Did all rivers on Earth "commence" in the spring of 2399 B.C.? No, that's not true: The birth of the oldest rivers predates this point in time by millions of years, according to the consensus of earth science. A U.S. Geological Survey scientist confirmed that to Lead Stories.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on Facebook on June 15, 2024. A narrator seen in the clip began:
Listen to this. Are you aware that silt goes down the Mississippi River and deposits at a rate of 2-plus tons per second, 80,000 tons per hour? Yes, Louisiana grows at that rate, judging by the shoreline now, and geologically, assessing where the area changes to a different shoreline. Mineral-wise, we can tell the Mississippi River in its observable state is 4,425-ish years old. Listen, if it were 4, 5 billion years old, the Gulf of Mexico would be filled in by now.
The man continued:
And get this, this same geo-mathematical equation holds true at the mouth of every river on Earth flowing into the ocean: Columbia, Sacramento, Amazon, Hudson, Rhine, Nile, Congo, Ganges, Volga, Yellow -- all rivers commenced spring 2399 B.C. ...
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Jul 17 15:36:44 2024 UTC)
Contrary to the claim, rivers did exist on Earth before 2399 B.C., as confirmed by multiple studies. The associate center director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Florence Bascom Geoscience Center, Peter Chirico (archived here), told Lead Stories via email on July 18, 2024:
Generally speaking, some of the world's oldest rivers (like some of those mentioned in the video) may be 10s to 100s of millions of years old depending on the geological conditions under which they formed.
Furthermore, recent research appears to find evidence pushing the formation of some bodies of water even further in the past.
In 2018, a team led by Sally Potter-McIntyre of Southern Illinois University (archived here) published a scholarly article (archived here) arguing that, based on the zircon fragments found in sandstone of the Illinois Basin, the Mississippi River was more than three times older than it was previously thought. A 2020 news article on the Southern Illinois University website (archived here) reads:
As of 2014, geologists agreed that the Mississippi River began flowing as 'recently' as 20 million years ago, keeping in mind that geological time is a bit different than what most of us use. But Potter-McIntyre's team found evidence the river began flowing more than three times earlier -- some 70 million years ago.
As the Smithsonian Magazine (archived here) put it in September 2020:
... when dinosaurs still roamed the planet.
In 2019, another group of scientists re-examined the age of the Nile (archived here). That year's news article (archived here) on the affiliated university's website explains:
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have cracked the case by linking the river's flow to the movement of rock in the Earth's deep mantle. In the course of their investigation, they found the eternal river to be much older than anyone realized, with the scientists estimating the age of the Nile to be 30 million years -- about six times as long as previously thought.
The assumption that the Mississippi River is "4,425-ish years old," as well as all other oldest rivers on Earth, appears to have originated from misinterpretation of scientific literature. Between 1963 (archived here) and the present day, those sources referred to the period roughly 4,500 years ago to place the formation of the Mississippi River delta on the timeline. For example, a U.S. Geological Survey summary (archived here) reads:
By 4,500 years ago, the Mississippi River moved into the area and began depositing the St. Bernard Delta lobe (on which the city of New Orleans is located), enclosing the embayment. Modern stabilization and subsidence of the delta lobe began about 2,000 years ago, developing Lakes Maurepas, Pontchartrain, and Borgne and creating the land surface seen today ...
However, a river's delta is not the same as the whole river. It is only one of its parts -- a flat plain formed from deposits of sediments at the mouth (the end) of a river, reads a National Geographic explainer (archived here). It also adds that not all rivers have deltas:
The Amazon does not have a true delta, for instance. The strength of the tides and currents of the Atlantic Ocean prevent the build-up of sediment.
Sedimentation rate
The sedimentation rate mentioned in the post is not always constant and may vary from river to river and over time. For example, a 2008 report (archived here) prepared for the European Research Office of the U.S. Army by the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham said, about the Mississippi River:
Historically, the quantity and caliber of sediment derived from catchment erosion have been affected by changes in land use and river management; increasing in the 19th and early-20th centuries, before decreasing due to soil conservation and improved land management. The supply of sediment from tributaries is also believed to have decreased markedly as a result of river engineering and management. However, there is no consensus on the degree of reduction as a proportion of the previous 'natural' or undisturbed load, the time distribution of the reduction or how the trajectory of past and present trends may change in the future.
The report acknowledged that, back in 2008, "cumulative land loss in Louisiana over a 50-yr period represents on the order of 80% of the coastal land loss in the United States." However, the post on Facebook greatly overstated the rate. Had it been "80,000 tons per hour," that would have resulted in almost 700 million tons a year. Instead it was 150 million tons annually at the time, the report said.
Lead Stories found no confirmation that the Mississippi River's sedimentation rate has ballooned since 2008. In fact, it decreased (archived here) between 1980 and 2015 from 200 million tons to 100 million tons a year, which is -- in combination with rising sea levels and land subsidence in the delta's region -- considered an environmental concern (archived here).
The Gulf of Mexico once extended up into what is in present day Missouri in the United States. Over its long history, sediment has been transported down the Mississippi and has been deposited and slowly filled in an area which is called the Mississippi Embayment. It has slowly accreted (added land area) from present day Cape Girardeau to Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and today into the Gulf at the present delta ...
The video also asserts that if the rate (they claim) of sediment were deposited over 4 billion years, the Gulf of Mexico would have been filled in. However, the North American Continent was not in its present location 4 billion years ago. As a result of plate tectonics the continents have moved (and are moving) over geologic time scales (hundreds of millions to billions of years) and sea levels have varied over that time too which can remove sediments or deposits sediments from the oceans depending on the global sea-level cycles. Though still moving and evolving, the North American continent has generally been at its present location for approximately the past 130 million years.
He continued:
Another point that should be made is that with sedimentation in the Gulf of Mexico and other ocean bodies globally - the ocean currents and tides remove and transport much sediment and deposit it elsewhere as the currents carry it to deeper parts of the ocean. Sediment does not only sit at river mouths.
The video claims that the same geo-mathematical equation for sedimentation rates is the same for all the rivers globally that are mentioned. This is false. Each of those river basins are all controlled by different geologic, tectonic, and climatic processes. This means that sedimentation rates are not the same from one river basin to another river basin ...
A minor point, but one that should be made, is also that the rivers mentioned in the video occur in different hemispheres (Amazon vs. Nile for instance), and so spring in the northern hemisphere is not spring in southern hemisphere. So, the claim that all rivers commenced in 'spring 2399 B.C.' is imprecise at best and having no basis in science.
The origin of the claim
The video was originally uploaded on TikTok (archived here) on June 1, 2024. Neither that person's LinkedIn profile nor publicly available resume (archived here) on the personal website showed any experience related to geology or river studies.
The clip started gaining significant traction only when it was republished by a Texas-based entity (archived here) selling jewelry. The About page on its website (archived here) did not indicate any connection to scientific research.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about science can be found here.
