From:    Michael Siemon
To:      All                                    Nov-15-93 05:44PM
Subject: Re: Flood(TM) Dates.

Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC
From: mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon)
Message-ID: <2c9bak$hv0@panix.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins

In <2c93q8$e3c@crchh7af.bnr.ca> blakeman@bnr.ca (Jim Blakeman) writes:


>I looked this up a long time ago.  Genesis dates the flood around
>1980 B.C...that's assuming a 6K age of the earth and a little over
>2000 years after Adam & Eve.

>How does this date fit into history...what was going on in other cultures
>that disproves it?  I don't make a point of keeping up with the ark stuff,
>but I'm curious.

Actually, your "date" is a bit low for the most straightforward reckoning
of a Flood date from genealogies (down to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and
subsequent references about the length of time in Egypt and from the Exodus
to the construction of the Temple -- that would place the flood circa 2250
BCE.  But since it doesn't much affect the case, I'll use your date.

In 1980 BCE, the first interregunum of Egyptian history, after the breakup
of the Old Kingdom (apparently, at least partly becuase of LOW Nile floods
in the late 3rd millenium :-)), was drawing to a close and the 11th dynasty
(from Thebes) was beginning to get the upper hand over its rival down river
in "Herakleopolis" (to use the later Greek nomeclature.)  The pyramids at
Giza were centuries old by then (and have no trace of inundation with a silt
layer, not even the standard annual Nile silt -- the Egyptinas knew where
to build to avoid water :-))  More seriously, the MUD BRICK taombs at Abydos
COULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED to the present, with anything remotely like their
individual distinct bricks, had there been a Flood(tm) at any time after
3500 BCE (to be conservative.)

In 1980 BCE, the Sumerian Renaissance, after the collapse of Sargon's
Akkadian Empire (from circa 2400 BCE and lasting three or four generations),
was well under way, and mud brick archives that constituted the foundations
of 2 more millenia of Mesopotamian civilization were being scratched out
in the Euphrastes flood-plain.  (These Sumerians were then "recording" the
story of a massive flood, from which Ziusudra saved himself alone of human
kind, along with his family and cattle and provisions, by building a boat
of immense dimensions at the command of a benevolent god, as having happened
about 1000 years earlier.  Funny thing about myths ...)  Note that recent
work (widely reported in the press) confirms a major Middle Eastern period
of drought at the end of the Akkadian state, just at the time that most
"calculations" place the Flood(tm).

In 1980 BCE, the earliest traces of Shang "oracle bones" (cracked turtle
shells used for omen prognostication) are traceable in China (with no
evidence in these strata or any others before or afterwards of floods
greater than might be generally statistically expected in a major river
valley.)

By 1980 BCE, urban (or at least "high village, agricultural") sites are
very widespread in the Middle East, beyond that into the Indus Valley
(which has no trace of flooding as the reason for abandonment), and into
Crete and around the Mediterannean.  It is the high Bronze Age, and
human cultures are flourishing around the globe (early predecessors of
American cultures are also detectable from this time or not much later.)

Rice culture had been established in Asia at least a millenium or two
before 1980 BCE.  Wheat, spelt, barley and other grains had been grown
in China for a millenium, maybe or maybe not with influence from the
West, where settled agriculture in wheat goes back to something like
7000-8000 BCE.

All of this would have been EVIDENTLY disrupted by a global flood (quite
aside from the physical and geological impossibility of the same :-)) at
ANY time after the Neolithic transition (which is not to say that there is
any ground for detecting a Flood(tm) at any time BEFORE that transition.

The Noachian Flood, overtopping the highest mountains for a year (cf.
Genesis 7:19, 8:5) never happened.  Period.
--
Michael L. Siemon             We must know the truth, and we must
mls@ulysses.att.com           love the truth we know, and we must
     - or -                   act according to the measure of our love.
mls@panix.com                                         -- Thomas Merton