In the Sumerian and Babylonian legends, in the myths of the South American and North American Indians, in the legends of the inhabitants of the ancient civilizations of India and China, almost the same words tell about the greatest catastrophe that befell our planet at the dawn of mankind - the Flood. And all these legends and myths mention a man who saved life on Earth by building a ship and gathering people and animals on it.
In the Bible, where 4 chapters are dedicated to the Flood, this man's name is Noah, and his rescue ship is Noah's ark. What is this global catastrophe that shook the consciousness of mankind in time immemorial? Was the Flood really or is it an idle invention? If so, what are the reasons and extent? To this day, researchers around the world do not have unequivocal answers to these difficult questions.
At different times, many hypotheses have been put forward regarding the cause of the most global of the catastrophes that once occurred on the planet - the Flood - from solid scientific theorizations to simply outright fantasies. For example, scientists assumed that the flood was caused by the fall of a giant meteorite into the waters of the oceans and the huge wave that rose after that swept across the globe. They also said that the great flood occurred due to the "meeting" of our planet with a comet and this collision upset the water balance of the Earth.
The following hypothesis was also put forward: a super-powerful volcanic process of a planetary scale occurred, the result of which was a titanic tsunami that flooded the entire land. The hypothesis of the American geologist G. Riskin is quite interesting. According to him, the cause of the Flood could be a "methane catastrophe" - a colossal explosion of large amounts of methane that was released from the waters of the oceans about 250 million years ago. It should be noted that the author of the theory himself admits that it is "rather hypothetical", but considers it "too weighty to be neglected."
The hypothesis of "methane cataclysm", advocated by Riskin, is as follows. Initially, at a certain historical stage, for some geological, climatic or other reasons, methane began to be released from the bottom sediments, the source of which could be organic deposits or frozen hydrates. Under the pressure of the water column, the gas dissolved, and its concentration increased with time. Further, a rather insignificant external interference was enough for the bottom water masses, saturated with methane, to move to the surface.
Such an impetus, according to Riskin's assumption, could be the fall of a small meteorite, an earthquake, or even - quite interestingly - the movement of a large animal (for example, a whale). The water, moving to the surface, no longer experienced strong pressure and literally "boiled", releasing the methane contained in it into the atmosphere. Further, the process became irreversible: more and more water masses moved to the surface, which, hissing and foaming, like soda in an open bottle, released ever larger volumes of combustible gas into the atmosphere. That's all, it remains to wait until the concentration is not up to a critical value and until some kind of "spark" appears to set it all on fire.
Theoretically, according to the scientist, the waters of the World Ocean could contain enough methane to ensure an explosion, in power exceeding the effect of detonation of the world's stock of nuclear weapons by 10 thousand (!) Times. This amounts to over 100 million megatons (!) In TNT equivalent. If the described phenomenon actually took place, a cataclysm of this scale, with a power even one or two orders of magnitude lower, is quite “pulling” towards the end of the world.
This hypothesis, in reality, at first glance, seems rather unrealistic. And, nevertheless, she, like any other, has her supporters. Some of the experts believe that "although she is eccentric, but not to such an extent and insane as not to take her seriously."
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Whatever it was, but the Flood is not fiction. Many scientists try to scientifically prove this argument. I. Yanovskiy, head of the Center for Instrumental Observations of the Environment and Geophysical Forecasts, wrote in his book The Mystery of the Flood: “The historical fact of the Flood is beyond doubt. There is a lot of similar information about him in various sources - archaeological research, legends of the peoples of the world, theological literature. All this, taken together, makes it possible to reproduce the general contours of that happened, the most formidable natural phenomenon.
The inconsistency of descriptions is only in the details. And if earlier they talked about the prescription of the event at 12,500 years, then not so long ago, researchers from America announced that the Flood occurred only 7,500 years ago. " But still, this is not the most important thing, the author believes. First of all, it is important for researchers to understand "the physical mechanism by which huge masses of water arose, moved and persisted for some time."
It was a lack of understanding of the mechanism that caused scientists to completely distrust the very fact of the Flood. Moreover, according to I. Yanovsky, the biblical rain, which "poured like a bucket for 40 days and nights," does not explain anything, - after all, it was in recent history, at the beginning of the well-known Godunovsky hard times (1600), continuous rain on for 10 weeks (from May 23rd to August 16th, only 70 days), and then nothing flooded in the State of Moscow - the entire crop perished only at the root (N. Karamzin. "History of the Russian State").
G. Hancock describes the Flood as a natural phenomenon in his fundamental work "Traces of the Gods". The large-scale Flood, he believes, was accompanied by violent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. As the author wrote, the characteristics of the dynamics of the water masses of this formidable natural phenomenon are very different - "from the relatively slow rise of water as a result of the melting of snow and ice covers" of the preceding ice age "(which is why animals and people managed to leave for the mountains, accumulated in caves, etc..) to instantaneous, with a tsunami wave height of 500-700 meters!
The latter scattered in places even the megalithic structures of the "Atlanteans", the weight of monoliths in which reached hundreds of tons.” including A. Einstein The conclusion is unambiguous: this information is not a myth, but a scientific reality.
But if the main question - whether there was a Flood at all - for the most part scientists answer positively, then there are completely different opinions about the scale of this catastrophe. Some of the researchers believe that they are greatly exaggerated and that the flood was not at all Worldwide, as the Bible says. Anti-biblical critics explain their arguments as follows. In the Old Testament, they assure, the legend of Noah and his ark came from the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian legends.
In particular, the story of this catastrophe has been preserved on clay Chaldean tablets of the 21st century BC. e. Then, 4,000 years ago, the population of ancient Sumer and Babylonia lived in Mesopotamia between two rivers - the Tigris and the Euphrates. The climate at that time was more humid, the rains were longer. Maybe after some very long rain (in the legend of the Sumerians it is said that the same rain lasted 7 days and 7 nights), the water in the Tigris and Euphrates rose and flooded all Mesopotamia. And the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia believed that their homeland was the whole world. Therefore, scientists come to the conclusion, in the legends, and there were stories about the Flood.
But opponents of this version claim that features similar to the biblical presentation were found not only in the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian narratives, but also in the legends of many other peoples. For example, the same elements of the global flood description are found in the folklore of North American tribes and among the inhabitants of Central and South America, in Africa and the Middle East, in Asia and Australia, as well as in the folklore of ethnic groups of ancient inhabitants of Europe. After this became clear, few doubts remained that the writer of everyday life Moses could hardly undertake such long-distance folklore expeditions. Therefore, the Bible should not be assigned the role of a collection of myths and legends borrowed from neighboring peoples.
Supporters of the so-called biblical version of the Flood believe that it is much more likely that the memory of all mankind keeps a story about the same event. In fact, almost all the peoples of our planet with the tradition of epic folklore or sacred texts revered by this people keep the memory of a gigantic worldwide flood.
And all the legends that have come down to us retain the general basic features of the exposition: the entire original life on earth was destroyed by a grandiose, incomparable cataclysm; all of our present life came from one person who, being supernaturally warned of an impending catastrophe, built a special ship and survived the Flood on it with his family. It is not surprising that in the oral legends of various peoples, this story has been distorted to varying degrees, overgrown with characteristic folklore elements. And yet, the written biblical testimony has preserved it in the utmost completeness.
In the Bible, the Flood story is central. It is no coincidence that four chapters are given to the description of the flood in the book of Genesis, which opens the Old Testament part of the holy book. And it is no coincidence that Jesus Christ himself spoke of the Flood not as a myth, but as a real event. What processes could actually take place during the catastrophic event known to us as the "Flood"? Here is how the beginning of the catastrophe is described in Scripture: “In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on this day all the springs of the great abyss were opened, the windows of heaven were opened; and it rained on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights”(Genesis 7: 11,12).
This is how geophysicists would describe the same phenomenon. Continuous heating of the Earth's interior has brought the earth's crust into a stressed state, close to critical. Even a minor external impact, such as the fall of a large meteorite or the usual tidal deformation, inevitably caused a split in the earth's crust. This rift, propagating at the speed of sound in the rock, took only 2 hours to circle the entire Earth.
Under the influence of pressure, the erupting rocks along with overheated underground water rushed into the formed faults - the sources of the great abyss (even nowadays, about 90% of the products of a volcanic eruption are water). According to calculations, the total energy of this eruption was 10 thousand times higher than the energy of the eruption of the Krakatau volcano. The height of the ejection of rocks was about 20 km, and the ash rising to the upper layers of the atmosphere led to active condensation and destruction of the water-vapor protective layer that fell to the ground with heavy rain.
Yet most of all the waters of the Flood, according to some of the researchers, were groundwater. The total amount of water erupted from the bowels is equal to approximately half of the water reserve of modern seas and oceans. The Bible says that the springs of the great abyss flooded the surface of the earth with water for 150 days (Genesis 7:24), while it rained only 40 days and 40 nights, flooding the earth, according to the calculations, at an intensity of 12.5 millimeters per hour.
The disappearance of the natural greenhouse cover led to an almost instantaneous cooling in the polar regions of the planet and the appearance of powerful glaciation there. Many representatives of tropical flora and fauna were frozen into the polar glaciers. Paleontologists quite often find the remains of ancient animals and plants perfectly preserved in the permafrost - mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, palm trees with green leaves and ripe fruits, etc.
But the Flood did not completely destroy life. According to the Bible, fleeing "from the waters of the flood," Noah, his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, as well as the wives of all four, entered the ark. As you know, Noah took animals on board the rescue ship - "each creature has a pair." We can say that we inherited this popular expression today from the Flood. And also in our language there is the word "antediluvian" (that is, literally: what happened before the Flood). We use it when we talk about something ridiculously outdated.
Nowadays, scientists around the world are concerned about the threat of a new global flood. For the first time in 12,000 years, the glaciers of Antarctica began to melt rapidly. The largest of the ocean wanderers reaches an area of 5.5,000 km2, twice the size of Luxembourg. Similar processes are taking place in the Arctic. Our blue planet may soon be left without an ice cap.
More recently, scientists have started talking with concern about the fact that giant ice shelves are breaking under the influence of global warming. As a result, part of one of the largest icebergs in the Antarctic, VM-14, decreased by 3,235 km in 41 days. The head of the British Antarktic Survey laboratory, Doctor of Glaciology D. Vaughan said then that he was “amazed at the speed of the process. It is simply impossible to believe that an ice block weighing almost 500 billion tons disintegrated in just a month."
Scientists express concern that over time the process may accelerate, and then the threat of a new global flood will become quite real for humanity. They were right. Already two months later, their colleagues from the National Glaciological Center in Suitland reported that the boulders are giving new cracks and many kilometers of icebergs flying away from them like chips. For example, not relatively recently an iceberg broke away from one of the glaciers, 9 times the size of Singapore.
“Global warming is not a very useful and pleasant process for mankind,” says M. Sokolsky, professor at Moscow State University. - This can significantly change the climate of the planet, threatens various cataclysms and ultimately endangers the survival of the biosphere of our planet. Already now, due to the split of glaciers, there are difficulties with navigation, tens of thousands of animals die, many of which are rare and endangered species.
Last year's drift has put an entire colony of emperor penguins on the brink of survival at Cape Croisier. These animals need a thick, durable ice cover to breed. But instead, the poor fellows found themselves on a crumb of snow that could not bear their mass. More than half of them died. Naturally, anxiety arises - what next?"
It is a pity that scientists cannot yet propose any measures to combat the destructive process, except for closer observation and accurate forecasting. True, sometimes exotic hypotheses appear on how to overcome the greenhouse effect. The American D. Krauf proposed the "removal" of huge masses of artificial ice at the poles, and the Australian C. Capucci developed the theory of forcing cold on certain parts of the Earth, covering them with a freezer cap filled with freon.
The creation of such gigantic refrigerating chambers would cost humanity an incredible amount, but this is not the limit of imagination. Scientists from the University of Maryland recently reported on their project of a forced deviation of the planet's course from the usual rotation, which supposedly should allow changing the climate on it for the better.
So far, no one is seriously considering all these projects. The "know-how" of the already mentioned Moscow geophysicist I. Yanovsky seems to be the cheapest. According to the scientist, the destructive processes that occur in the bowels of the Earth, including the incredibly fast melting of glaciers, have a direct connection with our thoughts and feelings (by the way, in ancient China, the governor of the emperor in the province in which devastating earthquakes took place, was executed!).
According to Professor Yanovsky, our bad deeds and thoughts generate a corresponding reaction from nature. He believes that it was the misbehavior of humanity that once provoked the Flood. If people change their train of thought, are kind and tolerant, then trouble can still be avoided.
Of course, the Flood that once befell the Earth is far from the only global catastrophe that once happened. History, archeology, geology and Scripture have brought to us a lot of evidence of various disasters, so to speak, of a "local scale" - earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, torrential and floods, mudflows and landslides. Naturally, all these disasters, to varying degrees, have left their mark on the face of our planet. However, the largest global cataclysm in the history of the Earth remains the Flood.
V. Sklyarenko