Floods

There are also these:
Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?
Early State Formation in Southern Mesopotamia: Sea Levels, Shorelines, and Climate Change
Shoreline reconstructions for the Persian Gulf since the Last Glacial Maximum

Note that none of this relates to a sudden breakthrough at the Straits of Hormuz. In fact the data would suggest, based on water depth in the straits, that this is not a plausible possibility. However, they are supportive of flooding of the floor of the Gulf as a consequence of post-glacial sea level rise and its consequent impact on humans in the area.
 
Last edited:
Hipparchia said:
Try this. Here is the abstract.

Aeolian dunes cover most of the United Arab Emirates and a large part of the eastern Arabian Peninsula. Although these sands, as well as older aeolianites, are largely composed of quartz, there is a high percentage of detrital carbonate in them south of the Persian (Arabian) Gulf for more than 40 km; this percentage decreases inland. These carbonate grains consist mainly of marine bioclastic fragments and calcareous ooids, and were derived from the floor of the Persian Gulf, which was exposed during low sea level of the last glacial period.
The postglacial rise in sea level rapidly reflooded the floor of the Persian Gulf, cutting off the source for these aeolian sediments. Between 12 and 6 ka, the sea transgressed more than 1000 km, inundating the extended route of the Tigris-Euphrates River and forcing people living on the exposed floor of the Gulf to abandon their settlements. Because of the varying rate of eustatic sea level rise, these waters at times flooded across the flat floor of the Persian Gulf at more than a kilometer per year. We proposed that the stories of a great flood, recorded in the Bible as Noah's Flood and in Babylonian history on clay tablets (excavated in the Tigris-Euphrates delta) as the Epic of Gilgamesh, are a record of this rapid postglacial flooding of the floor of the Persian Gulf.
Click to expand...
This is very interesting indeed, but you have omitted to cite the source. Where is it from?
 
exchemist said:
This is very interesting indeed, but you have omitted to cite the source. Where is it from?
Click to expand...
I've given you a direct link. Just hit the words "Try this". (The clue was in the words "try this" :) )

Edit: I just double checked and the link works for me.
Edit 2: It's annoying that the forum software doesn't underline, or colourise links, so they are visible even when a mouse isn't over them.
Edit 3: I see that links are colourised. They are a lighter grey than regular text. Not at all obvious.
 
Last edited:
exchemist said:
But the fact is that there are actually some tantalising bits of evidence for truly catastrophic floods.
Click to expand...
Yes, we have those bits of information but did the Bible writers have them? It's interesting to look at real flood events in the past but there's no need to tie them in with the Biblical Flood.
 
Hipparchia said:
I've given you a direct link. Just hit the words "Try this". (The clue was in the words "try this" :) )

Edit: I just double checked and the link works for me.
Edit 2: It's annoying that the forum software doesn't underline, or colourise links, so they are visible even when a mouse isn't over them.
Edit 3: I see that links are colourised. They are a lighter grey than regular text. Not at all obvious.
Click to expand...
Aha thanks, indeed I could not see that there was a link there.

I've now read it. From what they say, the sea could have advanced at a rate of 1km/yr, i.e. 3 metres per day, for prolonged periods. Certainly it would have pushed all the people living along the banks of the Ice Age Tigris, Euphrates, or Shatt-al- Arab, whichever it then was, Northwest into Mesopotamia. And this would have happened between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago, so definitely within the scope of folk memory.
 
sideshowbob said:
Yes, we have those bits of information but did the Bible writers have them? It's interesting to look at real flood events in the past but there's no need to tie them in with the Biblical Flood.
Click to expand...
No need, of course, but real floods that might have entered the folk memory of people who experienced them could have been responsible for later flood myths, could they not? As to whether these hypotheses could be testable, I suppose there might be further writings discovered, or submarine evidence of habitation on the floor of the Persian Gulf, or something. But they can only be hypotheses for the present, I accept.
 
iceaura said:
The Noachian Flood was not seasonal - not a "normal" flood. In the story it happened to people settled enough and familiar enough with flooding to know how to build large boats, and it wasn't anything like what they expected or could handle - they couldn't get to their own boats, even.
Click to expand...
In reality the audience knew about floods and boats. In the story they didn't. As far as I know, the only mention of rain before the Flood is in genesis 2:5 where God had not caused it to rain yet. As far as the story is concerned, God invented rain for the purpose of the Flood. Notice that rainbows were not invented until after the Flood, as a sign that rain will end.
 
iceaura said:
T

The Noachian Flood was not seasonal - not a "normal" flood. In the story it happened to people settled enough and familiar enough with flooding to know how to build large boats, and it wasn't anything like what they expected or could handle - they couldn't get to their own boats, even.
Click to expand...
If you see a flood only once in your life it's extraordinary even if it is seasonal to the resident.

The people in the biblical story didn't know how to build large boats, not with dimensions given. Nobody did at that time.
 
exchemist said:
No need, of course, but real floods that might have entered the folk memory of people who experienced them could have been responsible for later flood myths, could they not?
Click to expand...
Of course, but there's no reason to think that those folk memories came from a Black Sea flood or a Strait of Hormuz Flood. There are, after all, flood myths all over the world; we acknowledge that most of them are based on local floods, so why is "our" flood special?
 
sideshowbob said:
Of course, but there's no reason to think that those folk memories came from a Black Sea flood or a Strait of Hormuz Flood. There are, after all, flood myths all over the world; we acknowledge that most of them are based on local floods, so why is "our" flood special?
Click to expand...
Godddiditism.
 
sideshowbob said:
I don't know many "nice" cats. That is a pretty good analogy, actually: they're ruthless killers, they're capricious, etc. and yet we love them. It just goes to show how perverse humans are.
Click to expand...
They're predators, they are good at that. And their logic doesn't necessarily coincide with ours. I've seen studies that suggest cats moved into human habitats long before they could have been considered "domesticated". They wanted the vermin that was attracted to our food stores and we were happy to let them have it.
 
sideshowbob said:
Of course, but there's no reason to think that those folk memories came from a Black Sea flood or a Strait of Hormuz Flood. There are, after all, flood myths all over the world; we acknowledge that most of them are based on local floods, so why is "our" flood special?
Click to expand...
"Your" flood? I'm not suggesting any flood is special. It's simply intriguing to see that there were events in several parts of the world that could have made sufficient impact to be handed on in folk memory.

If your point is that there are independent flood myths in many cultures where there definitely were no phenomena associated with the last Ice Age, then maybe that is the case. Do we know that? I must say I begin to wonder if there may be flood myths due to Ice Age events in many cultures. Although, to be honest, I'm more interested in the geology and morphology of the events than in any putative effects on human culture.

P.S. From the silly exchange subsequent to this post 129 of yours, I continue to have the feeling that some people are determined to find a flimsy pretext to divert this thread into bashing religion. That is a pity, as there has been some good science in it.
 
exchemist said:
If your point is that there are independent flood myths in many cultures where there definitely were no phenomena associated with the last Ice Age, then maybe that is the case. Do we know that? I must say I begin to wonder if there may be flood myths due to Ice Age events in many cultures.
Click to expand...
I think you're looking at it backwards. We do know that there are flood myths in most cultures and there are floods in most cultures. We don't know that any flood myths are based on Ice Age events.
 
sideshowbob said:
I think you're looking at it backwards. We do know that there are flood myths in most cultures and there are floods in most cultures. We don't know that any flood myths are based on Ice Age events.
Click to expand...
That's fair enough I suppose. We don't have anything in the Epic of Gilgamesh that unequivocally points to a geographical area or an identifiable phenomenon. So it's just interesting speculation, no more than that. But the rate of flooding of the Persian Gulf does seem to have been remarkably dramatic, anyway, which is a useful titbit to file away.

I'll still like to resolve the issue of how the Straits of Hormuz got their shape. I wonder if it is possible that the combined rivers cut through to the lowered sea level at that point, or whether it is just some effect of the Al Hajar mountain range impinging on the Asian plate. There seems remarkably little about this on line.
 
Can we weed out the non-flood thread ideas? Interesting material enough to make their own turf. I've been through the Straits and it's rather claustrophobic for a carrier battle group.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top