Quote:
Originally Posted by Baddad
Hi Carl, Ric, 
Am very curious to hear your conclusions. 
Cheers Marty |
When you have no clue at what you're looking at because you know nothing of geology (or very little, at least), you see what you want to see and believe in. It's a load of hogwash.
You have to remember that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of parables, stories and allegorical history. For the most part, putting a straight fact (except after the fact of finding them) onto anything said within the book is rather spurious. Yes, it does mention historical events but that's hardly surprising, given the nature of who wrote the book and when they were written. However, that doesn't make it an accurate depiction of the history within it. Nor does it give accurate dates and such for these events. It's contextual, not factual.
What you have there is halite, gypsum and other saline deposits intermixed with clay and sandy sediments. Those "walls" and such are nothing more than eroded lake bed sediments. Actually, they're most likely stranded shoreline deposits that have been laid down in the Dead Sea and then when it evaporated or when earth movements uplifted the sides of the rift the lake sits in, left them high and dry. These deposits are laid down repeatedly over time and you see layer after layer of old shorelines built up along the periphery of the lake. You can see examples of this all over the area. I've seen similar stranded shorelines and shallow water sediments myself, out here in dry lakes. The crumbly texture of the deposits is classic...they have very little water in them and when they dry out, they go like powder. In these types of lakes which also happen to be associated with rift valley systems, like the Dead Sea is, you can also get hydrocarbon deposits....oil, tar and such, within the sediments. Most of these turn out to have a high sulphur content within the hydrocarbons. You can also get hydrothermal activity and the occasional spurt of volcanism, especially where hot rocks are close to the surface (within 2-4kms). This can also bring up saline waters and minerals which get mixed in with the clays and mud of the lakes.
The occasional volcanic event could have also frightened and bamboozled the people in the area at the time, considering pretty much all of them had never seen a volcano or an eruption...whole generations would have never had that experience.
If there were cities/towns on the coastline of the lake, say on the lakeshore flats...and there is evidence that there
may have been, any number of natural events could have written them off. A large earthquake or volcanic event could've cause the cities/towns to slip into the lake via liquifaction of the sediments the city/town sat on and an eruption may have partially buried the city.
But what we have in this video is not a city/town by any stretch of the imagination (and I have a pretty good imagination!!!)
