Hence, the recourse to the "glacial epoch" for some event which
might colourably represent a flood, distinctly asserted by the
only authority for it to have occurred in historical times, is
peculiarly unfortunate. Even a Welsh antiquary might hesitate
over the supposition that a tradition of the fate of Moel
Tryfaen, in the glacial epoch, had furnished the basis of fact
for a legend which arose among people whose own experience
abundantly supplied them with the needful precedents.
Moreover, if evidence of interchanges of land and sea are to be
accepted as "confirmations" of Noah's deluge, there are plenty
of sources for the tradition to be had much nearer than Wales.
The depression now filled by the Red Sea, for example, appears
to be, geologically, of very recent origin. The later deposits
found on its shores, two or three hundred feet above the sea
level, contain no remains older than those of the present fauna;
while, as I have already mentioned, the valley of the adjacent
delta of the Nile was a gulf of the sea in miocene times.
But there is not a particle of evidence that the change of
relative level which admitted the waters of the Indian Ocean
between Arabia and Africa, took place any faster than that which
is now going on in Greenland and Scandinavia, and which has left
their inhabitants undisturbed.
Pages:
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58