Manitoba geologist thinks he's found evidence of Noah's flood

Monday, Jan. 15, 2001

WINNIPEG (CP) -- The Arabian desert, one of the driest places on Earth, may
seem an odd place to look for evidence of what's supposed to have been the
greatest deluge in history.

  But a Manitoba geologist thinks he and an international team have found
scientific proof that a nearby area was flooded, at the end of the last ice
age, as the story of Noah and other ancient tales have suggested.

  "This isn't 40 days and 40 nights of rain as the scriptures would describe
Noah's flood but it certainly is one that would have impacted on people and
their settlements," says Jim Teller of the University of Manitoba.

  The rest of the team includes Nick Lancaster of the Desert Research Institute
in Nevada, Ken Glennie of the University of Aberdeen and Ashok Singhvi of he
Physical Research Lab in India.

  Their research was presented recently at the annual meeting of the Geological
Society of America in Reno, Nevada, and published in the scientific journal
Quaternary International.

  Two American scientists, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, have already
suggested the flooding of the Black Sea after the last ice age may have been
the source of the flood stories that appear in early recorded history.

  "There does seem to be some pretty widespread evidence for some huge
inundation in that general area," says Prof. Al Wolters, who teaches religion,
theology and classical languages at Redeemer College in Ancaster, Ont.

  "In principle I think it's quite possible that this theory, like the one of
Pitman and Ryan, may be on the track of something."

  The flood was certainly a catastrophe of epic proportions according to the
New King James Version of the Bible.
  "And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth and all the high hills
under the whole heaven were covered.
  "The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward (about seven metres) and the
mountains were covered."
  Scholars have long known of other, similar tales from the Middle East. The
Epic of Gilgamesh is perhaps the most well-known but not the earliest.

  That honour likely belongs to the story of Ziusudra, a Sumerian king who
boarded a barge to escape a flood of the Euphrates River.

  It has been speculated the flood of Noah -- said to have built an ark to save
his family and every species on Earth -- was also just a flood of the
Euphrates or Tigris, two rivers at the crossroads of recorded history.

  But Teller suggests it was a product of the great melt at the end of the last
ice age, a few thousand years earlier, and the story was remembered.

  For 100,000 years or more, kilometres-thick sheets of ice had covered much of
the globe. So much water was withdrawn from the oceans they were about 120
metres lower than today.

  The melt started about 20,000 years ago and took thousands of years to
finish, with another mini ice age along the way. It's during this process
Teller says the Persian Gulf was reflooded.

  The theory had its genesis around an Arabian desert campfire in the fall of
1998, where he and the other geologists were resting under a starry sky after
a day probing the origins of sand dunes.

  Some of the dunes were found to contain the remnants of tiny shelled marine
organisms such as foraminifera and clams, apparently blown from the floor of
the Gulf after it became dry during the last ice age.

  "The Persian Gulf area, which is only a shallow basin -- it's only 100 metres
deep -- was completely dry during the last ice age," says Teller.

  "Waters from the melting ice at the end of the last ice age went back to the
ocean. Ocean levels went up more than 100 metres and the Persian Gulf Basin
got refilled by water over 1,000 years."

  The tiny marine animals do not show up in dunes after the Gulf was filled.
  One thousand years is a lot longer than 40 days and 40 nights but at times
Teller says the water moved quite quickly over the flat plain, sometimes at a
rate of more than a kilometre a year.

  At that speed, he suggests the returning water would have driven the
inhabitants of the area from settlements and likely have been viewed at the
time as a catastrophic event, the kind to be recorded for posterity.

  "Stories must have been told and passed down through time."
  The Epic of Gilgamesh, which also describes a flood like that of Genesis, was
found inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets at the northwestern end of
the Persian Gulf.

  Columbia University marine geologists Ryan and Pitman wrote a book outlining
their theory that about 7,500 years ago, water from the Mediterranean spilled
over into the Black Sea, then a freshwater lake, raising levels 15 centimetres
a day and flooding surrounding settlements.

  More recently, explorer Robert Ballard, the man who found the wreck of the
Titanic, found remains of what he says is an ancient building on the floor of
the Black Sea.

  Teller doesn't dispute Ryan's and Pitman's conclusions about flooding, he
just doesn't buy the Black Sea as a likely source for the tale of Noah.

  "The Black Sea basin was flooded by water spilling into that basin from the
Mediterranean; I have no quarrel with the science of that," he says.

  "But the geography is all wrong for the source of the Noah's flood. Our
hypothesis places the flood in a geographical area that's far more
agreeable."
 

  Christians may like seeing science prove some parts of the Bible true,
meanwhile, but they don't need that to document their faith, adds Wolters.

  "I wouldn't want to hinge my belief in the Bible on whether or not it
(scientific evidence) exists. It's nice to have it."

  Teller's theory also may not be much use to ark hunters, tramping over
Turkey's Mount Ararat or nearby Mount Cudi, searching for the remains of
Noah's ship, which they believe still may exist.

  "As scientists we're not attempting to refute anything specifically, just
advance an idea that has pretty good basis in scientific fact.

Oryginal: http://www.canoe.ca/NationalTicker/CANOE-wire.Noah-Flood.html