60% of the Earth’s crust is made up of quartz (formed from oxygen & silicon) and feldspar (a mineral derived from tectosilicate).

Unlike some other rocks, quartz & feldspar don’t dissolve in water, but the grinding of this bedrock by glacial erosion and river transport, turns into silt, also known more poetically as, “rock flour”.

Silt holds water better & promotes air circulation. As such, it is ideal for growing plants. As the Tigris and Euphrates flowed downsteam from the mountains of Turkey, this silt created the fertile floodplain of Mesopotamia, which is modern-day Iraq, & civilization grew from this

In 10,000 B.C., the last Ice Age ended.

Global temperatures increased between 4-7° Centigrade over a period of roughly 5,000 years after that. #ClimateChange

Global sea levels rose 2 centimeters per year, until the sea had risen the equivalent of a 130-story building.

This #climate shift is what cut off the land bridge between Russia & America, and turned the U.K. into an island.

It also caused the Laurentide Ice Sheet collapse

In the flood plains of Mesopotamia, the melting ice caps caused the coastline to move an average of an astonishing 1 meter (3.28 feet) every 3 days, 120 meters (393 feet) per year, or over a kilometer every 10 years.

For comparison, while that change occurred over a 5,000 year period, within just the last 100 years, we've increased the global temps by 1.06°C by burning fossil fuels from this same region.

If we don't change our behavior, it could increase by 5℃ by the end of the century.

One theory holds this perpetual #ClimateChange flooding from the Southern area that would later become the Persian Gulf, forced the ancient Iraqis to become homeless wandering nomads moving Northwards for decades, is also the source of the Biblical myth of Noah & his Great Flood.

I think it was a combo of this destabilizing perpetual slow flooding, combined with the flash flood that occurred when a glacial dam holding back meltwater from the Black Sea broke, sending a 2,000 Ft deep lake bursting out at 200x the volume/speed of Niagara Falls from the North

This second event flooded 39,000 square miles and trapped these people between two seas for some 300 days. For a people with no access to flight, this must have seemed like the end of the entire world.

As the story was told and retold over time like a bad game of telephone, it became the Bliblical Noah myth that we know today.

A poetic reinterpretation of a crisis event, intended to teach moral lessons about obedience to a monotheistic God concept the Sumerians never knew.