  As is well known, during the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20'000 years ago,
the ice was asymmetrically distributed around the present North Pole. It
reached the region of New York, while east Siberia remained ice free. Mammoths
lived in arctic regions of east Siberia, where now their food cannot grow.
Therefore the globe must have been turned in such a way that the North Pole was
in Greenland. The required rapid geographic pole shift at the end of the ice
ages has been shown to be physically possible, on condition that an
astronomical object of planetary size in an extremely eccentric orbit existed.
In this postulated situation it was red hot and a disk shaped gas cloud reduced
the solar radiation on Earth in a time dependent way. A frequent objection to
this hypothesis is that the phenomena should be reported in old traditions.
This paper quotes such traditions from passages of Platon, Herodotus, Ovid,
papyrus Ipuwer, Gilgamesh, the Bible, American Indians and other civilizations.
Far from being exhaustive the examples show that apparently strange traditions
can report observed facts. This connection is of mutual benefit for science and
humanities.
