The Great Continent Of Pangaea

By James Donahue

If you examine world maps and globes closely, it is easy to see that all of the continents appear to be shaped like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. If you could slide them all together in certain ways they fit together forming what appears to be one large super continent.

Students of world maps and plate tectonics have long considered the possibility that this is exactly how the world looked at one time in the very distant past. There was one giant continent. They have even given it a name: Pangaea.

Some scientists have put forth the theory that other supercontinents may have existed before Pangaea. They have been given names like Kenorland, Columbia and Rodinia. Because of the way the massive plates are in constant movement, and because of volcanism, changing magnetic fields, polar shifts and general erosion, the shapes of such ancient land masses are impossible to determine.

While the contemporary continents appear to us to be stationary, the occurrence of constant earthquakes and other peculiar events have proven to geologists that there is a constant shifting and grinding of the massive shell-like plates that exist just below the surface of the planet. The plates are part of the surface of the earth composed of a rigid rock-like layer called the lithosphere. The lithosphere is broken into parts called tectonic plates, and all of these are in constant movement.

As the plates move, they collide into each other with such force they create mountains, and pull away from each other creating volcanic ridges in the middle of the oceans. There is a deep crevice stretching the length of the Atlantic Ocean, known as the mid-Atlantic Ridge, that clearly shows where the continents of North And South America once broke away from Europe and Africa.

By cutting the continents from printed world maps, they can all be pieced together in various ways that give us some idea of what the great continent of Pangaea may have once looked like.

If we think of the existence of humans and various animals of the world at the time Pangaea once existed, we can achieve an understanding of how contemporary continents and even islands became inhabited before the first explorers from China and Europe began discovering new lands and territories.

The great quakes and destructive force of massive lands breaking apart may also provide an explanation for the myths of the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu.

Or maybe not.