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Approximately five million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up after it was sealed off from the Atlantic Ocean. According to earth scientist Rob Govers of Utrecht University, a reduction in the weight on the Earth's crust led to the Straits of Gibraltar moving upwards. Govers will publish his conclusions in the February issue of the earth sciences journal Geology. Much like a mattress springs back into shape after you get off it, the Earth's crust moves upwards when sea levels fall. Known as isostasy, this phenomenon explains how the Mediterranean Sea was sealed off from the Atlantic Ocean five...

The Mediterranean Was a Desert Alan Feuerbacher In the past three decades convincing evidence has been found that the Mediterranean Sea has completely dried up at least once, and probably many times. The first solid evidence came in the summer of 1970, when geologists aboard the deep sea research and drilling ship Glomar Challenger brought up drill cores containing gypsum, rock salt, and various other minerals that could only have been formed by drying up of seawater. What was remarkable was that these minerals were found on the ocean floor, one to three kilometers deep, buried under as much as...

Sergio Frau suspects Plato was writing about a tidal wave on Sardinia... Writer and journalist Sergio Frau is another. After researching the island for a decade, Frau suspects a mysterious disaster that devastated Sardinia 3,200 years ago was in fact a tidal wave, which boosts the theory that Sardinia and Atlantis are one and the same, reports the Guardian. Stefano Tinti, an expert on tidal waves who recently visited the island with Frau along with a dozen other experts, says 350 tidal waves have occurred in the Mediterranean over the last 2,500 years and one might explain why all of...

The Anti-Defamation League condemned Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as the “leading anti-Semite in America” after a speech in which he blamed “Israelis and Zionist Jews” for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “At a time when anti-Semitic attitudes are at historic lows, Farrakhan’s unabashed promotion of anti-Semitism is a throwback to the intolerance of another era,” ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said in a statement issued Thursday. Farrakhan, who has a long history of anti-Semitic remarks, delivered his speech Sunday in Chicago as part of his Saviors Day 2015 sermon. “It is now becoming apparent that there...

'An unknown metal said to have been used in the sunken city of Atlantis has been found on 2,600-year-old shipwreck near the coast of Sicily. The 39 ingots of ‘orichalcum’ - described by Plato in his writings about Atlantis - are utterly unique. 'Nothing similar has ever been found,' an expert said. Plato described Atlantis as glittering ‘with the red light of orichalcum’, and he claimed that it was mined there, and used to build huge, glinting temples to the sea god Poseidon.'

A powerful earthquake in Alaska sent towering waves up to 30 feet (9 meters) tall crashing down on Hawaii about 500 years ago, leaving behind fragments of coral, mollusk shells and coarse beach sand in a sinkhole located on the island of Kauai, new research finds. The quake, likely a magnitude 9.0, sent the mighty waves toward Hawaii sometime between 1425 and 1665, the study found. It's possible that another large Alaskan earthquake could trigger a comparable tsunami on Hawaii's shores in the future, experts said. The tsunami was at least three times the size of the damaging 1946 tsunami,...

“There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel,” says Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa following an encompassing geo-archaeological study at the port of Caesarea. “Tsunami events in the Mediterranean do occur less frequently than in the Pacific Ocean, but our findings reveal a moderate rate of recurrence,” she says. Dr. Goodman, an expert geo-archaeologist, exposed geological evidence of this by chance. Her original intentions in Caesarea were to assist in research at the ancient port and at offshore shipwrecks. “We expected to find...

Double impact may have caused tsunami, global cooling Pieces of a giant asteroid or comet that broke apart over Earth may have crashed off Australia about 1,500 years ago, says a scientist who has found evidence of the possible impact craters. Satellite measurements of the Gulf of Carpentaria (see map) revealed tiny changes in sea level that are signs of impact craters on the seabed below, according to new research by marine geophysicist Dallas Abbott. Based on the satellite data, one crater should be about 11 miles (18 kilometers) wide, while the other should be 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) wide....

Olympia, the Sanctuary of Zeus and venue of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, was probably destroyed by tsunamis that reached far inland, and not as previously believed, by earthquakes and river flooding... Paläotsunamis that have taken place over the last 11,000 years along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. The Olympic-tsunami hypothesis has been put forward due to sediments found in the vicinity of Olympia, which were buried under an 8 metres thick layer of sand and other debris, and only rediscovered around 250 years ago. "The composition and thickness of the sediments we have found, do not fit...

According to the "Annals of the Four Masters" the island was once called Fitha Island and it formed part of the mainland until the day "the sea swelled so high that it burst its boundaries, overflowing a large tract of country, and drowning over 1,000 persons." This happened on March 16th, 804. Some reports describe it as an earthquake, others as a tidal wave when "the sea divided the island of Fitha into three parts." These three islands are Mutton Island, Inismattle (or Illanwattle) and Roanshee (or Carrig na Ron). There is a fourth island in the area called Carraig...

I have always been curious about the lack of documented evidence for a tsunami ever occuring on my home coast of North Carolina. Some of the largest undersea land slides on earth have been documented off our wonderful Outer Banks, and earthquakes are not completely unknown in the Carolinas. Both cause big waves. And more to point for the Tusk, some very credible work has documented cosmically-induced tsunami in the New York and Hudson Valley region, not far away from NC in a regional sense.

At 9PM on January 26, 1700 one of the world's largest earthquakes occurred along the west coast of North America. The undersea Cascadia thrust fault ruptured along a 680 mile length, from mid Vancouver Island to northern California in a great earthquake, producing tremendous shaking and a huge tsunami that swept across the Pacific. The Cascadia fault is the boundary between two of the Earth's tectonic plates: the smaller offshore Juan de Fuca plate that is sliding under the much larger North American plate. The earthquake also left unmistakable signatures in the geological record as the outer coastal regions subsided...

Nearly 1,500 years ago a massive flood in Geneva reportedly swept away everything in its path -- mills, houses, cattle, even entire churches. Now researchers believe they've found the unlikely sounding culprit: a tsunami-like killer wave in the Alps. The threat, they add, may still be very much alive. (Video: Tsunamis 101.) Spurred by a huge landslide, the medieval Lake Geneva "tsunami" (technically defined as a seismic ocean wave) swamped the city, which was already a trading hub, according to a new study. Far from any ocean, the massive wave was likely generated by a massive landslide into the Rhone...

A cave on the northwestern coast of Sumatra holds a remarkable record of big tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. The limestone opening, close to Banda Aceh, retains the sandy deposits washed ashore by huge, earthquake-induced waves over thousands of years. Scientists are using the site to help determine the frequency of catastrophes like the event of 26 December 2004.

Did a Comet Cause the Great Flood?The universal human myth may be the first example of disaster reporting. by Scott Carney11-15-2007 The Fenambosy chevrons at the tip of Madagascar. Image courtesy of Dallas Abbott The serpent’s tails coil together menacingly. A horn juts sharply from its head. The creature looks as if it might be swimming through a sea of stars. Or is it making its way up a sheer basalt cliff? For Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, there is no confusion as he looks at this ancient petroglyph, scratched into a rock by a...

A MYSTERIOUS settlement that sank beneath the waves at least 1,200 years ago has been discovered by divers off the south-east coast of India.Granite blocks and walls that lie 20ft below the surface may be the remains of six "lost temples" that form part of local mythology.The ruins came to light after the controversial amateur archaeologist and best-selling author Graham Hancock interviewed fisherman for a recent television series.After hearing accounts of the myth of a submerged city, he and two dozen divers searched the sea bed last week.India's National Institute of Oceanography, which was involved in the discovery, believes the...

Studies prove people of Madagascar came from Borneo and Africa mongabay.com July 8, 2005 Studies released earlier this year found the people of Madagascar have origins in Borneo and East Africa. Half of the genetic lineages of human inhabitants of Madagascar come from 4500 miles away in Borneo, while the other half derive from East Africa, according to a study published in May by a UK team. The island of Madagascar, the largest in the Indian Ocean, lies some 250 miles (400 km) from Africa and 4000 miles (6400 km) from Indonesia. Its isolation means that most of its mammals,...

Madagascar was first settled and founded by approximately 30 women, mostly of Indonesian descent, who may have sailed off course in a wayward vessel 1200 years ago. The discovery negates a prior theory that a large, planned settlement process took place on the island of Madagascar, located off the east coast of Africa. Traditionally it was thought to have been settled by Indonesian traders moving along the coasts of the Indian Ocean. Most native Madagascar people today, called Malagasy, can trace their ancestry back to the founding 30 mothers, according to an extensive new DNA study published in the latest...

This foraging occupation of one site effectively doubles and confirms the length of Madagascar’s known occupational history and thus the time during which people exploited its environments. The rock shelter yielded a stratified assemblage with small flakes, microblades, and retouched crescentic and trapezoidal tools, probably projectile elements, made from cherts and obsidian, some brought more that 200 km. The assemblage from the top layers of the site is well dated to 1050–1350 A.D. This was achieved using carbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), as well as ceramic typology imported from the Near East and China. Below this layer is...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...