Archaeologica.org

Would you wager that any volcano can ever be considered 'dead'?

No! But that isn't the question I asked.

Roy.

If you hadn't jumped the gun you would have seen the answer to your question...

I didn't jump the gun RS. There is also no evidence of activity. Negativity is hardly a reasonable answer.

Roy.

Digit wrote: There is also no evidence of activity.

Wrong: there is no evidence of no volcanic activity in that region. Not today, not 2/3 million years ago, and not 200 million years ago. It has always been extremely volcanically active there.

AT THAT TIME!

Roy.

Digit wrote: AT THAT TIME!

At ANY time in the last couple hundred million years, Roy...

At ANY time in the last couple hundred million years, Roy...

Is that evidence for eruptions or for the absence of eruptions are you saying?

Roy.

Like Vesuvius. Which had been sitting there for millions of years without activity, then suddenly erupted violently in 79 AD. And subsequently hasn't (yet) erupted since.

That's actually not true. Vesuvius has a long documented history of eruptions. Including 1944 when my dad was there with the rest of the US Army shitting his pants at the sight of it!


http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano ... page=erupt

Of course not. But that wasn't the situation. The situation was, as we have hypothesized, that HE was beach combing. So he was at the waterline. So that cluster of volcanoes is/was inland relative to HE's location. When they erupted HE's land routes were cut off. He couldn't go towards the volcanoes, so he obviously fled them in the only other direction left: across the water!

Would be a remarkable set of events and timing but we have no evidence one way or the other. I'll accept it as a "hypothesis." Next step in any hypothesis (which does not involve religion, that is) is to seek evidence to support it.

That's actually not true.

And widely shown at cinemas at the time and on TV ad Nauseum since!

Roy.

That's actually not true.

And widely shown at cinemas at the time and on TV ad Nauseum since!

Would be a remarkable set of events and timing

Yeah! Like being dealt five aces from the pack!

Roy.

Like being dealt five aces from the pack!

Well....if they are sitting on the beach and have boats available anyway...why not suppose that they had already crossed and were on both sides? In that case, the eruption could have obliterated the group on the African side and the ones on the Yemeni side would be highly motivated to head for the hills.

Also of course Bob if these 'eruptions' were so frequent how are these people supposed to have got to the Gulf side of them in the first place?
And if the they went north to get around them why head towards an are of constant eruptions, death wish.
And again, volcanic debris is just about the most accurately datable natural phenomenon that we have, so if there is no evidence for that period there weren't any eruptions!

Roy.

And if the they went north to get around them why head towards an are of constant eruptions, death wish.

I have the same problem with the idea that Ancient Siberians headed towards the glaciers? Why would anyone head for a glacier?

Geologic time scales don't match human time scales though. What a geologist might consider "constant" may occur over a 100,000 years.

Yep, and even if the eruptions were more frequent then than now it would have only taken a few months at the most to go through so a period of quiescence of just a few years would have provided the necessary time.

Roy.