Thus it would seem that the Euphrates valley, the centre of the fabled Noachian deluge, is also the centre of a region covering some millions of square miles of the present continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, in which all the facts, relevant to the argument, at present known, converge to the conclusion that, since the miocene epoch, the essential features of its physical geography have remained unchanged; that it has neither been depressed below the sea, nor swept by diluvial waters since that time; and that the Chaldaean version of the legend of a flood in the Euphrates valley is, of all those which are extant, the only one which is even consistent with probability, since it depicts a local inundation, not more severe than one which might be brought about by a concurrence of favourable conditions at the present day; and which might probably have been more easily effected when the Persian Gulf extended farther north.
Hence, the recourse to the "glacial epoch" for some event which might colourably represent a flood, distinctly asserted by the only authority for it to have occurred in historical times, is peculiarly unfortunate. Even a Welsh antiquary might hesitate over the supposition that a tradition of the fate of Moel Tryfaen, in the glacial epoch, had furnished the basis of fact for a legend which arose among people whose own experience abundantly supplied them with the needful precedents.
Moreover, if evidence of interchanges of land and sea are to be accepted as "confirmations" of Noah's deluge, there are plenty of sources for the tradition to be had much nearer than Wales.
The depression now filled by the Red Sea, for example, appears to be, geologically, of very recent origin. The later deposits found on its shores, two or three hundred feet above the sea level, contain no remains older than those of the present fauna;while, as I have already mentioned, the valley of the adjacent delta of the Nile was a gulf of the sea in miocene times.
But there is not a particle of evidence that the change of relative level which admitted the waters of the Indian Ocean between Arabia and Africa, took place any faster than that which is now going on in Greenland and Scandinavia, and which has left their inhabitants undisturbed. Even more remarkable changes were effected, towards the end of, or since, the glacial epoch, over the region now occupied by the Levantine Mediterranean and the AEgean Sea. The eastern coast region of Asia Minor, the western of Greece, and many of the intermediate islands, exhibit thick masses of stratified deposits of later tertiary age and of purely lacustrine characters; and it is remarkable that, on the south side of the island of Crete, such masses present steep cliffs facing the sea, so that the southern boundary of the lake in which they were formed must have been situated where the sea now flows. Indeed, there are valid reasons for the supposition that the dry land once extended far to the west of the present Levantine coast, and not improbably forced the Nile to seek an outlet to the north-east of its present delta--a possibility of no small importance in relation to certain puzzling facts in the geographical distribution of animals in this region. At any rate, continuous land joined Asia Minor with the Balkan peninsula; and its surface bore deep fresh-water lakes, apparently disconnected with the Ponto-Aralian sea. This state of things lasted long enough to allow of the formation of the thick lacustrine strata to which I have referred. I am not aware that there is the smallest ground for the assumption that the AEgean land was broken up in consequence of any of the "catastrophes" which are so commonly invoked.<12> For anything that appears to the contrary, the narrow, steep-sided, straits between the islands of the AEgean archipelago may have been originally brought about by ordinary atmospheric and stream action; and may then have been filled from the Mediterranean, during a slow submergence proceeding from the south northwards.
The strait of the Dardanelles is bounded by undisturbed pleistocene strata forty feet thick, through which, to all appearance, the present passage has been quietly cut.
That Olympus and Ossa were torn asunder and the waters of the Thessalian basin poured forth, is a very ancient notion, and an often cited "confirmation" of Deucalion's flood. It has not yet ceased to be in vogue, apparently because those who entertain it are not aware that modern geological investigation has conclusively proved that the gorge of the Penens is as typical an example of a valley of erosion as any to be seen in Auvergne or in Colorado.<13>
Thus, in the immediate vicinity of the vast expanse of country which can be proved to have been untouched by any catastrophe before, during, and since the "glacial epoch," lie the great areas of the AEgean and the Red Sea, in which, during or since the glacial epoch, changes of the relative positions of land and sea have taken place, in comparison with which the submergence of Moel Tryfaen, with all Wales and Scotland to boot, does not come to much.
What, then, is the relevancy of talk about the "glacial epoch"to the question of the historical veracity of the narrator of the story of the Noachian deluge? So far as my knowledge goes, there is not a particle of evidence that destructive inundations were more common, over the general surface of the earth, in the glacial epoch than they have been before or since. No doubt the fringe of an ice-covered region must be always liable to them;but, if we examine the records of such catastrophes in historical times, those produced in the deltas of great rivers, or in lowlands like Holland, by sudden floods, combined with gales of wind or with unusual tides, far excel all others.