Rising of the Amazon Basin and Disappearance of the Sea East – Part II

Continued from the previous post regarding the scientific support of this event.

Many people talk about the mysteries of God as though they are some unknown and unknowable “mysteries” that have not yet been discovered or at least discussed; however, these mysteries are available to all to know—all we need to do is read the scriptures and once read and understood, are no longer mysteries—the key is to read the scriptures and understand them in order to know the “mysteries” of God.

As an example, the idea promoted by many is that the location of the Nephite Land of Promise is a mystery known only to God, and not to man. Theorists, on the other hand have come up with numerous locations, but unfortunately, their ideas and beliefs do not match the descriptions found in the scriptural record.

The list of inaccuracies between theorists and the scriptural record could go and on, and we offer three here for clarification, as we have outlined many times in articles here, is that Heartland and Great Lakes theorists promote their models that have no mountains within their location of the Land of Promise, yet the scriptural record makes it clear that there were mountains that rose to great heights during the crucifixion (Helaman 14:23); Mesoamerican theorists claim the Land of Promise runs east and west, but Mormon tells us it runs north and south (Alma 22:29-31); theorists also claim that the Land of Promise was not an island, yet Jacob tells us it was an island (2 Nephi 10:20-21).

Seas and islands of ancient South America

 

Now in order for South America to be the Land of Promise, it would have to have been this island Jacob describes before the crucifixion—which is exactly what geologists tell us it was. To put this all in perspective, let’s consider the Amazon Basin. Containing a rainforest that covers most of northwestern Brazil and extending into Colombia, Peru and other South American countries, it is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. To get an idea of the size of the Amazon Basin, it is the largest system in the world in terms of the volume of its flow and the area of its basin—which covers an area of 2.9 million square miles, compared to the size of the 48 continental U.S, which is 3.1 million square miles. It is 89 times the size of Ireland, 34 times larger than Utah, 17 times larger than California, and 4½ times larger than Alaska. In addition, the Tocantins-Araguaia catchment area in Pará state (northeast Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River), covers another 300,000 square miles. Although considered a part of Amazonia by the Brazilian government and in popular usage, it is technically a separate system.

In addition, it is estimated that about one-fifth of all the water that runs off Earth’s surface is carried by the Amazon. The flood-stage discharge at the river’s mouth is four times that of the Congo and more than 10 times the amount carried by the Mississippi River. This immense volume of fresh water dilutes the ocean’s saltiness for more than 100 miles from shore.

The Amazon River is the second longest river in the world

 

The total length of the Amazon river—as measured from the headwaters of the Ucayali-Apurímac river system in southern Peru, is at least 4,000 miles long, equivalent of the distance from New York City to Rome. Throughout the Basin it is crisscrossed by thousands of rivers across the Basin, including the powerful Amazon—its widest point being 6.8 miles during the dry season, but almost triples over the course of a year. In an average dry season 68,351 square miles are water-covered, while in the wet season the flooded area of the Amazon Basin rises to 217½ square miles, with the river up to 25 miles wide. Where the Amazon opens at its estuary the river is over 202 miles wide!

There are more than 1,000 tributaries of the Amazon River that flow into across the Basin from the Guiana Highlands, the Brazilian Highlands, and the Andes. Six of these tributaries—the Japurá , Juruá, Madeira, Negro, Purus, and Xingu—are each more than 1,000 miles long, with the Madeira River is over 2,000 miles from source to mouth. 

The Amazon Basin and Rainforest in South America

 

The Amazon basin is a great structural depression, a subsidence trough that has been filling with immense quantities of sediment. This depression, which flares out to its greatest dimension in the Amazon’s upper reaches, lies between two old and relatively low crystalline plateaus, the rugged Guiana Highlands and to the north and the lower Brazilian Highlands—a huge craton to the south. The Amazon basin was occupied by a great sea at one time, until the Amazon River punched an opening to the Atlantic Ocean, with the great river and its tributaries becoming deeply entrenched in the former seafloor.

This is the area that was once flooded lying beneath a sea of relatively shallow waters. However, due to occurrences of the tectonic plates, forces above the subduction zone along the entire west coast of South America, where the Nazca Plate and a part of the Antarctic Plate are sliding beneath the South American Plate have produced ongoing orogenic events resulting in minor to major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and including in uplift events dating well back into BC times.

As a result, the entire Amazon Basin was forced upward, lifting just enough to rise above the water line. Today, the extensive lowland areas bordering the main river and its tributaries, called várzeas (“flood plains”), are subject to annual flooding. More than two-thirds of the basin is covered by an immense rainforest, which represents about half of the Earth’s remaining rainforest. 

Sometimes mountains rise from crust separating rather than colliding. This uplift Uplift is the process by which a portion of the earth's surface slowly rises either due to increasing upward force applied from below or decreasing downward force (weight) from above—sometimes mountains rise from crust separating rather than colliding. 

The Andes are split into three Cordilleras: Western, Central and Oriental

 

During uplift, land, as well as the sea floor, rises. In these uplifts, pieces of ocean floor trapped between the approaching continents rise as well. South America is a series of parallel north-south oriented mountain ranges—along their entire length, the Andes are split into several ranges (Oriental, Occidental, and Central cordilleras), separated by intermediate depressions, with high plateaus that separate the Andes from the ancient cratons in eastern South America.

Uplift also results when sea floor crust collides with continental crust or with other pieces of sea floor crust. Volcanic mountains, such as the Andes are the result of the sea floor colliding with diving beneath a continent or another sea floor.

Sea floor also uplifts along mid-ocean ridges where crust separated as magma (melted rock) from inside the earth tries to reach the surface. The magma that rises from below these ridges lifts the ocean floor. Mid-ocean ridges circle the earth like the seams on a giant baseball.

Thus, as the sea floor before the uplift of the great structural depression (Amazon Basin) rose from the pressure beneath it, the sea to the east of the Land of Promise, which the Nephites called the Sea East, began sliding (off this rising seabed) downhill toward the Atlantic Ocean, leaving behind an area (Amazon Basin) that was barely above the water line. This is why during the rainy season much of this Basin floods, and during the dry season is barely above the sea floor and formed the jungle and rainforest of Amazonia.

As this seabed rose, the water receded, rushing toward the center and then downward toward the east until it broke through the elevated land along the coast and emptied into the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, the entire Basin that formed, was so shaped toward the middle and then downward to the coast that the hundreds of streams and rivers formed a drainage in that direction—forming the Amazon Drainage Basin.

What had been the Nephite Sea East receded to the other side of the now existent east coast of the continent, creating the land form seen today. While many unknowing people and theorists want to claim that there was no island in South America, simply do not understand landform orogeny and uplift. Therefore, Jacob was correct—the Lord led them to “an isle of the sea” (2 Nephi 10:20).