Tea at Trianon: Noah's Ark

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Noah's Ark

It's back in the news.

Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985, recently sat down with ABC's Christiane Amanpour to talk about his findings. He and his team are scouring the floor of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey. Ballard believes the sea is hiding remnants of an ancient civilization, one that dates back to the time of Noah. Ballard is using robotic technology, which has evolved in leaps and bounds since his robotic submersible equipped with remote-controlled cameras found the Titanic, to conduct his search operation.

The archaeologist was intrigued by a controversial theory proposed by two scientists from Columbia University. Walter Pitman and Bill Ryan believe the Black Sea was once a freshwater lake that was flooded by a massive torrent of water from the Mediterranean Sea. They say that flood washed away everything in its path.

"With more than 200 times the force of Niagara falls, the flood caused water levels in the Black Sea, which was no more than a large lake, to rise six inches per day and swallowed 60,000 square miles in less than a year," wrote Hannah Fairfield in the Columbia News several years ago.

The people who lived there scattered as they fled the rising water that erased the obvious signs of their existence. But Ballard and his team believe the evidence of an ancient civilization is there for them the find. When Ballard launched his operation, he had a very specific goal in mind. "We went in there to look for the flood," Ballard told ABC News. "Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed... The land that went under stayed under."

Ballard's team eventually found ancient pottery and what appears to be an ancient shoreline, which he believes supports the scientists' theory. Based on carbon dating of the shells along that shoreline, Ballard estimates the flood happened around 5,000 B.C., which is believed to be the time of Noah. Ballard, Pitman and Ryan believe it's the recounting of this flood from generation to generation that evolved into the story of Noah's Ark (Genesis chapters 6-9). (Read entire article.)