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decorative symbolADDENDUMdecorative symbol




The addendum is the place where we as authors get to roll up our sleeves up and talk about the technical pieces of the story you’ve just read. When you have an author with a strong science background cowriting with an author who has a strong background in ancient history, you can imagine you might get a story with a bit of both.

And that would be true with Ice Trials (and the book that preceded it, Time Trials).



The Bimini Road


In Ice Trials we made some veiled references to things that are very much items that truly exist, such as the Bimini Road. We purposefully made light of it in the context of the story, but ultimately two things were later mentioned that are related: the Piri Reis map, and Atlantis. We’ll cover the map in a moment, but the relation with the Bimini Road and Atlantis might seem like a stretch—after all Atlantis is a made-up place, right?

Well, let’s leave that topic for the reader’s conjecture and focus on the Bimini Road for a small moment:

The Bimini Road, a mysterious underwater formation off the coast of Bimini Island in the Bahamas, has intrigued explorers and researchers for decades. Discovered in 1968, this unusual feature consists of a series of large, flat stones arranged in a linear pattern, resembling a road or pathway submerged beneath the ocean’s surface.

Some believe that the Bimini Road is evidence of an ancient, advanced civilization, possibly linked to the legendary lost continent of Atlantis described by Plato, which was said to have disappeared into the sea thousands of years ago. Proponents of this theory argue that the stones are remnants of a sophisticated, sunken city, and point to the alignment and construction as proof of human engineering.

However, the scientific community remains skeptical of these claims. Most geologists and archaeologists contend that the Bimini Road is a natural formation, likely the result of beachrock fractured and eroded by natural processes. They argue that while the formation is intriguing, there is no definitive evidence linking it to Atlantis or any other lost civilization.

Despite the lack of concrete proof, the Bimini Road continues to capture the imagination of those fascinated by the mysteries of the ancient world, keeping the legend of Atlantis alive in popular culture and fueling ongoing debates about what lies beneath the waves.



The Piri Reis Map


In Ice Trials we discovered a map that François related to an ancient map he’d seen that he called the Piri Reis Map. Again, we purposefully made reference to it because of its historical significance and the conjecture associated with it. You might ask, why is it special? Let’s talk a little about it:

The Piri Reis Map is a world map compiled in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. It has long intrigued historians and conspiracy theorists alike. What makes this map so fascinating is its depiction of parts of the world with surprising accuracy—particularly the coastlines of South America and Africa—despite being created during a time when European exploration of these regions was still in its infancy.

One of the most controversial aspects of the Piri Reis Map is its depiction of what some believe to be the coastline of Antarctica. This has led to speculation that the map might be a remnant of ancient knowledge, possibly dating back to a time during the last ice age, over twelve thousand years ago. This theory suggests that an advanced civilization, perhaps even that of Atlantis, could have charted these lands long before the rise of known civilizations.

Proponents of this theory argue that the Piri Reis Map could be evidence of a forgotten era of exploration, where ancient mariners mapped the world during a time when sea levels were lower.

However, mainstream historians are more cautious, attributing the map’s accuracy to a combination of known ancient maps, including those from the Greeks and the early explorers of the Mediterranean, rather than evidence of a lost civilization. They point out that the supposed depiction of Antarctica could simply be a misrepresentation of the southern tip of South America or an imaginative interpretation based on incomplete knowledge.

Whether the Piri Reis Map is a genuine relic of an ancient, advanced civilization or simply an example of Renaissance cartography’s blend of fact and fiction, it remains a captivating artifact, fueling debates about the mysteries of our past and the potential for lost knowledge hidden within the annals of history.

We’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine what you believe.



Nanites


We introduced something that was actually a “mystery substance” coating the ankhs back in Time Trials, but in Ice Trials we gave this thing a name: nanites. And even though the substance was a mystery to the cast members of the story, these microscopic little specks of gold served as a literary tool for us to do various things, especially things that affected the characters in ways that might have been subtle or somewhat drastic, depending on the situation. And you might think such things are fictional—they are not. The engineering world has had the ability to create things at the molecular level for quite some time.

The best example of this is in computer CPU manufacturing. Today, we are mass-manufacturing electronics with processes dealing with trace widths as low as 1.8 nanometers. That’s more than a thousand times smaller than the width of the finest hair. An atom averages anywhere from 0.1 to 0.3 nanometers wide.

We’ve even been able to manufacture tiny machines at the nano-scale. Think of a nanite as a tiny robot. A nanobot, if you will. Molecule-sized robots have been the promise of medicine for quite some time. The concept used in this series, where these “tiny doctors” are able to repair the body (within reason), and fend off sicknesses, is not really as ridiculous as it might seem.

Today, it is already possible to synthesize nanites that can determine where they are, and deliver minute units of a medicine to the correct locations. For instance, if one of these nanites was carrying a drug meant to treat a specific form of cancer, it would also carry a sensor that would help it identify its molecular target.

The advantages of such a precision approach are obvious. Chemotherapies, by contrast, blast the entire body with poisons, damaging healthy cells along with the cancerous ones. Nanites could be “programmed” to target only the unhealthy cells.

Yet today we are not using nanites as tiny doctors. Why?

Many challenges exist—among them, the ability to manufacture these nanites in a sufficient quantity to do clinical testing. This is hugely expensive today, and frankly, that’s the biggest technical hurdle.

But once that hurdle is crossed, the field is open for what could be a revolution in medicine, generating entirely new methods of treating cancer, other diseases, and even possibly halt the aging process.



The End of the Ice Age—the World is Changing


Ice Trials is set in a time of turbulence for our planet. We’re at the end of the last ice age, around 11,700 years ago, marking a dramatic turning point in the history of our planet. It was a time of profound change, not just for the climate, but for the creatures that roamed the Earth, the landscapes they inhabited, and the oceans that shaped the boundaries of continents. Among the most affected were the giant sloth and other megafauna—once rulers of the land, they found themselves struggling to survive in a world that was rapidly becoming inhospitable.



The Twilight of the Giants


When we think of the giant monsters of our ancient past, we often go back sixty-six million years ago to the age of the dinosaurs, but we had some very intimidating creatures much more recently than that. For tens of thousands of years, the Earth was home to an array of enormous creatures, collectively known as megafauna. The giant sloth, towering mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and massive bison roamed the landscapes of North and South America, thriving in the cooler, glaciated world. These creatures were well-adapted to the cold and the vast, open environments that characterized the Ice Age.

However, as the Ice Age drew to a close, the climate began to warm rapidly. Glaciers that had covered large portions of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres retreated, giving way to forests, grasslands, and wetlands. The habitats that had sustained these massive animals began to shrink, and with the changing climate came new challenges: dwindling food sources, competition with other species, and the arrival of skilled human hunters.

The giant ground sloth, a remarkable creature that could grow up to twenty feet long and weigh several tons, was one of the many species that found itself on the brink of extinction. As the forests expanded, the open areas where they foraged for food diminished. Coupled with human predation, the giant sloth’s numbers dwindled, and they eventually disappeared, leaving only their bones and the occasional fossilized track as a reminder of their once-dominant presence.



The Oceans in Flux:

Rising Waters and Changing Shores


The end of the Ice Age didn’t just affect the land; it also brought about significant changes in the world’s oceans. As the glaciers melted, vast amounts of water were released into the seas, causing global sea levels to rise by as much as four hundred feet. This dramatic increase in ocean levels reshaped coastlines, inundated low-lying areas, and formed new islands and waterways.

During the height of the Ice Age, much of the Earth’s water was locked in massive ice sheets, and sea levels were significantly lower. This created land bridges that connected continents—most notably, the Bering Land Bridge between Siberia and Alaska. It was over this bridge that humans first migrated into North America, tens of thousands of years before the Ice Age ended. These early pioneers spread across the continent, eventually reaching South America, and establishing diverse cultures and civilizations.

But as the Ice Age ended and the glaciers melted, the Bering Land Bridge was submerged by rising seas, cutting off the land route between Asia and the Americas. The civilizations that had taken root in the Americas were now isolated, separated from the rest of the world by vast oceans. For thousands of years, these societies would develop independently, creating rich and varied cultures that remained largely unknown to the rest of the world until the voyages of European explorers millennia later.



What Is This Deal with the King Being Killed

When His Powers Run Out?


This is an idea brought to public consciousness in James George Frazer’s monumental work The Golden Bough. This groundbreaking study in comparative religion got bigger as it went into new editions, until in its third edition it comprised twelve meaty volumes. The Golden Bough has had a massive influence on various spheres of intellectual activities, including poetry (see William Butler Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” and Robert Graves’s The White Goddess), classical studies (see Jane Ellen Harrison’s Themis and Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion), Biblical studies (see William Robertson Smith’s Lectures on the Religion of the Semites), psychoanalysis (see Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo as well as Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces), and even film (see Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now).

One of Frazer’s key ideas was that many religions were fundamentally fertility cults that contained buried within them reverence for a sacred king who ruled as long as he was virile and his magic was effective (in doing fertility things, such as bringing the rain, warding off death, etc.). Once the king’s powers showed signs of flagging—or in some cases, before they showed signs of beginning to fail and in order to avoid their failure—the king was murdered and replaced in his role by the man who killed him. This is the situation, obviously, into which we have inserted poor Surjan Singh.

Frazer starts his investigation with the priesthood of Diana at Lake Nemi in classical (Roman) times, but ranges all over the globe. His inclusion of Christ in his study caused no small amount of scandal. The Golden Bough also argued for an intellectual history of mankind in three phases, beginning with magic, then progressing to religion, and then ultimately graduating to science. If that sounds a little self-congratulatory to you, well, it has sounded self-congratulatory to other critics of the book.

The Golden Bough remains in print and is well known to the general reader. Within anthropology, its influence was initially pervasive but has long since faded. Nevertheless, it retains enough power—whether by virtue of its mass of ethnographic detail or by virtue of its creative vision—to continue to inspire new thinkers. And who can say whether it might yet come back into the limelight?

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Framed