1. Creationism, the position which even some scientists defend, which holds that the universe was created by God only 6000 years ago, and that a flood covered the whole Earth. It’s good to remember all the flood myths in the world, and that during the last glacial maximum or Ice Age which peaked around 17,000 years ago, sea level was 400’ lower than today. Civilizations, whatever form they took, would have been, as always, along those lower coastlines of warmer climes generally closer to the equator. The Persian Gulf would have been an actual, fertile, Garden of Eden, watered by the combined Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Those places would have been inundated by the melting of the glacial ice, sometimes catastrophically. Due to its expense and difficulty, marine archaeology is still in its infancy.
Re: Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, Graham Hancock (2002)
Hancock is a pseudoscience idiot. He is not an archaeologist or an anthropologist. He is not a scientist.
He is mainly a journalist with a degree in sociology. Most of his works about ancient civilisations are unverified speculations and filled with conspiracy theories.
Second, according to most English western translations of the bible, which are mostly based on the Masoretic Text as primary source, the timeline in Genesis would date the Genesis Flood to 1656 years after the creation of Adam.
The timeline depends on what happen in Exodus 12:40-41, the 430 years.
Exodus 12:40-41 said:
40 The length of time that the Israelites lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years; 41 at the end of the four hundred and thirtieth year, to the very day, all the ranks of the L ORD departed from the land of Egypt.
Would that 430 years be when Jacob was living in Egypt, or when Abraham received the covenant?
The former would put the Flood around 2104 BCE, the later would date the deluge to 2340 BCE.
It doesn't matter, which dates anyone use, because the Ice Age ended around 12,000 BCE.
No matter how anyone look at this Flood being caused by the melting of the ice from the Ice Age, there is a large gap of at least 7660 years.
If there was really Flood that caused global flood due to the melting of ice, this Flood should have happened much earlier than 2104 BCE or 2340 BCE.
For another flaw in Hancock's deluded thinking, is that the last ice age wasn't global (2.5 million years ago to 10,000 BCE. The ice sheets didn't cover as regions than much earlier ice ages.
Even at the height of the last glacial period (18,000 BCE to 17,000 BCE) known as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), much of the coverages of ice sheets only cover Northern Europe (including the British Isles, which made it landlock to northern France and Belgium, because the channel was ice), northern Asia and mainly in Northern America (only parts of the US).
Pockets of ice sheets are found in higher grounds, like mountainous regions like the Alps in Switzerland and Italy, and the Andes.
The rise in sea level, occurring globally had actually occurred even before the beginning of the Neolithic period, around 12,500 BCE. There are no evidences of sharp rise of sea level, at any point between 2500 to 2000 BCE.
My point is that the whole earth may be colder, the ice sheets didn't cover as everyone believe. And my main point that if Flood was caused by melting ice of the last Ice Age, the Flood would have occurred much earlier than the estimated dates of Old Testament bible.
The whole idea of melting ice causing the destruction of civilisations with Genesis Flood by Hancock is as much as a myth as Genesis itself.
ps
The last ice age might not have ended yet, according to palaeoclimatists.
According to science, the ice age experienced a series of glacial and interglacial periods, and we have been experiencing the latest interglacial period, for the last 10,000 years. The interglacial periods are sort of like the "eye of the storm".
The most recent interglacial period in the Pleistocene epoch (which was the 3rd interglacial epoch) was between 115,000 and 130,000 years ago, so a duration of 15,000 years of warm period. The first interglacial that ended in 478,000 years ago, had actually lasted over 80,000 years. The 2nd lasted 50,000 years.
Scientists have not been able to predict when we go back to the glacial period. Perhaps it did ended in 10,000 BCE, but is actually too soon to tell, and we would be long dead to care if it does.