From: Steven M Smith (smsmith@usgs.gov)
Date: Tue Aug 20 2002 - 09:44:30 EDT
Paul wrote,
>Glenn wrote,
>
><< What is shown on the picture on my website is the northern part of
> the country along the Euphrates river. >>
>
>It is not clear to me what area is being covered on the map. Where
>is Baghdad or some other city that will make the geography clear?
>And what is the scale?
>Also, what does the map look like for southern Iraq (The Flood of
>2900 BC is in southern Iraq.), and does it take into account the
>changing of the course of the Euphrates over the last 6,000 years?
Glenn replied,
<<The map is in the northern part of Iraq, just south of Syrian border.
I have the map on CD in PDF form and to see anything one must blow it
up to a decent scale. My point is not that southern Mesopotamia has not
been
flooded--it has. The point is that that flood can't move an ark north to
Turkey. If everyone now agrees that a mesopotamian flood can't flood
anything more than southern Iraq, then it is clear that either 1) the
Biblical account saying the ark landed on the mountains of Ararat is false,
or 2) Mesopotamia isn't the site of the flood.
As to southern Iraq, it is largely Holocene/Quaternary fluvial as is to be
expected as it is the former delta of the Tigris/Euphrates system. Thus,
there is no doubt that southern mesopotamia has been flooded everywhere,
but
then so has southern Lousiana and the Amazon delta, the Nile Delta etc.>>
Paul, Glenn, and anyone else that is interested. You can see the full
Iraq geology map from this USGS open-file-report at
<http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/energy/WorldEnergy/OF97-470B/>
At this site, you have the option of ordering the CD-ROM, viewing the map
with minor zoom in capabilities in your Web browser, viewing the map with
ESRI Arcview Interactive Map Server (this feature was not working when I
last checked this morning), or downloading the report as a 6.8 Mb PDF file.
If you download the PDF file and zoom in, you can reproduce Glenn's figure
plus pan around to other parts of the area that might interest you --
including southern Iraq where the large Tigris/Euphrates delta fills the
northern half of the Persian Gulf.
Steve
P.S. You may wish to check out the site
<http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/oilgas/wep/index.htm> for additional oil/gas
maps in Asia, Africa, or Australia
_____________
Steven M. Smith, Geologist Office: (303)236-1192
U.S. Geological Survey Fax: (303)236-3200
Box 25046, M.S. 973, DFC smsmith@usgs.gov
Denver, CO 80225
--USGS Nat'l Geochem. Database NURE HSSR Data Web Site--
http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/pub/open-file-reports/ofr-97-0492/
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