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BONUS – A Rapid Ice Age?

Animals repopulated the planet quickly after the flood cataclysm. At the start, there were bountiful resources, wide-open spaces and very little predation, so the multiplication of species exploded in every direction.1

Certain fossils and other evidences help researchers understand how the creatures spread rapidly across the globe.2 And by God’s marvelous design of genetics, many thousands of new species — which are merely variations within the kinds — flourished in some of the most remote and inhospitable climates and habitats.

In countless instances, a new species within a created kind3 that was well suited for a particular environment survived and multiplied, while species that were ill-equipped moved on or died out.4 This pattern continues today.

The Bible documents in Genesis 8:4 that Noah’s Ark came to rest somewhere in “the mountains of Ararat.” We do not know whether the mountain on which the Ark landed was unstable and volcanic, but we do know that the one modern mountain known as “Mount Ararat” is a volcano; it may have risen during and/or after the Flood, we do not know. However, it is improbable that Noah’s family originally settled in the cold, stark mountain range where the Ark came to rest (possibly somewhere in the eastern region of modern-day Turkey). Genesis chapter 11 tells us that they migrated from Noah’s farm to the Plain of Shinar. Many believe that this plain was in modern-day Iraq, where the Bible states that the people congregated before God forced their dispersion at the Tower of Babel.5

Snow soon fell in copious volumes on the newly exposed northern and southern lands. The severe and incessant snowstorms, combined with cooler summers caused by sunshine-reducing volcanic ash and meteor impact dust, would have resulted in thick ice sheets and glaciers. These covered huge portions of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, including areas such as the upper Midwest of the United States and substantial portions of Europe — all within only a few hundred years after the Flood.6

Various evidences indicate that eruptions and earthquakes diminished as the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates slowed from meters-per-minute at the height of the Flood, to the present rate of only centimeters-per-year.

It is clear that the world’s immense ice sheets and glaciers reached their maximum thickness and breadth very quickly.

One set of researchers based their findings on Ussher’s chronology—which places the Flood at about 2350 BC—and the understanding that the city of Ur was a coastal seaport when Abram was born there in about 2000 BC. The Persian Gulf was full or nearly full at that time because most of the earth’s huge glaciers had melted and released their stored water into the oceans. The research suggests that ice and massive glaciers accumulated within three centuries after the Flood, then melted and released their stored water to cover most intercontinental land bridges and many low-lying coastal areas during the next 100 years or so.7

Other researchers, using glacial and weather data, also support a recent and brief ice age but suggest the duration was 200–300 years longer.8

Both groups agree that the climate was erratic and there were extreme changes in weather during this period, known as the “rapid ice age,” and that it was triggered by the global Flood of about 4,300 years ago.9

1 For a free, brief video that highlights the basics of “Rapid Speciation,” visit http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n4/rapid-speciation.

2 Fossils laid down during numerous (localized) residual catastrophes in the centuries after the worldwide cataclysm reveal huge numbers of freshwater fish, mammal graveyards, etc. See “Continuing Catastrophes” by Dr. John Whitmore, www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n4/continuing-catastrophes. Also of note is recent research that has mapped the migration of mastodons and other species of elephants, plus the people who followed those migrations for food and furs. Data from thousands of archaeologists during the last several decades shows use of former land bridges from Russia to Alaska, and Asia to Australia, thus revealing the routes used to move from the Middle East to virtually all parts of the world. See the Answers magazine feature article, “When Was the Ice Age in Biblical History?” by Dr. Andrew Snelling and Mike Matthews, https://answersingenesis.org/environmental-science/ice-age/when-was-the-ice-age-in-biblical-history/ ).

3 “. . . the biblical creation model recognizes that one kind cannot change into another and that the changes are a result of variation within the created kinds — not descent from a single common ancestor.” by Roger Patterson in “Evolution Exposed: Biology” (chapter 3), www.answersingenesis.org/articles/ee/natural-selection-vs-evolution.

4 For example, the antelope kind bore many specialized new species, including gazelles, blackbucks, gerenuks, dibatags, saiga, beira, suni, klipspringer, and others. The camelidae kind bore camels, llamas, vicunas, guanacos, and more. Some animals were born with no hair, some with short hair, some with long. There were thick, dark coats, and thin, light-colored coats. This sort of variation within a kind is often referred to as speciation. It is not the unproven amoeba-to-man idea of evolution popularized by Charles Darwin and others.

5 Genesis 11:2. “And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar.”

6 All of Greenland, Iceland, and Antarctica, nearly all of Canada and New Zealand, and much of modern-day Russia, Europe, the USA, South America, and Australia.

7 Dr. Andrew Snelling and Michael Matthews, “When Was the Ice Age in Biblical History?” Answers magazine, vol. 8.2, April–June 2013, p. 46–52.

8 Weather data studied by meteorologist Michael Oard suggests 500 years (rather than 300), plus about 200 years for melt off, (compared to 100). See the technical writings and summaries by Mike Oard, Larry Vardiman, and Jake Hebert on this subject: www.icr.org/article/are-polar-ice-sheets-only-4500-years-old by Michael Oard, M.S., www.icr.org/article/was-there-ice-age/ by Jack Hebert, Ph.D., and www.icr.org/article/7161/ by Larry Vardiman, Ph.D.

9 “It is hard to imagine such extreme changes in weather, landscapes, and vegetation during the rapid Ice Age and the years that followed. Some lush places in the north were stricken by drought, while monsoons filled the Sahara Desert with lakes and grasslands, attracting rhinoceroses, crocodiles, and human settlers. For a time at the end of the Ice Age, the drenched Nile Valley was not even habitable,” by geologist Dr. Andrew Snelling in the Answers magazine article “When Was the Ice Age in Biblical History,” at https://answersingenesis.org/environmental-science/ice-age/when-was-the-ice-age-in-biblical-history/.