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A Lost Civilization Beneath the Persian Gulf?
Phoghat sends news of a new theory that a once-fertile landmass beneath the Persian Gulf may have supported some of the earliest humans outside of Africa. "Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago... These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean."
We're the most technologically advanced civilization that ever was, and we still have city-destroying floods even in industrialized nations with some regularity. Before the invention of modern irrigation and damming, massive flooding was even more common and more devastating. Given this, and the fact that basically every ancient civilization has myths involving massive floods, I doubt you could really point to any single event as the origin of any given flood myth with any degree of certainty.
Interestingly, most civilizations that developped near shorelines have flood myth and most inland civilization don't have it. Floods happen really frequently you know.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
But, the end of the last ice age about 8,000 - 10,000 years ago would have inundated many coastal settlements at about the same time.
mediocrity rules, man
So is this the origin of the flood myth?
Or another attempt at lending credence to the myth, by people of a faith where it's central?
It is unscientific to dismiss a theory because it lends credence to religious beliefs. Do you realize that the current cosmological theory for the origin of the universe, the "big bang" theory, was initially dismissed by the "leading scientists" of the day because (1) it was developed by a roman catholic priest and (2) it seemed too close to the "creation myth of genesis". The term "big bang" was coined by these "leading scientists" to mock the theory.
Secondly, many myths and legends have a bit of truth behind them. Sometimes based on a multigenerational telling of historical events and sometimes as an attempt to explain things beyond a culture's scientific understanding. A real scientist tries to interpret myths and legends, not ignore or dismiss them.
I'm afraid you misunderstand what 'mitochondrial Eve' entails.
It simply means that all living humans have some mitochondrial DNA in common, which they all inherited from a single female ancestor.
It does not mean there was only one female ancestor.
That common ancestor lived at the same time with other females (and males), some of which passed on their mitochondrial DNA to people living today, just not to all of them.
>Until I hear about a few geologists supporting this, I read this as Yet Another attempt at trying to legitimize the Abrahamic religion flood myth. That the man behind this was educated at the Southern Methodist University makes it, in my opinion, more likely that there's a bias here.
You realize you are engaging in the same bias practiced by those who dismissed the big bang theory because it was formulated by a roman catholic priest and seemed too close to the story of genesis? I am not vouching for this guy from SMU, just offering something for you to consider when you learn that a scientist has faith. Newton comes to mind too.
Also what is wrong with myth? They are sometimes a pre-literate pre-scientific civilization's attempt to pass along observations from one generation to the next. A real scientist would try to interpret the myth, not dismiss it.
Archaeologists study Geology intensely, and any team of size will include a Geologist.
Also Southern Methodist is a great place for archæology, home to Lewis Binford among others. The Methodist church isnt fundamentalist and doesnt have a problem with science.
So you were offbase on every point.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Occam's Razor says that evangelical Christians, whose always predate the retelling of the Bible stories in any civilization, simply told the story as part of the various biblical myths and that the locals simply pronounce "Noah" in the best rendition the foibles of their language allow. Every Evangelical is hoping to see a native populace that automatically accepts and corroborates their myths, so the first ones to arrive find similar local tales (what! You had a flood many years ago too! Damn, must be the exact same one God told us about, no, the guy isn't named B'Xorri, he was Noah. No-ah. Say it right and you get fed tonight." "Nu-aagh" "Very good try."
Then those evangelicals shove off and a hundred years later a new crop arrives, and the name's been changed because that was how a generation got help from the magic people.
If God killed everyone but Noah and his wife,
- Why do we have different languages?
- Who (other than Noah and his wife) was a witness to these events?
- Why do we have different races/colors of people? I though Man was incapable of genetic drift, being made in the image of God and all, but if there were only two survivors of the Flood...?
- Why do we have known things like genetic inbreeding of recessive traits, and if there were only two of each animal (including humans) why didn't they die out of horrible inbred mutations within a handful of generations?
- Why do people still believe any of this as any kind of science when it consistently and constantly refutes observable events? "The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways" is OK for a civilization that doesn't understand the world around them, but it's not like we're short on credible, observation-based theories that can explain things in much more likely terms than "Then A Miracle Happened".
The Noah myth is like any other, it's a retelling of an amalgam of stories based loosely on some historically significant event or series of significant events that have been pasted together into one event in centuries of retelling over dozens of generations of word-of-mouth tradition.
The use of Occam's Razor by someone who denies observable fact and engages in increasing contortions to explain everything in terms of a magical ghost just never ceases to amaze me.
This reminds me of the "Telephone" game. Start by saying something in one person's ear and go in a circle. What do you get at the end? Not the same story. Now, let's try a variation of this with something modern. Like JFK's assassination. Most people agree he was shot and killed, but that is where the agreement ends. But it still happened. So if you have 200+ different stories, but they all agree on flood and humans survive, 1)expect differences and 2) they might be onto something.
Or another way, 200 people run out of a building and tell you, "there's a fire" and then you get 4 or 5 different basic scenarios from the 200.... It's highly likely that there is a fire.