Post by pim on Mar 16, 2014 7:19:13 GMT 10
We're told that references to a "year" or a "day" in the Book of Genesis are not to be seen as what we understand as a calendar year or day. So it's reasonable to speculate that the flood myth of the Abrahamic tradition, which crops up - with variations - in the mythologies and sacred texts of all three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and which we know as the Noah story arises out of rises in sea levels which occurred, along with massive climate change, with the end of the last major Ice Age some 10 000 years ago.
These changes in the planet's climate systems also coincided with the extinction of some of the most spectacular creatures to have roamed the earth apart from the dinosaurs - the so-called "megafauna": notably creatures such as the woolly mammoth in North America, and the giant elephant-sized wombat called the Diprotodon in Australia.
Diprotodon, the largest known marsupial, which used to roam Australia
The woolly mammoth
There's a conference taking place in Oxford in the UK right now which is looking at possible causes for these extinction events, with the central "Whodunnit" question being: was it humans or climate change that finished off these creatures? www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/15/what-killed-giant-beasts-mammoths-climate-change-or-man
But there's another question and while it isn't one that will necessarily exercise the minds of these Oxford dons, it's nevertheless one that should confront biblical literalists: the extinction of the mammalian megafauna, both among placental and marsupial mammals, which occurred 10 000 years ago, is relatively recent so that humans would certainly have encountered them, puts them in the ballpark of the Noah's Ark flood myth. Why no mention of the megafauna? Did they perish in the Flood? Did God condemn them to death? And if so, why?
These changes in the planet's climate systems also coincided with the extinction of some of the most spectacular creatures to have roamed the earth apart from the dinosaurs - the so-called "megafauna": notably creatures such as the woolly mammoth in North America, and the giant elephant-sized wombat called the Diprotodon in Australia.
Diprotodon, the largest known marsupial, which used to roam Australia
The woolly mammoth
There's a conference taking place in Oxford in the UK right now which is looking at possible causes for these extinction events, with the central "Whodunnit" question being: was it humans or climate change that finished off these creatures? www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/15/what-killed-giant-beasts-mammoths-climate-change-or-man
But there's another question and while it isn't one that will necessarily exercise the minds of these Oxford dons, it's nevertheless one that should confront biblical literalists: the extinction of the mammalian megafauna, both among placental and marsupial mammals, which occurred 10 000 years ago, is relatively recent so that humans would certainly have encountered them, puts them in the ballpark of the Noah's Ark flood myth. Why no mention of the megafauna? Did they perish in the Flood? Did God condemn them to death? And if so, why?