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Did fossils inspire ancient flood legends?
Posted Sept. 6, 2004
World Science Staff
"Many ancient and modern cultures have creation myths involving flood legends similar to the Bible's story of Noah's Ark. Thinkers over the centuries, including Leonardo da Vinci, have debated whether the stories were true.
Detail of "The Flood" from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings, Rome, depicting the Bible's flood story. In the story, God sent a flood to cleanse Earth of man and his wickedness the Overcome by the wickedness. God spared only Noah and his family, instructing Noah to build an ark and to take on board a male and a female of every species of bird and beast. Ancient civilizations such as China, India, Russia, Babylonia, Wales, India, America, Peru, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, and Polynesia all have their own versions of a giant flood tale.
In the past few years it has become popular to believe they were – that a primordial flood really happened. Recent studies claim to back up the notion scientifically; for instance, there are findings that a titanic flood created the Black Sea in the Middle East 7,500 years ago.
But a better explanation may exist, a physicist says.
Fossils of ancient fish and marine organisms are often found high in mountains, due to the movement of rocks through geologic processes. The physicist, Richard K. Jeck, says these fossils could have inspired people to believe the areas were once flooded.
"Fossils of marine organisms, especially shellfish like clams and other molluscs, and sometimes fish, can be found in relatively high elevations in many places around the world," wrote Jeck, who is also a research meteorologist at the Federal Aviation Administration Technical Center near Atlantic City, New Jersey. Jeck published this hypothesis in the June issue of the journal Antiquity.
The sea life fossils "are found throughout the Near East and countries bordering the Mediterranean," the area from which the Bible stories came, he wrote.
This "can explain why stories of a great flood are found in the folklore or legends of ancient peoples in diverse places around the globe," he wrote. "It is understandable that primitive peoples had no other conclusion to draw than that a deep flood, one like no other in their experience, must have put those seashells way up there. They did not know about mountain building and the geological processes that can raise fossil-bearing, sedimentary rock strata to great heights."
Jeck's ideas aren't likely to end the debate. The findings about the ancient Black Sea flood are widely accepted, for instance. Backing them up, archaeologists have found signs of human habitation hundreds of feet below the sea.
But there are problems with the claim that the Black Sea flood is the source of the Noah's ark flood story, Jeck wrote. For instance, the evidence for this flood says nothing about a rainstorm, which figures prominently in the Noah story.
In the story, God sent a flood to cleanse Earth of man and his wickedness the Overcome by the wickedness. God spared only Noah and his family, instructing Noah to build an ark and to take on board a male and a female of every species of bird and beast.
The hypothesis that the Black Sea flood is the source of the Noah's Ark story was proposed in the late 1990s by the Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman. Pitman and Ryan wrote that the flood was caused by a massive overflow of water from the Mediterranean Sea due to rising water levels at the end of the last Ice Age.
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Send us a comment about this story
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READER COMMENTS
Its a shame we won't see stories like this in our public schools. (especially with all the "under God" fervor in the pledge). keep up the good work.
â€â€Frank
So rather than considering these mountaintop fossils and ancient flood stories to be potential evidence of a worldwide flood, these scientists believe geologic processes pushed these fossils toward the sky intact, inspiring primitive explorers around the world to come up with similar flood legends to explain their discoveries. To believe this strained theory requires a larger leap of faith than the Biblical account, which explains the same evidence far more simply and credibly.
â€â€David Krause (dhkrause<at symbol>neteze.com)
Altogether too many people have the mistaken idea that a catastrophic flood in the Black Sea was the inspiration for the Noah’s Flood story in the Bible. The TV programs on that topic are outdated and overly sensational and can be safely ignored. Sadly, you and maybe millions of other people have been misled on this subject.
Alas, there was no “Noachian†Black Sea Flood, and the science in William Ryan’s and Walter Pitman’s book “Noah’s Flood: the event that changed history†has in several cases been superceded by better information that indicates that there was no such event, and was in most cases preceded by evidence that indicated that there was no such event. Ryan and Pitman set out to overturn the orthodox view of the history of the Black Sea, but they have apparently abandoned their hypothesis, if more recent articles co-authored by Ryan are any indication. The orthodox view has prevailed, subject to some recent minor modifications.
There is evidence that there was an outflow southward from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean from more than 10000 years ago (well before Ryan and Pitman’s initial 5600 BCE flood date), continuously until the present day, though there may have been a relatively short interruption. And evidence from the south shore of the Black sea shows that the level of the Black Sea was only 18 m below the present level at the time of the supposed flood. The more recent claim by Ryan puts the flood date at 8400 BP, or about 9000 years ago, but then the “floodwaters†through the Bosphorus channel would have been only about 5 metres deep. 9000 years ago is when everybody else always thought that Mediterranean saltwater first entered the Black Sea. At about that time, the last phase of Glacial Lake Agassiz, in central Canada, finally found an outlet to the sea through or under the remnants of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, and so out into the North Atlantic, raising sea level an appreciable amount, and perhaps triggering a sudden inflow of saltwater into the Black Sea basin. But probably not sudden or great enough to inspire a Noachian Flood myth. Better candidates are widespread inundation of low lying parts of the Persian Gulf associated with the final draining of Glacial Lake Agassiz, and similar flooding of the Tigris-Euphrates delta, and (most likely) simultaneous flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates, which would have looked like a flooding of the entire world from the viewpoint of a person near present-day Baghdad. These candidates could each or all have inspired the flood myth in the epic of Gilgamesh, which predates the first known appearance of the Noachian Flood myth.
Check this out, for a layman-friendly synopsis of the refutation:
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/bseaflod.htm
On the draining of Glacial Lake Agassiz:
http://cgrg.geog.uvic.ca/abstracts/
PerkinsOnceDuring.html
And here’s a fairly recent news item on refutation of Ryan’s and Pitman’s hypothesis:
January 14, 2003
Newsday
Scientists are seriously challenging a recent, fascinating proposal that Noah’s epic story -- setting sail with an ark jam-full of animal couples -- was based on an actual catastrophic flood that suddenly filled the Black Sea 7,500 years ago, forcing people to flee. …
[for more, go to:
http://209.157.64.200/focus/
f-news/822427/posts]
Also, Ballard did not find Noah’s House, and he has recently admitted that he didn’t find any evidence of human occupation of the Black Sea continental shelf, let alone any support for the BSFlood hypothesis. Here is another recent news article telling you about that (please be warned that several statements in the article are erroneous, e.g. “Scholars agree the Black Sea flooded when rising world sea levels caused the Mediterranean to burst over land and fill the then freshwater lake.â€Â):
“Black Sea Trip Yields No Flood Conclusionsâ€Â
http://www.puresupply.com/newap/D8458SGG3.html
There was no actual ruined building found by Ballard, but rather just a partly rectangular outline of raised bed on the continental shelf, that might even be the outline of the wheelhouse of a modern freighter. To the northwest the outline continues, and narrows to a point. To the southeast, the outline continues for a shorter distance, and ends in a rounded curve. Just what you’d expect when a sunken ship’s hull is covered with sediment. The wood didn’t necessarily contaminate the site, it might have been part of the ship, and so accurately dates the site. The roughly-worked stones could have been the ship’s ballast.
Here are a couple of relevant scientific papers:
G r r, N., Cagatay, N., Emre, ., Alpar, B., Sakinc, M., Islamoglu, Y., Algan, O., Erkal, T., Kecer, M., Akk k, R. & Karlik, G. (2001) “Is the abrupt drowning of the Black Sea shelf at 7150 yr BP a myth?†Marine Geology 176: 65-73
“Persistent Holocene Outflow from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean Contradicts Noah’s Flood Hypothesisâ€Â
http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/gsatoday/toc0205.htm
Course notes showing diagrams from the most relevant papers can be see here:
http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/gsatoday/toc0205.htm
Radio interview with a marine geologist re: the BSFlood:
http://www.radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/
archives/01-02/mp3/qq220602b.mp3
Several presentations on the BSFlood:
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/
finalprogram/session_9644.htm
There’s lots more, but you’d need access to scientific journalsto read it, but you could ask me for more details if you want them. Some of the articles are available on the Web.
Sorry to splash water in the frying pan,
â€â€Daryl Krupa (icycalmca<at symbol>yahoo.com) "
http://www.world-science.net/
Posted Sept. 6, 2004
World Science Staff
"Many ancient and modern cultures have creation myths involving flood legends similar to the Bible's story of Noah's Ark. Thinkers over the centuries, including Leonardo da Vinci, have debated whether the stories were true.
Detail of "The Flood" from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings, Rome, depicting the Bible's flood story. In the story, God sent a flood to cleanse Earth of man and his wickedness the Overcome by the wickedness. God spared only Noah and his family, instructing Noah to build an ark and to take on board a male and a female of every species of bird and beast. Ancient civilizations such as China, India, Russia, Babylonia, Wales, India, America, Peru, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, and Polynesia all have their own versions of a giant flood tale.
In the past few years it has become popular to believe they were – that a primordial flood really happened. Recent studies claim to back up the notion scientifically; for instance, there are findings that a titanic flood created the Black Sea in the Middle East 7,500 years ago.
But a better explanation may exist, a physicist says.
Fossils of ancient fish and marine organisms are often found high in mountains, due to the movement of rocks through geologic processes. The physicist, Richard K. Jeck, says these fossils could have inspired people to believe the areas were once flooded.
"Fossils of marine organisms, especially shellfish like clams and other molluscs, and sometimes fish, can be found in relatively high elevations in many places around the world," wrote Jeck, who is also a research meteorologist at the Federal Aviation Administration Technical Center near Atlantic City, New Jersey. Jeck published this hypothesis in the June issue of the journal Antiquity.
The sea life fossils "are found throughout the Near East and countries bordering the Mediterranean," the area from which the Bible stories came, he wrote.
This "can explain why stories of a great flood are found in the folklore or legends of ancient peoples in diverse places around the globe," he wrote. "It is understandable that primitive peoples had no other conclusion to draw than that a deep flood, one like no other in their experience, must have put those seashells way up there. They did not know about mountain building and the geological processes that can raise fossil-bearing, sedimentary rock strata to great heights."
Jeck's ideas aren't likely to end the debate. The findings about the ancient Black Sea flood are widely accepted, for instance. Backing them up, archaeologists have found signs of human habitation hundreds of feet below the sea.
But there are problems with the claim that the Black Sea flood is the source of the Noah's ark flood story, Jeck wrote. For instance, the evidence for this flood says nothing about a rainstorm, which figures prominently in the Noah story.
In the story, God sent a flood to cleanse Earth of man and his wickedness the Overcome by the wickedness. God spared only Noah and his family, instructing Noah to build an ark and to take on board a male and a female of every species of bird and beast.
The hypothesis that the Black Sea flood is the source of the Noah's Ark story was proposed in the late 1990s by the Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman. Pitman and Ryan wrote that the flood was caused by a massive overflow of water from the Mediterranean Sea due to rising water levels at the end of the last Ice Age.
* * * * *
Send us a comment about this story
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
READER COMMENTS
Its a shame we won't see stories like this in our public schools. (especially with all the "under God" fervor in the pledge). keep up the good work.
â€â€Frank
So rather than considering these mountaintop fossils and ancient flood stories to be potential evidence of a worldwide flood, these scientists believe geologic processes pushed these fossils toward the sky intact, inspiring primitive explorers around the world to come up with similar flood legends to explain their discoveries. To believe this strained theory requires a larger leap of faith than the Biblical account, which explains the same evidence far more simply and credibly.
â€â€David Krause (dhkrause<at symbol>neteze.com)
Altogether too many people have the mistaken idea that a catastrophic flood in the Black Sea was the inspiration for the Noah’s Flood story in the Bible. The TV programs on that topic are outdated and overly sensational and can be safely ignored. Sadly, you and maybe millions of other people have been misled on this subject.
Alas, there was no “Noachian†Black Sea Flood, and the science in William Ryan’s and Walter Pitman’s book “Noah’s Flood: the event that changed history†has in several cases been superceded by better information that indicates that there was no such event, and was in most cases preceded by evidence that indicated that there was no such event. Ryan and Pitman set out to overturn the orthodox view of the history of the Black Sea, but they have apparently abandoned their hypothesis, if more recent articles co-authored by Ryan are any indication. The orthodox view has prevailed, subject to some recent minor modifications.
There is evidence that there was an outflow southward from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean from more than 10000 years ago (well before Ryan and Pitman’s initial 5600 BCE flood date), continuously until the present day, though there may have been a relatively short interruption. And evidence from the south shore of the Black sea shows that the level of the Black Sea was only 18 m below the present level at the time of the supposed flood. The more recent claim by Ryan puts the flood date at 8400 BP, or about 9000 years ago, but then the “floodwaters†through the Bosphorus channel would have been only about 5 metres deep. 9000 years ago is when everybody else always thought that Mediterranean saltwater first entered the Black Sea. At about that time, the last phase of Glacial Lake Agassiz, in central Canada, finally found an outlet to the sea through or under the remnants of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, and so out into the North Atlantic, raising sea level an appreciable amount, and perhaps triggering a sudden inflow of saltwater into the Black Sea basin. But probably not sudden or great enough to inspire a Noachian Flood myth. Better candidates are widespread inundation of low lying parts of the Persian Gulf associated with the final draining of Glacial Lake Agassiz, and similar flooding of the Tigris-Euphrates delta, and (most likely) simultaneous flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates, which would have looked like a flooding of the entire world from the viewpoint of a person near present-day Baghdad. These candidates could each or all have inspired the flood myth in the epic of Gilgamesh, which predates the first known appearance of the Noachian Flood myth.
Check this out, for a layman-friendly synopsis of the refutation:
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/bseaflod.htm
On the draining of Glacial Lake Agassiz:
http://cgrg.geog.uvic.ca/abstracts/
PerkinsOnceDuring.html
And here’s a fairly recent news item on refutation of Ryan’s and Pitman’s hypothesis:
January 14, 2003
Newsday
Scientists are seriously challenging a recent, fascinating proposal that Noah’s epic story -- setting sail with an ark jam-full of animal couples -- was based on an actual catastrophic flood that suddenly filled the Black Sea 7,500 years ago, forcing people to flee. …
[for more, go to:
http://209.157.64.200/focus/
f-news/822427/posts]
Also, Ballard did not find Noah’s House, and he has recently admitted that he didn’t find any evidence of human occupation of the Black Sea continental shelf, let alone any support for the BSFlood hypothesis. Here is another recent news article telling you about that (please be warned that several statements in the article are erroneous, e.g. “Scholars agree the Black Sea flooded when rising world sea levels caused the Mediterranean to burst over land and fill the then freshwater lake.â€Â):
“Black Sea Trip Yields No Flood Conclusionsâ€Â
http://www.puresupply.com/newap/D8458SGG3.html
There was no actual ruined building found by Ballard, but rather just a partly rectangular outline of raised bed on the continental shelf, that might even be the outline of the wheelhouse of a modern freighter. To the northwest the outline continues, and narrows to a point. To the southeast, the outline continues for a shorter distance, and ends in a rounded curve. Just what you’d expect when a sunken ship’s hull is covered with sediment. The wood didn’t necessarily contaminate the site, it might have been part of the ship, and so accurately dates the site. The roughly-worked stones could have been the ship’s ballast.
Here are a couple of relevant scientific papers:
G r r, N., Cagatay, N., Emre, ., Alpar, B., Sakinc, M., Islamoglu, Y., Algan, O., Erkal, T., Kecer, M., Akk k, R. & Karlik, G. (2001) “Is the abrupt drowning of the Black Sea shelf at 7150 yr BP a myth?†Marine Geology 176: 65-73
“Persistent Holocene Outflow from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean Contradicts Noah’s Flood Hypothesisâ€Â
http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/gsatoday/toc0205.htm
Course notes showing diagrams from the most relevant papers can be see here:
http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/gsatoday/toc0205.htm
Radio interview with a marine geologist re: the BSFlood:
http://www.radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/
archives/01-02/mp3/qq220602b.mp3
Several presentations on the BSFlood:
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/
finalprogram/session_9644.htm
There’s lots more, but you’d need access to scientific journalsto read it, but you could ask me for more details if you want them. Some of the articles are available on the Web.
Sorry to splash water in the frying pan,
â€â€Daryl Krupa (icycalmca<at symbol>yahoo.com) "
http://www.world-science.net/