example of the discrepancy between landscape (physiographic) zoning and geomorphological zoning, I will refer to my own experience of subdividing two heterogeneous territories of the Russian Plain - the Chkalovka region and the Chernozem center:

territory of the Chkalov region, instead of 13 geomorphological regions united into 3 geomorphological provinces [Khomentovsky A. S., 1951], 19 landscape areas were allocated, combined into 4 landscape provinces [Milkov F. N., 1951]. When zoning the Chernozem Center, its territory is divided into landscape provinces, consisting of 13 districts, while geomorphologically only 6 districts are allocated to the same territory.

“Pleistocene” is what the famous English geologist Charles Lyell called the era immediately preceding ours in 1839. Translated from Greek, this word means “youngest era.” For in its deposits, fossil invertebrates do not differ from modern ones. “He could not have given a more successful name, even if he had known other signs. For many, the Pleistocene means glaciation. And this is justified, because the most outstanding event of that era was repeated glaciation, and glaciers occupied an area three times larger than the area of ​​​​their modern distribution, writes R. Flint in the monograph “Glaciers and Pleistocene Paleogeography.” - But glaciation was only one of the consequences of climate changes that occurred over millions of years before the Pleistocene. Climate change caused: fluctuations in air temperatures and sea ​​water within a few degrees, movement of zones with a certain amount of precipitation, fluctuation of the snow line about an average height of 750 m, rise and fall of sea level by at least 100 m, deposition of loess-like material by winds over a vast area, freezing and thawing of soil in high latitudes, changes in the regime of lakes and rivers, migration of plant communities, animals and prehistoric humans.”

The idea that glaciers were once much more widespread than now has long occurred to observant inhabitants of mountain valleys and slopes. For in the meadows, arable lands and forests they found traces of former glaciers - polished boulders, polished and furrowed rocks, ridges of moraines. These traces were especially clearly visible in the Alps. It is not surprising that it was in Switzerland that the idea was born that once upon a time globe There were much more glaciers than now, and they covered vast areas.

Not all scientists agreed with this. Throughout almost the entire 19th century, there was heated debate about the great glaciation of our planet. And as they went, more and more evidence spoke in favor of the point of view that the great glaciation really happened, although even today there are risky hypotheses according to which all the evidence in favor of this glaciation can be interpreted differently and, therefore, , it exists only in the works of scientists.

Traces of past glaciations have been found in various parts of the planet. Geologists quickly learned to distinguish one from another glaciation that occurred more than two million years ago, traces of which were found north of Lake Huron in North America; glaciation that took place 600–650 million years ago, traces of which were found in the north and east of the Urals; glaciation, called Gondwana, which covered the continents of the Southern Hemisphere, as well as Hindustan and Arabian Peninsula before the onset of the “era of lizards” - the Mesozoic; and, finally, the last great glaciation, which spread its ice over many areas of the Northern Hemisphere and “froze” Antarctica, which had previously been a continent where tropical fauna flourished and lizards and amphibians lived.

Map of the maximum extent of Pleistocene glaciation.

We are only interested in the last glaciation, at the end of which modern fauna and flora were formed and at the end of which homo sapiens - man appeared modern type. After long (and to this day not completely completed) discussions, scientists have learned to distinguish traces of the last stage of this glaciation from traces of more early stages. In Western Europe it is called Würm, in North America - Wisconsin. It also corresponds to traces of the glaciation called Zyryansk, found in Northern Asia, as well as the Valdai glaciation, traces of which were found on the territory of Russia.

IN Lately Geologists, glaciologists, oceanologists and other representatives of various Earth sciences who have to deal with these traces have learned to identify within the last stage - the last glaciation! - several stages. It turned out that the Würm-Wisconsin-Zyryansk-Valdai glaciation was divided into a number of separate glaciations, between which there were periods of warming, glaciers decreased in size, the ocean level rose accordingly, and the waters of the next post-glacial flood advanced onto the land.

The last stage of the last glaciation of the planet began about 70 thousand years ago. But 30 thousand years ago, the level of the World Ocean, as shown latest research, was approximately equal to the modern one. It is obvious that at that time the climate was not glacial, but much warmer. Following this, a new cold snap began. More and more ice was added to the monstrous mass of Antarctica's glaciers. Greenland continued to expand its ice shell, and there was much more ice than now. A huge ice sheet covered the area North America. Glaciers covered the spaces of Western Europe, including the British Isles, the Netherlands, Belgium, northern Germany and France, the Scandinavian countries, Finland, Denmark, and the Alps. In Eastern Europe, they were in the center of Russia, reached Ukraine and the Don, covered the Northern and Central Urals, Taimyr and other areas of Siberia. Huge glaciers descended from the mountains of Chukotka, Kamchatka, and Central Asia. Glaciers lay in the mountains of Australia, New Zealand, and Chile.

How were these glaciers formed? Naturally, due to water. And this water was supplied by the ocean. Therefore, its level decreased as the volume of glaciers increased. Areas of the shelf that were under water were drained and became parts of continents and islands, and underwater mountains turned into new islands. The outlines of the land at that time were significantly different from modern ones. In place of the Baltic and North Seas there was land, although covered with a shell of ice. A vast land stretching from north to south for one and a half thousand kilometers, called Beringia, connected Asia and America with a bridge along which animals could migrate, and after them primitive hunters, the first Columbuses of the New World. The Australian mainland was united with the island of Tasmania in the south, and in the north it formed a single landmass with New Guinea. A single massif connected with Indochina and the Malacca Peninsula was formed by Java, Kalimantan, Sumatra and many small islands of Indonesia. The landmass was the northern part of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk; land bridges connected Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Japan, and Sakhalin to the Asian continent. The land was on the site of the present Bahamas, as well as large expanses of shelf that stretched in a wide strip along the eastern coast of the North; Central and South America.

These were the contours of the continents during the maximum of the last stage of the Würm (also known as Wisconsin, Zyryansk, Valdai) glaciation 20–25 thousand years ago. And they began to change, flooded with the waters of the global flood, which began 16-18 thousand years ago.

Where was the border between sea and land before the last global flood? It would seem that it is not difficult to determine if we remember that the shelf is the submerged outskirts of the continents. The level of the World Ocean at that time was lower than today. Exactly how many meters, apparently, can be judged by the shelf. However, in different seas and oceans the shelf boundaries are at different depths.

The shelf boundary of the California coast is at a depth of 80 meters, the Gulf of Mexico - 110, the coast of Argentina - 125, and off the Atlantic coast of the USA and Nigeria - at a depth of 140 meters. Sections of the Arctic Ocean shelf are submerged to depths of several hundred meters, and those of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk - over a kilometer. How can we determine what the level of the World Ocean was? After all, it couldn’t be a kilometer lower than it is now in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, in the Atlantic - 140 meters, and off the Pacific coast of California - only 80 meters!

Blocks of the earth's crust can fail not only on land, but also under water (especially since the shelf crust is continental). Apparently, it is precisely these tectonic failures that explain the enormous depths of the shelf of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and the deep-water areas of the Arctic Ocean. However, the earth's crust can not only fall, but also rise. Therefore, it is impossible to take shallow shelf depths, for example, 80 meters off the California coast, as a standard, and explain all others that exceed them by subsidence of the crust.

So by what depth mark should we determine the level of the World Ocean when we strive to outline the boundaries of the former land, which has now become a shelf after the last global flood - 80, 100, 120, 140, 180, 200, 1000 meters? Discard maximum and minimum values? But even without them, the spread is quite large.

Apparently, data from another science - glaciology, the science of ice - should be called upon for help. Based on the area and thickness of the glaciers that covered the planet during the last glaciation, it is not difficult to calculate how many meters the level of the World Ocean should have dropped. It is not so easy to determine the area, much less the thickness, of the ice that covered the Earth two dozen millennia ago.

Map of the successive stages of retreat of the last European ice sheet.

Modern ice cover an area of ​​about 16 million square kilometers, with more than 12 million in Antarctica. To calculate the volume of ice, you also need to know the thickness of the ice cover. It was possible to establish it only thanks to the research of geophysicists. In Antarctica, the thickness of the ice sheets reaches 3000–4600 meters, in Greenland - 2500–3000 meters. The average height of the ice sheet in Antarctica is 2300 meters; in Greenland its value is much less. On the planet today, continental ice contains 27 million cubic kilometers of ice, which, if melted, will raise the sea level, as already mentioned, by 66 meters (more precisely, by 66.3 meters). One should also take into account floating sea ice, the area of ​​which, depending on the season and average annual temperature, ranges from 6.5 to 16.7 million square kilometers in the Northern Hemisphere and from 12 to 25.5 million square kilometers in the Southern Hemisphere. According to V. M. Kotlyakov’s assessment given in the book “Snow Cover of the Earth and Glaciers”, currently sea ​​ice and snow covers 25 percent of the area in the Northern Hemisphere and 14 percent in the Southern Hemisphere, amounting to a total of 100 million square kilometers.

These are the data about the modern period. How much ice was there on the continents and in the sea during the last glaciation? Different researchers estimate their volume differently. Indeed, when making this assessment, it is necessary to take into account both the boundaries of the distribution of continental ice (and they are determined very conditionally) and the thickness of the ice cover (here the estimates are even more conditional: try to accurately determine the thickness of the ice that melted thousands of years ago!). But glaciers could also cover the areas of the current sunken lands, the shelf and be in the form of motionless “dead” ice, leaving no traces by which glaciologists determine the boundaries of ancient glaciation. This is why estimates of the volume and area of ​​ice of the last great glaciation vary so much: for example, the area is estimated at about 40, 50, 60 and 65 million square kilometers. The total volume of this ice is also estimated differently. As a result, an oceanographer who believes that the level of the World Ocean during the last glaciation was 90 meters lower than today chooses a lower estimate of the volume of water contained in the ice, and believes that glaciological data confirm his point of view. The oceanographer, who believes that the sea level in that era was lower not by 90, but by 180 meters, proceeds from other estimates given by glaciologists, and also believes that his conclusions are consistent with the data of glaciology. And, conversely, glaciologists, citing oceanologists, believe that their assessments are confirmed by data from oceanologists studying the shelf.

However, despite all the disagreements, most modern scientists believe that the level of the World Ocean in the last ice age was lower than the current one by more than 100 meters and less than 200 meters. Researchers who adhere to the golden mean believe that the level of the World Ocean at that time was lower than the current level by about 130–135 meters, equal to the average depth of the shelf (when we talk about “shelf depth”, we, of course, mean the depths of its edge , the edge from which the cliff to the depths of the ocean begins; naturally, the closer to the shore, the shallower the shelf spaces will be).

Even if we accept the minimum estimate of the level of the World Ocean before the last global flood, it still suggests that this flood must have been enormous. The spaces of ancient land, which were at that time below the level of 100 meters, should have been flooded. But this land was inhabited not only by animals, but also by people. For primitive man, such an invasion of water would have been a real disaster if... If the colossal supply of ice accumulated by glaciers had melted quickly. But can they a short time turn into the water of a global flood of ice, the thickness of which reaches tens, hundreds, thousands of meters? Of course no! Not only “in one disastrous night,” but also in a year, a decade, a hundred years, enormous deposits of ice, several kilometers thick, cannot melt.

This means that the global flood, which began 16–18 thousand years ago and raised the level of the World Ocean to the modern level, occurred slowly, gradually and stretched over hundreds and thousands of years? Facts obtained by a variety of sciences - from glaciology to archeology - indicate that this, most likely, was exactly the case. However, the process of melting ice at the same time did not proceed as evenly and smoothly as it seemed until recently.

Firstly, because in the thousands of years that have passed since the end of the last glaciation, there has been no continuous warming of the climate. The gradual melting of the ice stopped as soon as a temporary cooling occurred. The ocean has stabilized at a certain level - that is why terraces are found underwater, left by surf waves not only at depths of about 100–140 meters (the level before the ice begins to melt), but also at depths of 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 meters. For example, after carefully studying the bottom of the Bering Sea, the American geologist D. M. Hopkins came to the conclusion that its coastline during the last glaciation lay at a depth of about 90–100 meters. In addition, at the bottom there are coastlines at depths of 38, 30, 20–24 and 10–12 meters. They reflect “stops” in the melting of ice and the rise in sea levels.

But the melting of ice was not the only thing that stopped. The destruction of glaciers proceeded at a much faster pace than their formation. He devoted a special chapter in his book to the mechanism of destruction of the great glaciation. interesting book“Glaciations and geological development of the Earth” Moscow glaciologist G. N. Nazarov.

“Many geologists categorically deny the possibility of earthquakes and tectonic movements under the influence of changing external loads from water or ice, mistakenly considering this effect for the earth’s crust to be insignificant. However, in this regard, even the volumes of water accumulated during the creation of artificial reservoirs can be dangerous. For example, on the Colorado River, the accumulation of 40 billion tons of water caused subsidence of the earth's crust and tremors. A devastating earthquake occurred in January 1966 in Evrytania (Greece) due to the formation of an artificial reservoir 150 m deep. An increase in seismicity after the filling of reservoirs was noted on the Volga. Significant earthquakes, as noted by J. Rothe, occur when reservoirs are filled if the water column exceeds 100 m. In the areas of eight high-rise dams, he noted the occurrence of earthquakes with a magnitude of up to 5.1–6.3, writes G. N. Nazarov. - It is believed that the most powerful earthquake in New Madrid, numbering over 1200 impacts in flat platform (!) conditions in 1874, as a result of which an area of ​​500 km 2 was lowered and flooded with water, occurred as a result of the accumulation of sedimentary material in the valley Mississippi River."

How much stronger must have been the movements of the earth's crust during the melting of the ice of the last great glaciation, if masses of water were moving, the weight of which was tens of times greater than the weight of the Caucasus mountain range! At the same time, it must also be taken into account that the land, freed from the monstrous weight of the glaciers, began to rise, and its growth rate was rapid. For even today, territories that were freed from glaciers several thousand years ago are “growing” upward at a speed that is significant even on the scale of human life.

Back in the 17th century, Finnish bishop Erik Sorolainen, taking measurements on rocks, noticed with amazement that the “firmament of the earth,” which was motionless according to the dogmas of the Bible, was slowly but surely rising. The marks he made in the water ended up on land several years later. In the 18th century, the Swede Carl Linnaeus, the author of the first classification of all living creatures on the planet that has not lost its significance to this day, and his compatriot Anders Celsius, the inventor of the thermometer of the same name, after carrying out careful measurements, discovered that the shores of Northern Sweden were rising, and those of Southern Sweden were falling.

Rise of the coasts of Northern Sweden and Finland modern science explains by the fact that the earth’s crust here continues to “straighten”, although the load of glaciers of the last glaciation was dropped thousands of years ago. In the north of the Gulf of Bothnia, the rise is occurring at a rate of 1 meter per century. Scotland rose almost 50 meters, freed from glaciers, and Spitsbergen rose almost 100 meters. Of course, in the past the rise was even faster than it is now. For example, the rate of rise of Scandinavia, freed from the load of glaciers, reached 4.5 centimeters per year - 45 meters per century!

“The results of studies of geological deposits formed over the last 10 thousand years show that there is a certain connection between the stages of glaciation, manifestations of seismicity and the intensity of landslide formation. It is possible that the beginning of the sliding of glacial blocks into the sea was initiated by one of the episodic earthquakes of internal or glacioisostatic origin. Earthquakes can also contribute to sudden breakthroughs of subglacial waters and warm currents into high-latitude areas. It is possible that as a result of this, some volumes of glacial accumulations were destroyed and dumped into the sea in very short periods of time, giving an abrupt nature to the process of destruction of ice sheets. This nature of destruction is confirmed, in our opinion, by existing geographical, paleographic and historical data,” writes G. N. Nazarov. And he further gives an example of such a “leap” that was possible during the era of the glacial “flood”.

On the Schmidt Plain in Antarctica there is a depression, the bottom of which lies one and a half kilometers below ocean level, and the surface of the ice filling it is three kilometers above ocean level. If the ice sheet contained in this depression were to collapse, it would cause sea levels to rise by two to three meters!

Thus, the advance of waters could not be smooth, but sometimes be catastrophic. The post-glacial flood could have had its peaks and valleys, it could have been accompanied by earthquakes and tsunamis, a rapid invasion melt water, landslides and rubble in the mountains, such as those that caused local, local floods. In a word, the global flood, despite the fact that it lasted for many millennia, could give rise to natural disasters similar to those that formed the basis of the myths and legends about the flood of various peoples of the Earth.

Naturally, these flood peaks are not so easy to detect. In our time, we can record its “stops” - along ancient coastlines that are now under water. For example, in relation to the Bering Sea and its terraces, D. M. Hopkins outlines the following sequence: a terrace at a depth of 90–100 meters marks the ocean level before the flood, it refers to the coastline that existed 17–20 thousand years ago. The coastline at a depth of 38 meters was flooded approximately 13 thousand years ago, and the coastline at a depth of 30 meters was flooded approximately 11,800 years ago. The coastline, now sank to a depth of 20–24 meters, became submerged about 9–10 thousand years ago. The time of flooding of the ancient shores at a depth of 12 and 10 meters has not yet been established.

How can this time be established? First of all, based on sediments found at one or another depth. The radiocarbon dating method makes it possible to fairly accurately determine the age of organic sediments - and, therefore, the time when the current shelf was dry land. Thus, at the bottom of Norton Bay, which washes the shores of Alaska, peat accumulated 10 thousand years ago. From this it follows that there was once dry land here. The peat was found at a depth of 20 meters - and Hopkins believes that the coastline at a depth of 20 meters "may have been flooded soon after" - that is, about 10 thousand years ago. Since organic sediments could not be found at depths of 12 and 10 meters, it is impossible to establish with a sufficient degree of accuracy the age of flooding of the ancient shores that now lie at these depths.

Data of this kind were obtained not only for the Bering Sea, but also for a number of other sea basins that were dry land during the last glaciation. The shell of a mollusk living at depths of no more than four meters was raised from a depth of 130 meters off the Atlantic coast of the United States. Its age is about 15 thousand years. This means that at that time there was shallow water in this area and the sea level over the elapsed time has risen by more than 120 meters. On the same coast, peat that was 11 thousand years old was raised from a depth of 59 meters. Shells of shallow-water mollusks dating back 7,000, 8,000 and 9,000 years were recovered from depths of 20 to 60 meters. Finally, from various depths, up to 90 meters, 45 teeth belonging to mastodons and mammoths were recovered from the shelf in the same area. Their age was even less - 6000 years.

It is not so easy to find organic remains at the bottom of the sea. Indeed, during the time that elapsed after the onset of the flood, sea sediments superimposed on the “land” sediments. Therefore, nowadays, bottom drilling is widely used in order to break through the thickness of marine sediments and reach sediments formed in land conditions. Having drilled through a layer of marine sediments, at a depth of 21 meters off the coast of Australia, they found layers of peat that formed about 10 thousand years ago. At a depth of 27 meters at the bottom of the Strait of Malacca, layers of peat of the same age were discovered. Peat 8,500 years old was discovered off the coast of Guyana at a depth of 21 meters.

The scatter of data is obvious: peatlands of different ages were found at the same depth and, conversely, peatlands of the same age were found at different depths - 21 and 27 meters. Therefore, we cannot say with certainty whether the level of the World Ocean was 21 or 27 meters lower than it is today. But it is equally obvious that the search for dating is within one or two millennia, and the search for ocean levels is within ten meters. And these scales are incomparable with the scale of tens, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years and with the depth range of the order of several kilometers, which the “flood hunters” operated at first.

How they restore the history of the last glacial - and global! - Flood scientists of our days? Let's try to give a brief chronicle of the flood, into which, without a doubt, corrections and additions will be made, but which, apparently, still corresponds in its main features to the real picture.

25 000 years ago - the maximum glaciation of the last stage of the last ice age of the Pleistocene. The level of the World Ocean is more than 100 meters below the current level (but does not exceed 200 meters).

Between the 20th and 17th millennium- the beginning of melting ice and rising sea levels. The rate of increase is about 1 centimeter per year.

15 000 years ago - the ocean level was approximately 80 meters lower than today.

10 000 years ago - the ocean level was 20–30 meters lower than today.

6000 years ago - a sharp slowdown in the glacial flood, the formation of the modern coastline. The ocean level is 5–6 meters lower than the modern one or equal to the modern one.

As glaciers disappeared and the level of the World Ocean rose, land bridges that connected islands and continents found themselves under water. About 12–16 thousand years ago, Cook Strait separated the North Island of New Zealand from the South Island. One and a half thousand years later, Australia was separated by the Bass Strait from Tasmania and the Torres Strait from New Guinea. After another two thousand years, Sakhalin separated from the mainland. Around the same time, the Bering Strait was formed, and the land connection between the Old and New Worlds, which had existed for many tens of thousands of years, was interrupted.

Over the past six to seven thousand years, the contours of sea and land have been formed in the area of ​​the Bahamas, the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, the Baltic and the seas washing the islands of Indonesia, most of which at that time were still connected to each other and to the Malacca Peninsula. This is evidenced by numerous finds of peat bogs, bones of land animals, Stone Age tools and even primitive human settlements at the bottom of today’s seas and straits.

In the Baltic, peat about 7,500 years old was raised from a depth of 35 and 37 meters. A 9,300-year-old peat bog was raised from a depth of 39 meters from the bottom of the English Channel. Off the Shetland Islands, at a depth of 8–9 meters, deposits of peat bogs were found that formed 7000–7500 years ago. The list of such finds could be continued, but it is already obvious that the North Sea, the Baltic, and the seas of Indonesia are amazingly young from a geological point of view. They are a product of the last global flood.

It is very possible that 5000–6000 years ago the level of the World Ocean was not only equal to the current level, but also several meters (but no more than six!) higher than it. In other words, maximum level The glacial flood occurred at a time when the most ancient civilizations of our planet were born - in the Nile Delta and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Traces of this peak of the flood, called the Flanders transgression, were found not only in the Belgian province of Flanders, but also on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and other seas, on the coast of Australia and the Black Sea region.

Some researchers, for example G.N. Nazarov, whom we quoted, suggest that the Flemish flood could have occurred as a result of the destruction of part of the glacial masses. This destruction, as you know, can be accompanied by earthquakes, a rapid rise of the earth’s crust freed from the weight of glaciers, tsunamis and other phenomena that can give rise not to the usual “slow” flood caused by the melting of ice, but to a rapid flood, which is of a planetary, worldwide nature .

Perhaps this is precisely what is reflected in the myths and traditions of some peoples. Indeed, at that time, 5000–6000 years ago, people were no longer nomadic tribes of gatherers and hunters, as they were during the era of the last great glaciation, but settled peoples, creating writing, creating temples and palaces. Was the peak of the flood reflected in the Dravidian legends about the southern ancestral home, in the ancient Indian legend about the prophet Manu, in the ancient Greek myth of Deucalion's flood and, finally, in the Sumerian-Babylonian version of the story about the flood, which was reflected in the Bible?

Of course, this is just a hypothesis, or many scientists consider the very fact of the Flanders transgression to be unproven, not to mention its catastrophic nature). But be that as it may, this is the only version of the global flood that can be reflected in the mythology and legends of antiquity. All other real world floods, including the last glacial one, as you yourself have seen, have nothing to do with ancient legends and myths.

The pace of the global flood, caused by the melting of the great glacier, slowed sharply about 6,000 years ago... Why then do we find flooded or half-submerged cities, ports, ancient piers and piers everywhere?

At the bottom of the Dnieper-Bug estuary lie ancient city walls and buildings Lower City famous ancient Olbia. Another's defensive towers ancient city- Chersonesos are located at the bottom of Quarantine Bay. At the bottom of Sukhumi Bay, as many researchers suggest, are hidden the ruins of one of the most ancient ancient cities of the Black Sea region - Dioscuria. Near the modern port of Feodosia, under water there is a pier built in the era of antiquity. The walls of the capital of the Asian Bosporus - Phanagoria - are sinking to the bottom Kerch Strait. Bulgarian submarine archaeologists discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea coast of their homeland traces of sunken settlements from antiquity, as well as the remains of ancient Apollonia, founded almost three thousand years ago.

Even more impressive is the list of ancient cities, ports and settlements found in the Mediterranean, completely or partially submerged. Salamis on the island of Cyprus. Harbors of the Phoenician ports and city-states of Tire and Sidon. The flooded port of Caesarea, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. The breakwaters of the ancient Greek port of the glorious city of Corinth, which went to a depth of three meters. Protective walls of the ancient cities of Gythion and Kalydon on the coast of Greece. Flooded ancient tombs on the island of Melos in the Aegean Sea. Sunken defensive walls 200 meters from the shore of the island of Aegina. The buildings of the famous ancient resort of Bailly, sank to a depth of 10 meters to the bottom of the Bay of Naples. The flooded piers of Ostia, the harbor of great Rome. Etruscan settlements at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Port buildings of the ancient cities of Taufira and Ptolemais near the coast of Libya. The port and coastal buildings of Cyrene, the famous Greek colony in Africa. The sunken city of the island of Djerba lying off the coast of Tunisia. Numerous cities and settlements at the bottom of the Adriatic Sea.

This list is far from complete. Underwater archaeologists expect to find many other cities swallowed up by the waters under the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and its associated seas. But similar cities under water exist not only in the warm Mediterranean and Black Sea region, but also in the harsh North Sea - cities built not in the era of antiquity, but much later, in the Middle Ages, and flooded or half-flooded during the last millennium. At the bottom of the Baltic Sea lie settlements and sites of Stone Age people, and there also lie the ruins of one of the largest ports of medieval Europe, the city of Yumna, created by the coastal Slavs.

Water swallowed up not only medieval cities, but also cities created in modern times, several centuries ago. Remember Port Royal, nicknamed “pirate Babylon”. A third of the buildings in Orangetown, a smuggling village on the island of St. Eustatius, are located at a depth of 7 to 20 meters. The ruins of the “sugar port” of Jamestown on the island of Nevis lie at a depth of 3 to 10 meters.

Finally, the flood threatens and modern cities. Sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Venice about a thousand years ago medieval city Metamauco. Its inhabitants laid new town, which has become the pearl of the Adriatic, - Venice. "Venice is sinking!" - the call is being made to the whole world, for the palaces, churches, buildings of this beautiful city of the Doges, following Metamauco, are inevitably plunging under water. The medieval buildings and temples of the Brazilian city of Olinde on the east coast of the Atlantic have partially sunk and continue to sink. And our beautiful city of Leningrad is constantly threatened by floods.

Does this mean the global flood has not stopped?

The decline and death of many cities are explained by other reasons. Port Royal, as you know, went under water after the earthquake. The Adriatic coast is sinking, and therefore the cities standing on its low-lying shores are gradually drowning. Terrible storms caused the death of many cities on the North Sea coast. And still main reason The reason why many coastal cities are under water is that the level of the World Ocean is steadily rising.

Now the ocean is rising at a negligible rate. What does 1 millimeter per year, 10 centimeters per decade, 1 meter per century mean? But where is the guarantee that this rate of global flood will not increase? After all, we have studied in detail only a very small period of time covering the course of the last glacial flood, and even then there are many gaps in our knowledge of its rhythm. The history of the Earth says that the planet experienced much more powerful glaciations than the last. And where is the guarantee that they will not happen again - or, conversely, that the rapid melting of the remaining ice will not cause a catastrophe on the scale of all humanity, and not individual regions and cities? Moreover, more and more often voices are heard about man-made heating of the atmosphere, unknown in previous times.

Are we facing a global flood? This will be discussed in the final chapter of the book.