Noah’s flood is one of the most famous stories in the Bible. According to the Old Testament, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the sources of the vast were broken and the windows of the heavens opened.” (Genesis 7:11, English Standard Version). As described in the text, God saw evil in humans and sent a worldwide flood. Because Noah was righteous, God told him to build an ark for his family and save two of each animal, bird, and reptile. Did Noah’s Flood really happen?

“The only thing we know for sure from geology is that there has never been a global flood,” he said. david montgomeryProfessor of geomorphology at the University of Washington in Seattle and author of the book “”Rocks don’t lie: a geologist studies the Noah’s Flood.” (WW Norton & Company, 2012). “If you look at it as a global flood that literally covers the world’s highest mountains, then I’m sorry, there isn’t enough water on Earth for that,” he told Live Science.

If the “heavens” opened and all the water in the atmosphere suddenly descended as rain, the planet would be flooded, according to the U.S. Geological Survey – but only to a depth of 1 inch (2.5 centimeters). That’s not enough to justify a canoe, let alone a whole ship.

But what if there is something more to be considered in the “heavens” than water? according to NASAIf all the glaciers and ice sheets on Earth were to melt, sea levels would rise by more than 195 feet (60 meters), adding a little more water. Additionally, a 2016 study published in the journal Nature Geology, The upper crust is estimated to hold 5.4 million cubic miles (22.6 million cubic kilometers) of groundwater, enough to cover the earth at depth. 590 feet (180 m). That’s a lot of water, but there are cities thousands of feet above sea level and Mount EverestIts mountain, the tallest mountain in the world, stands at 29,000 feet (8,849 m) above sea level. Additionally, geologists see no evidence of a global flooding of rocks.

There are other questionable chapters in biblical history. For example, Noah was 600 years old when the flood began – we know people don’t live that long – and most species won’t survive if reduced to just two animals because they don’t have enough genetic diversity to create a livable population. At most, it’s not even clear how each individual animal will get to the ship – think penguins from Antarctica to the Middle East.

According to historical documents, Noah’s Flood is a retelling of ancient stories and is likely an allegorical rather than a literal retelling of the event. Ira SparBiblical stories in the Old Testament written between 800 and 500 BC likely came from more ancient oral traditions and from many sources, M.D., a professor of ancient studies at Ramapo College in New Jersey, told Live Science.

Earlier versions of the catastrophes come from ancient times, while other religious books, such as the Qur’an, have slightly different accounts of the Noah’s flood story. Mesopotamia texts Spar recorded a fragmentary Sumerian flood story dating to the late third millennium BC.

“Who knows how far history has gone?” said.

Considering that the sources of Noah’s Flood were regional rather than global, this is not an exaggeration. Montgomery explained that there might be some “geologically plausible” flooding that inspired the story.

For example, in the late 1990s, oceanographers William Ryan and Walter Pitman suggested at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that about 7,500 years ago, the Mediterranean began to flow into the then-isolated Black Sea, causing massive flooding around the Black Sea. this could have been the cause of Noah’s flood, the magazine reported Science in 1998.

“For the people who lived there, it would have been a devastating event that would have flooded the entire known world, and could have led to the Noah’s flood story among those who survived and fled to Mesopotamia,” Montgomery said.

In a 2009 study published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, It has been argued that had the flood occurred, it would have been much smaller than Ryan and Pitman had suggested. But while the inspiration for Noah’s flood story is debatable, there are many other flood stories from around the world that seem to have been inspired by regional events.

Montgomery said that many Native American stories in the Pacific Northwest, for example, involve floods that are very similar to tsunamis, where large waves crash ashore. The same goes for stories from the seismically active coasts of South America and the South Pacific Islands. Source