Lake Kashmir

Figure 70: Kashmir Basin Today. Consider whether this region and its bowl-shaped depression quickly rose several miles, carrying in its basin flood waters and fish. If so, the potential existed for “Lake Kashmir” to later overflow its rim and quickly carve a huge canyon, leaving the Jhelum River as a remnant of that event.

While legends and geological facts are consistent with this scenario, two questions remain. What could quickly lift the Himalayas, the most massive mountain range on earth? Can conventional geology explain these geological facts?

This chapter has answered the first question. Details below address the second question. The Grand Canyon and many other canyons are prime exhibits showing they too are best explained by a similar catastrophic event. Wouldn’t it be nice if eye witnesses could confirm this event? Consider the legend described below.

Kashmir, a disputed territory high on the borders of northern India and Pakistan, has an interesting geological and cultural history. Half of Kashmir’s seven million people live in an oval valley the size of Delaware, more than one mile above sea level. That valley is surrounded by high mountains containing fossils of sea life. Rain falling into this bowl-shaped region eventually enters the Jhelum River, which flows out between almost vertical canyon walls, 7,000 feet high, in a channel cut through the rim of the bowl.

The Nilamata Purana, written sometime between the sixth and eighth century, contains many Hindu legends. Verses 138–180 tell of a vast, ancient lake that once filled this valley and contained a demonic sea monster who ate people. Hindu gods decided to help the people by cutting an outlet for the lake’s waters through the surrounding mountains. Once the lake drained, the hero killed the immobilized monster. Since then, the lake’s bottom has been a fertile home for the people of Kashmir, most of whom know this story.

Geologists have confirmed that the valley once held a giant lake!  The thinly layered strata (of clay, limestone, and shale containing microscopic seashells) show that the valley was once under water. Was this just a lucky guess by the ancient writers of The Nilamata Purana myth? Did they understand geology and create a story to fit the evidence? They would have needed a microscope to see much of the evidence.  Perhaps some truth lies behind this myth.

Geologists claim that the entire region, including the bordering Himalayan Mountains, rose millions of years ago. If so, the fossils on top should have eroded away, because erosion occurs rapidly in mountainous terrain subject to many freezing-thawing cycles.

What lifted this region? How could a lake—and fish—accumulate in a high, remote, draining valley? Even if the valley’s outlet had not yet formed, why would a large lake form at that cold, high elevation? Snow or glaciers might accumulate, but rarely a large lake. At high elevations, evaporation rates are generally faster and precipitation rates slower. (Today, the world’s largest lake a mile or higher above sea level is Lake Titicaca,⁹⁵ astride the border of Bolivia and Peru. Kashmir’s ancient lake was probably larger.) If such a high lake could not form, or if it breached before it rose millions of years before humans evolved, why does a human account, historical or mythical, speak of the lake and the cutting of the canyon?

The hydroplate theory unifies, clarifies, and provides additional details to this cultural and geological picture. As crashing hydroplates crushed, thickened, and buckled, the Himalayan Mountains rose and the waters drained off the continents. Every basin became a lake, regardless of elevation. Kashmir’s lake was immediately full and could have held fish. Later, after people migrated to the region, the lake breached part of its boundary and quickly cut its canyon. Today, the upper Jhelum River is a remnant of that lake. Undoubtedly, other canyons of the world, including the Grand Canyon, formed in a similar way.