Earth in Upheaval Revisited – Part 25

Mount Everest

Chapter 6 of Immanuel Velikovsky’s Earth in Upheaval continues with a section entitled The Himalayas. In this section, Velikovsky argues that significant mountain building events have taken place within the last few millennia. If this were true, it would go a long way towards establishing the catastrophist hypothesis. But could such a far-reaching claim be true?

The Himalayan mountain range contains some of the tallest peaks on Earth, but, as Velikovsky concedes, the rocks comprising this huge massif were formed from sediments deposited at the bottom of an ancient ocean:

Scientists of the nineteenth century were dismayed to find that, as high as they climbed, the rocks of the massifs yielded skeletons of marine animals, fish that swim in the ocean, and shells of mollusks. This was evidence that the Himalayas had risen from beneath the sea. At some time in the past azure waters of the ocean streamed over Mount Everest, carrying fish, crabs, and mollusks, and marine animals looked down to where now we look up and where man, after many unsuccessful efforts, has until now succeeded only once in putting his feet. (Velikovsky 68-69)

It is now believed that the uplift of the Himalayas began about 50 Mya, when the Indo-Australian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate, closing the Tethys Ocean. The collision of two continental plates resulted in a series of thrust faults and folds, creating the Himalayan mountain range. Limestone created at the bottom of the Tethys Ocean can now be found on the summit of Mount Everest.

The Tectonic Formation of the Himalayas

Today, the Indian Plate—now divorced from the Australian Plate—continues to move north at a rate of about 67 mm per annum. The Himalayas are still growing, with some peaks rising by about 5 mm per annum. The Doctrine of Uniformity asserts that this gradual rise—painstakingly slow but unremitting over tens of millions of years—is sufficient to account for the formation of the greatest mountain range on the planet. Velikovsky, however, mistakenly believes that the formation of the Himalayas—according to the Uniformitarians—is something that happened a long time ago and is now complete:

Such a long period of time, so long ago, was enough even for the Himalayas to have risen to their present height. Do we not, when we tell young listeners a story about giants and monsters, begin with: “Once upon a time, long, long ago ...” ? And the giants are no longer threatening and the monsters are no longer real ... Since the appearance of man on earth, or since the beginning of the Ice Age, there have been no uplifts on any substantial scale. In other words, we have been told, the profile of the earth with its mountains and oceans was already established when man first appeared. (Velikovsky 69)

In spite of this misunderstanding, Velikovsky proceeds to undermine the gradualist hypothesis.

Helmut de Terra

Velikovsky’s first witness is the German geologist Helmut de Terra. De Terra made his first visit to the Himalayas during a joint German-Swiss expedition to Central Asia in 1927-28.

Helmut de Terra

Helmut de Terra was born in Germany to parents of French Huguenot origin. He studied geology and geography at the University of Munich, where he earned his PhD in 1924. In a career that spanned five decades, de Terra took part in numerous expeditions to Asia and Mexico, which allowed him to indulge his twin passions of geology and archaeology. Velikovsky came to de Terra by way of the Swiss geologists Arnold Heim and Augusto Gansser-Biaggi, whose account of the first Swiss expedition to the Himalayas in 1936, The Throne of the Gods, appeared in the same year as de Terra’s Studies on the Ice Age in India. It is the former work that Velikovsky first cites:

In Kashmir, de Terra and Sahni have found sedimentary deposits of an ancient sea-bottom which in places has been elevated to an altitude of 5000 feet [1500 m] and up-ended to an angle of as much as 40°. These deposits contain paleolithic fossils and other organismal fragments belonging to the Quaternary period. Who, in face of such facts, can venture to repudiate the bold hypothesis that since the appearance of man on earth the passes leading into Tibet have become more difficult owing to a rise of 3000 feet [900 m] or more in the height of the mountains—however fantastic changes so extensive may seem to a modern geologist? (Heim & Gansser 218)

Birbal Sahni was an Indian paleobotanist at the University of Lucknow, who shared de Terra’s interest in geology and archaeology. In 1936, he wrote an article for Current Science with the title The Himalayan Uplift since the Advent of Man.

It is startling to find mainstream geologists putting forward such radical views a mere century ago. Heim and Gansser go even further than Velikovsky in suggesting that some of these geological changes took place in historical times:

Prior to the discovery of the before-mentioned facts, it was known from zoological and botanical data that not so very long ago Tibet was a comparatively fertile land which only later was cut off from India by the elevation of the Himalayas ... May we not attribute the abandonment of the cave-city discovered by Gansser, and that of Takla Makan, the dead city of the desert visited by Sven Hedin and Aurel Stein to the increasing desiccation of the respective regions, and to the same cause ascribe the decline of the huge Mongolian Empire which flourished in Central Asia during the Middle Ages—all this being dependent on the increasing height of the Himalayas? Very remarkable indeed is the way in which observations made from various view-points in widely separated parts of Asia all lead to the same result. (Heim & Gansser 218-219)

Whatever credence one may lend to speculations such as these, there remain the paleolithic fossils and other organismal fragments belonging to the Quaternary period which were found at an altitude of 1500 metres. Do these prove that major uplifts have taken place within the last few millennia? Sahni believed that the Himalayas as they appeared in the 1930s would have provided an impassable barrier to Paleolithic humans. Nevertheless, stone tools found on both sides of the Himalayas prove that cultural contacts existed between India and China since the very dawn of human existence:

The main point of this article is that between India and China cultural contacts have probably existed since the very dawn of human existence. Long before man conquered the ocean intercourse between these two ancient countries was possible by the direct route across the Himalayas, which, during Palæolithic and Neolithic times, were probably not so high as to form an effective barrier. (Sahni 61)

Birbal Sahni

Velikovsky, however, does not cite Sahni. Instead he proceeds to take a closer look at Studies on the Ice Age in India, which de Terra co-authored with the Scottish polymath T T Paterson. Paterson was curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University. Velikovsky refers to him as Professor T. T. Paterson of Harvard University, but I have not found any evidence that Paterson ever taught at Harvard. Perhaps Velikovsky mistook Cambridge, England, for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located.

Velikovsky characterizes de Terra & Paterson’s book as one long argument and demonstration that the Himalayas were arising during the Glacial Age and reached their present heights only after the end of the Glacial Age, and actually in historical times (Velikovsky 70). This is at best an exaggeration. The authors actually hypothesize that there is a link between the uplifting of the Himalayas and the glaciation of the region:

Altogether, the Pleistocene history of Kashmir displays so puzzling a variety of geologic events that one is compelled to seek an analysis of the principal factors. These could conveniently be grouped into two major processes—a diastrophic and a climatic cycle. However, the description of the Pir Panjal glaciation has shown how closely these processes influenced each other, as exemplified by the uplift of the monsoon barrier in its effect upon drainage, sedimentation, and glacial movements. Indeed, the interplay of geologic and climatic forces was so constant and thorough that it is impossible to segregate the various processes and consider each separately. Hence it would seem that a more detailed historic account of each stage will do greater justice to the peculiarities of the region. Also it will help to emphasize the respective rôle of each process, and this will lead to more vivid appreciation of the most important events. In doing this we are fully aware of the incomplete status of our information as regards both certain regions in Kashmir and the origin of the Ice Age in general, and no attempt will be made to add a new hypothesis to the existing host of theories. Yet we must be emphatic on one particular feature—namely, the dependence of Pleistocene glaciation on the diastrophic character of a mobile mountain belt. This relationship, we feel, has not been sufficiently recognized in other glaciated regions, such as Central Asia and the Alps, where similar if not identical conditions are found. (de Terra & Paterson)

The Pir Panjal Range

If there had been any significant uplift during historical times, it would have been marked by its own glaciation. But de Terra & Paterson do not believe any such late glaciation occurred:

The retreat of the fourth glaciers and the formation of the last Pleistocene terrace mark a distinct change in the geologic history of the area. So far as observations allow a judgment, we do not believe that a major glaciation occurred in the immediate vicinity of the Kashmir Basin or in the upper Indus terrane during postglacial time. (de Terra & Paterson 231)

De Terra & Paterson do concede that at least one glaciologist dates the fourth glaciation in Kashmir to the historical era:

As stated above, Dainelli’s fourth glaciation appears still to belong to the Pleistocene, and as for Finsterwalder’s recent Nanga Parbat studies (1936), by which he dated the Himalayan glaciation as post-Pleistocene, one only has to look at a map in order to realize the peculiar position which the Nanga Parbat massif holds in respect to glacial phenomena. (de Terra & Paterson 231)

Although de Terra & Paterson rejected Richard Finsterwalder’s Post-Pleistocene Glaciation, Velikovsky was quick to adopt it:

R. Finsterwalder, exploring the Nanga Parbat massif in the western Himalayas (26,660 feet high), dated the Himalayan glaciation as post-glacial; in other words, the expansion of the glaciers in the Himalayas took place much closer to our time than had been previously assumed. Great uplifts of the Himalayas took place in part after the time designated as the Ice Age, or only a few thousand years ago. (Velikovsky 72)

Nanga Parbat

The citation is to a German article by Finsterwalder, Die Formen der Nanga Parbat-Gruppe [The Forms of the Nanga-Parbat Group], which appeared in 1936. Richard Finsterwalder was a German surveyor and cartographer. In 1934 he took part in the German Nanga Parbat Expedition, a private expedition to the ninth-highest mountain in the world that had the full support of Hitler’s government. Although the expedition ended in disaster, with the deaths of four mountaineers and six guides, it was a source of great national pride for the Nazis. Finsterwalder’s participation in this expedition allowed him to continue teaching at the Technical University of Hanover even though his wife was regarded as half-Jewish. Hitler personally made an exception for Finsterwalder, so that, unlike many others with a similar family background, he could become a professor.

Despite his experience in the field, Finsterwalder was not a glaciologist or a geologist. He was a surveyor, cartographer, geodesist and civil engineer. His opinions on the course of the Ice Age in the Himalayas would not be regarded today as those of an expert:

The application of the Four-Glaciation Model of the Alps [ie Günz, Mindel, Riss, Würm] to Nanga-Parbat and the Himalayas does not appear promising, as the most important glaciation in the Himalayas apparently only occurred in the Post-Glacial Age, and the course of the Himalayan Ice Age was probably fundamentally different than that in the Alps. (Finsterwalder 340—my translation)

Richard Finsterwalder

Velikovsky takes this opportunity to remind his readers that the Late Glacial Age may have been more recent than is commonly claimed:

In the last stages of the Ice Age, when man worked stone in the mountains, he might have been living in the bronze stage down in the valleys. It has been repeatedly admitted by various authorities—quoted subsequently in this book—that the end of the glacial epoch may have been almost contemporaneous with the time of the rise of the great cultures of antiquity, of Egypt and Sumeria and, it follows, also of India and China. The Stone Age in some regions could have been contemporaneous with the Bronze Age in others. (Velikovsky 71)

This is a cornerstone of Velikovsky’s revised chronology of the Ancient World.

J S Lee

As we saw above, Heim & Gansser did indeed hypothesize that major orogenic uplifts occurred in the Himalayas during the historical period—perhaps even as late as the Middle Ages. In the penultimate paragraph of this section, Velikovsky repeats this claim, but this particular citation is to another geologist:

Heim, investigating the mountain ranges of western China, adjacent to Tibet and east to the Himalayas, came to the conclusion (1930) that they had been elevated since the glacial age. [Footnote 7: Lee, The Geology of China, p. 207.] (Velikovsky 72)

J S Lee (Li Siguang)

Li Siguang, or Li Zhongkuei, was a Chinese geologist and politician of Mongol extraction. He is sometimes known in English as J S Lee. Between 1904 and 1910 he studied shipbuilding at Osaka University in Japan. And between 1913 and 1918, he studied mathematics, astronomy, physics and geology at Birmingham University, England. After his return to China in 1920, he taught geology at several universities and was an active researcher in the field in several parts of the country. In the 1950s, after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, he was Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Minister of Geology.

His English textbook The Geology of China was published in London in 1939, having grown out of a series of lectures he gave at various British universities in 1934-35.

This is what Lee wrote on pages 206 and 207:

At all events, it can hardly be doubted that the high mountains of western China have undergone a considerable uplifting movement against the neighbouring lowland in recent geological times. Indeed, it is not unlikely that such a relative movement is still going on. A striking case in this connection may be cited. In the neighbourhood of Tatsienlu, and on the eastern side of the Minya Gongkar, Heim has actually observed the fluvio-glacial water cutting its own deposit formed in the glacial age to a depth of about 100 m. There is clear evidence that the glaciers in the high mountains have retreated considerably in recent geological time. The argument that such stream erosion might be due to increased precipitation in post-glacial time can therefore be safely ruled out. Thus we may agree with Heim that the mountain ranges in western China have been elevated since the glacial age. Similar evidence of recent uplifting is available in the Himalaya. It would seem probable that the Tibetan massif, with the lofty height that it has already attained, is still undergoing elevation. (Lee 206-207)

Velikovsky added the year 1930 to Heim’s claim. It is true that Lee, on page 208, cites only one work by Heim: his 1930 paper The Structure of the Sacred Omeishan, Szechuan. But this is not the source of Heim’s claim. Among the other publications of Arnold Heim cited elsewhere by Lee is his 1933 monograph on Minya Gongkar, or Mount Gongga. This book is the actual source of Heim’s claim:

Still more important is the result obtained by Dr. Heim in the high mountains of western China, especially in the Kuanhsien area (about lat. 31° N., long. 103° 30' E.), where the Diluvial moraine lies over 1,000 m below the front of the existing glaciers. Deeply dissected fluvio-glacial deposits are found in places lower than the Mosimien Terrace, which stands at an altitude of 1,600 m. From these and other related facts the author of the “Minya Gongkar” rightly concludes that the region of the Tibetan border has recently undergone a general uplifting. That the amount of uplifting has been considerable may be further inferred from the depth of the valley that has been incised by the Tungho, which passes close by. According to Heim the Mosimien Terrace stands some 600 m higher than the Tungho Valley, which receives the water from the valley of the Luho immediately below Mosimien. It would thus seem that the old moraine as observed by Heim lay at a much lower altitude in Diluvial time than it does at present. (Lee 396-397)

Minya Gongkar (Mount Gongga)

Loess

There is one other subject briefly touched upon by Velikovsky in this section, the question of loess:

It had been generally assumed that loess—thin wind-blown dust that is built into clays—is a product of a glacial age. However, in the Himalayas De Terra reported finding neolithic, or polished stone, implements in loess and commented: “Of importance for us is the fact that loess formation was not restricted to the glacial age but that it continued ... into postglacial times.” In China and in Europe, too, the presence of polished stone artifacts in loess prompted a similar revision. The neolithic stage that began, according to the accepted scheme, at the end of the Ice Age, still persisted in Europe and in many other places at the time when, in the centers of civilization, the Bronze Age was already flourishing. (Velikovsky 72)

Curiously, this is the only mention of loess in Earth in Upheaval. For a comprehensive investigation of this important subject from a Velikovskian perspective the reader must consult Charles Ginenthal’s Physical Evidence of Global Floods: Ocean Sediments, Circumpolar Muck, Erratics, Buried Forests, and Loess (2016). But that’s a task for another day.

And that’s a good place to stop.

References

Richard Finsterwalder, Die Formen der Nanga Parbat-Gruppe, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, Pages 321-341, Der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde, Berlin (1936)
Charles Ginenthal, Physical Evidence of Global Floods: Ocean Sediments, Circumpolar Muck, Erratics, Buried Forests, and Loess, Kindle Edition, Forest Hills, New York (2016)
Arnold Heim, The Structure of the Sacred Omeishan, Szechuan, Acta Geologica Sinica (Bulletin of the Geological Society of China), Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages 59-74, Geological Society of China, Beijing (1930)
Arnold Heim, Minya Gongkar, Forschungsreise ins Hochgebirge von Chinesisch Tibet, Hans Huber, Berne (1933)
Arnold Heim & August Gansser, The Throne of the Gods: An Account of the First Swiss Expedition to the Himalayas, Macmillan and Co, Limited, London (1939)
J S Lee, The Geology of China, Thomas Murby & Co, London (1939)
Birbal Sahni, The Himalayan Uplift since the Advent of Man: Its Culthistorical Significance, Current Science, Volume 5, Number 2, Pages 57-61, Current Science Association, Bangalore (1936)
Helmut de Terra & Thomas Thomson Paterson, Studies on the Ice Age in India and Associated Human Cultures, Publications of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Number 493, Washington, DC (1939)
Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval, Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, New York (1955, 1977)

Image Credits

Helmut de Terra: Copyright Unknown, Fair Use
Birbal Sahni: Public Domain
:
J S Lee (Li Siguang): Public Domain