From John Heathcote
Shrewsbury, Shropshire
Although the theory in your article about Noah’s flood is plausible, I wonder if “The Flood” was a memory of much greater things (“Noah’s flood”, 4 October, p 24). After the end of the last glaciation, the climate warmed rapidly to a climatic optimum around 5000 BC, when it was warmer than the present day. During this climatic optimum, the tropical arid belt in the northern hemisphere was considerably wetter than it is today. This would have affected all the Old Testament lands and much of northern Africa and Arabia.
The wetness was sufficient to support lakes with hippopotamuses in what is now the centre of the Sahara. Lakes were also present in the “Empty Quarter” of Arabia. H. H. Lamb, in Climate, History and the Modern World, notes that this is recorded in paintings and the records of early Egypt. Evidence for it would therefore have been available to the writers of the Old Testament.
