This book takes a very different approach to the Great Flood, and floods in general, as compared to academic geology or archaeology. As before, the book deals with the legend of a great flood in a serious, open-minded, and scientific way, in an effort to determine whether there is something behind these flood legends, or if, indeed, they can be dismissed as easily as orthodoxy claims. The Great Flood legend, and many others are first discussed, including those legends of the Makah and Klallam we examined in volume 1. The book then deals with how geomythologists treat the Great Flood legend. Unsurprisingly, modern geology gives these legends no credence whatever, and explains the Flood in the usual fashion of a mere local flood exaggerated into a great global disaster. That or a bolide impact causing a tsunami or Ryan & Pitman's proposed sill-overtopping Black Sea flood, and that is about the total extent of academia's efforts. Considering the parallels between the Great Flood legend and those of the Makah and Klallam, a comparison seems compulsory, and, as we recall, the nature of the Native American flood descriptions suggested a cosmic body as being the most likely cause, which cause might possibly be the same for the Great Flood in Mesopotamia. The first part of the book, therefore, examines the Flood from the point of view of legend and makes a case for why the legend cannot be so easily dismissed. Building on that conclusion, the second part of the book addresses the Great Flood, and major floods in general, from a completely scientific viewpoint. We begin with the early days of modern science in the sixteenth century and the first efforts to explain the Flood scientifically. Two scientists, Edmond Halley and William Whiston suggest a cometary cause, the reason being that there appears to be nothing on or within the earth that could cause such a flood as described in the Bible. As the natural sciences developed during the eighteenth century, much of the evidence seen all over Europe was interpreted as due to large-scale flooding, and the term "diluvialism" came into use. While it was initially thought that the flooding in question was due to Noah's Flood, by the end of the century it was generally held that the evidence implied a much different and far more powerful and destructive flood was involved. By the early nineteenth century, Noah's Flood had been abandoned as the cause of the evidence by the majority of geologists and a much more dynamic flood was envisioned. Again, a comet was proposed as the cause of the flooding. Diluvialism remained a general belief until Charles Lyell published his books in the early 1830s, promoting uniformitarianism, which denied the reality of major flooding as ever having occurred. Since Lyell was inspired by the theories of James Hutton, who advocated an infinitely old earth with geological change happening too slowly to be observed, we take a close look at Hutton's famous Siccar Point unconformity. Contrary to Hutton's conclusions, this book finds that Siccar Point represents a catastrophic event and not a long slow sequence of gradual change. An examination of two long-recognized outburst floods due to natural dam failures follows and both are, in fact, found to be misinterpretations of the evidence by the geologists involved. The book then moves to the realm of archaeology and we begin with Leonard Woolley and the evidence of a major flood in the valley of Mesopotamia. Woolley found exceedingly thick layers of sediment at the site of Ur of the Chalices, and other such layers were found at many other sites. While the evidence was "explained away" as a number of individual floods, a close study finds that they are all synchronous and the due to one flood, the Great Flood of legend. Further, a cuneiform tablet shows a comet in the sky at 3123 BCE, close to the estimated date of the Flood from other evidence. Hence, this book proposes that the Great Flood occurred in 3123 BCE.
