I have the book. I agree with you that the “could amount to” phrase is very confusing, and the final paragraph and table on the Ubaid cemeteries is confusing, but I think if we continue to look at this, then we will eventually come to a consensus. The size of the Eridu cemetery was 1,000 dead persons (Vertesalji, page 182). The “actual population” of Eridu “could amount to” 4300 to 5250 people (Vertesalji, page 185). I think that because we know that the commonly quoted population of Eridu is greater than 4,000 people, then “could amount to” refers to the population at any time. These are the commonly quoted numbers with respect to Eridu population and cemetery size so I think we can trust that these numbers are correct. The period of the cemetery was 250 years (Vetesalji, page 185). These are the only numbers that are needed for the Crude Death Rate equation, which results in a life span of 1,000 years.
Now let’s look at the other sentence in question: “the actual living population determined by cemetery data and estimations would be 450-550 people.” I interpret this to mean that if you start with cemetery data and use your assumptions (such as M = 35 based on other cemeteries and towns), then you would estimate that the size of Eridu is 450 to 550 people. It is very hard to understand, but I think he uses this population estimate to calculate the populations in different parts of Eridu vicinity in Table A, which has a total of 520 people, which is in the middle of his 450-550 number. Also, this is the sentence where you find, “living population,” but it is the hypothetical living population based on cemetery size. Also, referring back to one of your other points, we can’t conclude that “population” refers to the number of buried people because he already stated that there are 1,000 buried people. Is there an archaeologist out there who can help us?
I hope everyone had a great weekend. I am slowly working through some of the responses from last week. In my claim that the Great Ur flood was Noah’s flood, one of the responses was that Ur has deep flood deposits and Eridu has no flood deposits; thus, the Ur flood was not extensive and should not be considered as Noah’s flood. I found two explanations for the lack of silt at Eridu, one observational and one theoretical. If much of the rain that fell during this event fell on the Arabian Peninsula, then there would be extensive flooding from the Peninsula toward Eridu, as I will explain in the following paragraphs. Rain on the Arabian Peninsula would be especially likely if Noah’s flood was caused by a hurricane in the Persian Gulf, as I have already proposed. The Arabian Peninsula is enormous. The peninsula used to be drained by the Wadi al-Batin until it dried up in the 5.9 ka event. During the tens of millions of years prior to that time, the Wadi al-Batin laid down an enormous alluvial fan called the Dibdiba formation. Eridu is at the edge of the Mesopotamian Plain and directly at the base of the Dibdiba formation, and Ur is 12 miles away from the Dibdiba formation in the Mesopotamian Plain.
I used Google Earth to make a transect from Ur through Eridu and up the Dibdiba formation. In the following figure, the transect is 135 miles long, begins at Ur on the left side of the elevation graph, continues 12 miles to Eridu, which I have marked at the 23 ft elevation point, and then rises over the next 120 miles to over 1300 ft elevation on the Dibdiba formation. The formation actually goes way beyond the transect. The topography from Ur to Eridu in the Mesopotamian Plain is basically flat. There is a small ridge of a couple meters in height between them. I made a higher resolution image on the second figure that has an elevation line that is 32 miles long. The left 12 miles are between Ur and Eridu, and then it travels 20 miles up the Dibdiba Formation. You can see the ridge between Ur and Eridu in this image.
If there was a massive precipitation event on the Arabian Peninsula, then it would seem the normal result would be a flood moving down the Dibdiba alluvial fan toward Eridu and the rest of the Mesopotamian Plain. Because Eridu is right at the bottom of the slope, the water would still have flowing relatively fast as it passed Eridu, but then it would have slowed by the time it reached Ur because it would run into the main body of water in the Mesopotamian Plain. When flood waters slow down, they drop their silt. See Carol Hill and Greg Davidson et al.’s recent book on the Grand Canyon for a detailed explanation of how this works. This explains why Ur normally has silt deposition during Arabian Dibdiba flooding and Eridu does not. I haven’t looked at the grain size of the silt at Ur, but according to Hill and Davidson et al., sand would fall out first, and then silt so it would be interesting to look at the grain sizes at Ur in order to gain an estimate of the flow velocity at Ur. I also noticed a statement by Robert MCC Adams, former secretary of the Smithsonian from 1984 to 1994, who chose to focus a University of Chicago archaeological project on Eridu because, as he stated, Eridu does not accumulate silt.
I would also like to deal with the claim that the Ur flood was a local flood that did not cover Eridu from another angle. The flood deposits at Ur indicate that the flood was over 30 ft deep. It is hard to imagine how a 30 ft deep flood at Ur would not cover Eridu, 12 miles away, which was slightly lower with a ridge between the two cities is only a few m high.
From my perspective, some things have been established in our discussion. Please let me know if you disagree. The Septuagint chronology of the Bible places Noah’s flood at 3500 BC. The Great Ur flood took place in 3500 BC. The Great Ur flood was an order of magnitude larger (depth of silting) than any of the other floods that have been proposed as alternatives in this blog (Shurupak and two at Kish). The lack of silting at Eridu at the same time as silting at Ur is scientifically plausible and was also observed by the secretary of the Smithsonian. The Great Ur flood wiped out the Ubaid culture in southern Mesopotamia.
The methodology used in the article provided to you by @Jonathan_Burke was a simple one:
He looked for the flood that fit closest in time and had most of the features found in common with one of the more detailed non-biblical versions of the flood story - - as well as being in common with the Biblical version.
But, as we’ve all said before, it could have been any serious flood that inspired the first non-biblical versions … with the Biblical version being a well-written co-opting of a pagan story to make the story eternally Yahweh’s (just as we put up evergreen trees every Christmas, because the evergreen has been co-opted in our Western tradition to be a symbol of the eternal life of Jesus … rather than some pagan instrument of myth and legend.
But let’s tackle your conclusion:
The problem here is that the Great Flood of 3500 BCE was apparently only great within fairly confined geographic limits. It did not destroy the Ubaid people… as in, the Ubaid people were “virtually eliminated” or anything even close to that.
Let’s look at a timeline:
As you will see in the image below, the Uruk period does not come close to ending at 3500 BCE. The culture continues to prosper, with the Akkadian hegemony still centuries ahead:
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In this image, we see that while the Great Flood may have been the punctuation mark for the end of “Uruk VII”, and the start of “Uruk VI”, the dislocation to the entire culture isn’t even sufficient to break the “Middle Period” into two pieces:
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And in this final image, we learn what brought an end to the Ubaid period, which allows for the rise of the Sumerians (still generations from the big flood of 3500!) in the Uruk period:
"Spreading from Eridu, the Ubaid culture extended from the Middle of the Tigris and Euphrates to the shores of the Persian Gulf " . . . [spreading even further down past Bahrain and on to Oman in what is called the Arabian Bifacial period]. The Ubaid period “… came to an abrupt end in the Eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula at 3800 BC, just after the phase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation.” It seems reasonable to imagine the 2 great rivers flowing into the Persian Gulf bought the Ubaid’s some additional time, before the rise of the Sumerians and the start of the Uruk (aka “Iraq”) - - anywhere from 4000 BCE to 3700 BCE.
@PeterWaller, I understand your fascination for this phase of history in the ANE. It’s a very attractive way to look at the earliest times of civilization, and how it might interact with the fragmented narrative Genesis supplies us.
I will even say that “latter-day Sumerians”, in their heyday, may well have blurred the timing of the Great Flood of 3500 with the end of their predecessors in the region. They could very well have seen themselves as the “better” Folk… the more devoted people, the humans the Gods have most favored.
They had yet to be embraced by the Akkadian noose, and perhaps like modern America, saw no end to their pre-eminence in human history.
But where I would draw the line is thinking that any supposed synchronous arrival of a flood with the Biblical narrative makes for good history. Hardly. It’s much like Rohl’s efforts to re-define the chronology of Egypt and the Bible, in order to get synchrony between the Hyksos and the Hebrew; but in the process, he decimates the historicity of other parts of the Biblical chronology!
If the story of Noah is really just the story of a regional flood, it is a story that has become severely distorted and hardly reliable in its detail other than to say: “Yep… that was a bigggg flood! Uncle No-Ach was so dehydrated, he thought he and his kin were the only ones left on Earth! We have yet to let him live that one down!”
Thanks for your response. I agree with you and only stated that the flood wiped out the Ubaid in southern Mesopotamia. I can see how that statement would be misinterpreted. As you correctly stated, the Ubaid had spread far and wide by 4000 BC, and southern Mesopotamia was only one of many Ubaid zones stretching from the Arabian Peninsula along the Persian Gulf to Iran to Northern Syria and Turkey. The Uruk phase began in in northeastern Syria at places such as Tell Brak and Hamoukar (approximately 400 m above sea level). The evidence for this is state buildings, war, class structure, idol worship, and other evidence of “civilization.” The Uruk phase did not spread into southern Mesopotamia until after 3500 BC. There is no archaeological evidence of a continuum between the Ubaid (before 3500 BC) and the Uruk (after 3500 BC) phases in southern Mesopotamia.
You mentioned a decline in the Ubaid in Arabia in 3800 BC. I have read that this was due to the 3.9 ka event, which caused drought, dried up the lakes in Arabia on which the Ubaid depended, and caused a dramatic drop in population of the Ubaid.
You mentioned a link on floods posted by Jon Burke. Would you please post the link? I didn’t see it. I will be happy to look at it.
Ah, so we are getting somewhere. But even in terms of Southern Mesopotamia … it couldn’t have wiped out the Ubaids …
because the Uruk period had already started by the time of the Great Flood of 3500 BCE.
You say:
I don’t even know what that sentence is supposed to mean. Usually “continua” aren’t between two adjacent historical periods. A continuum runs until the end of a period. Then a new continuum starts to run its course.
All the charts that I provided in the post above quite clearly mark the start of the Uruk period in Uruk anywhere from 4000 BCE to 3700 BCE (running well past the time of the Great Flood). In all modern sources that I’ve had a chance to look at, the Great Flood of 3500 BCE took place after the start of the Uruk period in Uruk.
I suppose now you are going to attempt to say that the Ubaids were still alive and well in Ur, when the Great Flood of Ur wiped them out.
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If you look at the map above, considering the proximity between the two cities (Ur and Uruk/Urik), I sincerely doubt that the Ubaids were thriving between Uruk and the Ocean, at the very same time Uruk was setting out to accomplish amazing things in Sumerian culture. And if, for some odd reason, the Ubaids were maintaining a holdout city-state at UR, which was then destroyed by the Great Flood of UR, then its pretty clear that well neigh the vast majority of Mesopotamia north of UR’s borders felt very little of the Great Flood.
Are you sure you absolutely need the Great Flood of 3500 for your Faith? It is situated in a rather awkward part of the timeline and at an awkward part of the geography. Won’t just about any major flood do the trick for you?
You are right. I got that one wrong. The Ubaid period ended in 3800 BC or thereabouts. Thanks for clarifying that. Of course, if the culture just continued unabated in a city before and after the great Ur flood, then I would have to agree with you that the flood did not reach that location.
