Posted on 09/24/2006 6:00:46 PM PDT by blam
Flood made Britain into an island 'in 24 hours'
By Tim Hall
(Filed: 25/09/2006)
Britain may have become an island after a Biblical-style flood split it from Europe in less than 24 hours, according to new geological research.
The flood would have taken place between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, sweeping away hills between Britain and what is now France.
The theory could rewrite British prehistory, as current text-books teach that Britain - once a peninsula of continental Europe - split from the great land mass after a long process of erosion and rises in sea levels.
However, surveys of the Channel bed using new sonar techniques have revealed the remains of a huge valley, running south-west from the Strait of Dover.
The sonar survey, led by Sanjeev Gupta, from Imperial College, London, uncovered deep bowls, scour marks and piles of rubble on the sea bed that may have been caused by a torrent of water.
Dr Gupta said in a paper published at an academic conference: "In places, this valley is more than seven miles wide and 170 ft deep, with vertical sides. Its nearest geological parallels are found not on Earth but in the monumental flood terrains of the planet Mars.
"This suggests the valley was created by a catastrophic flood following the breaching of the Dover Strait and the sudden release of water from a giant lake to the north."
According to Dr Gupta's theory, France and Britain would have been linked by a high ridge of chalk hills, running roughly between Dover and Calais. To the north would have been a freshwater lake, fed by rivers, and deepened over thousands of years.
The lake, hundreds of feet above sea level, finally overflowed the chalk ridge and swept down towards the Atlantic. The water washed away the soft chalk hills and left the British Isles a separate land mass.
Dr Gupta's work is outlined in his book Homo Britannicus: the Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain, to be published next week.
How about plain ole' geophysics, plate tectonics, and geology?
What's so unusual about multiple, massive geological events (including various types of water catastrophes) occurring over the course of millions and billions of years?
Indeed, he had a recurring dream (which I have had myself, incidentally, recurring) of watching a great towering wave, as high as the sky, rush in from the sea to sunder the land.
When I saw the movie Deep Impact, with the great towering wave come in, it reminded me of that dream. Turns out Tolkien had the same dream.
I am reminded of the recent Tsunami, that all of the natives on some island were saved because, from an oral legend passed on since time out of mind, when they saw the sea depart, they headed for the hills. Nobody alive, or in living memory, had ever seen a tsunami, but the ancient memory, the legend, the myth, left a concrete lesson.
So, when the sea departed, they fled.
And while civilization on all of the surrounding islands was being drowned,. they all lived.
I note that in the tsunami, too, that none of the herds of large animals perished. They, too, all fled to the hills for some reason.
It is instinctive in the species, it is written in the genes (how else could Tolkien and I, separated by 60 years of existence and unrelated, have had the same recurring dream?), it is somewhere embedded in the collective memory of the living things of the Earth, man and beast, of a terrible, catastrophic flood.
The Algonquian Indians too have their memory of it, doubtless when the glaciers melted and the seas surged and broke open the end of Long Island Sound, which used to be a lake. Why did this formerly seaside people, with legends of the Atlantic coast, flee one thousand miles inland, to live by the shores of the Inland Sea (the Great Lakes)?
Their legends say because of a disastrous flood.
The flood happened.
Probably in many different places in many different times, as the glacial walls broke and the seas rose suddenly, or the canyons were dug, or any number of things
Apparently, there is nothing unusual about finding evidence of massive water catastrophes. But that evidence wasn't predicted by geophyics, plate tectonics or geology. That was predicted by Creation.
Actually it rained on Noah for 40 days, but the flood took a year, with water rising for 150 days.
So how does this guy know this only took 24 hours? Answer: He doesn't. That's the amazing junk science conjecture to make the rest of the science more appealing.
Wow, are you a sedimentologist? Because the guy who did this research is.
No, but it doesn't take a sedimentologist to have followed the debate about timing, and to realize that Nature only recently printed research on rapid stratification that Creationists had known and talked about for years.
It doesn't take a sedimentologist to have followed the debate and recognize that it was Creationists who were screaming that fossils were usually the evidence of huge phenomenal water catastrophes, long before others begin acknowledging the role of water catastrophes as part of their finds.
or did you slept through all that when you took geology 101?
Isn't your argument self-contradictory? On the one hand, you can't imagine how kangaroos made it to Australia after the flood, and on the other hand you are pointing out that marsupials exist on more than one continent.
It's well known that there have been many large floods in the past. However, these floods are all local catastrophes. You can read about many of them here. It beggars the imagination to think how people could possibly believe that such geological records were set down during a time of global flooding. These floods obviously cut through pre-existing rock, itself with fossils inside, indicating its ancient origin. The flood damage occurs alongside strata that was obviously set down on dry land. And that's not even mentioning all of the other evidence that simply cannot be explained in the context of a recent global flood. All of your wishful thinking is not going to change the fact that evidence for scattered local floods does not add up to one global flood.
You are twisting my words.
I didn't say geology didn't "cover" the evidence, I said it didn't "predict" the evidence, like Creation did.
Unlike YECers, I don't think the world is 6000 years old, so I can easily see how the slow process of continental drift can separate land masses that were previously in contact, splitting two populations of marsupials so that they continue to evolve and produce different daughter marsupials on different land masses ages later.
Now YECers either have to have kangaroos developing sudden amazing swimming ability, have God zap the kangaroos from place to place, or have a single land mass split up after the Flood with the continents careening into their modern places at breakneck speed--ignoring how ridiculous this is since that would suddenly expose a vast surface area of magma to cold sea water and cause a global catastrophe resulting in the extinction of all life. Ho-hum!
How does Creation predict a global Flood?
FEMA, hell! Where was Spike Lee the savior?
Gen 6:11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. 13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. ... 17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
Genesis records both the prediction of the flood to Noah and the flood itself. Based on that record of the past, Creation Science predicts that evidence of a monumental water catastrophe will be found.
200,000 years ago? Not Noah.
Can you imagine, standing on the cliffs of Dover 300,000 years ago, looking down into that valley?
Gad, what a sight it must have been.
After major changes to the enviroment, evolution happens much faster, because most of the flora and fauna of the region have been wiped out.
New movie coming: Moses II
Flood ping!
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