Debunking Geology’s ‘No Flood, Ever’ Theory: Historical Analysis & Bathymetry Evidence on New Maps

For almost 200 years geologists have accepted that the Earth has had all its water since nearly the beginning. This paradigm finds its origin in the early decades of the 1800s when European geologists began the process of determining whether or not the whole of the Earth suffered a deluge. The early geologists set about various landscapes seeking a common, flood-created deposit layer, but they could not find it. Instead, it became apparent that diluvial gravels belonged to multiple, distinct events. Therefore, because there was not a common event in the observational record, the early geologists concluded that there was never a worldwide flood. Thus, Earth’s waters have been here since the onset.

In his 1831 president’s address to the Geological Society of London, Adam Sedgwick renounced his belief in a worldwide flood. He stated, in part:

The vast masses of diluvial gravel … do not belong to one violent and transitory period. It was indeed a most unwarranted conclusion when we assumed the contemporaneity of all the superficial gravel on the earth…. Having been myself a believer [in a worldwide flood], and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, … I think it right … thus publicly to read my recantation.

It was a celebrated pronouncement, for Sedgwick was not only the Society’s president, but he was also a Cambridge University professor and a clergyman in the Church of England. Sedgwick’s recantation had lasting effect: to this day, all of science accepts that there was never a worldwide flood.

Interestingly, today’s lettered geologists staffing the science’s premier journals do not know the source of their fundamental “no flood, ever” tenet. They simply accept it as an article of their faith, and they immediately discount anyone thinking otherwise. I know this because I have dealt with them. Many of them. I have found that the very few aware of the tenet’s history are wholly uncritical of the conclusion relative to its supporting evidence.

Uncritical? Indeed: the early geologists’ “no flood, ever” conclusion is indisputably wrong. From the evidence, Sedgwick and his peers instead should have concluded: presently exposed landscapes were never submerged by a common flood. Whereas it is undeniably true that where we are now was never flooded by a common event, that is not equivalent to the claim that there was never a worldwide flood. Sedgwick and the other early geologists mistakenly passed judgment on vast, submerged landscapes that they could not observe; they assumed that all of Earth’s waters have been with us since the beginning. Their error precluded the possibility that now-submerged landscapes were once exposed and later inundated by some event.

Geology’s incorrect finding persisted for two reasons: (1) there was little contradictory evidence on presently exposed landscapes that would call into question the prevailing theory, and (2) we could not see into the bathymetry to observe submerged landscapes until only recently. Today, however, new maps allow us to observe the topography of ocean floors where we find former river systems.

For instance, the map on Figure 1 depicts bathymetry details to the west of the Monterey and Big Sur coasts of California. Note the many former rivers that made their way down and into the abyssal plain from upland areas. The combined drainages flowed to the southwest (lower left on Fig. 1); this terminus region is now submerged in more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of water.

Figure 1. Bathymetry map off the California coast near Monterey and Big Sur.

It is important to note that we are applying the scientific method: new data on the maps caused us to review theory, and that led us to discover that geology’s “no flood, ever” paradigm is erroneous. The new data should evoke new thinking, which, in this case, would result in the restoration of the belief that the Earth suffered a devastating flood. That geologists have failed to review their fundamental belief in the presence of this new data is powerful testament to the constraining effect that “no flood, ever” holds over science, related disciplines, and rational thought.

The drainages in Fig. 1 reveal that the Earth had much less water than the present. As such, it is interesting to consider pre-flood Earth, a model for which is shown on Figure 2. It was created in ArcGIS by removing an estimated average depth of 3 km from the present sea level, thereby exposing the former river systems.

Figure 2. With more than 3 km of water graphically removed, a model of land and sea distributions in pre-flood Earth shows previously exposed but now-submerged landscapes (tan), presently exposed landscapes (beige), and former oceans and seas (blue).

The pre-flood atmosphere would have covered the dark tan, formerly abyssal regions. As a consequence, this expanse would have experienced higher temperatures, primarily due to the absence of the incredible heat sink represented by the present oceans (higher atmospheric pressure would be another factor). We find evidence of pre-flood human activity nearly exclusively in tropical latitudes because, at more than 3 kilometers (two miles) above the former sea level, most of the yellow regions on Fig. 2 were too cold for human habitation. An immediate consequence: Fig. 2 should transform anthropology because furless humans evolved in tropical and near-tropical portions of the tan regions; we are not out of Africa.

To explain the drainages off the California coast, we must recognize that pre-flood California would have been more than 3+ km above the former sea level, and winds uplifted by the nearly vertical continental shelf condensed to create persistent rainfall that eroded and rounded the hills. The collective rainfall runoff drained down the nearly vertical slope where it acquired sufficient kinetic energy to carve Monterey Canyon (dominant feature in the upper part of Fig. 1). Runoff flows carved all the submerged drainages that can be identified throughout the planet’s coastal regions.

Not only does the new ocean bathymetry information overturn geology’s erroneous “no flood, ever” paradigm, it also affords a better perception of our past. In particular, the maps allow us to resolve the problem of Atlantis.

In Critias, Plato describes the Atlantis canal system:

It was rectangular, and for the most part straight and oblong…. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium [equivalent to 185 meters] everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length…. The depth and width and length of this ditch were incredible and gave the impression that such a work, in addition to so many other works, could hardly have been wrought by the hand of man. It received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain, and touching the city at various points, was there left off into the sea…. From above, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut in the plain, and again let off into the ditch toward the sea; these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, …cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city.

Figure 3 is a NOAA map, centered at 24.4°W, 31.3°N, that shows the remnants of the Atlantis canal system. Let us compare it to Plato’s description. First, we note that the canals were straight and formed rectangular sections. The canal perimeter measures approximately 165 km east to west and 120 km north to south, so it was immense. In addition, the canals were sufficiently deep and wide to be discerned by modern instruments. The water source might have been the highland region to the west, which is the eastern extent of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. We can see that the interlocking transverse canals were mostly at right angles and that the system might have drained to the northeast where we find a drainage channel. The distance between the canals varies, but the span between two major east-west canals, identified by the red arrow on Figure 3, measures 15 km, which equates to approximately 85 stadia (assuming that 5.666 stadia equal 1 km). Thus, Plato’s description of the distance between canals is close to what we observe.

Figure 3. NOAA map (public domain) of a portion of the Madeira Abyssal Plain with a superimposed arrow that is 15 km in length.

To determine the overall length of the canals, we can overlay straight line segments, as shown on Figure 4. We take those segments, lay them end to end, and convert their distance in kilometers to stadia. Doing so reveals: the length of the canal system is 1,775 km, which translates to 9,600 stadia, a number within 4% of Plato’s description.

Figure 4. Same map as Fig. 3, with overlain lines.

The blue star on Figure 5 (top and bottom) depicts the same map location. It is approximately 1,750 km west-southwest of the Strait of Gibraltar near the Canary Islands, 750 km south of the Azores, and 650 km nearly due west of Madeira. That is, the canals are found where prehistorians believe Atlantis existed.

Figure 5. To convey the location of the submerged canal system, the blue star in each NOAA map is in the identical location.

To carve such an extensive canal system implies that the Atlanteans were master stone masons. How they achieved such a feat is open to speculation. Yet, however they were created, conservation of mass should lead us to wonder: what did they do with the excavated materials? Could they have stacked them into pyramids?

In Timaeus, Plato describes Atlantis’ fate:

“At a later time there were earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, and in a single dreadful day and night all your fighting men were swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis was similarly swallowed up by the sea and vanished.”

The incredible earthquakes that Plato recounts would have been induced by the immense cosmic impact that delivered the flood, described below. Soon after the impact, the newly introduced floodwaters coursed their way around the planet and into low-lying regions such as the Madeira Abyssal Plain where Atlantis was buried (and its canals preserved) by the worldwide floodwaters.

Such a volume of water so as to add 3+ km to abyssal regions could not be stored at Earth’s poles – the atmosphere only extends so far. Thus, the source must be cosmic, and this brings us to the Younger-Dryas event wherein geologists recognize incredible ecosystem changes induced by a cosmic impact roughly 13,000 years before present. They have yet to identify the impact site, though they presume that some comet struck an ice sheet somewhere in North America and projected chunks several hundred to more than a thousand miles (and outside the atmosphere!) thereby creating the Carolina Bays and other craters found in North America. If the impact was predominantly comet ice (H₂O) on North American ice sheet (H₂O), then how could this hypothetical impact create any nanodiamonds (C), let alone a worldwide layer? Furthermore, such a forceful impact would have created a crater, no? And since the impact was only 13,000 years before present, then the crater could not have eroded away. Well, then, where is it?! (Answer: not in North America.)

Interestingly, but as yet unrecognized by geologists, thousands of similar impact craters are found along the entire length of South America (a list of crater locations is found in the appendix of my recently published paper). Example craters from southern Argentina are shown on Figure 6. Note that many of the craters have a NNW-SSE orientation. This indicates the overflight direction of the object from which they fragmented.

Figure 6. Example ice impact craters from southern Argentina that were created by IO fragments as it neared impact. Because of the IO’s overflight direction, the ice impact craters are predominantly oriented NNW-SSE.

I knew to look for ice chunk-created impact craters in South America because I had located the flood-inducing impact site. It is found in the Southern Ocean south of Madagascar and north of Antarctica, and it is shown on Figure 7 (top) along with a superimposed diameter that measures approximately 2500 km. The image at the bottom of Figure 7 is a magnetic anomaly overlay shown from the same perspective as the image above it.

Figure 7. Identical perspectives of the IO impact site in the Southern Ocean include: (top) bathymetry image with a superimposed diameter that measures 2500 km; and (bottom) a magnetic anomaly overlay. Note the parallel central scrapes, scoured by the IO’s solid core, that are perpendicular to the black diameter segment (top) and corroborated by a red band (bottom). To the northwest of the impact site is South Africa (upper left), and to its south (below) is Antarctica (each land mass is labeled, though somewhat difficult to discern).

The parallel central scrapes interior to the impact site delineate a trough carved by the solid impacting object (IO) nucleus; this nucleus also served as the gravitational attractor in the Oort Cloud where the IO formed. The trough indicates the direction of travel taken by the IO, and back-propagating its direction indicates to us that the object overflew North America and South America immediately prior to impact. Along the way its ice fragments rained down and created the many craters that we can find on the new maps.

Minerals and other debris delivered by the IO are found in deposit mounds interior to the crescent. In addition, IO debris was strewn up to 1500 km to the northeast through the crescent gap by impact velocities. We can identify the extent of the debris field in the magnetic anomaly overlay on Fig. 7 (bottom). The gap in the crescent was caused by IO fragmentation on its Earth approach.

Among its many names, the IO is known in various cultures as Phaeton, Set, and Satan, and it was one of a class of objects from which smaller comets are but fragments. It was loosely packed due to small gravitational accelerations induced by its dense nucleus as the object formed in the Oort Cloud, far from gravitational effects from our sun and other stars. The IO’s loosely packed nature likens its Earth-impact to a huge, porous ice-ball – with a rock in the middle – hitting a brick wall. We should note that the IO was not sufficiently massive to have its own atmosphere.

We know about comet composition from NASA’s Deep Impact mission, so we can estimate the volume of water delivered by the IO’s melted ice. From the IO’s radius, we can calculate the volume of water it contained, and, once we have that number, we divide it by the oceans’ surface area. This calculation yields average depth, which in this case comes out to be a bit more than three kilometers (two miles).

The addition of this nearly incomprehensible amount of water quickly and irreversibly changed the Earth ecosystem. The IO’s waters flooded the planet, and they did so from the abyss upward – they did not inundate presently exposed landscapes. In addition, the IO’s massive, high-velocity, ice-on-earth impact created the ubiquitous nano-diamond layer, and its ecological and geological influences are the known Younger-Dryas effects.

From an anthropological and historical context, we should recognize that the waters nearly killed our species. Human survivors were evicted from their natural environment by the flood, and having to adapt to a new Earth ecosystem changed their nature; they and their descendants struggle to survive. In the ensuing millennia, nomadic humans sought habitable regions as the Earth transformed from its pre-flood state to the present ecosystem for which humans remain ill-adapted. It is vital to note: our survival necessitates environmental abuses as we seek requisite food, shelter, and warmth.

Because Google Maps/Earth help us to identify and correct an historic, far-reaching scientific blunder, their new information is equivalent to Galileo’s telescope: each observational tool revealed data that led to overturning incorrect scientific paradigms (geocentrism, “no flood, ever”). We might consider that a universal and correct understanding of what happened to us and our planet 12,800 years ago could enhance international cooperation and efforts to ensure our continued survival.

Finally, two items: (1) geology needs to recognize the indisputable error that has adversely affected the most recent 200 years of science, particularly anthropology, as highlighted in my recent paper, “The Flooding of the Mediterranean Basin at the Younger-Dryas Boundary“; (2) validation of this finding will occur when remnants of pre-flood human activity are discovered in the deep abyss.

About (2): I have written to several wealthy explorers who own and operate deep-diving equipment. My missives have suggested several locations in the Atlantis region – not only the canals, but likely pyramid locations, too. It is only a matter of time until one of these entrepreneurs undertakes the mission. Any help in connecting me to an interested party would be greatly appreciated!