The greatest flood story ever told is recorded in religious texts, a story of world-wide inundation precipitated, if you will, by a God angry at his faithless people.
The purpose of the story is to teach a moral lesson, not a meteorological one, but many such stories are rooted in experience. The half-meter rise in sea-level that resulted from the discharge of water from Glacial Lake Agassiz doesn’t sound like much, but in low-lying coastal areas the effect could have moved shorelines inland up to 10 kilometers.
The resulting flood would have forced ancient peoples to flee their coastal settlements, and lacking any knowledge of the glacial lake responsible for the floodwaters, the people created a story that helped explain both how and why the flood occurred.
Source: Teller, J.T., and Leverington, D.W., Outbursts from Lake Agassiz and their possible impact on coastal environments. Environmental Catastrophes and recoveries in the Holocene, August 29-Sept. 2, 2002, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK. Also mentioned in a 2002 piece in Science News by Sid Perkins.
Photo credit: http://www.maritimequest.com/misc_ships/noahs_ark_3000bc/noahs_ark_4.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment