Posted on 07/31/2004 4:37:21 PM PDT by blam
Black Sea Trip Yields No Flood Conclusions
By RICHARD C. LEWIS
Associated Press Writer
July 30, 2004, 2:06 PM EDT
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Four years ago, scientists thought they had found the perfect place to settle the Noah flood debate: A farmer's house on a bluff overlooking the Black Sea built about 7,500 years ago -- just before tidal waves inundated the homestead, submerged miles of coastline and turned the freshwater lake into a salty sea.
Some believed the rectangular site of stones and wood could help solve the age-old question of whether the Black Sea's flooding was the event recounted in the Biblical story of Noah.
That story told of a calamitous flood occurring over 40 days and nights. Scientists had largely dismissed it, believing the Black Sea filled up gradually with gently rising waters. That wisdom was rocked, however, when two scholars claimed several years ago that the Black Sea's flooding was more recent -- and so rapid and widespread that it forced people to move as far away as mainland Europe.
The scientists who visited the underwater site last summer off the northern Turkish coastal town of Sinop couldn't arrive at any conclusions. The settlement, about 330 feet underwater, was "contaminated" by wood that had drifted in, foiling any attempt to accurately date the ruin -- and thus date the flood.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Never mind, it worked.
GGG Ping.
"...as Rome ordered more taxes to be collected from its eastern province. The edict spawned a boom in local production and trading among communities across the Mediterranean and north to the Crimea..."
Have they never heard of Laffer curve? Those damned ignorant liberals...
"Scientists"??? Noah's Ark is just another thing that keeps on giving!! Hope they enjoyed their vacation!!
Still, scientists are puzzled why a ruin, then located on a 40-foot rise, and at the mouth of a river, would be anything but an ancient, well-situated home. They don't understand how the debris floated in and settled around the site, especially considering there's no other similar pile of underwater matter for miles around. It could be that the debris floated up as the waters rose, and that it wasn't a continuous rise, or at least not entirely continuous. It's also possible that they've rejected the RC dates because they don't conform to expectation, i.e., that the flood event took place more recently than R&P originally determined. For that matter, it's possible that the long submergence of the wood has had an impact on the carbon ratios.
Ballard's mentor, Willard Bascom, lived not quite long enough to learn of this discovery.Ancient Wooden Ship Emerges Intact From Geographic's Black Sea ExpeditionThe discovery in September of the well-preserved ship confirms scientists' belief that the oxygen-deprived waters of the Black Sea below 656 feet (200 meters) provide an ideal environment for preserving ancient wooden vessels, making that sea a treasure-house for archaeologists. Shipwrecks in most other bodies of water usually are robbed of their wooden parts quickly by wood-boring organisms.
by Mary Jeanne Jacobsen and Barbara Moffet
Ballard's website
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Newsday wants to be accurate?
That policy must have taking effect 10 minutes ago. (/ very very sarcastic ?
Yes, I would agree. Water (H2 O) with no oxygen, would be quite unique.
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Note: this topic is from 7/31/2004. Thanks blam. I thought it would be nice to ping this one, since someone recently posted the fiction that Ballard had discovered Noah was real as if it were A) reality and B) recent news.
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