WISDOM

The Great Flood... Did it happen as written in the Bible? Many claim "yes" while others say "no." If a real thing, when was it? How did it come about? Is there evidence?

There are 150+ cultures around the world that remember and speak of a great flood story in antiquity. That, alone, speaks to something significant having happed in our distant past. There are many, and with increasing numbers, of archeological digs revealing settlements and cities buried under dirt and sands that appear to have been either buried intentionally or done so in enormous flood water deposited. Many are in the cradle of civilization, ancient Iraq and the greater middle east, as well as finds just about everywhere shovels break dirt. Multispectral satellite and LiDAR-based archeology is finding structures of temples, towns, cities, and even mega-cities in the Sahara Desert, across Central and South America, and just about everywhere they look on land and in coastal waters around the world. And then, there are the settlements, towns, and cities being discovered world-wide... beneath the waves of our seas. Over 200 in the Mediterranean, alone. For the most part, everywhere scientists, both professional and amateur, look they're finding unknown structures, forgotten temples, and lost urban areas under 100' to 400' of water... some deeper, much deeper. Some of the newest discoveries are being made off the western and southern coasts of India... most notably is in the Gulf of Khambhat. There, ruins have been scientifically dated (carbon dating of a chunk of a tree laying at the submerged site) to ~9,500 years old... that's 7,500 B.C. Is this chunk of tree dated from the original submerging flood event of the city or was it deposited at a later time. Regardless, the city is aged at a minimum date to 7,500 B.C. yet may be older. That, alone, pushes back by thousands of years organized civilization from what's known out of Mesopotamian and Egyptian archeological thought. Though, "mythological" and "legend" references in the Hindu Vedas and Sumerian clay tablets have the newly discovered city, and other cities in the Middle East, possibly going back 32,000 years ago and more... as this city in India is possibly the fabled Dwarka. Dwarka was lost to the sea after Lord Krishna departed to the heavenly abode, according to the ancient texts, drowning in the waves some 12,800 to 9,000 years ago. Based on scientific flood simulations of the region, the seas rose over the city in the mid-9,000 B.C. time period. The city was lost to the sea... was it in the Great Flood? Below are several links to articles and videos about this rediscovered city, and other newly discovered archeological finds.

Article Link - Ancient, submerged city discovery in India's Gulf of Khambhat

Article Link - 15 Underwater Cities from Around the World

Video Link - Indias Ancient Underwater Civilization

The question concerning the Great Flood is not "if" it happened, it's about "when" it happened and what did it look like. There are two major candidates for the time of the Great Flood. One, approximately 12,800 years ago... that's ~10,800 B.C. at the end of the most recent glaciation period of the ice age, the Younger Dryas event. A second candidate is the Burckle impact event some ~5,000 years ago... that's ~3,000 B.C. in the Indian Ocean.

The world's seas rose some 400 feet between 12,800 to 11,600 years ago in the Younger Dryas event. What caused the Younger Dryas? Many think it was caused by a cosmic event... a comet or asteroid. Some do their best to refute the impact theories, instead blaming man burning the vast dry grasslands of North America and other places around the world at this time, all of them. In a word about man setting fire to everything... absurd. Massive and rapid world-wide temperature changes that occurred (see figure Integrated Cosmic Events and Climate Chart below) require a significant, shocking event to trigger it. Not a bunch of humans in small clans running around setting fire to all the lands across the continents... that they lived upon. Bigger things are at play.

Figure - Integrated Cosmic Events and Climate Chart

Approximately 12,800 years ago, discovered evidence points to a cosmic event having taken place. Some of the evidence speaks of an asteroid or comet or their shattered debris striking in the Southeast Asia and Australian region and also across the northern hemisphere of the earth, from Syria in the Middle East across the Mediterranean and Europe then across the Atlantic to the massive glaciers of Greenland and North America. Argued over evidence, by the scientific community, from Syria and Eastern Europe of impact or debris fields from this time period gain much interest. Others are looking for impact craters across the northern hemisphere to confirm the theory. Much speculation is made as to what evidence would remain for modern science to find if a comet or asteroid struck the multi-mile tall glaciers in the north that then were made of highly compress, dense ice. Likely... no ground deforming crater would exist from anything short of a large impactor. Spheroids, always present with cosmic impactors, are found spread across the earth from Australia and Southeast Asia and across the northern hemisphere to North America. Could such burning debris cause the massive fires we have evidence of at the beginning of the Younger Dryas? If hot, burning debris from a single or multiple impactors or shattered bolides 12,900 to 12,800 years ago showered the grasslands and shrub terrain across North America in a single event or series of events over a relatively short period of time... with much of all the plant life dry, the entire continent could burn, killing in mass many of beasts... especially the large megafauna, and much of any human populations present during the event. There are questions that evidence and logic struggle with to tie a bow around an asteroid or comet as the cause or sole cause of the onset of the Younger Dryas. A cosmic event of some form is largely considered the most likely explanation but are impactor(s) the main cause of the 12,800 year ago global climatic disaster? Let's start with article and video overviews of this event in the links below.

Evidence of Cosmic Event at Abu Hureyra, Syria

Evidence for Cosmic Impact 12,800 Years Ago

13,000 Years Ago: How Bad Was the Younger Dryas in the Fertile Crescent?

Were cosmic impactors the whole story of what set off the Yonger Dryas? Solid and growing evidence points to a different or associated cause of the broad mass megafauna extinction, death of the human Clovis culture in North America, and the carbon-rich black layer from an enormous, continent sized, biomass (mostly plants) burning at 12,900 to 12,800 years ago. A major data element in this saga is that the Younger Dryas onset and ending were not uniform all over the planet. The Middle East and southern hemisphere data speak to the Younger Dryas starting sooner and finishing later than the northern hemisphere while being less severe overall in the southern hemisphere. So, are there other potential causes other than a big cosmic whack on our planet? Another cosmic event sourced from our sun has growing evidence... a super-sized Solar Proton Event (SPE). SPEs not only produce dangerous and sometimes deadly Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), but they also produce a preceding and often subsequent blasts of electromagnetic energies ranging in results from disruptive to destructive to a technological society, as we are presently on earth, hitting us such as we were at the Carrington Event in 1859. In the ancient case 12,900 to 12,800 years ago and then into the Younger Dryas period, a super-sized SPE struck the earth with an unescapable, deadly barrage of ultraviolet rays and other energies bathing and scorching the earth. The super-sized SPE at the beginning of the Younger Dryas lasted two centuries bathing the earth and glaciers with high energy radiation causing their wide-spread melting. Those same high energy radiations potentially caused the widespread burning of biomass in the geological record and further caused genetic damage and cancers to all creatures unable to shelter safely underground or elsewhere. Gone went the megafauna and humans unable to shelter or those creatures' not stout enough to survive the sun's high output ultraviolet rays and other energies. A potentially more widespread cause with the super-sized SPE at the beginning of the Younger Dryas lasting almost 200 years. Check out the following videos to get a sense of the evidence supporting the SPE theory.

Study Completely Refutes Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis

What Really Happened 12,900 Years Ago? Extraordinary Biomass-Burning, Huge Rise In Be10, Migration

What can we conclude? To start off, scientists are divided on what they think happened 12,900 to 11,600 years ago in the Younger Dryas. Disappointingly so, we appear to be suffering from the scientific community on one side of the argument saying "mine!" and the rest of the scientists on the other side also saying, "mine!" with a few uncommitted in the middle. Cosmic impactors vs. a super-sized SPE. Either or and nothing in between. Very typical of the uber-competitive scientific community. After reviewing the scientific articles and the summary videos linked in this blog, I find neither of the entrenched positions accounting for the sum-total of all evidence of the Younger Dryas. The occurrence of both cosmic events... a super-sized SPE lasting just about 200 years and one or more impactors or shattered debris showers in the region of Australia and also across a wide corridor stretching from the Middle East, Europe, Greenland, and finally into North America makes sense... based on the evidence presented, so far. A very nasty multi-event cataclysm appears to have hammered the earth spanning hundreds of years causing dramatic global change. One thing we can say is... it is highly doubtful the 12,900 to 11,600 years ago Younger Dryas event was the source of the Great Flood as legends describe in the Bible and 150+ cultural traditions around the world. At the end of the Younger Dryas, about 11,600 years ago, the waters of the world's oceans rose around 400 feet. It took decades, if not centuries, for the waters to rise globally. It was not instantaneous... instead the northern hemisphere suffered slowly melting glaciers... in geological terms and relative to our life spans. Asteroid or comet impactor's striking the multi-mile high glaciers would not blast out much, if any, dirt and rock. Instead, they would blast out massive volumes of compacted ice and maybe a little of the ground beneath, unless the impactor was a really big boy. The glaciers would be super-heated sending large volumes of vaporized water into the atmosphere that would later come down as torrent rain. Such an event would appear as the Great Flood, but it lacks elements of the account for the world-wide flooding written and spoken of in our religious and cultural traditions. Yet, it would account for the submerging of the Persian Gulf at the end of the Younger Dryas, that previously was a productive, plush plain filled with forests, expansive grass fields, animals, and humans before the rise in sea levels. Some think the Persian Gulf, now submerged by sea waters, to be the Biblical Garden of Eden. Others still search for it elsewhere around the world. And then, if what has been discussed is not enough as sources of wide-area impactors and extraterrestrial matter, there is the considered theory that what we're looking at is having passed through the tail of a large comet. If a large comet, the earth would suffer getting pummeled in shotgun fashion with smaller debris bodies from its tail impacting the earth's ice sheets or exploding in the skies across Southeast Asia and Australia and / or the northern hemisphere, littering the planet with space-born material. As world changing as this period of time and events was, it seems it was not the flooding that whisked Noah and the ark to the mountains. That points us to another source for the Great Flood "myth."

Another cosmic event, again either a comet or an asteroid, struck the deep waters of the southern Indian Ocean some 5,000 years ago. A comet is the leading favorite among the scientific community. The comet is thought to have broken up into three impactors, the largest striking the Indian Ocean and the other two striking in the northern and southern Pacific Ocean, respectively. The southern Indian Ocean impactor was a massive comet that sent enormous tidal waves across Australia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, India, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, Madagascar, Africa, and Antartica. Then, it rained for forty days and forty nights... globally raining for weeks from the vaporized ocean waters blasted into earth's atmosphere at the moment of impact of all three comet fragments. A world-wide cataclysm experiencing massive displacements of ocean waters. Speaking to the Great Flood, this devastating event fits into the Biblical and cultural narratives and timelines more so than the Younger Dryas event does. In addition to the massive tidal waves being sent in all directions, the unique geography at the mouth of the Persian Gulf is such that the giant tidal waves, now with some lost energy and height, were funneled heading at the Cradle of Civilization... Mesopotamia. Modern Iraq... and the Biblical Noah. So, was this the Great Flood told to us in of the Book of Genesis and in more than 150 traditions from cultures around the world? More evidence is being gathered and details are being complied confirming this theory. Though, evidence is strong for this event to be what was captured in Genesis. Check out the video overviews below in the provided links for more detailed insights.

Burckle Crater Impact ~5,000 Years Ago by Oz Geology

Burckle Asteroid Impact, Mega Tsunami & Global Rainstorm Behind the Biblical Flood | Ep 9.

The Burckle Crater Mega Tsunami: The Full Documentary

The Burckle impact event speaks to the lived experiences by the ancient human cultures known to have existed between 4,000 B.C. to 2,800 B.C., the beginning of recorded civilization as modern science, scholars, and theologians profess. Was the Buckle Impact Event the cause of the Great Flood? Nothing is for certain as our understanding of the ancient past is incomplete. Yet, the Burckle Impact Event is compelling in its cause and associated effects documented in our religious traditions, myths, and legends of the Great Flood.

A note concerning our other myths and legends, specifically the story of Atlantis. Did it exist? Many doubt it ever did. If it did exist, where was the famed city located and when did it sink beneath the waves? Plato speaks to this in what some call a fictional narrative in his Timaeus and Critias, providing a very detailed description of the city and its place on earth and the time it existed... the Younger Dryas. Some "experts" cite no evidence of the city has been discovered as proof Atlantis is nothing more than a fable. Others wait for "concrete" evidence before weighing on the subject. I'll be weighing in on Atlantis in a future blog soon to come.

So... What does all this have to with Primeval Origins®? Our ancient and largely undiscovered past, limited in many ways to recorded human history yet so much more exists into our deepest time, is the territory of the Primeval Origins® Epic Saga... taking seriously our myths and legends epically revealed in the pages of speculative science fantasy storytelling.

Don't forget to grab a copy of my Fan Favorite Freebie...

Primeval Origins: The Harbinger of Judgments (Digital Only Book)

B.A. Vonsik

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