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200 million years hence, a full circle: well, shall we call it neo-Pangaea ?
The following article that I have written is a pure work of fiction and
just good clean fun and it is solicited that it be taken that way.
I have abridged it to be able to
place here. I have made but one basically wrong
assumption while writing it that the homo sapiens will not undergo
further evolution through geological time. Though quite absurd, it is
apparent and logical that the humour that can be easily seen by the
present human eye and appreciated by the present human brain will not be
so by organs doing similar functions in the creatures to be evolved from
humans through geological time. Please bear with the language of the
article, which I am afraid, is too verbose. I did not have sufficient time
to trim it down. Geophysicists predict, and of course, geologists follow suit in the absence of any other tangible evidence to the contrary (my apologies, Mr. Bellusov, but you will agree that there isn’t much evidence along similar lines from the vertical tectonics either), that if the current rate of continental extension along the East African and Aden rifts is maintained, in about 17 million years from now, the horn of Africa will be severed, mode a la Madagascar and the ships will sail to maritime Kampala, since Uganda will no longer remain a landlocked nation. In the course of time it will have moved to the south like Madagascar; and Zanzibar archipelago, the islands of the finest cloves in the world, will no longer remain so since that archipelago too will have moved south, and some other as yet unknown part in that severed horn will bear such lovely cloves that leave the tongue tingling. I cannot help but quote the following lines with a streak of humour from “The Emperor tries to close the African rift” (published in the Sunday Literary Supplement, The Times, London, 23 July 1970):
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This separation will delight the US if it continues to maintain its supremacy in the world after 17 million years, since the Americans can have a new naval base in the Indian ocean and bid adieu to Diego Garcia.
In the same vein, it is predicted that in about 60 million years, Australia will have moved to the equator and Nasca plate will be consumed. It will cease to be a spreading centre in a time span of about 20 million years. In 200 million years, Japan will collide with California. It will no longer be the Land of the Rising Sun, and the easternmost part of Canada, the island of Newfoundland will presumably receive that credit. Europe will of course continue to be in the western hemisphere but not the New World, and eastern half of Iceland split into two will be the westernmost part of the world. The Nasca plate has just a short life of about 60 million years and Andes will have grown considerably more in altitide. The Pacific Ocean will shrink to nothing except for some landlocked water bodies like the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea of the present day. The plate tectonic processes will have swallowed the world’s only complete atoll at Funafuti. The time of shrinking of this vast expanse would have been just 100 and not 200 million years but for the spreading centers such as East Pacific Rise, the Juan de Fuca ridge, and the hotspots at Hawaii and a couple of other places. The world would have come to a state of having all land on one side and all oceans on the other, exactly the scenario at the beginning when the oceans formed. The Atlantic Ocean will be the largest than any water body ever was and people either side of it will not refer to it as a “pond” since the vast expanse will dispatch that phrase too, into oblivion. The Kangaroos, if at all they remain the marsupials, will hop in the Andes, else just roam. In all probability, they will have evolved into full-fledged mammals. No longer will the females of that species bear pouch (neither inflated-mother is nursing, nor deflated-“What are you doing this evening” type). The opossum, the only mammalian birds may continue to flourish, in much more evolved state.
Destiny will thus bring the bitter “Pearl harbour-Hiroshima-Nagasaki” enemies together to become the closest neighbours. Mount Fujiyama will be a dormant or dead volcano. The hotspot at Hawaii will become landlocked and might become a place like Old Faithful, the geyser in the Yellowstone National Park. If it is much more beautiful, it might raise an ownership political dispute between the US and Japan or may be shared by both the countries like the Niagara Falls at the US-Canadian border. Thus the Polynesian race, stretching from Mangolia to Australia will still be together, in fact more compact than now since seas will have dwindled, something on the lines of birds with the same feathers flocking together. The US and Japan may sign a joint pact to make the world’s largest monorails to cater to an enormous continent. Japan may move the US to try and treat North Koreans in a more humanistic way. All Sony and Nokia products will be quite inexpensive in the US, what the US has been craving to have for many years.
With continued good neighbourliness between the two countries, love may not lag behind (it certainly travels at a rate much faster than any of the plates may ever have moved or will move) and the names such as David Kuno and Hisashi Brown will be commonly found in the populace of both the countries. Geishas may roam the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles but I cannot say if they would demand fees for the services rendered in Yens or US dollars. Eyes like buttonholes, shunned by the Caucasian race will probably be considered a sign of beauty or manliness. Because of the US influence, the Japanese hostesses may not be so courteous as to bend through a right angle to greet you but with just a little nod and a hello, or the more common American Hi. Many Japanese women would learn to divorce their husbands on the flimsiest of grounds. In the geology departments of various universities, the scientists will be engaged in plate reconstructions during the post-Cenozoic era (whatever name it may have), and most of these so conjectural as to be quite hopelessly wrong and ridiculous. The main points of dispute may have been the exact timing of separation of the African horn, where exactly should the Philippines sea lie, and to what extent the Pacific was consumed during the rise of the North American Cordillera and so on. The Panama Canal may be converted into an express 6-lane highway. Cars may be parked in the hovercrafts and at that point of entry, you may simply drive along the Panama Express highway into the Japan-US-China combine. I do not know if the cars will have a nuclear fuel, but most probably they will, with probably a very frightfully different look and streamline. The men and women with shaven heads will be common in the streets, and what a great sight would that be to behold! But it will be too hard to tell if they are Buddhist monks, a Japanese legacy or members of the ISKCON (International Society of Krishna Consciousness- Harey Rama Harey Krishna Movement, a reminder of the hippie cult in US since the Vietnam war). Well, you do can tell them apart if they are not marching silently but either chanting Rama and Krishna names or Japanese equivalent of Buddham Sharanam gachhami.
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The two great global friends of today, US and France will be accessible by a road that would stretch EW for nearly half the circumference of the earth going across Japan, northern China, Mangolia, Siberia, Russia, Poland, Austria and Germany. But people may prefer flights although the distance by road and air will be nearly equal. |
Thus the Pangaea, the single landmass that was, will be born again; though of a little smaller size since it will be shorn of the icy continent, Antarctica and constituents having changed positions like in the game of musical chairs. I do not know if this Pangaea reborn (the neo-Pangaea, if you like the term) will again break up into two, first along an EW line (equatorial split) followed by the splitting along a major NS one (meridional split). If the Huttonian principal of uniformatarianism that the present is the key to the past is true, so will the doctrine present is the key to the future be true and we should expect this cyclical rifting and rejoining occurring throughout the earth’s history of existence of which about 4000 million years still remain. Our solar system will thereafter cease to exist.
Whatever the degree, amount or extent of plate movements, I am sure that my India will not change even a wee bit and will continue to be the most beautiful, most mystical and most mythical country. Himalayas will continue to be the loftiest mountain in the world, and the Ganges and the Godawari will be worshipped with the same religious fervour as today. And of course the Pandas of Benaras, Gaya and Prayag will continue to cheat the pilgrims. One may notice a monkey trainer in a metropolis forming a little crowd with his monkey bridegroom in dandified attire ready and eager to meet the monkey bride. Rajasthan will continue to be a state of majestic palaces and forts, and Tamil Nadu, of serene temples. A turban here or there will testify that Sikhism is alive. Kashmir will still be the heaven on earth. The Indian music with its unique half-beats, unknown in any other music from any part of the world, will still be the best music in the world and Indian dances stretching from Manipur to Kerala will continue to be the richest dance styles. India will be much more ethnically diverse with the preaching Atithi Devo Bhava (treat thy guest as god) coming down through centuries into the very ethos of the people. There still shall exist the unity in diversity as it does today. Though wearing extremely varied attires, Indian women, will still continue to blush (as they should, rather than behaving like men as women do in other parts of the world). And there will always be a Sachin Tendulkar, wielding his willow with grandeur and style, a heartthrob of the cricket fans in India and the world. Yes, my India will continue to be the small but most conspicuous brush stroke of art on the world canvas.
