NYCkayaker NYT: May 10, 2807 BCE, Hudson River Valley, tsunami, and Noah?

[Erik Baard]

Fascinating article in the NY Times today. Excerpts and link follow.

In short: an asteroid + tsunami + Noah + the Hudson Valley?

Ancient Crash, Epic Wave

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: November 14, 2006 

"The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or
comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population,
smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at
least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated
Indonesia nearly two years ago. The wave carried the huge deposits of
sediment to land...chevrons, which they interpret as evidence of past
giant tsunamis. Scores of such sites have turned up in Australia,
Africa, Europe and the United States, including the Hudson River Valley
and Long Island."

...

"When the chevrons all point in the same direction to open water, Dallas
Abbott, an adjunct research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., uses a different satellite technology to
look for oceanic craters. With increasing frequency, she finds them,
including an especially large one dating back 4,800 years."

...

"William Ryan, a marine geologist at the Lamont Observatory, compared
Dr. Abbott’s work to that of other pioneering scientists who had to
change the way their colleagues thought about a subject.

“Many of us think Dallas is really onto something,” Dr. Ryan said. “She
is building a story just like Walter Alvarez did.” Dr. Alvarez, a
professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of
California, Berkeley, spent a decade convincing skeptics that a giant
asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago."

...

"Dr. Masse analyzed 175 flood myths from around the world, and tried to
relate them to known and accurately dated natural events like solar
eclipses and volcanic eruptions. Among other evidence, he said, 14 flood
myths specifically mention a full solar eclipse, which could have been
the one that occurred in May 2807 B.C.

Half the myths talk of a torrential downpour, Dr. Masse said. A third
talk of a tsunami. Worldwide they describe hurricane force winds and
darkness during the storm. All of these could come from a mega-tsunami."

LINK:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/science/14WAVE.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin



Erik Baard

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