In Search of Noah's Flood

[cormac mac airt]

Any flood occurring in the Egyptian 1st Dynasty would be constrained by a date of circa 2900 BC at the latest making a 4550 BP flood irrelevant. Sadly any actual mention of archaeological/historical events in Mesopotamia don’t come into play until several centuries later and therefore don’t help the problem. 
 

cormac

[cormac mac airt]

23 minutes ago, Doug1066 said:

I see where the idea that Eridu was not Eden came from.  He makes a good case.  This will likely have an impact on the Bible's other location for Eden.  Researching that is a project for another day.

The OUT-OF-AFRICA hypothesis runs into the problem of how early humans crossed the Strait of Hormuz.  During a time of lower sea levels (There were others before the LGM.), they could just have walked across.

Doug

 

Out of Africa is not a single pronged problem as Hss/AMH were moving into Arabia and the Levant by circa 125,000 BP. Those don’t appear to have lasted too long though with a more lasting and migratory series of people leaving Africa circa 65,000 - 50,000 BP. 
 

I forgot about Misliya Cave, Israel, finds of which have been redated to circa 185,000 BP. 
 

cormac

Edited January 11, 2024 by cormac mac airt

[Doug1066]

59 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

Out of Africa is not a single pronged problem as Hss/AMH were moving into Arabia and the Levant by circa 125,000 BP. Those don’t appear to have lasted too long though with a more lasting and migratory series of people leaving Africa circa 65,000 - 50,000 BP. 
 

I forgot about Misliya Cave, Israel, finds of which have been redated to circa 185,000 BP. 
 

cormac

All one has to do is figure out when the glacial maxima were.  The crossing dates for the Strait of Hormuz will be one of them.  What prevents an end-run around the strait?

Doug

Edited January 11, 2024 by Doug1066

[Doug1066]

I have tentatively re-dated the Nile flood at 2882-2861 BC based on Dee et al.'s radiocarbon dates for Semerkhet's reign.

I recall a 14C date for some tamarisk bushes in the newly-established shoreline of Lake Moerhis.  Those should date to less than ten years after the flood.  That would be a good check on the two sets of dates, if I can find the reference again.

Doug

[cormac mac airt]

12 minutes ago, Doug1066 said:

All one has to do is figure out when the glacial maxima were.  The crossing dates for the Strait of Hormuz will be one of them.

Doug

LGM was circa 26,000 - 19,000 BP which is irrelevant to Noah’s Flood and the Dry Persian Gulf ended by circa 14,000 BP. Any moving across the Strait of Hormuz would have been the later series of migrations circa 65,000 - 50,000 BP which would have nothing to do with Noah’s Flood or mankind’s migrations OOA as a whole. 

cormac

Edited January 11, 2024 by cormac mac airt

[Doug1066]

19 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

LGM was circa 26,000 - 19,000 BP which is irrelevant to Noah’s Flood and the Dry Persian Gulf ended by circa 14,000 BP. Any moving across the Strait of Hormuz would have been the later series of migrations circa 65,000 - 50,000 BP which would have nothing to do with Noah’s Flood or mankind’s migrations OOA as a whole. 

cormac

Agreed.  But getting to know the paleohistory of the place is part of knowing what's possible.

By 14,000 BP, the last moraines were being deposited in my home town.  Sea levels were already approaching modern.  The Bolling-Allerod had just ended and the world was about to get hit by the Younger Dryas.  Up until about 13,000 BP the Near East was hyperarid.  During the Younger Dryas things got wet; there were about five megafloods on the Nile (Wild Nile Phase).  During the Early Holocene there were maybe three more.  Then I've got a flood-free gap from about 8400 BP to about 6200 BP with no floods that I can find.  Then the four Mesopotamian floods (two on the Nile) around 3100-2800 BC.  And not one little trickle after that.

Still looking for those tamarisk bushes.

Doug

[Doug1066]

Seem to be zeroing in on 2900 BC, more or less, as the year of THE FLOOD.  How big that more-or-less is depends on how tightly I can nail down the end of the Jemdet nasr period.  How about 2882BC?

 

Mallowan estimates that THEFLOOD may have occurred as late as 2800 BC.

So now my Egypt-derived date of 2882-2861 BC fits nicely into the Sumerian time table.  The 4260BP date is wrong.

The storm that occurred in upper Egypt between 2882 and 2861 BC was the same storm that caused "Noah's Flood."  We are dealing with a megaflood, one such as has not occurred since.  Even by today's standards, this was a storm/flood of biblical proportions.

Wonder if I can find a connection with the Indus Valley.

Doug

 

Edited January 11, 2024 by Doug1066

[cormac mac airt]

14 minutes ago, Doug1066 said:

Seem to be zeroing in on 2900 BC, more or less, as the year of THE FLOOD.  How big that more-or-less is depends on how tightly I can nail down the end of the Jemdet nasr period.  How about 2882BC?

Doug

Even if you proved there was “a” flood either at 2900 BC or 2882 BC you have ZERO evidence that the Sumerians or other Mesopotamian peoples would have recognized it as “the” flood as they don’t give enough detail. At best you “might” be able to discover how far it extended. 
 

And then there is this: 

Quote

Mid-Holocene transgression of the Gulf surpassed today's sea levelby 7100–6890 cal yr BP, attaining a highstand of > 1 m above current sea level shortly after 5290–4570 cal yr BP before falling back to current levels by 1440–1170 cal yr BP.

 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0033589415000381

That high stand would cover your 2900-2886 BC timeframe, which is a problem IMO. 
 

cormac

[Doug1066]

20 hours ago, cormac mac airt said:

Even if you proved there was “a” flood either at 2900 BC or 2882 BC you have ZERO evidence that the Sumerians or other Mesopotamian peoples would have recognized it as “the” flood as they don’t give enough detail. At best you “might” be able to discover how far it extended. 

First, dates that far back have rather large margins of error.  Getting it to the right century might be as good as I (or anybody else) can do.  And you're right that we don't know what the Sumerians would have thought of the largest flood to hit them in their history.  Maybe they would think it was a little, inconsequential thing.

It seems that no flood, however great or small, completely disrupted the cultures of Mesopotamia.  A sliver of the original population managed to survive and re-establish itself.  That blurs the dates between cultures.  As a result, there is no clear ending date for the Jemdet nasr culture.  We can't just say that it existed in 2900 BC, but was gone in 2899 BC.  Dating just isn't that exact.  Even the new 14C dating technique still has an error rate of at least a decade.  We need a twig swept in on the flood so we can establish a 14C date for it - or a building built right after the flood.  Something that will allow us to nail down the date to the greatest level of accuracy possible.

I am thinking that the flood that came down the Nile about 2870 BC was both bigger and coeval with the Mesopotamian flood.  Both were the largest floods to hit their respective areas in the last 4800 years.  That sounds to me to be way too big for any ordinary weather-related event, even a bomb cyclone.  So here we are, back to asteroid impacts.  And Ethiopia got a lot more rain than Mesopotamia, which would suggest an impact in the Indian Ocean.

And that was the idea proposed by Massey and Abbott that got roundly given the scientific boot for lack of evidence.  They proposed Burkel Crater as the impact site, but the crater has never been dated, so that idea remains speculation.  I have no idea what the impact site was.  There are no tsunami deposits in the Persian Gulf or Red Sea, that we know of, so an impact in the Indian Ocean starts to look iffy.  There are "chevron" deposits near the Strait of Hormuz that may indicate a tsunami passed that way, but if so, where is the run-up damage?

So what else was going on about this time?  The Mid-Holocene Climate Anomaly.  Might it be connected?  This problem may just have gotten way bigger than a couple of quasi-historical floods.

21 hours ago, cormac mac airt said:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0033589415000381

That high stand would cover your 2900-2886 BC timeframe, which is a problem IMO. 

The bottom of the flood layer at Ur was at a level of one meter.  That would mean that sea level never got above the site while it was occupied.  There are other papers that put the figure higher and have different dates, but in all cases, sea level is falling when the four floods in question hit.  So it doesn't matter if sea level was once higher; by the time we're talking about, it was back down to less than a meter above current.

Doug

[Doug1066]

Read somewhere that THE FLOOD came during the sed festival of Semerkhet.  Read somewhere else that the festival was in the 30th year of Semerkhet's reign, as was the usual case.  Am now trying to find the references.

 

Came across an article on the Palermo Stone.  It covers the time from Narmer to the Fifth Dynasty.  The Flood had the highest water level during that time.  So the highest level recorded should be the one I'm interested in, right?  That happened during the reign of Den, not Semerkhet.  But the flood during Semerkhet's reign was almost as high.  The difference was less than an inch.  Problem:  Den also had a sed festival.  No way to decide which one is right.  And how does that square with Mesopotamia?

Doug

Edited January 12, 2024 by Doug1066

[cormac mac airt]

3 hours ago, Doug1066 said:

Read somewhere that THE FLOOD came during the sed festival of Semerkhet.  Read somewhere else that the festival was in the 30th year of Semerkhet's reign, as was the usual case.  Am now trying to find the references.

 

Came across an article on the Palermo Stone.  It covers the time from Narmer to the Fifth Dynasty.  The Flood had the highest water level during that time.  So the highest level recorded should be the one I'm interested in, right?  That happened during the reign of Den, not Semerkhet.  But the flood during Semerkhet's reign was almost as high.  The difference was less than an inch.  Problem:  Den also had a sed festival.  No way to decide which one is right.  And how does that square with Mesopotamia?

Doug

Assuming the Den and Semerkhet Floods may be relevant to the story, and that’s only an assumption, that would appear to place them in the general timeframe of the two earliest Kish floods or even the Shuruppak flood but leaving out the later and greater Kish flood. That timeframe was still not disrupted by any such flood as the Mesopotamian or Biblical texts claim. 
 

cormac

[Doug1066]

16 hours ago, cormac mac airt said:

Assuming the Den and Semerkhet Floods may be relevant to the story, and that’s only an assumption, that would appear to place them in the general timeframe of the two earliest Kish floods or even the Shuruppak flood but leaving out the later and greater Kish flood. That timeframe was still not disrupted by any such flood as the Mesopotamian or Biblical texts claim. 
 

cormac

I am still working out a time line for the Den and Semerkhet floods.  Looks like Semerkhet was only on the throne for about 9 years; the earlier records are messed up.  At any rate, I'll post some more later.

Doug

[Doug1066]

According to the Palermo Stone, there were three large First-Dynasty floods.  Djer 4993BP 2.82m ht.,  Den 4861 BP, 2.35 ht. and Semerkhet 4841 BP 2.25m.  That spans 152 years.  Of these, the first would be the largest.

Doug

[Doug1066]

So far:  three Egyptian First Dynasty Floods, two of them big, probably megafloods.

Leads on two pre-dynastic floods, but haven't nailed them down yet.

Records may not be good enough to detect pre-dynastic floods.  BUT:  after Semerkhet there have been no more megafloods on the Nile, and no record of a megaflood in Mesopotamia.  So even Noah's Flood wasn't all that big.

Doug

[Doug1066]

Appears there was a wet period beginning about 7000BP and ending with Semerkhet's flood.  Large amount of water came down Wadi Abu Suffian, an area which is now desert.  Resolution not good enough to identify separate floods.  Starting to look like Egyptian floods were just part of the wet period and nothing extraordinary for their time.  Still, they were bigger than anything that followed.  Wadi Howar still carried water in 4000BP.

 

Have identified eight "Wild Nile" floods, all during the Younger Dryas.  This seems to have been a pretty dry time outside of the Ethiopian highlands.  I wonder what was going on.

Doug

Edited January 14, 2024 by Doug1066

[Doug1066]

Record of Lake Moeris highstands is rather disappointing:  one about 6100, another about 4800 and another about 4100 BC.  Unless the entrance to the lake was blocked by sediment, those are the only possible superfloods.

Examination of a graph showing all known Nile floods suggests that none of these were all that unusual.

Doug

[Doug1066]

The Moeris highstand at 6100 BP may provide the solution to the two water marks at the Temple of Karnak:  One of them should date from about that time.  There are numerous gaps in the record around 6100BP.  Maybe another flood could sneak in there without being noticed?

 

Flood layers at Ur, Kish, Shurruppak and Uruk 2.  That's four.  How many are duplicates?

Doug

[Doug1066]

Found a record of a large impact in northern Europe in 3121 BP by varve count.  Could this be the cause of the mid-Holocene climate anomaly?

Doug

[cormac mac airt]

4 hours ago, Doug1066 said:

The Moeris highstand at 6100 BP may provide the solution to the two water marks at the Temple of Karnak:  One of them should date from about that time.  There are numerous gaps in the record around 6100BP.  Maybe another flood could sneak in there without being noticed?

 

Flood layers at Ur, Kish, Shurruppak and Uruk 2.  That's four.  How many are duplicates?

Doug

Temple of Karnak dates to circa 1970 BC IIRC so cannot be reconciled with a 6100 BP/4150 BC date. 
 

Quote

Found a record of a large impact in northern Europe in 3121 BP by varve count.  Could this be the cause of the mid-Holocene climate anomaly?

3121 BP/circa 1171 BC is nowhere near the Holocene Climactic Optimum. 
 

cormac

[Doug1066]

On 1/15/2024 at 6:49 PM, cormac mac airt said:

Temple of Karnak dates to circa 1970 BC IIRC so cannot be reconciled with a 6100 BP/4150 BC date. 
 

3121 BP/circa 1171 BC is nowhere near the Holocene Climactic Optimum. 
 

cormac

I've been very tired lately.  Thanks for waking me up.

Doug

[Doug1066]

On 1/15/2024 at 6:49 PM, cormac mac airt said:

3121 BP/circa 1171 BC is nowhere near the Holocene Climactic Optimum. 

How about Ragnarok?

Doug

[Doug1066]

19 minutes ago, Doug1066 said:

Temple of Karnak dates to circa 1970 BC IIRC so cannot be reconciled with a 6100 BP/4150 BC date.

Date of Nile flood, long pre-dating Noah.  This is way back in the Stone Age.

Doug

Edited January 17, 2024 by Doug1066

[Doug1066]

I now have two dates for the Proto-Moeris lake in the Fayum Depression:  5200BP and 4800BP.  The later date seems to fit better, but I'll have to check further.

Fayum Depression oveflowed to Wadi al-Rayan, but could not have overflowed to the Mediterranean.  So the earlier idea of an extra temporary mouth of the Nile could not have happened.

Doug

Edited January 17, 2024 by Doug1066

[Doug1066]

Time to start putting some of this together.

The flood that came down the Nile in 2911+/-20 BP during Den's sed festival seems to be the Egyptian equivalent of Noah's Flood (The date was determined with 14C AME dating of objects from the beginning of Den's reign.).  The flood was three miles wide at Thebes.  It involved the entire delta.  At Fayum, it filled the depression and ran out into Wadi al-Rayan.  It ended the Stone Age in Egypt.  This was, by far, the largest flood on the Nile since the Younger Dryas.  This was larger than the Mesopotamian floods during the previous 500 years; it could probably qualify as a 10,000-year flood in Egypt.  Could it have overflowed Wadi Tumilat into the Red Sea?

What could cause a gigantic flood that was larger in Egypt than it was in Mesopotamia?  Something that produced a pronounced "south" wind?  An asteroid strike in the Indian Ocean seems the best candidate.  Massey and Abbott are sticking with their proposal that Burkle Crater was the impact site, but still have not obtained a date on it.  There are no tsunami deposits in the Persian Gulf, perhaps because the entry channel is crooked, making it difficult for a tsunami to enter the Gulf from the Indian Ocean.  Same criticism applies to the Red Sea.  But otherwise, an asteroid impact offers the best hypothesis for the Mid-Holocene Climate Anomaly.

There remain two or three floods during the Third Dynasty to check out, but they're more recent than the Mesopotamian flood, so are weak candidates.  Also, there are several pre-dynastic floods to check out, as well as the synchronicity of Nile/Mesopotamian floods.

 

The Indus valley has a flood layer buried 60 feet below the surface at Mohenjo Daro.  This seems to bespeak a titanic flood, as would be expected from an asteroid impact in the Indian Ocean.

 

In Mesopotamia, there are four floods of record.  The Mesopotamian plain has no catchment basins to record floods, so they are harder to detect.  The Uruk2 flood is probably the same one as the Ur flood.  There were three floods at Kish; one of them seems to duplicate the Shurruppak flood.  There are few good dates for Mesopotamia.  Many that exist were taken before 14C technology had developed enough to give accurate dates.  The best bet is to match up dates for Egyptian floods with Mesopotamian floods and check to see that the intervals between them are proportional.

Test cores went only deep enough to reach river sediments below the ruins.  There could well be lots of undetected flood layers down there.  A test core at Ur was deep enough that it probably came within a meter of the Dibdibba Gravel (Younger Dryas age).  No flood layer detected, other than Wooley's.

 

So that's where I am now.  Looks like I am not going to confirm dating of Mesopotamian ruins.  The archeology for Mesopotamia has been outdated by better techniques and better understanding.

Doug

 

 

[cormac mac airt]

21 minutes ago, Doug1066 said:

Time to start putting some of this together.

The flood that came down the Nile in 2911+/-20 BP during Den's sed festival seems to be the Egyptian equivalent of Noah's Flood (The date was determined with 14C AME dating of objects from the beginning of Den's reign.).  The flood was three miles wide at Thebes.  It involved the entire delta.  At Fayum, it filled the depression and ran out into Wadi al-Rayan.  It ended the Stone Age in Egypt.  This was, by far, the largest flood on the Nile since the Younger Dryas.  This was larger than the Mesopotamian floods during the previous 500 years; it could probably qualify as a 10,000-year flood in Egypt.  Could it have overflowed Wadi Tumilat into the Red Sea?

What could cause a gigantic flood that was larger in Egypt than it was in Mesopotamia?  Something that produced a pronounced "south" wind?  An asteroid strike in the Indian Ocean seems the best candidate.  Massey and Abbott are sticking with their proposal that Burkle Crater was the impact site, but still have not obtained a date on it.  There are no tsunami deposits in the Persian Gulf, perhaps because the entry channel is crooked, making it difficult for a tsunami to enter the Gulf from the Indian Ocean.  Same criticism applies to the Red Sea.  But otherwise, an asteroid impact offers the best hypothesis for the Mid-Holocene Climate Anomaly.

There remain two or three floods during the Third Dynasty to check out, but they're more recent than the Mesopotamian flood, so are weak candidates.  Also, there are several pre-dynastic floods to check out, as well as the synchronicity of Nile/Mesopotamian floods.

 

The Indus valley has a flood layer buried 60 feet below the surface at Mohenjo Daro.  This seems to bespeak a titanic flood, as would be expected from an asteroid impact in the Indian Ocean.

 

In Mesopotamia, there are four floods of record.  The Mesopotamian plain has no catchment basins to record floods, so they are harder to detect.  The Uruk2 flood is probably the same one as the Ur flood.  There were three floods at Kish; one of them seems to duplicate the Shurruppak flood.  There are few good dates for Mesopotamia.  Many that exist were taken before 14C technology had developed enough to give accurate dates.  The best bet is to match up dates for Egyptian floods with Mesopotamian floods and check to see that the intervals between them are proportional.

Test cores went only deep enough to reach river sediments below the ruins.  There could well be lots of undetected flood layers down there.  A test core at Ur was deep enough that it probably came within a meter of the Dibdibba Gravel (Younger Dryas age).  No flood layer detected, other than Wooley's.

 

So that's where I am now.  Looks like I am not going to confirm dating of Mesopotamian ruins.  The archeology for Mesopotamia has been outdated by better techniques and better understanding.

Doug

You need to watch your dates better as you’ve done it again, 2911+/-20 BP is circa 961 +/-20 BC NOT BP. Other than that I don’t believe you’re ever going to be able to validate any single flood as Noah’s Flood. But you’ve made an admirable attempt. 
 

cormac