The Ancient Tropical Forests of Siberia
A little hazy this morning and plus 1 C and last night we had a dusting of snow that has almost melted.
I still love to journey deep into the forest alone to see some archaeological site or ride my bike on some lost road into the middle of nowhere and come across an ancient city or visit one of the many Siberian pyramids (really maybe they are burial mounds as many of them are through Asia, America, and Europe but the ones I’ve seen appear to be natural).
What is interesting to me about these ancient cities of 1200 to 1600 years ago, in Siberia, is there is no evidence of real heating, you know, large fire pits, even if you could believe that they were more advance and had central city heating, nothing, no heating. Yes, they found things similar to wok pans or small cooking areas that had some charcoal around them. These cities that they have uncovered reach up to the northern parallel line. So how could have they been without heat since according to NASA, 1300 years ago the earth was in a mini ice age?
Something happened about twelve hundred years ago to the Siberian climate it went from a warm semi-tropical climate to a b-tt freezing icebox in just a few short years and most of the inhabitants moved (imagine that).
Each year just as the river slowly begins to melt from the hard freezing winter it is dynamited, to break it up, so the small villages along the river don’t flood. The interesting effect from this is how it causes the temperature in one area to drop and another to rise by 5 to 10 degree celsius for a couple of weeks.
These ancient cities were built at about the time in history when China was in a cold period and about ready to move into a warm period in its history between 950 to 1150 years ago. A little earlier in history the Vikings, that is about twelve hundred years ago, could sail from the Arctic Ocean south up the great rivers of Siberia. All this makes me assume that there was a warm shallow current running through the Arctic while the rest of the earth was cold.
It is speculated that great spice routes fifteen hundred plus years ago ran through what is now southern Siberia (no good proof to this), even Genghis Khan reestablished these routes through what was then Mongolia but today is southern and central Siberia.
There is floral that is unique to this part of the world that is generally only associated with tropical climates, somehow it hibernates during the colder times and reappears when it warms up in the area. There is semi-tropical floral in Siberia just waiting for the climate to change. This makes me ask “just how often does this happens in history?”
Think, if my theory is right that as the Arctic opens up, which it has for the last 4 to 6 years, then Siberia will warm up in the next couple of decades as the rest of the world turns into an icebox for a few hundred years.
Maybe someday we’ll understand this better as I’m bathing myself in the sun and you’re dressed up like polar bears, until such time — I’ll keep walking into the forest, propping myself against some fallen tree that lets me look over a river valley or some lake. Letting the small animals come near me and even the wild dogs/coyotes lay beside me.
Ron the Siberian
Make the heart green
PS Siberia is almost 10% of the world’s land surface (25% larger than all the territory of the USA) ranging to the far freezing north, just as you think of Siberia; to central Siberia with the largest standing forest left on this planet, the Taiga; to southern Siberia with its thick lush forest, in the Altai and Saian mountain ranges that I always find similar to Western Oregon. I should mention that in Siberia you can homestead.
