- Mar 15, 2003
- 814
- 9
- 69
- Faith
- Word of Faith
- Marital Status
- Single
- Politics
- US-Constitution
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, an enormous amount of fossils was excavated from the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits. Approximately 60 species have been identified, including saber-tooth cat, bear, lion, wolf, camel, bison, and mastodon. Also found were about a dozen human bones, as well as a number of artifacts such as milling stones and bone hairpins. These fossils and artifacts have been dated by scientists to the late Pleistocene or early Recent Period.
The conventional explanation for the abundance and diversity of this fossil material is that successive animal entrapment
episodes had created an ever-growing clutter of bones at the bottom of the tar pools. An unwary herbivore such as a mastodon, for example, might step into a seemingly benign pool of water to get a drink. The herbivore would then become hopelessly ensnared in the sticky tar underneath the watery surface. Its distress cries would draw hungry carnivores, such as wolves, seeking an easy meal. These carnivores would themselves slip and fall into the pool, becoming, like their prey, inescapably mired in the tar. Although this theory is useful for explaining a lot of data, it does contain some serious weaknesses. This booklet uses the catastrophic flood model as an alternative explanation for the deposition of the fossils.
This article is very long, so I posted the conclusion here and the entire article can be read here ;
Conclusions
Prestwich died in 1896. Twelve years later, the fossils of the La Brea Tar Pits became known to the world. Had he lived and read the early reports, he would have recognized patterns similar to what he saw in Europe. The bones were fragmented and packed into an irregular mix with no complete skeletons. The herbivore bones showed few, if any, signs of carnivore teeth impressions. There were even indications of water deposition in the woody debris. With the exception of the petroleum factor, there was nothing in these reports that would have set them apart from his own investigations of bone accumulations in Europe. The only circumstance that might have surprised Prestwich was the implication that the great flood that had swept over Europe had also reached California.
As mentioned in the introduction to this article, the date assigned to the deposition of the bones in the tar pits was late
Pleistocene. Prestwich would have recognized here a correlation with his date of the flooding of Europe, which he believed took place sometime between the end of the Ice Age and the beginning of the Recent Period or 10,000 years ago. In the decades following his death, improved methods of dating by observation of erosion and sedimentation processes required a revision of geologic dates. Velikovsky (1955, pp. 148-164) mentions a number of scientists who went on record stating that the beginning of the post-glacial period should be re-dated to approximately 4000 to 5000 years ago. If these new methods of dating have any validity (and in the author's opinion, they do), then the concurrence of the post-glacial period and the continental flood spoken of by Prestwich line up more with Biblical chronology, which puts Noah's flood at 4300 years ago.
Let us now take the evidence of the tar pits and reconstruct what happened based on a catastrophic flood model. Just as in
Europe, the animals and birds in California were seeking refuge from water that was rising higher and higher. They would have been attracted to the Santa Monica Mountains, which rises to an elevation of about 1200 feet above the plain. As the water climbed up the sides of the mountain, the last remaining land surface continued to shrink. Under such circumstances, the stronger and larger creatures would have kept back the weaker ones. It was a survival of the fittest with the wolves and saber- tooth cats fighting for preeminence on the ground, and the eagles fighting for preeminence in the trees.
Just as the carnivores were predominant on the mountain of Santenay, so they were predominant on the mountains of Santa
Monica. Meanwhile, turkeys and a variety of other small birds and animals were finding refuge in hollows and cavities that were inaccessible to the larger animals. It is quite probable that the great herds of herbivores had drowned earlier on the plain below. Where the bones went is a matter of conjecture, yet it is possible that they might have been buried under the water-borne sand and clay which now forms the alluvial plain at the foot of the mountains.
After the last animals and birds on top of the ridge had perished, their floating carcasses became a temporary breeding
habitat for insects. Blowflies went into exposed cavities to lay their eggs. As the carcasses decayed and fell apart, their remains were scattered over the underwater mountains and plains below. At last the waters subsided, and wave action proceeded to smash the bones on re-emerging land formations. At the same time, disturbances within the earth allowed natural gas and oil to seep up and create underwater blowholes. Some of the blowholes became receptacles of the water- driven bones. After the land had at last dried out, flowing oil covered the bone-laden ground with a lake of pitch. When the lake dried out, it formed a protective matrix that preserved the bones both within and below the asphalt crust.
The evidence of water catastrophism at the La Brea Tar Pits dovetails with Prestwich's hypothesis regarding the
submergence and re-emergence of Western Europe. While he was gathering his data, he became intrigued with the way the evidence was confirming the Genesis account of the universal flood. He then proceeded to see how far the evidence went. When he journeyed as far as the coastlines of the Mediterranean Sea, he still had not found its limits. As a careful geologist, he stayed within the bounds of the evidence observed and would only commit himself to the idea of a continental flood. However, by applying the insights of his research to the phenomenon of the La Brea Tar Pits, we get a broader picture of the worldwide effects of the Genesis flood.
The conventional explanation for the abundance and diversity of this fossil material is that successive animal entrapment
episodes had created an ever-growing clutter of bones at the bottom of the tar pools. An unwary herbivore such as a mastodon, for example, might step into a seemingly benign pool of water to get a drink. The herbivore would then become hopelessly ensnared in the sticky tar underneath the watery surface. Its distress cries would draw hungry carnivores, such as wolves, seeking an easy meal. These carnivores would themselves slip and fall into the pool, becoming, like their prey, inescapably mired in the tar. Although this theory is useful for explaining a lot of data, it does contain some serious weaknesses. This booklet uses the catastrophic flood model as an alternative explanation for the deposition of the fossils.
This article is very long, so I posted the conclusion here and the entire article can be read here ;
Conclusions
Prestwich died in 1896. Twelve years later, the fossils of the La Brea Tar Pits became known to the world. Had he lived and read the early reports, he would have recognized patterns similar to what he saw in Europe. The bones were fragmented and packed into an irregular mix with no complete skeletons. The herbivore bones showed few, if any, signs of carnivore teeth impressions. There were even indications of water deposition in the woody debris. With the exception of the petroleum factor, there was nothing in these reports that would have set them apart from his own investigations of bone accumulations in Europe. The only circumstance that might have surprised Prestwich was the implication that the great flood that had swept over Europe had also reached California.
As mentioned in the introduction to this article, the date assigned to the deposition of the bones in the tar pits was late
Pleistocene. Prestwich would have recognized here a correlation with his date of the flooding of Europe, which he believed took place sometime between the end of the Ice Age and the beginning of the Recent Period or 10,000 years ago. In the decades following his death, improved methods of dating by observation of erosion and sedimentation processes required a revision of geologic dates. Velikovsky (1955, pp. 148-164) mentions a number of scientists who went on record stating that the beginning of the post-glacial period should be re-dated to approximately 4000 to 5000 years ago. If these new methods of dating have any validity (and in the author's opinion, they do), then the concurrence of the post-glacial period and the continental flood spoken of by Prestwich line up more with Biblical chronology, which puts Noah's flood at 4300 years ago.
Let us now take the evidence of the tar pits and reconstruct what happened based on a catastrophic flood model. Just as in
Europe, the animals and birds in California were seeking refuge from water that was rising higher and higher. They would have been attracted to the Santa Monica Mountains, which rises to an elevation of about 1200 feet above the plain. As the water climbed up the sides of the mountain, the last remaining land surface continued to shrink. Under such circumstances, the stronger and larger creatures would have kept back the weaker ones. It was a survival of the fittest with the wolves and saber- tooth cats fighting for preeminence on the ground, and the eagles fighting for preeminence in the trees.
Just as the carnivores were predominant on the mountain of Santenay, so they were predominant on the mountains of Santa
Monica. Meanwhile, turkeys and a variety of other small birds and animals were finding refuge in hollows and cavities that were inaccessible to the larger animals. It is quite probable that the great herds of herbivores had drowned earlier on the plain below. Where the bones went is a matter of conjecture, yet it is possible that they might have been buried under the water-borne sand and clay which now forms the alluvial plain at the foot of the mountains.
After the last animals and birds on top of the ridge had perished, their floating carcasses became a temporary breeding
habitat for insects. Blowflies went into exposed cavities to lay their eggs. As the carcasses decayed and fell apart, their remains were scattered over the underwater mountains and plains below. At last the waters subsided, and wave action proceeded to smash the bones on re-emerging land formations. At the same time, disturbances within the earth allowed natural gas and oil to seep up and create underwater blowholes. Some of the blowholes became receptacles of the water- driven bones. After the land had at last dried out, flowing oil covered the bone-laden ground with a lake of pitch. When the lake dried out, it formed a protective matrix that preserved the bones both within and below the asphalt crust.
The evidence of water catastrophism at the La Brea Tar Pits dovetails with Prestwich's hypothesis regarding the
submergence and re-emergence of Western Europe. While he was gathering his data, he became intrigued with the way the evidence was confirming the Genesis account of the universal flood. He then proceeded to see how far the evidence went. When he journeyed as far as the coastlines of the Mediterranean Sea, he still had not found its limits. As a careful geologist, he stayed within the bounds of the evidence observed and would only commit himself to the idea of a continental flood. However, by applying the insights of his research to the phenomenon of the La Brea Tar Pits, we get a broader picture of the worldwide effects of the Genesis flood.
