The Science Behind the Flood Myths

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i am not underestimating anyone,

there were several truly revolutionary thinkers that even today would be among the smartest people alive,
that however says nothing about average intelligence, it isnt an all or nothing claim.

and yes it would be fairly recent, the conditions that makes it happen werent there.

but if you look a whole 10k years back and not just 2 like archimedes then any effect would be even more pronounced, the whole point of these posts isnt to say that poeple in the past werent stupid, but that we have changed from, then to now and that has brought a slight average increase in intelligence, making the whole there is o difference from then to now factually incorrect.

i also think our thought patterns and cultural values have evolved since then.

We should not forget that people of prehistoric, and recorded ancient times simply didn't have the backlog of technology to build upon, that we have today. That, I believe, has more to do with the ancients lacking modern achievements, and less to do with a lack of intelligence.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

i agree, still doesnt mean there havent been a change,

that technological backlog essentially is why there is a difference, we have simply learned more and that does have a direct effect on neurology.

Flynn himself was rather intrigued by this effect that he observed and he wrote a book exploring it which I read. He couldn't help but admit that his eponymous Flynn Effect implied that people of the past were less intelligent. Yet the things they accomplished with no prior knowledge implied that they weren't. When Isaac Newton was praised for his discoveries, he said "I am standing on the shoulders of giants." And it's true. People before us figured these things out starting from no prior knowledge. They got it just from observing nature. Newton (and ruveyn) acknowledge that this is a huge intellectual feat. The things they figured out became part of cultural knowledge. They are giants whose shoulders Newton stood on and whose shoulders we stand on when we do better on IQ tests than they probably would have.

So Flynn had to reconcile how IQ test scores could go up while the intelligence that these scores theoretically correlate with is static. The way he reconciled this was the concept of "scientific spectacles". He said that the modern enviroment presents information arranged in a way that correlates more and more tightly with the categories used by IQ tests. This starts in infancy, From infancy, the modern child (unless they are in some cut-off hinterland not culturally connected to the rest of the world) is marinated in what Flynn called the scientific mindset/ wearing what he called "scientific spectacles". Even before a baby can say a single word, parents are framing the world for the baby as though the baby was a miniature scientist performing experiments by throwing things off the highchair to discover gravity. Even the way parents present language to babies is in this sort of scientific categorization. For example, the baby is shown several colors and each color is named. This is a way of framing the world that is valued by IQ tests.

But it doesn't make the baby inherently smarter than the baby 10,000 years ago who was taught what plants were ok to gum and what plants would be snatched away by Mama. According to Flynn, the way people used to previously frame information was by utility. PLants that it's safe to eat/plants that are poisonous, animals that are dangerous/animals that are harmless etc. It's a useful way to frame information (or it certainly was back then) but it is not "scientific" and it is not valued by IQ tests or taught to modern babies as the primary way to frame information. These days, information is framed by semantic rather than utilitarian categories and that's how it is taught to babies (colors, shapes etc.) and that way of categorizing information is what the writers of IQ tests also value. And so you have the Flynn effect as populations are indoctrinated into this way of thinking more and more as they become part of the industrialized global network.

Flynn concluded that this rise in IQ test scores was an artifact of the increasing ubiquity of a "scientific" way of framing information as more and more people were raised this way from infancy. It is now flattening out as he predicted it would in industrialized coutries. It only continues to rise in countries that are moving towards greater industrialization and "coming online" with this way of organizing information. But he didn't think it reflected a literal increase in intelligence.

nor do i think it means a literal macroscopic difference in neurology at birth,

i personally dont believe intelligence to be static either, it will change throughout a persons lifetimes as connections ae created and atrophy.
the brain is a remarkable organ and it allows us to do amazing things, and it is true that there isnt a huge difference between now and the past but there is some,

excactly because there were intelligent people in the past,
thing is the flynn effect never affected the most intelligent in a society the most, it was always seen as an average of a society, it was also noted that it did affect the lower end of the bell curve more than it did the high end, essentially skewing the bell curve upwards.(correlating nicely with the population increasing its litteracy)

it is true that there is a difference in what we require of people and that intelligence as a modern concept hinges around that, making the actual measurement fairly self referential, that shouldnt have any effect when everyone is discussing the same premise.

i also dont think one can deny that a change in thaught pattern is a change, so in the end the actual discussion lies in what intelligence is, since change is a given yes?

I see another type of knowledge in the past, one that we would starve to death without.

Reading the whole cycle of the year, knowing where to find food, game, and all of the steps to making weapons, using them, and the mental projection of the hunt.

The floods were not myths, and not mild. 22,000 years ago sea level was seven meters higher, a warmer world, when that changed and warm moist air flowing over frozen stone cooled, and first rain then snow fell, and it kept snowing for over a thousand years. Altogether forty five miles of snow fell, compacted to five miles of ice, then flowed out under it's own weight, till it was three miles thick. It reached from the Artic Ocean, out past England, over to the Ural Mountains, and the south edge was a cliff, reaching from London, to the south end of the Urals.

When it started to melt, it melted pools on top, much like Greenland does now, and when some broke loose, they dropped three miles, then raced over the land taking everyrthing with them, as they made their way to the ocean.

A sudden and broad river, a wall of water, trees, bolders, perhaps fifty foot high, filling valleys, and scouring them down to bedrock.

This continued for thousands of years, then got worse.

Sea level had gone from seven meters higher, to a hundred and fifty meters lower. It was stable for thousands of years, and people do like the beach.

Stable from 22 to 15 thousand years ago, it was mostly all melted by 10,000 years ago. In one summer it raised sea level sixty foot. Now much larger floods started high up, and came as a sudden wall of water dropping to the ocean.

Water from above, water from below, and nothing stood up to it.

When it stopped the world became colder, dryer, and all of the rock dust ground fine became airborne, and for 1500 years the world wide dust storm of the Lesser Dryas Period buried a good part of the world.

When the dust settled, the ocean stayed in one place, the few survivors told stories. It was different, the sun shined upon them, plants grew, the mountain animals had survived,

10,000 to 8,000 years ago seems mild, constant, then something happened. All of the Sahara was grassland, with lakes, rivers, trees, and many animals, It was the same over to the Persian Gulf, then very suddenly, something made it like it is today, desert, barren.

The people that lived in highland Turkey, moved to England, and built Stonehenge. We have the DNA from both ends.

The flood was universal, even where it did not come from above, it rose from below. The Sudah Shelf off of southeast Asia was one landmass, all the way out to Boreno, As the water rose people became islanders.

Not only do all have flood stories, but the floods stopped 10,000 years ago. So that shows how long stories can continue, passed generation to generation.

I think people had a much wider range of intelligence, they watched the earth and learned, or they were lucky, they made good weapons from sticks and rocks, and knew the ways of animals well enough to eat regularly.

We are within being human, they were just as human, but living within the Earth. We think we are smart, but could we build Stonehenge? With sticks, hide ropes, rocks to shape other rocks, to move and set up the stones?

They did, and at a lot more sites, while feeding themselves. All of Stonehenge was built as a machine to study the Earth's place in the solar system, It was something they knew well before building. They were refining their knowledge, and teaching.

Our survival comes from their domestic plants and animals.

They developed the first large vocabulary language, that most now speak.

These and more, like seven weaves of cloth, came from before the flood.

They were a people who could survive with just their knowledge.

^ ^ ^

There was no world flood that covered ALL the land and ALL the mountain to a height of 15 cubits above the highest mountain.

No doubt there was river flooding, coastal flood and flooding due to the breakage of ice dams. This was NOT the flood described in the Bible.

ruveyn

A flood could have existed millions of years ago, Ruvey. The whole planet was one big ocean.

Please prove your statement or I will regard it as being meaningless conjecture.

It's just science stuff I picked up. It's called the primordial ocean, I think.

There is some evidence that ice once covered both land and sea (about 600,000,000) years ago. This is not the Flood of the Bible. That Flood never happened. There were local floods due to the melting of ice dams and there was coastal flooding because of the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age. This is NOT the Biblical Flood.

ruveyn

The flood in the Bible, would have called for the addition of miles of water to cover the whole earth, then it drained to somewhere. 40 days and 40 nights of rain, at 500 foot per day.

Geologic history gives three recent floods, as three waves of ice melted, 40,000, 28,000, and 18,000 years ago. Sonar clearly shows wave cut beach lines world wide, at 330 and 450 foot.

That is enough flood for me, and it is still rising a foot every hundred years. That is from ice still melting, and as water expands when warmer, expect some thermal rise. If all the ice melts sea level will rise 21 foot, and Florida becomes a reef. It did till 23,000 years ago, leaving a beach line across the Gulf Coast, which later was made a road, called the English Road, from the Atlantic to Baton Rouge. It is inland, raised, level, and 20 foot above sea level.

Close to Baton Rouge it ends, and there 125 foot down is The Drift. The Drift is a deposit of sand, gravel, cobbles, that was the outwash plain of the Mississippi when the last ice melted, it covers from Mobile to past Houston which was one wide river, then as sea level rose the Mississippi became an inland sea, and through deposits of silt and clay filled in. The fill rate was 10 foot per thousand years, which produced the Beaumont Clay, that covers the drift.

We are living at peak flood times. At current rates, one foot in a hundred years, in 2,000 years it can reach the max flood possible. While we would lose Florida, most of our population lives along coasts, and close to sea level. New York City would be standing in open water. New Orleans would be under water, and twenty five miles offshore.

Global warming will speed things up, and expand the water. Max flood could come in one to two hundred years.

More water in the air, more heat, drives storms, so we are in for a wild ride, then something triggers a snow storm that does not stop for thousands of years.

Drought is likely the cause. Snow covered ground is blanketed, conserves heat, it may be frozen, but it is only a few degrees below freezing, and below that, warmer. Bare ground and minus fifty air, the ground becomes minus fifty for some distance down. It does not warm up, and warm moist air passing over cools, and falls as rain, sleet, snow, now the cold plate is blanketed, and stays well below freezing.

We are at the tipping point where in the past it got a lot warmer, or a lot colder. A lot comes out to 5 Degrees, up melts all the ice, down brings an endless snowfall. It could go either way.

Flooding is relatively slow compared to human lifetimes. People will just have to move inland. It happened before and it will happen again. There is still plenty of dry land for the human race to inhabit.

ruveyn

Floods are good, during the last ice age the Nile looked like the Grand Canyon, and ended in a two hundred foot waterfall. it was not till recent times, about 10,000 years ago, that it first became an inland sea, then the delta formed up river.

Egypt grew with the population, adding more land, and well watered.

Without the massive food production of Egypt and Sumaria, there would have been a lot less people.

Deltas produce the conditions for sea life to breed.

The only problem I see is the people of Florida moving to America. And the gators, pythons.