Does it? Does it my hairy arse;
LOL@Abaddon
You all may find the following of interest (the author is John Croft):
"A common statement in support of the flood is that large areas of
the earth have been flooded.
The truth is, most areas of the Earth have been under water at one time or
another. All sedimentary rocks (with the possible exception of
Aeolian Sandstone), have been formed as deposition layers under
water. This would indicate that everywhere a sedimentary rock has
been located that area was, at that time under water. The trouble
comes from the use of the word "flood" which is usually taken to
mean "a rapid and disastrous catastrophe". Evidence shown on the
margins of the formation of these sedimentary rocks show that the
changes in sea levels have been very slow - in the order usually of
millimetres per year. Hardly discernible for anything except over
geological timescales.
It used to be thought that there were 4 great Pleistocene
Glacial Periods
European Name/American Name rough time period
Gunz/Nebraskan Glacial
Cromer/Afton Interglacial
Mindel/Kansan Glacial
Holstein(Hoxnian)/Yarmouth Interglacial
Riss/Illinoian Glacial 180-130,000 years ago
Eemian/Sangamon interglacial 130-75,000 years ago
Wurm/Wisconsan Glacial 75-10,000 years ago
Flandrian/Recent Interglacial 10,000 to present
To this sequence in Europe two earlier periods have been added, the
Donau and the Bibber.
Generally Interglacial periods have been periods in which sea levels
have risen, glacial periods are those when they have fallen. Again,
to speak of "flooding" is a misnomer. These sea level rises have
been on the order of 130-140 metres over 5-7,000 years, giving an
annual rise of 26 metres a millennium (i.e. 2.6 centimetres per year -
hardly "catastrophic" - even snails could save themselves at that
pace)!
To find an idea of the areas that would have been effected by
interglacial periods one needs to get a good map of the
world's oceans and look at all those areas where sealevels are above -
130 to -140 metres below sea level today. These would have been
areas *above* sea level during one of the Ice Age peaks.
What you find is, for instance, the Adriatic would have been dry land,
Britain would have been joined on to the mainland (and Ireland joined
to Britain), with the whole of the North Sea being above water.
Equally the "Sunda Shelf" joining Borneo, Java, Sumatra and Mainland
South East Asia would have been above sea level during the glacial
period. Equally the "Sahul Shelf" joining Australia and Papua New
Guinea, and the Bass Shelf, joining Tasmania to Australia would have
been dry land. The Florida Keys too would have been dry and a large
area off Yucatan in Central America.
These sea level rises could scarcely have generated stories
of "catastrophic floods" of the Noahite variety. There are a few exceptions to this trend.
These occur when there are seas with narrow openings to an ocean. There are a number
of these around the world. The classic one is of course the
Mediterranean, in which for instance the Straits of Gibraltar act as
a "dam wall". Subsequent evaporation of the enclosed sea behind the
wall then sees the sea reduced to a brakish salt-lake. The Bab el
Mundib between Yemen and the Afar Triangle in Eritrea is another such
dam-wall, as is the Bosphorus and the Straits of Hormuz across the
Persian Gulf. This is what led Pitman and Ryan to suggest a rapid
flood of the Black Sea some 5,600 BCE.
One may also like to get Steven Oppenheimer's book "East of
Eden" which has a series of interesting charts showing sea level
rises in various locations around the world. Unfortunately while I
mentioned a sea level rise of 130-140 metres as a general rule, when
you consult these graphs there is a general rule which needs to be
taken into account.
Firstly the graphs are not smooth curves. It appears that there were
three more rapid rises, followed by periods of thousands of years of
stability, before another rapid rise. It has been shown that these
periods of stability are associated with a general worsening of the
weather where glacial conditions can in fact seem to return. For
instance the Wurm glaxial maximum was 18,000 BCE. There was a
general warming trend in which sea levels rose by about 40 metres
until 10,000 BCE, during the "Younger Dryas" when for a while it
looked like the Ice Age was returning. The Gulf Stream, which had
been reaching Iceland now reached no further than Portugal. In fact
in some areas, sea levels fell for a while.
Secondly, because 1 cubic metre of water weighs a tonne, loading the
surface with 140 tonnes per square metre can cause isostatic
movements of the Earth's crust. There is similar corresponding
releases in pressure associated with the removal of the continental
glacial burden. Thus today, for instance Norway and Sweden are
rising (from the disappearance of the Glaciers), whilst Holland and
East Anglia are falling (from the weight of the North Sea on the
crust - and to counter the compensating rise over Scandinavia and
Scotland!)
Thirdly you need to take into account Glacial Meltwater. For
example, Northern Hemisphere Glaciers melt at their southern edge.
This is fine when we have rivers running south to cart all the
Meltwater away, but there are at least four areas where this is not
true. The first is the Mackenzie River in Canada. During the Ice
Age, Meltwater would have accumulated to form a huge Meltwater Lake -
bigger by far than the current Great Lakes (Scientists call it Lake
Agassiz after the Swiss scientist who discovered the Ice Ages).
Eventually as the Ice Water Melted, the dam wall disappeared and Lake
Agassiz drained northwards - the Great and Lesser Bear Lakes are all
that survives. A similar thing happened with Hudson's Bay. The
Connection across the mouth of the Hudsons Bay with Labrador, Baffin
Island and the NW Territorias created a dam wall for a huge inland
meltwater lake. Eventually as the Ice-plug melted and began to foat,
suddenly the flood of cold Ice Water rushed into the North Atlantic
displacing the guld stream to the south and precipitating the shift
in the Global Conveyor southwards (with the Gulf Stream sinking below
Portugal) precipitating the Younger Dryas. Similarly the melting of
glaciers as a result of Global Warming due to Greenhouse Gas
accumulation could achieve the same today. Since the Gulf Stream
provides 30% of Western Europe's summer warmth - it will make Britain
look like Siberia)
The Baltic is another example of the same thing. 17,000 years ago
the Scandinavian ice sheet withdrew from the lowlands of northern
Germany and the Baltic region and the melted snow and ice rose
between the mountains in the south and in the north. About 7000 years
later so much water was collected in the huge reservoir that it was
sizeably higher than the global sea level in that time. The
difference of the sea levels of 20, 30 or even more meters was
removed as the Baltic reservoir could adjust its sea level to that of
the North Sea through an opening in the middle of Sweden. Because of
this connection to the North Sea salt water and subsequently the
shell Yoldia arctica could get into the former reservoir. According
to this shell this state of development of the Baltic Sea is called
Yoldia Sea. In the following time the Scandinavian ice began to melt
more and more, the pressure on northern Europe caused by the ice (it
was equal to the pressure caused by mountains with a height of more
than 1000 meters) grew smaller.
As a consequence of this smaller pressure an elevation of Scandinavia
closed the connection between Yoldia Sea and North Sea.The Baltic Sea
became fresher again and the snail Ancylus fluviatilis, living in
fresh water gave the inland lake its name Ancylus Sea. The rise of
the sea level let water get to the, till then continental region of
the western Baltic Sea and created a new connection to the North Sea
through the belts, which can still be proved today on the ground of
the Baltic Sea. After the adjustment of the sea levels about 7,000
years ago salt water could flow into the Baltic Sea again.
A typical snail in this period was Littorina littorea, according to
which this phase of development is called Littorina Sea. About 3,000
years later the rise of the Danish islands started to increase an the
ground of the sea was lifted in the region of the belts and sounds,
so that the amount of exchanged water decreased. The salt content
reduced and the Baltic Sea became an sea with brackish water. The
index fossil of this period is the snail Limnaea ovata and because of
that this phase is called Limnaea Sea. 4,000 years ago the Baltic Sea
reached today's coasts. Since 2,500 years the Baltic Sea is called
Mya Sea, named after the Sand Gaper Shell Mya arenaria.
Also in Siberia, all the Rivers run northwards. 17,000 years ago
when Ice Began to Melt the northward draining rivers (Ob, Lena,
Yemesei) were dammed and a huge inland lake formed over Western
Siberia. Eventually this formed a channel into the Aral Sea, which
in turn over filled its basin draining into the Caspian, which also
flooded, particularly over the shallow northern end into the Volga
Don gap and then into the Black Sea which as the Euxine Lake was much
larger than it is today. The eventual melting of the Ice Plug on the
northwards running rivers suddenly drained all the water of the West
Siberian lake, causing the Aral Sea and the Caspian Sea to shrink in
size."
Dansk
