To aChristian:
Let me try to answer some of the questions and problems you've raised. I will point out one major gripe I have with the sort of ad hoc attempt at explanation that this "meteor theory" is: By setting forth the material that COJ posted last year alongside the material from your linked "meteor theory" website and other stories, you've set forth two mutually exclusive and contradictory hypotheses. COJ's material points out evidence that a massive flood drowned the entire southern end of Mesopotamia around 3500 B.C. (actually the evidence for this is rather poor), whereas your material here claims that different evidence indicates 2350 B.C. and entirely different causes. Doesn't that bother you? It only makes you appear to be grasping at straws.
Yes, it's interesting that tree ring methods and perhaps traces in mythology indicate a major climate-altering event around 2350 B.C. But it's a long road from there to a set of evidence that supports Noah's Flood -- even a local flood. As the article you posted from, "The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined" by Greg Bryant said, there were a number of periods of low tree ring growth, possibly accompanied by "dark ages". It may or may not be that some of these events were precipitated by meteor/comet impacts. However, some events have been shown to be almost certainly caused by volcanic eruptions. For example, there was a massive eruption of the Aegean island Santorini, generally dated to the vicinity of 1620 to 1650 B.C. (cf http://www.geo.aau.dk/palstrat/tom/santorini_homepage/minoaneruption.htm , http://library.thinkquest.org/C0112681/Eng/Normal/Volcanoes_World/Accounts/Santorini.htm ), which may well have caused the collapse of the Minoan civilization which lived on it and surrounding islands, as well as caused a major setback for other civilizations in the vicinity. The article said that there was an environmental shock found by tree ring methods around 1628-1623 B.C., which is pretty close. Other more recent volcanic events, such as the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, created documented climate changes that lasted a year or more.
The point about these "meteor theories" of climate change is that they're far more speculative than other theories of climate change. That doesn't mean they're less valid, just less documented. There are other documented episodes of climate change that affected civilizations greatly, but lasted long periods of time, and they certainly were not caused by a specific catastrophe, but by long-term and yet-undetermined causes. Such an episode is the long period of warm weather from roughly 700 to 1300 A.D., followed by the Little Ice Age for another 400 or so years. The latter, by the way, was apparently related to sunspots, because hardly any were observed during the entire time. This climate change also appeared in tree ring data, where the usual 22-year cycle disappeared during that time.
The two articles you posted or posted links to have a certain sensationalism to them. The original material is more conservative and more informative. The original material posted by the "64th Annual Meteoritical Society Meeting (2001)" can be found in pdf format here (note that this will take awhile to load), http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2001/pdf/5196.pdf , and in html format here, http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Gt4gSGtNbuc:www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2001/pdf/5196.pdf+geology+iraq+recent&hl=en . The pdf document contains a Landsat picture of the roughly circular structure of interest. A picture map of the location can be found here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/564185/posts .
The original material gives some interesting information. For one thing, the coast (which is rather fuzzy because it's hard to define because of the marshy conditions) has migrated seaward some 130-150 km, and possibly more, according to some websites. That puts the circular structure very near the coast, and perhaps a little out in the Persian Gulf, of 2350 B.C. In any case, the water in which the hypothetical meteor strike occurred could have been no more than a few meters deep, which means that relatively little flooding would have occurred inland. There simply was not enough water at or near the coast to flood a large inland region to the required depth (according you your 'best' scenario) for the better part of a year. Note that Baghdad is about 350 km. from the site of the circular depression, and is 34 m. above sea level (cf. Encyclopedia Britannica). A rough estimate from a standard relief map of Iraq suggests that a width of roughly 120 km. along the Tigris-Euphrates valley is below the 34 m. mark. According to the scenario you've suggested for Noah's Flood, and somewhat according to that suggested by COJ, approximately that volume, at a bare minimum, would have to be filled with water in order to cause Noah's Flood. That works out to about 715 cubic km. Now, the "circular depression" is about 3.4 km. in diameter. If we generously allow (actually this is ridiculously generous because a strike that leaves a crater in a certain depth of water cannot displace more than a few times more than a volume of water equal to the diameter times the depth; see below) that a meteor strike displaced a volume of water 10 times the volume of a sphere the same diameter, that works out to about 21 cubic km. -- which is 33 times less than the volume of water needed to flood a conservative volume from the ancient coast to Baghdad -- which would just barely reach the latter. Thus, there is simply not nearly enough water to do the job. If we now do a ridiculously conservative calculation and assume that the Flood was just a puddle 25 km in diameter and 21 m. (30 cubits) deep (that's allowing 15 cubits for 1/2 the height of the ark, and "high mountains" 15 cubits in height), that works out to a Flood volume of 41 cubic km. -- still not enough for an impact to flood the land. Finally, if we do a more realistic calculation of the maximum volume of strike-displaced water, according to what I described above, using a diameter of 3.4 km, depth of 20 m. and fudge factor of 10, we get about 1.8 cubic km. of displace water. So no matter how you look at it, given reasonable and very conservative assumptions and given what we know about the geology of the region, there is simply no way a meteor strike could have caused Noah's Flood by displacing water in a splash.
What about "the vast springs of the watery deep"? Whatever the Bible means by that, we certainly do not know. Many have speculated that it meant some sort of vast underground water reservoir of some sort. You yourself postulated ground water coming up through a cracked earth's crust. Anewperson spoke of the earth's crust cracking open and apparently referred to water coming up from the earth's mantle. Neither scenario comes close to being realistic. First, ground water is not some sort of giant underground lake just waiting to spurt forth if overlying soil and rock is somehow removed. It is water that percolates through sand and gravel, or through cracks in bedrock, and it is physically impossible for quantities massive enough to flood a volume as described above to just shoot out of the ground. If you disagree, then postulate a physically plausible theory of how it might happen. Similarly, while the earth's mantle contains massive quantities of water, the water is dissolved in the magma and is held at some 1100 degrees Celsius and at extremely high pressure. When pressure is released, as in a large volcanic eruption, the water simply explodes out of the magma just as if you pulled the lid off a giant pressure cooker containing water at 1100 degrees. Steam is created, not a flood of water. As an excercise, see if you can calculated just how much water-containing magma would have to be erupted to cause a flood big enough to be Noah's. Then tell our readers where all that magma and such disappeared to since 2350 B.C.
Another problem is containing the Flood waters. Suppose that part of your scenario is right, and that the trough between the Arabian peninsula and Zagros mountains in which the Tigris-Euphrates valley sits somehow got filled with enough water to be Noah's Flood. Just how would the water keep from running southeast right down the river valley and into the Persian Gulf? The only way would be for some kind of damn to form somewhere around the southeast end of the valley. But how could it form? The geology of the area suggests that the present low-lying land has been low-lying for a lot longer than since 2350 B.C. Obviously the land at the Gulf end is right at sea level, so even using the above absolute minimum of about 20 m. depth for the Flood, you'd need a dam at least that high and long enough to cross the entire valley -- at least 100-150 km. Is there any evidence for such a damn? Not a bit. How about throwing up a temporary dam by a meteor strike? Could a strike that leaves a crater 3.4 km across somehow throw up an earthen dam 100-150 km long? No. So there is simply no way to contain any water that might have been splashed up into the Tigris-Euphrates valley. It would run off into the Gulf in at most a few days, which in no way corresponds to the biblical account. COJ and I discussed this, partly on H2O and largely via email. Due to time constraints I was not able to continue our discussion, but this was one problem he was never able to deal with.
The original "circular depression" material in pdf format pointed out that the depression was filled with a lake until Saddam Hussein's troops drained the area for military purposes in 1993. Interestingly, the depression has some sort of rim around it (the height and characteristics are not specified), which may well suggest that the feature is an impact crater. I seriously doubt it, though, because if a huge 3.4 km crater were formed just 4350 years ago, and most of the crater were filled in by floodplain sediments since then, then a rim would hardly have survived. I think that the depression will be found to have been formed by other causes.
One of the biggest holes in any theory trying to connect the circular depression with a specific time period is that no one has actually connected the timing of formation of the depression with about the year 2350 B.C. The original pdf material only says that "Recent" sediments are less than 5000 years old. The space.com article you linked to said that some unspecified "Biblical stories, apocalyptic visions, ancient art and scientific data all seem to intersect at around 2350 B.C" but gave no solid particulars and ignored a number of very real problems in dating such things so precisely. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh is variously dated as having originated anywhere from 2200 to 3500 B.C. And the article specifically stated: "Arriving at an exact date will be difficult, researchers said." So in reality there is nothing connecting this circular depression with any ancient events except speculation that "could provide a smoking gun." The London "Telegraph" blurb went rather out on a limb not only by calling the depression a "crater" prematurely, but by implying that the dating of the "crater" was a good deal more established than the original report said.
So as usual when people are trying desperately to support a cherished idea for which little or no evidence exists, we find far more speculation than fact, and a willingness by many commentators to take the conclusions much further than is justified by the facts.
At this point, aChristian, I'll address some of the specific comments and questions you asked in your last post to me:
: Obviously I don't have all the answers.
Nor do I, but as I pointed out above, you're grasping at anything at all to support your desire, whether what you grasp is consistent with other things you grasp.
: My primary point in starting the thread, as you can see from its title, is that I find the tree ring dating of a major climate altering event, such as a large meteor impact, in 2350 B.C. quite interesting.
But as you can see for yourself, no large meteor impact has been dated to that year. The only connection is extremely speculative, and is a result of assuming that an unproved impact occurred at the same time that an apparent climate change occurred. The hole here is that other events could just as well have caused the climate changes. But neither you nor the sources you cited said anything about that. You just made assumptions.
: For that is the exact date that Bible chronology provides us with for Noah's flood.
Not necessarily. Those great lights John Whitcomb and Henry Morris pointed out in their 1961 book The Genesis Flood that the so-called Bible chronology actually has a lot of slop in it. There is no way to tell, for example, if the various "begats" referred exclusively to a father-son relationship, or sometimes to an ancestor-descendent relationship. Whitcomb and Morris gave a number of examples of problems in accepting the sort of linear dating that the Watchtower Society and Bishop Ussher used.
: How a meteor impact could have caused a flood like the one described in Genesis is not clear.
I have shown quantitatively that it is impossible.
: Your suggestion that "such a large disaster could easily have given rise to a Flood Myth," but could not account for a flood in which "all the high mountains were covered for nearly half a year," certainly seems to be a reasonable one.
It is not just reasonable, it is definitive. Look over the above calculations and see how conservative I was in making them.
: Keep in mind, however, that advocates of a local flood point out that the expression "high mountains" should be translated "high hills" and refers only to the hills in a portion of southern Iraq, which are not all that "high" now and were even less "high" then.
Do you really think that "all the high mountains" refers to hills not more than 20 feet high? If you use a realistic figure, the 'meteoric local flood theory' only gets worse.
: Though you seem absolutely certain that no large flood even vaugely fitting the description of the one described in Genesis could have been caused by a meteor impact, others evidently are not so sure, as evidenced from the contents of the space.com article.
I haven't read space.com before, but if this article is representative of what they normally put out, I'm not going to start reading it. The article fairly screams of sensationalism, quite in contrast with the original Meteorical Society article.
: Do you really know what may or may not have resulted from such an impact?
To a certain extent, yes, as I have described above. Physics and geology place certain limits on what is possible. You can't make a tiny volume of splash water fill a huge geological basin. You can't make ground water fill it either.
: Could it have cracked the earth's crust causing ground water to rise to the surface for several months before draining into the Persian Gulf?
No, for reasons I described above. Also, any water that you postulate might have come out of the ground would have caused a commensurate sinking of the land, i.e., 10 meters of water comes out on the land and the land would of necessity drop 10 meters. If the water then ran off into the Gulf, the land would remain sunken by an amount equal to the depth of the flood. Drainage patterns would be drastically changed, and there is no evidence whatsoever that drastic changes in drainage patterns have occurred in the Tigris-Euphrates valley in the last 5000 years. Keep in mind that Baghdad is only 34 meters above sea level, and so a flood only half that depth that caused a commensurate impact on the level of the land in the entire region would have a major effect.
: Could it have caused several volcanic erruptions which spewed vast amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere?
Perhaps, but where is the evidence? Are there any volcanos in the region today? Not that I'm aware of. A volcano big enough to do what you'd like, near enough to be created by a meteor strike, would certainly exist today. Further, for reasons I explained above, the water vapor would come out as superheated steam and would dissipate rapidly. There's no way it would sit above a small region and just start precipitating.
: Could it have caused other flood producing effects you and I are not now aware of?
Who knows? Why not just say, "God did it" and leave it at that? When you get to this level of desperation in grasping for 'answers', you might as well hang it up.
: I don't know. But the fact of the matter is that tree ring studies now date a very significant climate altering event, such as a large meteor impact or several such impacts, to 2350 B.C., the same date the Bible indicates Noah's flood took place.
As I've shown, this stuff is completely speculative and the events are connected mainly by a desire to see one.
In sum, I don't see any reason that a particular large event, even a meteor impact, couldn't have given rise to a Flood myth. It's just that no evidence has yet surfaced that is both consistent with the details of the biblical story and with solid science.
AlanF
