1. Over 500 world flood myths- Myth or meteor?
World flood myths and glacial melting
-Kristin Samples

2. Myths
Flood

3. “In the geological past, within human experience, several great floods are widely suspected to have occurred, with varying amounts of supporting evidence.”
-Wikipedia

4. Maximum ice extent at the Last Glacial Maximum
*During the last
Glacial Maximum
sea levels were 120
– 130 meters higher.
*Starting c. 18,000
years ago sea levels
began to rise.
*Most of the glacial
melt had occurred
by c.8,000 years
ago.
*Changes would not
have been regular.
*The immense
weight of the ice
sheets depressed
the continental
plates.

5. During the Last Glacial Maximum the currently
submerged darker areas were dry land.

6. The ocean could fill vast basins in a matter of weeks or months.
Where silts formed dikes that protected low-lying areas, a winter storm or sudden spurt of melt water thousands of miles away could raise ocean levels, resulting in catastrophic erosion and massive flooding.
The ocean could fill vast basins in a matter of weeks or months.

7. The Carpentaria Plain
During glacial times a level plain joined Australia with New Guinea.
C. 12,000 – 10,000 years ago, it was flooded to form the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Aboriginal myths of ‘dream time’ incorporate a few great flood myths, where floods would not have been common in the region.

8. Great Sunda wetlands of Indonesia
During glacial times a huge peaty swap land joined Malaya, Sumatra, Java and southwestern Bornei to the Asia mainland.
The present land masses were high lands framing a vast wetland ecosystem now covered by the southern parts of the South China Sea.
This flood was possibly onset by a catastrophic monsoon.

9. North America
During the glacial maximum Proglacial lakes formed and shifted in the area of the great lakes.
The lakes drainage system sometimes shifted south into the Mississippi system, sometimes into the Artic or east into the Atlantic.

10. Glacial Lake Agassiz
Agassiz created a series of great floods as ice-dam configurations failed , pumping massive pulses of freshwater into the worlds oceans.

11. The Missoula Floods
The Missoula Floods of Washington were also caused by breaking ice damns, resulting in channeled scablands. l

12. Lake Ojibway
Lake Ojibway reached its largest point c. 8,500 yrs ago, when it joined with Lake Agassiz.
Its outlet was blocked by glaciers; so, it drained by tributaries into St. Lawrence far to the South.
C. 8,300 – 7,700 years ago the melting ice damn over the Hudson Bay’s southwestern most extension narrowed to the point that pressure and buoyancy lifted it free and the ice damn failed.
The lake was 250 meters above sea level.
Its volume is estimated to have been 163,000 cubic kilometers, more than enough water to cover flattened out Antarctica with a sheet of water 10 meters deep.
The lake was added to the worlds oceans in a matter of months .

13. Tollman’s hypothetical Bolide
Hypothesis presented by the Austrian Prof of Geology Dr. Alexander Tollman.
The Hypothesis states that one or several bolides struck the earth c BCE. A much larger instance was suppose to have occurred c BCE.
The first would have explained the extinction of mega fauna, while the second would account for the global flood myths.

14. The positive scientific evidence includes stratigraphic studies of
tektites, dendrochronoloy, and ice cores (from Camp Century, Greenland) containing hydrocholoric and sulphuric acid (indicating an energetic ocean strike) as well as nitric acids (caused by extreme heating of air).

15. Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America
C. 7,640 BCE is consistent with the dates of the formation of a number of salt flats in North America and in Asia.

16. Bibliography http://www.answers.com/topic/deluge-prehistoric
Bibliography