I considered the thesis that it was caused by a natural event, but if it were so then you'd find all sorts of natural structures buried under the mud, and widespread discontinuities in the stratigraphy. The mainstream is aware of the latter and it's rare.
One example I can think of is where a petrified forest was exposed somewhere along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. They suspected inundation by a tsunami and were able to guess at the late 1700's. It turns out they traced it back to records of a big earthquake in Japan right at that time.
The only other similar example I know is Pompeii, which was ash and not mud. Again, the vast majority of places in the world are not sites of human habitation so "mud flooding" of dwellings should be very rare indeed.
I considered the thesis that it was caused by a natural event, but if it were so then you'd find all sorts of natural structures buried under the mud, and widespread discontinuities in the stratigraphy. The mainstream is aware of the latter and it's rare.
One example I can think of is where a petrified forest was exposed somewhere along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. They suspected inundation by a tsunami and were able to guess at the late 1700's. It turns out they traced it back to records of a big earthquake in Japan right at that time.
The only other similar example I know is Pompeii, which was ash and not mud. Again, the vast majority of places in the world are not sites of human habitation so "mud flooding" of dwellings should be very rare indeed.