http://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=304240&t=304240
A sad read if you ask me.
One poster mentions the famed "Piri Reis" map as ultimate proof of the past cataclysm that sunk "Atlantis."
The original poster is of course promoting his book "Message from the Ancients." And refers to science as being "absurd."
Well, lets get started. The Piri Reis map was created in 1513 by the Ottoman-Turkish admiral Piri Reis. It's the oldest surviving map of the Americas1.
Charles Hapgood studied the map among others in his first published book "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings." According to Hapgood, the accuracy of the cartography far too good to have been done with the tools available at the time. For most readers, that seems to be a solid argument. However, Hapgood and Hancock fail to realize the most basic of ideas of the maps existence. Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews of badarcheology.net states the following:
All in all, the Piri Re‘is map of 1513 is easily explained. It shows no unknown lands, least of all Antarctica, and contained errors (such as Columbus’s belief that Cuba was an Asian peninsula) that ought not to have been present if it derived from extremely accurate ancient originals. It also conforms to the prevalent geographical theories of the early sixteenth century, including ideas about the necessity of balancing landmasses in the north with others in the south to prevent the earth from tipping over (just as Hapgood hypothesised with his crustal displacement theory). Nevertheless, the map was a remarkable achievement, testimony to the skills of Piri as a cartographer and the only surviving representative of the maps made by Columbus during his first two voyages of discovery. As with so much in Bad Archaeology, it is only made mysterious by the willful ignoring of evidence that explains its methods of composition (most importantly, the legends written by the mapmaker himself) and by making exaggerated claims about its accuracy while its manifest inaccuracy is overlooked.
One well thought poster lays out rational scientific evidence for them
Surely you have done some reading about true polar wander which describes how an uneven mass distribution would eventually redistribute due to forces from the earth's angular momentum. You probably also know, there is recent evidence which supports the theory suggesting such an event may have occurred some 800 million years ago. This adjustment takes place over geologic timescales; millions of years. Why? A rapid movement of the lithosphere would require, once again, a huge release of energy. Those continent sized masses are pushing against other continent sized masses which requires some kind of rapid subduction, upheaval or the entire lithosphere to shift at the same time. Even with the added energy of a meteor strike, this is unlikely to have occurred without leaving unmistakable evidence.
As for the mammoths of Siberia, surely you have seen climate data gleaned from ice-cores and so you know that over the eons, earth has experienced regular cycles or warming and cooling. Some 40K years BP Siberia was much more temperate with permafrost melting as high as 60d. latitude. More than enough to support a species adapted to cooler climes.
Of course his rationality is met with skepticism and more psuedo-scientific "what-if" scenarios like this one he quotes from the "Solar Typhoon Theory":
"The sun has and will again produce a solar storm the likes of which isn't seen for thousands of years. When this storm, or shall I say typhoon, occurs, it totally compresses the Earth's magnetosphere to the point where the lines of conductance actually touch the surface of the planet. This has three main effects, the first is that all metal on the planet will start to induct a current, with large metal pieces or long wires inducting significant voltages. The second effect is that the earth's core, being most likely an iron/silicon alloy will induct enormous amounts of electrical current from the disruption of the magnetosphere though the blasting solar wind. This extra induction will transfer into heat, which will cause the core to spin more rapidly and to perturb the mantle with shockwaves and turbulence. Additionally, the heat will cause expansion, especially at the poles. The third effects comes from the combination of the first two, and that is that the crust will separate from the mantle and while floating on a newly created 'lubrication layer', will allow the global mass imbalance that currently exists to try to rectify itself. Of course this will be catastrophic for all living things on the planet.
Can you see the pattern?