Ice Age 2

                                                                                           B-H
In his commentary on the Chumash (the Torah), Rashi explains that the waters of the Flood were not merely ordinary water but were hot—boiling and scalding. This interpretation comes from a Midrashic teaching, found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 108b) and the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 31:5), which suggests that the intensity of the water served as a form of Divine punishment for the wickedness of humanity, making the Flood’s impact even more severe.
While this homiletic aspect of the story of the Flood (Mabul) is important, it raises additional questions: How did the waters of the Flood become hot? And how did this affect the post-Flood climate and geography?
In my primary work posted on the other page of this website, “Chazal on Mabul,” I have broadly outlined the events that took place in the year 1656 after Creation, using the Torah and the teachings of our Sages to build a sequence of events leading up to and during the Flood. While I did not focus on the conditions after the Flood, I hope to dedicate time to researching and building a clearer picture of the world after the Mabul, based on historical material from the Midrash and commentaries.
BeEzras Hashem, I have begun collecting this material, but more time and effort are needed to complete this research. For this current discussion, we will rely on observable phenomena that can be studied scientifically, particularly in the areas of glaciation, the Ice Age, and deglaciation.
I will summarize the events of the Mabul to provide context for the astonishing conclusions we can draw about the Ice Age.

One of many reconstructions of Pangea. Counters of today's continents are visible. Source - Wikipedia.

Before the Flood, there was a single landmass surrounded by ocean—what modern geology refers to as "Pangea." Evolutionary geologists recognize this fact through their analysis, and even without scientific expertise, it’s easy to see how the coastlines of Europe, Africa, and the Americas align. The only difference, of course, is the timeline.

The best example of fitting costal lines on the edges of continental shelve approximately 460 below sea level.

​In the timeline presented here, the single supercontinent was inundated by water during the time of Enosh, when a third of the land was flooded, leaving perhaps behind sedimentary deposits. It is also possible that this flooding created internal seas, isolated from the main ocean. The existence of stromatolite fossils in places like Nevada, Wyoming, Texas, and Upstate New York indicates such a scenario. Stromatolites are bacterial colonies that grow in shallow parts of the sea and require significant time to form. I’ve been researching these fascinating organisms for some years, but it’s still too early for me to share definitive conclusions.

Stromatolite fossils near Brady TX.

For several hundred years before Noah’s Flood, Earth was in a relatively stable condition. Then, in the year 1656, on the 17th of Cheshvan, the continent split apart.
The following map of the oceanic floors shows the grooves carved by the continents as they drifted apart. These grooves can be found on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as in the western part of the Americas, on the Pacific oceanic floor. This may seem surprising, as the Americas were drifting westward, but the hypothesis shared by both creationists and evolutionary geologists is that the old oceanic floor was subducted beneath the American continents, sinking into the Earth's mantle and core.

One of the latest and most detailed scans of oceanic floor.

Work of the plate tectonics and subduction zone. On the right of the diagram, rendition of western coast of North America. 

Evolutionary geologists believe this process took millions of years, while many creationists, including myself, believe the subduction happened rapidly—what is known as the Conveyor Belt Hypothesis. Both groups face challenges with dating methods. For example, instruments used by evolutionists date the oceanic floors as only a few million years old, when they should be hundreds of millions of years old, according to their worldview. From our perspective, however, we see the chain of events occurring much more rapidly.
Recently, oceanic floors have been mapped in great detail, revealing that the ridges and valleys created by the moving continents are still sharp and rugged. If these processes took place over millions of years, one would expect the ocean currents to have eroded and smoothed these features. But that’s not what we observe. This is significant, as water is a powerful eroding agent—not only on the surface of the planet, but also on the ocean floor.
Putting aside the dating methods for now, though this topic certainly deserves its own chapter, there’s compelling recent research that supports the Conveyor Belt Hypothesis proposed by creationists. Seismologists, measuring the frequency of seismic waves passing through the Earth, have discovered chunks of solid material inside the planet’s liquid core. These chunks should have dissolved over millions of years, but they remain intact. This evidence suggests that parts of the old oceanic floor sunk into the core, rapidly subducting along what we know as the subduction zone.

Colored rendition of dens material under the Earth's crust. (photo Physic,org)

Detailed diagrams of the newest research on the quite recent discovery.
Every few months the diagrams are coming with more details and sharper counters of the zones of densities.

​I suspect that these chunks of antediluvian oceanic floor, twisted and buckled beneath the continents, are responsible for many of the mountain chains, plateaus, and uplifts we see today. As these oceanic floors tumbled beneath the Earth’s crust, they likely caused some mountains to rise, and volcanic areas to develop, at the end and soon after the Mabul. Large extinct volcanoes, found in places like Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho, appear to have formed relatively recently. These areas are home to massive calderas and lava fields that look as though they cooled very quickly, and lack of vegetation suggest that it happened rather recently. 

Collection of volcanic flows from New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Idaho. Far from the edge of continental plate.

​While this digression may seem off-topic, it helps to understand the general dynamics of the Mabul and the post-Flood period.
But let’s go back to the beginning of the Mabul.
As the continents split, exposing the hot mantle beneath, massive volcanic activity likely ensued. Rav Miller theorizes that volcanoes erupted. However, compared to the giant fractures created during the Mabul, volcanic eruptions are relatively small. I’d like to draw attention to the Atlantic Ocean, which is particularly relevant to our discussion. It clearly shows the contours of the gigantic split that began along what we now call the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, forming an "S" shape halfway between the Americas, Europe, and Africa.

Older, less detailed map of Atlantic Ocean Floor with Mid Atlantic Ridge clearly indicated.

When the oceanic waters began to flow into these massive fractures, an unprecedented amount of evaporation occurred. It’s not unreasonable to propose that the sky became opaque due to volcanic ash, shrouding the Earth and cooling the atmosphere. (Please see the Chazal page for more on this.) Obviously, the steam and aerosols in the atmosphere didn’t escape Earth’s gravity, as life on the planet was clearly restored after the Mabul. But the changes to the atmosphere, although difficult to pinpoint, could be significant.
As per the words of Chazal, the waters of Mabul were hot. We can begin to understand how this occurred by analyzing the scenario provided here. But how hot were the waters, and what was the temperature of the mantle at the time? While I cannot offer precise calculations, scientists with more expertise in this area would need to create models to address these questions.
What we can understand, however, is why the Arctic Ocean was not frozen, while parts of North America and Eurasia were covered in ice. We can also explain why regions closer to the oceans never froze, while ice formed over the interiors of continents. This also helps us understand why we find fossils and skeletal remains of warm-climate animals in places like Great Britain, or why large herds of grass-eating animals, including multiple species of elephants, once roamed Alaska, northern Canada, and Siberia.

​This is an expert from simple google search:
Mammal fossils found in Great Britain 

• Hippopotamus: A lower jaw fossil from the Pleistocene era was found in Norfolk
• Giant armadillo: A scute fossil from the Pleistocene era was found in the UK
• Llama: A tooth fossil from the Pleistocene era was found in the UK
• Tapir: A tooth fossil from the Pleistocene era was found in the UK
• Mammal foot bones: Foot bones from the Pleistocene era were found in the UK

Pleistocene era in evolutionist period is aligned with few hundred years after the Noah’s Mabul.

Additionally, it sheds light on how camels and horses arrived on the American continent long before Europeans brought them back after they had become extinct during the interceding time. This also explains why the Sahara was lush and full of vegetation after the Mabul, why human settlements thrived in places like Doggerland (now submerged beneath the North Sea), and why the Mediterranean Sea was lower in elevation before filling up sometime after the Mabul, most likely around the time of the Exodus from Egypt

Doggerland around three thousand years ago. Obviously our dating vary from evolutionary time line. As Ice on the continents melted, this land was submerged rapidly. Photo - National Geographic

​I hope that, with Hashem help, I will be able to share more material on these facts in future essays, as I still have much research to process and organize into something truly enlightening.