Science, Creation & EvolutionNoahs Flood is it real, is it global?I'm curious to know what the views are on this subject from various folks on the board. I'll start with an interesting abstract from the Geological Society of America Meeting in 2000 (available online at:
http://rock.geosociety.org/docs/absinde ... /51194.htm
Rapidly rising sea level during the last deglaciation inundated the floor of the Persian Gulf, which had been subaerially exposed during glaciation. This cut off the supply of calcareous bioclasts, oolites, and ooids from the Gulf floor, which had been deflated by the Shamal Winds during low sea level, depriving dunes on the Arabian Peninsula of the calcareous components that characterize glacial periods. Radiocarbon ages on these calcareous clasts are mainly >12 ka, and agree with the IR luminescence dates on quartz in these dunes. During exposure of the Persian Gulf floor, the course of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers extended >1000 km east from its present mouth in Iraq. From 12-6 ka, postglacial sea level rise forced people living on the flat Gulf floor to rapidly migrate to higher areas. Rates of this transgression at times exceeded 1 km per year, notably around 12-11.5 and 9.5-8.5 ka radiocarbon years. We believe this rapid flooding of the 260,000 km2 floor of the Persian Gulf is the source of the legend about a great flood recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written on clay tablets (about 4800 yrs BP in the first cuneiform script) that were discovered at the western end of the modern Persian Gulf; scholars believe this is the probable origin of the story of Noah’s Flood found in Genesis 7-8 of the Bible. Migration into this region, known as Mesopotamia, would have been a logical result of postglacial sea level rise that forced people to move westward up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers into the 'cradle of civilization'. In fact, early biblical stories have a Mesopotamian background. We believe that linking Noah’s Flood to the Persian Gulf basin is more compatible from a geographic and a human history perspective than is linking it to the Black Sea basin >1000 km to the northwest beyond the high mountains of Turkey, as Ryan and Pittman have done.
-E
| View dfilename Return Home |