In several previous articles I have been describing some of the great planetary upheavals that have occurred in the recent geological past that had a profound effect on humankind. I related how in the aftermath of thousands of years of the Great Winter, its catastrophic termination and the traumatic birth of the present world age, Earth’s environment shifted into a phase of benign and nurturing warmth. From the period beginning about 9,000 years ago to about 6,000 years ago the climate entered a period called the Holocene Thermal Maximum (abbreviated HTM) by the scientists who have studied this unique time. It has also been referred to as the Climatic Optimum and the Hypsithermal. The renowned archaeologist Marija Gimbutas has delved deeply into this period of prehistory and has revealed an amazing culture in Old Europe that she describes as the Civilization of the Goddess. During these several millennia average global temperatures were higher than now. Studies from all over the world confirm this. I could site dozens of reports supporting the existence of a warm climate interval shortly after the cessation of the great ice age.

What follows are a few examples from mainstream, peer reviewed scientific journals. There are some extremely interesting implications to this research especially in regards to the culture that flourished in that epoch just prior to the rise of modern civilization. I present this information to provide a context in which to understand the rise of the Goddess civilization.

Let’s begin with an early study conducted in 1970s. A team of biologists and ecologists from the University of Minnesota studied forest distribution in New England during this period of post-glacial warmth. Their investigations revealed that white pine and hemlock trees were growing up to 1300 feet higher on the mountain slopes than at present! This requires a climate about 2 degrees warmer than today. (see Davis, Margaret B. et al. 1980, Holocene Climate of New England: Quaternary Research, vol. 14, pp. 240-250)

Studies performed in the 1980s in western Canada showed that the timberline between about 9 and 6 thousand years ago was as much as 425 feet higher than it is today. The authors of one study that appeared in 1989, John Clague and R.W. Matthewes, a geologist and biologist respectively, report that “we present new evidence that the growing-season climate of southwestern British Columbia about 8-9 ka (ka means 1000 years) was probably warmer than at present. Additional data from other sites in southern British Columbia and southwestern Alberta indicate that a generally warm climate may have persisted until 5-6 ka . . . Maximum warmth probably occurred between 9.1 and 7.6 ka . . . glaciers in the mountains of western North America probably were less extensive than today from before 9 ka until at least 5 ka.” (Clague, John J. & Matthews, R.W, 1989, Early Holocene thermal maximum in western North America: New evidence from Castle Peak, British Columbia)  Other studies support the idea that glaciers of North America’s western mountains were actually smaller than now during this time.

Another study performed in the Canadian High Arctic indicated a temperature 2 to 2 ½ degrees Centigrade higher than the present temperature during the Thermal Maximum. The scientists who conducted this research studied lakes in the Canadian tundra near the Arctic Ocean and found evidence for “a transition from tundra to woodland in response to a major warming of the climate” at the onset of the HTM. The pollen evidence they studied showed “that between 10,000 and 6,000 yr much of the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, which is today covered by tundra, was then occupied by spruce forest . . . summers during the earliest Holocene must have been significantly warmer than the modern Arctic and late Holocene climates.” (See J. C. Ritchie et al., 1983 Evidence from north-west Canada for an early Holocene Milankovitch thermal maximum: Nature, vol. 305, 8 Sept. pp. 126-129) Interestingly the shift from warm to cold occurred between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago.

In 2004 another study of Arctic climate was published by a 30 member scientific team. They summarize their findings in the abstract to their report: “The spatio-temporal pattern of peak Holocene warmth (Holocene thermal maximum, HTM) is traced over 140 sites across the Western Hemisphere of the Arctic. Paleoclimate inferences based on a wide variety of proxy indicators provide clear evidence for warmer-than-present conditions at 120 of these sites.” The authors estimate that average temperatures may have been up to 2.4 degrees warmer than the 20th century. (D.S. Kaufmann et al., 2004; Holocene thermal maximum in the western Arctic Quaternary Science Reviews vol. 23 pp. 529–560)

In a more recent study from 2012 a team of European scientists developed a sophisticated computer model to study Arctic temperatures during the Thermal Maximum. After feeding data into the program from a variety of proxy studies the authors conclude that Arctic temperatures were significantly higher than now. They state: “In the model, the warmest HTM conditions are found at high latitudes in both hemispheres, reaching 5°C above the preindustrial level,” 5 degrees Centigrade is about 9 degrees F. That implies a very warm Arctic indeed! (For the full study see H. Renssen, et al. 2012, Global Characterization of the Holocene Thermal Maximum: Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 48, pp 7 – 12)

Shifting over to Europe we find other examples. One study conducted in the European Alps focused on the landscape effects left in the wake of modern retreating glaciers. One particular glacier, Rutor Glacier in the Italian/French Alps was chosen for study because of its close similarity to many other alpine glaciers during the mid-1980s. Since the time when it had reached its maximum expansion during the Little Ice Age in the early 19th century it had contracted nearly a mile and a quarter at the time of the study. As it retreated two scientists conducting the study, Stephen Porter and Giuseppe Orombelli, found that it had uncovered a former peat bog that had at one time been overrun by the glacier as it expanded during the early part of the Little Ice Age. In fact, it appeared that more bog was still buried farther up under the glacier. After a series of radiocarbon dates they were able to conclude that the bog “formed and remained beyond the terminus from at least 8,400 to 6,000 B.P.” (Before Present). 

This implied that during this time span Rutoy glacier had been significantly smaller than it was in the 1980s. Porter and Orombelli were aware of the fact that a few years earlier it had been discovered that the fossil remains of forests of larch and pine were being revealed underneath numerous receding glaciers throughout the Alps. These forests had obviously been overrun by the advancing ice. Again it clearly implied that when the forests were growing where the ground was now covered by glaciers, the glaciers had been notably smaller and the climate significantly warmer. (see Porter and Orombelli, 1985, Glacier contraction during the middle Holocene in the western Alps: evidence and implications. Geology, vol.

In 2004 a team of scientists from China analyzed the changing pattern of pollen species in a core sample of peat taken from a swamp in southern China that had once been a lake. The species of pollen prevalent in a sample serves as a proxy, providing indirect evidence of temperature at the time the pollen was deposited. In this case the main pollens extracted and analyzed were from various species of trees and flowering plants. A shift from predominantly alder trees, which are a cold loving tree, to species of oak and pine and flowering plants that thrive in warmth is a clear signal of a climate and environmental change. Through analysis of shifts in the dominant type of vegetation supplying pollen to the former lake, a reconstruction of past temperature changes becomes possible. With respect to the period from 9000 to 6000 years ago the authors comment “During this period . . . average temperature was about 1 – 2°C above the present.” Their analysis also shows that around 6,000 years ago the environment in China became colder and dryer. (Zhou, Weijian, et al. 2004, High-resolution evidence from Southern China of an early Holocene optimum and a mid-Holocene dry event during the past 18,000 years. Quaternary Research, vol. 62, pp. 39 – 48)

I could site literally dozens of additional studies confirming this period of global post-glacial warmth but I think you get the point.

One significant implication of these studies is that temperatures warmer than present have occurred in the past and that they were due entirely to natural causes.

It is important to realize this when we are constantly being told that today’s temperatures are unprecedentedly warm. The studies cited here are a small sample of the enormous amount of research proving that Earth’s climate has been, and continues to be, very dynamic and that present day warmth is not unusual. I have provided the specific references primarily to underscore the fact that these studies are published in the peer reviewed scientific literature and are not the propagandistic prevarications of global warming “denialists.” They can be accessed by anyone who takes the time to visit a university library.

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It should be noted that the first scientists who studied this era of benevolent early Holocene warmth called it the Climatic Optimum. Changing the name to Holocene Thermal Maximum obscures the positive implication of the term optimum, which Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines as “the best or most favorable point, degree, amount etc. for the purpose, as of temperature, light, moisture, etc. for the growth or reproduction of an organism. Best or most favorable.” In the initial concepts of an early Holocene warm period it was envisioned by those studying it as a period of time optimum or favorable for the reestablishment of biological and cultural equilibrium after the environmental disruption that terminated the Pleistocene Epoch and brought the planet out of the great Ice Age. We can now appreciate how appropriate that term is in the context of the Younger Dryas catastrophe that marked the transition from one geological epoch to the next, or, if you prefer, from one World Age to the next.

During this roughly 3000 year warm spell early in the present World Age, or the Neolithic as the archaeologists call it, humankind worshipped a benevolent and nurturing Earth in the form of a corpulent goddess of plenty, often depicted in figurines and effigies as a pregnant goddess.

It was also during this time of natural beneficence and organic proliferation that humankind recovered from the brink of extinction.

Next month I will continue this exploration into the changing World Ages and the extraordinary shift of the Earth out of the Great Winter and into the Age of the Goddess.

Randall Carlson

Read part 4 here