Great flood in china found, according to articles in BBC News, ScienceDaily and Science (AAAS) News 4 August 2016, Science vol. 353, pp. 579-582, doi: 10.1126/science.aaf0842, and Science Perspective, vol 353 pp538-539, doi: 10.1126/science.aah4040, 5 August 2016. An international team of scientists have found evidence of a massive flood in the Jishi Gorge at the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China. In 2007 Wu Qinglong, from Nanjing Normal University, and colleagues studied “ancient lakebed sediment” in the gorge. They speculated that a lake formed behind a dam created by an earthquake, which had later burst open releasing the water in the lake as an outburst flood.
They also carried out further research on sediment in an archaeological site named Lajia, where a number of cave dwellings had been destroyed by an earthquake and engulfed by a massive flow of sediment, leaving preserved human remains and artefacts so well preserved it is referred to as a Chinese Pompei.
Wu explained: “In July 2008 I suddenly realised that the so-called black sand previously revealed by archaeologists at the Lajia site could be, in fact, the deposits from our outburst flood. The subsequent investigation confirmed this speculation and showed that the sediments from this outburst flood are up to 20m thick, and up to 50m higher than the Yellow River – indicating an unprecedented, devastating flood”. The Lajia remains have been dated by radiocarbon dating to be around 1900 BC.
The researchers suggest their findings fit with the Chinese story of the founding of the Xia imperial dynasty, which was founded by Yu, who earned his right to become the first Emperor after overseeing a program of dredging and canal building that controlled flooding from the Yellow River.
In a commentary article written for Science, David Montgomery a geologist at University of Washington, Seattle wrote: “The timing of the flood, Wu et al. report, coincides with an avulsion that redirected the Yellow River to carve a new course across the North China Plain about 2000 BCE. It would have taken considerable time for a large river to adjust to such a change, and the associated sustained flooding would fall in the right time and place to account for Yu’s story—including the long time it took to control the floodwaters”.
Montgomery went on to comment about the world wide phenomenon of ancient stories of “epic deluges”. However, he quickly dismisses Noah’s Flood. He wrote: “After all, attempts to explain the biblical story of Noah’s Flood not only shaped the early development of geology but later fuelled discoveries refuting the biblically inspired idea that a global flood laid down the world’s sedimentary rocks in the first place. But how many of these ancient stories might actually record regional flood disasters?”
Editorial Comment: The Chinese story of Emperor Yu is about local flooding and water management. The Chinese were brilliant civil engineers, so the findings described above certainly seem to confirm the Yu flood story as real history, but we do need to note the Chinese do not claim the Yu event was about a world-wide flood sent in judgement.
One trend in modern thinking has been to relegate all “flood legends” as purely local memories that have nothing to do with Noah’s Flood, yet almost every culture in the world has legends of a great flood sent by a Supreme Being in judgement on man’s evil, and this flood wiped out all humanity except for those saved by the Supreme Being of the account. Furthermore, the people of these flood judgement stories know this event was different from the local natural disasters that they experience.
There is no doubt that since the time of Noah’s Flood there certainly will have been localised catastrophic floods associated with earthquakes, and the end of the ice age mentioned in Job’s day would certainly have resulted in massive flooding as ice-sheets melted, ice dams burst and massive amounts of water flowed over the land and into the sea. However, these local events cannot be used as an excuse to deny the reality of the Genesis Flood, which is clearly described as a unique world-wide event that inundated all the land surface. (Genesis 7:17-24).
There is also no doubt that the early development of geology was shaped by the Biblical account of Noah’s Flood, and all early geologists started right there, but attempts to refute it exist only in the minds of anti-Christian sceptics, in spite of the evidence. There is undeniable evidence of massive catastrophic flood deposits all over the world, but modern day sceptics insist on interpreting these as separate local events, even when they are far larger than any observed local event. They are happy to have a long series of separate local disasters, but draw the line at one world-wide disaster, largely due to the influence of Darwin’s mentor Charles Lyell who admitted he wanted to “free the science from Moses”. (Charles Lyell, Letter to George Scrope, 14 June 1830).
The fact that modern geologists have followed in Lyell’s footsteps is not due to the evidence – it is mostly due to man’s desire to deny the reason Noah’s Flood was sent, i.e. judgement on human sin. By freeing science from Moses the sceptics are trying to free themselves from the One whom Moses wrote about – Jesus Christ, who is Creator and Judge. Sadly this “freedom” means they also deny the free gift of salvation that Christ offers, because, as Christ Himself warned, “if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:46-47) (Ref. catastrophe, earth science, geomorphology)
Evidence News vol. 16 No. 15
17 August 2016
Creation Research Australia