Glenn Morton hypothesis: The Flood could ONLY have happened 5 million+ years ago

MPB wrote I agree with that I have told you this and unless someone can point to a place where a year long flood could occur, this remains true. There are many anthroplogists who believe that building boats took place as long ago as a million years. Chimps can't even cross rivers, but somehow, mankind crossed rivers 2 million years ago because he is found from Africa to Europe to Asia 2 million years ago. I cited such evidence but you ignore it. Why is that? You are drawing wrong conclusions again. I probably can be criticized on that account, but isn't it you who doesn't want to Bible to be false? Ever hear of Ludwig Boltzmann and Paul Erhenfest and Ludwig Wittgenstein? Boltzmann developed statistical mechanics. The physics community rejected it all his life--he finally killed himself. His student Paul Erhenfest took up the topic, he too was ridiculed and ignored. He too killed himself. Ehrenfests student, the Ludwig Wittgenstein left physics, moved to London and became a philosopher--a very famous one. Today, statistical mechanics is widely taught in Physics. Lack of traction is one of the most illogical reasons to reject a view. Reject it if it doesn't match observational data if you will, but not because no one believes it. Such a standard is not even scientific. Don't be offended if I say that you so poorly understood what I was saying about anthropology that you claimed I was saying things I wasn't saying. Thus, your 'rejection' of my view doesn't bother me because frankly, you don't know enough anthro to know up from down. Yes I have harshly criticized Ross because they don't even mention some of the data which is out there, that goes against their theory. They act as if it doesn't exist. All ideas have some contradictory data. The intellectually honest thing to do is to mention that which doesn't support you and explain why you think it isn't important. Yes, the mesopotamian flood concept, in which water flows uphill is entirely ludicrous. but then, ignoring the earliest artistic piece, the phonolite pebble found by Mary Leakey in Olduvai Gorge dating over a million years old in which a face is pecked into a rock, is bad. Please cite the EVIDENCE, not your opinion. What exactly within anthropology, what observational data destroys my theory (and lets distinguish between that which destroys and that which doesn't fossilize). Well, I would agree to a point that agendas drive everyone, including those who don't want the Scripture to be true. But, there are no 'scientific testing methods' that rule out the flood altogether. I doubt seriously that you could even describe precisely what testing methods you are referring to which means that your rejection here is being done from emotion, rather than knowledge. Care to try to prove me wrong.Edited to add; There is no doubt that my views are risky. I am risking that data might falsify them. I intentionally want them that way. I do not want views which are incapable of being falsified. And if data goes against me, then my views will go into the trash heap of history. Unfortunately, most Christians seem to want views which can never be falsified and thus, they make no predictions, and risk absolutely nothing. I won't be cowardly like that.On the other hand, If someday some prediction comes along which my views alone predicted, then well, it will be peaches and cream as they say.It is easy to have a view which risks nothing and makes no demands upon oneself. Mark, you take the easy path. It seems to suite you. Just don't ask me to admit something that I don't believe. I don't believe you have even struck the target anthropologically speaking.I do want to say that the one piece of data which may go against my views, meaning is actively contradictory of it, is the MHC complex, which has occasionally been interpreted to mean that there is no genetic bottleneck for the past 30 million years. Others don't see it that way. I want this out there for honesty sake. if I demand Hugh Ross and Fuz Rana admit what their theories don't match, then I must be prepared to do it myself. Edited by grmorton, : No reason given.

Mark, citing Wikipedia is not what was sought. I didn't ask for a definition of what a scientific testing method was, I asked for what scientific testing methods dispproved the flood--specifically. I am using the word flood as opposed to global flood for a reason here. You claimed that scientific testing methods ruled out the flood, I ask again WHAT specific testing methods. I had suggested that you couldn't name them and you haven't. Care to try again?Your argumentations shows that you need to learn much more about the individual methods of science, and not from Wikipedia.Mark, I don't give a flip whether or not someone rejects my views who 1. doesn't know geology(by your own admission), 2. doesn't know anthropology (by your own admission), 3. doesn't know genetics (by your own admission) and 4. can't discuss the details of the evidence either way on any model. Your rejection is not based upon knowledge, it is based upon well who knows what. The best advice I can give you is read the anthropological literature--not just one or two books, and read geological literature--same thing.A couple of posts ago, you asked why my views have no traction. First, you have no idea of the number of books I have sold, and you have no idea of the email I receive. Secondly, the biggest problem is that Christians in the area of creation/evolution are in general not scientists themselves and worse are not knowledgeable in science(why do you think most of them are young-earth creationists). They will admit this, but then claim that they have enough knowledge in an area to draw judgements about what is true and what is false. Without having the knowledge base I question whether or not one can draw correct conclusion. If they do, it is merely by random chance.

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The Pathway Papers http://home.entouch.net/dmd/path.htm

Much of this reply is concerned with the evidence for h. sapiens being the same biological species as the archaic hominids. I believe this to be the case, and is one reason I move Adam back as far as I do. I will cite some famous anthropologists who were the ones who initially made me aware of that position--a position they advocate, contra mbp1 and others.My view does require that humanity extend way back in time, but contra Mark's claim, there are many mainstream anthropologists who believe precisely this!RAZD wrote: The question goes way beyond y-chromosome data. It goes to all the other chromosomes and the genes they contain. Melanocortin is not found on the y-chromosome; it is on chromosome 18. The Microcephalin gene, which appears to have come from the Neanderthals is on, I believe, chromosome 8.The bbc link, may be a bit out of date and refer only to attempts to get mtDNA. The data I am citing is coming from within modern humans and there is evidence about 40,000 years ago, for genes, long separated from our lineage, jumping back into the human lineage. Interbreeding is a very likely mechanism.Of the Lagar velho child (the one cited in the BBC report), on June 24, 1999, I asked Eric Trinkaus about this child. This man has actually studied the child, indeed was called in by the discoverers. Trinkaus is the leading authority on Neanderthals. This is what I reported to a listserv about that discover:-----------my email--------------
I e-mailed Trinkaus today and got a reply. He told me that the
thoracohumeral muscle insertions are not totally diagnostic but are
supportive of Neanderthal ancestry. However, he did state that there is a clear "difference particularly in the development of the pectoralis major insertion on the humerus". This difference is found among Neanderthal children as well as adults. Thus this muscle attachment is diagnostic of Neanderthal ancestry.The article clearly notes this on the child:"The left humerus has clear diaphyseal torsion and a prominent ridge
along the pectoralis major insertion leading up to the anterior greater tubercle. There is rugosity for the pectoralis major attachment, and the ridge creates a marked intertubercular sulcus and an anterolateral to posteromedial elongation of the diaphyseal cross section." Cidalia Duarte, Joao Mauricio, Paul P. Pettitt, Pedro Souto, Erik Trinkaus, Hans van der Plicht, and Joao Zilhao, "The Early Upper Paleolithic Human Skeleton from the Abrigo do Lagar Velho (Portugal) and Modern Human Emergence in Iberia," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci, USA, 96(1999):13:7604-7609.>From the leg information I posted earlier
(Page Not Found - Error pages | Calvin University) and from this
muscle attachment, the child must have had Neanderthal parentage.
--------end of my email----------I still have a copy of Trinkaus's email to me, but I never pass on other people's emails because then they won't send me more. This citation basically agrees with what Trinkaus told me. I actually think the jury is almost in on it. There is some interbreeding but the gene flow is quite small. There were few neanderthals and if a large number of Africans came into Europe, their genetic heritage would be swamped. Are you aware that among some Native American tribes, their genes today are far more likely to resemble Europeans than Native Americans? This is after only 400 years of a massive immigration to the Americas followed by interbreeding with the few remaining North Americans. Indeed, here is an amazing statistic."Wub-e-ke-niew wanted to learn about his own line of descent,
and to do so he worked out the genealogy of the
Ahnishinahbaeojibway. He entered some 60,000 names and
relationships into his computer. What he learned is that the
vast majority of patrilineages could be traced, not to Aboriginal
Indigenous Americans, but to Euroepan sources. he wrote a book
on this topic. Clara, who had done much of the analysis,
estimates that some 99 percent of the people who identify
themselves as Ahnishinahbaeojibway have Europoean patrilines.
Reasons for this are complex and purposeful. In a second phone
call, Clara told us she believes the high level of European
patrilines in the descendants of indigenous peoples is not
unusual in areas of European colonization. It reflects the
colonization process, and in some cases subsequent government
policy."Milford Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari, Race and Human
Evolution, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 363-364IF this process continues, in about 40,000 years we will have the observational data for people to claim that Native Americans are not the same species as us. The swamping of the genes of a few indigenous peoples by a much larger population of invaders is probably what happened to the Neanderthals.But, there is even more evidence of the interbreeding. I presume that we can agree that the anatomically modern humans brought their traits with them from Africa when they invaded Europe. And I presume that we can agree that they didn't acquire new traits (blue eyes, red hair etc), SIMPLY by being in Europe. If their descendants acquired the traits of the Neanderthals, they didn't do it by standing next to them, but through lying next to them and doing what comes naturally when in that position with one of the opposite sex, (e.g. having sex).With that as a basis, please explain how the earliest anatomically modern humans in EUROPE obtained the traits associated with the Neanderthals, when their anatomically modern African parents didn't have those same traits. And here are the traits I am speaking of. In these charts the Skhul/Qafzeh and African Eves are the parents of anatomically modern invaders of Europe.Fossil Sample Meric Index femoral robusticityEuropean-Neanderthals-------------79.6
Skhul/Qafzeh---------------------------83.1
Early-Upper-Paleolithic--------------77.6
Late-Upper-Paleolithic---------------78.0
Mesolithic-------------------------------78.0
Medieval---------------------------------80.4
~ David W. Frayer, "Evolution at the European Edge: Neanderthal
and Upper Paleolithic Relationships," Prehistoire Europeenne,
2:9-69, Table 8, p. 35I like this one, it is a measure of the largeness of the nose. The Neanderthals had HUGE noses. Notice that the small nosed Africans suddenly got BIG noses when they entered Europe. Amazing that this can be done without any sex being involved. As an aside, I lived in China for 14 months and I speak Mandarin. The Chinese racial slur against Europeans is Da bi zi, which means 'big nose'. Think of the Gallic or Britannic nose, compare them with Chinese noses and you will see that the description is apt.Fossil_Sample______Nasion_Projection_(mm)Neanderthals------------------29.3
African-Eve--------------------17.8
Skhul/Qafzeh-----------------12.4
Early-Upper-Paleolithic----21.9
Late-Upper-Paleolithic-----19.3
Mesolithic----------------------19.3
Medieval-Hungarians-------20.2
~ David W. Frayer, "Evolution at the European Edge: Neanderthal
and Upper Paleolithic Relationships," Prehistoire Europeenne,
2:9-69, Table 2, p. 17The Mandibular foramen is the place in the jaw where the nerve to the teeth leaves the lower jaw bone. this is the place the dentist tries to shoot his novacaine. The Horizontal oval shape of the foramen is almost unique to the Neanderthals. And about half of them had it. Half had the normal form. But notice that the African invaders didn't have it at all. And once again, we are expected to believe that merely by standing next to a Neanderthal, the descendants of the AFrican invaders, who had no H-O foramen, acquired the H-O foramen without any sex being involved. Amazing powers these Neanderthals have.mandibular foramen
European-------------------H-O-------------Normal
-----------------------------Foramen------Foramen
------------------------------%------------%Neanderthal-----------------53-------------47
African-Eves-----------------0------------100
Skhul/Qafzeh-----------------0------------100
Early-U.-Paleolithic--------18-------------82
Late-U.-Paleolithic----------7-------------93
Mesolithic---------------------2-------------98
Medieval-Europeans-------1-------------99
~ David W. Frayer, "Evolution at the European Edge: Neanderthal
and Upper Paleolithic Relationships," Prehistoire Europeenne,
2:9-69, Table 7, p. 31YOu an see that even today, some Europeans have this form of foramen. Frayer's article gives trait after trait like this in which the earliest anatomically modern Europeans were in between the Neanderthals and the real African invaders.What I would like those who don't think there was interbreeding to explain is how on earth the invaders came into Europe and acquired Ancient European traits, without having any sex with them. Of the genetic bottlenecks, I would point out that populations of 10,000, which is considered a decent bottleneck, does not match at all the Biblical account. If one wishes the Biblical account to actually concord with the observational data, one needs the bottle neck of 2-5 people to be way way longer ago than 100,000 years ago. Well fine, if the gene came from H. habilis, H. erectus, or whatever older hominid, that fits my view of how to fit science with the Bible every bit as much as it does if the genes come from the Neanderthals. My views are not dependent upon the Neanderthals being the same species, because what I am saying is what Milford Wolpoff (whom I have personally met) says. Humanity is one single evolving species from several million years ago to the present. IN other words they say all hominids are Homo sapiens. Don't believe me? This is from a post I made in 1997 and last year.Ernst Mayr the great taxonomist said that there should be only one
genus--Homo for the entire past 5 million years. He said
this in 1951 at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium which gave rise to the modern taxonomy. He said that with any other lineage that is how it would be--Homo transvaalensis, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens."The biggest bombshell dropped on the Old Guard, however, came
from Ernst Mayr, a German-trained ornithologist and specialist in
the naming (taxonomy) of species in nature. Using the new
yardstick of variability within populations, he stated that
'after due consideration of the many differences between Modern
man, Java man, and the South African ape-man, I did not find any
morphological characters that would necessitate separating them
into several genera.' He suggested that all the fossil human-
like specimens that anthropologists had discovered after so much
laborious effort over the preceding century be simply ascribed to
one genus, our own--Homo. In other words, the entire 'Age of
Description,' from before Darwin to Cold Spring Harbor, was a
waste of time. His opinion was that the differences were not as
great as between genera of other animals. This assertion meant
that the wonderfully diverse lexicon of human paleontology, a
virtual liguistic playground for the classically educated, with
melliferous names such as Plesianthropus transvaalensis,
Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, Africanthropus njarensis,
Sinanthropus pekinensis, Pithecanthropus erectus, and so on, were
to be replaced. Everything was now to be simply Homo, with three
species: Homo transvaalensis, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens.""
"Mayr's proposal went so far that even Washburn argued that at
least the South African Australopithecus be retained (instead of
Homo transvaalensis) because it showed such significantly more
primitive anatomy than members of the genus Homo. Mayr simply
countered that the population is what the species designates.
How one determines a genus is arbitrary. The definition is
gauged by the relative amount of difference that one sees
between the genera of other animals and, in Mayr's opinion,
hominid fossils don't show very much difference. To
anthropologists, this statement was a bit like telling a new
mother that her baby looks like every other baby. It did not go
over well."" ~ Noel Boaz, Quarry, (New York: The Free Press,
1993), p. 10Here is a direct quote from Ernst Mayr:"Summary1.There is no conclusive evidence that more than one species
of hominids has ever existed at a given time.
2. It is proposed to classify fossil and recent hominids
tentatively into a single genus (Homo) with three species
(transvaalensis, erectus, sapiens).
3. The recognition of subspecies groups within the species
facilitates classification.
4.The ecological versatility of man and his slowness in
acquiring reproductive isolating mechanisms have prevented
the breaking up of Homo into several species."" Ernst Mayr,
"Taxonomic Categories in Fossil Hominids,"" Cold Spring
Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 15(1951)pp109-117,
reprinted in William White Howells, Ideas on Human
Evolution, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp
241-256, p. 256Milford Wolpoff, no slouch in anthropology, beleives that Homo erectus, Neanderthal and us are members of the same species. He writes:"No speciation events seem to separate us from our immediate
ancestors, and cladogenesis, the splitting of one species into
two, last characterized our lineage at the origin of Homo sapiens
some 2 million years ago, when members of what we once called
'Homo erectus' first appeared in East Africa. For 2 million
years, from the end of the Pliocene until now, ancient and modern
Homo sapiens populations are members of the sames
species." Milford Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari, Race and Human
Evolution, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 34Franz Weidenreich, one of the discoverers of Peking Man also thought that Homo erectus was merely a subspecies of us."His use of 'Sinanthropus pekinensis' was a convenience'...without any 'generic' or 'specific' meaning or, in other
words, as a 'latininzation' of Peking Man....it would not be
correct to call our fossil 'Homo pekinensis' or 'Homo erectus
pekinensis'; it would be best to call it 'Homo sapiens erectus
pekinensis.' Otherwise it would appear as a proper 'species,'
different from 'Homo sapiens,' which remains doubtful, to say
the least.'""~Franz Weidenreich, "The Skull of Sinanthropus
pekinensis: A comparative study of a primitive hominid skull,"
Palaeontologia Sinica, new Series D, Number 10 (wole series No.
127), p. 246, cited by Milford Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari, Race
and Human Evolution, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p.
186Try Helmut Hemmer who says the same,"Since these features vary among the recent races no less
significantly than between different fossil groups, or between
fossil and recent populations, it is impossible to draw a line
anywhere for species delimitation unless one intends also to
split up recent man into several species. Therefore it seems
necessary to include all of these fossil and recent groups in the
single species H. sapiens."~Helmut Hemmer, "A New View of the
Evolution of Man," Current Anthropology, 10(2-3):179-180, p. 179Jan Jelinek advocated that there was only one species of humans in:
Jan Jelinek, "Was Homo erectus already Homo sapiens? Les Processus de l'Hominisation,(CNRS International Colloquium, No. 599:85-89"Robinson argued that in the broad view of human evolution, 'most
of the obvious physical change had already occurred' at the time
of the appearance of homo erectus. All subsequent human
populations were mainly characterized by a single evolutionary
trend, in his view, 'the realization of the cultural potential.'
he believed homo erectus and Homo sapiens should therefore be
subsumed in the single species Homo sapiens, because it has
priority.""~Milford Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari, Race and Human
Evolution, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 251Haywood notes:"From the neck down Homo erectus was, to all intents and purposes, a fully modern human." John Haywood, The Illustrated History of Early Man, (London: PRC Publishing Ltd., 2000), p. 30Barnouw notes the same:> > The reality is that only a small difference exists from the neck
> > down
> >
"From the neck down, Homo erectus seems to have been much like
ourselves but the skull was low browed, keel domed and thick
walled, with a cranial capacity ranging between 780 and 1,300
cubic centimeters. Homo erectus had heavy brow ridges and
lacked a chin. Behind the brow ridges there was a post orbital
constriction. The proportion of arms to legs was greater than
for present-day humans."" ~ Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to
Anthropology: Physical Anthropology and Archaeology, 1,
(Homewood, Ill: The Dorsey Press, 1982), p. 137Most of human differences today are in the skull. Many Chinese and native Americans have extra bones, called wormian bones in their skulls which Europeans lack. I can assure everyone that the Chinese and us are one biological species and my half-chinese grand-daughter is proof of that.Even Richard Leakey wrote:"I am increasingly of the view that all of the material currently referred to as homo erectus should in fact be placed within the species sapiens [which would]project Homo sapiens as a species that can be traced from the present, back to a little over two million years." R. E. Leakey, 1989, ""Recent Fossil finds from East Africa," in J.R. Durant ed. Human Origins, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989),p. 57 I don't think you can say that blonde is not explained by the N's. Other anthropologists have already concluded, prior to the advent of the melanocortin work, that blond and ginger hair came from the N's.Neanderthals are also traditionally drawn with black hair; but it
seems likely to me that such northern creatures would have been
blond or ginger. With their great manes of read or yellow hair
and their huge red beards their heads would have glowed like
sunflowers in the slanting northern sun, their faces as round as
an orang-utan's, though shaped by hair rather than by flesh. It
is a fanciful vision but it has more thinking biology behind it
than the standard image of the male neanderthal as a kind of down-
and-out." Colin Tudge, The Day Before Yesterday, (London: Pimlico,
1995), p. 220This hair is found ONLY in the territory of the Neanderthals--amazing that this should be the case if there was no sex with Neanderthals. That isn't what brings blond hair. What brings it is something that is not found in Africa. Consider this:"Recently, there has been some evidence that skin colors are
linked to differences in the ability to avoid injury from the
cold. Army researchers found that during the Korean War blacks
were more susceptible to frostbite than were whites. Even among
Norwegian soldiers in World War II, brunettes had a slightly
higher incidence of frostbite than did blonds." ~ Boyce
Rensberger, "Racial Odyssey," in Elvio Angeloni, Editor, Annual
Editions Physical Anthropology 94/95,(Sluicedock,Guilford, Conn.:
The Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1994), p.40-45, p. 42Neanderthals needed protection from frostbite, Africans didn't need it and thus didn't bring it with them when they invaded Europe! To deny interbreeding with the N's means that miraculously Africans developed the frost-bite protecting blond hair when they invaded a territory inhabited by a people who had lived 200,000 years in Europe when it was at its coldest. To me, it is amazing that people don't understand this data exists out there. When in doubt, go to the casino. So, if that is true, why don't we see it in low percentages in the Africans today? Did they go to the casino as well and lose at the roulette wheel? How convenient for your proposal! I challenge you to show me where and at what church chimps will worship this week. I don't buy the crazy idea that chimps have religion. I might sarcastically add, that people think my views wacko! but chimps having religion? Some evidence (other than a mere speculation) would be nice. I can accept that not everything will be found, but I have read hundreds of anthro books and thousands of articles. I have never heard anyone suggest that chimps have that old time religion! I have. and I have given you the best shot of which I am capable.

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The Pathway Papers http://home.entouch.net/dmd/path.htm

Razd wrote:"Is this his mis-interpretation of your position? I don't see why it would apply after 5M years and not before."The Bible says that the flood lasted 1 year, covered high hills, and landed an ark on the Mountains of Turkey. I looked for some place where this could happen. There is no place. The Mesopotamian basin slopes southward from the Turkish mountains to the Persian Gulf. If you pile a bunch of water on to that slope, it does what water does on any hillside, it would flow down hill, towards the Persian Gulf. At the speed of most riverine floods, the water would be largely emptied into the Persian gulf, carrying the ark, in about a week or two even if the water flowed at a very slow, two miles per hour. This argument is laid out and extended at http://home.entouch.net/dmd/mflod.htmThus, I reject the Mesopotamian flood. Other sites which have been suggested include the Caspian basin. This place was suggested by Hugh Miller in the 1850s. The problem with that is that the Caspian has no big mountains and is far from Turkey. It also can't float an ark and land it on a high mountain without causing a global flood for which there is zero evidence. So I view that place as unlikely.Ryan and Pitman suggested the Black sea as the site of Noah's flood, but, as soon as they wrote their book, I was online showing geologic data which indicated that they couldn't be correct. First off, the rate of rise of the water was about 1 foot per day. At the gradient the land has, that means that to avoid the flood one only needs to move about 300 feet per day and you will not be killed in the flood. That scenario hardly seems catastrophic. It would be like going to bed and waking to find your bed in the water. But merely moveing about 3 houses down the block, you would be on dry land again. Repeat that for 400 days and that is what they suggested.One thing about the Black sea flood is that Ryan and Pitman no longer support the concept. I got in a debate with another geologist about it. I was citing the paleontological data which showed that assuming water flow from the Mediterranean into the Black sea, a particular floating animal should have entered the Black Sea earlier than it actually did. Without that animal being carried into the Black sea, it meant that there was no flowage in that direction. I emailed Ryan and Pitman about this issue and normally the use of my work title will elicit responses from professors. They didn't reply and later I lerned that further seismic data came up with data disproving their theory and they no longer seem to suppor the concept. An entire issue of Marine Geology was devoted to debunking the Black Sea Flood with Ryan contributing to it--an amazing thing if he still supports it.No other place in the world matches the Biblical description except the Infilling of the Mediterranean. Here is the setting. In the Miocene, as Africa moved north, the Tethys ocean (a remnant of which we call the Mediterranean), became blocked both at the east and west ends of the Mediterranean. Evaporation in this area is so great that even today, if you built a dam across the strait of Gibraltar, you would evaporate all the water in the Mediterranean in about 4000 years. Not even the rivers emptying into the Med would provide enough water to keep it full. With the water evaporating, salt would be deposited. And that is what we find in the sediments of this time--salt deposits about 1 km thick.During this period of time, sediments show land animals on the bottom of the Mediterranean. Sediments which used to be on the bottom of the Mediterranean but have subsequently been uplifted by the collision of Africa into Asia, show these land animals. Here is what was found on the former bottom of the Med.“One Sunday afternoon in 1972 an amateur fossil collector dug into a hillside outcrop of gypsum-bearing rock in the Tarano Valley in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. He peered at the inside face of the thinly laminated anhydrite rock that had just split apart with the blow of his hammer and saw a specimen of an ancient eel the outlines of its entire body and fins splendidly preserved. The fossilization in this rock was exceptional because the environment at the time the sediment was laid down had been a briny lagoon whose tranquil bottom waters were devoid of oxygen. No scavengers had been able to tolerate such conditions.
“When the quarried slab was delivered to Carlo Sturani, an articulate and energetic professor of paleontology at the Institute of Geology of the University of Turin, he knew imediately that it was equivalent in age to the Gessoso Solfifera of Sicily and the anhydrite and salt recently discovered by the Globmar Challenger. He visited the cliff to undertake a detailed investigation of a succession of fossil-rich rocks. Along with more eels he found foraminifera, corals, echinoderms, conch, herring, small flounder, dragonflies, leaves, acorns, land turtles, freshwater reeds, and roots of trees still in place. In a three-hundred-foot cliff Sturani could observe a moderately deep former sea that had dried out and become a tidal flat with algae and mud cracks. Then it became a shallow lagoon so concentrated by evaporation that its brine precipitated massive banks of selenite from which the first eel had been discovered. After a while the lagoon turned into a brackish lake, sometimes filled with freshwater. Then the lake withered into a peat bog as the region progressed from marshland to a sequoia forest. Abruptly, in the span of a tenth of an inch of rock, it was once again an open deep sea situated far from land. The transformation from sea to land and back to sea had taken less than half a million years. Except for those privileged to have been on the Glomar Challenger, no one else had ever expected that a major sea such as the Mediterranean could have evaporated so rapidly and refilled so quickly.” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 89-90This land slab has been verified by drilling cores into the sediments even today on the bottom of the Med. In about 1/10 of an inch, the sediments go from continental land sediments and fossils to deep deep marine muds and fossils. The benthic foraminifera (bottom-dwelling animals, benthic=bottom dwelling, not floating), show that the collapse of the Mediterranean dam was at least 3000 feet (1000 meters) deep. Cibicidoides kullenbergi is found on the deep ocean bottom in the Atlantic and on the ocean bottom immediately in the sediments deposited by the flooded Mediterranean."This species, usually typical of water depths greater than 1000-1200 meters is biconvex with the involute side more convex than the evolute." ~ Ramil Wright, "Neogene Benthic Foraminifers fro mDSDP Leg 42A, Mediterranean Sea," in R. B. Kidd and Paula J. Worstell, editors, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, Vol. XLII, (Washington: U.S. Govt Printing Office 1978), pp709-726, p. 713That means that the wall separating the Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean basin collapsed at a depth of about 3000 feet! That would be catastrophic and explain why there is only 1/10 of an inch of separation between the desert deposits and the deep sea deposits on the bottom of the Med.Here is what Kenneth Hsu said:
"Although the flood gate at the Strait of Gibraltar apparently swung open and shut repeatedly during the Late Miocene, the gate was irreparably crushed at the beginning of the Pliocene. It has been mentioned that Pliocene sediment of the Mediterranean is a deep marine ooze. Perhaps the recurrent Messinian 'refills' were caused by eustatic rise of the worldwide sea level, but the final deluge must have followed a drastic event which produced a gap deep enough to permit the immigration of deep-Atlantic bottom faunas into the Mediterranean." ~ Kenneth J. Hsu, "The Miocene Desiccation of the Mediterranean and its Climatical and Zoogeographical Implications", Die Naturwissenschaften, 61, April 4, 1974, p. 140.I performed a calculation (laid out in Foundation, Fall and Flood) which shows that with a 3000 ft deep gash 15 miles wide and water flowing at 20 mph (which is a speed which has been observed in big floods), the entire Mediterranean basin could re-fill in about a year.Prior to the collapse of the Dam near Gibraltar, the dried out Mediterranean was a land with towering 10-15,000 ft mountains. After the infilling, the mountains became islands, like that of Malta. Any floating object in the waters of the Med would have been pushed towards the eastern end of the Med--that is, towards Turkey.Hsu says:
"One can picture the desiccated Mediterranean as a giant bathtub, with the Strait of Gibraltar as the faucet. Seawater roared in from the Atlantic through the strait in a gigantic waterfall. If the falls had delivered 1,000 cubic miles of sea water per year (equivalent to 30 million gallons per second, 10 times the discharge of Victoria Falls), the volume would not have been sufficient to replace the evaporative loss. In order to keep the infilling sea from getting too salty for even such a hardy microfauna as the one found in the dark gray marl the influx would have to exceed evaporation by a factor of 10. Cascading at a rate of 10,000 cubic miles per years, the Gibraltar falls would have been 100 times bigger than Victoria Falls and 1,000 times more so than Niagara. Even with such an impressive influx, more than 100 years would have been required to fill the empty bathtub." ~ Kenneth J. Hsu, "When the Mediterranean Dried Up", Scientific American, December, 1972, p. 33.Now, I disagree with the rate he uses because of his observation that the gash had to be 3000 feet deep. Such a hole in the dam would provide water much more rapidly than he uses in his analogy. But, since I am not afraid to let people know that people use other rates, I will proudly publish this here.What about the rain? The empty Mediterranean basin would contain 4/1000s of the earth's atmosphere. That much air would rise, cool and dump lots of rain in the surrounding regions to the Mediterranean basin as it re-filled. I did a calculation once that indicated that there would be rainfall for as much as 800 km from the basin edge in all directions. This would flood the land surrounding the basin. If the ark became grounded along the edges of the basin, Noah would observe the waters receding and would report
that.The geologic data is incredibly good to say that this event happened as described. It is 5.5 million years ago, just about the time that the earliest hominids appeared on earth--something I find to be an interesting coincidence. In addition to Foundation, Fall and Flood, I would point people to an article on this which I wrote for the PSCF which can be found at The Mediterranean Flood Glenn R (the address on that article is about 5 addresses ago.)So, to answer the initial question, the only place which fits the flood's description is from 5.5 million years ago. By the way, this is the event which Charles Lyell used to define the change from the Miocene to the Pliocene.

Icant wrote: The only way by which one can know if one is correct or incorrect is by comparing the observational implications of an interpretation with actual observations. So, lets look at this claim The re-creation theory would seem to imply that at some point in Earth history, all the previous species died off and new ones were created. There is no evidence of such an event in paleontological history. Here is a list of fish genera through geologic time. Note that the living genera gradually arise, and there is no time that all the old genera die off and new ones arise.youngest period # Fish genera # living genera # extinct genera
Recent---------------3245----------3245-------------0
Pleistocene----------422-----------408-------------14
Pliocene--------------416-----------372-------------44
Miocene---------------496-----------320-----------176
Oligocene-------------321-----------207-----------114
Eocene----------------398-----------157-----------241
Paleocene-------------124------------53-------------71
Cretaceous------------340------------38-----------302
Jurassic----------------146--------------5-----------141
Triassic----------------175--------------0-----------175
Permian----------------86---------------0-------------86
Pennsylvanian--------106-------------0-----------106
Mississippian---------163--------------0-----------163
Devonian--------------524--------------0-----------524
Silurian-----------------57---------------0-------------57
Ordovician--------------5---------------0---------------5
Cambrian---------------1---------------0---------------1So, if you want your Scriptural interpretation to match the observations of geology, then you have failed, and by that criteria, the re-creation view is false.You also wrote: Well, this is false, time was created at the big bang and since that time, there are only 13.7 billion years, approximately. Trillions of years for the age of the universe is ruled out by observational data. It is ruled out by the the observed distance to the most distant objects in the universe. Those objects are only 13.7 billion years away and that is as far as light has had time to travel since the beginning.I don't see why planning is incompatible with omniscience. Jer 29:7Edited by grmorton, : formatting add one comment

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RAZD wrote: No, I do believe that there was a flood, not a global flood, but that is no different than million of Christians who also believe the flood, they just place it in a different time and different place. Sigh, the hominids are not found near the Red Sea. And the possible precursors of hominids are found in both Europe and Africa--in other words, all around the Mediterranean"Another possibility is that euhominoids evolved in
Eurasia, with the African ape and human clade returning
recently to Africa. This would explain the poor fossil
record of African Miocene euhominoids, and the apparent
persistence of Proconsul or Kenyapithecus-like forms at a
few later localities (Hill and Ward, 1988). Griphopithecus
from Slovakia and Turkey may represent the ancestral stock
from which hominoids diverged, again in three major
divisions: hylobatids, Asian great apes, and African apes
and humans. The last group may have further subdivided into
European and African branches, with the more terrestrial
African branch returning to Africa sometime during or after
MN 10, about 9 Ma, when the area was becoming drier
(Steininger and Rogi, 1979; Steininger et al., 1985). There
is no compelling paleogeographic evidence to suggest one of
these views over the other. Connections between Africa and
Eurasia were intermittent throughout the middle and late
Miocene, and appropriate ecological conditions were
apparently available for either of these two scenarios to
have occurred (Steininger etal., 1985)." David R. Begun,
Carol V. Ward, and Michael D. Rose, "Events in Hominoid
Evolution," Function, Phylogeny, and Fossils: Miocene
Hominoid Evolution and Adaptations, ed. By M. D. Rose et al,
(New York: Plenum Press, 1997), p. 389-415, p. 413 Have you looked at my page on the nature of the fossil record? I cited it earlier I believe. The earliest fossil example of any given species is not the first of its kind. Fossilization is vher unilikely when a species is rare or in a limited area. And when a species arises, they are in a limited area and only if that area has something happen which causes fossilization will a fossil form. But then the researcher must look in the right place to find it. Only when a species is widespread does fossilization become more likely. see http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gaps.htm So, the species you speak of, lived earlier than their earliest found fossil. Indeed, statistically speaking, they lived about 30% longer ago than the earliest example.And the fossils you speak of would be in my view post flood.The problem you have is that you are not taking into account the nature of fossilization and you are making the illogical assumption that the place where the descendants of the flood survivors lived is the same place as the ark's crew started at. My ancestors are from Scotland which is a long way from Houston.So, do you expect to find the descendants of the Titanic survivors still living in the Atlantic Ocean?Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fixed one quote box. The problem was mostly an error carried over from RAZD's message.

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Well Mark, you have claimed that my views are against anthropology. Please explain why Richard Leakey thinks that H. erectus and H. sapiens should be classified as the very same species. I am always disturbed by people whose claims are refuted who then make no acknowledgement of that.

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RAZD wrote: Exactly, and many anthropologists believe that the same thing happened to the Neanderthals. The very last place which anatomically modern man (AMH) inhabited was Europe--they were in Australia earlier. Many think that the strength of the Neanderthals (they were stronger than us) kept the AMH's out of Europe. But, there were never many Neanderthals and their populations collapse. It could easily have been disease that did them in and then the space was open for AMH to move in. And Frayers data shows that many Europeans may have Neanderthal blood, as does the Microcephalin gene. I have to go to work now, but before I fly out tonight I hope to look up the Neanderhtal population estimate. I am not assuming it, Frayers data for pete's sake shows it! Go look again at Frayers data. Show me the data for these traits appearing in the Caucasion region. Give me the skull data. If you can't, then I see no reason to take your impression as a serious objection. Show me that the Nasion index originated with the African invaders. Agreed. My children don't have my mtDNA, but I am still related to them. As I pointed out the Neanderthals were stronger and kept AMH out of Europe for a long time. If they were regularly beating the AMH men, they would do what all conquorers do--take the women for wives and sex slaves. The children thus produced would have AMH mtDNA, but the N's would still be related to any children. Such a view fits the observed facts. But for some reason, people don't want us to be related to the N's so they dont think along these lines. Woah, here now, you are jumping to a massive conclusion. If the scenario of take the wives after beating the wimpy men is correct, you would have the very same mtDNA gene flow. Well, Frayer's article has much more than that, and those who don't want N's to contribute genetics say the same thing as you do. I KNOW that skeletal traits come from our parents and unless you want to postulate massive mutations causing identical heritable changes in DNA merely from moving into Europe, the only rational explanation is interbreeding. I don't have time to post more of Frayer's tables. I am waiting for nuclear NEanderthal genetics. I bet it shows lots of their genes are in us, just like the microcephalin gene! It could just as easily rule it in.Edited by Admin, : Fix quotes.

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Just before I read your note, I tried to upload a higher res picture but it wouldn't take it. The one I have is from Bangkok, the one I am trying to upload was take at 17,000 feet high in Tibet.Oh, I see it did take it. Edited by grmorton, : No reason given.

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Equinox wrote: Thank you for the kind words. You raise an interesting set of points.1. if the Bible is not meant to communicate anything real, then of course, my view of the flood would fail. But there would be other implications(both related)1a one could question the reality of any theology therein because if there is nothing of reality communicated, then the theology equally wouldn't be real.1b. If there is no verification of the observational part of the Biblical message, and the same is concluded for the message of other religions, then one could indeed conclude that religion is one grand self-delusion.And when you then point out that MPB is bringing out the question of miracles when observation fails him, you are correct that one should discern whether one is discussing a flood which is totally miraculous or one with observational evidence.If the flood is totally miraculous, (and with a miraculous god could have taken place exactly as described leaving absolutely no evidence) then there is really no reason to expect any observational evidence to show that a miracle occurred. We christians don't go around arguing for science to support the changing of water to wine--it was a miracle and we simply accept it. If the flood is a miracle, this should be our approach.But if we think there would be observational evidence resulting from such a flood, then we can't call upon miracle everytime observation fails to support our view of how the flood happens. To do that is to make up miracles for God to perform in the past in order to support our strange ideas in the present. In other words, to make God perform miracles when we lack observational support for our pet flood theory, we are in effect making God dance to our tune.Making God do our bidding is a bad thing. We are supposed to do His.

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MPB1 wrote: Mark, don't try to get your science out of Newsweek or any other non-scientific publication. The reporters too often don't know enough to know what they are hearing and so, they then miscommunicate things to the average person. One stupidity this article has is Given that H. erectus and H. ergaster are morophological overlaps, and hundreds of our nuclear genes come from that time period, it is
ridiculous to say that H. erectus, wasn't our ancestor.And one thing that started out in the press and has gotten way out of hand is FOXP2, which is claimed to be a language gene and the article makes the same blunder. FOXP2 is a regulator gene, it regulates the expression of lots and lots of other genes. It in and of itself does not affect language. It affects the expression of some genes that do affect languge. http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dm/foxp2.pdfThe other thing you are ignoring is the many indications in the article that my position--that of an ancient humanity (humanity not defined by looks, but by behavior) is closer to being correct than the ridiculous views of Hugh Ross.The article is correct that the earth became drier about 6 million years ago. Actually it was just Europe and AFrica that this happened to and that was in part because of the closure of the Tethyan ocean as India and Africa collided into Asia. The Mediterranean is the last remnant of that ocean and its evaporation, took away a water source for the rains. Note that the hominids arose at this time.Now, the Newsweek article mentions HAR1 but they don't tell you what is really important to this theological debate. To get that you must read the original scientific article in Nature. Here is what the Newsweek article relates: The article in Nature tells us something very very important for our debate, which means if you don't read the scientific literature you get a stilted view of things. What the Nature article says is (note the bold) And since Neanderthals and humans split from each other about 600,000 years ago, it means that Neanderthals had the HAR1 gene, like us--the thing which makes our brains. So, Neanderthals were much more similar to us than you want to admit, which means that humanity goes way back in time, and that means that if you are going to have a flood that has a prayer of matching reality, it has to be millions of years ago. Or a layman who doesn't understand what is being said. One can't rule out that as a viable explanation. Lets take another example from the Newsweek article. They discuss prodynorphin, a chemical which speeds up signal processing in the human brain. The article says. What you fail to note is the implications for australopithecines and fail to ask the questin, how much of this stuff is required for someone to be considered behaviourally human? Where in our lineage does one become spiritually aware? If you look at that chart, most of the 'predictions' are actually trash. "Evidence for ongoing star and planet ormation and for star extinction will increase." Duh! Isn't that just equivalent to saying our technology to see these things will get better?
"Astronomer's measurements of the universe's age will become more accurate, and more consistent, and more certainly fixed on about 14 billion years." If it is 12 billion or 15 billion, Is the RTB model thereby false? The minute one grabs for God's miracle to save his pet flood theory, is the minute he has become a Biblical author--re-writing the Scripture to make it say what he needs it to say.

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This was written to MPB1, I believe Some of the hominid data is relevant to the question of why one must look for the geologic evidence of the flood at an older time. Geology is 4 dimensional and if one looks for a certain event at the wrong time, then the evidence will ether be lacking or misinterpreted to force geologic data into the wrong slipper.I would also note the original definition of fossil--anything dug up and by that definition, hominid fossils are everybit as much geologic evidence as are the fossils of paleontology used in index fossils. At least that would be my interpretation as a professional geoscientist.Edited by grmorton, : No reason given.

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jar wrote: I would agree that there would be evidence."Pleistocene glacial outburst floods were released from ice-
dammed lakes of the Altay Mountains, south-central Siberia.
The Kuray-Chuja lake system yielded peak floods in excess
of 1 x 10^6 m^3 s^-1 and as great as 18 x 10^6 m^3 s^-1. The
phenomenally high bed shear stresses and stream powers
generated in these flows produced a main-channel, coarse-
grained facies of coarse gravel in (1) foreset-bedded bars
as much as 200 m high and several kilometers long, and (2)
degradational, boulder-capped river terraces. Giant current
ripples, 50 to 150 m in spacing, composed of pebble and
cobble gravel, are locally abundant. The whole sedimentary
assemblage is very similar to that of the Channeled
Scabland, produced by the Pleistocene Missoula Floods of
western North America." ~ A. N. Rudoy and V. R. Baker,
"Sedimentary Effects of Cataclysmic Later Pleistocene
Glacial Outburst Flooding, Altay Mountains, Siberia,"
Sedimentary Geology, 85(1993:53-62, p. 53But, your dogmatism that there is no Biblical flood is based upon1. the assumption that the young-earth/global flood interpretation of scripture is the only way that scripture can be interpreted.2. that the anthropologically universal flood occured when the young-earthers say it did--

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Are you the same Jesse with whom I have had the pleasure to discuss things on another forum? Given the Lao tzu name, I strongly suspect it.Jesse wrote: This is an interesting objection but one which won't work. We are not talking about a break in the Gibraltar dam 500 miles wide and 3000 feet deep. At most you are talking something starting small and growing, so the volume of water which came through was small and as the waters spread out from the initial hole, geometric spreading (something one needs to understand), turbulence and other frictional processes would make this appear much more gradual than your objection would seem to indicate. The geometric spreading is the biggest factor. Wave height, and that is what the crest is, diminishes 1/r^2 where r is the distance from the initial perturbation, in this case, Gibraltar. Starting with a 3000 ft tall wall of water at the Gibraltar dam, it would be reduced to less than a foot high after spreading for 2500 miles. Such is the power of geometric spreading when applied to a wave. The biggest limitation is the size of the collapse, which restricts the volume of water flowing This is the point at which I confess, I do something non-scientific. Christians are supposed to believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible. But then, when it is needed in practice, many reject it and use this argument against my view. I have cases of stories of glacial events being handed down 12000 years in a pre-literate society, but, clearly that is much different than asking for 250,000 generations, or 80,000 if one has grand-parent/grandchild interactions.While, as I discuss below, I believe in divine inspiration for this problem, I can't entirely rule out father-son/mother-daughter transmission. Why? Because I have one example of knowledge being transferred in precisely this manner for 1 million years. Without knowing anthropology you would never know of it.Many people don't believe that H. erectus had language. I believe they did, but the interesting thing is that with or without language
they transmitted from parent to child, the correct instructions for producing an Acheulean hand ax from their first appearance about 1.5 million years ago until their disappearance and replacement with better technology at around 500,000 years."Tools very much like the one I now held had been found in
European sites as young as 500,000 years, as well as in Olduvai
deposits dated at a million and a half."
"Whatever they were used for, clearly the hand axes and other
Acheulean tools were doing it efficiently. Compared to the
longevity of the hand ax, the invention of the automobile-or for
that matter the wheel itself-strikes me as a sort of cultural
whimsy, a fleeting bit of gadgetry. Thousands of generations
separated me from the individual who had knocked this flake of
rock off a boulder and fashioned its shape. But I, a user of
garage-door openers, power saws, and electric blenders, could
instantly recognize it as a tool, potent with human purpose.
Gently, idly, I tapped the blunted point against my palm. For a
moment a few thousand generations didn't seem like much time at
all. I could count them off in less than an hour with gentle
taps of the tool in the palm of my hand--parent to child, parent
to child. There was something very reassuring, almost liberating
about that thought. I smiled to myself and put the hand ax back
on the ledge where I had found it." ~ Donald Johanson and James
Shreeve, Lucy's Child, (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc.,
1989), p. 148-149.So, if material culture can be passed down correctly from preliterate parent to preliterate child for 1 million years, it is hard for me to really discount the possibility that stories could also come along that way.I would also note that the concept that stones can be chipped into tools has been passed down from parent to child for 2.6 million years. Stone tool-making is not instinctual among humanity.But, I believe in the Divine inspiration of the Bible, and thus, do not have to claim that such a message can be carried that far. I am surprised as to how many Christians won't allow the Bible to be divinely inspired and thus reject the possiblity (but then, illogically, claim that the theology is inspired). When everyone knows that the Jews came from the Semitic world of Babylon, and everyone would agree that if there was a flood, it happened earlier than either Abraham or the Babylonians, I fail to see why this is so damning to the view. Of course the Hebrews got the story from their tribal parents in Babylon. That still doesn't conflict with either inspiration or its possible reality. So you are presuming to prove that no Babylonian could have been inspired by God with a true story about a past event? Interesting concept and I would love to see your argument laid out in detail.Your argument seems to me to be one of merely stating your incredulity, which may be vast, but isn't the judge of what is and isn't the case. One of the things that literate people don't realize is the power of human memory. When we quit needing to memorize things we did. There are scientific reports of amazing memory skills among preliterate peoples, things we moderns find hard to believe."Although fewer than one in a hundred adults in the West have
this sort of intense imagery, it is quite common in children and
'primitive' people. In a 1960s study in a Nigerian village, a
slide projector was set up and the tribesmen were shown some
pictures for thirty seconds each, ranging from a photograph of a
Nigerian bus stop to scenes from Alice in Wonderland. Over half
the villagers showed some level of photographic memory and about
a fifth had almost perfect recall, being able to do such things
as trace out the license plate number of a car from their memory
of a picture, even though they were unable to read or write. In
one instance, a subject who wrongly stated that the Cheshire cat
from the Alice in Wonderland picture was black was greeted with
cries of scorn from the other eighteen villagers who had watched
the test. All of them were looking at the blank projector screen
as if the picture still lingered there like an after-image from
staring at the sun, and when they were asked how many could see
the original image, fourteen hands shot up.
"These impressive memory feats-- even though the mental pictures
quickly fade-- seem, however, more the sign of an uncluttered
mind than of special powers of memory. Members of the same
tribe, brought up in cities and educated to read and write, show
far less ability, and studies in the West have shown that while
eight in a hundred children appear to have photographic memories,
nearly all loose their ability as they become adults." ~ John
McCrone, The Ape That Spoke, (New York: William Morrow and
Company, 1991), p.98-99Tribes also do things differently than moderns, like you, conceive of:"Among modern fisher-gatherer-hunters such partnerships based on
exchange, marriage, and family extend over huge areas. They
involve time being set aside for visiting, feasting, and
competitions such as song contests and poetry recitals. As Leah
Minc has shown, these story tellings not only confer prestige on
an individual but also serve as a repository of survival
information is coded in such oral traditions it is common to find
it sanctified and linked to ritual performances. Unlike ordinary
storytelling this leads to accurate repetition so tht the vital
information is not lost or embellished by the present generation.
Periodic crises in the Arctic may not always happen in an
individual's lifetime, but on a longer timescale they certainly
will. Social communication of this nature represents an extreme
example of how information is stored and survival enhanced
through a group memory. John Pfeiffer has called this the tribal
encyclopedia. Obtaining, updating, and preserving such knowledge
thus involves complex and time consuming social practices
understood to be indispensable for longterm survival." ~ Clive
Gamble, Timewalkers, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994),
p. 119-120I would also point out that the earliest Venus figurines dates 400,000 years ago-Tan tan Morocco (look it up on the BBC). The youngest are still being made--madonna and child. While the specific belief of who is the child has changed, humanity has had this same motif for that long. Your incredulity may be vast but you have no evidence to show that this hasn't happened. INdeed, I have now given you examples of cultural material being passed down for respectively 50,000 and 20,000 generations respectively. Admittedly, this isn't 250,000 but, it is approaching the 80,000 that a grandparent/grandchild relationship would require. While I am in agreement with your assessment of my chances for verification, it actually represents more chance of my views being verified than the existence of the graviton being verified. So, you ignore the flood myths of other countries? While we have the provenance for the Biblical tale, that doesn't mean that it is false in light of the rather well known fact that the Hebrews came from Mesopotamia. So, I guess I am rather impressed with the illogic here. My grandfather told me he went to work in 1916 for $25 per month. Thus, now that I have lived in Dallas,TX, Lafayette, LA, Houston, TX, Scotland and China, I can no longer count on this piece of information to be true? Is it because I moved around a bit that I can no longer count on the verity of what my grandfather told me? Are you aware that the inhabitants of the Mesopotamian region came from previous populatons who did not live there? There is some evidence that the Sumerians were invaders to the land. So to depend only on one movement of people (Hebrews from Mesopotamia to Palestine) and ignore the movemnt of the Sumerians from wherever they came from, seems, well, limiting the options. This of course, is an understatement of biblical proportions. Dig in any river and you will find evidence of flooding. I would give a big so what to this. And it is not true, contra popular opinion, that the silts from one of the floods is widespread.“Following its publication in 1929, his Ur of the Chaldees became the most widely read book on archaeology ever printed.
“However, subsequent trenching at Ur, in the neighboring tells that surround Ur, such as Abu Shahrain (biblical Eridu), and in those extending north to other equally ancient settlements, such as Tell el Oueli and Choga Mami, have invariably failed to encounter this same silt layer. After much probing by trench and drill to trace its extent investigators have determined that the surface area of the deposit was localized and perhaps only a single breach in a levee of the Euphrates River, forming what modern hydrologists call a 'paly deposit,'covering at most a few square miles of the lateral floodplain. No archaeologist today considers Woolley’s silt layer at Ur to be any more significant than a thousand other silt layers spewed from the two great rivers during and since the last ice age. None of these local floods apparently had more importance than any other in serving as a major divide in human settlement in Mesopotamia.” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p.55 Like anything about the past, one can speculate anything away. YOu have presented this speculation of how the flood story came to be as if it is fact. But you have not one shred of actual observational evidence for the scenario that semites digging in the area connected the wrong dots and came up with a world wide flood. Not one document exists to prove the assertion, not one modern example of this process can be cited, yet, we are supposed to believe that this speculation is the most parsimonious explanation?If one were to equate parsimony in evidence as the type of parsimony of which you speak, then indeed, your view is the most parsimonious, lacking any and all evidence whatsoever. Once you present actual evidence that such a sequence of events took place, then we can discuss it scientifically, so, I would say from this, that your explanation isn't really science, if one defines science as that which is capable of offering observational evidence.At least, I have examples of long transmissions of information which could, if I wanted them to,be used to support the transmission of the flood story for nearly as long as you want. No, my objection to this is that you have zero evidence that what you suggest actually happened. It wins because it has no evidence? Wow. What a way to win. I thought science worked off of observational evidence. Where is yours supporting the concept that the flood story arose from looking at clays in the river? What ancient document tells you this? What physical remains tell you this? Jesse, is the last sentence supposed to be condemnatory? Science does not constitute the entirety of human experience. Prove that you love your parents. Even worse, prove that you think highly of them. There are lots of things which lie outside of science.Edited by grmorton, : No reason given.

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jar wrote: The ENGLISH says that the 'earth' was flooded. The Hebrew uses both eretz and adamah, to describe that which was flooded.Adamah means, according to BDB1) ground, land
1a) ground (as general, tilled, yielding sustenance)
1b) piece of ground, a specific plot of land
1c) earth substance (for building or constructing)
1d) ground as earth’s visible surface
1e) land, territory, country
1f) whole inhabited earth
1g) city in NaphtaliThe most problematical word here for my position is 'whole inhabited earth' is not necessarily the same as the whole earth, especially early in humanity's existence.And when one goes looking at eretz in Genesis, one quickly learns that early genesis didn't use it as planet earth. I note that before and after the flood account eretz is used in a local sense. I am going to illustrate this by translating eretz as 'planet earth' to show how ludicrous it is to read the word as meaning planet earth.If eretz means planet earth, then here was Abram from?Gen 12:1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy planet, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a planet that I will show thee:Was Abram a martian?Is the Bible a sci fi story? Do we have Planet Havilah, Planet Cush, Planet Nod?Gen 2:11-13, The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole Planet of Havilah, where there is gold; 12and the gold of that planet is good: . the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole Planet of CushGen 4:16 Cain went . , and dwelt in the Planet of NodGen 10:10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, . , in the Planet of ShinarClearly eretz doesn’t mean planet earth. We have examples of the local usage of eretz from Genesis 5 through 12, so when we come to the occurrences where the usage is at issue, Gen 6-9, why do we suddenly assume that it should be used differently?If we translate the passage consistently with Gen 5 and 12, then the passage says:And the flood was forty days upon the land
the waters . increased greatly upon the land
all flesh died that moved upon the land Oh, now the illogic here can be illustrated by rejecting the burning of Rome because historical accounts say that it occurred during the life time of a specific person--Nero, or that we can reject the Trojan war which occurred in preliterate times, because it is said to have occured during the life of Helen. No, it says that all life on the land died. That is quite a different thing. If you insist on your preferred interpretation of what was flooded, then I would conclude that the story can't be correct, but there is still the option that your interpretation of the story is what is really incorrect. No, I have gotten rid of English words which don't have the same meaning for us today as the Hebrew words had for the ancient peoples. It has everything to do with the story if one reads it in Hebrew rather than reading a very bad English translation. No I am not. Demonstrably you said that the bible teaches the flood was world wide. I interpret that to mean global so on #1 I was indeed correct.

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