Is there proof of the Noah's Ark flood?

Answer 1

Yes there is!

Geologists have shown there was a world wide flood!
One of the most fascinating scientific discoveries in recent times regarding a universal flood came from some scientists who were not searching for any evidence of the Flood. It came from oceanographers in the Gulf of Mexico who were doing some rather routine research on coral and sediments of the ocean floor.

Their two oceanographic vessels had pulled from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico several long, slender core samples of the sediment, which includes the fossil shells of one-celled plankton called foraminifera. While still alive, these organisms lock into their shells a chemical record of the temperature and salinity of the water. When they reproduce, the shells fall away and drop to the bottom. A cross-section of that ocean bed carries a record of climates that the oceanographers say go back more than 100 million years.

The cores were analyzed in two different investigations-by Cesar Emiliani of the University of Miami, and by James Kennett of the University of Rhode Island and Nicholas Shack of Cambridge University. Both analyses pointed to a dramatic drop in the salinity of the water providing compelling evidence of a vast flood of fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico thousands of years ago.

Cesar Emiliani explains the results: "A huge amount of ice-melt water rushed into the Gulf of Mexico and produced a sea-level rise that spread around the world with the speed of a tidal wave." He adds, "We know this because the oxygen isotope ratios of the foraminifera shells show a marked temporary decrease in the salinity of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It clearly shows that there was a major period of flooding from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, with a peak about 11,600 years ago. There is no question that there was a flood and there is also no question that it was a universal flood" ("Noah, the Flood, the Facts," Readers Digest, U.S. edition, September 1977, p. 133).

It is also worth mentioning that the radiocarbon dating used to establish the number of years is imprecise after 4,000 years, so the time of this universal deluge could be closer to the 4,300 years described in the Bible as the time of the biblical Flood.

Another recent discovery that could have a relation to the inundation of the Gulf of Mexico is the finding by geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman of the sudden flooding of the Black Sea basin around 6,000 to 7,000 years ago (according to their dating). "The salt water," says Smithsonian magazine, "poured through the deepening channel, creating a waterfall 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls. In a single day enough water came through the channel to cover Manhattan to a depth two times the height of the [former] World Trade Center, and the roar of the cascading water would have been audible at least 100 miles away" ("Evidence for a Flood," April 2000, electronic version).

An additional evidence of the Deluge being global and not local is the literally thousands of flood stories from around the world. One enterprising historian, Dr. Aaron Smith of the University of Greensboro, North Carolina, became obsessed with classifying all the flood accounts. "As a result of years of labor, he has collected a complete history of the literature on Noah's Ark. There are 80,000 works in seventy-two languages about the Flood, of which 70,000 mention the legendary wreckage of the Ark" (Werner Keller, The Bible as History, 1980, p. 38).

It is hard to believe that if the Flood were only a local event, there would be 80,000 different accounts of it from around the world that describe it as universal in scope.

Answer 2

Nope, not on the global scale that the bible describes.

If the entire Earth was flooded then most life on Earth would cease to exist - any story about an Ark is pure fantasy:-
+ The Ark would have to be impossibly large
+ It would have to contain more than two of each animal (because otherwise you would get the genetic variation we see today)
+ To keep all the animals alive it would need to contain all the various habitats (desert, arctic tundra, rain forest). Refrigeration units weren't all that common back then...

There is evidence that as the ice caps melted at the end of the last Ice Age and sea levels rose about 400-600ft large low-lying areas were flooded, included the Black Sea basin as the sea broke through what is now known as the Bosphorus. This would have created a catastrophic flood which may have been the grain of truth behind the Great Flood legend. No doubt a few people may have survived along with their domestic animals and this would have been enough to trigger the growth of a story that culminated in the Noah fantasy.

Answer 3

There is proof of a massive flood in the Middle East area. The story of Noah's Ark was probably an oral tradition for a long time just like the Story of Gilgamesh.

Answer 4

Some of these old myths are derived from an actual event, and some aren't. The flood story originated (probably, it could be older) in Akkadian mythology, so it could very well have been a response to a flood that caused one city's priests to write about how their favorite god was wittier than a nearby city's favorite god.


Anything larger than that absolutely did not happen, though hoaxsters are always claiming to have found an ark or two.

Answer 5

None. There is evidence of a number of large regional floods at the end of the last ice age when water collected behind glaciers, possibly including the Black Sea basin. All of these floods were local in nature and their bounds can be determined. As the missing mass of water necessary for a global flood is roughly one tenth the mass of the Moon, it can be reasonably said that no global flood occurred. Floods encompassing the "known world" to primitive peoples, certainly did occur.

Answer 6

"It is hard to believe that if the Flood were only a local event, there would be 80,000 different accounts of it from around the world that describe it as universal in scope."

Sure is, especially when that is 10,000 times more stories than what survived the flood. Evidence that there have been floods all over the world does not prove the entire world was flooded.

Answer 7

Not a global flood. Can't say I've seen proof of a large regional flood, but the existence of several reports in various religious books (not just the Bible) suggest there might have been one.

Answer 8

For a global flood, there is none. But most places on the planet show evidence of a local flood at different times during history, except for most of China.

Answer 9

There is plenty of evidence. It's not believed by some. We can make excuses for any evidence of any event we want. It's a matter of what you want to believe. Kind of like the folks who don't believe we landed on the moon or that millions of Jews were exterminated in Germany. Who knows, maybe in about 200 years, Katrina will never have occurred. After-all, they would never have seen it.

Answer 10

Depends on your interpretation of the data. The world at that time is relative to perspective. Such is reality.


Praise be to Anu.