The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood (39 page)

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Acknowledgments

Once again, Anne patiently endured stacks of books piled up on our dining room table for months on end. Her insight, suggestions, and ideas greatly improved more chapter drafts than one should really ask a spouse to read. My editor at W. W. Norton, Maria Guarnaschelli, helped me frame and shape the story, and tremendously improved the manuscript. I greatly appreciate her taking on this book and her help in crafting it. Her assistant, Melanie Tortoroli, deserves extra special thanks for helping to focus and streamline the narrative, consistently offering up ways to improve the story. Janet Byrne helped polish the manuscript with insightful copyediting. Several people were instrumental in helping with the artwork. Harvey Greenberg made all the wonderful maps. Véronique Robigou helped conceptualize and sketched exceptional draft figures on very short notice. Alan Witschonke also produced beautiful illustrations. I am indebted to Susan Rasmussen and Jessica Cromheecke for help running down source materials, Rachel Walcott for organizing a trip to Siccar Point, Mike Summerfield for sharing his personal library, Lewis Owen for enduring a trip to the Creation Museum, and Charlotte Schreiber, Blake Edgar, Ronald Numbers, Roger Wynne, and Art McCalla for reading draft manuscripts and offering suggestions for improvements along the way. Ray Troll’s song “Rocks Don’t Lie” was inspirational. And I am deeply appreciative of Oliver Korup and the Swiss Federal Research Institute for hosting an extended visit to work on the manuscript. Finally, in addition to finding the book a great home, my agent, Elizabeth Wales, offered timely advice and enthusiasm when it was sorely needed.

I would also like to thank several colleagues at the University of Washington for their companionship and assistance in the field. Among them, Bernard Hallet graciously allowed me to use his photograph of the Tsangpo moraine dams, and Amanda Henck Schmidt translated key conversations described in chapter 1. Alan Gillespie, Allison Anders, and Noah Finnegan also played key roles in uncovering the Tibetan lake story. The opportunity to work with wonderful people in an inspirational landscape is a tremendous side benefit of geological fieldwork.

Naturally, I am particularly indebted to scholars whose works I relied on, especially Norman Cohn (
Noah’s Flood: The Genesis Story in Western Thought
), Arthur McCalla (
The Creationist Debate
), Ronald Numbers (
The Creationists
), Martin Rudwick (
Bursting the Limits of Time
), Davis Young (
The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church’s Response to Extrabiblical Evidence
), and Dorothy Vitaliano, whose classic
Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins
remains both inspirational and informative. In condensing so much into this book, I have had to telescope the evolution of geological and theological thought into the lives of selected major players. As influential as these key protagonists were, in many ways progress was the fruit of incremental discoveries that contributed to setting the intellectual context for the issues and views of their day. To the reader offended at my neglect to cover his or her favorite historical character(s), I can only plead that a sincere desire to prevent this book from mushrooming beyond appeal to a general readership made such oversights inevitable. And instead of naming a few of the key players in developing the theory of plate tectonics, I chose to respect the extended nature of the network of many individuals who transformed the way we see Earth’s dynamic surface.

As this book is intended for a general audience, I abandoned traditional academic footnotes and instead document the source materials I drew upon at the end. Naturally, I encourage the enthused, skeptical, or outraged reader to consult them for additional detail, material, and perspectives. Of course, I alone am responsible for any inadvertent errors and the inevitable sins of omission given the tremendous amount of material—and wildly divergent opinions—on the subjects considered in these pages. And finally, I must confess to taking a few inconsequential liberties in recalling my hike out of the Grand Canyon.

Index

Page numbers in
italics
refer to illustrations.

ABC News Poll, 259
n

Abraham, 150, 151, 152, 171, 264
n

Accademia del Cimento (Academy of Experiment), 58–59

“adamah,” 167

Adam and Eve, story of, 39, 55, 68, 69, 85, 165, 179, 181, 190, 228

descendants of, 96, 97–98

African elephants, 84, 87, 88, 110

Agassiz, Lake, 213–14,
214,
219

Agassiz, Louis, 140

Age of Reason, The
(Paine), 164–65

Akkadian language, 154–56

Alexander Polyhistor, 157–58

Algonquin Indians, 213

alluvium, 112, 122

Alps, 45, 55, 58, 77, 81, 82, 125

chaotic interior of 65–66,
65

American Association for the Advancement of Science, 209

American Civil War, 183

American Geophysical Union, 260
n

American Revolution, 164–65, 182

American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), 194, 226, 237

ammonites, 80, 87, 89, 90, 189

ammonium chloride (sal ammoniac), 103

Andes mountains, 80

Anglican Church (Church of England), 68, 120–21, 123, 125, 129

Annals of the Old Testament
(Ussher), 97–98

anthropology, 168, 172–73, 175, 248

Appalachian mountains, 195–96

apparent age, doctrine of, 231

Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 40

Ararat, Mount, xiii, 238

Arbuthnot, John, 72–73

Arca Noë
(
Noah’s Ark
) (Kircher), 44

archaeological excavations, 143–54, 212, 217, 227, 230

of cuneiform tablets, 143–50,
144,
152–54, 222–23

by George Smith, 148–50, 153–54

of Kish, 151–52