Found! Noah's Ark - 4000m Up Mt Ararat

Originally posted by doulos33
I think Graham Hancock's theory in "Underworld" that the flood (tales of which can be found amongst numerous cultures - the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic etc.) was related to the large scale glacial melting at the end of the last age has some merit.

Probably more related to the fact that floods happen all the time, they happen now and they happened back then so there are lots of stories about them. A biblical flood? Nope

The Noah story; the religious people really need to accept it as just a story, trying to make it 'real' puts a huge dent in what little creditability they have left.

reply to post by MrWendal


Ahhh good ol' faith! Who needs scientific evidence when you have faith!

I'm guessing ducks and the like should be very over-populated considering they didn't really need a lift anywhere

It's funny because I notice that when floods hit, animals (as long as they're not caged or tied down) generally do a better job of finding refuge and escape than human beings. On the whole, they're better swimmers, always seek high ground or debris to float on, and aren't slowed down by having to drag their entire families along with them.

Also, as far as the Noah story is concerned, it's not like there weren't probably other good sailors and boats around that could ride out 40 days of rough sailing. The Noah story is kind of an insult to all good sailors of the time.

Originally posted by doulos33
reply to post by MrXYZ

 

No, but any cities along the coast and lands below sea-level would have been submerged. This would have been massive world wide flooding.

It still wouldn't result in a global flood happening all at the same time and all of a sudden as told in the bible...it's all complete and utter nonsense to claim a global flood suddenly happened

No geological evidence whatsoever...

Originally posted by MrXYZ


No geological evidence whatsoever...

More correctly, massive overwhelming evidence against it

Originally posted by Hanslune

Originally posted by MrXYZ


No geological evidence whatsoever...

More correctly, massive overwhelming evidence against it

Ditto

reply to post by MrXYZ


Most right-minded Christians don't believe that the world was totally inundated by the flood, and view this literature as mythopoetic. It may have some kernal of truth in that it may be a recollection of events during the glacial melts of the last Ice Age, but I certainly don't think that it happened exactly as depicted in the Genesis narrative. This flooding, while on a global scale, was limited to coastal areas and lowlands, and may have given rise to the Noah/Gilgamesh material, as well as the corresponding literature of the Vedas.

Originally posted by doulos33
reply to post by MrXYZ

 

Most right-minded Christians don't believe that the world was totally inundated by the flood, and view this literature as mythopoetic. It may have some kernal of truth in that it may be a recollection of events during the glacial melts of the last Ice Age, but I certainly don't think that it happened exactly as depicted in the Genesis narrative. This flooding, while on a global scale, was limited to coastal areas and lowlands, and may have given rise to the Noah/Gilgamesh material, as well as the corresponding literature of the Vedas.

True, but the flooding stories probably come from the flooding of rivers like the TE, Indus and Nile, those people could see and suffer from this and they left comments in the literature of Sumer and the archaeological records of several cultures which shows the affect of these massive floods.

reply to post by Hanslune


Have you ever read Hancock's Underworld? You would probably like it. It's not really from a religious perspective, but shows how there may be some element of truth to the various flood myths by detailing how the world's oceans were a lot more shallow when the ice caps covered the northern hemisphere around 12,000 years ago. The world's sea level was a lot lower and coastlines extended to well beyond their present location. He shows that various cities and settlements around the world were constructed well below the present sea-level, and points to underwater archaeological sites off the coasts of India and Egypt and how the legendary island of Hy-Brazil of Irish folklore may have been a reality in the distant past. He theorizes that the glacial melts occured a lot quicker than traditionally thought by mainstream geophysicists, showing how vast amounts of melt water could have been trapped in glacial valleys in North America, which would have been kept in place by natural ice dams. Once these dams collapsed there would have been a massive surge in ocean volume, leading to the loss of these now underwater cities and settlements in a relatively short space of time.

reply to post by doulos33


Hancock is wacko. Do the math. Let's say that we want to raise the level of the oceans 1m by adding water. If we call the surface of the Earth 1 Ea or Earth area, then the volume we want to add is .7Ea m.

How do I calculate that? The oceans are around 70% of the Earth's surface and I want to raise it 1 meter. So the volume is area times height or (.7 Ea) times (1m) or .7 Ea m.

Now if all of the water were placed on all of the land area, how deep would that water be?

(.7 Ea m)/(.3 Ea) = 2.3 m

This says that if all of the water were equally spread across all of the land then the water would have to be 2.3 meters deep.

If we look at glaciated areas we quickly see that far less than 1% of the land area was covered in glaciation. That makes these ice dam depths on average at least 230 meters deep.

So if the glaciated areas were ice dams 230m deep and they burst and emptied into the oceans then the oceans would come up 1m.

Not happening is it? The water was not water, but ice. With ice it can be stored on land in much greater depths such as it is on Greenland and Antarctica today.

I'm not sure which sites in Egypt Hancock refers to but Greek temples go underwater as well due to tectonic issues and not the change in ocean levels.

Originally posted by stereologist
reply to post by doulos33

 

Hancock is wacko. .

Excellent response, I would add on to Hancock's reputation - poorly educated in the areas he tries to write about.


Howdy doulos33

I would also note that the early civilizations arose on rivers and not coast lines. As the water levels rose the people just moved inland

Anyway the Biblical story of Noah is clearly derived from earlier Mesopotamian stories such as that of Atrahasis. Whose flood sounds rather more like a bad storm (tropical cyclone) - and who came to rest in the same delta in which he started.

You also have to remember that when ancients peoples spoke of the 'world' they didn't literally mean the whole planet (which they knew nothing of) but of 'their' world - the land they could see with their eyes and where they lived. Thus, if the whole valley in which they live is flooded, the whole world has been flooded.

It's possible sea level rises did gove rise to some flood myths - especially, perhaps, around Sundaland and in NW Europe. In North America it's possible the Missoula floods may have provided an origin to some stories. And in other cases they are nothing more than 'just so' stories to explain why fossil sea shells are found in rocks high up on the hillside.

The one size fits all solution is rarely right.

awesome, MOUNT AGRI

I didn't watch too much of the video. The stills at the beginning are from the hoaxers that carried old wood up Ararat and were turned in by a person from Virginia that was asked to go in on the hoax.

reply to post by Xtrozero


[fist time post]

The height of the altiplano and the inability of maize to ripen there isn't really a good argument for it rising to its current height after being populated (and forcing an unlikely geological time-table). I speculate that they did not grow corn there but rather grew Quinoa which cannot only be grown at those alitudes but actually thrives at those alititudes.