California Levee Failures: 6000 BC to 2000 AD.

There is, it turns out, a lot to be said for the bible. " In the beginning was the word". When we look back we see the chapters of creation and destruction, the most recent of which are the chronicles of the Quaternary.

Our story begins and will end in the Holocene, the green incomplete cycle at the right end of the timeline.

It is the story of Noah who being a righteous man is selected to survive the great flood. I have never understood why a man who gets his neighbors to help build a big boat and then watches them drown can be admired. But those were the old days.

Now it turns out the the story of Noah is derived form a much older and in my view more intelligible story, from Sumeria, dating back to the third millenium. The site of this story is lower mesopotamia, the bbilical Ur of the Chaldees, home of the legendary Gilgamesh, and scene of the Gulf War.

It happens on the valley of Mesopotamia.

In our version of the story, God arranged the Holocene starting with The Garden of Eden and in doing so created the world. By "the world" we mean a place with stable climate and sea level, and fertile valleys, wetlands abundant with birds and shellfish, leading to sedentary life. We argue the case in another web site that all of this happened between five and seven thousand years ago, when this unprecedented stability arrived. Keep in mind that this condition had never existed-homo sapiens and a stable environement.

It is the story of Atrahasis:part 1, creation of men by the gods. A whole committee in this case.

After a while the men become numerous and noisy and troublesome. The gods send a sickly yellow plague to quiet them down. A flu epidemic, perhaps, just like the one that we should fear now.

Next, a horrible drought.

Then another drought; this time the rivers cease flowing

At last, the deluge, drowning all but one family.

Just as at Arboga, January 2, 1997.

Elsewhere we show that this event can be assigned to about 3200 BC.

We should keep in mind one detail of the story: the fountains of the deep

Here is the remains of one at Arboga, after the 1997 flood.

Lance Williams' San Francisco Examiner article
Air photos of the Marysville area, before and after flooding
USGS topographic and levee failure map
Land developments
Geological history of levee weak spots
Similar problems near Pajaro
How the bible provides an early prediction of levee failures
Mechanics of levee failures
Sinkholes and sand boils
Shanghai Bend: past and future
Preventing levee failures
Author

Questions or Comments?

meehan@blume.stanford.edu