Having been resarching Noah after reading one of the other threads here i came across an interesting article on Wiki that i would appreciate some clarification on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_%28prehistoric%29

specifically:-

In a 1981 Journal of Cuneiform Studies article, "The Tangible Evidence for the Earliest Dilmun", Theresa Howard-Carter espoused her theory identifying Dilmun with Qurna, an island at the Strait of Hormuz. Her scenario put the original mouths of the Tigris-Euphrates rivers, which she thought should be the site of the primeval Dilmun, at or even beyond the Straits of Hormuz. Mainstream archaeologists have avoided mentioning her article, for fear of its apparent catastrophism, an awkward subject in geology.

If one takes the similarity of the flood stories as a suggestion of some dark event in prehistory, 12,000 years ago would seem a convenient timescale for it to filter down to the sumerians, Isralites etc.

As the apparent flooding of the Persian Gulf would have been pretty catastrophic at the time, why would Geologists have a problem with Howard-Carters theory?

More importantly, would this not give credence to the similarity of flood myths, being between Europe and India?

I agree this may be the basis of some of the flood myths, but thought this event was to have happened closer to 19,000 BC. But both the Sumerian and Hebrew stories place the even closer to 5,000 BC when there really was a large flood in the region which laid a large silt layer around that time. But this flood was not nearly as catastrophic as the Persian Gulf flood would have been. I do want to read her article now.

Have managed to come up with these two sources, both a bit of a long read, so not going to quote them here.

http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=422

http://user.tninet.se/~oof408u/fkf/english/flood.htm

Happy reading.

interesting idea and not inconceivable if one considers the effects of the melting of the northern european ice sheets that coincided with the melting of the northern american wisconsin ice sheets...about 12,000 years ago. Sea levels worldwide would have risen considerably and in places like the mediterranean it could have risen suddenly by some 300 feet - this would have caused flash flooding right the way across north africa and thru the near east down to the persian gulf
I have often wondered if the predecessors of the ancient egyptians saw this event and carried the memory of it down thru their folk lore which ultimately inspired the construction of the Pyramids. A design peculiarly resistant to both earthquake and flood.

except no there has been an earthquake and it did extremely damage the pyramid (thats where the casing went and why the kings chamber ceiling has a big crack in it)
and the area has never been flooded in its entire existence (unless you go back about 200 million years when the limestone bedrock was first layed down by small marine organisms)
just so's you know

There have actually been numerous earthquakes in egypt many of them severe enough to have levelled nearly every building the ancient egyptians built......except the pyramids. The casing stones were indeed loosened by earthquake but one would expect this as the stones were fixed to the sides of the pyramid with cement but even so, the great bulk of the casing stones were actually removed by local inhabitants for their own constructions.
The fact remains though that despite the numerous seismic events in the region that caused great destruction, the effects on the pyramids have been minimal.
So far as flooding is concerned.,its very likely that a large area of north africa's coastal regions were flooded after the melting of the northern ice sheets and the nile itself would have been greatly swollen, probably to a depth of over 300 feet.
Its not unreasonable to assume that there were people living in the region around the time of the melting of the last ice ageand who witnessed the evnts.....unless of course you are declaring your belief in the biblical date for man's first appearance on the earth; circa 4,000 bc.
lol

shall give the articles a read when i have a bit of free time ...

Not sure of the basis for your assumption that the Nile would have been 300 feet deeper. The melting of the ice certainly wasn't as fast as you would suggest. probably, at worst, 2 or 3 thousands years. So... no-one would have witnessed cataclysmic events, just a sure but steady progression out of the ice age. Of course the Pyramids are MUCH younger than this anyway."2.5 million blocks, each weighing approx. 2.5 tons (just an average you understand), 6.25 million tons will be fairly resistant to the small earthquakes encountered in Egypt. Most stone is very resistant to flooding anyway, in fact the Nile depends on annual flooding for the richest of the soil.

Just one thought to add here at theis point:-

At the end of the last ice age when the glaciers were retreating (melting), there is always the possibility of large formations of glacial ice sliding into the sea, therefore generating a serious tidal wave?

yes - take for example the melting of the wisconsin (north american sheet) it is now believed that a huge amount of melt water was held back by glaciers and when these glaciers were breached a cataclysmic flood rushed over the lands to the south. There is much evidence to support this and it is believed by some that the grand canyon is a consequence of this rapid flood.
A similar phenomenon could easily have been repeated in europe with sudden rushes of meltwater from the northern ice sheets flooding in the mediterranean and as the mediterranean has a bottleneck at its western end the water would have rapidly built up and flooded over the north african coast, into the nile and across turkey and south thru the euphrates and tigris valleys.

I wonder if "world wide flood" is the same as "world wide war", in that it's Most of the world, or many part of the world enough to call it world wide, because I don't think every square inch of the world was involved in the world wars.

dont mention the bible or the forum sharks will sniff fresh blood and start circling...

How long has this earth been in existence? The oceans are enlarged rivers that became oceans because of the enormous amount of Hydrogen that was blown off from the sun during the Nova. You want proof of that? Look at a detailed drawing or picture of the whole solar system. In an orbit just outside the planet Mars is about 150,000 asteroids and these asteroids are frozen heavy Hydrogen. Around the orbit of Jupiter is several pockets of larger asteroids and on out there is more. Where do you think these have come from? A collision, perhaps? What do you think makes water water? Isn't it hydrogen and oxygen? What is the outer zone of atmospheric protection of the earth? It is an oxygen atom on top of a molecule of oxygen. If it were lower in the atmosphere, you would burn up; not because of the sun, but from oxygen. That is why there is nitrogen in the atmosphere; > 2/3 of the atmosphere is nitrogen. Our earth is bombarded daily, second by second, by huge amounts of hydrogen from space. When a particle of hydrogen strikes the upper ozone, it causes friction and fusion. The friction causes extreme heat and the heat causes fusion of the hydrogen and the oxygen and produces water; that is where our oceans came from. Now that the Nova has occured and that was about some billion years ago, the oceans supply our atmosphere. The sun will not Nova again, which is a biblical statement.

so if what youre saying is true then each day there would be more water
and at one point the biblical claim states the world was covered by enough water to cover the tops of the highest mountains
see the obvious flaw in your argument yet ?

Each day there is more water! I was going to leave the bible out of this but then you have left the bible out of your statement. Find the statement in the bible that tells you that the earth drinks up the water! It is in Revelation. At the time of Noah, the water receded and in Revelation, after the birth of the child, the flood that was sent to destroy the child was swallowed up by the earth.
What you call water is one type of liquid. There are several other forms of liquid and one type causes your thinking in your brain and the less of that liquid, the more depression and anxiety.
In the bible, God said He would not again destroy mankind by flood. He might destroy mankind by lack of water. Depressing. But we have instances now of Altzheimer's disease which may be a lack of the type of water in the brain. And that leads to more problems because of the lack of Nitrogen.
The liquid in your brain is Hydrogen-Nitrogen-Oxygen.
The liquid that you drink is Hydrogen-Hydrogen-Oxygen.

the liquid in my brain that a shortage of causes anxiety and depression is serotonin
i have no idea what liquid your brain uses but apparently it isn't cutting it

as for the bible being evidence ?
what the ......
the book of revelation is from the new testament
the book of Noah is from the old testament
you are apparently claiming that the water receeded at the time of Noah
you didn't read about the sudden increase caused by God just before that ?
lol

SERATONIN IS HYDROGEN-NITROGEN-OXYGEN! HNO not H2O.

Gen 8:13 And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.

Rev 12:16 And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.

Serotonin is N2OC10H12
water is H2O

see any difference ?
youre under 15 years old arent you (at least your knowledge of chemistry is)

the bible is a book comprised of middle eastern mythology
not facts
there was no great flood on the face of the earth, geology has proved that and there is not enough water on earth to cause one (thats physics)
and the descriptions found in the book of revelation apparently havent occurred yet
so you are comparing something that never happened with something that hasn't happened yet
good luck with that

I agree my representatio of the chemical fingerprint of seratonin may be lacking. An organic compound, C10H12N2O, formed from tryptophan is seratonin.
Tryptophan is an essential amino acid, C11H12N2O2, formed from proteins during digestion by the action of proteolytic enzymes. It is necessary for normal growth and development and is the precursor of several substances, including serotonin and niacin.
You left out Oxygen in your formula and I left out Carbon. The difference between water and seratonin is carbon and nitrogen. Carbon is present to 'cool' the charge and nitrogen is present to keep you from turning to water.
Some being with a whole lot of thinking came up with that! And the bible has to be lived and then it will be shown how true it is. Mythology is just covering for truth.

I recently heard someone say that the Mediterranian Sea used to be dry before the Strait of Gibraltor gave way to let the water in. If humanity was clustered around this area then with all the geography and climate zones being different, is it possible that this could have been the "Great Flood" spoken of in all these mythologies from various cultures?

And i suppose the gods started the Trojan war!

how does someone live the bible
how is any of its truth hidden in mythology
mythology is built around a simple truth thats true
in the case of the bible the mythology existed before it did
its not an original work
so nothing is being hidden at all
its a book written by human beings
fallible human beings just like you

It now appears that the Mediterranean has dried out and flooded several times down the ages. The Mediterranean is also nearly landlocked so when the meltwater from the north european glaciers flooded into it ,its level may have risen by more than 300 feet, although not permanently. There are the remains of human settlements now submerged all around the fringes of the mediterranean and in the area that comprises the English Channel and a good part of the North Sea there have also been found the remains of extensive human habitation and forests.
If there is any truth in the Biblical flood then it has to be referring to this event as the Mediterranean would have overflowed into North Africa,the Near East and down thru the Tigris and Euphrates river valley and out into the Persian Gulf. The narraters of the Biblical version would obviously have been unaware of the existance of North and South America,China,Australia etc., so would have seen this flood as covering their KNOWN world. Anybody who disputes this would in effect be saying that humankind wasnt around at the time of the melting of the last ice age - which means they agree with the supposed Biblical age given for man ie; 4,000bc lol. (the Bible actually doesnt give a time for creation at all but faith-deniers insist it does)
So far as the Noah story is concerned; there were probably many Noahs and I have no doubt they would all have stuffed their vessels with as much livestock as they could get on board. They didnt have tiined beans and microwave burgers or fridges in them thar days so meat that was still breathing kept better....lol.
Like I have said many times in this forum, the great bulk of legend was created by professional story tellers and the tales from the Bible have to be understood in the context they were written but it doesnt mean that there isnt an element of truth in them.

but youre starting with an assumption based on incorrect facts and reaching a hypothesis that doesnt make sense
the mediterranean didn't flood at the end of the ice age its level just went up a little, so it was never a flood at all
it took thousands of years for this to happen hardly a need to rush out and build a big ship overnight
there is no evidence of the Med ever flooding into north africa which is bordered on that side by the Atlas mountain range, which the Atlantic was named after
the Tigris and Euphrates are not even on the African continent
the origins of the Biblical flood story are very easily traced back to ancient Sumer
a country at the edge of the persian gulf that suffers from seasonal flooding that is evidenced both textually and archaeologically as both swift and devastating
if someone was looking for a flood which affected the middle east maybe the best place to start looking might actually be there
fyi the Med isn't even in the middle east
its part of the Atlantic ocean

You are getting desperate here.
I did not say that the Tigris and Euphrates are in Africa, you need to read more slowly rather than rushing to have the last word.
Seasonal flooding would not be written into legend.
And now you are claiming that Israel,Lebanon which are generally described as being in the near or middle east do not border the Mediterranean Sea ,which I did not claim to be in the middle east.
At the melting of the last ice age sudden and catastrophic flooding could certainly have occurred much as it did when the wisconsin ice sheets in north america were breached allowing a massive amount of melt water to be released across north america scouring the landscape.


post glacial warming also produced catastrophic localized flooding. For example:

(1) The Mediterranean and Black Sea Basins

Evidence of salt beds and shallow lagoon fossils found in core samples (Deep Sea Drilling Project [DSDP] by the Glomar Challenger in 1970) show that pockets of the Mediterranean had evaporated during the last glacial period. The Straights of Gibraltar formed a narrow escarpment which blocked water from the Atlantic from entering the Mediterranean basin.

"The researchers [William Ryan and Walter Pitman - both geology professors at Columbia University] were reluctantly, but excitedly, driven to the conclusion that the Mediterranean Sea had dried up and refilled a dozen times in a million years. Since the Mediterranean basin is as much as 16,000 feet deep, the dry sea floor must have been an incredible hot desert for long periods of time. The lowest place on earth nowadays is the Dead Sea which is only 1300 feet below sea level Further studies confirmed that deep gorges in solid rock (now filled with ocean sediments and then river muds) lay under the Nile River and the Rhone River, suggesting that these rivers were once great torrents steeply dropping water into the empty Mediterranean basin. (However, other filled in gorges are also found around the world and are not unique to the Mediterranean). Best of all, the researchers imagined a prehistoric waterfall at the Straits of Gibraltar bringing in Atlantic ocean water with the volume of a hundred Victoria Falls or a thousand Niagaras at intervals lasting a hundred years or more."
- Lambert Dolphin , "The Great Mediterranean Desert"

"I was doing some research in the Black Sea in the late Seventies. I found an old shoreline about 110 meters under the surface. Then I found evidence of ancient beaches [including sea shells]. The old dune formations were extremely well-preserved. This proved that they had been covered suddenly by a huge volume of water. In other words, there had been a flood."
- Prof. Petro Kimitrov (Institute of Oceanology, Varna) ) interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"

In 1993 Ryan and Pitman, aboard a Russian vessel tracking radiation levels in the Black Sea, obtained core samples which included desiccated clay with roots of shrubs and plants still in place.

"As it turns out, looking at the cores and the sediments, it was quite easy to see that 25-30,000 years ago the Black Sea was a fresh water lake. And it wasn't until, oh, maybe about 9,000 years ago [9,750 according to radio carbon-dating on the sea shells] that we hypothesized then that with the rise in sea level, that the waters of the Mediterranean eventually started getting into the Black Sea."
- Dr. David Ross (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"

"According to the Russian model, the Black Sea level was at its lowest at around 20,000 years before present. At that time the Black Sea turned into a fresh water lake. And the level of this lake started to rise gradually, due to the influx of melted water from the North, until between 9-8,000 years the linkage was established and the salt water from the Mediterranean started to penetrate into the Black Sea. Then the two seas together started to rise at around 6,000 years before present."
- Dr. Pavel Dolukhanov (University of Newcastle) interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"

Ryan and Pitman disagree that the rise in the sea levels remained gradual. The core samples showed an abrupt transition between marine muds and fresh water muds. Carbon-14 dating was performed on the shell samples. The Black Sea today is poisoned by a layer of salt water flowing in through the Bosphorus which settles on the bottom of the Black Sea and doesn't allow it to breathe.

"This date, 7,550 years ago, was exactly the date that he [Dr. Glenn Jones] had got from all his cores of the onset of the- beginning of a poisonous layer in the Black Sea. And this meant that when the salt water rushed in through the Bosphorus and flooded the shelves, it stopped the breathing of the Black Sea."
- Bill Ryan interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"

Ryan and Pitman argue that a sedimentary plug damming the Bosphorus broke 7,540 years ago, and water flooded into the Black Sea basin.

"I was able to get a brief look at data obtained by the Turkish Navy all along the Bosphorus. And what I was able to see was that the depth to the hard rock below the sediment was 80 meters at a minimum and in many places over 100 meters. And what it indicated to me was that this groove, this channel, had to have been cut by a rush of fast-moving water [aprox. 100 km/hr]."
- Walter Pitman interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"

"The inrushing waters would have quickly scoured all soil, sediments, and loose rock down to the bedrock from the passage to create what is estimated to have been a cataract the flow of which would have been in excess of a thousand times greater than that now observed during flood stage at Niagara Falls, or approximately twelve billion (12,000,000,000) cubic feet per minute. Those fleeing the encroaching waters would have had to move over a kilometer a day up gradient in order to escape drowning."
- D. Laing, "The Flood is Found"

In twelve months, the Black Sea rose 280 feet. (Today is well over a mile deep.)

"It's pretty amazing to think of raising an entire ocean basin 140 meters in certainly under thirty years. What that means globally, if you actually calculate how much water went into the Black Sea from the rest of the world's oceans, it lowered the world's oceans by about one foot."
- Dr. Glenn Jones [Texas Institute of Oceanography] interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"

"The increased moisture in the air due to evaporation from both the cataract as well as sheet flooding of the dry basin could have resulted at some point in truly torrential rains in a region which had not experienced the like for millions of years (when the Mediterranean itself was flooded). Interestingly enough, studies of the Dead Sea reflect that the Black Sea flood occurred during an unusually wet historical period, and shortly thereafter the weather in the region assumed a pattern close to that of the present."
"Biblical scholar Michael Sanders has recently pointed out that the establishment of early Sumerian cities in the northern plain of the Tigris and Euphrates occurred shortly after the date of the Black Sea Flood."
- D. Laing, "The Flood is Found"

"According to Ryan and Pitman...the resulting dispersion of the populace led to the spread of farming skills, languages, and cultures to new settlements in southern Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Asia. The archaeological record is supported by DNA studies that reveal genetic connections between modern peoples of these regions and remains found around the flood region. But Ryan and Pitman don't draw only on science, they study as well the flood stories of various cultures, from Sumer to India, contending that they remain remarkably similar despite local coloring and storytellers embellishments. These tales tell of the destruction of the world as it was then known..."
- Noah's Flood - Redux
(Kirkus Review of William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah's Flood The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History)

"The type of flood that we've found in the Black Sea has remarkable parallels in the Gilgamesh epic. In fact, the very word they use for `flood' --`abubu'--when seen in different contexts, talks to an orifice or a waterfall... a projectile... a roar that comes out of an orifice, out of the throat of a monster".
- Bill Ryan interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"

"Traditionally it's been thought that when Gilgamesh made his journey in search of Upnapishtim [the only human immortal and the sole survivor of the Great Flood] he went to the Persian Gulf. But the actual description of his trip says otherwise. It is said that he set out in the direction of the setting sun, which means he went westerly, north- west; and eventually he came to the Sea of Death--a perfect description of the anoxic condition of the Black Sea."
- Walter Pitman interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a population explosion along the shores of the Black Sea 400 to 500 years after the flood when it crested and the sea level became stable.

"People who came from the Black Sea coast after the inundation probably would have come to a place like this: a small river flood plain with forests around it. Now, this resource zone is extremely different from the Black Sea coast. So you couldn't use the same knowledge, the same technology to live here as you could have used on the coast--it wouldn't have worked. So what would have happened is that probably over many years--perhaps 400, 500 years-- they would have come to rely on wheat agriculture. Wheat agriculture locks them into this place for permanent settlement. What you have, then, is the accumulation of successive building horizons one on top of the other. And this forms a tell.
"After about 5,000 BC, from 15-100 kilometers and further inland from the new Black Sea coast, these sights are popping up everywhere. That's incredible! That's 10 meters of people living here: that must be hundreds and hundreds of years of people settled in this place. It just defines the period so exactly."
- Douglass Bailey (University of Wales, Cardiff) interviewed in BBC's "Noah's Flood"



(2) The Columbia River Drainage

"It is now generally agreed that between 12,800 and 15,000 years ago more than 40 tremendous deluges of almost inconceivable force and dimensions swept across large parts of the Columbia River drainage. They were the greatest scientifically documented floods known to have occurred in North America."
- Alan Feuerbacher, "Documented Flooding in the Pacific Northwest"

Late in the last glacial period, the Okanogan Lobe of the Cordilleran icesheet stoppered up the Columbia River, near present-day Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho. Glacial Lake Missoula was formed, "stretching hundreds of miles across western Montana and containing more water than Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined." After some years the lake pushed the glacier up and over. A wall of water over 2,000 feet high burst through the ice barrier, "shooting out of Clark Fork Canyon at speeds approaching 65 miles per hour a and at a rate 10 times the combined flow of all the rivers in the world. At that rate the lake would have drained in as little as 48 hours!"
- Ice Age Institute - Missoula Floods

"Nearly 16,000 square miles were inundated to depths of hundreds of feet. Swollen by the flood waters, the Columbia grew to contain ten times the flow of all the rivers in the world today and 60 times the flow of the Amazon River."
- Alan Feuerbacher, "Documented Flooding in the Pacific Northwest"

"The deluge quickly stripped away 200 feet of soil and cut deep canyons or 'coulees' into the underlying bedrock, creating a vast maze-like network clearly visible from space."
- Ice Age Institute - Missoula Floods

"...These features [locally called 'scabland'] are not evident in the high country outside the flooded area, nor are they evident across the rest of the United States, even in areas that were under continental ice sheets."
- Alan Feuerbacher, "Documented Flooding in the Pacific Northwest"

Ryan and Pitman are years out of date and their idea never got beyond a hypothesis
as it turns out they were wrong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory

go google Ali Aksu

so basically like a lot of posters here your information totally ignores the facts and is based on a hypothesis that is out of date

quite simply no flood theory can be based on glacial meltwater at the end of the ice age because that took thousands of years to happen

www.laputanlogic.com/articles/2004/01/index.html

scroll down to the articles on marsh arabs.....its possible that the mudhif houses, made of reeds (in the flood plains) as shown in ancient depictions, and in recent photos inspired 'the ark'. Saddam drained the area to rid it of terrorists...

how it looked then...


inside a mudhif house (guest house)..


ma'dan floating village...


mudhif houses from the outside...


CARVED GYPSUM TROUGH FROM URUK. Two lambs exit a reed structure identical to the present-day mudhif on this ceremonial trough from the site of Uruk in southern Iraq. Neither the leaves or plumes have been removed from the reeds which are tied together to form the arch. As a result, the crossed-over, leathered reeds create a decorative pattern along the length of the roof, a style most often seen in modern animal shelters built by the Mi'dan. Dating to ca. 3000 BC, the trough documents the extraordinary length of time such arched reed buildings have been in use.


more sumerian depictions...



how the area looks now...



what a shame. the land of noah, gone.

From your link:

"In a series of expeditions, a team of marine archeologists led by Robert Ballard identified what appeared to be ancient shorelines, freshwater snail shells, drowned river valleys, tool-worked timbers, and man-made structures in roughly 300 feet (100 m) of water off the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey. Radiocarbon dating of freshwater mollusk remains indicated an age of about 7,000 years.

According to a report in New Scientist magazine (4 May 2002, p. 13), the researchers found an underwater delta south of the Bosporus. There was evidence for a strong flow of fresh water out of the Black Sea in the 8th millennium BC.

The review of sediments in the Black Sea coming from a series of expeditions carried out from 1998 to 2005, firstly in the frame of a collaborative project between France (Ifremer[3]) and Romania (GeoEcoMar[4]), then followed by a pan-European project (Assemblage[5]) coordinated by Gilles Lericolais,[6] confirmed the conclusion of Pitman and Ryan. These results were also completed by the Noah project led by the IOBAS Bulgarian institute. Furthermore, calculations made by Mark Siddall predicted an underwater canyon that was actually found."

And again from your link:

"In the relatively recent geological past, several great floods are widely suspected to have occurred, with varying amounts of supporting evidence, usually as a result of the last Ice Age ending.

At the most recent glacial maximum, so much of the planet's water was locked up in the vast ice-sheets that formed ice domes kilometers thick, that the sea level dropped by about 120 to 130 meters. As the sheets melted starting around 18,000 years ago sea levels rose. Most of the glacial melt had occurred by around 8,000 years ago, but the changes have not been as regular as a constant drip at the edges of the world's glaciers might suggest.

Sea levels have changed significantly since Late Paleolithic time, and shorelines have migrated. The sea has not always steadily encroached upon the land, for the immense weight of the ice-sheets depressed the continental plates under them and caused isostatic rebound around their edges, which are still adjusting today. Averaged rates of sea-level-rise are misleading. Also, parts of Scandinavia are rising isostatically for this reason, by up to centimeter a year in some places; it rises as fast as mantle rock can flow in under it, and that mantle rock must come from somewhere around, including from under the Netherlands, which are slowly sinking as a result.

These floods happened in various ways, which can be categorised into 5 types:-

Very flat land being steadily flooded over a long time as the sea rises, sometimes fast enough to be easily noticed in a human's lifetime.
The same, plus the occasional stormflood submerging land and washing the loose soil and subsoil away, leaving the flooded land too deep to be reclaimed. This is more noticeable if the people try to defend their land with dikes, for example in the Netherlands and in the Solent.
The rising sea overflowing a natural sill and entering an enclosed basin. The sill may then erode away catastrophically, like a dike in the Netherlands. The ocean could fill vast basins in matters of weeks or months, in catastrophes that are unimaginable in today's world. Some people argue that these events may have sparked the flood myths found in many cultures.
Big glacier-dammed lakes bursting as their ice dams melt until they suddenly collapse.
Other causes, for example megatsunamis.
Several examples where such rapid encroachment of the sea occurred are provoking geologists' and archaeologists' investigations."

as it turns out
marine molluscs aquire the calcium to build their shells from their local environment
so all Ballard had actually dated was some local calcium
and Ballard did not lead a team of marine archaeologists at the site, he made a few passes with an rov and took a few samples is all
hardly even compares to the decades of data that Russian researchers have collated which disproves the whole idea (which you weren't even aware of)

and the five reasons given for catastrophic floods were not even mentioned in your original post where you claimed it was all because of melting glaciers that caused the mediteranean to flood into the black sea and over into africa and down the tigris and euphrates rivers
I could have mentioned that the Tigris and Euphrates are two rivers formed by Silt running off from meltwater from glacial deposits of the last ice age
which of course means that they didn't exist at the end of the ice age
but I decided to keep that to myself because it would have made you look stupid
are we learning yet ?

This is becoming rather sad as your anger is making you confused. I really suggest you cease responding to me before you suffer a seizure and say something you may really regret.

You just said:
quote : "I could have mentioned that the Tigris and Euphrates are two rivers formed by Silt running off from meltwater from glacial deposits of the last ice age
which of course means that they didn't exist at the end of the ice age
but I decided to keep that to myself because it would have made you look stupid
are we learning yet ? " end quote.

Errr yes...lol

If there is any truth at all in the biblical flood story then we have to look to the end of the last ice age and the effects the melting of the north european and asian ice sheets had on specific areas such as the mediterranean, the black sea and lower lying regions of eastern turkey which run down thru central iraq and into the persian gulf.
here are a couple of links to start:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/clihis10k.html

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/finalprog...ession_9644.htm (some good reading on this one)

http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=422
so you were saying

too late sweetypie. You have seen your mistake and are now attempting to paste your boo boo over. Perhaps you realised - too late - that much of the water from the melting glaciers to the north of mesopatamia had only one place to go......down the euphrates and tigris river valleys . Much as it does today.

huh
a few posts ago you were claiming that it was melting flood water from the end of the ice age
thats around 10,000bce
then you were claiming it was proved by Ryan and Pitman in their hypothesis which is dated to 5500bce
then you suggested it was possibly 1 of 5 different scenarios listed by wikipedia

thats rich
coming from someone previously who claimed that the Romans couldnt have built baalbek despite the fact that it was documented by them and from someone who suggested that aliens communicate with human beings on internet chatrooms
you'll have to excuse me for not bothering to take you seriously anymore

what you have completely failed to appreciate is that the origins of the great flood do not lie in a great flood
they lie in traditional story telling
thats already a proven fact
but please
carry on embarressing yourself
im amused


oh btw
north of Mesopotamia is the Caucasus mountain range
during the ice age they were volcanic and supported about 80% of the worlds population because they were so fertile
so weren't glaciated

ok I shall go on embarassing myself.
The original temple at Baalbek wasnt built by the romans. The romans built the temple of jupiter which is on top of its foundations and it is these foundations that contain the gigantic stones that formed the core of my original post.

From your favorite source of reference:
" The Roman construction was built on top of earlier ruins and involved the creation of an immense raised plaza onto which the actual buildings were placed. The sloping terrain necessitated the creation of retaining walls on the north, south and west sides of the plaza. These walls are built of monoliths at their lowest level each weighing aproximately 400 tons. The western, tallest retaining wall has a second course of monoliths containg the famous "trilithon"; a row of three stones each weighing in excess of 1000 tons. A fourth, still larger stone called "the stone of the south" (Hajar el Gouble) or "the stone of the pregnant woman" (Hajar el Hibla) lays unused in a nearby quarry. Had it been freed from the quarry, it would have been the largest stone ever moved, larger than the famous unfinished obelisk in Aswan. Another of the Roman ruins, the Great Court, has six 20 m-tall stone columns surviving, out of an original 128."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baalbek

The 'aliens in the chat room " thing was a joke.....
"A joke is a short story or series of words spoken or communicated with the intent of causing laughter or being found humorous by the listener. A practical joke differs from a verbal one in that the humor is mainly physical rather than verbal (e.g. blocking a door while the "victim" is still in the room).

In 1975 anthropologist Mary Douglas noted that "Joking as one mode of expression has yet to be interpreted in its total relation to other modes of expression";[1] scholar Seth Graham remarked that 30 years later that statement is still largely valid.[2]

Jokes are performed either in a staged situation, such as a comedy in front of an audience, or informally for the entertainment of participants and onlookers. The desired response is generally laughter, although loud groans are also a common response to some forms of jokes, such as puns and shaggy dog stories."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke

But as you are bereft of any such emotion as humour and thus must be an alien you are proof of my original claim, that aliens use chat rooms and forums like this to engage with humans.....in your case rather badly now go back to your home planet.

now that actually was funny

Fantazum,

Thank you so much for the information you've given in this thread. Good stuff. I'd like to ask you also:

Along with this I also came across some theory that prior to the this flooding of the Mediterranean, there were gigantic men/beings like Nephilum (or Annunaki, Annu, etc.) and that the flood wiped them out mostly. Have you seen anything on this? I don't believe this is a literal thing, but rather fables about these previous human settlements.

I find the topic very interesting just to speculate about.

The idea of such giants was probably inspired by the discovery of fossil bones. Just as a mastodon skull probably gave rise to the idea of cyclops.

What are these bones? Why, they must be from giants! What happened to them? Why, they all perished in the flood!

Perhaps. But much of what I've seen in the way of explanation views the mythology as if those telling it were a few short of a full deck. I don't think this is the case.

if you go read the Hebrew bible it doesnt say anything about giants
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0.htm
that came about when it was translated into latin for the KJV

yes I have read many tales of giant humans but despite much research I have never seen the skeleton of one even though many fringe museums claim to possess at least one example.
You may find this interesting but I cannot make any comment on it:

"Giants of Ohio and the Mound Builders
Mary Sutherland, author of Living in the Light



Estimates of the number of moundworks in Ohio alone—at the end of the Colonial period—topped ten thousand. Today, less than one-twentieth of these exist in reconstructed form. ,

The first record of giants in Ohio can be traced back to 1829. A near by mound was being used to furnish the material to build a hotel in Chesterville. As they dug into the mounds, the workers dug up a large human skeleton. The local physician examining the skeleton said that the skull could have easily fit over a normal man's head with no difficulty. Another pecularity of the skeleton was the additonal teeth it had compared to modern man.

In the Ohio River Valley, Indian Mounds abound. In 1872,Seneca Township, Noble County, Ohio, in what is now called 'Bates' Mound three skeletons wre found. All three skeletons unearthed were at the very least eight feet tall in heighth with bone structure proportional to their height. Another amazing discovery about these skeletons is that they all had double rows of teeth.

Later, in 1878, another discovery in the county of Ashtabula County, Ohio. Mounds were excavated on land belonging to Peleg Sweet, a man of large features. In the first mound, theyt unearthed a skull and jaw which were of such size that the skull would cover Sweet's head and the jaw could be easily slipped over his face. Excavating further, they discovered these mounds contained the graves estimated between two and three thousand. Many of the skeletons found were of gigantic proportions.
According to Indian Legend there were two different races of strange humans that pre-existed their culture. One was the Archaic people who had slender bodies with long narrow heads.. The other group was the Adena people who had a massive bone structure with a short head. The Archaics were living in the Ohio River Valley prior to the Adenas. In what is assumed to be around 1000 BC, the Adenas moved into the area , coming up from the South, to claim dominion over the land. After a great war, the Archaics were destroyed by this more advanced and powerful race. From the Adenas the art of mound building was established .
David Cusic, a Tuscorora by birth, wrote in 1825 that among the legends of the ancient people there was a powerful tribe called Ronnongwetowanca. They were giants, and had a "considerable habitation." He states that when the Great Spirit made the people, some of them became giants. They made themselves feared by attacking when most unexpected. After having endured the outrages of these giants for a great long time, the people banded together to destroy them. With a final force of about 800 warriors, they successfully annihilated the abhorrent Ronnongwetowanca. There were no giants anywhere after this, it was said. This was supposed to have happened around 2,500 winters before Columbus arrived in America, i.e. circa 1,000 B.C.-the time that the Adena seem to have arrived in the Ohio Valley.

Modern day archaeology and anthropology have literallly sealed the doors to the true history of our ancestors. Archeological discoveries have become a one way door. What was discovered went to the Smithsonian Institute and others like it where the contents have been virtually sealed off to all but the elite few. But by digging through the archives of old newspapers, remaining documents, diaries and Indian legends we can form some idea as to what laid in our past.

The Scientific American, in 1883, published the following account:

Two miles from Mandan, on the bluffs near the junction of the Hart and Missouri Rivers, says the local newspaper, the Pioneer, is an old Cemetery of fully 100 acres in extent filled with bones of a giant race. This vast city of the dead lies just east of the Fort Lincoln road. The ground has the appearance of having been filled with trenches piled full of dead bodies, both man and beast, and covered with several feet of earth. In many places mounds from 8 to 10 feet high, and some of them 100 feet or more in length, have been thrown up and are filled with bones, broken pottery, vases of various bright colored flint, and agates ... showing the work of a people skilled in the arts and possessed of a high state of civilization. This has evidently been a grand battlefield, where thousands of men ... have fallen. ...Five miles above Mandan, on the opposite side of the Missouri, is another vast cemetery, as yet unexplored. We asked an aged Indian what his people knew of these ancient grave yards. He answered: "Me know nothing about them. They were here before the red man."

From the Ironton Register, a small Ohio River town newspaper, dated 5 May 1892,:

Where Proctorville now stands was one day part of a well paved city, but I think the greatest part of it is now in the Ohio river. Only a few mounds, there; one of which was near the C. Wilgus mansion and contained a skeleton of a very large person, all double teeth, and sound, in a jaw bone that would go over the jaw with the flesh on, of a large man; The common burying ground was well filled with skeletons at a depth of about 6 feet. Part of the pavement was of boulder stone and part of well preserved brick.
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Evidence for the occupation of this region before the appearance of the red man and the white race is to be found in almost every part of the county, as well as through the northwest generally. In removing the gravel bluffs, which are numerous and deep, for the construction and repair of roads, and in excavating cellars, hundreds of human skeletons, some of them of giant form, have been found. A citizen of Marion County estimates that there were about as many human skeletons in the knolls of Marion County as there are white inhabitants at present!

The History of Marion County, Ohio 1883
compiled from past accounts, published in 1883
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Mastodonic remains are occasionally unearthed, and, from time to time, discoveries of the remains of Indian settlements are indicated by the appearance of gigantic skeletons, with the high cheek bones, powerful jaws and massive frames peculiar of the red man, who left these as the only record with which to form a clew to the history of past ages.

The History of Brown County, Ohio
(complied from past accounts, published in 1883)
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She said also that three skeletons were found at the mouth of the Paw Paw Creek many years later, while Nim (Nimrod) Satterfield was justice of the peace. Jim Dean and some men were digging for a bridge foundation and found these bones at the lower end of the old buffalo wallow. She thought it was Dr. Kidwell, of Fairmont, who examined them and said they were very old, perhaps thousands of years old. She said that when the skeletons were exposed to the weather for a few days, their bones turned black and began to crumble, that Squire Satterfield had them buried in the Joliffe graveyard (Rivesville). All these skeletons, she said, were measured, and found to be about eight feet long.
Now and Long Ago-A History of the Marion County Area
by Glen Lough (1969)
(This citation on West Virginia courtesy Dave Cain.)
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Collected Accounts of James Mooney (1861-1921), tells of the visit of very tall people from the west:

James Wafford, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last century, told him that she had heard from the old people that long before her time a party of giants had once come to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and had their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them Tsunil´ kalu´, "the Slant-eyed people," because they looked like the giant hunter Tsul´ kalu´. They said that these giants lived far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the west...
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A document dated March 3 1880 records an excavation in Brush Creek Township, Muskingurn County. A site was excavated on the farm of J.M. Baughman. In this particular muond was discovered the bones of men and women, buried in couples . The length of their skeletons exceeding eight and even nine feet! The excavation was started in early December 1870.

What is most interesting and IMPORTANT here is the discovery of a large stone tablet inscribed with an ancient eastern form of writing. These are what is now refered to as the Brush Creek Tablets. *See Morman Tablets


Modern anthropologists have put forward the theory that once the giants existed in great number, and were the dominant race prior to the advent of modem and smaller races of men and women. Being warlike, they diminished their number in great wars (as the thousands of mound burials in the Ohio River Valley attest), and were eventually subjugated by the smaller, but more numerous races. Although the giants of yesteryears may have been destroyed, the genes still rise in modern man ie. children born with 6 toes or fingers, double rows of teeth and giant sizes such as shown in the picture at the top of the page.
Click below to see the Ohio Mounds Presentation

We can find another example of the existence of giant 'bearded' men, through the tradition of the Chippewa, Sandusky, and Tawa tribes.,
"In this connection I would say that Mr. Jonathan Brooks, now living in town, stated to me, that his father, Benjamin Brooks, who lived with the Indians fourteen years, and was well-acquainted with their language and traditions, told him and others that it was a tradition of the Indians that the first tribe occupying this whole country, was a black-bearded race, very large in size, and subsequently a red bearded race or tribe came and killed or drove off all the black beards, as they called them."
The Firelands Pioneer (1858) "

From: http://www.burlingtonnews.net/ohiogiants.html

I don't think that could of happend .. unless the glaciers were like really big.. i mean like really really big.. not just a normal glacier size..