Ryan, Pitman and others make a plausible claim in their paper when they argue that flooding of the Black Sea shelf "accelerated the dispersal of early neolithic foragers and farmers into the interior of Europe." Low population densities prevailed in the early neolithic because farmers controlled only a small percentage of territory and farmed at low intensity they land they did control (Gregg, 1998). Nevertheless, the vast extent of land flooded at the western and northwestern coasts of the Black Sea would have ensured the exodus of large numbers of people and possibly provided the stimulus for settlement of the interior of Europe. However, the claim Ryan and Pitman make in their book that the Black Sea flood had a similar impact on dispersing early neolithic foragers and farmers south into the Levant, Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates valley, and east into the interior of Asia appears less plausible. Low densities of population similarly prevailed along the northeastern, eastern, south central and southeastern coasts of the Black Sea. The steeper slopes along these shores may have meant the area controlled by farmers was a smaller percentage of the total than in the Balkans and that cultivation was less intense. The areas drowned represented less than 10% of the total, mostly along short stretches of narrow coast. The number of farmers displaced was probably fewer than 10,000, mostly in small groups, the largest numbering about 1,000 persons. While these considerations do not falsify the authors' claim, they suggest that the claim is not plausible. Possibly, the difference in the two claims is related to the fact that scientific papers are subjected to peer review, but books are not.