Another geographic consideration arising from the book by Prithvi Raj on the historical content of Indian scriptures is the representation that the Ganges arose in its present form about a thousand years or so after the primary event I have called the Pleistocene Nonconformity.

There was a time that when confronted with such a proposition, I would have dismissed it out of hand. Then I discvovered that one could get there from here.

So the question right of is can we reconcile this with our model as we have reconciled the submergence of the Maldive Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Again this part of the crust was accommodating compression and the prior mountain building provided a natural fault system able to accomplish this. So it is fair to assume that the mountains rose several thousands of feet at least if not a lot more. After all they are presently the tallest in the world and are comparable only to their near equivalent in the Andes on the same arc and same effective position.

This produced a valley sub parallel to the newly raised mountain range and possibly upheaved Tibetan plateau (?). Massive precipitation at the eastern end of the range north of Burma began cutting several major river systems including the Mekong. Water began filling the valley and draining westward. This valley breaks out close to Pakistan and enters the present plain of the Ganges.

Prior to a final breakout, the valley was certainly blocked in multiple locations with massive landslides and intrusive structures. It is quite plausible that that primary blockage was a weak landslide that allowed the accumulation of water. It is thus reasonable to assume that the water accumulated for centuries behind this natural blockage. In fact it is highly reasonable considering the incredible terrain itself. A thousand or so years of water accumulation is very reasonable.

I also note that the geology of the area is incredibly young. I have reviewed a photograph of a major sheer cliff in those mountains that showed little accumulation of scree yet was formed from sediments. It was implausible and demanded a recent genesis. In short, if those mountains were a million years old, the valleys would be choked with material as is constantly coming off those mountains today. They are not particularly choked at all.

That such a water buildup took place appears almost inevitable. That its release would be dramatic is also inevitable as the rushing waters would swiftly scour out the valley bottom for its full length. The amount of water held could have approached that of a small great lake and produced a huge flow that took weeks to subside.

We thus have a mechanism for producing the river bottom of the Ganges as a one time event. Before this happened, the rains had already created an active riverine system flowing off the front of the Himalayas and possibly producing several rivers flowing along the Gangetic plain to its huge delta. When the impounded waters began their release, a huge torrent proceeded to scour out a deep and broad valley down through this established sedimentary plain. In short, it is possible to provide a valid explanation for the abrupt rise of the Ganges that fits the cultural record.

It should be easy to piece together the geologic record, and someone should already have had his eyes open because of the note in the cultural record.

I also noted that before the event of the nonconformity, that a barrier mountain range is reported to be cutting India across the center in an east west direction. There was an equally important plain north of this barrier. If we simply look to the Himalayas as the original barrier range, its location is solved. This means that the cultural sources were describing a much larger geographic area than supposed where the southern portion fell south of the equator and the northern portion, plausibly as large fell north of the equator.

I would like to note that Prithvi Raj’s historical reconstruction and my own work are arriving at the same conclusions from very different directions and are agreeing very well. The knowledge of the crustal shift and the derivative knowledge of the impact along the arc of maximum movement on local crustal curvature is easily providing guidance in understanding the reported events. More important, the right things are happening in the right place.

It is significant to observe that populations still survived although coastal damage must have climbed into the hills. It also becomes plausible that populations of herders began to migrate into these broken lands quickly to escape suddenly long bitter winters in their own homelands.

As yesterday’s item made clear, the cultural information provided by Prithvi is showing us that a lot was going on in the Indian Ocean when the crust shifted eleven and a half thousands of years ago or so. So I cranked up Google Ocean to see what we now know about the subsea of this ocean. Most of this is fairly recent and was not available before.

I quickly discovered that I did not need any subsidence in the theory at all. We have a submerged mountain and island chain comparable to Japan in scale and extending along the Western coast of India and south into the Indian Ocean. The key larger islands begin just south of India and run several hundreds of miles. That part also is closely sub parallel to an apparent oceanic trench like Japan. The Maldives are part of this chain.

Merely lowering the sea level back to Ice age levels would reveal this land mass. It is also noteworthy that massive coral structures have also grown that appear to be miles wide and extending the full length of the chain. Subsidence added into this mix would certainly create the initial conditions and a rising sea would keep up the building process.

Put another way, Japan would notice a rise of three hundred feet, but the bulk of the topography would still appear intact. A subsidence of two to three thousand feet which also induced any volcanic stacks to also collapse would produce a wreckage pile mostly close to the surface. A rising sea would then encourage a huge build out of corals.

Therefore, we can state that mere sea level rise is insufficient to reduce an obvious mountain chain and that a violent subsidence surely can.

This chain bears the same relationship to India as does Japan to China. That means that it is impossible for appropriate cultural information to not exist even long after a disappearance. Prithvi has shaken it out for us.

I am also aware of legends covering the Gobi and the Himalayas that will now need to be sourced and revisited. This was a very busy part of the world for the several days in which the crustal movement took place.

It is also obvious that the crustal movement would have activated the contact and faults associated with the apparent trench along its entire length. This would certainly explain the reports of mountains visibly moving and also appearing to fall over into the ocean. This would have been quite visible from the mainland as there are many apparent submerged volcanoes close along the coast.

In short, we have found ample and surprising evidence supporting the plausibility of the reported observations. The evidence is much better than expectation. It also begins to answer the question of Mt Meru.

This was a huge mountain that was unique to this region and a center of religious veneration. For huge, we only need to think of Mt Fuji and its many sisters. Like Fuji, it is no trick to collapse these very weak stacks. Its image and idea has passed down to us over millennia. The only remaining question is exact location on the chain and whether is also blew up during the primary event. I think it likely should have blown up. So we should be looking for an active crater underwater.

We have three clear nearby population centers prior to the Pleistocene Nonconformity. There is the Indian subcontinent, there is the Japan like Maldives island belt, and we also have the huge Indonesian plains. All were positioned in the tropics where habitable land existed. The ice age made organized habitation impossible outside this fairly narrow belt.

There are plenty more things to run down in the cultural records of India and plausible explanations to follow up from this. We have already learned a lot about the imparted velocity of the crustal movement and we have discovered a true submerged and significant land mass. We did this by simply looking with eyes informed by understanding the significance of the crustal shift.