i just searched for animations of tectonic movement,it doesn't show very much influence from the earths spin..but then again maybe the spin of the earth wasn't factored in..also i would agree with spin does not cause movement but i think it would influence it, more so than any magnetic influence, but less than any magma flow influence. yes we know the earth is not a perfect circle it bulges at the equator due to centrifical force,(how much does the moons gravity affect this?) and correction to an error i realized i had posited.. i said the moons gravity pushes the ocean..it doesn't..it pulls the ocean, creating the tidal forces.. i just wonder how this influences tectonics and the formation of mountain ranges.. um..somantic red flag.. 'away from each other' with tectonics one side is moving away and the other is moving towards.. subduction means one going under the other, so one is moving towards..
Well I agree it would have more influence than those, but I'm still not sure it has much at all. I would say it's minimal as it's far easier to affect a free flowing surface liquid than something solid. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ok I should probably have said "some of them" if we're being pedantic. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I simply meant not all in the same direction.
the short version.. science is all about the details, even if all those factors had small influences on the current configuration of land masses, those influences should still be factored in to the final equation, any math geek should know how small changes can effect your final answer..
You can see the magnitude of the effect of the moon's gravity on the oceans. The difference between high tide and low tide is just a few meters--and this also includes the effect of the sun's gravity when the moon and sun happen to line up. This is not a very strong force. Of course the moon and sun exert the same force on the land, but the land can't flow as quickly as the water, as the earth makes its daily rotation. So the their gravity's effect on the shape of the solid part of the earth's surface and on the movement of the tectonic plates is effectively zero. On the side of the earth facing away from the moon the force of the moon's gravity is weakest so the water is actually flowing away from the moon, creating another high tide. This is why there are two high tides and two low tides every day.
The history of the Black Sea is interesting. First it should be noted that water evaporates from the Black Sea faster than it is replenished by rainfall & rivers. The same is true of the Mediterranean Sea. Without water flowing from the Atlantic, the Mediterranean would evaporate (it completely evaporated millions of years ago). Similarly the Black Sea would evaporate without water flowing from the Mediterranean. Circa 20 thousand years ago (time is guess on my part), the Bosporus & Dardanelles closed, resulting in partial evaporation of the Black Sea. Circa 1000-2000 years prior to the establishment of cultures like Mesopotamia & Egypt, the straights opened (Earthquake or erosion of the blockage). The level of the Black Sea rose very rapidly flooding quite a few villages which have been discovered 100-300 feet below current Black Sea level. The above flooding of those villages is likely to have been remembered long enough for it to be the origin of Gilgamish & Noah mythology relating to a world wide flood. BTW: Prior to the reopening of the Straights of Gibralter, the Mediterranean was very much like the Salt Flats in North Western USA. When the straights opened, the Mediterranean filled so rapidly that one geologist said something like the following (paraphrase, not quote)
I was wondering if and when someone would mention the original source of the Noah myth - the Epic of Gilgamesh. The description reads very much like an extraterrestrial body collision event or a large, percussive volcanic event. 'The rain was black, the ground cracked open, fires and lightnings ran across the sky.' Scary stuff from the 'oldest story', and no limit to the possibilities involved. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Yeah, they found ruins on the bottom of the Black Sea - whole towns...the Med likely had a 'great flood' as well, but that would have been a very long time back.
A volcanic eruption on the island of Thera in the eastern Mediterranean around 1700BCE, which obliterated Minoan civilization, is considered by many scholars to be the source of the Atlantis myth. Its tidal wave would have had a wide effect. The Mediterranean Basin was not always a sea. Geological activity opened the Straits of Gibraltar, allowing water to rush in at three times the rate of flow of the Amazon River, and it's estimated that it filled up in two years. Of course this happened five million years ago, before there were any civilizations in the region. Although sea level today is very near its cyclical low point (we're just coming out of an ice age and it will eventually rise by half a kilometer, submerging the world's most valuable real estate), it has been about a hundred meters lower during historic and late prehistoric times. Much archeological evidence of Neolithic villages all over the world is under water. The flow into the Mediterranean has slowed greatly, and today water evaporates from it faster than it refills. Local sea level will drop for a while, until the global warming cycle (with or without our help) raises the Atlantic again.
Well there used to be many areas connected together, either before the continents drifted to their current location or due to lower sea levels or other reasons. The English Channel used to be a land bridge to France. You can also find places in the world where ancient settlements used to be by the coast but are now located further inland due to sea levels lowering.
The recent rise in sea level of the Black Sea was at most a few hundred meters. I do not think the Black Sea completely evaporated less than millions of years ago. It probably evaporated when the Mediterranean evaporated. The villages flooded were only 200-300 feet below the current level.
That was around 8000-12000BCE, when the current ice age was at its extreme. That's when humans first migrated to the British Isles. The first wave of human migration out of Africa occurred around 60KYA. It was an ice age so much of the world's water was locked up in glaciers and polar caps, so rainfall was low and there was a famine in Africa. The first successful emigrants (members of the San tribe or "Bushmen," who have since relocated to southern Africa) walked along the southern edge of Asia, then sailed into the Malayo-Polynesian area looking for richer land. Since sea level was lower, the straits between the islands were narrower, and they made it all the way to Australia. As luck and the vagaries of weather patterns would have it, Australia had plenty of rainfall and was a great place to settle. These were the ancestors of today's Native Australians. The Mediterranean did not evaporate. The geology of the area was different and there were no Straits of Gibraltar for water to come through. Since it filled 5MYA sea level in the Mediterranean has risen and fallen along with the oceans, but it was never dry. Remember, sea level today is very near its lowest cyclical point because we're just emerging from an Ice Age and the glaciers and polar caps have not melted yet. It only drops about a hundred meters below this, but it rises half a kilometer higher.
My favourite explanation (which I came up with about 30 seconds ago) is the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. After the flood God collected a bunch of different histories from the multiverse (all of which realized a Noah's Ark but one that contained a different selection of animals) and selectively merged them into one. Like, duh, guys, how obvious is that!?
I'd agree with that. I seem to recall speculation on sea levels lowering again in brief recent history, such as the last 2000 years, based on archaeological evidence of (previously coastal)towns now situated several miles inland. I can't for the life of me find this information again, and as it may have been from a tv program I may have to withdraw that statement for the time being.
Fraggle rocker: You surprised me. You are usually very knowledgeable, but the following is incorrect. Check the following.http://www.wisegeek.com/was-the-mediterranean-sea-ever-dry.htm http://www.oberlin.edu/Geopage/projects/204projects/brooks-church/brooks.htmlFrom the latter web site
This is true. Just check the Wikipedia article on Sea Level. Ice ages come in very long cycles, with many large fluctuations of shorter duration along the way. We are just coming out of the bottom of one cycle; the clue is that there are permanent ice caps at the poles and glaciers on the tallest mountains, locking up a huge portion of the earth's water. All of that ice is currently melting, with or without our help. Sea level will rise by as much as half a kilometer over the coming millions of years. But it has indeed been quite a bit lower and somewhat higher during recent (from a geological perspective) times. Cool! Thanks for the info. It did seem a little suspicious that such a large area of land, so far below sea level, would remain dry for so long.
I guess my first question would be why would you not consider the 100+ other "myths?" I have a couple of pet peeves, one being the incorrect use of language and the other being an incredibly parochial view. Language is often intentionally employed, especially through erroneous translations, as a means to denigrate, debase and ridicule. A good example is Plato's Atlantis. What we are told is that according to Plato, "Atlantis sank." Now, we all know that islands and continents, and in this case an island-continent (Plato's exact words) cannot sink. That is totally absurd. However, Plato never said Atlantis sank. What he said was Atlantis was inundated. Did New Orleans "sink" during Hurricane Katrina? No, but New Orleans was inundated (ie flooded) was it not? Okay then. We have the same problem here, as there was no Flood, rather there was a Deluge. Certainly a deluge can be a flood, but in this context it is not, and when you read the many other accounts, it is obvious that it is not. Accounts of the Deluge span 6 continents (obviously not Antarctica) and are remarkably consistent, which unnerves the traditionalists because you can't have Cultural Diffusion if Cultures are not in contact with one another. It is only the Hebrew account, and 2-3 others that vary, and point out those variations. From the more than 100 accounts we can see that: 1) There was Deluge; 2) It was a naturally occurring event of celestial or terrestrial origin -- more on that later, but only the Hebrews and two other accounts claim it was caused by a "god-thing"; 3) The description of the Deluge more or less is an account of a series of large tsunamis -- only the Hebrew account confuses that; 4) The origin of the tsunamis was the southern hemisphere -- the Hebrew account says "the fountains of the deep" but that is archaic Sumerian-Akkadian phrase and actually refers to the south polar region; 5) The Deluge last 4-6 days before the waters calmed or resided -- the Hebrew account is the only one that varies and it claims 120 days and 365 days and one might be correct, but not both; 6) The Deluge was not a punishment on humankind -- the Hebrew account and two others claim it was; 7) A "god" warned one or more people about the pending disaster and guided them in the building of a watercraft to survive it -- in the Sumerian account the Hero of the Deluge (Ziusurda) was also given a skilled navigator to pilot the craft to safety -- the accounts from eastern Siberian and the Americas no craft were constructed, rather they were told to use normal watercraft (dugout canoes etc); 8) Animals if taken aboard the craft were used for food, not to save them -- the Hebrew account is the only one that varies -- the majority of Mesopotamian/Middle Eastern accounts claim the were given the "seeds" of certain (but not all) animals to save -- in the accounts originating in eastern Siberia and the Americas no attempts were made to save animals. There is one other major difference between accounts of the Deluge originating in the Europe, the Middle East, Africa and western Asia, and the accounts originating in eastern Asia (Siberia) and the Americas, and that is all of the accounts from eastern Siberia and the Americas mention the "Water Comet," "Water Star," "Flaming Star," "Flaming Arrow," "Flaming Rock" etc. That should be expected, since someone in Mesopotamia/Middle East could not see a meteor in Earth's atmosphere transiting the Americas. You could envision a large meteor entering Earth's atmosphere over the Siberian north polar region and coursing on a southeast transit across what is now Canada, the US, Mexico and the many Central/South American countries and striking the western ice sheet in Antarctica. Such an event would go a long way explaining any number of things, such as why the western ice sheet was destroyed 10,000 years ago, why the sea levels rose 600-800 ft (180-240 m), why global temperatures increased 7°F in a mere 54 years, why there are "ghost beaches" at high latitudes, why there are animal "graveyards" consisting of a wide variety of animals not native to that region, and of course, the many Deluge accounts. It's important to understand that at the time the Hebrew account was written, there were already several dozen written accounts in the Middle East and Mesopotamia that predate the Hebrew account by 1,000 to 4,000 years, so I consider it an outlier and one that has been tinkered with to conform to certain religio-political constraints. For those who doubt that, consider this... Genesis 7:23 So the Lord destroyed every living thing that was on the surface of the ground, including people, animals, creatures that creep along the ground, and birds of the sky. They were wiped off the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark survived ...which contradicts this... Genesis 6:4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (and also after this) Numbers 13:33 We even saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak came from the Nephilim), and we seemed liked grasshoppers both to ourselves and to them.” ...so clearly we have a grotesque contradiction. Noah and those with him in the ark were not the only survivors. The Nephilim survived too, since they were on the earth those days before the Deluge and also long, long after the Deluge. The descendants of Anak cannot have come from the Nephilim if the Nephilim were all killed during the "Flood." From that you can conclude that 1) Yahweh can't kill the Nephilim; or 2) The Nephilm were a helluva lot smarter than Noah since they didn't need a god-thing to tell them how to build an ark. It also shows that Yahweh failed, since the purpose of the "Flood" was to destroy all evil, and since Noah was the only righteous man, then the Nephilim were not righteous and they out-witted, out-smarted and thwarted the plans of Yahweh.
um.. in context.. 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” it says they lied..
I'd suggest that the Ark and Flood story is figurative for the time of what is known as the hiatus palestinien when the Pre-Pottery B cultures of Jericho - Beidha - Sheikh Ali and Munhatta disappeared for good and their sites abandoned; in other words from about 6500-5500 BC ...
Pretty ridiculous. My main argument is that when the bible was written, without technology, a regional flood would really feel like the "world" was flooded.
