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Noah’s Flood—Probing an Ancient Narrative Using Geoscience

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Palaeohydrology

Part of the book series: Geography of the Physical Environment ((GEOPHY))

Abstract

This article sheds new light on the narrative of Noah’s Flood (Genesis Flood, Great Deluge) from a geoscientific point of view. It outlines the four most popular hypotheses: (i) the postglacial–early Holocene flooding of the Persian/Arabian Gulf which fell dry during the last glacial lowstand of the sea; (ii) a cosmic impact by a meteorite ca. 10,000 years ago, which triggered tsunami waves worldwide; (iii) the rapid re-filling of the Black Sea basin when the early Holocene rise of the Mediterranean Sea surpassed the Bosphorus sill about 8400 years ago; and (iv) the occurrence of one or several mega-floods in Central and Lower Mesopotamia, which left imprints in and around ancient settlement mounds (tells) such as Ur and Uruk. The pros and cons of these scenarios are discussed. Based on geological and sedimentological evidence the authors argue for the latter theory and describe future research venues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1341253/videoplayer/vi3808732697?ref_=tt_ov_vi.

  2. 2.

    Woolley (1955:68) described the flood layer as follows: “As to the character of the silt there could be no doubt; the analysis … makes it perfectly clear that it is the type of deposit normally left by the Euphrates in flood, collected from the upper reaches of the river; it is fluvial, not marine. The practical absence of stratification shows that it was deposited all at one time and is not the result of repeated minor floodings… Over the greater part of the area… no break in the uniformity of the deposit from top to bottom could be detected; here and there might be a ‘pocket’ of material of a different character, rubbish such as would be carried along by the swirling waters as they passed over an inhabited site, but such were isolated and discontinuous…”

  3. 3.

    It is noteworthy that the first prosaic texts are in cuneiform lettering and date from the late fourth millennium BC.

  4. 4.

    This kind of catastrophic scenario had already been favoured by Woolley. He ends his comment about the Flood layer: …. (a riverine) “flood eight metres deep may well have spread over what was for the farmers of the Mesopotamian valley the whole world” (Woolley 1955:19).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geography, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Helmut Brückner & Max Engel

  2. Geological Survey of Belgium, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science, Brussels, Belgium

    Max Engel

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  1. Helmut Brückner
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  2. Max Engel
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Correspondence to Helmut Brückner .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Jürgen Herget

  2. Dipartimento di Geoscienze, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padua, Italy

    Alessandro Fontana

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Brückner, H., Engel, M. (2020). Noah’s Flood—Probing an Ancient Narrative Using Geoscience. In: Herget, J., Fontana, A. (eds) Palaeohydrology. Geography of the Physical Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23315-0_7

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