natural events shape migration patterns

Natural events such as glaciation, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or meteors from outer space have spectacularly changed the Earth's terrain for eons -- and will continue to do so -- andtheir affect on the pattern of migration has been similarly spectacular, the island of Britain being a case receiving recent attention from scientists at Imperial College, London.

According to them, it was an enormous flood that opened the Channel and turned Britian into an island, and it happened between 450,000 and 200,000 years ago.

Imagine how different the world would be today if Britain had remained part of Europe!

For starters, there would be absolutely no racial diversity between Britons and Europeans because isolation creates a small interbreeding population that, given time, throws up some weird and some wonderful characteristics --which, no doubt, are responsible for the legendary British eccentrics of today!

Whether it was a flood or something else that separated Britain from Europe, the people who remained to populate Britain were far more representative of ancient European ethnicity than their cousins on the mainland because continuing migration around Europe, from all parts of the world, effectively changed their ethnic characteristics.

Even during subsequent periods of heavy glaciation when sea levels were low, and one could theoretically skate across the Channel, migration did not take place. We have evidence of Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthal habitation in Britain from 700,000 years ago to about 180,000 years ago, and then there's not much until the final recession of the ice about 14,000 years ago in12000 BCE.

Over time, of course, boats were fashioned to cross the Channel and cross-pollination (for want of a better word) took place, but it did not happen on the large scale that it happened in Europe. So, when Julius Caesar set foot on British soil in 54 BCE the blue painted people he met there were largely the descendants of the ancient Europeans before the Channel opened up.

Nobody denies that Britain was once joined to Europe -- the chalk ridge of the Weald runs continuously into the Artois region of northern France and Belgium -- but there is still debate about how the separation came about. Was it a flood? Was it gradual erosion? Was it a glacial dam?

The Imperial College scientists believe that there once existed a natural land dam at the Strait of Dover, and when this failed during a massive flood, a surge of water breached into what is now the Channel bed. Later, when the ice sheets covering the British Isles and Scandinavia melted, the Channel as we know it today was created by another flood.

As yet, the Imperial College scientists cannot say with certainty what triggered the flood that caused the breach,but suggested it could have been an mini-earthquake, similar to the one recently in Kent, coinciding with summer melt-waters in the North Sea.

However, it could have been something of biblical proportions such as a volcanic eruption from an island near the Canaries off the coast of West Africa which, some say, is ready to erupt again and cause a massive tsunami on both sides of the Atlantic and consequent massive migration shifts, too.

Bearing in mind that floods have figured hugely in oral histories, from one civilization to another, the flood theory most certainly strikes a harmonious chord -- no matter what caused it -- and the silence of the global warming activists on this matter is deafening!