The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

This hypothesis, described earlier (Woodmorappe et al. 2003a), has led to misconceived over-reliance on the notion that sequences of disturbances, affecting tree rings, had necessarily repeated in time . While events that recur at quite-regular intervals do occur in nature (e. g, Hurwitz et al. 2014), and theoretically remain a viable possibility in terms of a complex series of tree-ring-altering events literally-repeating and geographically-migrating on a time scale measured in centuries, they are distracting by virtue of their complexity, and are totally unnecessary to achieve the required outcome. For this reason, they are not considered further in this paper. A time-transgressive set of the same sequence of events, sustained over centuries and covering appreciable geographical distances (Figure 1; explained below), suffices. Examples of known time- transgressive ring-perturbing events are those of rising floods causing narrowed rings in different trees at different times (Ballesteros-Canovas et al. 2015), and that of narrowed rings caused by slowly-moving landslides impacting the roots of trees at different times (Stoffel and Corona 2014). The migrating disturbances can be entirely subterranean, as in the case of groundwater. Although groundwater acting in “staccato” manner has apparently not been investigated, the effects of groundwater, on tree-ring growth, are known to be quite diverse. Thus, for example, tree growth is inhibited by both a “too dry” and “too wet” substrate (Scharnweber et al. 2015). The widths of individual tree rings can correlate with yearly levels of groundwater, as well as rainfall, whenever the water table fluctuates between just-within and just-beyond the reach of tree roots. (Gholami et al. 2015). Now, if groundwater level could be decoupled from annual rainfall, and “pumped” by underground forces whose loci of action migrate over centuries, it could lead to centuries-paced pulses of growth-reducing and/or growth-enhancing groundwater that are reflected by a time-transgressive pattern of ring alterations. The foregoing hardly exhausts the possibilities of time-transgressive individual-ring-altering sequences of events. For instance, they could be biological in origin (See Future Research ). TheMigrating-Disturbance Hypothesis is most applicable toMWK. There the trees all grew close to each other, and the crossmatched series, with some exceptions (Woodmorappe 2003a), feature very long (sometimes >1,000-year) OVL with each other. Here is a necessarily-simplified description of the Migrating- Disturbance Hypothesis in action (Figure 1): A series of six bark-to-pith cores, from trees, are shown being “over-written” by migrating disturbances in the first few centuries after the Flood of 3000 BC (first row, left and center). Then the same six are shown in the later centuries after the Flood (second row, left and center). As shown in top-left, a series of disturbances (ABCD…EFGH…, etc.) had formed between the trees, and are migrating leftward. The leftmost tree’s core has just been marked by ABCD and the second-left one with EFGH. And so on. This process continues over the centuries. With reference to the second row, the tree originally shown affected only by ABCD (at top-left) is now marked with ABCDEFGHJ (bottom left). It will soon additionally be marked with KLM. And so on. Some trees (bottom row, second one from the right) had not been entirely overwritten by disturbances. The unaffected parts can still crossmatch in accordance with the normal annual climate signal. The unaffected ends crossmatch with the younger climate- governed trees, and serve to “root” the disturbance-crossmatching trees with the entirely climate-governed trees starting at about 2000 BC (topmost right). The end result (far right) is a long tree ring chronology that seems to begin before 6000 BC even though none of its constituents are any older than some date between about 2000 BC and 3000 BC (the Flood). Had the forgoing-described migrating-disturbance process not taken place, all of the cores/series shown in Figure 1 would have crossmatched with each other, in accordance with the annual climatic signal, at 2000-3000 BC (top far-right). 4. An Introduction to the New Disturbance-Clustering Hypothesis The Disturbance-Clustering hypothesis dispenses with the temporally- or geographically-repetitive disturbances of the Migrating-Disturbance Hypothesis. Instead, a series of geographically-static, geography-demarcated sets of disturbances are the ones that erase the conventionally-expected climatically- induced crossmatches. The affected trees themselves now crossmatch only within their respective “bundles”, and these “bundles” can get connected in a chain that comprises the artificial pre-3000 BC part of the long chronology. Here are the details (Figure 2). Some trees had undergone distinct disturbances in what (not shown) can be called the geographically- demarcated regions [2], [3], and [4]. Because of this, the respectively-overprinted trees, shown as constituents of clusters [2], [3], and [4], now strongly crossmatch with each other, but not with trees of any other cluster, or with the remaining unaffected climatically-crossmatching cluster [1]. During conventional dendrochronology, the “clusters” ([1]-[4]) become the nuclei of the submaster chronologies. In time, these clusters become “bridged” into a chain. The “bridges” consist of a combination of fortuitously- crossmatching individual series, small ensembles of validly-and invalidly-crossmatching series, and by fortuitously-crossmatching randomly-disturbed tree ring series that do likewise. The “bridges” are illustrated by ovals in Figure 2. The clusters ([1], [2], [3], [4]), heretofore disjointed, became connected together in an artificially- long chronology. This faux chronology ostensibly began anywhere from a few to several thousand years—potentially more--before 3000 BC, but is actually composed of trees that had grown at or about the same time (and after ~3000 BC). TREE-RING CHRONOLOGY-BUILDING IN THE LIGHT OF THE DISTURBANCE-CLUSTERING HYPOTHESIS This section describes the modus operandi and workability of my new hypothesis. 1. The Experimental Construction of a Perturbed-Tree False Master Chronology Earlier work (Woodmorappe 2003a) had shown that decadally- spaced ring alterations are sufficient to force two individual bristlecone pines to anomalously crossmatch with each other. Would this also occur in other trees? More important, how difficult would it be for disturbances to so profoundly transform Woodmorappe ◀ Tree-ring chronology shortening via disturbances ▶ 2018 ICC 662