At the 1969 congress of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA), Ryan and Pitman discussed the subject of the Black Sea with other scientists who were working on subjects related to the retreat of the glaciers in Europe, such as climatic change, vegetation, and human settlement. Though these subjects were being vigorously pursued in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria, political barriers made it impossible for Ukrainian, Russian and Bulgarian scientists to work with their counterparts in the West—until Chenobyl. The explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the Ukraine posed a risk to the food chain because radioactive fallout could contaminate seafood from the Black Sea. Study of the Black Sea sediments might benefit by participation of Western scientists. Petko Dimitrov, of the Bulgarian Institute of Oceanography, made the first overture in 1993 in a letter to Ryan and Pitman. Soon Russian scientists invited the two to sail aboard the Soviet research ship the Aquanaut and welcomed the contribution by Datasonics Corporation of a sonar device capable of exploring the bottom of the Black Sea.
The joint Russian/American expedition obtained high-resolution seismic profiles across the outer continental shelf in the Black Sea south of the Ukraine that showed a break in slope caused by erosion and an underlying glacial-age alluvial and delta deposit. This break appeared everywhere above the modern -150 meter isobath. Sediment cores were obtained to analyze the layers of the bottom and the underlying material. Shells of mollusks were raised from the sea bottom indicating identical radiocarbon ages of the shells, 7,150±100 years B.P.(before the present). The shells document a flooding surface which reached inland from the shelf edge to at least the modern -49 meter isobath. The rapid rise of the sea up the slope to the modern shoreline left the erosion surface intact. This is shown by the uniform burial of a former river channel.
The scientists recorded their observations and conclusions in a scientific journal, summarized as follows:
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ABSTRACT
During latest Quaternary glaciation, the Black Sea became a giant freshwater lake. The surface of this lake drew down to levels more than 100 m below its outlet. When the Mediterranean rose to the Bosporus sill at 7,150 yr bp, saltwater poured through this spillway to refill the lake and submerge, catastrophically, more than 100,000 km2 of its exposed continental shelf. The permanent drowning of a vast terrestrial landscape may possibly have accelerated the dispersal of early neolithic foragers and farmers into the interior of Europe at that time(Ryan, et al. 1997).
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Noah's Flood
The authors of this scientific paper made modest claims, some of which have had a mixed reception in scientific journals. However, the two scientists also wrote a book, Noah's Flood, that went beyond the modest claims of the scientific paper ( Ryan and Pitman, 1999).
In the book Noah's Flood, the authors claim that the drowning of the Black Sea shelf was the stimulus for the dispersal from the Black Sea basin of a variety of peoples of various cultures and languages—the ancestors of virtually all the cultures of Europe, Egypt, the Middle East and India. In effect, the Black Sea flood changed the history of the world. The western diaspora included the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans, the Linear Pottery Farmers, the Vincas, Hamangians and Danilo-Hvar—most of the early European peoples known. The eastern diaspora included the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans the Tocharians, Ubaids, Semites, pre-Dynastic Egyptians and Anatolian cultures—most of the early eastern peoples known, including the western invaders of India.
The authors contend that long before writing was developed traditions were passed orally by story-tellers and singers of ballads. Finally, the oral traditions were written, first in stone and clay tablets, like the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, which recounts a Great Flood. Genesis, written later, tells essentially the same story with a different moral. Ryan and Pitman argue that there really was a great flood, the flooding of the Black Sea shelf. The book is a fascinating mix of science and speculation, well worth reading.
It is beyond the scope of this project to examine the geological and archaeological controversy that has developed following the publication of Noah's Flood. Instead, this project will examine the Black Sea shelf that is now under 100 to 150 meters of seawater to gain perspective on the magnitude of the catastrophe.
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