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Did
fossils
inspire
ancient
flood
legends?
Sept.
6,
2004
Special to World Science
Many
ancient
and
modern
cultures
have
creation
myths
involving
flood
legends similar to the Bible's story of Noah's Ark.
Thinkers over the centuries, including Leonardo da Vinci, have debated whether the stories were true.
 |
| Detail
of
"The
Flood"
from
Michelangelo's
Sistine
Chapel
paintings,
Rome,
depicting
the
Bible's
flood
story.
In
the
story,
God
sent
a
flood
to
cleanse
Earth
of
man
and
his
wickedness
the
Overcome by the wickedness.
God
spared only
Noah
and
his
family,
instructing
Noah
to
build an ark and to take on board a male and a female of every species of bird and beast.
Ancient civilizations such as
China,
India,
Russia,
Babylonia,
Wales, India, America,
Peru,
Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra,
and
Polynesia all have their own versions of a giant flood
tale. |
In
the
past few years it has become popular to believe they were
–
that a
primordial flood really happened. Recent studies claim to back up the notion
scientifically; for instance,
there
are
findings that a
titanic flood created the Black Sea in the Middle East 7,500 years ago.
But a
better
explanation
may
exist,
a
physicist
says.
Fossils of ancient fish and marine organisms
are
often
found high in mountains, due to the movement of rocks through geologic
processes.
The physicist, Richard K.
Jeck,
says
these fossils could have inspired people to believe the areas were once flooded.
"Fossils of marine organisms, especially shellfish like clams and other molluscs, and sometimes fish, can be found in relatively high elevations in many places around the world," wrote Jeck, who is also a research meteorologist at the Federal Aviation Administration Technical Center near Atlantic City, New Jersey. Jeck published this hypothesis in the June issue of the journal Antiquity.
The sea life fossils "are found throughout the Near East and countries bordering the Mediterranean," the area from which the Bible stories came, he wrote.
This "can explain why stories of a great flood are found in the folklore or legends of ancient peoples in diverse places around the globe," he wrote. "It is understandable that primitive peoples had no other conclusion to draw than that a deep flood, one like no other in their experience, must have put those seashells way up there. They did not know about mountain building and the geological processes that can raise fossil-bearing, sedimentary rock strata to great heights."
Jeck's ideas aren't likely to end the debate. The findings about the ancient Black Sea flood are widely accepted, for
instance.
Backing
them
up,
archaeologists
have
found
signs
of
human
habitation
hundreds
of
feet
below
the
sea.
But
there
are
problems
with the
claim
that
the Black Sea
flood
is
the
source
of
the
Noah's
ark
flood
story, Jeck
wrote.
For
instance,
the evidence for this flood says nothing about a rainstorm, which figures prominently in the
Noah
story.
In
the
story,
God
sent
a
flood
to
cleanse
Earth
of
man
and
his
wickedness
the
Overcome
by
the
wickedness.
God
spared
only
Noah
and
his
family,
instructing
Noah
to
build
an
ark
and
to
take
on
board
a
male
and
a
female
of
every
species
of
bird
and
beast.
The hypothesis that the Black Sea flood is the source of the Noah's Ark story was proposed in the late 1990s by the Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman. Pitman and Ryan wrote that the flood was caused by a massive overflow of water from the Mediterranean Sea due to rising water levels at the end of the last Ice Age.
—EJL
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