Lost Arctic Continent? 1922

From The Washington Times, Washington D.C., September 10, 1922

What Science Hopes to Discover in the Mysterious Land Between Us and the Pole, That Has Been Locked Away for Ages by Cold and Storm and Frozen Ocean And Why Science Believes It May Be a Living Page of the Past, Where Monsters Still Roam Through Hidden Valleys and Where a Race That Ruled When the Pole Was Tropical May Still Exist

LOCKED In by age-old ice fields and gigantic frozen bergs some where between Alaska and Siberia and the North Pole Is a lost continent.

It Is the one remaining place on earth about which the world of today knows nothing – except that it exists. Yet of all places on earth there is none upon which the mind of science dwells with such eager curiosity, or whose exploration may mean so much to man’s knowledge of his own history.

For on that lost continent, there is good reason for belief, there are still living, forms of life, both animal and vegetable, which have been wiped out for ages in all other parts of the earth. In its hidden valleys, protected by towering mountains and volcanic warmth, the dinosaurs, those monster lizards of a million years ago, may dwell. The mastodon and the hairy mammoth may walk with ponderous tread the floors of its forests; the pterodactyl, the enormous flying lizard, whose memory still comes down to us in the legends of dragons, may still beat the air with Its bat-like wings.

And In some such hidden and protected valley the creature that bridged the gap between the ape-like forms and man, the “missing link” itself, may still be alive. Or, at least, relics of him may still exist in such numbers and forms as to settle forever the question of our evolution.

It may be, too, that onthls lost continent are the ruins and remains of a forgotten civilization to which old Egypt’s most ancient cities are nothing but babies. Remnants of the races that built them may still be alive among them. Almost certainly there are descendants of a great expedition of Norsemen who Journeyed west some seven hundred years ago, found the lost continent and were trapped there.

All these things may be, and science believes that many of them are. It is sure that, at the least, the lost land hides profitable trades in gold and gems and minerals of all kinds. There Is evidence that radium
bearing ores in vast quantities exist – and if this can be found and utilized the whole problem and power may be solved for the world.

When Captain Roand Amundsen, the discoverer of the South Pole, starts off this Fall with the expedition that was delayed last month by the accident to his aeroplane, the first step toward discovering and opening up the lost continent will be taken. It was indeed the primary cause of the expedition, but Amundsen was drawn away from his purpose by the dramatic and spectacular idea of racing over the Pole in his plane instead of using It to observe the mysterious land. Now, it is reported by those close to him, he has gone firmly back to his first idea, and so the finding of the lost Arctic continent again becomes a probability.

The lost land cannot be less than a half million square miles in extent, and is perhaps more than a million. Its existence Is proven not only by the legends of natives and tales of explorers who have seen it from a distance and were beaten back by ice and cold and storm. Its verity has been scientifically determined by careful studies of the movements of polar tides, currents and ice drifts, and from these the United States Hydrographic Office has been able to place on Its charts the land’s approximate location.

The nearest approach is by way of Bering Strait, and this is the direction which Amundsen will take. He will drive his ship, “The Maud.” into the ice floes which circle the shores of the polar continent and allow himself to drift, for years if necessary, until, he is closest to those shores. Then he will arise in his all-metal plane and soar over the mysterious land, landing for closer observations of what he sees, like the eagle, high up in the air. We know that the whole Arctic region once had a tropical climate, and that the animals, trees and plants of the tropics once flourished there. The Pole, now frozen, basked under a fervent sun.

In Greenland, which Is to a large extent In the same latitude as the unexplored land, vast remains of tropical life have been discovered. There are fossil remains of palms and bread fruit trees in Greenland, and also of tigers, camels, rhinoceroses. mastodons, elephants and other animals of the tropical zone.

In that period all the lands within the compass of the Arctic Circle were warm of climate and clad with a luxuriant verdure. Then a great change occurred, due, perhaps, to a shifting of the earth’s axis, and cold descended on the polar regions. Vast quantities of Ice were formed and flowed down from the poles to ward the south. A series of glacial periods then extended over the temperate regions, and to some extent over the tropical regions of the earth.

But the occurrence of the glacial period was not as severe In some regions as in others. Climate has never followed latitude exactly. There are valleys In Alaska which enjoy a warm climate faring a large part of the year. The Island of Iceland, which touches the Arctic Circle, has a very pleasant, warm climate In Summer, and is a healthy place of residence all the year round. Europeans are flocking to it as a Summer resort in increasing numbers every year.

There is good reason to believe that the lost Arctic Continent may possess extensive valleys and areas which enjoy a relatively moderate climate. Protection by favorably situated mountain ranges, preventing the flow of ice and glaciers from the north, would conduce to this condition. The existence of volcanoes, which are common in Alaska, might also help to maintain a fertile soil and warm climate In certain parts of the Arctic Continent.

It is significant that scientists have recently found a vast extinct volcanic crater of Ngomo in South Africa, which was inhabited by tropical animals at the time the glacial period prevailed in the surrounding country. The fossil bones have shown that these animals sought a refuge here from the surrounding cold and found it, for they continued to live here for hundreds of thousand years. It is suggested by geographers that somewhat similar conditions may have preserved both animals and men within the heart of the Arctic Continent.

Peary, the discoverer of the North Pole, tells a most interesting experience along exactly these lines. He once climbed, he says, an enormous ice barrier In an unexplored part of northern Greenland.

When he reached the top he looked down through thousands of feet Into a fertile, almost semi-tropical valley!

There were trees, luxuriant vegetation and meadows and open spaces all spangled and covered with flowers. Through his glasses he could see great herds of animals roving about and feeding. All around Peary was a desolation of ice, with zero temperature. yet far beneath him, in a protected, deep and enormous valley, there were teeming life and warmth and every thing necessary to existence. Peary would have liked to explore It, of course, but the descent was impossible. The plans of his expedition soon took him away, and he never returned to the place.

An aeroplane could have made the descent and explored the mysteries of this lost Greenland valley, whose latitude was no nearer to the Pole than the lower section of the lost continent.

There is a very interesting possibility that the gigantic hairy mammoth still survives in the sheltered fastnesses of the Arctic Continent We must bear in mind the unquestioned fact that the mammoths, down to comparatively recent times, roamed in vast herds in what is now the Arctic portion of Siberia. The mammoth is a huge species of elephant, an animal which now only exists naturally in the tropics.

In Siberia mammoths have been dug out of the earth, with all their flesh on their bones, In such good condition that It could be eaten; with their eyes intact and with undigested food still In their stomachs. Such discoveries have been made at Khabarovssk and other places In Siberia. For years many scientists argued that mammoths must still be living somewhere in Siberia, but this idea is now nearly abandoned.

It seems that these mammoths were rather delicate animals, and that a general fall in temperature, accompanied by heavy snowfalls and the formation of vast morasses, caused them to perish suddenly at about the same time as in Siberia. If they found refuge in the former place within warm and sheltered valleys, is it not unreasonable to suppose that these monstrous creatures are flourishing there still?

If the mammoths still exist, it is also probable that the other extinct animals which flourished at the same time survive with them in their hidden retreat. Therefore we should expect to find the hairy mammoth accompanied by the wooly rhinoceros, the sabre-toothed tiger, the cave-lion, the cave-bear , the cave-hyena, the aurochs and many extinct monkeys in the arctic continent.

Science has already discovered many links the chain of evolution, including the Pithecanthropus Erectus, or ape-man of Java; the Neanderthal man, the Piltdown man, the Galley Hill man, the Hill man and other types of men now extinct The Pithecanthropus of Java is the only known animal that shares the characteristics of man and ape, and we have merely a portion of his skeleton, so that the existence of a race of this kind rests on rather slender evidence. Science is also seeking for other links running back from this creature to the point where the ancestry of man and apes branched off.

If the hairy mammoth survives In the Arctic Continent, it would be most reasonable to expect to Find the Neanderthal type of men who existed In Europe and other parts of the world at the same time as the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave-bear, the aurochs and others of the extinct .animals mentions.

It would be a most amazing experience for a modern man to come upon a community of these very primitive, terrifying, extinct men, who were very different from any existing human beings. Their receding foreheads were hidden under shaggy hair, and they had tremendously projecting eyebrow ridges and protruding jaws, giving them a ferocious and brutish appearance.

Their bodies were huge and muscular and covered with hair, their legs short and bowed. They had no conception of clothing or house-building. They lived in caves, when they could find them, or under bushes, If the eaves were not to be found. They fought with rough clubs and stone spearheads, and conquered their huge huge animal neighbors – like the cave-bear and cave lion – who often struggled with them for the possession of their caves. The sudden disappearance of these early pre-historic men is as much a puzzle as the disappearance of certain races of animals.

Among all the tribes that dwell in Northern Siberia, among the Eskimo, and, in fact, all the primitive peoples living in the harsh but habitable lands this side of the lost continent, there are ancient and persistent legends of a great race that once dwelt in the far north near what is now the Pole.
All these legends unite in the declaration that once the now frozen north had a mild and equable climate, In which men were able to work and to live easily. All of them make the interesting statement that at this time “the men of power” lived in this land toward the north and that the countries which they themselves now inhabited were wildernesses.

Science knows that they are right in ascribing to the Pole a different climate than now. It has no evidence of any civilization once existing there. But it has many riddles of man’s past that would be riddles no longer if Amundsen found evidence that a civilization did once flourish In the far north.

There came a time, according to these legends, when a sudden, terrific cold set in. and when for months and years gigantic storms raged about this land. When the storms abated, what had been open sea was a frozen waste, and those who knew of this country of “the men of power” were unable to reach it, and no one ever again came out of it.

This may well describe a sudden, cataclysmic arrival of a glacial age upon the polar continent, a catastrophe which also dropped a curtain between it and the rest of the world.

But man is adaptable, lie surmounts vast difficulties and he manages to survive under the most hostile conditions. It is not at all impossible to imagine that these “men of power.” whoever they were, found a way of continuing life on their stricken land, even though they could not leave it

If Amundsen finds them – what a triumph! What mysteries of our origins may be made plain! A whole new history of mankind will be written!

That there have been, within historic times, brief modifications of the Polar rigors, we have indubitable evidence.

It is told in some of the written records of the Norsemen that about the year 800 there came to the far north a period of unusually warm Summers and mild Winters. So warm was It that the Ice which had been locked In solid sheets for centuries, melted and broke up in Summer and the Winters were not cold enough to freeze again the polar sea. It appears that In about the third and last year of this warmth, a large expedition, carrying women and children, made Its way from Scandinavia, lured by the legends of an unknown land to the north. After they had gone and within the time they could hare had opportunity to reach the lost land, the unusual weather ended. The old cold set in again, the seas froze and none of the expedition ever returned to report what It had found!

But at the same time no slightest trace of It was ever discovered In floating Ice or bergs or In the trade currents on the shores of the Arctic.

And Amundsen may see from his plane cities of the descendants of these Norse men as they lived in Iceland hundreds of years ago, when the intrepid explorers set forth.

The Norse Vikings of that time were the most daring and adventurous people of which history has record, and there Is no doubt that they explored and cultivated all the lands within their reach. Furthermore, they were a sturdy, hardy stock, well fitted to cope with conditions even on the
lost continent There is a story that seems to show that the historic voyage of Leif Erickson, son of Eric the Red, in 999 to America really was begun with the idea of locating that expedition, which had gone forth almost two hundred years before. He could not get to the lost continent, but be did discover the mainland of America, landing at what is now called Vineland.

In 1006 another Greenland Viking, Thorfinn Karlsefni, searching for the lost continent, made a settlement on the American continent. His son, Snorre Karlsefni. was born there, and was taken by his parents on a visit to Rome, the first child born of European parents on the American continent Owing to many misfortunes the American settlement was soon abandoned.

Early in the middle ages the Norse settlements on the coast of Greenland became very weak. They were attacked by European pirates, said to be mainly English, in 1448, and those of the population who were not killed were driven away. Many of them became merged with the Eskimos. European settlements were not re-established in Greenland until the eighteenth century, when the Danes went there and found the ruins left by their Norse kinsmen.

If Amundsen should discover the Arctic Continent it is understood in Washington that he will raise the United States flag over the territory. The map shows that Alaska is the nearest large body of land to the hypothetical location of the lost continent, although Canadian territory is also close at hand. It is significant that Canada recently claimed possession, through Stefansson, of Wrangel Island, which lies nearer to the supposed continent than Alaska. It is possible that an international agreement would be necessary to settle the possession of the new land.

From geological conditions already known in the same latitude It is certain that immense treasures of mineral wealth await development In the Arctic Continent. The immense deposits of gold in Alaska and the adjacent Canadian territory point to the probability that great deposits of the precious metal exist on the Arctic Continent also. With the assistance of aeroplanes a great “gold rush” to this unexplored country may be witnessed in a few years.

Ivory Is another precious product which should be found in great abundance on the Arctic Continent. on the New Siberian Islands, which lie off the north coast of Asia, there are literally mines of the finest ivory in the world. These Islands were the favorite “dying place” of the huge mammoths, and their remains furnish an Immense supply of ivory.

These and other Islands which surround the North Pole form the largest archipelago in the world. One of the most Important islands Is Spitzbergen, which lies north of Lapland, within 700 miles or the Pole. This Island possesses Immense supplies of fine coal. The coal has been mined to some extent by an English company In recent years, and it Is expected that when suitable ships are available it will be widely marketed.

No voyage of discovery within recent years has had quite such a flavor of romantic adventure as Captain Amundsen’s expedition. This famous explorer has already to his credit the glory of having discovered the South Pole. But this expedition. If It results In discovering the unknown continent will have accomplished still more.