What Can Go Wrong with Non-Carbon Radiometric Dating?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Nope, the Geological Column is Not Well-Proven in the Terrain · Creation vs. Evolution: What Can Go Wrong with Non-Carbon Radiometric Dating?

Had this conversation yesterday, only copying relevant parts:

Dexia

@hglundahl It's a physical limitation due to the half life of Carbon 14, and even if you stretch it a bit, how will you use it to date dinosaurs for example?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@DexiaSteele It's not just due to the halflife, it's due to existing measurement equipment.

As said, other methods, the ones you date dinos with in Evolutionist circles, are even shadier than Carbon 14.

Dexia

@hglundahl Shady ? You mean nuclear physics is shady ?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@DexiaSteele Applied sciences can always be shadier than the principles.

Photography isn't based on shady principles, but photoshop can lead to shady applications.

AND that can be a matter of fraud, or simply of inadequate routine.

Perhaps nuclear physics is shady too, while we're at it, but that was not the point being made.

So, what are the non-carbon ways of dating dinosaurs?

Why can they be wrong?

The historically earliest one has exactly nothing to do with radiometric dating methods or nuclear physics. Strata.

Here is a thing. "Above" and "below" mean one thing in ordinary conversation, and another one when a geologist speaks of strata. I asked Howard F (a geologist) where a pelycosaur was ever found below a dinosaur.

The pelycosaurs appear to have been a group of synapsids that have direct ancestral links with the mammals, having differentiated teeth and a developing hard palate. The pelycosaurs appeared during the Late Carboniferous and reached their apex in the early part of the Permian, remaining the dominant land animals for some 40 million years. A few continued into the Capitanian, but they experienced a sharp decline in diversity in the late Kungurian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelycosaur#Evolutionary_history

This wiki is garbled, the Capitanian is actually supposed to be after the Kungurian.

In the geologic timescale, the Kungurian is an age or stage of the Permian. It is the latest or upper of four subdivisions of the Cisuralian Epoch or Series. The Kungurian lasted between 283.3 and 274.4 million years ago (Ma). It was preceded by the Artinskian and followed by the Roadian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kungurian

Dinosaurs diverged from their archosaur ancestors during the Middle to Late Triassic epochs, roughly 20 million years after the devastating Permian–Triassic extinction event wiped out an estimated 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species approximately 252 million years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur#Evolutionary_history

So, you can see from the "millions of years ago" that Pelycosaurs are supposed to go extinct by 274.4 million or rather 260 million years ago and Dinosaurs are supposed to arise 232 million years ago. Strata should have a spot where a dinosaur is above a pelycosaur. Howard F said they did. When I checked his reference, the pelycosaur was in one end of North Dakota, the dinosaur in the other and the "above" means a higher layer.

So, why is this not two layers of rapidly deposing Flood of Noah mud, covering two different creatures at slightly different times? Because there is so much time between us and the pelycosaurs and dinosaurs that the place where a pelycosaur was buried millions of years before a dinosaur was has at least one of them, usually both disappearing? Neat explanation, but proof still lacking.

The two main non-carbon but still nuclear are K-Ar (potassium-argon) and the Uranium or Thorium based ones (U-Pb, Th-Pb).

They are still different. Potassium argon comes from lava. It contains lots of potassium, the eruption of it all has a tendency to go with radioactivity, and the potassium then initially produced is supposed to evaporate before the lava solidifies. What could go wrong?

Well, in the case of eruptions during the Flood, lava could solidify quickly. And the quicker the lower down since the water would have been more plentyful, and cooler.

Quicker solidity means less has time to escape, means more is left, means those who presume it all escaped before the process began again in solid lava misdate it even more.

Some have answered that Ar-Ar is used to verify, but actually argon-argon is used to finetune the dating already established by K-Ar.

However, this cannot be said for Uranium Lead dating or the similar ones, since in this case neither parent nor daughter element are gasses that even can escape.

For some of it, one can ask how we know that the specific isotope of Lead came from Uranium and wasn't there from start (like the meteorites that are used to date Earth and Solar System to 4.5 billion years). But zircons don't allow that either. You see, zircons are closed around an initial mass, where Uranium can, but Lead can't enter. All lead in a zircon has to come from the Uranium.

So, the only way about Uranium-Lead in zircons is, either it took that long, or the speeding up of the decay would have caused heat. Even a heat problem.

A certain Setterfield considers that the constant speed of light in vacuum has changed. Decay rates would have changed with them, all going slower. I don't agree on that solution, but it's fair to mention it.

Now, there is, after the Flood in speedy decay a heat problem. There is also a mud problem, very thick layers of deposition during the Flood, and how could all that become solid? I combine these into zircons actually helping to grill the mud from the inside ... at least the ones with Uranium in them. Obviously, the normal mix of zircons is non-radioactive and has no decay. Forgot to say that.

I mentioned that even before applying the principles, the nuclear physics themselves might be shady. I didn't mean questions like "how do you know that an electron is a particle" but more like how do you measure the decay speeds of K-Ar or U-Pb?

Take a sample of wood that's 500 years old. Calculate how much the carbon 14 content should be if there hadn't been emission of carbon dioxide ("modern carbon" means "modern level of carbon 14 as it should be" and not "as it is"). Measure the carbon 14 (in relation to carbon 12) in the wood. This then gives you how many "percent modern carbon" or percent of this theoretic modern carbon level are left in the wood.

In actual fact, the carbon 14 level has fluctuated, so just one of these ages (500 years ago) could be off, you'd need to do it for more of them. But I'll give you 500 years for the example. Now, it is important to keep in mind, you actually know the wood is 500 years old, the wooden object was created 490 years ago from wood that had been drying for ten years, meaning it had been felled 500 years ago.

0.5^(500 / 6730) = 0.9498066715168165
0.5^(500 / 5730) = 0.9413087854383377
0.5^(500 / 4730) = 0.9293485964739775

Lo and behold, the wooden object has a remaining carbon 14 content of 94.131 pmC, not of 94.981 or of 92.935.

But the reason this helps us is, we can actually check that the number of years of actual decay which we compare to the halflife (decay until 50 pmC is left, i e half the initial proportion of C14) is 500 years. Now, potassium-40 has (supposedly) a halflife of 1,251,000,000 years.* Let's compare with the half life of thousand times faster.

0.5^(500 / 1,251,000,000) = 0.9999997229627959
0.5^(500 / 1,251,000) = 0.9997230011288433

So, how do you tell the difference between 99.999... and rounding upward and 99.999... and rounding upward? Especially as the comparison is to a potassium isotope that's just theoretically assumed to be this proportion of potassium.

To measure the amount of ⁴⁰K remaining in the sample, the total amount of potassium is measured and multiplied by the ratio of ⁴⁰K to total potassium.[29] This ratio, 0.000117[10], is considered to be constant in all terrestrial potassium.[30]**

What? I wonder what the footnotes 29 and 30 say ... McDougall & Harrison (1999), p. 10. / Dalrymple & Lanphere (1969), p. 36.***

I can't consult these books to check the accuracy, but if this is so, the potassium daters are basically assuming that other potassium is lost in time with potassium 40 becoming argon 40.

Otherwise, why would the potassium 40 be measured indirectly, by multiplying overall potassium by 0.000117?

So, back in the dialogue, I answered a somewhat different question, namely why reported datings are not necessarily by many concurrent dating methods per sample and discording dates are left out. I have now answered why the routines for dating dinosaurs (outside creationist circles, Mark Armitage actually does find carbon 14, or did before external labs started refusing them), are shadier than carbon 14.

Underpinning everything, of course, is the theory of evolution and its passengers. As the archaeologist Professor Brew put it, ‘If a C-14 date fits our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it is completely "out of date", we just drop it.’

How long have Aborigines been in Australia?
Published 27 Jan, 2006
https://creation.com/en/articles/how-long-have-aborigines-been-in-australia

This was my original answer. Datings that do not confirm the given dates actually exist. They are left out. Citing CMI for citing the archaeologist (of Aborigines) Brew.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Charles Borromeo
4.XI.2026

3 Novembris Mediolani natalis sancti Caroli Borromaei Cardinalis, Episcopi Mediolanensis et Confessoris, quem, sanctitate conspicuum et miraculis clarum, Paulus Papa Quintus in sanctorum numerum retulit. Ipsius tamen festivitas sequenti die celebratur.
4 Novembris Sancti Caroli Borromaei Cardinalis, Episcopi Mediolanensis et Confessoris, qui migravit in caelum pridie hujus diei.

My debates with Howard F are in a series, where the main message, giving the principle, is in Three Meanings of Chronological Labels.

The debate with Dexia is an update on a somewhat older post, from August.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_nuclides_by_half-life#1015_seconds_(petaseconds) ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E2%80%93Ar_dating#Potassium *** McDougall, Ian; Harrison, T. Mark (1999). Geochronology and thermochronology by the 40Ar/39Ar method. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-510920-7. / Dalrymple, G. Brent; Lanphere, Marvin A. (1969). Potassium-Argon Dating: Principles, Techniques and Applications to Geochronology. San Francisco: W. G. Freeman & Co. ISBN 0-7167-0241-X.

An Anti-Duane "Gish Gallop" Answered

What Flood? · Let's Continue, What Flood? · An Anti-Duane "Gish Gallop" Answered

Under Michael Spaulding's status, there came this comment by Ken Stephenson. To some the twenty points might seem daunting.

Reasons why the flood is impossible:

1. Not enough water, where did it come from.
2. Where did all that water go?
3. How did plants and animals indigenous to Australia, North and South America get to the ark? Did they swim 1500 miles? Plants too?
4. Yes, plants! Because they, their roots and seeds would have rotted to nothing.
5. There are 300,000 described species of animals x 2 x = 600,000.
6. There are 390,000 described species of plants, X 2 = 600,000 conservatively. Most plants reproduce sexually
7. There are one million described insects, most reproduce sexually, so 900,000 x 2 = 1,800,000 insects.
8. How did the three fertile women in Noah’s family repopulate the earth with 9 billion people in 4,500 years?
9. There are 300,000 described marine species, potentially 2 million. Few can survive fresh water. So conservatively, 600,000.
10. Noah would need six absolutely enormous saltwater aquariums, one for prey species, one for predictor species, one to protect marine species from the prey species which eat corals etc. And three more for food for these species.
10. There are conservatively, 11,000 bird species x2 = 22,000.
11. Mitochondrial DNA is passed unchanged from mother to daughter. There should be only three lineages. There are thousands.
12. How did the DNA of seven ethnic groups get into the DNA derived from three women?
13. How were the severely detrimental effects if incest and intensive inbreeding avoided.
14. How did Noah store and preserve food, meat for carnivores, and fresh water for all these species?
15. When the ramp came down after 370 days, the land was beyond rotten, so what did the herbivores eat while plants repopulated?
16. What did the carnivores eat while waiting for plants to repopulate so herbivores could repopulate so carnivores could eat and repopulate.
17. How did non indigenous plants and animals get back to there countries of origin? Swim 15,000 miles?
18. Other cultures were present before, during and after the alleged flood. They have no record of a flood.
19. There is zero evidence in the geological record of a flood.
20. Noah was not the only one with a boat! Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian and other cultures had military, merchant and fishing vessels plying the Mediterranean.

Let's take them one by one or sometimes two or more together:

1. Not enough water, where did it come from.
2. Where did all that water go?

They belong together.

The water we now have is enough to have covered all the pre-Flood mountains, with the relative shallowness of pre-Flood seas.

It went partly into the deep sea basins, through which oceans are much deeper now. And partly seas are deeper because ground got higher.

However given the seas were not as deep before the Flood, where was it?

There are more than one theory, I would consider this pretty good. Water was somehow (underground reservoirs or underground water bound up in a mineral) trapped below earth's surface in the pre-Flood world, and it rose very violently, probably not least in the Mid-Atlantic ridge, i e where that is now. As to the heat problem, that is part of where the rain come from. Heat turns water to steam, steam will rise, but sooner or later it will calm down and condense, and with that much steam, there was a whole lot of rain from this process.

Probably also some water formed as oxygen rose and hydrogen sank into a layer of Brown's gas, which was ignited and produced water which didn't exist in the pre-Flood world. Hence the pre-Flood atmosphere was larger and less heavy in nitrogen, and therefore a smaller density of nitrogen was in the upper levels of the atmosphere, producing less carbon 14. As per the Flood, oxygen was lost, nitrogen remained and in the post-Flood world takes up a bigger proportion of the atmosphere.

3. How did plants and animals indigenous to Australia, North and South America get to the ark? Did they swim 1500 miles? Plants too?
4. Yes, plants! Because they, their roots and seeds would have rotted to nothing.
17. How did non indigenous plants and animals get back to there countries of origin? Swim 15,000 miles?

Plant survival would have involved vegetation mats floating on the water.

5. There are 300,000 described species of animals x 2 x = 600,000.
6. There are 390,000 described species of plants, X 2 = 600,000 conservatively. Most plants reproduce sexually
7. There are one million described insects, most reproduce sexually, so 900,000 x 2 = 1,800,000 insects.
9. There are 300,000 described marine species, potentially 2 million. Few can survive fresh water. So conservatively, 600,000.
10. Noah would need six absolutely enormous saltwater aquariums, one for prey species, one for predictor species, one to protect marine species from the prey species which eat corals etc. And three more for food for these species.
10. There are conservatively, 11,000 bird species x2 = 22,000.

Problem 1 is, you take Linnean modern species as the standard for the Biblical kind. Rapid speciation doesn't mean rapidly developing new features, it means more like degrading in different and incompatible ways. Did you know hedgehogs aren't a species or even a genus? They are a subfamily. I'd say there was one hedgehog couple on the Ark. It has given rise to 16 to 17 species in 5 genus. A hemiechinus auritus isn't an erinaceus europaeus, both are however hedgehogs. It's possible the other subfamily, gymnures, came from the same couple, or that it didn't. If it did, that's 25 to 26 species from one couple and ten genus.

Problem 2 is, the pre-Flood sea is pretended to have been far saltier than it was. Think of it. If most of the water now on earth didn't exist, and seas had all the salt they have now, they might have been something like the saltiness of the Dead Sea. So, obviously, there was less salt in the seas. Most of the salinity has been added over 5000 years. The ancestors of species that can't survive in fresh water, had nothing saltier than brack water back before the Flood.

8. How did the three fertile women in Noah’s family repopulate the earth with 9 billion people in 4,500 years?
11. Mitochondrial DNA is passed unchanged from mother to daughter. There should be only three lineages. There are thousands.
12. How did the DNA of seven ethnic groups get into the DNA derived from three women?
13. How were the severely detrimental effects of incest and intensive inbreeding avoided.

For number 8, let's take getting the population to Babel in 401 years.

8 people. 5 % population growth each year. So, 8 * 1.05, and that to the power of the number of years, 8 * 1.05⁴⁰¹

2 511 880 150 ... more than a quarter of today's population. Let's try 2 % instead. 8 * 1.02⁴⁰¹

22 478 ... were there enough when Babel started, 350 after the Flood? 8 * 1.02³⁵⁰

8187, arguably yes. But what would this rate have given by now? 8 * 1.02⁵⁰⁰⁰

80 158 355 092 957 128 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000, think of that!

That's clearly not what we have. How about 1 %? 8 * 1.01⁵⁰⁰⁰

32 356 303 484 189 688 000 000

Still far too many. 0.5 %, then? 8 * 1.005⁵⁰⁰⁰

541 251 072 007

That's more than fifty-four times of what we actually have.

Yet, 5 % annual growth of the population is actually possible. Nigeria has, or a few years ago had 6 % annual growth.

This means, the genetic bottleneck after the Ark widened very quickly.

There was soon opportunity for outbreeding, as opposed to inbreeding. You aren't very inbred because five actual couples account for not 10, not 20, but 24 of your 128 ancestors (seven generations back). You would be somewhat inbred if they were 24 of your 32 ancestors, so you had only 16 actual ancestors in the theoretic line of 32 ancestors (five generations back). The Flood is far more generations back than that.

There aren't thousands of radically different maternal lineages, look up:

Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitochondrial_DNA_haplogroup

Haplogroups split over time, this is why there is a "mitochondrial Eve" (last common ancestor of Noah's three daughters in law, just as Noah himself is "Y chromosome Adam"). Since the three haplogroups on the Ark that were transmitted (Noah couldn't transmit the mitochondriae from his mother and his sons not those from his wife), splits have happened.

And since splits happen from mutations, but also from recombinations, that's also part of why all ethnicities today came from the DNA of five of the eight people on the Ark: Noah, his wife, the three daughters in law. The sons of Noah and his wife didn't contribute more DNA than they got from them.

Now, inbreeding and detriments. The inbreeding as such is not the cause of the detriments. It's an occasion for the cause, namely the double occurrence of a gene, which has the same detrimental mutation. But considering Noah lived to 950 and I probably won't live to 95, I think there has been some detriment since back then, right?

14. How did Noah store and preserve food, meat for carnivores, and fresh water for all these species?

Carnivores can eat fish. There was plenty of that around the Ark. But ... I suppose some dried meat can have done too.

I have calculated the logistics. Quoting myself:

On the other* post, I had estimated the number of couples to 2032, meaning 4064 individuals, on the average size of a sheep. Now, a sheep eats 7 kg green fodder per day, 365 days. 10,383.52 metric tons for food. How much would 4064 sheep weigh? Tame sheep weigh 45 to 160 kg for the bucks, 45 to 100 kg for the ewes. Let's add the numbers together and divide by four : (45+45+160+100)/4 = 87.5 kg. Let's multiply this by 4064. 355.6 metric tons. Living passengers with crew therefore 355.6 + 10,383.52 = 10,739.12.

So, even the smallest weight available for the animals and food and tools and the walls of the small chambers and so on has 500 tons for tools and temporary water supplies on top of needed animals and food weight. And the 2032 couples I got by reducing an evolutionist's estimate for number of species (taking mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians separately) by only 16, the number of species I thought there were of hedgehogs, but that's actually 17.

...

I think there might actually have been more animals than just 2032 couples. Especially since 7 kg food per day is not exactly typical in proportion to the body weight, the ruminants need more food. [than the other beasts do]

Creation vs. Evolution: Small Tidbits on Ark, Especially Mathematical
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2021/11/small-tidbits.html

In other words, there was plenty of room for food and water.

15. When the ramp came down after 370 days, the land was beyond rotten, so what did the herbivores eat while plants repopulated?

We don't know exactly how an olive tree was alive, the example of Aaron's rod blossoming suggests that God simply may have resurrected vegetation.

And the land was also quickly dried up, I'd suggest that the process may have involved God speeding up the decay of Uranium in zircons lying around and thus microwaved the mud from the inside, so that both the normal ground for plants and the "Uranium decay for millions of years" is explained in one go.

16. What did the carnivores eat while waiting for plants to repopulate so herbivores could repopulate so carnivores could eat and repopulate.

Carcasses and fish ...

18. Other cultures were present before, during and after the alleged flood. They have no record of a flood.
20. Noah was not the only one with a boat! Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian and other cultures had military, merchant and fishing vessels plying the Mediterranean.

Already extensively answered in the posts in reply to Michael Spaulding. What's said about civilisations goes for vessels too. The actual Flood date was 2958 BC, the actual year, and when you get to the carbon dated and now presumed year 2958 BC, insofar as it's directly from carbon, it would be something like ...

1759 BC

86.359 pmC, dated as 2971 BC

19. There is zero evidence in the geological record of a flood.

Or, in fact, plentiful.

Until you misdate nearly all of it to very diverse "geological periods" that are supposedly millions or even billions of years apart.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Lucan of Paris, Martyr
30.X.2026

Lutetiae Parisiorum sancti Lucani Martyris.

Let's Continue, What Flood?

What Flood? · Let's Continue, What Flood? · An Anti-Duane "Gish Gallop" Answered

Items 2 and 3, the one being preliminary to the other:

2. What "The Whole World" Meant to Ancient Readers:

The Hebrew word translated as "earth" or "world" in Genesis is 'eretz. It does not mean an astronomical globe; it means "land," "region," or "territory"—the same word used for the "land ('eretz) of Canaan."

The Old Testament frequently uses "all the earth" (kol ha'aretz) to describe regional horizons rather than planetary geography:

• Genesis 41:57 states that "all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain" during a famine—referring to the surrounding Middle East, not Australia or the Americas.
  
  
• 1 Kings 10:24 notes that "all the earth sought the presence of Solomon" to describe regional trade partners and rulers.

When Genesis says the flood covered "all the land," it means it submerged the entire known, inhabited world of that ancient civilization.

There are two places in Genesis 1 where "eretz" is used. Both are translated "terra" (in appropriate case form, so, I think, both times "terram") in the Vulgate and "earth" in Douay Rheims.

In the beginning God created heaven, and earth
[Genesis 1:1]

And God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good
[Genesis 1:10]

In both of these senses, prior to Genesis 41 or 3 Kings 10, it's wider than regional.

Michael Spaulding would have a better argument if the regional significations were all there was.

And "ancient readers" isn't totally the ultimate go to for a text referring to events outside the time when it was written.

For the Exodus, we'd like to know what a certain term meant in Pharaonic Egypt or nearby deserts or Canaan. For the Gospel, we'd like to know what it meant in 1st C. Judea, Samaria or Galilee, sometimes 1st C Roman world or 1st C Jewish world (for instance, we know Jesus was a homeschooler, since public education didn't exist in the Holy Land outside Jerusalem, which is not where he grew up.* Or leaving John 7 for Matthew 6, the Pagans can't have meant Buddhists, there wasn't a community in the Roman Empire of those.

But if John refers to the gematria of the Antichrist in Apocalypse or Moses to the whole earth in pre-Flood terms, we can't go to their contemporary hearers. A First Century Christian couldn't know of ASCII, he had to imagine John meant either Greek or Hebrew gematria, or perhaps number values of Latin letters. A 16th C. BC Israelite couldn't have known much geographic details of the pre-Flood world, whichever it was.

Here the reader has to rely on his total knowledge. Not what was naturally known to normal readers of Genesis or Apocalypse.

Again, there is a quiproquo here, a mixup.

"What "The Whole World" Meant to Ancient Readers"
"the entire known, inhabited world of that ancient civilization."

These terms are not synonyms. A Sumerian from Lagash wouldn't have known Bahrein, but would have included Dilmun in the world.**

St. John's readers wouldn't have known Alaska, Cape Horn, Tasmania or North East Siberia (near Kamtchatka), but St. John said there were four corners. I've just passed by a place where a globe didn't show the North Pole's ice sheets, just where land ended and sea began. Ellesmere Island doesn't appear to be a fifth corner.

3. The Real Historical Event: The Persian Gulf Floods:

Geology and paleoclimatology provide a concrete historical anchor for a regional, world-ending flood.

During the last Ice Age, lowered sea levels exposed a +35,000 sq. mi. fertile river valley in what is now the Persian Gulf—the Persian Gulf Oasis. Fed by four major river systems, it was an ideal cradle for early human settlement and matches the Biblical description of where Eden was with the four major river systems.

As the Ice Age ended, two events combined to submerge this basin 6,000 to 10,000 years ago:

1. Massive Monsoon Rains: Intensified Indian Ocean monsoons drove heavy rains deep into Arabia and surrounding mountains, causing catastrophic river flooding.
2. Rising Sea Levels: Melting glaciers caused ocean levels to rise rapidly, breaching the Strait of Hormuz and permanently filling the valley.

To the communities living in the basin, their entire known land ('eretz) was completely submerged. Survivors fleeing north carried an indelible memory of a world-ending disaster. This trauma became the core of ancient flood traditions—preserved in Mesopotamian accounts like the Epic of Gilgamesh and recorded in Genesis to convey a theological message about judgment and divine covenant.

I'm relieved he didn't rehash a "2900 BC" flood of lower Mesopotamia.*** However, the problems are partly very similar. And damning.

• The overall story ark is incompatible with the Biblical Flood, since it involves more than one (set of) survivor(s). Since it doesn't involve in the actual floodings any divine judgement, since the 6000 BC world's Persian Gulf landscape wasn't obviously the most wicked place in 4000 BC, since the survivors would have met people who hadn't been flooded, and would very probably have known about them beforehand. The theological story is only an afterthought to a misunderstood and distorted memory.
  
  
• This is basically necessary for this setting, since a period of flooding ranging from 10 000 to 6000 BP (8000 to 4000 BP, roughly speaking 2556 to 2015 BC, birth of Peleg to birth of Abraham) is too slow to be one major disaster wiping out all men except select survivors;
  
  
• and since, as said, the geography of the region doesn't allow for the flooded people to have been ignorant of Green Arabia and a society forming there from 7000 to 3000 BC°
  
  
• not to mention that the region apparently didn't have very high hills
  
  
• and that the Ark described in the Bible would have worked in a world wide Flood, but not in those floodings. The SS Wyoming, of similar length, floundered in the Nantucket Bay, which has an average depth of 9 meters, but not in the Atlantic, which is far deeper. This is due to the shape of waves in deep vs shallow water. Now, the Persian Gulf is closer to Nantucket Bay:
  
  

  The waters are very shallow, with a maximum depth of 90 metres (295 feet) and an average depth of 50 metres (164 feet).
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf

  
  
  Exactly the type of Flood that SS Wyoming did refute for the Biblical Ark.

What Michael Spaulding falls back on in debates with others under his status is water problem and heat problem.

I have dealt with these elsewhere.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. John of Autun, Bishop and Confessor
29 October 2026

Augustoduni sancti Joannis, Episcopi et Confessoris.

Notes:

* Some guy who wanted to tell Christian children who hate going to school "Jesus did it too" fibbed, implicitly putting Yeshua ben Gamla in the First Century BC rather than the First Century AD:

Continuing the Tirade of Genetically Modified Sceptic, but Discission, Not Video Comment

My discussion about Jack Wellman is in the second half of the article. After quoting him, I quote "My Jewish Learning" ...

** Dilmun is now usually identified with Bahrein, if I recall rightly.

*** Already dealt with that one in 2017: Damien Mackey & The Flood

° Carbon dated, see:

Chapter 3 - The Formation of Arabian Society: 7000–3000 BC
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2014 | Peter Magee
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/archaeology-of-prehistoric-arabia/formation-of-arabian-society-70003000-bc/61E0BE7AACAEED00488FCB4F5087D22C

The carbon dates reduce to 2442 to 1759 BC:

2442 BC

(Shem has died, Reu will be born)

57.683 pmC, dated as 6990 BC

1779 BC

(Ishmael has died)

85.963 pmC, dated as 3029 BC

1759 BC

(Isaac will die)

86.359 pmC, dated as 2971 BC

Newer Tables, Flood to Joseph in Egypt

What Flood?

What Flood? · Let's Continue, What Flood? · An Anti-Duane "Gish Gallop" Answered

In response to a meme by Michael Spaulding, part 1:

1. Archaeology Shows Unbroken Human History:

Young Earth Creationists place the flood around 2350 BCE. A planetary extinction event at that time should leave an absolute break in human history worldwide, followed by a total cultural reset starting from eight people in the Middle East.

Instead, archaeology shows continuous human habitation through that exact window:

• Egypt: Scribes, pyramid builders, and royal dynasties maintained continuous administrative records straight through the 3rd millennium BCE with no evidence of a universal flood stratum.
• Mesopotamia: Cuneiform tax logs, legal codes, and trade records continue uninterrupted across major city-states.
• Indus Valley & China: Early urban centers show unbroken development in agriculture, pottery, and architecture.

Civilization was never wiped out across the globe 4,400 years ago.

Reply fairly simple. I have a different Flood date, though.

Key notions first:

• Carbon dates of archaeology are misleading.
• Chronicles attached to them are misleading, partly based on lies.
• Some of these lies were calibrated in chronological quantity by the Father of Lies who knew what 1700 BC (Joseph's pharao Djoser died) would look like in terms of carbon dating.

Point one:

Carbon dates of archaeology are misleading.

2350 BC in carbon dates means some date between 1656 and 1634 BC in real history.

1656 BC

91.353 pmC, dated as 2404 BC

1634 BC

93.251 pmC, dated as 2212 BC

The real history 2350 BC is carbon dated to 6254 BC:

2361 BC

Shelah died

2350 BC (!)

62.358 pmC, dated as 6254 BC

Let's take my Flood date instead, now. The Roman Martyrology says Jesus was born 2957 after the Flood, so the Flood was 2958 BC (Jesus was born 1 BC, while 1 AD starts with His circumcision).

Carbon dated 2958 BC means a date between 1759 and 1739 BC:

1759 BC

86.359 pmC, dated as 2971 BC

1739 BC

86.754 pmC, dated as 2914 BC

1736 BC

Isaac died

Real history 2958 BC means carbon dated 37 050 BC or 39 000 BP, and that's where my tables begin:

Starts out 2958 BC,

1.6277 pmC, dated as 37 000 BC

2956 BC

Arphaxad born

Point two:

Chronicles attached to them are misleading, partly based on lies.

Michael Spaulding flaunts the records by certain old cultures. Of the following three quotes, only the last one is free from writing from the period concerned:

"maintained continuous administrative records"
"tax logs, legal codes, and trade records continue uninterrupted across major city-states"
"Early urban centers show unbroken development in agriculture, pottery, and architecture"

Someone said, the Catholic Church gave us "the Calendar" ... if you mean a year that has 365 days 3/4 of most twenty year periods and 366 days 1/4, namely every 4th year, Julius Caesar did it (Gregory XIII changed "all twenty year periods" to "most" by excepting 1700, 1800, 1900, but not 1600 and 2000).

But the Catholic Church actually did give us the Anno Domini reckoning. It was universally accepted by 1100. Including by people aware of its shortcoming as to exact birthyear.

A scribe under Nebuchadnezzar II can't prove that Ur was founded 4000 BC. Do you know why? If we accept (which I'm somewhat sceptical of) that he came to power in 605 BC, then his fifth year would have been 600 BC. However, the scribe who made a date on a document would not state "3400 after the founding of Ur", but rather "sixth year of Nebuchadnezzar".

During the Assyrian chronicle, this was probably not a problem. However, before that, any king who wanted to magnify his predecessor could flatter him by stating his years were more than they were, any king who wanted to belittle his predecessor could instead shorten his reign, and any local ruler who gained the upper hand over another city could transpose all of its years to before the own city's hegemony or supposed such, or to before the current dynasty (for instance Ur III). Parallel rulers were serialised. In Mesopotamia, this is somewhat transparent and admitted by archaeologists, I'm certain it's an issue in Egypt too. Certainly, Egypt has divergent king lists that leave out or take in some dynasty or dynasties of some city prior to kings that both lists acknowledge.

So, the "continuous administrative record" or the "tax logs, legal codes" and so on only tell us there was continuity in that specific past, it cannot help to date that past. Some people think that Egyptian Pharaos and Sumerian Lugals would have as little chance to do so as 19th C. European kings. None of these could invent an extra century before their own, because all of these had real masses who could read, who were not depending on the palace, and who having known the previous year as 1815 would not have accepted to know the current year as 1916, since dating didn't start over again each new ruler.

Point three:

Some of these lies were calibrated in chronological quantity by the Father of Lies who knew what 1700 BC (Joseph's pharao Djoser died) would look like in terms of carbon dating.

That God and Satan have their deals and truces, where God permits Satan some of the things he wants to do, should be known from the Exorcism of Leo XIII.

One of these probably involved what God foretold through St. Paul:

And in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying That all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity
[2 Thessalonians 2:10-11]

Bishop Challoner comments:

[10] "God shall send": That is God shall suffer them to be deceived by lying wonders, and false miracles, in punishment of their not entertaining the love of truth.

I would hold that a Pharao in Egypt (most of them) and a king (local or "of Sumer and Akkad") in Mesopotamia were even more under Satan's power than people in "Satan's century".

I would also hold that God had allowed Satan to prepare "his case" ... Satan in spreading error was not suddenly prompted these last two centuries by God, chosing nothing of his own, he was more like having been very eager all along, and when God loses him, given his known appatite for deception, that's equivalent to "sending" him, not like Moses sent spies into the Holy Land, but like Samson sent foxes into Philistine fields and vineyards. The foxes didn't need an order to try to escape the fire. They were very well equipped to run. Satan also knows he has limited time to deceive and get people damned, and is very well equipped to chose that. And was so while waiting too.

The amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere at a given point would have been easy to observe for any angel. God would have told both Satan and good angels what the level was going to be now and that carbon dating would exist. None of them would have had a hard time understanding it, no human technology can in principle add to the technological knowhow of angels. (However, in detail yes. Satan could not on his own have foreknown ASCII has 65 = upper case A or English has 26 letters, so Z gets 90 for upper cae, only God was able to show that to St. John).

Therefore Satan could adapt the vanity of rulers in displacing chronology to what he wanted uniformitarians to conclude from carbon 14 too. Not perfectly, but overall. If one king hadn't taken that temptation, Satan could try it on the next one.

The Bible, including in Genesis 5 and 11, is obviously not subject to Satan's deceptions, and especially the original LXX text, a translation from a Hebrew text older than the Proto-Masoretic or Masoretic versions. Therefore, we should rely on it rather than on Pagan rulers, especially when their words are supported by a carbon 14 dating that can pretty easily be skewed by rising carbon 14 levels, which were therefore lower than reckoned with before the rise to c. 100 pmC was complete.

2350 BC, the carbon 14 level wasn't 100 pmC, but 62.358 pmC. This gave objects from then an instant age of 3904 years. 3904 + 2350 = 6254 years.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts Simon and Jude
28.X.2026

PS, I was in a library where the time on the internet ended. So, I missed out on giving the martyrology reading, see my wishes on another blog : Bonum Festum Sanctorum Simon et Judae. I also missed out on sourcing the three posts from 2024 that I used: Newer Tables: Preliminaries · Flood to Joseph in Egypt · Joseph in Egypt to Fall of Troy..

Enjoy, and excuse me!/HGL

PPS, I forgot to actually state the answer in so many words. The carbon date for the Flood being 39 000 BP actually does involve a break for human population : all Neanderthals with skeleta or parts of skeleta that have been carbon dated are older than that in carbon, and obviously other dating methods give even older dates. If you heard "Gorham Cave, Gibraltar, 28 000 BP", the cave in question has charcoal dated that recently (real date not long after the Flood, when Neanderthals died out, between 2870 BC and 2848 BC). In a nearby cave a Neanderthal skeleton was dated to 47 000 BP, so prior to 39 000 BP./HGL

Literal Trees, a Hypothesis of "Mechanics"

Adam and Eve already had immortality as a charism. Not as simple part of human nature, the merely natural state of man, neither fallen nor hallowed, but as part of the holiness that was in their original justice.

They would have transmitted immortality and original justice to the posterity, at same conditions as themselves, so, with a free will still able to fall.

I think there could have been conflicts and the tree of knowledge would have put the one at fault, the one sinning into shame and into a state of beginning death.

Once that person had repented, Adam or whoever else would have been there, would have given them access to the tree of life, which Adam already had access to. Immortality would have been restored.

When Adam and Eve sinned, that is what happened to them. But they were not allowed an immediate restoration of immortality, since they were the ones who would have been judging posterity through the trees (and if my thesis is right, God would have revealed to them this proper use of the tree of knowledge later on when it was useful). So, being at fault, they were struck by the punishment of the tree, and ... in their case, immortality was not immediately restored.

The two trees were giving rise to saplings up to the time of Jesus. The Cross was made from wood of both trees. On Calvary, immortality is restored, with a delay, certainly, we do not most of us get to Heaven in our bodies, like Jesus and Mary already did, but this delay was the price for the judges being bad judges who sinned first before they had anyone to judge.

As Adam died the same "day" (i e lifetime of Adam, a bit less than "thousand years") as he had sinned, so Christ died "on the sixth day" not just of the week, Good Friday, but of the world (sixth millennium, sixth lifespan of Adam, both fit with either Roman Martyrology or George Syncellus). Like the day when Adam was created and according to some also sinned.

The sin is a bit like the son of a judge playing with an electric chair. Except this play was reparable, which getting electrocuted wouldn't be. Or the son of a Cohen playing with the Urim and Tummim, except in that case there would have been no automatic consequence at all of the outcome.

This is a hypothesis of mine, let the Church judge.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Raphael
24 Oct. 2026

Festum sancti Raphaelis Archangeli, cujus dignitas ac beneficia in sacro Tobiae libro celebrantur.

Are Neanderthal Y Chromosomes Still There?

The mystery of the disappearing Neanderthal Y chromosome
By Emily Cooke | Published May 17, 2024
https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/the-mystery-of-the-disappearing-neanderthal-y-chromosome

However, there's one part of our genome that lacks any Neanderthal DNA: the Y chromosome. But why?

...

"We've never observed the Neanderthal Y chromosome DNA in any human sample ever tested," Carlos Bustamante, co-senior study author and a population geneticist at Stanford University, said in a statement at the time.

Interbreeding between archaic and modern humans
a linea: Mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans#Mitochondrial_DNA_and_Y_chromosome

No evidence of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA has been found in modern humans.

...

However, the hypothesized incompatibility between Neanderthals and modern humans is contested by findings that suggest that the Y chromosome of Neanderthals was replaced by an extinct lineage of the modern human Y chromosome, which introgressed into Neanderthals between 100,000 and 370,000 years ago.

These two seem to indicate between them, that Neanderthals both have a distinct Y chromosome of their own, and have been found with that of modern humans. Not necessarily agreeing with the order of events suggested here. Uniformitarian timelines are convoluted by the difference of carbon dates, which are at least post-Flood on my view serially rising, and potassium argon dates, which would indicate the Flood.

Now, let's take Dr. Robert Carter's view:

Disappearing Neanderthals
By Dr Robert Carter | Published 14 Oct, 2026
https://creation.com/en/articles/disappearing-neanderthals

• The Neanderthal and modern human genomes are highly similar in general, but about 5% of the Neanderthal genome was identical to that of modern humans.
  
  
• The Neanderthal Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) were essentially identical to modern humans.3
  
  
• Neanderthals were more closely related to another archaic group, the Denisovans, than to modern humans, but the Denisovan Y and mitochondrial chromosomes are very different.

So, modern humans and Neanderthals are different genetically, but not in the Y chromosome or mtDNA. On the other hand, Neanderthals are similar to Denisovans, but not in the Y chromosome or mtDNA. In the meantime, modern humans and Denisovans are different in all these respects.

This one could be taken in two ways.

Either Dr. Carter says that the distinctive Neanderthal Y chromosome is much closer to modern human than the Denisovan, so that by comparison it is identic. Or he is just taking into account those Neanderhals who have the modern human version.

It's interesting that Denisovans are in both respects different from modern humans.

While once upon a time, I considered Neanderthals a candidate for Nephelim, I now consider Denisovans to be so.

As to the disappearance of the Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA and of the distinctive Neanderthal Y chromosome, and as admitted by Carter too, the ones of Denisovans, my solution is, neither Neanderthals nor Denisovans were post-Flood, let alone post-Babel. The contribution we have from their genomes are compatible with coming through lines of which the closest ones would be:

• Daughter in law had a Neanderthal father. He didn't transmit mitochondrial DNA, she didn't transmit Y chromosomes.
• Noah's wife had a Neanderthal mother or father. She didn't transmit Y chromosomes, and as to her mitochondrial DNA it ended with her three sons.
• Noah had a Neanderthal mother. She didn't hand him his Y chromosome, and he didn't transmit her mitochondrial DNA.

But this view of Carter makes Neanderthals kind of a mixed category with modern human (the majority gene pool of the Ark) and Denisovan, not fully, but still.

So, Denisovans were perhaps Nephelim, and Neanderthals perhaps a kind of half breed between normal Adamic and Nephelim. Or the normal stock from which Nephelim were taken.

But either way, the disappearance of their distinctive Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA argues that it was lost via a bottleneck like the Ark. This, along with the carbon dates, which I unlike Carter attribute to a basically only rising carbon 14 content, argue pretty persuasively to me, both of these were pre-Flood.

So, how exactly does this work?

Three types of DNA are more or less sex specific.

Everyone inherits an X chromosome from the mother, but from the father you inherit X or Y. Only girls get exactly one X from dad. Only boys (or nearly) get exactly one Y from dad. (The exception has to do with fetal development). Once a girl has two X chromosomes, as a mother she hands on either to either sons or daughters. I have my X chromosome from mother, and then I don't know if it's from grandfather or grandmother.

Mitochondriae are a bit more sex specific. Everone has mitochondriae. Only mothers give them. The one person who got mitochondriae from a male was Eve, she got Adam's. But her creation was miraculous.

And Y chromosomes are most sex specific, and this for males and only males have or hand them on.

How does this affect the scenarii? Using the specifically Neanderthal mitochondriae or Y chromosomes, as per El Sidrón genomes.

Daughter in law had a Neanderthal father.

We know the three daughters in law had modern human mothers. Hence modern human mitochondriae. But this doesn't preclude a Neanderthal father, since he would not be the source of mitochondriae anyway. He could hand on Y chromosomes, but not to a daughter.

Noah's wife had a Neanderthal mother or father.

Or even both.

If her father was a Neanderthal, she didn't get his Y chromosome, since female. If her mother was Neanderthal her sons, but not daughters in law or grandchildren had Neanderthal mitochondriae.

Noah had a Neanderthal mother.

And he didn't have the capacity to hand mitochondriae on. But his father had to have a modern human Y chromosome, since this is the post-Flood standard.

The three scenario are not mutually exclusive, and each admits the Neanderthal admixture of being more indirect. The Denisovan admixture would have lost Y chromosomes and mitochondriae by a similar process and would have involved fewer persons or more indirect sourcing.

So, why not post-Babel or (he half heartedly touches on spread before Babel, which I hold to) post-Flood?

Carbon dates is one reason. CMI would hold that Abraham was born 292 after the Flood and went to Egypt's court at age 75 or 76 or so. 368 after the Flood is too short a time to both develop and get rid of Neanderthals, and it has a carbon date of either early dynastic (3100 BC) or up to some centuries before that, in the sense that his pharao could have been Narmer, or that Hor-Aha surviving to 3100 BC carbon dated doesn't preclude his having lived at c. 3500 BC carbon dated. I'll use the calibration for a partly LXX based chronology, but the principle is the same:

2028 BC

78.316 pmC, dated as 4048 BC

2016 BC

Abraham born

1841 BC

Abraham died

1838 BC

84.77 pmC, dated as 3204 BC*

There is no way that atmospheric carbon 14 levels could have sunk from between 78.316 and 84.77 pmC down to a level admitting the misreading from low original level of "42 000 BP" (40 000 BC), which is Thorin, the most recent Neanderthal as per carbon dates so far. Putting the last Neanderthals even more recently compounds the problem.

Another, 2262 years or even just 1658 years of the pre-Flood world is more time for the divergence of Neanderthals than whatever small time the post-Flood era offers for the purpose. If Carter is right that Neanderthals could have diverged in the post-Flood or even just post-Babel era, I'm still right that the pre-Flood era would have been adequate. If Carter is wrong, I still at least could be right it was adequate. And if I'm wrong that the pre-Flood years would have been adequate, I'm right that Nephelim could account for the difference.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Raphael Archangel
after First Vespers
23—24.X.2026

Festum sancti Raphaelis Archangeli, cujus dignitas ac beneficia in sacro Tobiae libro celebrantur.

* Creation vs. Evolution: Newer Tables, Flood to Joseph in Egypt
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2024/12/newer-tables-flood-to-joseph-in-egypt.html

Danger Cave, Chronology

A video made me look up a wiki:

They Found an 11,000-Year-Sealed Cave in Utah—What Was Inside Rewrote the Desert West
Beneath the Field | 12 Sept. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nZBgRleZP8

Danger Cave is a North American archaeological site located in the Bonneville Basin of western Utah around the Great Salt Lakes region, that features artifacts of the Desert Culture from c. 9000 BC until c. 500 AD. Through carbon-14 dating, it has been determined that there is very little evidence of human life in the Danger Cave area c. 11,000 BP [9000 BC], but there is much evidence of human life by 9000 BP [7000 BC].[3]

Note:

Jennings, Jesse (1957). Danger Cave. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press Anthropological Papers, No. 27. ISBN 978-0874806120.

Article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Cave

2634 BC

37.009 pmC, dated as 10,851 BC

...

2591 BC

46.223 pmC, dated as 8970 BC

Creation vs. Evolution: Newer Tables, Flood to Joseph in Egypt
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2024/12/newer-tables-flood-to-joseph-in-egypt.html

So, what are the comparisons between "normal" and Creationist (my own) calibration of carbon dating?

Period of "settling"?

2000 years vs 43 years (2634 BC to 2591 BC).

Period of sporadic use?

11 000 years vs 3091 years (2591 BC to 500 AD).

I hold there was geographic spread during Babel, just that a certain project made people gather inward to Shinar. The scattering when Peleg was born was not simply spread, but breaking of connections./HGL