Wapsi Square Forum

Older than Alexandria....

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/an ... 29650.html

One needs to remember that during the last ice age, the oceans were some 300 feet lower than today. At some point (can't find the reference), the Mediterranean sea was mostly a dried up salt flat -- the Strait of Gibraltar is pretty shallow, and served as a dam. The Sahara was grassland with many rivers as well. When the Glacial period ended, it was a waterfall, refilling the Med and Black seas. This was likely the origins of The Flood tales.

Atomic wrote:One needs to remember that during the last ice age, the oceans were some 300 feet lower than today. At some point (can't find the reference), the Mediterranean sea was mostly a dried up salt flat -- the Strait of Gibraltar is pretty shallow, and served as a dam. The Sahara was grassland with many rivers as well. When the Glacial period ended, it was a waterfall, refilling the Med and Black seas. This was likely the origins of The Flood tales.

I think the last time the Med actually dried out was some millions of years ago... the Strait is more than 900 feet deep and the recent glacial-period drop in sea level would not have been enough to close it. The Black Sea was isolated from the oceans much more recently... the Bosporus is shallower than the Strait of Gibraltar, and IIRC the Black Sea is believed to have reflooded somewhere around 5600 BCE.

As a general point you're right... quite a few shoreline sites which were occupied by humans thousands of years ago are now underwater as a result of higher sea levels.

Older than Alexandria is not that difficult--it was founded by Alexander the Great in the 330s BCE.

Now, if it were older than Thebes, founded almost 3000 years earlier, or over 5000 years ago, that might be more impressive.

Atomic wrote:One needs to remember that during the last ice age, the oceans were some 300 feet lower than today. At some point (can't find the reference), the Mediterranean sea was mostly a dried up salt flat -- the Strait of Gibraltar is pretty shallow, and served as a dam. The Sahara was grassland with many rivers as well. When the Glacial period ended, it was a waterfall, refilling the Med and Black seas. This was likely the origins of The Flood tales.

yeah, my pet theory on the Straits is that they are the "Clashing Rocks" of the Jason and the Argonaut's fame... they were *just* barely above the water line at low tide, and when high tide came in they submerged... and if you are on a boat floating right there, you can't really tell when high or low tide is from the water without any reference to a fixed object like the shoreline... so, as the tide went out and the bottom of the "V" was becoming exposed, it's an optical illusion that makes it *look* like the rocks are actually sliding closer together, and as high tide comes in and fills in the valley to a higher water level, they look like they are sliding apart!... thus the "Clashing Rocks" are discovered.

there are also a few documented cities/villages/whatever that are located hundreds of feet under water in the Med... and they all seem to be at the same depth... implying that they were all at the shoreline during the same time frame and all got sunk at that same time too... if this was right about the same time that the Straits finally gave way to the fully open state that they are in today, meaning not open at high tide and shut off to water flow at low tide, then that could have been the water level in the Med BEFORE the "Great Flood". i think i remember reading a really long time ago that some scientist's did a study of the water flow into the med, from all the rivers and the straits, and then subtracted the water from evaporation, and figured that if the straits were sealed off, the water level in the med would drop by ... get this, about 330 ft!!... RIGHT about the same depth of those towns underwater... hmmm...

scantrontb wrote:

Atomic wrote:One needs to remember that during the last ice age, the oceans were some 300 feet lower than today. At some point (can't find the reference), the Mediterranean sea was mostly a dried up salt flat -- the Strait of Gibraltar is pretty shallow, and served as a dam. The Sahara was grassland with many rivers as well. When the Glacial period ended, it was a waterfall, refilling the Med and Black seas. This was likely the origins of The Flood tales.

yeah, my pet theory on the Straits is that they are the "Clashing Rocks" of the Jason and the Argonaut's fame... they were *just* barely above the water line at low tide, and when high tide came in they submerged... and if you are on a boat floating right there, you can't really tell when high or low tide is from the water without any reference to a fixed object like the shoreline... so, as the tide went out and the bottom of the "V" was becoming exposed, it's an optical illusion that makes it *look* like the rocks are actually sliding closer together, and as high tide comes in and fills in the valley to a higher water level, they look like they are sliding apart!... thus the "Clashing Rocks" are discovered.

there are also a few documented cities/villages/whatever that are located hundreds of feet under water in the Med... and they all seem to be at the same depth... implying that they were all at the shoreline during the same time frame and all got sunk at that same time too... if this was right about the same time that the Straits finally gave way to the fully open state that they are in today, meaning not open at high tide and shut off to water flow at low tide, then that could have been the water level in the Med BEFORE the "Great Flood". i think i remember reading a really long time ago that some scientist's did a study of the water flow into the med, from all the rivers and the straits, and then subtracted the water from evaporation, and figured that if the straits were sealed off, the water level in the med would drop by ... get this, about 330 ft!!... RIGHT about the same depth of those towns underwater... hmmm...

This does require a more recent Med dry-up than current theories, which put the Med outburst flood (Zanclean flood) about 5.33 million years ago, before even the earliest members of genus Homo had evolved. But, whenever it happened, a flood of water rushing down a drop of more than a kilometer with a discharge of up to 108 m3/s, about 1000 times the present day Amazon River, even in a gradual slope toward the bottom of the basin, rather than forming a steep waterfall, would be quite impressive. From a suitable distance, anyway. I'd hate to get caught in the rapids.

bmonk wrote:

scantrontb wrote:there are also a few documented cities/villages/whatever that are located hundreds of feet under water in the Med... and they all seem to be at the same depth... implying that they were all at the shoreline during the same time frame and all got sunk at that same time too... if this was right about the same time that the Straits finally gave way to the fully open state that they are in today, meaning not open at high tide and shut off to water flow at low tide, then that could have been the water level in the Med BEFORE the "Great Flood". i think i remember reading a really long time ago that some scientist's did a study of the water flow into the med, from all the rivers and the straits, and then subtracted the water from evaporation, and figured that if the straits were sealed off, the water level in the med would drop by ... get this, about 330 ft!!... RIGHT about the same depth of those towns underwater... hmmm...

This does require a more recent Med dry-up than current theories, which put the Med outburst flood (Zanclean flood) about 5.33 million years ago, before even the earliest members of genus Homo had evolved. But, whenever it happened, a flood of water rushing down a drop of more than a kilometer with a discharge of up to 108 m3/s, about 1000 times the present day Amazon River, even in a gradual slope toward the bottom of the basin, rather than forming a steep waterfall, would be quite impressive. From a suitable distance, anyway. I'd hate to get caught in the rapids.

Agreed. Best watched from a safe distance!

As I understand it, current thinking is that the Med would have been more than 300 feet below its current levels during the last Ice Age, even without any additional restrictions present at the Strait of Gibraltar. All of the oceans were that much lower (close to 400 feet says Wiki) simply due to the massive amount of water being locked up in the larger ice-caps. The British Isles weren't islands then... you could walk over from the Continent. There were some interesting flooding events when the icecap melted back, especially when ice dams failed and released massive amounts of built-up meltwater (e.g. the Missoula Floods in North America).

There are almost certainly a lot of very interesting archaeological sites, all around the world, which are now underwater... miles and miles of continental shelf, likely suitable for habitation (and quite fertile in many places), great spots for hunter-gatherer camps and villages, now down under seawater. It doesn't even take sea-level change to cause this: a few years ago a late-Stone-Age encampment was found underwater near the shoreline of Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) in Israel, beautifully preserved due to immersion in water and a blanket of sediment. The inhabitants apparently built it during a period of drought, and when rainfall increased the site was flooded (and remained so for over 20,000 years).

Highly recommended reading: The Gandalara Cycle stories, by Randall Garrett (RIP and a terrible loss - he'd have been right at home here in the forum) and Vicki Ann Heydron. Dunno if they're still in print these days, but if not they're definitely worth chasing down at a used-book store. They form one long story, so read 'em all and in sequence (and watch out, the 1986 version of the collection apparently got two of them out of order )