The Black Sea deluge is the best known of three hypothetical flood scenarios proposed for the Late
Quaternary history of the
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, ...
. It is one of the two of these flood scenarios which propose a rapid, even catastrophic, rise in sea level of the Black Sea during the Late Quaternary.
[Yanko-Hombach, V., Mudie, P., and Gilbert, A. S., 2011, ''Was the Black Sea catastrophically flooded during the post-glacial? Geological evidence and impacts'', in Benjamin, J. et al. (eds.), ''Underwater Archaeology and the Submerged Prehistory of Europe'': Oxbow Books, p. 245–262.]
History
In 1997, William Ryan,
Walter Pitman
Walter George Pitman (May 18, 1929 – June 12, 2018) was an educator and politician in Ontario, Canada.
Background
Born in Toronto, Ontario, he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1952 and a Master of Arts in 1954 from the University of Toronto. He ...
,
Petko Dimitrov
Prof. Dr. Petko Stoyanov Dimitrov is a Bulgarian marine geologist and oceanographer from the Institute of Oceanology - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Varna.
Biography
Born on September 16, 1944 in the village of Novachene, Sofia Province. I ...
, and their colleagues first published the ''Black Sea deluge hypothesis''. They proposed that a catastrophic inflow of
Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...
seawater
Seawater, or salt water, is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has appr ...
into the Black Sea
freshwater
Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does in ...
lake
A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much lar ...
occurred around 7600 years ago, .
As proposed, the Early Holocene Black Sea flood scenario describes events that would have profoundly affected prehistoric settlement in eastern Europe and adjacent parts of Asia and possibly was the basis of oral history concerning
Noah's flood
The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) is the Hebrew version of the universal flood myth. It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre- creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the micro ...
.
Some archaeologists support this theory as an explanation for the lack of
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several part ...
sites in northern Turkey. In 2003, Ryan and coauthors revised the dating of the early Holocene flood to 8800 years ago, .
Before that date,
glacial
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betwe ...
meltwater
Meltwater is water released by the melting of snow or ice, including glacial ice, tabular icebergs and ice shelves over oceans. Meltwater is often found in the ablation zone of glaciers, where the rate of snow cover is reducing. Meltwater ca ...
had turned the Black and
Caspian sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad s ...
s into vast freshwater lakes draining into the
Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea ; tr, Ege Denizi (Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans an ...
. 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 North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...
. The levels of the lakes dropped through evaporation, while changes in worldwide
hydrology
Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is calle ...
caused global sea levels to rise.
The rising
Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...
finally spilled over a rocky
sill
Sill may refer to:
* Sill (dock), a weir at the low water mark retaining water within a dock
* Sill (geology), a subhorizontal sheet intrusion of molten or solidified magma
* Sill (geostatistics)
* Sill (river), a river in Austria
* Sill plate, a ...
at the
Bosporus
The Bosporus Strait (; grc, Βόσπορος ; tr, İstanbul Boğazı 'Istanbul strait', colloquially ''Boğaz'') or Bosphorus Strait is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul in northwestern T ...
. The event flooded of land and significantly expanded the Black Sea shoreline to the north and west. According to these researchers, of water poured through each day, two hundred times the flow of
Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Fall ...
. The Bosporus valley roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days. They argued that the catastrophic inflow of seawater resulted from an abrupt sea-level jump that accompanied the
Laurentide Ice Sheet
The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the Northern United States, multiple times during the Quaternary glacial epochs, from 2.58 million year ...
collapse and the ensuing breach of a bedrock barrier in the Bosporus strait.
Popular press accounts
Popular discussion of this early Holocene Black Sea flood scenario was headlined in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in December 1996
and later published as a book.
In a series of expeditions widely covered by mainstream media, a team of marine archaeologists led by
Robert Ballard
Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942) is an American retired Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology ...
identified what appeared to be ancient shorelines, freshwater snail shells, drowned river valleys, tool-worked timbers, and man-made structures in roughly of water off the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey.
Black Sea gradual inundation hypothesis
In addition to the early Holocene "Noah’s Flood" scenario proposed by Ryan, Pitman, Dimitrov, and their colleagues
and the Caspian Sea overflow scenario of Chepalyga,
the non-catastrophic ''progressive flood model'' (or ''gradual inflow model'') has been proposed to explain the Late Quaternary sea level history of the Black Sea.
About 8,000
YBP, the level of the
Marmara Sea would have risen high enough for two-way flow to start. The evidence used to support this scenario includes the disparate ages of
sapropel
Sapropel (a contraction of ancient Greek words ''sapros'' and ''pelos'', meaning putrefaction and mud (or clay), respectively) is a term used in marine geology to describe dark-coloured sediments that are rich in organic matter. Organic carbon conc ...
deposition in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea; buried back-stepping barrier islands observed on the Black Sea shelf; and an under-water delta in the Marmara Sea, near the Bosporus Strait, composed of Black Sea sediments.
Late Pleistocene Great Flood hypothesis
In 2003 and 2007, a more ancient catastrophic flood scenario was proposed by Andrei L. Chepalyga for the Late Quaternary sea level rise of the Black Sea.
The hypothesis for a Late Pleistocene Great Flood argues that brackish Neoeuxinian Lake, which occupied the Black Sea basin, was rapidly inundated by glacial meltwater overflow from the
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad s ...
via the
Manych-
Kerch
Kerch ( uk, Керч; russian: Керчь, ; Old East Slavic: Кърчевъ; Ancient Greek: , ''Pantikápaion''; Medieval Greek: ''Bosporos''; crh, , ; tr, Kerç) is a city of regional significance on the Kerch Peninsula in the east of ...
Spillway shortly after the
Late Glacial Maximum, about 17,000–14,000 BP. These extensive meltwater flooding events linked several
lacustrine
A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much larger ...
and
marine water bodies, starting with the southern edge of the Scandinavian and southward, through spillways to the Manych-Kerch and Bosphorus, ultimately forming what has been referred to as the Cascade of Eurasian Basins.
This event is argued to have caused a rapid, if not catastrophic, rise in the level of the Black Sea. It might have imposed substantial stresses upon contemporary human populations and remained in cultural memory as the ''Great Flood''. The authors also suggested that the event might have stimulated the beginning of shipping and horse domestication.
Counter arguments
Criticisms of the deluge hypothesis focus on the magnitude and pace of the water level rise in the Black Sea. With enough moderation of these features, the catastrophe hypothesis is voided. However, a few key points should be noted:
* Since the ending of the
last glacial period, the global
sea level has risen some .
* The flood hypothesis hinges on the
geomorphology
Geomorphology (from Ancient Greek: , ', "earth"; , ', "form"; and , ', "study") is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical, chemical or biological processes operating at or ...
of the
Bosphorus
The Bosporus Strait (; grc, Βόσπορος ; tr, İstanbul Boğazı 'Istanbul strait', colloquially ''Boğaz'') or Bosphorus Strait is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul in northwestern Tu ...
since the end of the glacial age. The Black Sea area has been sealed off and reconnected many times during the last 500,000 years.
Opponents of the deluge hypothesis point to clues that water was flowing out of the Black Sea basin as late as 15,000 years ago.
In this alternative scenario, much depends on the evolution of the Bosphorus. According to a study from 2001, the modern sill is below sea level and consists of Quaternary sand over-lying Paleozoic bedrock in which three sills are found at below sea level.
Sedimentation
Sedimentation is the deposition of sediments. It takes place when particles in suspension settle out of the fluid in which they are entrained and come to rest against a barrier. This is due to their motion through the fluid in response to t ...
on these sills started before 10,000 years ago and continued until 5,300 years ago.
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 Bosphorus or enough of a difference in water levels (if at all) between the two water basins.
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.
According to a 2009 study by
Liviu Giosan, Florin Filip, and Stefan Constatinescu, the level in the Black Sea before the marine reconnection was below present sea level, rather than the (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. Since the depth of the Bosphorus, in its middle furrow, at present varies from , with an average depth of , a calculated
Stone Age shoreline in the Black Sea lying lower than in the present day would imply that the contact with the Mediterranean might never have been broken during the
Holocene
The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...
, and hence there could have been no sudden waterfall-style transgression.
The flooding could have been "not so big".
In 2011, several authors concluded that "there is no underwater archaeological evidence to support any catastrophic submergence of prehistoric Black Sea settlements during the late Pleistocene or early Holocene intervals".
A 2012 study based on
process
A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic.
Things called a process include:
Business and management
*Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...
length variation of the
dinoflagellate cyst
Dinocysts or dinoflagellate cysts are typically 15 to 100 µm in diameter and produced by around 15–20% of living dinoflagellates as a dormant, zygotic stage of their lifecycle, which can accumulate in the sediments as microfossils. Organic- ...
''Lingulodinium machaerophorum'' shows no evidence for catastrophic flooding.
Geophysical,
geochronological
Geochronology is the science of determining the age of rocks, fossils, and sediments using signatures inherent in the rocks themselves. Absolute geochronology can be accomplished through radioactive isotopes, whereas relative geochronology is pr ...
, and
geochemical
Geochemistry is the science that uses the tools and principles of chemistry to explain the mechanisms behind major geological systems such as the Earth's crust and its oceans. The realm of geochemistry extends beyond the Earth, encompassing the ...
evidence points to a "fast transgression" of the submergence lasting between 10 and 200 years.
See also
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* , flooding of the Mediterranean
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*Dimitrov, Petko.; Dimitrov, Dimitar. 2004
''The Black Sea, the flood, and the ancient myths'' Varna (Bulgaria): Slavena.
*
*''
National Geographic News
The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational organizations in the world.
Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, and ...
''. 2009-02-06
"Noah's Flood" Not Rooted in Reality, After All?*''Nature''. 2004
Noah's Flood 430: 718–19
*
*Yanko-Hombach, Valentina. 2007. ''The Black Sea Flood Question: Changes in Coastline, Climate and Human Settlement''.
Springer
Springer or springers may refer to:
Publishers
* Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag.
** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...
*Chepalyga, A.L. 2006. The late glacial Great Flood in the Ponto-Caspian basin. In: ''The Black Sea Flood question: changes in coastline, climate and human settlement''.
Springer
Springer or springers may refer to:
Publishers
* Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag.
** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...
. pp. 119–14
Further reading
*
This article (possibly not identical to the preceding citation) is available online with unrestricted access
hereat the sponsoring institution's website.
Noah's Not-so-big Flood*
*
*Dimitrov, D. 2010.
Geology and Non-traditional resources of the Black Sea'.
VDM Publishing, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. . 244p.
The late glacial Great Flood in the Ponto-Caspian basin
*
Shopov Y. Y., Т. Yalamov, P. Dimitrov, D. Dimitrov and B. Shkodrov (2009b) 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.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Black Sea Deluge Theory
6th-millennium BC natural events
1997 introductions
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History of the Black Sea
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