The Black Sea deluge is a hypothesized catastrophic rise in the level of the
Black Sea circa 5600 BC due to waters from the Mediterranean Sea breaching a
sill in the Bosporus strait. The hypothesis was headlined when The New
York Times published it in December 1996, shortly before it was published in
an academic journal. While it is agreed that the sequence of events described
did occur, there is debate over the suddenness, dating and magnitude of the
events. Two opposing hypotheses have arisen to explain the rise of the Black
Sea: gradual, and oscillating. The oscillating hypothesis specifies that
over the last 30,000 years, water has intermittently flowed back and forth
between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea in relatively small magnitudes, and does
not necessarily presuppose that there occurred any sudden "refilling" events.
Flood hypothesis In 1997, William Ryan and Walter Pitman
published evidence that a massive flooding of the Black Sea occurred about
5600 BC through the Bosporus. Before that date, glacial meltwater had turned
the Black and Caspian Seas into vast freshwater lakes draining into the
Aegean Sea. As glaciers retreated, some of the rivers emptying into the Black
Sea declined in volume and changed course to drain into the North Sea. The
levels of the lakes dropped through evaporation, while changes in worldwide
hydrology caused overall sea level to rise. The rising Mediterranean finally
spilled over a rocky sill at the Bosporus. The event flooded 155,000 km2
of land and significantly expanded the Black Sea shoreline to the north and
west. According to the researchers, "40 km3 of water poured through each day,
two hundred times the flow of the Niagara Falls... The Bosporus flume
roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days."
Samplings of sediments in the Black Sea by a series of expeditions carried out
between 1998 and 2005 in the frame of a European Project ASSEMBLAGE and
coordinated by a French oceanographer, Gilles Lericolais, brought some new
inputs to Ryan and Pitman's hypothesis. These results were also completed by the
Noah Project led by Petko Dimitrov from the Bulgarian Institute of Oceanology.
Furthermore, calculations made by Mark Siddall predicted an underwater canyon
that was actually found. = Criticism=
While some geologists claim it as fact that the sequence of events described
did occur, there is debate over their suddenness and magnitude. In particular,
if the water level of the Black Sea had initially been higher, the effect of the
spillover would have been much less dramatic. A large part of the academic
geological community also continues to reject the idea that there could have
been enough sustained long-term pressure by water from the Aegean to dig through
a supposed isthmus at the present Bosporus, or enough of a difference in
water levels between the two water basins.
Countering the hypothesis of Ryan and Pitman are data collected prior to its
publication by Ukrainian and Russian scientists including Valentina
Yanko-Hombach, who claims that the water flow through the Bosporus repeatedly
reversed direction over geological time depending on fluctuation in the levels
of the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. This contradicts the hypothesized
catastrophic breakage of a Bosporus sill. Likewise, the water levels
calculated by Yanko-Hombach differed widely from those hypothesized by Ryan
and Pitman. In 2007, a research anthology on the
topic was published which makes much of the earlier Russian research available
in English for the first time, and combines it with more recent scientific
findings. A five-year cross-disciplinary research
project under the sponsorship of UNESCO and the International Union of
Geological Sciences was conducted 2005–9.
A February 2009 article reported that the flooding might have been "quite
mild". According to a study by Giosan et al.,
the level in the Black Sea before the marine reconnection was 30 m below
present sea level, rather than the 80 m, or lower, of the catastrophe theories.
If the flood occurred at all, the sea level increase and the flooded area
during the reconnection were significantly smaller than previously
proposed. It also occurred earlier than initially surmised, ca. 7400 BC, rather
than the originally proposed 5600 BC. Since the depth of the Bosporus, in its
middle furrow, at present varies from 36 to 124 m, with an average depth of 65 m,
a calculated stone age shoreline in the Black Sea lying 30 m lower than in the
present day would imply that the contact with the Mediterranean may never have
been broken during the Holocene, and hence that there could have been no
sudden waterfall-style transgression. A new study based on process length
variation of the dinoflagellate cyst Lingulodinium machaerophorum shows no
evidence for catastrophic flooding. See also
Flood myth Noah's Ark
Zanclean flood, Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago
References and sources References
Sources Aksu, Ali E. et al. 2002. Persistent
Holocene Outflow from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean Contradicts
Noah's Flood Hypothesis. GSA Today, May 2002, 12(5): 4–10.
doi:10.1130/1052-5173(2002)0122.0.CO;2 Sperling, M., Schmiedl, G., Hemleben,
C., Emeis, K. C., Erlenkeuser, H., and Grootes, P. M. 2003. Black Sea impact on
the formation of eastern Mediterranean sapropel S1? Evidence from the Marmara
Sea. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 190, 9-21.
Gökaşan, E., Algan, O., Tur, H., Meriç, E., Türker, A., and Şimşek, M. 2005.
Delta formation at the southern entrance of Istanbul Strait: a new interpretation
based on high-resolution seismic stratigraphy. Geo-Marine Letters 25,
370-377. Eris, K., Ryan, W. B. F., Cagatay, N.,
Sancar, Ü., Lericolais, G., Menot, G., and Bard, E. 2008.The timing and
evolution of the post-glacial transgression across the Sea of Marmara
shelf south of İstanbul. Marine Geology 243, 57-76.
Dimitrov, Petko and Dimitrov, Dimitar. 2004. The Black Sea, the flood, and the
ancient myths. Varna: Slavena. Keith, M.L. and Anderson, G.M. 1963.
Radiocarbon Dating: Fictitious Results with Mollusk Shells. Science, 1963
August 13, 141(3581): 634–637. doi:10.1126/science.141.3581.634
National Geographic News. 2009-02-06. "Noah's Flood" Not Rooted in Reality,
After All? Nature. 2004 August 12. Noah's Flood.
430: 718-19 New Scientist. 2004 May 4. Flood
hypothesis seems to hold no water. 2341: 13
Ryan, W.B.F.; Pitman III, W.C., et al. 1997. An abrupt drowning of the Black
Sea shelf. Marine Geology, 138: 119–126. Yanko-Hombach, Valentina. 2007. The
Black Sea Flood Question: Changes in Coastline, Climate and Human Settlement.
Springer ISBN 1-4020-4774-6. Chepalyga A.L. The late glacial Great
Flood in the Ponto-Caspian basin. In: The Black Sea Flood question: changes in
coastline, climate and human settlement. Springer. 2006. pp. 119–148 [1]
Further reading Giosan, Liviu et al. 2009. Was the Black
Sea catastrophically flooded in the early Holocene? Quaternary Science
Reviews, January 2009, 28(12-2): 1-6. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.10.012
This article is available online with unrestricted access here at the
sponsoring institution's website. Noah's Not-so-big Flood
Lericolais, G. [2] et al. 2009. High frequency sea level fluctuations
recorded in the Black Sea since the LGM. Global and Planetary Change, March 2009,
66(1-2): 65-75 "Ballard and the Black Sea"
Ryan, William B.; Pitman, Walter C., Noah's Flood: The new scientific
discoveries about the event that changed history, Simon & Schuster, ISBN
0-684-85920-3 Dimitrov, D. 2010. Geology and
Non-traditional resources of the Black Sea. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.
ISBN 978-3-8383-8639-3. 244p. The late glacial Great Flood in the
Ponto-Caspian basin Yanko-Hombach, Valentina, Allan S.
Gilbert, Nicolae Panin and Pavel M. Dolukhanov, ed., The Black Sea Flood
Question, Springer, p. 999, ISBN 978-1-4020-4774-9
Shopov Y. Y., Т. Yalamov, P. Dimitrov, D. Dimitrov and B. Shkodrov Initiation
of the Migration of Vedic Aryans to India by a Catastrophic Flooding of the
Black Sea by Mediterranean Sea during the Holocene.” Extended Abstracts of
LIMPACS-3 International Conference of IGBP, PAGES, 5-8 March 2009, Chandigarh,
India, pp.126-127.