Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis - Flood Hypothesis

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, following this scenario. 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 sea level to rise. The rising Mediterranean finally spilled over a rocky sill at the Bosporus. The event flooded 155,000 km2 (60,000 sq mi) of land and significantly expanded the Black Sea shoreline to the north and west. According to the researchers, "40 km3 (10 cu mi) of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over 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 to 2005 in the frame of a European Project ASSEMBLAGE and coordinated by a French oceanographer, Gilles Lericolais, brought some new inputs to the Ryan and Pitman's hypothesis. These results were also completed by the Noah project led by the Bulgarian Institute of Oceanography (IO-BAS). Furthermore, calculations made by Mark Siddall predicted an underwater canyon that was actually found.