Tea at Trianon: Noah's Ark: An Archaeological Explanation

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

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Noah's Ark: An Archaeological Explanation

From RealClearScience:

As Laurence C. Smith, a Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University, recounted in his forthcoming book, Rivers of Power, a story nearly identical to Noah's is "written on one of the twelve tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh," predating the Old Testament account by more than a thousand years.

"Numerous credible studies suggest that a real-world local catastrophe may have inspired the story," he writes.

"At the height of the last ice age around 21,000 years ago, global sea level averaged some 125 meters lower than today. The present-day Persian Gulf, extending from Dubai to Kuwait City, was a broad river valley dotted with freshwater lakes... this ancient valley became inundated when global sea levels rose rapidly from approximately 10,000 to 4,000 BCE, due to melting of continental ice sheets and thermal expansion of ocean water as it warmed... The sea's advance averaged more than 100 meters per year, and sometimes more than one kilometer per year."

About sixty well-developed communities along the modern shores of the Persian Gulf date to around 5,000 BCE. The thousands of people dwelling within the fertile basin would have been forced to move and resettle year after year until the waters finally stopped rising and they could lay down more permanent roots. As Smith writes:

"To the region's human inhabitants, living on what is now the muddy seabed of the Persian Gulf, the relentless inundation of their homeland over the course of many generations was surely a noticed and traumatic event. Oral (and eventually written) accounts of their forced migration may have passed down to their descendants and could be the original source of the Gilgamesh Epic, the Old Testament account of Noah and the Ark, and other ancient Great Flood legends." (Read more.)