Every time the claim is made that there is "no evidence" for a global flood some 4350 years ago, I am compelled to reply "not so fast" and submit the following article:
At some time around 2300 BC, give or take a century or two, a large number of the major civilisations of the world collapsed, simultaneously it seems. The Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisation in Israel, Anatolia and Greece, as well as the Indus Valley civilisation in India, the Hilmand civilisation in Afghanistan and the Hongshan Culture in China - the first urban civilisations in the world - all fell into ruin at more or less the same time. Why? …
Some decades ago, the hunt for clues passed largely into the hands of natural scientists. Concentrating on the earlier set of Bronze Age collapses, researchers began to find a range of evidence that suggested that natural causes rather than human actions, may have been initially responsible. There began to be talk of climate change, volcanic activity, and earthquakes - and some of this material has now found its way into standard historical accounts of the period. Agreement, however, there has never been. Some researchers favoured one type of natural cause, others favoured another, and the problem remained that no single explanation appeared to account for all the evidence….
The hunt for natural causes for these human disasters began when the Frenchman Claude Schaeffer, one of the leading archaeologists of his time, published his book ‘Stratigraphie Comparee et Chronologie L’Asie Occidentale’ in 1948. Schaeffer analysed and compared the destruction layers of more than 40 archaeological sites in the Near and Middle East, from Troy to Tepe Hissar on the Caspian Sea and from the Levant to Mesopotamia. He was the first scholar to detect that all had been totally destroyed several times in the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age, apparently simultaneously.
Since the damage was far too excessive and did not show signs of military or human involvement, he argued that repeated earthquakes might have been responsible for these events. At the time he published, Schaeffer was not taken seriously by the world of archaeology. Since then, however, natural scientists have found widespread and unambiguous evidence for abrupt climate change, sudden sea level changes, catastrophic inundations, widespread seismic activity and evidence for massive volcanic activity at several periods since the last Ice Age, but particularly at around 2200BC, give or take 200 years.
Areas such as the Sahara, or around the Dead Sea, were once farmed but became deserts. Tree rings show disastrous growth conditions at c 2350BC, while sediment cores from lakes and rivers in Europe and Africa show a catastrophic drop in water levels at this time. In Mesopotamia, vast areas of land appear to have been devastated, inundated, or totally burned... Yet what was the cause of these earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, fire-blasts and climate changes? By the late 1970s, British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier of Oxford University had begun to investigate cometary impact as the ultimate cause. Then in 1980, the Nobel prizewinning physicist Luis Alvarez and his colleagues published their famous paper in ‘Science’ that argued that a cosmic impact had led to the extinction of the dinosaurs..
He showed that large amounts of the element iridium present in geological layers dating from about 65 million BC had a cosmic origin. Alvarez’s paper had immense influence and stimulated further research by such British astronomers as Clube and Napier, Prof Mark Bailey of the Armagh Observatory, Duncan Steel of Spaceguard Australia, and Britain’s best known astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. All now support the theory of cometary impact and loosely form what is now known as the British School of Coherent Catastrophism.
These scholars envisage trains of cometary debris which repeatedly encounter the Earth. We know that tiny particles of cosmic material penetrate the atmosphere every day, but their impact is insignificant.
Occasionally, however, cosmic debris measuring between one and several hundred metres in diametre strike the Earth and these can have catastrophic effects on our ecological system, through multimegaton explosions of fireballs which destroy natural and cultural features on the surface of the Earth by means of tidal-wave floods (if the debris lands in the sea), fire blasts and seismic damage…
The extent to which past cometary impacts were responsible for civilisation collapse, cultural change, even the development of religion, must remain a hypothesis. But in view of the astronomical, geological and archaeological evidence, this ‘giant comet’ hypothesis should no longer be dismissed by archaeologists out of hand.
Evidence shows catastrophic climate change around 2350 BC in the civilized world mentioned in the Bible, i.e. "areas such as the Sahara, or around the Dead Sea, were once farmed but became deserts. Tree rings show disastrous growth conditions at c 2350BC, while sediment cores from lakes and rivers in Europe and Africa show a catastrophic drop in water levels at this time. In Mesopotamia, vast areas of land appear to have been devastated, inundated, or totally burned."
The evidence of natural disaster around the world at the same time, to the scientists quoted in this article, suggests comets were the probable cause.
Science of course excludes the supernatural on principle, but we Christians would say such a catastrophe was the will of God whether He used comets or something else to effect His will.
Personally, my musing is that the Noah Flood was worldwide and targeted to destroy utterly (except for Noah et al) all life in which existed the neshama, the breath of life. (Genesis 2 and 6) To the archeologist, that might interpret to "civilizations."
To God be the glory!
AMEN! THANKS THANKS.
Some folks are disinclined to have their biases dinged or pinged.
That's very nice.
But you still must realize that there is no scientific evidence for a global flood about 4,350 years ago.
The argument that comets may have had some effect about the same time as a purported worldwide flood is typical of what we see from creation "science." It totally ignores the mountains of evidence that the flood did not occur in favor of an idea, comets, for which there is scant evidence. It takes what is, only to creation "science," an anomaly and uses that to equal and in fact refute the mountains of evidence on the other side.
Sorry, real science doesn't work that way.
If you posit a global flood, you better start finding some evidence for flooding in some parts of the world at the specified time. In reality, a global flood would mean that there would be evidence in your back yard. An archaeologist or a sedimentologist could find it easily, if it was there.
Archaeologists and sedimentologists have been poking their noses into the earth everywhere, and there is no evidence for a global flood at the appointed time. Not surprising, as the idea of a global flood is a tribal myth.
There may have been some effects on advanced civilizations from comets or other celestial phenomena, but that does not equal a flood -- except to creation "scientists."
As for pings, please feel free to ping me to posts that have some science content (as this one has a specific claim). What I don't have time for is the lengthy metaphysical posts that are totally devoid of science content.
So we have a flood that was not a flood, which destroyed civilizations but not populations, and took place over about a century or more instead of a year. How does this even vaguely resemble the biblical account?
Christianity isn’t the only religion that claims the flood happened. I believe some ancient religions also did (Babylonians maybe?). It bears looking into.
Or maybe we could just mention Plato a bit here? Certainly that wouldn't be "theological!"
I'm not sure how to reconcile the biblical dating here with what geologists have to say about the period in question; i.e., ~2,200 B.C.
Yet the fascinating thing is it is precisely within this geological period that Plato places his myth of Atlantis (~2,200 B.C.), in the "unfinished" dialogue, Critias. [Warning: the Greeks generally do not get high marks for their handling of time problems....]
As far as I know, Plato's reference to Atlantis is the only recorded instance in history suggesting that such a place actually existed. Plato describes Atlantis as the wealthiest, most prosperous, most technologically advanced, and most strictly socially integrated society of its day. An Athens that was well in Plato's past at the time of his writing this dialogue went to war with Atlantis; and ultimately, under the most difficult circumstances, ultimately prevailed.
But by then, it simply didn't matter: For what instantly occurred was a great natural cataclysm that set up earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, such that "in a single dreadful day and night all [the Athenian] fighting men were swallowed up by the earth [earthquake], and the island of Atlantis was similarly swallowed up by the sea and vanished [great flood]."
My own view is that Plato's tale of Atlantis is pure fiction, a literary device that he used to explore certain aspects of his political and social thought that need not detain us here. What I suspect, however, is that Plato may well have been aware of geological events that occurred nearly 2,000 years before his own time, which would have been within the ken of the greatest scientists of the day, the Egyptians. Indeed, Plato himself has Critias document the tale of Atlantis as information that came to him ultimately from Solon, who heard it from the Egyptian priests; which information Solon transmitted to Critias's grandfather, from whom Critias heard the tale.
The Myth of Atlantis gives us yet another "tale" or account of a Great Flood occurring within the geological period of interest here.
Plato never really tells us where his Atlantis "is." There is some suggestion that she lay outside the Pillars of Hercules; i.e., in the Atlantic Ocean. There would be good literary reasons for putting Atlantis "outside" the Mediterranean basin altogether, to emphasize the more universal implications of Plato's account.
But scholars seeking possible empirical connections between the myth and the geological record tend to associate Atlantis with ancient Crete. Crete, evidently, was devastated, overwhelmed by a great natural disaster which occurred around, or fairly closely following, the above-indicated timeframe — the devastating volcanic eruption of Thera (a volcanic explosion that was like the Krakatoa explosion of the modern period, on steroids).
Thera was an island in the Mediterranean Sea; when she blew, she disappeared forever. Some geologists and cultural historians credit the volcanic explosion on Thera as responsible for the widespread destruction which took place on Crete, after which this great island culture never recovered its former glory and prosperity....
The point of the Atlantis myth, it seems to me, is its reference to the extraordinary geological disturbances occurring in this time period, involving extremely violent, widespread volcanic activity; pervasive, recurring earthquakes; and especially gargantuan floods.
What could have set off such events? Why not comets and the disaster they evidently unleashed, in the Bronze Age?