Posted on 08/15/2018 12:07:44 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
UNSW scientists have shown -- for the first time -- that a series of high-profile burial sites in the Pacific, Mediterranean and northern Scotland were likely related to catastrophic tsunamis... Honorary Professor James Goff from the PANGEA Research Centre at UNSW Sydney, who co-authored the paper, says the research provides new insights into past human-environment interactions and a new perspective on past catastrophic events... The researchers looked at coastal mass burial sites in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu as well as in Orkney and Shetland. The mass graves cover a long timeframe of human history -- they are from about 5000 years ago to as recent as about 500-600 years ago... The death tolls in modern coastal populations because of recent catastrophic tsunamis in Japan and Indonesia have shown the world just how devastating these events can be. Mass graves with up to 60,000 bodies illustrate that the need to bury the dead after the event often overwhelms the normal funerary protocols... The researchers' argument is not that every mass burial is tsunami-related, but that in a coastal context in particular, there is the danger of not considering it and, as such, misinterpreting much about human-environment interactions in prehistory.
Genevieve Cain from the University of Oxford, the lead author... "There is a fairly simple way forward here. When people die in a tsunami, they inhale saltwater that contains small marine micro-organisms called diatoms, which means they suffocate and then drown. These diatoms travel through the blood stream and are deposited and preserved within the bone marrow of larger bones. If we can find marine diatoms, this may indicate that the body is a tsunami victim."
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
The failure of the remaining glacial dams led to those floods, which are documented in formations like the Channeled Scablands.
During an ice age with mile thick ice over Seattle, I’m guessing that there would be opportunity for that ice to break and calve off like it does today. When a 100-foot chunk breaks off in some Alaska bay it will cause a water rise. One minute you are standing in the water with your rubber boots, the next the water is suddenly pouring over the tops.
Having a chunk of ice thousands of feet wide and thousands of feet tall break off would have been fairly common 15,000 years ago I would think. I’m not sure what the dimensions of that island out in the east Atlantic is - but there are articles written on the huge tsunami that it would cause if there was a huge landslide.
And landslides/ice falls can cause larger tsunamis than a large earthquake.
My daughter goes to the University of Missoula. On the hills you can see all of the various horizontal striations marking the numerous shorelines that happened as the ice would block the ancient lake, burst, then repeat the cycle. Pretty cool to look 400 feet up the hill and think “This was all under water back then!”
The tsunamis mentioned in replies are localized in effect. Glacier drops/breaking dams are catastrophic regionally, but not to the extent of creating a tsunami that travels thousands of miles to inundate tropical islands, which are the subject of the original post.
Those islands sprout along the pacific rim and are susceptible to tsunamis from earthquakes. Glacier issues would never have troubled them.
Read the book. It is well worth the time. It didn’t “calve off.” Many cubic kilometers sluiced out through the Hudson bay in one gush. That was ice on land and would raise the sea level by itself fairly rapidly as well as creating the tsunami. It was not a slow regular process and the huge glacier lake pouring out behind it amplified the effect. Very strong earthquakes accompanied the change in pressure on the land and volcanism increased. That is why every old culture has flood myths, especially in the SEA area where the greatest expanse of land was subsumed in three episodes between 11000 years ago and 7500 years ago. The sea level is still rising a few cm a decade from those events. The AGWists do have some inkling of what is happening but no notion at all of why and they think they can godlike stem the tide if only we give them enough money and power.
I think we are talking about Noah’s Great Flood, my FRiend, which you have exactlyu described.
I was thinking the same thing. Seems rather sketchy.
The glacial melt caused the sealevel to rise, which had an impact on all landmasses.
:^)
Correct. I’m only saying it wouldn’t have cause tsunamis thousands of miles from the glacial boundaries.
Even that would depend on the direction the water was going and the distance involved -- that much water delivers energy the same way a landslide does, just over a longer time frame (usually).
I can’t prove it, but I *think* I have that title, uh, around here somewhere. When I make out my will, I’m going to make sure all the books that family doesn’t want gets sold. I’d give some to a friend of mine, but the b****** will just sell them himself anyway.
Chevrons keyword:
I’m a big fan of that book.
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