Source: _Biblical Archaeology Review_, March/April 1997, p. 10.
"The Bible tells us of it; the ancient Mesopotamian epic of
Gilgamesh tells of it; a terrible deluge left the whole world under
water. But have scientists found evidence of it? A research team
headed by William B.F. Ryan and Walter C. Pittman, geologists with
Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, reports that
7,500 years ago sea levels rose dramatically and salt water cascaded
through the narrow Bosporos strait into the Black Sea, which was then a
freshwater lake. Using seismic evidence, sediment cores and freshwater
fossils, the geologists have traced the shores of the old lake,
according to a report in the _New York Times_. The scientists determined
that the Black Sea's water levels rose about 500 feet, perhaps in only
a matter of months. The quickly rising waters then submerged over
60,000 square miles of land.
Scholars have long noticed similarities between the Biblical flood story
and an earlier flood story in the Gilgamesh epic (probably written down
in the early second millennium B.C.) In both stories, for example,
a dove and raven are sent from a ship after seven-day intervals. The
similarities may suggest either that Noah's story was modeled after
Gilgamesh or that both stories derive from something else; they may
even preserve memories of an actual event.
If the Black Sea deluge was that event, the memories stretched back some
3,500 years. Nonetheless, Ryan and Pittman make some tantalizing
suggestions. They observe that the western and northern coasts of the
Black Sea supported some of the West's earliest agricultural communities.
Only around 7,500 years ago did settled agricultural communities
begin to appear in central Europe, Anatolia and Mesopotamia.
Were revolutionary agricultural techniques brought to these areas by
peoples forced by the flood to vacate the Black Sea coast? And did
these migrants bring with them vivid memories of what was perceived as
a worldwide deluge?"
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