Did the Flood really happen: scientists put forward an unexpected version

The Flood is one of the most famous stories in the Bible. According to the Old Testament, God ordered the righteous Noah to build an ark and put two individuals of each species of earthly biodiversity on it. After that, an unprecedented flood descended on the planet, lasting 40 days. Even the highest mountains were covered with water.

The story of the global flood is found not only in the Bible. The ancient Hindu Puranas, Sumerian myths, and the Epic of Gilgamesh also mention legends of the destruction of humanity as a result of catastrophic floods. The Live science publication published a study by scientists on the likelihood of a massive natural disaster.

If it rained for 40 days

David Montgomery, a professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington in Seattle, confidently asserts that there was no flood. He explains his theory simply and clearly, "There simply would not have been enough water on Earth for a flood of this magnitude."

"If the 'heavens' had opened and all the water in the atmosphere had fallen to the ground in the form of a long, continuous and very heavy rain, the planet would have been submerged only to a depth of about 2.5 centimeters," the scientists cited the US Geological Survey. For such a small flood, the arks would not have been needed.

If all the glaciers melted

Let's consider another option. It has been raining for 40 days and, in addition, all the ice sheets, icebergs and glaciers have melted. NASA researchers say that in this case, the level of the world's oceans would rise by 60 meters.

In addition, scientists have calculated that 22.6 million cubic kilometers of groundwater are stored in the upper part of the Earth's crust, which can cover the planet by another 180 meters.

It seems that a flood is still possible as there is a lot of water. However, scientists reassure us that this is definitely not the scale described in the Bible. The highest mountain above sea level reaches 8849 meters, and geologists have found no evidence that there was ever a really large-scale flood on Earth.

Versions of the Flood

Historians claim that the Flood and the legend of Noah's Ark are simply a retelling of other stories that existed in ancient cultures and mythologies. Professor of Ancient Studies Ira Spar emphasized that it is estimated that the biblical stories in the Old Testament, which were written down between 800 BC and 500 BC, originated from older beliefs and oral traditions. For example, the Sumerians described a flood 3000 years before Christ. Of course, these were not eyewitness accounts but retellings of even older legends.

Professor Montgomery added that many millennia ago, there were probably local floods of a large scale that inspired the creation of stories about the Flood. For example, in the late 1990s, the hypothesis that the so-called Flood once occurred in the Black Sea region was widely spread. Oceanographers William Ryan and Walter Pitman proposed the theory that about 7500 years ago, the Mediterranean Sea began to flow into the then-isolated Black Sea, causing massive floods that could have been the prototype of the biblical events.

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