Wegener, Alfred

Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was a German professor of meteorology who in 1912 advanced the theory of Continental Drift, which proposed that the continents were in motion, however slowly. In this context, he contended that Atlantis was a distant memory of the time when America, Europe and Africa were joined. However, the rate of ‘drift’ is so slow that such a conjunction of the continents would have broken up long before the emergence of modern man. Unfortunately, Wegener died while exploring the Greenland ice cap.

As early as 1842 Frederik Klee had suggested that originally there had existed one large megacontinent which later broke up^(a), an idea later echoed by Wegener.

>The discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the 19th century had allowed geologists and botanists to suggest that it may have provided a stepping-stone or landbridge across the Atlantic explaining the shared biota on both sides of the ocean. Some also thought that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge provided a possible home for Atlantis. However, Wegener’s proposed theory of continental drift did not allow room in the Atlantic for a continent-sized Atlantis leaving some geologists who were Atlantis supporters somewhat unhappy.<

Wegener’s theory was slowly accepted and eventually morphed into the theory of ‘plate tectonics’ in the 1960’s. But, even today, the latest tectonic concepts appear to have been brought into question by a study of the lava fields of Saudi Arabia. The theory is also under attack by supporters of the Expanded Earth hypothesis^(b). On the other hand, an Islamic website has identified a reference in the Qur’an to the concept of an expanding Earth^(c).

^(a) See Archive 5144 

^(b) https://www.wincom.net/earthexp/n/navback.htm (offline Aug. 2017)

^(c) See Archive 3384