Ancient Sea Levels Part 1

Howdy! What a Beautiful night i am enjoying tonight. Hope you are all doing well.

I have spent countless hours looking over google earth. There is one thing that really sticks out in my mind that has bothered me.

If you look at all of the light blue areas that are currently under water, it appears that if the water levels were lower there is a bunch of land that suddenly washed over the lands. If you use google earth, you can use your mouse pointer and hover over the land to find out the elevation.

The reason i think it was sudden is because on almost every continent you can see that the light blue area is anywhere from -30 feet to -300 feet, and sometimes -600 feet before it very quickly drops from -1000 feet to -20,000 feet or more.

Like i said, every continent has this. The most obvious place to look is the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia. Everywhere you look the light blue area is about -100 feet and then suddenly drops off to -12,000 feet on average on both sides, north and south.

Florida has this too, along with most of the east coast of America.

For those living in the Uk and northern Europe, all of that was connected at some point. Amazingly, the Straight of Gibraltar would NOT have been connected, and there was always a sea route from Egypt to outside of the Mediterranean Sea, but just barely. There would have been another important gate that you would have to cross between Italy and Africa near Tunis, which i believe would have been the site of a famous ancient civilization. The island of Pantelleria would have been in the middle of the gate, which spans about 40 miles.

Look at Egypt and you will notice that they would have had about 25-35 more miles of land, the extended land is exactly the same shape as the nile delta's arc.

Amazingly Jerusalem would not have lost much land on the coast.

India would have a lost a decent amount of land, and this is where it starts getting interesting. In India's ocean there was an ancient civilization that dated around 9500 BC that is currently underwater which was at the mouth of one of their great rivers. Sri Lanka would have been easily connected,

Continuing Eastward, you can see that Indonesia was one giant land, often called Sundaland. From here you could NOT walk to Australia. There is no way you could have done this, you would have had to sail to Australia.

So as you can see, there are many many MANY places that are found that lie within 300 feet below sea level that could have easily be land.

There are 2 questions i have.

1. What year was it in our ancient past that this land would have been above water?

2. Are there any programs or websites that show how the earth would have looked like when the sea levels were -300 feet?


I hope this post helps you think creatively when viewing google earth next time, if you haven't thought about this. When i get more information i will make a second thread to conclude some of the things i have found most interesting.

Originally posted by BeastMaster2012
There are 2 questions i have.

1. What year was it in our ancient past that this land would have been above water?

2. Are there any programs or websites that show how the earth would have looked like when the sea levels were -300 feet?

Well I have also wondered that also.

There are all these ancient, cities and sturctures udner water that aren't in tooo deep of water.

Obvieouly the water wasn't high enough and poeple lived there. Either that or the continents have shifted down somewhat. But i believe that the water levels have risen and is probably due to the melted ice levels on land. I mean where else is the water going to go excep on land and into ice. Or perhaps these desert we have used to be flourishing with tropical wildlife and fauna and a lot of water when there and not in the oceans.

I know Australia used to have an inland sea and sea creatures used to be live there as there are shells and stuff that support it.

Obviously either Australia has risen up, or the sea level has gone down since then.

Anyway this is what i truely believe.

The Earth has these cooling and warming periods.

Ice sheets melt, release too much fresh water into the oceans, the oceans stop circulating for a short period of time and thus stopping the transfer of heat around the oceans causing things like in the movie "The day after tomorrow" where an ice-age beings, the water level thus drops dramatically, and cycle repeats.

reply to post by DaRAGE


Well i did not know that Australia had a inner ocean at one time, that is very interesting. By quickly looking at google earth i can see in the middle a HUGE white spot that is -49 feet deep. I am guessing it is white because of salt?

It appears that. from wiki:
en.wikipedia.org...

Lake Eyre itself lies approximately 16 metres below sea level, and usually contains only salt. In flood years it fills and for a short time undergoes a period of rapid growth and fertility: long-dormant marine creatures multiply and large flocks of waterfowl arrive to feed and raise their young before the waters evaporate once more.

it looks very cool on google earth! Thanks for pointing that out!

Originally posted by BeastMaster2012

1. What year was it in our ancient past that this land would have been above water?

2. Are there any programs or websites that show how the earth would have looked like when the sea levels were -300 feet?

See levels at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (~20-18,000 years ago) were around 400ft lower than today. They steadily rose thereafter until reaching a peak height ~6,000 years ago.

If you have Google Earth (version 4) you can download a programme here which enables you to see how sea levels would have been when ~400ft lower.

There is also a small scale map here:



One of a number produced by Wm. Robert Johnson

Although I wouldn't normally recommend journalist Graham Hancock (his research in some areas leaves much to be desired), you might like his book Underworld: Lost Kingdoms of the Ice Age which has many maps showing how the post glacial sea levels rose, and the areas of land lost around India and other regions (as well as discussion of possible, submerged, human structures - not all are necessarily quite what he implies though)

Originally posted by Essan

Originally posted by BeastMaster2012

1. What year was it in our ancient past that this land would have been above water?

2. Are there any programs or websites that show how the earth would have looked like when the sea levels were -300 feet?

See levels at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (~20-18,000 years ago) were around 400ft lower than today. They steadily rose thereafter until reaching a peak height ~6,000 years ago.

If you have Google Earth (version 4) you can download a programme here which enables you to see how sea levels would have been when ~400ft lower.

There is also a small scale map here:



One of a number produced by Wm. Robert Johnson

Although I wouldn't normally recommend journalist Graham Hancock (his research in some areas leaves much to be desired), you might like his book Underworld: Lost Kingdoms of the Ice Age which has many maps showing how the post glacial sea levels rose, and the areas of land lost around India and other regions (as well as discussion of possible, submerged, human structures - not all are necessarily quite what he implies though)

Awesome thanks for the links and the google earth app, that is EXACTLY what i was looking for! I wish you could change the number a bit but this is great.

Also if you want to use the elevation tool you have to make sure Terrain is checked off at the very bottom of the layers on the bottom left hand side.

I am familiar with Grisham's work, i have read most of Fingerprints of the Gods and i have seen a number of documentaries of him talking about the underworld book. He is the main reason i am interested in underwater civilizations. Thanks for the suggestion.

Archaeologists with diving experience are finding 'cave man' sites in the English channel, preserved cut wood, 'middens' (trash heaps) etc, and the Rhine river flowed past the Dover cliffs at one point, deep sea trawlers are always bringing up Mammoth bones etc.

From what I understand the entire east coast half of the United States was once under water. If the same amount of water was on the planet back then, when this large chunk of land was under water other land that is now under water would have been dry land.

Originally posted by BeastMaster2012
If you look at all of the light blue areas that are currently under water, it appears that if the water levels were lower there is a bunch of land that suddenly washed over the lands. If you use google earth, you can use your mouse pointer and hover over the land to find out the elevation.

These areas are called "continental shelves", and the sinking wasn't quick. Catastrophic sinking is caused when a section of continental shelf suddenly slides down many feet below what it used to be. Earthquakes/volcanos are usually involved, but the total area of land sunk is fairly small compared to the Earth.

They are millions of years old, by the way.

1. What year was it in our ancient past that this land would have been above water?

All of it would have been out of water during "snowball earth". en.wikipedia.org... This was during Precambrian Earth when the only complex organisms around were stromatolites and corals.

There were five major ice ages, most of which happened before the dinosaurs showed up. The Wikipedia page is helpful, and it also discusses "interglacial ice ages" like the one that we usually call "the Ice Age" (which was a real piker compared to REAL Ice Ages: en.wikipedia.org...

The warming/rise of the sea was fairly slow. It takes a lot of heat over a long time to melt a glacier and it takes a lot of glacial ice to raise the level of all the seas of the world by one inch. The rise took place over generations of lifetimes; not in seconds or minutes.

Well, rivers are always adding to the oceans, who says the ocean filters back thru the land? It might not be a true cycle, just a one way road for water.

Adding to this thread, I know that the Belgian city of Bruges was once flooded and stayed under water for nearly 400 yrs during the Roman period.

Originally posted by Byrd
These areas are called "continental shelves", and the sinking wasn't quick. Catastrophic sinking is caused when a section of continental shelf suddenly slides down many feet below what it used to be. Earthquakes/volcanos are usually involved, but the total area of land sunk is fairly small compared to the Earth.

They are millions of years old, by the way.

I don't think they are millions of years old. Was the Alaska land bridge millions of years old? The land bridge was there before the last ice age. If you look at google earth with the above application to see how sea levels were around 18,000 years ago you would see that most of the continental shelves were above the sea.

reply to post by BeastMaster2012


"1. What year was it in our ancient past that this land would have been above water?"


In the six hundreth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day. This is when the springs of the great watery deep and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.

Before this, I believe most of all the continental shelves that you spoke of, were above sea level. I don't have time to do the math right now, but with this info, you could figure it out to the exact year and day.

You can find this in Genesis chapter 7 verse 11.

S & F

Here is a great on topic thread

Origins of Atlantis/Lemuria Myths Part-1

reply to post by SLAYER69


Thanks Slayer! I loved your post and i hope to do something like that in the near future. Your post will be a good guide on how a great post should be made! It does seem like there is more to the world before the bible, doesn't there?

Originally posted by BeastMaster2012
I don't think they are millions of years old. Was the Alaska land bridge millions of years old?

Yes. That doesn't mean it's above water all the time. But it's been there since the complete breakup of Laurasia. Continental shelves don't just suddenly appear; they're formed over a long time. The Wikipedia article refers to dinosaur footprints and Beringea; so that's at least 60 million years old. I know from some of the material in our paleontology lab (I work as a volunteer for these guys: www.pbs.org... )that the area goes back 90 million years

The land bridge was there before the last ice age. If you look at google earth with the above application to see how sea levels were around 18,000 years ago you would see that most of the continental shelves were above the sea.

Yes. And before that, they weren't.
en.wikipedia.org...