From the Vault: The Sunken Lands, Part 4
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Hello and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Joe McCormick. Today we're going to finish out the Vault series that we've been running this week. This is part four of our series called The Sunken Lands. This originally published on December 7th, 2023. Hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb. And I am Joe McCormick. And we are back with the fourth and final part in our series called the sunken lands about places on earth that relatively recently used to be dry land, but are now covered by water. Now in previous parts of the series, we talked about, of course, legendary lands of this sort, uh,

Atlantis and other fictional or mythical sunken civilizations. And sorry to be a bummer to the many Atlantis hunters out there, but yes, it does seem like the experts on the original sources that this story comes from, namely a couple of dialogues of Plato, think that it probably is a fictional invention and not a reference to a real place that existed. But that doesn't mean that there are not

lands that have been within the history of the human species submerged by water. In fact, we know of some examples of places that were both inhabited by humans and sunk under the water, not really anything like was described in the Atlantis story.

But there are examples of the sunken land masses of Beringia and Doggerland, which during and briefly after the last ice age formed land bridges between North America and Asia and Great Britain and continental Europe, respectively. We also talked about vanished islands in the Pacific. Some of these supposedly vanished islands are probably a result of errors in their original reporting, but others persist.

are places that probably actually did vanish or sink beneath the water due to cataclysmic seismic activity. We also talked about atolls, how they're formed and where their central islands went. There was a hypothesis that Darwin had about this going all the way back to his voyage on the Beagle. There are new ideas related to karstification and the dissolution of carbonate rock or limestone.

when it's exposed over the surface of the sea, dissolution by rainwater. And then also, finally, in the last episode, we talked about places that have been flooded by damming, the damming of freshwater resources, damming rivers and streams to end up submerging areas that used to be exposed land now under lakes.

Now, a quick note on just the idea of sunken islands and sunken lands. We had a listener ask about this in Discord. So I want to just briefly point out that, especially in our discussion of Atals in the last episode, the term sunken or to sink is

may ultimately be too simplistic for these discussions because they're all very based on the human perspective of what's going on. And in any case, we're talking about situations that may entail both rising and lowering sea levels, as well as land that is pushed up and or created by volcanic, organic, or seismic forces, and land that lowers, sometimes beneath water level due to erosion, seismic forces, etc. So just in all cases, just keep in mind that, yep,

Sunk in, sinking, maybe doesn't fully capture the picture of what's going on. Well, actually, as luck would have it, I do want to get to one example of actual sinking of lands in just a bit here. So in the background of discussing these historical cases of landscapes covered by rising seas,

There is the knowledge that most of us have now that relatively rapid increases in sea level are happening right now and will continue in the coming decades due to climate change, due to the warming of the seas, the melting of glaciers.

Sea level changes have happened on Earth before, but one thing that's different now is how much of the physical infrastructure and culture of modern human civilization was designed on the assumption of current sea levels staying where they are. Whole cities, whole countries even, are threatened by rising waters because they have been built without those rising waters in mind.

Yeah, some of the very places we've discussed, at least in passing in these episodes, like the Maldives, are greatly threatened by these rising seawaters.

Yes, absolutely. But of course, this applies to coastal settlements all over the world on every continent on Earth, though in different ways. Not every coastal settlement will be affected the same. And I want to get to some of that variance in just a bit here. But as a baseline, I thought we should look at how much are sea levels expected to rise in the next century or so?

That depends on a number of variables, but I was looking at the most recent IPCC report, which had put together a series of estimates. First of all, they look at the question of what is happening to global mean sea level right now, what has already happened in the traceable recent past. Whatever happens in the future, one thing we know for certain is that the sea level is already rising and has already risen, and the rate at which it

rises will very likely accelerate in the future. Based on our best measurements averaged over different time periods, we can see that sea levels have risen over the past century. And basically, the more recent the chunk of time you look at is, the faster they're rising. So the IPCC report points out that sea levels rose about 1.4 millimeters per year. If you look at the time period 1901 to 1990,

If you shift more recently and look at 1970 to 2015, it's 2.1 millimeters per year. If you just look at 1993 to 2015, it's 3.2 millimeters per year. If you just look at 2006 to 2015, it's 3.6 millimeters per year. So the later the period of the last century you look at, the more it is rising per year.

Now, you might reasonably wonder, how do you actually measure sea level down to the millimeter? Like the top of the water is always moving. So that's a reasonable question. What methods do you have to know that the average level of the sea is rising? There are a couple of major metrics here cited, and I didn't fully know how these worked beforehand. So I thought this was interesting.

One method used is tide gauges. These systems have been used in some form to record sea levels for hundreds of years, or at least going back, I think, to the early 1800s, though now they've changed form to incorporate different types of sensors and computers, other modern components.

But they still have some things in common. So the old method here was that they would use a device called a stilling well. And this was basically a pipe about a foot wide that would be plunged down into the water from a place called a tide station, essentially a house built out on a dock.

And this pipe would still the water around a floating device. The float would be suspended down into the well by a wire. And then that wire would be attached at the other end to a recording device, which might be something like a pen that would mark the water level automatically on a paper strip.

So the float floats on the top of the water. As the water rises, the pen moves and marks that level on the paper strip. As the water goes down, the pen moves again. And then these marks were analyzed and averaged together to form a picture of the tidal variance and the average sea level.

Over time, this method changed so that the data could be fed directly into computers. And these tide stations also, they had measuring staffs as well. You've probably seen things like this somewhere around the coast before, where it's just like a stick poking out of the water. It's basically a ruler. You know, it's got height markings on them. And then the operators could visually observe the staff and compare that to the mechanical readings from the float device.

Now, tide gauges still exist and they still make readings, but they've got new systems, new types of sensors today to get their readings from. Modern tide gauges tend to use acoustic sounding tubes instead of a float and a stilling well. So the acoustic sounding tube will emit a sound wave from a fixed height and then wait for it to bounce off of the water's surface and come back.

And the time to return of the signal allows you to calculate the height of the water across the tidal variance. So you can put in place these tide gauges in coastal environments all around the world and average them out to try to get some information about what the global sea levels are doing all around the world.

And if you look at that information, it shows, yes, indeed, the sea levels have been rising. They've been rising over the last century along the lines of the measurements I mentioned a minute ago. But if you're able, you'd also want to compare that data to other sources of information to make sure you're getting the most accurate possible average. So there is another method that is used, and that is altimetry.

This is the use of satellite-based tools called radar altimeters to measure the height of the sea. Basically, you can know the altitude of a satellite with a high degree of precision. You can track that with instruments like laser range finders, like, you know, bounce a laser off the satellite so you can tell pretty much exactly how high it is. And then with that information in mind, you can use a satellite to send out a microwave pulse toward the Earth and

That pulse bounces off of the surface of the ocean and then bounces back to the satellite and hits a return sensor. And then the satellite measures the time of the round trip between the emitter and the surface of the ocean to get a very precise measurement of the distance between the satellite and the water, which again, in combination with the precisely known altitude of the satellite, can be used to measure the level of the sea.

And of course, radar altimetry can be used to measure average sea level changes over time and get global averages and stuff. But it can be also used, I thought this was interesting, to measure variations in the height of the water around the world at the same time. So I

So a kind of crazy thing about the ocean is that it is not at the same height everywhere on Earth all the time. That seems counterintuitive because you think of water in a container like a bowl or something eventually finding, you know, finding its own level. It kind of levels out. But across the world's oceans, there are peaks and valleys that arise in certain places at certain times.

And so one example we're all familiar with is the tide. You know, the tide is caused mainly by gravity, by the gravitational influence of the moon, but also the sun.

But there are other factors that can cause local and sometimes temporary high and low altitudes of seawater as well. I was reading a report from NASA Earth Observatory about this, and it mentioned friction caused by wind on the surface of the water. So like wind sort of dragging the water around and piling it up in certain places. I guess that's a crude way of describing it, but that is sort of what happens sometimes.

There are also Coriolis effects and ocean currents. And there are also effects of variations in atmospheric pressure. So, you know, the atmosphere pushing the surface of the water down in regions where the pressure is high and so forth. And we can measure these altitude variations across the ocean with the help of satellite-based radar altimetry. As just one example of the variance in the height of the oceans around the world, according to

to NASA, the sea level in the Pacific Ocean is generally higher than the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 20 centimeters or about eight inches higher. How is that possible? Well, the volume of seawater is not static. Changes in the temperature and salinity of seawater affect its density. So warmer water generally is less dense. It takes up more space per unit of mass.

The Pacific is on average warmer, so its volume is greater, and thus Pacific sea levels are higher, and other factors contribute like this as well.

This kind of variation is actually acknowledged in the IPCC report where they say, quote, sea level rise is not globally uniform and varies regionally. Thermal expansion, ocean dynamics and land ice loss contributions will generate regional departures of about plus or minus 30 percent around the global mean sea level rise. And those regional variations in changes in sea level, I want to come back to that in a minute.

Now, of course, we all know that the main cause of the current warming that is driving sea level rise is, of course, what the IPCC report calls anthropogenic forcing. This means results of human activity, primarily the changing of the composition of the atmosphere, causing it to trap more heat. This is

the famous greenhouse effect. Putting more things like carbon, methane into the atmosphere increases the heat trapping potency of the atmosphere. It traps more heat. The earth warms.

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Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Talk to your doctor and visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

This is Jonathan Strickland from Tech Stuff. I've been getting into the holiday spirit by listening to a lot, and I mean a lot, of music on my Sonos Move 2 smart speaker. Now the thing I love about the Move 2 is that I can pick it up off its cradle and just carry it with me room to room. So whether I'm decking the halls or I'm prepping hot apple cider or I'm just

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So we know sea levels have been rising and they will continue to rise. But we don't know how long it's going to last.

But how much and how fast they rise is highly variable from our current point of view. So there are some estimates based on current data, according to the IPCC predictions, relative to the mean sea level in the period from 1986 to 2005. They predict that the global mean sea level will rise probably somewhere between 0.43 meters or about 1.4 feet per

to 0.84 meters, which is about 2.8 feet, by the year 2100. And then due to a cascade of factors, sea levels will continue to rise for centuries after that and will probably stay higher for thousands of years.

Now, I wouldn't hang hang on those exact numbers too much because those are estimates. They're also averages of estimates. And I've seen other reports with different estimates, especially at the high end of like how bad could it possibly get if we just keep increasing more and more greenhouse gas emissions.

But the important thing to note is that the high and low-end projections here are dependent on the variable of human activity. So if we continue increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we're somewhat closer to the top end of that range. And the low end is feasible if we drastically reduce greenhouse gas output and factor in some kind of negative emissions as well, such as massive natural or artificial carbon sequestration. And natural carbon sequestration would be

be, you know, trapping carbon in things like plants and forests. Yeah. So as I've heard a lot of experts say, it's not that there isn't room for optimism in all of this, but the optimism does not come without action. There are definite steps that need to be taken. We can't just be like, ah, it might be, it might be okay. Maybe it's just gonna be the lower end. We'll just, we'll roll the dice and see. Like, that's not how it's going to work out.

Yeah, that's exactly right. The lower end of the prediction range there is based on an assumption of action. If humanity does something to massively reduce the contribution to global warming through greenhouse gases. So in that case, yes, we could limit it to the lower levels of sea level rise. But to be clear, some amount of sea level rise at this point has already happened and is basically locked in. The question is, how much worse will it get?

And that outcome is clearly dependent to a large extent on what we do. But in most plausible scenarios, we can expect somewhere between something like one and three feet of global sea level rise by the end of this century.

Now, I mentioned there are other estimates I've come across. Some of these are specifically focused on like certain countries or regions or might be drawing on some emphasizing different data sources or something. But another estimate I came across was a 2022 joint report by NASA, the NOAA and several other federal agencies of the U.S. government called Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States. This was an update to a previous report from 2017.

And this report, quote, concludes that sea level along U.S. coastlines will rise 10 to 12 inches or 25 to 30 centimeters on average above today's levels by 2050. So that's predicting, you know, roughly a foot of increase by the middle of the century. Also, on the more dire end, this one was predicting 20.

much higher levels of sea level rise at the, you know, basically at the letter rip scenario. It's just like do nothing scenario by the end of this century. If you want to experiment with the findings of this report, it actually has an online mapping tool you can look up and mess around with yourself called the Interagency Sea Level Rise Scenario Tool. You can Google that and mess with it yourself if you want.

Now, there are a couple of major contributors to the actual physical causes of sea level rise due to a warming climate. One of them is melting ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets. We've already talked about the role of melting ice in the sea level increases at the end of the Pleistocene, which were responsible for inundating Doggerland and Beringia. But there's still a lot of ice on Earth left to melt.

Another important cause of sea level rise is the thermal expansion of water. Remember what I was talking about a minute ago with the difference in the height of the Pacific Ocean versus the Atlantic Ocean? One factor there being that the Pacific Ocean waters on average are warmer.

This stacks on top of the melting, but as water heats up, it becomes less dense and takes up more space. Warmer water takes up more space per unit of mass, so warmer oceans will be taller. And the thermal expansion of water plays a role already in a number of different

phenomena that happen within the ocean, for example, in the creation of ocean currents and in stratification of water levels within the oceans, like warmer water floats on top of colder water. But anyway, as the Earth warms, the water thermally expands also, so that contributes to the sea level being higher. Now, what does this actually mean for the everyday life of people living in low-lying coastal areas of planet Earth?

I think one thing people sometimes like if you haven't read much about this, you might have trouble imagining the form exactly this will take. Like you're just imagining the sea rising in a kind of static way. Like, you know, it's either dry land or it's underwater. What's in between? There actually is something in between, which is.

frequent flooding. The way many people will probably experience sea level rise at first is an increase in the frequency and destructiveness of extreme weather events that are dependent on sea level for the amount of damage they cause.

So a person who lives in a low-lying coastal city will start dealing with storm-related floods on a more and more frequent basis. What used to be a once-in-a-century flood will become a regular occurrence until, at some point, the flooding becomes so common that people may start to simply consider a place uninhabitable. And this happens before that place is more or less permanently underwater, but that eventually happens too.

Of course, this kind of flooding and water encroachment, it comes with all kinds of consequences, massive economic damage, destruction of property, destruction of livelihoods, displacement of people and all of the downstream effects of that.

But another factor people might not think about are the effects of the ingress of saltwater into places with freshwater resources, like into river deltas and so forth. Of course, this can have negative effects on habitats and wildlife, but also on agriculture and groundwater and all that. You don't want to salt your earth. But to come back to an issue I raised earlier, uh,

An interesting factor contributing to the coming inundation of coastal areas and especially coastal cities is that not only are sea levels definitely rising around the globe and differently in different places, in some places, the ground is literally sinking. The lands are not just metaphorically sunken because the water covers them. They are quite literally directly sunken. The land is going down.

So you might have a coastal city that is experiencing more and more frequent flooding during storm surges as the sea grows taller, but also the ground level of the city is several millimeters lower every year, which makes the relative sea level rise even worse. Now, how is that possible? Well,

There are multiple causes, but I was reading about this and a major one of the causes seems to be the extraction of groundwater from underlying aquifers, especially you're extracting it faster than those aquifers are replenished.

And as the water is extracted, it creates these voids underground. These voids grow. The soil gets compressed, especially if you're putting a bunch of heavy stuff on the soil, such as a city, like building on top of it. And then that compressing of the ground and the compressing into the voids below essentially means the city literally starts to sink. And this is happening to cities all around the world. I was reading a really interesting article recently

that addresses this issue. It's in Wired by Matt Simon called Sea Level Rise Will Be Catastrophic and Unequal. So this article is emphasizing again that the global mean sea level rise estimates are averages. In specific places, the problem could be not as bad or much, much worse. Simon writes, quote,

Galveston, Texas, where the land is slumping, could see almost two feet of rise by the year 2050. Meanwhile, Anchorage, Alaska, could see eight inches of sea level drop thanks to the fact that its land is actually rising following the departure of long-gone glaciers. So why is Galveston, Texas, sinking relative to the sea level?

He says mainly there are two causes here, and they're both related to the extraction of liquids from underground reservoirs. One is the extraction of water and the other is oil extraction of oil. And this is true in many places as a result of the combination of global sea level rise and land subsidence.

Some of the areas of the world that are going to be the hardest hit by the greatest relative local sea level rise are on the Gulf Coast of the United States, the Gulf Coast, because they're suffering both of these at the same time. The land is going down and the sea is coming up.

Simon in this article quotes a guy named Bob Stokes, who is president of the conservation nonprofit called the Galveston Bay Foundation. And he tells a story that I thought was wild. So this is Stokes talking in the article. He says, quote,

The numbers I'm going to give you are going to be hard to believe, but there is an area in Baytown where there is a big ExxonMobil industrial plant that sank about 11 feet in a period of 50 or 60 years because they were unsustainably pulling water out of there. There was a nice upper middle class subdivision where all the Exxon executives lived that ultimately had to be condemned because water was lapping up the foundations of these houses.

So there, water and oil being extracted from below, the land is sinking, and the sea is coming up. Meanwhile, with the example of Anchorage, Alaska, this is typical of many areas on the southern coast of Alaska where the ground is rising due to glacial retreat. This is called glacial isostatic adjustment. And Simon uses the analogy of when you get up off of a memory foam mattress and that mattress gradually fills in the dent you left with your body.

That's kind of what the land does when a glacier retreats. When a glacier melts away, it sort of bounces back up.

So, areas where the land is rising relative to the sea are going to be on average hit less by global mean sea level increases. And areas where the land is literally sinking, such as in many cities on the Gulf Coast, they're going to be hit harder than average. And there are a lot of sinking cities, not just on the Gulf Coast, but according to the map included, all along the U.S. East Coast.

Now, this article goes on to talk about other factors contributing to the regional variation in the effects of sea level rise as well, such as local characteristics of water. You know, warmer waters, as we said earlier, usually mean higher sea levels, but also more storm surge and things like that. But important thing to remember at the end of this article.

projections are variable. At this point, some amount of sea level rise is locked in, but humanity has power over how much worse the problem gets. And the recipe for minimizing damage to world civilization is reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as much as possible. Stop adding them and to the extent possible, take them out.

Yeah, basically, the natural environment is malleable, as we've discussed, and humanity has tremendous power and tremendous will. We see that in the degree to which we have and are changing things, but that power and will can also be applied to changing the ways that we're interacting with the natural world for the better. But again,

It does require action. It doesn't require just setting back and hoping that it will be better or pretending that the problem does not exist. Correct. All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the partition. Partition? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too. I just got it for

So how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jollier. ♪

Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Pick up your phone and shake it to get $50 off any cocktail maker. Yes, you heard me. Shake your phone and get $50 off. Don't delay. What is chronic migraine? It's 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

Botox. Onabotulinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not approved for adults with migraine who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Ask your doctor about Botox. Botox is a prescription medicine injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.

Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

Talk to your doctor and visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. This is Jonathan Strickland from Tech Stuff. I've been getting into the holiday spirit by listening to a lot, and I mean a lot, of music on my Sonos Move 2 smart speaker. Now, the thing I love about the Move 2 is that I can pick it up off its cradle and just carry it with me room to room. So whether I'm decking the halls or I'm prepping hot apple cider or I'm just

rocking out to my punk rock holiday music playlist in the living room, I can carry the tunes with me. But better than that, Sonos has engineered their products to deliver the highest quality sound you could ask for. So bringing the Move 2 into a room is like transforming that space into the

Perfect listening environment. Doesn't matter which room it is. And I can go hours without needing to put it back on the cradle to recharge it. Sonos has great gifts for everyone on your list. Visit Sonos.com forward slash tech stuff to wrap up your holiday shopping. That's Sonos.com slash tech stuff. Running low on time? Let a shopper with ship same day delivery go the extra mile to help you get more out of the holidays.

More time building a beautiful brunch spread? Not shopping for it, because you got groceries through same-day delivery. More time decorating the house? Not waiting in line. After all, you got lights from Lowe's delivered same day.

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All right. So this is the fourth part of our series. And we could honestly easily keep going. But we can't because we've got some Christmas stuff to do next week. Yeah.

So in this last section, I'd like to refer to the ancient Hindu epic, the Ramayana, which I do want to add a note. I brought this up in the show, but I brought the topic up on the show before, but I don't know that I've been using the proper pronunciation. I may have said it wrong in the past, in which case, my apologies. But the Ramayana, which chronicles the life of King Rama or Ram, an incarnation of Vishnu.

If you're not familiar with the story, there are lots of ins and outs. It's essentially the story of this mythical king, this divine king's life. But there is perhaps the most famous plot line in there is that his wife, Sita, is kidnapped by the ten-headed demon king, Ravana, who takes her away to the land of Lanka, provoking a great war to reclaim her.

So, of course, Rama has to assemble the troops. He has to gather his forces. And this includes various figures and factions, including a people known as the Vanara. In short, the Vanara are the monkeys. If you've seen illustrations of the Ramayana before, some of the related traditions, you've probably seen images of these various monkey troops aiding Rama. And, of course, you may be familiar with Hanuman, the most famous monkey.

of the vanara this is you know the tireless friend to rama and uh his you know his key champion and a very powerful entity that is i believe the son of a wind deity and uh in in some traditions so um but i was looking into the into the vanara a bit more and according to the author nandita krishna in the book sacred animals of india which i've referred to in the past

The Sanskrit word for primate is actually kapi, but the word used in the Ramayana, vanara, essentially translates to people of the forest, with vana being forest and nara being men. Interesting. Yeah, the author writes that this term probably never actually meant monkey. In fact, in Jainism, there's

the Vanara are described as a forest-dwelling tribe of people. And elsewhere in the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, they are also discussed as such. Contributing to this kind of mythic transformation from perhaps, you know, some sort of forest-dwelling people to intelligent humanoid primates, it might have been that these people

to whatever extent, you know, they were real. They may have been worshippers of a primate-themed deity, or they might have used some sort of primate-themed totem of some sort, or some sort of totem system. But the author stresses that it could also be neither of these. We just don't know. Hmm.

And so the Vanara include several important individuals that pop up in the epic. There's mighty Hanuman, as we already noted, most famous of them all. There's King Sugriva. And there's also a pair of twins known as Nala and Nila.

And the twins aid is especially important because Rama must deliver his army across the waters to the island fortress of Lanka in order to reclaim his bride. And so, as the epic describes, they have to create a bridge between

And this is where Nala and sometimes Nila, depending on the version, becomes essential. This is a quote from the Ramayana in translation, of course. Quote, A bridge was thrown by Nala or the narrow sea from shore to shore. They crossed to Lanka's golden town where Rama's hand smote Ravana down. A bridge was thrown. Wow. How do you how do you throw a bridge?

Well, this is where things get interesting, dissecting all of this, because the accounts apparently vary. In some cases, the resulting bridge that gets thrown or constructed is...

is in fact a great bridge, that it's something built, it's constructed, it's perhaps made it wood at the base and then becomes stone further up. It is like a huge mega work that connects one land to the next so that the army can march over it. Other times it's described more as, I mean, it's still something that's constructed, but with a lot more magic involved. Like there

There are stories about the Varna using floating stones to build this bridge, throwing the stones in the water. And in some cases, these are stones that kind of float on their own already. But then there are other accounts where like there's a certain amount of monkey trickiness that's involved. Like they they do some like I think the account that I was reading, one of the accounts is that they were like throwing holy items into the water. And the gods said, OK, that's it. Nothing. The monkeys throw in the water.

can sink. Everything has to float. We can't have the stuff sinking to the bottom. And then they start throwing stones in and they kind of find a loophole to build the bridge. Brilliant. Love a loophole. Yeah. But at any rate, there's no like one way. Apparently there are different accounts, different stories. But we end up with the idea of a bridge one way or another. This is Rama's bridge or the Rama Sittu.

Now, especially since this has already come up in this series we're doing, I know some of you are thinking about those floating pumice rocks and wondering if observations of this phenomenon might have influenced the myth-making or if this has anything to do with it. And apparently, this has been discussed. A number of criticisms emerge concerning the lack of such stones in areas like

that are discussed as possibly linking up with the area where this great bridge could have been or is supposed to have been. More on that in a second. And then, of course, you get into some other situations, too. Like it's one thing for you could I guess you could say like the idea could be passed on and then could be

spill over into some myth-making, but could you actually build a bridge using pumice stones? I think there's significantly less evidence for that. Yeah, would they support your weight? I would think it'd be more like the ball pit. You'd kind of fall in between them. Yeah, and I think there are also just more convincing ideas regarding all of this.

So, of course, the big questions here would be, OK, first of all, did something even remotely like the events of this Hindu epic ever take place? And if so, why?

Where did it take place? Where would this bridge have been and what land masses would it have been linking? So versions of question one, to be clear, turn up in all religions. And they're often asked with different objectives in mind. Very broadly speaking, some researchers seek to prove religious accounts correct by finding corroborating evidence in archaeology, history and geology, while others seek to employ religious texts to better understand human and geologic history.

Again, very broadly speaking, because you can wind up with a little bit of column A and column B and vice versa, and human motivations are ultimately complicated. But it also means that these sorts of discussions can generate strong emotions as well. So I would suppose we should stress something that we often touch on, that mythology is not fiction, even if it is not objective reality.

Not to say that it is necessarily completely removed from objective reality, but it's kind of this third category between the two that can still empower us on multiple levels and give life meaning without being like one to one with the objective world.

Well, yeah, I've often spoken this opinion with reference to things like the creation story told in Genesis or something that are you sure that the people who first wrote this story even necessarily meant it to be taken as a literal factual account? Yeah. And, you know, it kind of comes back to some of the things we're discussing just concerning some of these ideas of different lost islands and so forth. It's like we always want to find that one reason, that one explanation. And, you know, oftentimes, especially when we're dealing with

things like this that are concepts that exist not only in one human imagination, but in multiple human imaginations spread out across different communities and cultures over long stretches of time. There's a lot of room for various influences to shape the final form of the thing. So,

Anyway, coming to this idea of a bridge, where would you possibly look for evidence of this? So a lot of it comes down to the possible location of the island of Lanka. And there's a great deal of scholarship on this question alone, with the prime candidate seeming to be the island of Sri Lanka.

The Maldives, Sumatra, and even Madagascar have also been discussed. And of course, conspiracy-minded folks are not above suggesting Atlantis. That's it. It was Atlantis. Yes.

But it was, yeah, it was not Atlantis. So for our purposes here, we're going to focus mostly on Sri Lanka, as that's where there's some really interesting evidence to discuss. And that seems to be where a lot of the energy seems to be going. Sri Lanka is easily spotted on any map separated from the Indian Peninsula by the Gulf of Manar and the Palk Strait. It has been inhabited by humans since prehistoric times.

And so it's, you know, it's been presented. And there's additional evidence to support this idea as well that we don't have time to get into. But a lot of people make the case that Sri Lanka was Lanka. And so, yeah, how would you get an army, an ancient army, supernatural or otherwise, from point A to point B? Well, this is, of course, where the bridge comes in.

And of course, in the context of a mythic story, you know, the bridge doesn't have to be anything that corresponds with actual geology or time specific technology. I mean, people can imagine bridges spanning impossible distances, that sort of thing. I think all that goes without saying. And there's plenty of things that happen in the Hindu epics that are inherently supernatural.

But attempts to nail down a possible actual bridge to Sri Lanka would constitute either a manufactured bridge and or a naturally occurring bridge.

It's the idea of at least some level of naturally occurring bridge. This is where it gets really interesting, because there is a chain of limestone shoals between Manar Island off the northwest coast of Sri Lanka and Ramaswaram Island off the southeast coast of India. Interconnected with sandbanks, it all forms a 30-mile or 48-kilometer-long quote-unquote bridge, and it is shallow enough to pose a navigational hazard to ships.

Oh, OK. So it's almost like if, you know, if the water levels were a little bit lower or something were piled up here, you can imagine something like a bridge emerging. Yeah. Yeah. And so this and this is something that has captivated the human imagination for a while and and and and cause people to logically wonder, could this be what the epics are talking about?

So this is also commonly known as Adam's Bridge, the name linked to an Islamic tradition and I think sometimes a Christian tradition as well that holds that Adam's Peak on Sri Lanka is where Adam, the first human in Abrahamic traditions, fell to earth. And the mountain in question here is also sacred in Hinduism. Yeah.

At any rate, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that these shoals and sandbars constitute a former land bridge.

though estimated dates vary. Cartographical records suggest that it may have been whole and even traversable until the year 1480. And the beginning in 1480, you might have had a series of storms that ended up washing sections of it away, storm breaches that end up taking away this portion of it and another portion until you're left with something that is no longer traversable.

Well, so that is much more recent than any of the than the land bridges we've been talking about in the other episodes or like the or the so-called land bridges, the former areas of Doggerland and Beringia, which are that are now underwater and have been for many thousands of years. This is just a question of a few centuries, comparatively very recent, if true.

Yeah, yeah. Though, of course, there are all sorts of questions that arise in this. Like, is it too recent? Is it something that would be something that might have emerged and then resemble something from pre-existing mythology? Or is it indeed, as many people believe, is it evidence of something that is described in the Hindu epics? Yeah.

So it's fascinating to think about those things. And also thinking about, like, reports of it being traversable from centuries past, like, to what extent can we trust those? We've already talked about whole islands that have been cataloged due to various errors or sort of deciding to err on the side of caution when identifying things that could be a navigational hazard to ships and so forth.

But at any rate, there is evidence of something here. And there are various theories about its natural formation. They range from tectonic forces to coral sand trapping, water current movements of sand, and so forth. So there is this idea that it could have been certainly a naturally occurring opportunity that could have been augmented then by human beings.

To some degree, which I don't think is all that outrageous, at least if you consider like small scale efforts to shore up or repair individual segments in a chain like this. And then on top of that, I mean, ancient peoples were certainly capable of larger scale engineering projects as well.

Though, based on the sources I was looking at, I don't think there's any strong scientific evidence for the idea that it was largely constructed or that it was constructed entirely. But again, this is an area of controversy. Mm hmm.

So setting aside how it came to be, we can be reasonably sure that the remnants we see here do constitute a one-time land bridge that in its current form is no longer traversable, likely due to changes in sea level and storm activity, some combination of the two.

And there have been proposals to dredge more of it out in order to improve navigation by boat. But this is controversial, both due to environmental reasons, but also to religious objections. And you also see proposals to rebuild the bridge, quote unquote. And this would be a project that would have tremendous religious significance, as well as, of course, just being like a major avenue of transportation between nations.

By the way, we don't have time to go into this one, but I also wanted to acknowledge that there is a mythical continent named Kumari Kandam linked in some traditions to ideas like Lemuria that would have been situated in the Indian Ocean. It would have allegedly hosted an ancient Tamil civilization, and I think it's generally described as a Tamilized take on the concept of Lemuria.

So, you know, a fairly recent idea in the grand scheme of things. But then in the 20th century, the idea ends up being taken up by Tamil revivalists. And so it has remained since that point a culturally charged idea as well, which kind of takes us back to a lot of what we were talking about just in general about the idea of selfhood.

sunken lands, whether real or mythological, even fictional, and how the classifications may shift over time and how they can become important. They can become vitally important. They can be things that are sought after not only as a way to sort of understand mysteries about the natural world, such as

how similar species can be found on two sides of a vast ocean, but also in trying to make connections that aid in the conceptualization of one's worldview, that sort of thing. Well, I think maybe that spells the end of our exploration of sunken lands, but this has been a really interesting journey to go on with you, Rob. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. I learned a lot, and I would love to learn some more from listeners out there. If you have some

additional examples of anything we've discussed, any of the categories we've discussed in these episodes. If you have some firsthand knowledge or observations you'd like to share about the various places we've discussed, all of that is fair game and we would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays, we do listener mail. On Wednesdays, there tends to be a short form artifact or monster fact episode.

And on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. I should point out, I do not think we've done an Atlantis movie on Weird House. I know we've had some flooding occur in some of the shows we've watched, but I don't recall Atlantis popping up. I could be wrong. There's a submerged city or two, I think. A few submerged lands. I watched a movie a few years back that's about just like there's like a hurricane and a flood and it's just about a bunch of gators getting in somebody's house. Right.

I forget what it's called. It was pretty funny. Like they're coming up the stairs, that sort of thing. Swimming up the stairs, you know. Oh, nice.

I'm trying to look it up. It's not Gator from 1976. So that has Burt Reynolds in it. Now I kind of need to see it. Oh, it might not be about alligators. It might be about a guy called Gator. I don't know. All right. Well, this is also fair game as well for anyone who wants to write in. If you have suggestions for Atlantis-based movies, sunken world movies that we can discuss in Weird House Cinema, well, we'd love to get those as well.

Oh, I found what it was. It's called Crawl. It starts in a crawl space and then the house is full of gators as it floods. That's what it is. All right. That sounds great. It's great. Okay. Anyway, a huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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