The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 9 Australia and Discharge fluctuation of major rivers

Australia

The Aboriginal tribes in southern Australia, who could be the direct descendants of migrants who left Africa up to 75,000 years ago, and who carry some of the genes associated with the Denisovan (a species of human related to but distinct from Neanderthals) peoples of Asia; and having them migrated from Siberia to tropical parts of Asia and that they interbred with modern humans in South-East Asia 44,000 years ago, before Australia separated from Papua New Guinea.

Heavy rain and high tide causing flooding of R...
Heavy rain and high tide causing flooding of Rapid Creek on the 19th February 2008 in Darwin, Northern Territory. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Discharge fluctuation of major rivers

Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, locally known as the “Gorge Bridge” and the “High Bridge” – 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Taos, New Mexico, United States

Fluvial geo­morphology provides useful evidence for changes of the hydrological balance in semiarid or and regions. Specifically, well-dated, fine-grained alluvial fills in semiarid Arizona and New Mexico suggest that runoff was inhibited by an effective vegetation mat except for brief periods of relative aridity c. 8500-8000 BCE, c. 6500-3800 BCE, and again c. CE 500-1000. In addition, falling water tables are indicated c. 8500-5000 BCE, rising water tables c. 2500-1500 BCE. Comparable deposits may exist in central India and South Africa. In the axis of the Sahara, increased stream activity is indicated c. 7500-6500 BCE and c. 3500-2500 BCE, coincident with periods of significantly higher Nile floods. Alluvial deposits of comparable age elsewhere are either, unstudied, undated, poorly developed, or uninformative. Still enigmatic are alluvial deposits of post-Roman to late medieval age found throughout the Mediterranean Basin, temperate Europe, and western Asia: in part they relate to man-influenced soil erosion, in part they may also reflect climatic variations of uncertain character.

Sundown and the flooded valley near Cairo

Fragmentary records of Nile flood levels, providing an index of total flood volume and of rainfall in eastern Africa, exist back to 3100 BCE, but few systematic data are preserved before 622 CE. Of particular interest is the downward trend of flood levels after 3000 BCE, culminating in abnormally low floods between 2180-1950 BCE that led to severe famines and allowed sand dunes to invade parts of the former floodplain. A number of surviving records indicate exceptionally high floods c. 1840-1780 BCE and again in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. On the basis of the gauge readings, Nile floods were abnormally low CE 756-1089, 1192-1382, and 1452-1506; they were unusually high c. 1610, 1727-1776, and 1846-1892; total discharge has been measured regularly since 1870 and shows a sharp decrease since 1899.

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Preceding articles

The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 1 Flooding and Water-waves

The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 2 Mythic theme 1 God or gods warning

The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 3 Mythic theme 2 Hebrew story of the flood

The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 4 Mythic theme 3 Chinese mythology

The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 5 Indian region

The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 6 European myths

The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 7 North America

The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 8 South America

Next: The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 10 Animated water

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11 thoughts on “The flood, floods and mythic flood stories 9 Australia and Discharge fluctuation of major rivers”

    1. Lovely to have presented those links.

      In the interesting articles is proposed that recent catastrophes show that violent events like the flood described in Genesis could form many rock layers very quickly.
      In “Refuting Evolution—Chapter 8” How old is the earth? by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., F.M.is written

      The Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington state produced 25 feet (7.6 meters) of finely layered sediment in a single afternoon!1 And a rapidly pumped sand slurry was observed to deposit 3 to 4 feet (about 1 meter) of fine layers on a beach over an area the size of a football field. Sedimentation experiments by the creationist Guy Berthault, sometimes working with non-creationists, have shown that fine layers can form by a self-sorting mechanism during the settling of differently sized particles.2,3

      We may never forget not everything decayed in a normal manner. some things have been buried quickly by sediments carried by water. This water would also have contained dissolved minerals, which would have caused the sediments to have been cemented together, and so hardened quickly.

      Ironically, NASA scientists accept that there have been ‘catastrophic floods’ on Mars7 that carved out canyons8 although no liquid water is present today. But they deny that a global flood happened on earth, where there is enough water to cover the whole planet to a depth of 1.7 miles (2.7 km) if it were completely uniform, and even now covers 71 percent of the earth’s surface! If it weren’t for the fact that the Bible teaches it, they probably wouldn’t have any problem with a global flood on earth. This demonstrates again how the biases of scientists affect their interpretation of the evidence.

      Problem with man is that they always try to explain everything, though not everything can be grasped with our limited human brain, nor explained by the present scientific knowledge.

      There are many examples where the dating methods give ‘dates’ that are wrong for rocks of known historical age. One example is rock from a dacite lava dome at Mount St Helens volcano. Although we know the rock was formed in 1986, the rock was ‘dated’ by the potassium-argon (K-Ar) method as 0.35 ± 0.05 million years old.9 Another example is K-Ar ‘dating’ of five andesite lava flows from Mt Ngauruhoe in New Zealand. The ‘dates’ ranged from < 0.27 to 3.5 million years—but one lava flow occurred in 1949, three in 1954, and one in 1975!

      Another problem is the conflicting dates between different methods. If two methods disagree, then at least one of them must be wrong. For example, in Australia, some wood was buried by a basalt lava flow, as can be seen from the charring. The wood was ‘dated’ by radiocarbon (14C) analysis at about 45,000 years old, but the basalt was ‘dated’ by the K-Ar method at c. 45 million years old!11 Other fossil wood from Upper Permian rock layers has been found with 14C still present. Detectable 14C would have all disintegrated if the wood were really older than 50,000 years, let alone the 250 million years that evolutionists assign to these Upper Permian rock layers.12[Update: see also Radiometric dating breakthroughs for more examples of 14C in coal and diamonds, allegedly millions of years old.]

      11: A.A. Snelling, Radioactive ‘dating’ in conflict, Creation 20(1):24–27, December 1997–February 1998.
      Lots of people try to give an idea of the history of our earth and the ages of millions of years counting on all sorts of methods to calculate the earths history by assuming the rates of change of processes in the past to be the same as we observe today—called principle of uniformitarianism.

      If the age calculated from such assumptions disagrees with what they think the age should be, they conclude that their assumptions did not apply in this case, and adjust them accordingly. If the calculated result gives an acceptable age, the investigators publish it.

      We must warn to be very careful with ‘creationist’ ideas. The other way round we also want to warn to be careful with evolutionists their assumptions and theories which also have a wide variety of opinion.

      Don Batten writes in Age of the earth 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe:

      when the evolutionists throw up some new challenge to the Bible’s timeline, don’t fret over it. Sooner or later that supposed evidence will be turned on its head and will even be added to this list of evidences for a younger age of the earth. On the other hand, some of the evidences listed here might turn out to be ill-founded with further research and will need to be modified. Such is the nature of science, especially historical science, because we cannot do experiments on past events (see “It’s not science”).

      Man, who often does want to play for God, does have to know his knowledge is very limited. Man may have created lots of theories which they group under the term ‘Science’ which they have based on observation. Though also in our observation we must see that we always have our thinking fed by our way of growing up in a certain educational system and culture. Though many scientist may say they are not biassed and that they are doing their analysis on the base of reliable witness who observed the events they are examining. Though how can they know they have reliable witnesses when it is about matters thousands or millions of years ago?

      We also notice lots of people do want to take every effort to deny the biblical truth or to pull people away from their trust in the Divine Maker. though we may not forget that the Bible claims to be the communication of the only One who witnessed the events of Creation: the Creator himself. As such, the Bible is the only reliable means of knowing the age of the earth and the cosmos.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Thanks, yes I’d like to build on that last point. There is only one eye witness in this discussion, and that is God… and he himself points this out to Job. However that does not mean we should have blind faith!

        We are told to be ready to give an answer for the hope within us. To prove all things and hold on to that which is good. One way of doing this is through creation itself.

        In Romans 1:20 we are told that the invisible things are clearly seen from creation. The results of the 6 24 hour creation days, that we have not personally witnessed testify to the truth of the record of God. So we can see the evidence of what exists now and work out which fits best with the evidence… creation or evolution?

        There are plenty of articles on Creation.com and AnswersInGenesis.com that are written by leading scientists in their fields. Their arguments are lucid and consistent. To me it is clear that the evidence falls decisively on the side of the scriptures… a young earth.

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