And he adds the significant words:
"Contemporaneously, similar movements were in progress over the other continents: along the Andes, affecting half, at least, of South America; the Pyrenees, Carpathian Alps, and a large part of Europe; the Himalayas and much of Asia." (p. 365.)
Let us now take a brief glance at a few of the details of what these mountains were thus doing while Man was living in semi-tropical England, or at least Western Europe.
In speaking of foreign examples of Tertiary mountain-making this author devotes especial attention to the Alps and the Juras, for their structure is better understood, having been more carefully studied. And of an example described by Heim, already spoken of, he says:
"One of the overthrust folds in the region has put the beds upside down over an area of 450 square miles. Fifty thousand feet of formations of the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Eocene Tertiary and Miocene Tertiary, were upturned at the close of the Miocene period."[92]
With what a whack must this mighty mass of rocks have fallen on itself—miles in thickness, and turned "upside down over an area of 450 square miles"!!!
Of course I am here taking the record just as I find it, as I have already discussed this matter of "overthrust folds."
I need not give further examples from the other great mountain ranges. Their structure is not so well understood as that of the Alps, though doubtless when examined they will be found just as "young," and just as full of astonishing mountain movements as those already examined. But this much is already certain, that practically over all the world the mountains were either completed or wholly raised from the sea level during "late Tertiary" and "early Quaternary time." No wonder Dana says that this fact "is one of the most marvelous in geological history."
"It has been thought incredible that the orographic climax should have come so near the end of geological time, instead of in an early age when the crust had a plastic layer beneath, and was free to move; yet the fact is beyond question." ("Manual," p. 1020.)
I think I have now abundantly proved the various heads of the proposition with which I began this chapter, viz., that even from the standpoint of the current theories:—[93]