Timeline of Thoreau’S
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TIMELINE OF THOREAU’S WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS: “A BOOK’S NOT READ UNTIL IT’S WRITTEN IN” “The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.” — Jean Cocteau HDT WHAT? INDEX THE TIMELINE OF WALDEN 618,000 BCE The beginning of the Cromerian interglacial of this current Ice Age. The Yellowstone dome blew its lid, although not so severely as it had in 640,000 BCE (this blast was only about 5 times greater than the Tambora eruption of April 10, 1815). OUR MOST RECENT GLACIATION Based on the best global evidence available (continuous cores from abyssal marine sediments and from the summit domes of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets), the Walden paleo-valley was probably glaciated four times. These well-dated global records match the tally of four glaciations present in both the sea- cliffs of Nantucket and and [sic] drill cores of Georges Bank. Based on the best astronomical dates on hand, these glaciations culminated about 22, 130, 420, and 620 thousand years ago, plus or minus a few thousand years. During each of the four ice sheet culminations, the same source of ice moved over the same paleo-valley with the same mechanisms, and reached roughly the same thickness over roughly the same resistant bedrock topography. Even more conservative was the bedrock highland associated with the Bloody Bluff Fault that divides the watersheds of the Sudbury River and Charles River. This suggests that comparable drainage scenarios were present during each ice advance and retreat, meaning that a series of broadly similar glacial lakes existed in the Sudbury Valley as the ice sheets came and went. Using Occam’s Razor, the default assumption is that previous ice sheets made previous versions of Walden. Not clones or identical twins but fraternal twins, perhaps the relationship Thoreau had in mind when he linked Walden and White Ponds. — Professor Robert M. Thorson, WALDEN’S SHORE, pages 98-9 TIMELINE OF WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX THE TIMELINE OF WALDEN 418,000 BCE The completion of another spasm of glaciation during this present Ice Age, the Kansan glaciation. Within awhile the British Isles would be entering the Hoxnian interglacial. Huts with palisaded walls would have been being built in France — but we don’t know whether these structures were primarily to keep wild animals and human enemies out or primarily to keep children and domestic animals in. In about this timeframe, in places where there were people (not, of course, the North American landmass), these people would have been beginning to wet their digging sticks and throwing sticks and spears and then bury them near their fires, to slowly temper them into strong, springy rods. We now have collected some of these oldest wooden weapons known to have survived (we have also some fire-hardened curved sticks, and suppose they may have been useful as drumsticks). OUR MOST RECENT GLACIATION Based on the best global evidence available (continuous cores from abyssal marine sediments and from the summit domes of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets), the Walden paleo-valley was probably glaciated four times. These well-dated global records match the tally of four glaciations present in both the sea- cliffs of Nantucket and and [sic] drill cores of Georges Bank. Based on the best astronomical dates on hand, these glaciations culminated about 22, 130, 420, and 620 thousand years ago, plus or minus a few thousand years. During each of the four ice sheet culminations, the same source of ice moved over the same paleo-valley with the same mechanisms, and reached roughly the same thickness over roughly the same resistant bedrock topography. Even more conservative was the bedrock highland associated with the Bloody Bluff Fault that divides the watersheds of the Sudbury River and Charles River. This suggests that comparable drainage scenarios were present during each ice advance and retreat, meaning that a series of broadly similar glacial lakes existed in the Sudbury Valley as the ice sheets came and went. Using Occam’s Razor, the default assumption is that previous ice sheets made previous versions of Walden. Not clones or identical twins but fraternal twins, perhaps the relationship Thoreau had in mind when he linked Walden and White Ponds. — Professor Robert M. Thorson, WALDEN’S SHORE, pages 98-9 TIMELINE OF WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX THE TIMELINE OF WALDEN 128,000 BCE Until circa 108,000 BCE this planet would experience a warm but stormy interglacial we now term “the Eemian period.” The initial 12,000 years of the Eemian would be a relative stable climate with cozy temperatures, just about like our Holocene era, and what would follow this would retain some warmth even as the North American ice sheets began gradually again to expand. The North American landmass may have suffered some terrific storms during the period between 116,000 BCE and 108,000 BCE, amounting to horrific blizzards laying down a snowpack that would compact into the advancing glaciers of a new episode of our current Ice Age. Such spasms can begin fairly abruptly with little warning (they also can end abruptly, although probably not so very abruptly as their beginnings). Global sea levels were presumably nearly the same as at present or possibly slightly higher, ensuring that land links such as the Bering land bridge, and many sea islands, would be submerged (the greater Southeast Asian peninsula would have also in large part been beneath salt water.) OUR MOST RECENT GLACIATION Based on the best global evidence available (continuous cores from abyssal marine sediments and from the summit domes of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets), the Walden paleo-valley was probably glaciated four times. These well-dated global records match the tally of four glaciations present in both the sea- cliffs of Nantucket and and [sic] drill cores of Georges Bank. Based on the best astronomical dates on hand, these glaciations culminated about 22, 130, 420, and 620 thousand years ago, plus or minus a few thousand years. During each of the four ice sheet culminations, the same source of ice moved over the same paleo-valley with the same mechanisms, and reached roughly the same thickness over roughly the same resistant bedrock topography. Even more conservative was the bedrock highland associated with the Bloody Bluff Fault that divides the watersheds of the Sudbury River and Charles River. This suggests that comparable drainage scenarios were present during each ice advance and retreat, meaning that a series of broadly similar glacial lakes existed in the Sudbury Valley as the ice sheets came and went. Using Occam’s Razor, the default assumption is that previous ice sheets made previous versions of Walden. Not clones or identical twins but fraternal twins, perhaps the relationship Thoreau had in mind when he linked Walden and White Ponds. — Professor Robert M. Thorson, WALDEN’S SHORE, pages 98-9 TIMELINE OF WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX THE TIMELINE OF WALDEN 18,000 BCE On the basis of Carbon-14 measurements, this was the last Glacial Maximum, the coldest period of the most recent Ice Age. People made wall paintings in caves, for example in the cave of Lascaux, France. Rope was in use, according to evidence there. The extreme terminal moraine of the farthest reaching advance of the ice of our current Ice Age fell across Staten Island, where Henry Thoreau would reside, and therefore date to this period or earlier (prior to the publication of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, Thoreau never lived anywhere except on top of the same sort of terrain of glacial detritus characteristic of Walden Woods — that landscape was in fact the sole landscape with which he to that point had had any experience at all). Chauvet cave in France. People living in or visiting caves in what are now Israel and Jordan were putting notches on bones to record sequences of numbers (the devices are thought to have functioned primarily as lunar calendars). By about this point or at least by 13,000 BCE, the spear thrower and the harpoon would have been invented. The first-known artifact with a map on it, made of bone, has been at what is now Mezhirich — it appears to show the region immediately around the site at which it was found. OUR MOST RECENT GLACIATION At about this point the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated, and features called glacial lakes were formed in what would be termed “New England.” These glacial lakes were being fed a constant supply of meltwater from the HDT WHAT? INDEX THE TIMELINE OF WALDEN glacial wall to the north and these streams were carrying along sand and gravel. Two particularly prominent lakes were Lake Sudbury and Lake Concord. Lake Sudbury formed 1st and was about 4 miles wide and 20 miles long and 90 feet deep and was situated just south of present-day Massachusetts Route 2. As the glacier would continue to retreat, Lake Concord would come into existence north of Massachusetts Route 2. There would have been chunks of ice remaining in these lakes, so instead of being one expanse of water, they actually consisted of a number of smaller bodies of water. Eventually the glacial waters would drain away through various outlets toward the east, leaving behind a lake basin filled with clay and silt. These layer of clay and silt would become the materials with which colonial settlers in Massachusetts would make bricks to build their houses. They also left behind landscape features known now as “kame deltas,” as indicated by the rows of black upside-down pyramids below: Based on the best global evidence available (continuous cores from abyssal marine sediments and from the summit domes of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets), the Walden paleo-valley was probably glaciated four times.