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Massive flood impacted Caspian Sea and Eurasia

Methods to use researching geological history

Today’s feedback comes from RG who sent us geological evidence in the Caspian Sea area for a massive flood that affected vast areas of Eurasia.

Caspian-Sea
Caspian Sea (facing west; image width 1500 km (900 mi))

Dear CMI,

I am trying to reach out to encourage scientists, academics, and religious scholars to investigate the evidence of a massive flood that impacted the Caspian Sea and Eurasia. The physical evidence of the flood can be seen in strandlines in Azerbaijan’s coastal interior in a valley floor and on two mud volcanoes. Mud volcanoes are easily eroded by wave action and so provide evidence of when the flooding occurred.

It is possible to date the flood using the technique of optical stimulated luminescence (OSL) by testing the sediments washed off the volcano as they were exposed to sunlight. Radiocarbon dating of molluscs is also a possibility for there is evidence that the floodwaters persisted long enough for shellfish to survive in the flooded land.

In 2018 I made a presentation to the Geological Institute of Azerbaijan (GIA) who agreed with my deductions that there had been a massive flood reaching 222 m above mean sea level. To account for the water involved a catastrophic event must have happened to push seawater inland. Given the height of the flood, water would drain away quickly to the Arctic, Baltic and Mediterranean, though much would be retained in the Caspian and Black Sea basins. They also agreed that the date of the flood could be determined using OSL.

A number of people have suggested that this flood looks to be the flood of Noah and based on the erosion patterns on the mud volcanoes seems to mirror the timeline given in the Noah story.

From a scientific perspective I am interested in the cause of the flood and the physical, chemical, biological, and human impacts that it would have had. So far, the flood seems to have happened around 9,600 years ago based on radiocarbon dating of marine molluscs and microfauna in the North Caspian sediments. This puts it at odds with biblical scholars’ estimation of the biblical flood.

Can I suggest that you might wish to investigate the date of the flood by independent testing of the sediments as I suggest. If it is accepted that the mud volcanoes act as a sort of ‘tidal gauge’ then logically they would have been etched by a worldwide flood. The strandlines therefore provide the necessary evidence of the last significant flood.

What is encouraging about my observations is that it confirms a great flood happened and that this could well be the flood of myth, legend and that bible clearly informs us of a of a world changing event. Only the date and the cause of the flood need to be established.

I trust that this information is of interest to you and hopefully encourage you to follow up on it.

Best wishes, RG

Azerbaijan
Figure 1. Strandlines in the Gilazi Valley, Azerbaijan, alongside the Caspian Sea. with the upper strandline at 222m above mean global sea level. The strandlines were caused by a Caspian highstand, and are impossibly high.

CMI geologist Dr Tas Walker responds.

Hi RG,

Thanks for sending those documents about the geomorphology of the Caspian Sea Area. What you provided looks very interesting and could be significant evidence for Noah’s Flood. I offer here some comments to help with the direction of future research. I will also publish your correspondence on our website with the aim of arousing interest in your research.

You said, “Only the date and the cause of the flood need to be established.”

By cause, I assume you mean whether the cause was Noah’s Flood or a catastrophe that occurred in the approximately 4,500 years after Noah’s-Flood. The first image in the document you sent (figure 1) shows the strandlines you mentioned with the maximum at 222 m. Another image you sent (figure 2) shows the areas of Eurasia that would be inundated with water at a flood level of 222 m. Unless there are some hidden complications, it looks overwhelmingly compelling that this inundation was during the Retreating Stage (RS) of Noah’s Flood. In other words, the water level in figure 2 is dropping. Not long before, perhaps four or five months previously, the water had covered the whole continent, but now it is flowing into the surrounding oceans.

Concerning the “date”—you mentioned a number of 9,600 years and commented that this “puts it at odds with biblical scholars’ estimation of the flood.” However, you cannot rely on dates like this provided by OSL, or carbon-14 because they are based on multiple assumptions about the unobserved past. Further, their uniformitarian philosophy requires that they stretch the dates into long ages. Also, be aware that mainstream geologists do not accept any dates that do not agree with what they think they should be (see how dating methods work and related articles). Neither should we. We can rely on the chronology provided in the Bible (see The Forgotten Archbishop and Biblical minimum and maximum age of the earth) which is based on historical evidence.

There are a few issues with the 9,600-year date, which you said is “based on radiocarbon dating of marine molluscs and microfauna in the North Caspian sediments.” First, as you noted, it is too old for biblical history. However, that is not surprising because uniformitarian dates are typically much older than the Bible allows. However, the uniformitarian date is too young for what we would expect from Flood fossils. It is more recent than the uniformitarian date for the Last Glacial Maximum (22,000 uniformitarian years), which, in biblical time was some 500 years after the Flood. One possibility is that there is something happening that is causing the carbon dates to be ‘young’, and we can just ignore it. Another possibility is that the sediments from which the molluscs were collected may be post-Flood and post-Ice-Age sediments. I see that they are classified as Holocene, which may be post-Flood. And a third possibility is that the strandlines formed during high localized water level during the Ice Age and glacial ice cover dammed the water to restrict it to the local area. So, the date introduces a puzzle that may need to be sorted.

Working through a Flood sequence

The way to sort the timing is to look at the physical nature of the rocks, work through a Flood sequence, and determine the relative timing of the geology. There are lots of tools that can be used, such as the principles of stratigraphy. That is the way mainstream geologists work to produce their maps. In fact, all radioactive dates must agree with the relative timing so determined.

One powerful tool biblical geologists have is to apply a Flood sequence to the rocks of the area. This is something that mainstream geologists do not do because they do not acknowledge Noah’s Flood happened. The Flood sequence involves considering the progress of the Flood. That is: waters rising, waters peak, waters cover all land, planation surfaces erode, waters start to recede, continents start to uplift, land emerges above water, wide river valleys erode. sediments deposited locally, more erosion, etc. It involves looking at the big picture, at the regional scale and even further.

This analysis of a geological guide book shows how the sort of treatment I just described was applied to the RS for Central Australia, that is after the end of the Cretaceous. Mainstream geologists use language and descriptions that fit remarkably graphically into the RS of the Flood, but they do not appreciate what they are observing. In the progress of that biblical analysis some of the published geology that did not match a biblical sequence, raising questions that highlight the need for further study. In other words, we cannot always accept the timing of the different geological units on a geological map. The reason for the discrepancy is that the uniformitarian timing is based on criteria that differ from biblical criteria. Discrepancies like these flag areas we need to check against a logical Flood sequence.

Eurasia
Figure 2. What Eurasia would look like with a flood level of 222m above mean sea level.

I have found generally that the top of the Cretaceous is where the waters of Noah’s Flood peaked (more or less). I do not know if that applies to your area, but I suspect it would. However, rocks classified after the Cretaceous, the Cenozoic, do not translate neatly into the RS of the Flood for many reasons some of which are discussed here.

Along this line, your diagram (figure 2) showing most of Eurasia inundated provides physical evidence for the timing. That is, it is almost certainly the RS of Noah’s Flood, which was about 4,500 years ago. It is unimaginable that this sort of flooding would have happened post-Noah’s-Flood. This is a reasonable first step. Of course, we need to be careful. For example, were the ‘strandlines’ on that hill (figure 1) formed by some process other than standing water? Or was the water near that hill confined in some way such that it did not affect the whole of Eurasia?

Figure 2 also shows that much land had already emerged above the water. This reveals what it would have been like late in the RS. Some call this the Dispersive Phase or the Channelized Flow Phase. (See this summary of the biblical geological model).

Examples the Retreating Stage of the Flood

To assist with your research here are some articles that discuss the Retreating Stage (RS) of the Flood and the characteristics of it:

Noah’s Flood in Africa shows that early in the RS, after the floodwaters peaked, lots of erosion occurred on the continents. You should be able to identify some erosion surfaces in the area—surfaces which have subsequently been dissected. Geographically extensive erosion surfaces would be cut into Cretaceous deposits and earlier. They may not be obvious in the immediate area if there is a lot of Cenozoic sediment deposited there. This erosion period means there was no sedimentation at that time in the area. This helps to sort out the timing of events.

Here is another article about the remarkable flat African planation surface. Note this paper describes how the planation surface is bounded at the edges by a steep escarpment located inland from the coast. This escarpment was eroded by the receding floodwaters. It would be good to consider the big picture of Eurasia and see if you can identify any escarpments like that.

This article tremendous flood erosion is another that explored the remarkable erosion that took place during the RS. It’s plain to see is another.

This article on Noah’s long-distance travelers explains how the high energy water flows during the RS eroded boulders from the continent and transported these boulders for hundreds of kilometres across the landscape. The boulders often have percussion marks caused by their crashing into each other. This would be something worth looking for in the region.

Developing geological history from the Flood sequence

Here are a couple of articles that work through the geological history of a couple of different areas showing how the geology can be tied to distinctive phases of the Flood. Both talk about the RS of the Flood.

About half of this article on Wilpena Pound, Australia, discusses the RS of the Flood and describes some of the characteristic features formed at that time, such as water gaps. These are features worth looking for in your area.

This article about Wave Rock, Western Australia, talks about the two-phase erosion process (erosion in sheets and erosion in channels) which is characteristic of the RS of the Flood. This gives a good example of multiple, wide river valleys, which are characteristic features of the RS.

And finally, here is an article about loess, i.e. deposits of very fine sediment, which suggests the fine material was formed during the RS of the Flood. These features can provide a marker to help work out the timing of the geology.

You have done some amazing work. Perhaps you can publish some of it in the Journal of Creation.

All the best,
Tasman Walker
Scientist, Writer, Speaker
Creation Ministries International (Australia)

Published: 12 December 2020

Helpful Resources

How Noah's Flood Shaped Our Earth
by Michael J Oard, John K Reed
US $17.00
Soft cover
Exploring Geology with Mr Hibb
by Michael Oard, Tara Wolfe, Chris Turbuck
US $10.00
mobi (ebook) download