Upheavals in the Third Millenium BCE

[Charlie Hatchett]

I tend to agree with you on these points Min. It seems society was well in to a state of advancement when a series of disasters struck 2200-1500bce. I'll have to see if a can come up with a Tower of Babel theory.

As Charlie mentioned earlier, the 10000-9000bce era was also marked by major changes in climate, geology, and distribution of human activities.

It's quite possible 10,000 B.P. 14C equals ca. 2500-3000 cya. Higher CO2 levels during that time frame would yield an exaggerated 14C date. Also lower 14C levels would have the same effect. Then we have the whole physics bit: Space/Time Continuum coupled with a rapidly expanding universe. And of course there's the supposedly very old sedimentary strata fossils (hundreds of millions of years old, conventionally) yielding finite 14C dates in the 20,000-60,000 B.P. range.

[Digit]

I accept that Min, but that isn't quite what I meant.
If a stone age man were to be passed by an auto whilst he was on his own, how would he describe what he had seen when he returned to the family cave?
Arthur C Clarke stated that a sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic, I think he was probably correct.

[Beagle]

So when did the "flood" happen and what caused it?

One cataclysm at a time.

[Minimalist]

I wonder if the climatic wheel of fortune spins that slowly?

In the last millenium we had the Little Ice Age which lasted from around 1250/1300 - 1850. Temperatures were lower and growing seasons were shorter.

When I was a kid in the 1950's there was a lake nearby that we could ice skate on for months in the winter. They used to take a team of horses out to test the ice. Now, if it freezes at all the ice is far too thin for anyone to risk ice skating.

In the Roman era we have texts which tell us that North Africa was the granary of the empire. Vast and productive farms existed in Libya and Tunisia whereas today the area is desert.

The point is that you don't need a cataclysm to account for cataclysmic change. The margin of survival for agrarian cultures must have been so low that relatively minor fluctuations in rainfall would have caused significantly reduced harvests leading to a cycle of famine and war.

[Minimalist]

I accept that Min, but that isn't quite what I meant.
If a stone age man were to be passed by an auto whilst he was on his own, how would he describe what he had seen when he returned to the family cave?
Arthur C Clarke stated that a sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic, I think he was probably correct.

Understood but I don't think you have quite that level of change. Minor technical improvements (the compound bow as opposed to a straight bow) had inordinate effect on the battlefield....but no one would have had trouble realizing that they were getting nailed with arrows from a greater distance than they thought possible.

I think it was Von Daniken who came up with the example of a stone age tribesman in New Guinea seeing an oil company team landing in a jet helicopter. He watches them from a distance as they perform tests and then climb back into the helicopter and fly away.

How the hell does he explain that to the tribal elders with a vocabulary of probably 500 words?

[Charlie Hatchett]

I think it was Von Daniken who came up with the example of a stone age tribesman in New Guinea seeing an oil company team landing in a jet helicopter. He watches them from a distance as they perform tests and then climb back into the helicopter and fly away.

How the hell does he explain that to the tribal elders with a vocabulary of probably 500 words?

"... Holy Shit...uhg, ugha, ug...faint..."

[Digit]

Keep breathing Charley! Keep breathing!

[Charlie Hatchett]

Keep breathing Charley! Keep breathing!

[Charlie Hatchett]

So when did the "flood" happen and what caused it?

From observations here locally, Beag, it appears two separate major flooding events occurred. One flood is capped off with the Cretaceous limestone, and another is represented by the thick, large nodule gravel stratum, which lays uncomformably on the limestone, implying some period of time separated the two events. How’s that for vague...

[Forum Monk]

So when did the "flood" happen and what caused it?

One cataclysm at a time.

I think most here would at least agree there was a flood of biblical proportions. By that I mean, it probably involved the majority of the population within a given region. To the survivor, it would look like the entire world and indeed, it would have been the length and breath of the world he knew during his lifetime. Based strictly on the mythologies, it appears there was a flood and an eventual redistribution of the population.

Now there could have been many floods, or there could have been one or a few truly huge floods in an area where the biggest part of people lived.

As for dating, there have been local floods, but the one that became the stuff of legends is not easy to date. I think you need to consider several factors.

Look at who is probably telling the same story, and where did their ancestors come from and when.

If you can find a correlation there, you can nail down the locale and the date.

Then you look for geological evidence.

Some of this work is already done by others.
I will find some links

[Beagle]

There have always been huge floods locally. And I'm sure some of the flood myths are about floods other than the biblical flood. The biblical flood though, seemed to be one event that affected all of the countries of the Mediterranean Sea, the middle east, and possibly over to India.

The Mesopotamian area has always had floods, but one was much bigger.
Egypt was seemingly unaffected by that one.

The Ryan and Pitman theory of the Black Sea flooding is still appealing to me. The passageway that the water broke through was solid land at least 20,000 yrs. ago. That would then mean that the flood legends of the middle east, and of Greece and Italy were brought there by the survivors.
That has made the most sense to me for a long time.

[Charlie Hatchett]

I figure while we're all pondering on this, a little theme music might be enjoyable:

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.com/Texas%20Flood

[Forum Monk]

The Ryan and Pitman theory of the Black Sea flooding is still appealing to me. The passageway that the water broke through was solid land at least 20,000 yrs. ago. That would then mean that the flood legends of the middle east, and of Greece and Italy were brought there by the survivors.
That has made the most sense to me for a long time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory

Countering the theory is a vast amount of data collected by Russian scientists, for example the extensive research of Valentina Yanko-Hombach, a geology professor of Odessa State University, Ukraine. These findings predate the publication of the Black Sea deluge theory, which highlights the problem of language barriers faced by western scientists dealing with scientific literature of the former Eastern Bloc. The Black Sea deluge theory ignores several facts apparent in the Russian language literature. Yanko-Hombach had shown previously that the water flow through the Bosporus reversed at certain geological times, depending on the water level of the Aegean Sea relative to the Black Sea. This contradicts the catastrophic breakage of a Bosporus sill on which Ryan and Pitman base their hypothesis. Likewise, the water levels calculated by Yanko-Hombach were by a wide margin different than those hypothesized by Ryan and Pitman.

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/bseaflod.htm

In Oct 2002, as documented below, Marine Geology dedicates an entire issue to the Black Sea Flood hypothesis. Almost all authors are negative. The paper which includes William Ryan as an author doesn't mention or defend the Noah's Flood hypothesis, which is surprising since he is one of the authors of that hypothesis. This is usually a sign that the idea is no longer supported.

http://www.noahs-ark-flood.com/pitman.htm

The Gilgamesh flood hero lived in Shuruppak on the Euphrates River.
But the Black Sea is separated from Shuruppak by more than 700 miles
including 200 miles of high mountains.

Ryan and Pitman cite Gilgamesh IV,5 and V,6 that refer to a "cedar
mountain" located in or near Lebanon (lab-na-nu) and therefore closer
to the Black Sea than Shuruppak. But cedars of Lebanon are not
mentioned in Gilgamesh,XI containing the flood story, and the flood
story was a late addition to the Epic of Gilgamesh and hence is not
related to the cedars of Lebanon. Ryan and Pitman also describe how
people could navigate "the waters of death" and argue that the flood hero
could have warnings of an impending flood in the Black Sea region, but
not in the Euphrates River valley. That may be true, but these story
elements do not unequivocally identify the Black Sea flood as Noah's
flood.

[Forum Monk]

From observations here locally, Beag, it appears two separate major flooding events occurred. One flood is capped off with the Cretaceous limestone, and another is represented by the thick, large nodule gravel stratum, which lays uncomformably on the limestone, implying some period of time separated the two events. How’s that for vague...

About the flood in Texas - hows this?

Cesar Emiliani explains the results: ”A huge amount of ice-melt water rushed into the Gulf of Mexico and produced a sea-level rise that spread around the world with the speed of a tidal wave.” He adds, “We know this because the oxygen isotope ratios of the foraminifera shells show a marked temporary decrease in the salinity of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It clearly shows that there was a major period of flooding from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, with a peak about 11,600 years ago. There is no question that there was a flood and there is also no question that it was a universal flood” (“Noah, the Flood, the Facts,” Reader’s Digest, U.S. edition, September 1977, p. 133).

http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/gn/gn047/worldwideflood.htm

The above article is a second-hand reference. I would like to find the original paper.

[Minimalist]

If they can still find evidence of Ice Age superfloods in Siberia and the Northern US, they should be able to find evidence from a massive flood which took place a mere 4,000 years ago.