Toto

praxeus has been banned.

RED DAVE

couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Now it's up to afdave to carry the ball.

RED DAVE

mung bean

Yep. I'm willing to bet the Nile freshwater sediments have annual layers too, in accordance with the annual flooding of the Nile with its accompanying load of extra silt.
The earlier saltwater ones may or may not. Even so, given the depth of the alluvial fan at the north end of the Nile there's sure to be quite a few years on record if anyone has done the research. I haven't looked into this yet.

For me the absolute killer is the massive halite deposits on the floor of the Med. The salinity of the Med is about one-tenth saturation level, so before the salt would even begin to precipitate 90% of the water would have to evaporate. This ties in very nicely with the depth of the post-Messinian sediments under the Nile delta.

deadman_932

Oh, hell YES they do. This is something well-known and which allows for some really nice dating. Ack, I should have mentioned that events like Thera can be seen in the delta cores, too, I believe.

mung bean

So how far have down they cored? I assume they aint gone all the way through the post-Messinian delta. That's a long way down.

deadman_932

on the banks or the delta? Both? I'd have to check. Nah, no way they got to near the Messinian, I'd bet. I actually despise Egyptian stuff ( I have a prejudice against civilizations), so I'd have to check all of this. I'll get back to you in about 12 hours or so after I get some sleep. Cheers!

The Evil One

<misanthrope>you and me both, buddy. you and me both.</misanthrope>

mung bean

I just found out something I wasn't previously aware of. Dave's date for the building of the Great Pyramid coincides with an interesting period in Egyptian history. Still want to go with 2170 BC, Dave? Read this:

"The sudden and dramatic collapse of the Old Kingdom government marked the onset of the “First Intermediate Period,” also once called the “First Dark Age.” The cause of the civilization’s demise remained a mystery until geological investigations revealed that Egypt had suffered from a series of catastrophically low Nile floods due to abrupt climate change. As crops failed, there was a food shortage, aggravated by speculators who hoarded grain, which led to starvation, disease, death, civic unrest and political turnover."

"A team of scientists, led by Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian Institution, has now substantiated this explanation, by analyzing sediments obtained from drilling the subsurface sediments of the Delta. The geologists noticed a distinctly thin layer of reddish-brown silt dating between 2250 to 2050 B.C., coincident with the time of the collapse of the Old Kingdom. The layer indicated that the delta floodplain dried up for a long period of time, allowing reddish-brown iron oxides to accumulate at the surface. The scientists also detected a significant change in the ratio of strontium isotopes, which they interpret as evidence for a decline of rainfall in Ethiopia, the main source of Nile floods."

From this link: http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/apr05...ileFloods.html

Dave Hawkins

NOW you say that ... in retrospect. Would you have said this in 1940? I doubt it ... judging from your present MO, you probably would have been bashing Bretz with everyone else. You would have said he's a pseudo-scientist ... he's a crackpot, etc.

Well, just off the top of my head there is ...

1) cellular simplicity -- wrong, cells are the antithesis of simplicity
2) multitudes of transitional forms -- wrong, there aren't ANY truly transitional forms in the fossil record
3) modern synthesis of ToE -- wrong. It's dead according to Allen MacNeill. He's off and running with what he calls the 'evolving synthesis.'
4) Lyellianism -- wrong, just about every geologist accepted Lyell's "the present is the key to the past" -- now it's been largely discarded

I could go on and on.

Dave Hawkins

You are correct that a catastrophist view of the geology of Egypt needs evidence. I am sure I won't be the one who investigates it and provides that evidence. My purpose here for discussing it is to point out how wrong geologists can be, given the inherited mindset of Lyell. Are they actually wrong in the case of Egypt? I cannot say. But I would say it is highly likely, judging from the increased interest in catastrophism as an explanation for many geological phenomena among mainstream geologists in the last 20 years.

As for limestone, I haven't a clue how it can form in such massive quantities. Have not studied it. As I have said before, Walt Brown has a hypothesis ... read his if you like.