Ancient Tsunami Source of Flood Legend?

by willyloman 4 Replies latest jw friends

  • willyloman
    willyloman

    This is being reported by MSNBC. Wonder if the biblical Flood legend, and related stories, stems from this event?

    Ancient tsunami devastated Mediterranean

    Volcano avalanche 8,000 years ago triggered 10-story wave By Ker Than Staff Writer LiveScience Updated: 10:29 a.m. PT Nov 30, 2006

    A volcano avalanche in Sicily 8,000 years ago triggered a devastating tsunami taller than a 10-story building that spread across the entire Mediterranean Sea, slamming into the shores of three continents in only a few hours.

    A new computer simulation of the ancient event reveals for the first time the enormity of the catastrophe and its far-reaching effects.

    The Mt. Etna avalanche sent 6 cubic miles of rock and sediment tumbling into the water—enough material to cover the entire island of Manhattan in a layer of debris thicker than the Empire State Building is tall.

    The mountain of rubble crashed into the water at more than 200 mph. It pummeled the sea bed, transformed thick layers of soft marine sediment into jelly and triggered an underwater mudslide that flowed for hundreds of miles.

    To create their computer simulation, researchers at the National Institute of Geology and Volcanology in Italy used sonar-equipped boats to survey seafloor sediment displaced by the Mt. Etna avalanche.

    Their recreation suggests the tsunami's waves reached heights of up to 130 feet and maximum speeds of up to 450 mph, making it more powerful than the Indonesian tsunami that killed more than 180,000 people in 2004.

    The researchers have also linked the ancient tsunami with the mysterious abandonment of Atlit-Yam, a Neolithic village located along the coast of present-day Israel. When archeologists discovered the village about 20 years ago, they found evidence of a sudden evacuation, including a pile of fish that had been gutted and sorted but then left to rot.

    "A tsunami was not suspected before," lead researcher Maria Pareschi told LiveScience.

    According to Pareschi, if the same tsunami struck today, Southern Italy would be inundated within the first 15 minutes. In one hour, the waves would reach Greece's western coasts. After an hour and a half, the city of Benghazi in Northern Africa would be hit. At the three and a half hour mark, the waves would have traversed the entire Mediterranean to reach the coasts of Israel, Lebanon and Syria.

    Avalanches and minor eruptions still occur on Mt. Etna today, but so far, nothing approaching the magnitude of the ancient event.

    "Should the Neolithic Etna tsunami have occurred today, the impact is tremendous because the Eastern Mediterranean coasts are very inhabited ones," Pereschi said.

    © 2006 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

    URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15971504/

  • lonelysheep
    lonelysheep

    It very well could have. That was interesting, Willy.

    Playing God's advocate here, how do they know for sure that this tsunami actually took place?

  • jaguarbass
    jaguarbass

    Anythings a possibility 8,000 years ago. We dont even know what happened 2,000 years ago. Something like that if it happened could be the source of the flood legend. That would deffinitely diminish the credibility of a God like character who was in control, and who directed the writing of the bible. You can put that in the long list of possibilities.

  • hopelesslystained
    hopelesslystained

    Along the same lines, I watched a History Channel show about the plagues of Egypt being easily explained by weather science, including the red rain of blood. I highly recommend watching, The Exodus Decoded
    Hope

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    There certainly have been many terrible disasters in the past, but I do not put much stock in this tsunami as an explanation for the Flood stories of Mesopotamia and the OT (which is a version of the Mesopotamian myth), because there is already a much better candidate: a series of devastating floods that occurred in Mesopotamia in the fourth and third millennium BC. The first flood was the most devastating one, which took place around 3500 BC and which left an enormous layer of silt presently 11 feet thick at Ur. Smaller floods occurred at Kish around 3000 to 2900 (producing a smaller layer of clay about 10 inches thick), and the latter flood is probably the same one that occurred at Shuruppak around 2900 BC, which left about 15 inches of clay. This last flood is the most interesting one because the Sumerian flood hero, Ziusudra, was the king of Shuruppak, and the Sumerian King List places the flood before the Early Dynastic period, which is precisely when the Shuruppak-Kish flood occurred. This is imho the most plausible explanation of the Mesopotamian flood myth. By the time the Gilgamesh Epic was put to writing around 2000 BC, memories of these local floods that occurred at different times became a memory of a single region-wide flood that occurred before the Early Dynastic period. The Gilgamesh Epic (which in its Akkadian form named Ut-napishtim as the flood hero) was the most famous piece of Mesopotamian literature, with cuneiform copies discovered at Megiddo in Israel and in the Hittite archive in Asia Minor. The Greek myth of Deucalion is almost certainly derivative of it, as were many other Greek myths of ANE origin (cf. the Gilgamos mentioned by Aelianus). Similarly, cf. the Gilgamesh and Atambish (= Ut-napishtim) mentioned in the Jewish Book of Giants.

    Along the same lines, I watched a History Channel show about the plagues of Egypt being easily explained by weather science, including the red rain of blood. I highly recommend watching, The Exodus Decoded

    Actually, I would not recommend this program at all; it is more fantasy or pseudo-history than anything else. I watched it with astonishment at the cavalier way it jumped to conclusions, ignored contrary evidence, misinterpreted facts, conflated different historical periods, built on speculation as if it were fact, and provided ludicrous "scientific" and historical explanations which were impossible. Not to mention editing the interviews with experts in ways that quoted them out of context. Caveat emptor. There have been many responses to the program, including, for example:

    http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BAR/bswbba3206f4.html

    http://www.bib-arch.org/bswbOOexodusbeware.html

    http://abr.christiananswers.net/articles/article58.html

    and Christopher Heard's extensive analysis (with occasional responses by Jacobovinci):

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=60

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=67

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=79

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=70

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=86

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=80

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=104

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=107

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=106

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=108

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=117

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=141

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=176

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=228

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=360

    http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=429

    Bottom line is that Jacobovinci is neither an archaeologist, historian, or biblical scholar, and it shows at almost every turn.

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