Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood

No one is going to be able to prove the flood using old mythical theories that are contary to everything we know in science and just plain common sense. There is a book that really does solve the mystery of the flood. It is basically a geology book that proves the earth has had a recent earth wide flood as described in the Bible. This book has all the answers, it explains in detail exactly how the flood happened.There have been many Scientific Creationist books over the years that have tried to prove the flood, but they have all failed because they ignore basic scientific facts and twist everything in a vain attempt to support their impossible theories and end up only deluding themselves. The science in this book on the other hand is very good, in fact the first few chapters show the errors in currently used flood theories and why they don't work. The author disproves the young earth theory, the everything was laid down at the flood theory, the canopy theory, etc. He then goes on to show that the earth has indeed recently had a major ice age and that it was the sudden collapse of the ice sheets surging into the oceans that flooded the world. (The 40 days of rain was caused by one or more comet impacts which triggered the collapse of the ice sheets and blasted water and/or ice into near earth orbits that fell back to earth all over the globe.) He ties this in with evidence from all over the world that points towards this happening, evidence that the scientific creationists have completely missed since they don't even accept that the earth has had an ice age.Since this is a geology book and the author of course accepts the fossil record as factual, he is able to tie in the Pleistocene extinction and a lot of other supporting geological evidence with the flood. The creationists can't make these connections since they believe the fossil record was all created at once by the flood. The author puts all the pieces together and runs it like a movie explaining step by step how the flood occurred. Each step is supported by quotes from geology books with evidence from around the world showing that these events actually happened. The chapter on Looking at the Numbers is really more for the geologists than the average reader, has a lot of deep geology about how the flood affected the earth.A new geology theory is presented called Ice Age Flexing that reveals how the deluge and the comings and goings of the earlier ice ages has affected the earth. Explanations also include, if the flood waters drained into the deepening oceans, how is it then that the oceans have islands today? Worth reading if you can plow through it, answers all the questions that till now no one was able to answer. The author presents photographs of finding microscopic marine diatoms in Midwestern soil samples. These diatoms are traces left by the flood all over the world. The author even explains step by step how to find these diatoms so the reader can duplicate the results and prove the flood for his or herself. After reading this book you will probably want to take Morris's book the "Genesis Flood" and throw it into the trash can. (if you haven't already) This book completely destroys creationism's flood theories by replacing them with one that actually works and can be verified scientifically. The book is called "Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood" and is worth reading if you want to be up to date on flood geology.

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[This message has been edited by Percipient, 12-20-2001]

Yes the book has paragraphs. I was really hoping for a more meaningful discussion on this board, but I guess you sometimes have to take what you can get. At less you guys were able to figure out that Wm. Scott Anderson, William Scott Anderson and wmscott are the same person. Your powers of deduction underwhelms me. If I had wanted to hide my identity I would have done so, on the Internet it is certainly easy enough to do. The reason I didn't state that I was the author in first post is that I didn't know this board's policy on the matter. Now any body want to talk about the flood?

In my book I refer frequently to Ryan & Pitman's book. In my opinion they did very good work, but failed to see that it was part of a bigger event. For example they failed to connect the sudden flooding of the Black Sea with the sudden flooding of the Caspian Sea which occurred at the same time. As the flood waters rose they flooded the Med causing it to pour into the Black Sea which in turn flooded the Caspian Sea and so on. This is shown by the geologic evidence and by the pattern of sea life. Things from the Med are found in the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea as well. The Caspian seal is from the arctic ocean, showing how far the flooding of the black sea reached.

I believe the two events are connected. The dating methods used really only give approximate dates in "radiocarbon" years not calendar years. The date for the end of the ice age is a ballpark figure also which has ranged anywhere from 30K to 10K. In my book I leave it open as to which date is correct, but heavily favor the biblical date considering the source. What happened at that time is the sudden release of ice and water into the oceans raised the sea level which caused the sudden flooding of the Black Sea. As I mentioned, there is evidence pointing to this chain of events and it is a logical chain reaction.

The 30K date is the old date used when it was thought the Ice Age ended a long time ago. More recent dating has moved it up to about 10K, the current range depending on who's book you are reading, is anywhere from maybe as low as 9K up to over 14K. On the dates being in calendar years, no they are not. Calendar years are events dated by historical sources. dates fixed by carbon dating are in carbon years. the best absolute dates on these events are from carbon dating, hence they are in carbon years not calendar years.where the water went is simple, it is in the oceans. The ice age pulled enough water out of the oceans long enough that the ocean basins flexed upward to make up for the missing pressure, this is called hydrostatic pressure. The sudden return of the previously removed water occurred faster than the sea floor could be pushed back down. Since the oceans were in effect too small to hold all the water, the earth was flooded for a time. Then as the pressure pushed the sea floor down, the water drained into the deeping oceans. Since the earth inside has a constant volume, the pressure that pushed the ocean floors down tended to also push the land areas up. This up lifting of land areas has been pronounced in areas that were once covered by large amounts of glacial ice. the combined effects of increased pressure and the ocean bottoms and a reduction in the weight of glaciers on land, resulted in a great uplifting of many mountainous areas to heights far higher than they had in the ice age when they were buried under the ice.

Yes, most people are totally unaware of the fact that these respective events are not dated in regular years. Which is why events sometimes seem to shift in time as more is learned. Many scientists have repeatedly warned about the hazard of taking scientifically dated dates as being real dates.

The dates must be used with caution. . . .Therefore, time spans based on radiocarbon dating should be read as "radiocarbon" years, not regular "calendar" years . . . Neither of these radiometric dating techniques, nor any other, can supply dates that are acceptable at face value . . . Human error is an ever-present possiblity . . . Just a speck of contaminant throws the computed date off . . . The personal element, however innocent does tinge research. A researcher at times cannot help leaning in his interpretation of data toward the answer he wants to find. And there is another tendency of which we have to be aware because it bears upon Ice Age dating. It is the desire to find earlier and still earlier beginnings of things, as though the oldest thing found is a record, and it is an achievement to break record . . . Will the trend someday change, shrinking the tape measure, requiring us to shorten our time scale? (Ice Age Lost by Gwen Schultz 1974, pages 27-29)

The above is not that old of a book, in the early 20th century the end of the ice age was dated at 30K years ago, now it is dated at less than half that age. Events dated by carbon dating and other systems are not anchored in time, it is not impossible for the two events to have happened at the same time. Considering the effects of a rapid rise in sea level would have, it just makes too much sense, plus the evidence from surrounding areas indicates the flooding did not stop with the Black Sea. Flooding caused by a rising sea level as the evidence indicates, only could have happened at the end of the ice age when large amounts of water were returned to the sea.Heat due to flexing the earth would only be a problem if the flexing was limited to the surface. most of the flexing occurred at great depths inside the earth. The mountains are floating and their thickened base is what causes them to rise above the surrounding land. In the ice age the mountains were carrying a heavy load of mountain glaciers which had pressed them down into the earth. the removal of large amounts of water from the oceans in the ice age to form the ice sheets had caused the oceans to shrink and their basins to flex upward. The upward flexing of ocean floors combined with the weight on glaciated land areas, caused a general depression of the land with a proportionately larger depression of the mountainous areas due to the weight of the mountain glaciers. Once the ice age had ended, and the water returned too quickly to the sea flooding the world, the shift in pressures pushed the mountains up.This uplift is still going on and is why all tall mountains are measured as rising yet today. This shift in pressure beneath the mountains combined with the uplift, has created or in some cases added to the cracks in the earth's crust, through which some of the hot material which has up lifted the mountains, has leaked out to the surface and caused secondary volcanic eruptions. These types of eruptions are associated with tall mountain chains a round the world. Plate tectonics created the mountains, but it was this shifting of internal pressures at the end of the ice age that caused the volcanic activity and lift them to the heights they are at today.In my book I develop a theory called Ice Age Flexing which explains this flexing in detail and the effects this has had on the earth and the landforms effected by it. A number of geologists have previously theorized on deep flexing occurring, some have even associated it with ice ages. In my theory I just put the pieces together and show the extent of the flexing and explain the mechanism behind it. And yes there are signs of repeated flexing from the advances and retreats of the ice age. This shows up in when some volcanic activity has occurred, and in erosional deposits this pattern shows up strongly.It has been long noted that there is a pulsation pattern in ice age erosion. Stream terraces are built in ice age advances only to be down cut in the retreats. The reason for this is the down warping of the land reduces the grade of the stream or river causing the water to move more slowly causing a build up of sediment, when the ice retreats, the land rebounds and the grade is steepened and the water moves faster cutting down into the ice age sediments creating the ice age stream terraces.[Edited for readability --Percy]

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[This message has been edited by Percipient, 01-08-2002]

In science dating using in direct methods, is not totally reliable, which is why historical dates are given greater weight than dates derived from tests. The errors that have occurred with the dating of geologically recent events is well known. Dates from scientific dating methods are approximate, frequently given with a error range of plus or minus so many years with a 90% estimate that the time the event actually occurred at falls inside of that range. This is why the month or the day of the week that the event happened on is not also given, the dating systems are not that precise. Even with a good date with a 90% reliability, it is still acknowledged there is an estimated 10% chance that the date is in error, and that is not even allowing for other errors such as contamination. The dating systems in use are in general very good, but it is important to remember their limitations, it is important to look at each date and what it is based on. Things change, better understandings are gained and dates are adjusted, it happens.No I don't have the same problem as the YECs, because I use geology instead of abusing it. Actually there is plenty of evidence to support a recent global flood in geology. We have for example the Michigan whale bones, found in deposits from the end of the ice age in an area the sea according to current geology has been in ages. the link below is to a site with more information on the whale bones, it is a creationist site but the information conforms with what I have read in books on the matter.http://sentex.net/~tcc/michwls.htmlOther evidence includes the discovery in Wisconsin at even higher elevations than the Michigan finds, of marine diatoms left by the flood waters. These diatoms are part of a world wide deposit that once surveyed will show the extent of the deluge. We also have glacial drop stones in non glaciated areas, raised shorelines dated to the end of the ice age and inland bodies of water with marine life. This is just some of the evidence supporting a global flood. While it is not overwhelming at this point since the research on this new flood theory is so recent, it is in correct to say that there is no evidence of a recent global flood. Hopefully as this new theory becomes better known, more research will be done around the world and more things will come to light.

First, in my book in my book I highly favor the more recent biblical date for the flood, but I leave open the possibility it occurred at the earlier scientifically dated time for the end of the ice age. I was very impressed that you checked my quote from Ice Age Lost, very good work. The purpose of the quote was to show the unreliability of dating systems used in dating recent geologic events, that they are not fixed in time as well as many think. As for cutting her short, I could say you did the same, she also went on to quote a paper on dating that said "the possibility that all methods used today are wrong must be acknowledged.." I just found that statement a bit too extreme even if it maybe some day proved true. The reason I quoted Gwen Schultz is because she is so quotable, she comes out and says things other infer over several pages of technical text. The essence of what she said is repeated even today by some scientists today, despite our improved dating methods. Basically anything man can do, man can screw up. A point to remember is what the dating of the Black Sea flooding is based on. A single set of bottom cores tested at one lab. Assuming test accuracy, there is still the old carbon problem. The oceans contain more carbon 12 than land based things. Dating of marine organics requires an adjustment for this. The freshwater shells used to date the Black Sea flood were found below marine sediments. Freshwater doesn't require the marine adjustment, but were the shells affected by marine water or not? If the mud had sealed them off from the sea water they didn't, but was there a slow leaking of marine water into the freshwater area, or was that was assumed but it didn't happen. The biggest problem with dating is contamination, and considering freshwater shells under marine sediments, the resulting dates could easily be off by a large measure.
On the 10% or 5% error ranges, the range is in the shape of a bell curve. If the date is off it is probably just out side the given range, the curve drops off to each side but does extent to both sides of the chart. The possibility the given date could be at ether extreme is next to zero, but not zero. A single date could be off by very large amounts, while a large group of dates is less likely to be in error. Unless of course there is a basic error in the dating system itself such as miscalibration of the system used to measure the age of things.
Any date out side of our historical records, and many inside of it, needs to be taken as approximate. It is misleading to refer to any non-historical date in calendar years, even tree ring dates can be in error. Dates need to be weighted or valued according to the evidence supporting them. they should never be taken blindly.
Considering these facts, and the fact that the flooding of the Black Sea is much better understood in connection with a sudden rise in sea level at the end of the ice age, it makes overwhelming logical sense that the two events are connected and the pattern of evidence indicates that they were.

My statement on the single set of cores was based on the information in the book "Noah's Flood; The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History" by William Ryan & Walter Pitman. It has been a while since I read this book, but in checking the index I could find references to only a single set of cores dated at one lab. (If your reference to other dates on other cores was from this book, could you please give the page number since I couldn't find it.) Additional cores may also have been taken since this book was written. Actually I like the date for the Black Sea flooding since it is closer to the biblical date for the flood. It is the dates for the end of the Ice Age I would like to see moved up, but we are talking about a large number of dates on a large number of items. About the only way such an error could be possible is as we have mentioned, the effects of the old carbon levels in sea water. Perhaps an unaccounted for dunking in sea water has given Ice Age materials an appearance of being a bit older than they really are. The differences in dates as to when events took place is the biggest difference between biblical history and secular history. Since biblical history is based on eyewitnesses and the secular is based on indirect methods, I favor the biblical dates.
Yes, I have much more information in the book. It would be hard to give a quick over look since that is what the book does. I would have to post several chapters worth of stuff. But in short, some of the other things supporting a flood are the presence of ice rafted rocks in areas the glaciers didn't reach such as the Driftless area in SW Wisconsin. This area adjoins the Mississippi river, a number of high valleys and hills along this river have rocks left by floating ice. As the sea level rose, the river backed up and rock bearing ice drifted into flooded valleys and over the hills. The presence of sea life in inland bodies of water is also evidence of a former connection with the sea. We have the Pleistocene extinction which is a mystery and occurred in a pattern consistent with the cause being a global flood. We have the disappearance of Ice Age people and the sudden change since in the archeological record. We also have a wide range of geological evidence supporting a recent sudden end of the ice age that resulted in large scale elevation changes around the world. As shown by greatly elevated shorelines of recent geological age. There is also of course the marine diatoms here in Wisconsin deposited in an event that dropped large ice rafted boulders at fairly high elevations far from any sea. These things and many others are part of an over all pattern. If viewed in isolation, each event is a bit of an anomaly, but not too troubling if it were just a case of there only being one anomaly. However once they are connected together we begin to see that they are each part of a much larger event.

Thank you Percipient, I stand corrected then, it was two sets of cores rather than one. Still two dates is not that much to hang your hat on. We have been discussing the evidence against the two events happening at the same time, but perhaps we should consider the evidence that shows they are connected.
First the evidence from the Black Sea is that it once was a fresh water lake at a much lower elevation, one main shore line with beach dunes, etc., fresh water shells right up to the change and no salt deposits or other marine or indications of brine conditions. The theory for this is that the Bosporus straits became blocked by landslides or earthquakes. The sea level rose at the end of the ice age but the earthen dam held out the sea for a few thousand years and then collapsed suddenly flooding the Black Sea area. This chain of events is impossible for the following reasons. One shoreline, with its outlet blocked the lake did not flood even in the post ice age rainy period, and the level of the lake remained stable which would be very unusual for an evaporative lake.. No salt deposits, with no outlet for several thousand years all the water had to leave by evaporation which would have turned the lake into a salt lake. Fresh water shells up till the event, if the lake had been isolated, the salt build up would have killed off the fresh water shells long before the flooding event. Now let's consider what the chain of events would have been if these events where connected.
The ice sheets collapse into the sea raising the sea level suddenly, which causes the level of the Med to rise above the level of the Black Sea area, the water flow in the river draining the area is reversed. As the sea level continues to rise, the in rushing flow gets greater and greater. The in rushing sea water creates the abrupt change found here and carries in marine life. This flooding doesn't stop here but continues to rise higher flooding the Caspian Sea was well shown by the presence of Med sea life being found there as well, which would require a rise in sea level above what we have today since today the Caspian Sea is land locked and its level today is actually below sea level.
By connecting these two events the problems are solved and the chain of events makes much better sense. It is for these overwhelming reasons I believe these two events happened at the same time. It is easier to believe we have some problems in our dating systems than to believe they happened several thousands of years apart. Perhaps in time better dates will be arrived at and it will be recognized that these events did indeed happen together.For other quiestions on raised shorelines, the ones I am referring to are found along sea coasts, which eliminates the possibility of them being formed by local flooding. The Diatoms found in Wisconsin were found at an elevation of 1000 Ft. The drop stones in SW Wisconsin are also found at elevations of about 1000 Ft also. On the Pleistocene extinction, I would suggest you do a little research into some of the accepted causes and you will see what I mean about it being a mystery.

For Quetzal, good questions. I deal with the Pleistocene extinction dates in my book. A number of Ice Age animals appear to have died off before the end of the Ice Age, but we see the same apparent pattern with the extinction of the dinosaurs. Now we know that there was a major sudden extinction event associated with the demise of the dinosaurs, some of them may have died off before or it may just appear that way in the fossil record. It was similar with the Pleistocene extinctions, some of the animals may have or may not have died off before hand. Finding fossils is a rare event, there are many gaps in representation. It is very possible that a number of animals believed to have died off before the extinction event actually lived up to it. The cause of these extinctions is unknown, there are three theories in science that attempt to explain this extinction event, but none of them is very good which is why there are three of them. The pattern of extinction at the end of the ice age is consistent with a sudden rise in global sea level. Small animals would stand a much better chance of surviving a flood by rafting than would large animals. Small animals are more numerous giving better odds of having a surviving viable population. Areas with lower elevations such as Australia had higher extinction rates. The area where larger animals did survive is in harmony with the biblical story of an ark. The area where the ark was has the lowest level of extinction. In fact the patterns are just the opposite of what is expected from the currently believed causes of over hunting and climate change. The super virus theory is too far fetched and is basically impossible to prove or disprove, not doesn't fit the pattern of survival ether, why should smaller animals be more immune when they have a denser population more suited for disease transmission than the larger animals. A flood event is not that damaging to plants, plant extinctions are not to be expected. A major disturbance in marine organisms is not to be expected ether, since the change was not that great for them. There has found to be a freshwater spike in gulf sediments, and the drop stones found on the Atlantic floor point towards a sudden movement of glacial melt water and ice into the sea which would have greatly raised sea levels.On the marine diatoms found here in Wisconsin. They are not found in "rocks" but in top soil in a thin layer. They are dated by species type, they are recent species which were found in our oceans at the end of the ice age and are still living in the seas today. Some of the marine species I have found include, Asterolampra Marylandica, Pseudoguinardia recta, Grammatophora Marina, Thalassionema Nitzhioldes, Asterionella Japponica and others.
For Percipient. Yes I have, for the book, but not that well when writing posts. I will go with the evidence as I must, facts are facts, I may not agree with the results but I certainly try to make sense of them. I believe dating is useful, but sometimes is off by larger amounts than many think. I feel that I have put forward the broad supporting pattern of evidence supporting my view in my book. I unfortunately lack the resources to do carbon dating myself, so I am not in a position to correct the apparent errors in some dates. I would like to see many things from the end of the ice age redated using the newer AMS system and see if they come up with dates closer to the one the system has given for the Black Sea flooding.On the lakes having shorelines and the flood having none, where would the shoreline be of a total global flood? The flood was brief enough that few shorelines would have formed, for it takes time to create a shoreline. In areas where the conditions were suitable, we do find high level shorelines. It appears from what we have found, that only towards the end of the deluge when the draining into the deepening seas slowed, was there time enough for shore lines to form. These raised shore lines are found on coasts in many parts of the earth and are due to a former higher sea level combined with local uplift caused in part by the depression of the ocean floors.On the Black Sea, dropping the lake level by evaporation instead of once having a lower outlet, that would have made the water that much saltier. As for the lake not getting salty in that time, look at the Caspian Sea, it hasn't been isolated that long and is well on its way to becoming as salty as the ocean. The Caspian sea was flooded with salt water and then was being flushed out by fresh river water until its level dropped below the outlet and them the salt levels began to increase. This partial freshwater flush is the reason we don't find more marine life in the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea which is not that far from the Black Sea, has responded with changing salt levels in fairly short periods of time. Yet the cores of the former Black Sea lake show no signs of increasing salt levels. The marine life in the Caspian Sea can not date back millions of years since in the ice age the lake there at times drained into the sea and was freshwater, which would have tended to have flushed out the marine life. As for genetic studies, the Caspian Seal is believed to have been isolated from its parent population the Arctic Ringed seal at the end of the ice age.On the drop stones and diatoms in Wisconsin. The SW Driftless area is not believed to have been covered by any lakes. A massive damming of the Mississippi was put forward for some of the drop stones at lower elevations, but there is no evidence for this and as the author of that theory admitted it would still not be able to account for the drop stones found at higher elevations. In order for the Mississippi t rise that high, it would require it to be backed up by a rising ocean level, since the required rise in level is too high to have been held in place by the surrounding terrain. The diatoms found are marine as found only in the ocean, they can't survive in freshwater. The area they were found in also has not been believed to have been covered by the glacial lakes.On the Pleistocene extinction, I have posted more above in this post already, but flooding is a better explanation of the pattern seen, especially when you consider how poorly current explanations fit with what is known about this extinction event. I find that flooding being the cause of the Pleistocene extinction event answers many questions in animal population distributions that have been without reasonable answers. Like why did so many animals survive in Europe when they died in America?For Edge; The collapse of an ice sheet or glacier is called a Jokulhlaup, what happens is a large amount of trapped water beneath the ice is released at the edge. This water release reduces the ground friction to about zero and the ice surges forward in a huge release of ice and water. These events have been observed on a small scale in Iceland. Similar events are believed to have happened on a larger scale with the ice sheets. If a large ice sheet suffered a large Jokulhlaup, the resulting release of ice and meltwater surging into the sea could have been large enough to raise global sea levels enough that the rising water destabilized other ice sheet edges resulting in a chain reaction of surging and flooding.some of the marine shorelines are found at great heights such as in the Andes mountains, but for the most part the flood was to brief to have created extensive shorelines at high elevations, or we would still be waiting for the water to drain. Yes you are right in that flooding is not considered as a possible cause of the Pleistocene extinction. It is specially excluded from consideration since the people involved do not accept the possibility of a global flood. For this reason they are blind to any evidence that may point in that direction. As you can see in reading the responses I get here and on other boards, everyone automatically rejects the flood regardless of any evidence I may present. People don't listen well when they think they already know the answer. Hopefully I will be able to change the scientific view of global flooding in time, but I will have to over come a lot of miss conceptions and prejudice first.

Quetzal, on the dates for the Pleistocene extinction, if the cause was a major change in climate or a global flood, it is be expected that the extinctions occurred at the same time even if dating seems to indicate otherwise. I particularly have to question the Australian dates considering how much earlier they are then the other dates, and the Australian dates are based on small amount of evidence. Even before developing my theory, I have always been suspicious of the earlyness of Australian dates for the extinction of ice age animals and other things. As for the extinct there occurring earlier due to other causes, the population is considered to have been far to small to have over hunted the animals, which is why some invoke human started wild fires to explain this problem, still hard to believe for a whole continent. That leaves the super virus, which is pretty much impossible to find evidence for or against. While some animals may have died off earlier, it seems probable that many lived up to the extinction event and we are just lacking the fossils to prove it at this point. As I was saying about the dinosaurs, many of them appear to have died off before the comet impact, many believe it is due to a lack of fossils that this appears to be the case and not that they were not in decline as some believe. The point is dating of this type is not a stop watch, there is a lot of play in when exactly these events happened. Considering the globalness and similarities of the extinctions, it seems highly probable that they had a common global cause which would indicate a common time as well. The elevation effect I pointed out earlier, that lower continents had higher extinction rates, is seen in Australia which has the lowest average elevation and had the highest extinction rates. I did not apply this ratio to the other continents because of their proximity to each other, other factors over power this effect.On the forest record, you should have referred to the Bristlecone pine tree ring record which extends back 10,000 years without any gaps. In fact the oldest living Bristlecone tree predates the biblical date for the flood by three hundred years. Any reasonable flood theory would have to account how these trees and many others were able to survive a global flood. What it appears to have happened is the flood started in late fall, and occurred in winter time in the northern hemisphere when the trees were dormant and ended before the spring. Thus it is very possible for a global flood to have occurred and to have left no gap in the tree ring record, if it was brief enough. It is only if you start theorizing a longer flood or like the creationist flood, one that rips up the surface of the earth, that you run into serious problems with the record of plants.On the reference on the fresh water spike in the gulf, here is one reference. "Evidence for the surge comes from two sediment cores extracted from the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Oxygen isotope ratios in the fossil plankton suggested that the surface water there became notably fresh around 11,600 years ago-creating a so-called 'meltwater spike' in the fossil record. After this time, the relative abundance of warm-loving forams increased." (The Coevolution of Climate and Life by Stephen H. Schneider and Randi Londer 1984, pages 85-86)On the reference on drop stones in the Atlantic, I was reading "Riddle of the Ice; A Scientific Adventure into the Arctic" by Myron Arms, on pages 160-165 he discusses the finding of drop stone layers in cores taken from the Atlantic ocean floor. The cores were the 'GRIP' cores and were used to support the "Bond-Heinrich cycles" theory. I had just been reading this and thought it interesting and included it in the post. Most of the references to drop stones I have in my book refer to areas closer to where the edges of the ice sheets were located. The layer in the GRIP cores apparently cover most of the North Atlantic and indicate that a number of ice ages or stages, have had huge sudden releases of ice and water into the sea.On the Marine diatoms found here in Wisconsin. My favorite reference for identification is "Diatoms of North America" by William C. Vinyard, which I found more usable than Round's book "Diatoms". I also referred to several other books, but I found these two the most relevant. On your second question, diatoms have a silicon outer case than is very durable and is sometimes referred to as a diatom micro fossil, but due to its make up, no fossilization is required which is why they are so frequently found. The condition of the ones I found were quite dead, just outer shells which tended to be stained a bit brown from tannic acid. The diatoms also showed signs of age in that the finer edges were frequently rounded apparently by water slowly dissolving the silicon over time. The soil here is glacial till, so it all technically dates from the end of the ice age. The samples were extracted from cores taken of the top 16 inches of the soil. Only the surface cores and surface cores beneath drop stones were found to contain diatoms. I have outlined the steps on how to find these diatoms in my book. If would like, private message me your e-mail and I will send you as an attachment the part of the book dealing with this and you can try it out for yourself. I am hoping that interested people will extend the field work of finding this diatom trace left by the flood world wide.
.Edge- On shorelines, my point was that at its peak, a global flood would have no shore on which to create a shoreline. Then as the water receded, it was to steady in its withdrawing to leave extensive shorelines for the simple reason it takes time to create a shoreline. Only where the water and land maintained a stable level in respect to each other long enough for wave action to erode a shoreline, will one be found. Many brief floods fail to create shorelines, if they also fail to leave a strand line or a sediment deposits, they disappear with out a trace. The reason for greater occurrence of raised shorelines at lower elevations is the slowing of the draining of the waters as the flood ended. The draining at first apparently lowered the water level too fast to allow time for the creation of extensive shorelines or the greater grade and erosion found at higher elevations resulted in their erasure.On the depression of ocean floors and land. Yes the land was depressed by water, in the form of ice. The depression of the earth's surface by the weight of glaciers is well known. The same effect is also known to occur with the ocean floor when the depth of water increases which increases the amount of pressure on the ocean crust. The reason the ocean floors and warped upward in the ice age was that the formation of the ice caps pulled large amounts of water from the oceans reducing the amount of weight pressing down on the ocean crust. then when the flood occurred, the ocean floors are denser and much thinner than the continental crust, this greater flexibility combined with their lower elevation which put them under greater pressure than the land, resulted in the ocean floors sinking while land areas tended to rise. The removal of the weight of some of the glaciers from the land and putting them into the seas also helped to tip the weight balance. This process of the earth's crust shifting in elevation due to weight put on it is called isostatic compensation.On data on the rates of Pleistocene animal extinctions, see any good book on the extinction of ice age animals, for example the book "Mammoths" by Adrian Lister and Paul Bahn on pages 124-125 has a nice depiction of the extinction rates and how they varied from continent to continent. The point I was making about these extinction rates is they are lowest in the area where Noah is believed to have built the ark, and are progressively higher farther away. Which is why it is not mysterious that some animals survived in Europe and not in America, call it the ark effect.The water to move the ice sheet comes from underneath, the geothermal heat melts an ice sheet from the bottom up at the end of an ice age. The thinner edges remain frozen to the bedrock acting as a ice dam. If the dam breaks, a huge amount of ice and water will surge into the sea. Enough to raise the sea level high enough destabilize other ice sheets which were on the verge of surging on their own due to the warming conditions. This theory is called the "domino Theory" in glaciology. There is evidence that there were massive sudden releases of ice and water at the end of the last ice age, evidence of super floods and huge surging events shown by disrupted and plowed sediments and many drop stones found on the ocean floors.On Andes mountains uplift, yes of course, that is why they have such highly uplifted shorelines. As the Pacific ocean floors was pushed down, the Andes were pushed up. This happened in stages or steps which is how the shorelines had time to form. The word marine implies marine life and conditions where salt lakes just have the salt at varying concentrations and lack ocean life forms. Yes I know all about plate tectonics, and I have already talked about the 'ark effect' on the different rates of animal survival. As for weak and conflicting evidence, you have a very limited knowledge of the details of my flood theory, hence it is to be expected that you will have some trouble understanding some of it. I have only been dealing with outlines and small parts of it in these posts, it would take a book to explain it all in detail, which is why I wrote one. You can have what ever opinion you want, but doesn't mean much if you have never read my book. Now if you read someone's book, then your opinion has some weight behind it.

Mark24- very good observation, I am very surprised no one else has brought up this very obvious point until now, thank you for doing so. I deal at length with this issue in my book, but will give a brief review here. Movements of the magnitude implied by the rate flood waters apparently drained into the sea, are believed to be impossible to occur because the Asthenosphere (the soft part of the mantle) is not fluid enough to flow fast enough for this to occur. It is apparent that the movement that has occurred, was not sideways flow in the Asthenosphere as is generally the case, but in stead was vertical movement from deeper inside the earth. Using a theory I call Ice Age flexing, I theorize that this deep movement or flexing of the earth occurred in the outer core. Here the earth is fluid enough to flex rapidly enough to respond as the historical account indicates. If the pressure changes where great enough and over large enough areas, this flexing of the earth could occur. Considering the massive movements of ice and water shifting positions at the end of the ice age, it is very possible that this was how the earth was able to respond so quickly to the shift in pressures on the lithosphere. We have evidence in gravity anomalies that there was a major shift or flexing of the earth at the end of the last ice age that created many of these anomalies. We also have evidence in the rates of uplift in areas not believed to have been recently affected by plate tectonics that this has occurred. To sum it up, the flood waters pushed the ocean crust and the entire mantle below it, down toward the outer core, at the same time the huge release of ice and water from the ice sheets caused the continental crust and the mantle below them, to warp upward pulling the surface of the outer core upward in those areas. The earth is like a layer cake with each layer getting denser towards the bottom. over time gravity pulls the denser materials towards the center while the less dense or lighter materials tend to rise to the top. The shifting that occurred at the end of the ice age pushed down on these layers under the oceans and lifted them up under where the ice was removed, this was not evenly done and has resulted in gravity anomalies which are caused by differences in the local density of the earth which affects the strength of gravity measured. Gravity over time will cause a slow flow in the asthenosphere that will even out these differences. Under areas once burdened by ice sheets, their sudden vertical movement has resulted in the uplifted of the surface of the dense outer core, this material is denser than the mantle, so it will tend to sink back down. As this happens the Asthenosphere flows in form the sides to make up for this. The same process in reverse happens underneath the oceans. This is part of the reason we see a steady glacial rebounding going on and a steady on going uplift in many mountains ranges and other areas around oceans. I have most of a chapter and several illustrations on this in the book, I hope I have managed to get the idea across in this short post. but thank you again for bringing this up, I find it one of the more interesting parts of the geology of the flood.Edge-On dead valley, I believe it is a dropped block fault valley. Britannica states "The geologic history of Death Valley is extremely complex and involves different types of fault activity at various periods, in addition to crustal sinking and even some volcanic activity. Essentially, Death Valley is a graben, or rift valley, formed by the sinking of a tremendous expanse of rock lying between parallel uplifted, tilted-block mountain ranges to the east and west. A type of fault activity called , in which the movement is dominantly vertical, began to form the valley in the middle Tertiary Period (about 30 million years ago). The sinking of crustal blocks to form the great trough of the valley and the uplift of other blocks to form the adjacent mountain ranges progressed gradually through the rest of the Cenozoic Era. As the valley sank, it was filled by sediments that were eroded from the surrounding hills; in the central part of the valley the bedrock floor is buried beneath as much as 9,000 feet (2,745 m) of sediment. Tilting and sinking of the valley floor have continued to the present time." The only fact I could add is that some of the sinking could have occurred as the depression of the Pacific ocean floor in turn has pushed the west coast upward. This uplift is uneven and results in some areas sinking while others rise. This movement has undoubtedly magnified some movements already taking place caused by other forces such as plate tectonics. It is important to remember that the up lift has happened in association with the comings and going of the ice stages over the last two million years of the ice ages, and during ice advances has operated basically in reverse. And the reason there was a flood despite the shifting going on, is that the sea level rose much faster than the crust of the earth could adjust to the shifting pressures.On Greenland and Antarctica not being affected. Actually they were affected quite a bit by a global flood. They lost a lot of ice on their margins and were probably thinned by ice lost into the rising flood waters, but they largely remained intact. Some of the reasons for their survival could be the fact the Greenland glaciers are surrounded by a ring of mountains that keeps them in place, and may have kept them in from floating away in the flood. Antarctica has a surrounding ring of ocean currents that may have acted in the same manner. It has also been noted that today as the earth's climate warms, these two areas seem to be growing in the rate of ice growth, in stead of melting away like other glaciers are doing. If true, this may have meant that these two ice areas were much more stable at the end of the last ice age and did not contain huge bodies of trapped melt water that weakened the Pleistocene ice sheets. These local climate factors may have helped these two ice areas survive the flood even as they have survived to today. It is not possible to say what percent of ice age ice was contained in the two areas since the total amount of ice for the ice age is not known. Also if the ice in those areas floated, they displaced their weight in water and made their contribution to the depth of the flood waters with out ending up in the oceans after the flood.On the Iceland glaciers reseating after a release of sub glacial water. Yes, what happens is the trapped water is released which carries away ice from the edge of the glacier where the release occurs. In areas away from the edge that lost water, the ice subsides as water is removed form underneath. I don't know if the glaciers are retreating or advancing on Iceland. Even an advancing glacier could experience a large release of water and ice. Yes there certainly is plenty of geothermal heat in Iceland, but remember it is pretty far north too. One of the causes of some of the recent releases in Iceland has been volcanic activity beneath glacial ice. Not a fun situation to have going on, yet Iceland still seems to have plenty of ice.For evidence showing wide spread surging of glacial ice into the ocean I can quote by last post. "On the reference on drop stones in the Atlantic, I was reading "Riddle of the Ice; A Scientific Adventure into the Arctic" by Myron Arms, on pages 160-165 he discusses the finding of drop stone layers in cores taken from the Atlantic ocean floor. The cores were the 'GRIP' cores and were used to support the "Bond-Heinrich cycles" theory. I had just been reading this and thought it interesting and included it in the post. Most of the references to drop stones I have in my book refer to areas closer to where the edges of the ice sheets were located. The layer in the GRIP cores apparently cover most of the North Atlantic and indicate that a number of ice ages or stages, have had huge sudden releases of ice and water into the sea." Couldn't say it better myself. The ocean wide layer of drop stones is evidence of a very large surging of glacial ice into the ocean.On the uplifting of the Andes you stated, "But then it had nothing to do with receding floodwaters, right? If the uplift was caused by convergent tectonics, which we can see happening today, by the way; why call upon a flood that has never been observed?" First off, this flood was observed and is recorded in a book called the Bible. You mite try reading it sometime, the flood part is near the beginning by the way. On the uplift, it has been caused by a combination of factors, convergent tectonics created the mountains, and Ice Age flexing has lifted them to their current elevation. The uplifting of some areas is in association with the down ward movement of oceans floors as shown by uplifting occurring in areas Plate Tectonics is unable to account for. Lake shorelines salt or otherwise are not the type of shoreline referred to. Shorelines in confined areas are evidence of local not global flooding and I don't refer to the for this reason. As for knowing ALL about plate tectonics, don't be a child, I used the word 'all' in the general sense and not in an all inclusive sense. On geology textbooks, I have read quite a few, my favorite is "The Earth's Dynamic Systems" by W. Kenneth hamblin, very nice book, I wrote a review on it at Amazon.Quetzal-I am not arguing that all the extinct ice age animals died at the end of the ice age. I looked over the web sites and found one interesting note. "a recent paper in Science argued that the last megafauna died out almost 42,000 years ago, but dating of snail shells from the Burra site suggests the skeletons may be closer to 33,000 years old." That would change the date on this particular find by 9,000 years. As I have been saying there is a lot of play in these dates. We have no way of knowing if this find was the last of his species to die, or if in the future it will be found that our dating needs to be adjusted because of this newly discovered effect of this or that. And as I have been saying, the Australia having much earlier dating on the Pleistocene extinctions in general has always seemed strange to me, and I will question it until someone can come up with a very good reason for it. But what I am mainly concerned with here is the terminal phase of the extinctions, a sudden dropping of the curtain on these animals at the end of the ice age. The fact that some of them died off before hand, considering the length of the ice age and rates on normal extinctions, is not surprising.On diatoms and soil. The soil here has a topsoil layer that varies but is usually composed of a mixture of clay/sand with organic material. The layer below that is clay, of a glacial loss type common to this part of Wisconsin, or a sand gravel glacial till mix of varying depths. This soil is laid on top a a general limestone bed rock base that may be exposed in some places or buried hundreds of feet below the surface. I would have to look up the chemical composition some where, but I would expect a high amount of silicon oxides from the Canada shield and ground up rock from everything else the glaciers rode over to get here, ground up limestone, etc. The loss soil here may have been deposited by wind or water. the diatoms however only are found on the original surface exposed at the end of the ice age. I have no problem with diatoms being carried by the wind. The one here that I have found were not deposited in that manner. If they had been they would be found throughout the soil or at least on the modern surface everywhere. Areas where the surface has been disturbed have no diatoms, which if the wind was the source, they would have had them. And no, the soil here is glacial till and loss, no marine clays. I have found at this point no other signs of marine life, but then diatoms is what I was focused on. But looking at the relative abundance of marine life, the odds of finding other larger traces are progressively much smaller as the size increases. Of course we do have the Michigan whale bones which I am sure we are tired of talking about.On the flood as an extinction cause, you stated, "A global flood such as you postulate would be a temporally restricted "point" extinction event (otherwise we'd see significantly more evidence, including large scale marine sedimentation on the continental landmasses, etc, which is conspicuous by its absence). In addition, all the critters all over the world would have gone *poof* at roughly the same time." The flood was too short to deposit much sediment except for a thin dusting of diatoms and an occasional anomalous marine fossil, and where would it have washed from anyway in a global flood?On gradual ice age climate change. there was a long warming period leading up the sudden end, and afterwards more gradual changes. The flooding was temporary and not a long term climate factor in its self, and the secondary effects would have a gradual influence over time. the earth has a huge climate system which responds slowly to even sudden changes.
On your question "shaky foundation of a 2700-year-old myth that, by your own dating, could only have been written 7000+ years after the events depicted occurred!!!! I guess I have to ask: which is it? A biblical apologetic or a scientific hypothesis?" If the flooding event at the end of the ice age is real, then that myth is real too. As I have stated I favor the biblical date for the flood and the bible book of Genesis was written using earlier records from the eye witnesses of the events handed down as written accounts or as oral family history. My book and theory are on the science side of the street, but I do deal with the religious side as well. With this event it would be almost impossible not to. Think of it as scientific findings confirming the biblical account of the flood, similar to biblical archeology findings showing the historical accuracy of the bible.The Amazon water plume is a new one to me, increased meltwater run off in the Mississippi river due to increased melting of the ice sheet due to a sudden southern push resulting a much higher rate of melting is the standard accepted cause. to differentiate between these to possible sources it would be necessary to know the location of the respective cores and know the current flow pattern at the time the deposits were made. I assume the respective researchers did this and perhaps we are talking about two difference sets of cores. On the other hand, the Andes mountains had some extensive mountain glaciers which also disappeared into the sea at end of the ice age as well, so the source may not be as important as the effect.

Quetzal-On the Pleistocene extinctions were almost (except NA and SA) exclusively BEFORE the actual Pleistocene/Holocene boundary. As I have said before, I believe some of the dates on when some of the Ice age animals went extinct maybe to earlier, and the fact that some of them died off before hand is to be expected and is not contrary to what I am theorizing. On "rates on normal extinctions" on a planet as diverse as the earth is, a number of living species die off and others arise as a steady rate over time. What the 'normal' rate for this is no one really knows, it is argued that human intervention in our time is causing an above normal extinction rate. On Pleistocene extinction, I like your statement, "in North and South America we see extremely short time frame and extremely severe." it seems that for half of the world we are in agreement, the rest could be dating problems or maybe they did just die off earlier. The sample cores were taken of the surface soil, the top few inches down. What marine trace elements are you thinking of? Maybe I could check it out. Here is a link about the Michigan whale bones.
http://sentex.net/~tcc/michwls.html."immersion will kill most trees." Not if it is brief, particularly if it occurs when the tree is inactive as in winter time."How does the spike, whether from the Mississippi — and there's a fair amount of evidence that the river did flood severely at the end of the ice age — or the Amazon, provide evidence for a global flood?" It shows that the glaciers were releasing very large amounts of water back into the sea at this time and that a sudden huge release was very possible, and the peak of the spike may very well be the record of that release.Edge-You asked "What is your evidence?" on uplift and subsidence being associated with the comings and goings of the ice sheets. We have evidence in that the recorded uplift and subsidence has occurred in stages and has been associated by some geologists with the coming and going of the ice sheets. "The margins of continents have afforded remarkable sites of cymatogenic tilting with repeated uplift upon the landward and depression upon the seaward side of axes trending closely parallel with present coasts. Corresponding with the polycyclic denudational history of the lands is therefore a polycyclic depositional record embodied in the offshore sediments." (The Morphology of the Earth; A study and Synthesis of World Scenery by Lester C. King 1962, p.223) By polycyclic King means that there occurred a number of distinct periods of rapid erosion of recently uplifted land followed by periods of little erosion. He also connected the uplift of the land with subsidence of the sea floors. A number of geologists have connected this pattern with the pattern of the ice ages. An extreme flooding event at the end of the last ice age would have repeated the earlier pattern and due to the suddenness and size of the shift in weight, the effects were more extreme and more sharply felt than the previous events."Why wouldn't the continental ice sheets be held back similarly? Moreover, how does the actic ocean ice participate. Seems to me like it can't because it should simply rise with the rising sea level. The amount of cement in your model is disappearing with each post" Whereas current studies seem to indicate that the Greenland and Antarctica Ice sheets remain intact during a warming climate, evidence such as the fresh water spike indicate that the other continental ice sheets were falling apart and very vulnerable to surging at the end of the ice age. This difference in response to changing climate conditions is why the ice sheets responded differently. And as I have stated before, it was not necessary for the ice to be in the sea to contribute to the flood waters since whether they were floating over land or ocean, would make no difference."You have taken a local phenomenon (a jokhulhlaup) and applied it to multiple continental ice sheets. Are you sure that this is valid?" Yes it is, I didn't come up with it, it is part of what is know about the behavior of the ice sheets. I have merely used it as part of my theory. Most of what I am saying is nothing unusual, I have just picked up the pieces and put them together.On drop stones in the North Atlantic you replied "Nonsense. The phenomenon is not "ocean-wide."" The source I quoted stated "The layer in the GRIP cores apparently cover most of the North Atlantic""selectively collecting facts to support a legend" Some legends turn out to be true, and if it wasn't, then there wouldn't be any evidence for me to collect."Can you show me a map that tell us where the continental ice sheets were in South America during the ice ages?" See the map on page 64 in the book "Late Glacial and Postglacial Environmental Changes; Quaternary, Carboniferous-Permian, and Proterozoic" edited by I. Peter Martini."So, was that your college geology textbook?" I have read many geology textbooks, but I have never been to college as a student.

Just found some very interesting information on some diatoms found in Antarctica that we had been talking about earlier. It seems some of them did not arrive by ice or wind. "We suggest that if the microfossils in the surface unit arrived by glacial transport mechanisms, they ought to occur within a glacial deposit of younger age than the underlying lodgement tills. If the microfossils arrived by eolian processes, they should occur in surface deposits of disparate origin but of unknown age, both glacial and nonglacial, given the ability for the deposit to trap fine-grained, wind-blown material (McFadden, Wells, and Jercinovich 1987; Wells et al. 1995)." It would seem that my earlier assessment that some of these diatoms could have been deposited by a rise in sea level at the end of the last ice age may be on target. It would also seem that I am not the only one finding marine diatoms on land that were not deposited by glacial activity or by wind action. Here is a link to this site.
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1997/nsf97160/ch9.htm#fig1