Geodynamic Model Description for Ptolemy’s Germania Magna

Sven Mildner 

This model proposes that the well-documented geodynamic and climatic disruption of the 6th century AD involved a reactivation of the ancient Caledonian Deformation Front (CDF) and the Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ), most likely triggered by cosmic events in the form of impacts or airbursts. Large-scale inversion tectonics, driven by Alpine compressive forces, are argued to have caused substantial crustal deformation throughout Germania Magna during this period. Old extensional basins and zones of weakness were uplifted, folded, and shortened; with the Lausitz Block functioning as a rigid tectonic anchor, neighbouring crustal blocks — including the Fläming, Harz, and
Thuringian Forest — underwent characteristic rotations and lateral displacements.

The proposed consequences of this deformation cascade include catastrophic flooding, regional firestorms, and the widespread deposition of a distinctive Event-Dark-Earth (ED-E) sediment horizon. Concurrently, the Oceanus Germanicus (North Sea) experienced a significant northward regression, fundamentally altering the coastline geometry and decoupling the ancient, more compact shape of Germania Magna from its presentday configuration. This geodynamic transformation is advanced as an explanation for the abrupt collapse of ancient settlement structures documented in the archaeological record.

The cartometric foundation of the model is a strictly affine transformation of Ptolemy’s Geographike Hyphegesis (c. 150 AD), anchored on the invariant Rhine–Elbe baseline and yielding a fixed global scaling factor of ≈28 km per Ptolemaic degree of longitude. Residual analysis of the gazetteer reveals a statistically significant eastward displacement of the Elster-Lusatia Cluster (Δλ = −93.1 km, t = −13.7, p < 0.001, df = 3), which is incompatible with uniform cartographic measurement error and is interpreted as requiring a geodynamic, tectonic-block explanation. The extended evidence analysis and the Saale-Unstrut Fragment Impact Hypothesis develop these foundations in quantitative depth across Parts II–IV of this work.