Is there any evidence that glaciers caused a global flood 12,000 years ago?

I have never known of or seen any evidence of a global flood. I think a lot of people want to believe there was one because their belief system says there was one or they think their belief system says there is one. There are many reasons flood myths sprouted up all over the world and the main reason probably is that cultures often do endure terrible floods. These get attributed to gods in some cultures.

I enclosed a nice article about the matter.

While major floods were caused by glaciers in the past and still are today, I am completely unaware of any that were anywhere near being on a global scale.

There have been major outburst floods all around the world. I also have included a nice article that explains outburst floods. These may have been inspiration for some flood myths, but none truly correspond with any religious flood stories that I know of. Some have tried to correlate the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis with the story of Noah, but that is a bit of a stretch. It was about 7,000 years ago. 12,000 years ago? No. The Black Sea Basin was from a flood 16,000 years ago. Nothing from 12,000 years ago. Unless there is a different set of religions you are possibly hinting at.

Global? Absolutely not. Significant flooding over certain regions? Absolutely. The termination of the last glacial maximum produced a great number of ice-dammed lakes, some of which exceeded the volume of Lake Superior. And, it wasn't uncommon for them to breach their banks catastrophically. Also, consider that the volume of water being returned to the oceans would have flooded regions of the coastal shelf once high and dry, such as the Bering Strait and the Dogger Banks.

Yes indeed. Check the Wikipedia entry on "Channeled Scablands", "J. Harlen Bretz", "Lake Missoula".

Much of the physical geography of eastern Washington State (all those dramatic coulees and scoured granite channels and mondo gravel deposits) is a consequence of an episodic flood that took place back in the Pleistocene- 12K years ago or thereabouts. It is postulated that a failed ice-dam in the Wisconsinan Sheet resulted in a cataclysmic flooding event... draining a big water body (glacial "Lake Missoula") in a very short time indeed, with spectacular geologic consequences. I think there was a nod to this event in one of those Pixar Ice Age movies (I love those things).

The academic story about Bretz's interpretation of those Scabland features (as "Catastrophic" versus "Uniformitarian") is an important one for geologists and science-history types; it's a classic example of a big paradigm-shift in our science.

ADDENDUM: YIKES! Mea culpa... I failed to read your query thoroughly, missed the "global" bit. NO, NOT GLOBAL! The flood affected the areas I described, but of course could NOT, did NOT flood the planet. Man, am I embarassed. Good heavens...

There were three Ice Ages. Even in Maine ice was miles thick.

No ice like that now. When it melted, water had to go somewhere right? Likely bottled up huge masses of meltwater broke through in many and various places, yes? You only need logic for absolute proof, even though no one took videos and handed them down...

When all the ice melted, sea levels rose tremendously too, yes? Global aspect, all low lying areas disappear under water.

Also, once there was land bridge between Spain and Morocco where Gibraltar is http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.wor...

The Mediterranean was fertile, inhabited large valley place with lake in middle. Then Atlantic ocean busted through probably following earthquake and whole Mediterranean was flooded, became a sea.

Legends tend to color isolated floods as happening to 'whole world' if area affected is big enough.

But massive ice melt makes it true worldwide in many respects, just does not often happen all at once.

You'll learn more gradually as you become older and continue investigating, more so if you study geology.

The Great Lake Bonneville Flood

http://geology.isu.edu/Digital_Geology_Idaho/Modul...

No, there is no evidence of a global flood = to putting a huge percentage of the earth's land masses under water all at once 12,000 years ago. Among other things, it would have wiped out a large number of surface archeological sites like caves.

Ursus is correct, a bit more info though, to the people who were flooded out in the Bible, to them their whole world was flooded out, they did not have any knowlege on the rest of the planet. There used to be a land bridge connecting Tasmania with the mainlaind Australia. Aboriginal dreamtime stories talk about the Abo's in Tazzy being punished and separated from the rest of the country.

The only Global Flood I have ever read about was in the Christian Bible. But that also was not Global just the Black Sea being created.