I doubt you can support that the Nile River is flooding these pillars to account for the flood markings Jon expressed in the opening thread.
As I said before, they are not flood markings. A body of still water couldn't produce such markings - water running over and of the back of the Sphinx, as Schoch suggests, could.
So, tell me, what do you think happened? Is the Sphinx proof of a much older civilization? Is their an explanation for the erosion patterns found?
There are multiple explanations, though I am not sure which one I believe. Schoch believes the markings indicated centuries of above average rainfall running off the structure, due to the shape of the markings, so asserts that the Sphinx dates as far back as 7000 BCE, rather than 4500BCE which is the accepted date.
Other scientists have proposed other mechanisms that could have created such markings within the usually accepted time-frame. A geochemist from the University of Louisville, K. Lal Gauri, believes atmospheric moisture is to blame. As dew condenses it absorbs the minerals in the rock, and then as the dew evaporates later in the morning, the salts recrystallize and force their way out of any small pores the water has infiltrated. Differing gradings in the rock may also have attributed to the patterns of weathering.
Dr. James Harrell, professor of geology at the University of Toledo, Ohio, argues that this erosion was more likely caused by wet sand. The Sphinx enclosure has been filled with sand for most of its known existence. In Harrell's opinion, this sand could have been wetted by rainfall and also by runoff from the Giza plateau. It could also have been wetted from the occasional Nile flooding or from capillary action (in which flood water that did not reach the monument seeped upward).
August Matthuson, a geologist with an interest in archaeology, comments that any rain induced weathering from an early period would be heavily eroded from the later millenia of wind erosion, almost to point of not being visible at all. He also claims that the differing lithologic morphologies Schoch associates with wind and water respectively are not generally accepted by geologists to be directly associable, because differences in the rock structure can often eclipse the differences in erosion patterns by the elements.
There are also some additional theories: Lambert Dolphin, a geophysist, argues that as acid rain in the last 150 years has very quickly damaged the sphinx, but I couldn't determine any more about this theory.
So no, I don't think it is evidence of an older civilization. Maybe in conjunction with other indicators, then I might be convinced, but at the moment I am sceptical.
Edited by Doddy Curumehtar, : fixed grammar