The New York Times has a fascinating article on mega-tsunamis caused by meteors impacting the world’s oceans. Although most scientists think no large ones have hit the earth in the past 10,000 years, a few scientists are pointing to one that could have occurred 4500-5000 years ago.

One scholar in particular thinks he can pinpoint the date. Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist, has surveyed a number of flood myths from around the world.  He notes that fourteen of them say that the sun stopped shining that day. Because there was an eclipse that occurred on May 10, 2807 BCE, he concludes that was the day this meteor hit.

It would be interesting to see how a wave created by such a tsunami (estimated to be thirteen times larger than the one two years ago) would have affected the ancient Near East. How would it have traveled up the Persian Gulf? Could it have led to the the flood stories in the Bible and in Mesopotamian literature? The tsunami could also have caused rains.

The article does not mention the biblical flood, but the dating would be around the right time (if there is such a thing) for the biblical flood. The one problem, however, is that Genesis seems to place the locus for Noah up in eastern Turkey. Mt. Ararat, for instance, is near the border with Armenia. That would have had to be quite a wave to reach that far. On the other hand, Mesopotamia is remarkably flat, and it is not hard to see a wave of great size reaching fairly far inland.

It would be interesting to see some modeling of the wave and how it would have affected Mesopotamia.

(I just did a search for chevrons and Middle East on the web. Chevrons are geological formations along the shore that are left by large tsunamis. Unfortunately, searching for chevron and Middle East gets you lots of sites talking about the Chevron oil company and its extraction efforts.)

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