Mountains and the Flood
Uplift of continents and mountains, and deepening of ocean basins in the closing stages of the Flood, help to explain that the water which temporarily covered the whole earth (after mostly coming from subterranean sources—the ‘fountains of the great deep’) is now in the oceans. Here is where God has ‘set a bound that they may not pass over, so that they do not turn again to cover the earth’ (
Psalm 104:9).
If the surface features of the earth were totally flattened out, water would cover the globe to a depth of 2.7 km (1.7 miles). That is still much less than the height of Mt Everest (some 8 km [5 miles]) and other Himalayan mountains.
However, the Flood waters did not have to be this deep in order to cover ‘all the high hills that were under the whole heaven’ of the pre-Flood earth (
Genesis 7:19). The Himalayas show clear evidence of having been pushed up after layers of fossil-bearing Flood sediments had been deposited. Thus the ‘high hills’ (mountains) before the Flood were different from those we see today, and were probably not much higher than 2 km (1.3 miles). Much of this pre-Flood mountainous mass may have been eroded away during that cataclysm.
There is evidence of long-ago ocean life embedded in the limestone at Everest's summit: fossils, including those of crinoids, ancient underwater animals with tentacles and cone-shaped shells. These fossils are found at 29,000 feet because the highest point on Earth was once under sea
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A different opinon