From "Earth in Upheaval": Many forms of life, many species and genera of animals that lived on this planet in a recent geological period, in the age of man, have utterly disappeared without leaving a single survivor. Mammals walked in fields and forests, propagated and multiplied, and then without a sign of degeneration vanished. A considerable group have become extinct virtually within the last few thousand years. The large mammals that died out [in America] include all the camels, all the horses, all the ground sloths, two genera of musk-oxen, peccaries, certain antelopes, a giant bison with a horn spread of six feet, a giant beaverlike animal, a stag-moose, and several kinds of cats, some of which were of lion size. Also the Imperial elephant and the Colombian mammoth, animals larger than the African elephant and common all over North America, disappeared. The mastodon that inhabited the forests and ranged from Alaska to the Atlantic coast and Mexico, and the woolly mammoth that roamed in a broad area adjacent to the ice sheets, likewise persisted until a few thousand years ago. The dire wolf, the saber-toothed tiger, the short-faced bear, the small horse (Equus tau) disappeared, and are no longer found either in the Old or in the New World. Many birds, too, became extinct. These species are believed to have been destroyed to the last specimen in the closing Ice Age. Animals, strong and vigorous, suddenly died out without leaving a survivor. The end came, not in the course of the struggle for existence-with the survival of the fittest. Fit and unfit, and mostly fit, old and young, with sharp teeth, with strong muscles, with fleet legs, with plenty of food around, all perished. These facts, as I have already quoted, drive "the biologist to despair as he surveys the extinction of so many species and genera in the closing Pleistocene [Ice Age]."

Some possible reasons given in explanation of this extinction event are disease, climate change, and over-hunting by man. I would assume that the evolution of the number of species we are considering here would have taken millions of years, and each had proven capable of surviving and adapting on this planet. Yet within a very short period of time, well over half of all large mammal species disappeared forever. Man did not kill off these creatures; if anything it is more likely that man was the hunted. Could it be that only 12,000 years ago, in a sudden and cataclysmic event, all species were brought to the brink of extinction, including man. Did highly advanced civilizations vanish into the mists of myth?

What we have to realize is that 12,400 years ago a major catastrophic event took place. When considering the number 12,400 years, it places this event in a position that is very difficult for us to truly comprehend. Events that occur today, of even small significance, are within 24 hours known worldwide. The survivors of this cataclysm would of been forced to make their own conclusions as to the events that changed their civilizations forever. The remaining survivors were forced in a very dramatic fashion to immediately change their inherit practices in order to survive. In today's society, even with all our technologic advances, this would be a mammoth task. Indeed we might even be at a disadvantage, for the knowledge of how to sustain ourselves if left on our own is lost for most of us.

We can only imagine the radical changes that must of taken place and the great difficulty that the remaining societies must have endured to ensure their survival. I feel strongly that the efforts put forward by these remaining civilizations warrant our efforts to fully understand this time in our history.

Other Extinction Events The recent "Ice Age" Extinction Event was only one of many in Earth's history. The extinction of the Dinosaurs, some 65 million years ago, is the most widely recognized. For over ten years now that extinction event has widely been accepted to have been caused by a meteorite impact whose resulting crater (the Chicxulub crater) has been found deep in the earth's crust.

Recent evidence though has raised doubt about this conclusion. A group of scientists, led by Professor Gerta Keller of Princeton and Professor Wolfgang Stinnesbeck of the University of Karlsruhe, have put forth geological evidence that suggests this crater is not the smoking gun. Core samples of the sediments around this crater appear to show this impact happened well before the dinosaurs went extinct. Science still believes that the dinosaur extinction was caused by meteorite impact, just that the resulting crater may not have been found yet.

The most important point and lesson that we should take from these observations is that over years, with the constant gathering of new information, the scenarios we accept as historical facts often change. We at one point argued vigorously that the Earth was flat. We must now open our minds and understand that the Theory of Mankind's Prehistory may be running in the second position behind the Flat Earth Theory. The hardest part of excepting a new theory is acknowledging the errors in the existing theory. To make matters even more complicated, when one theory is found to be incorrect, other existing theories may be challenged. We are creatures of habit and changes are not easily excepted. We must push ourselves to find the truth and be willing to examine all possibilities. We must not except theories as fact.