Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Evidence for and
Implications of the Black
Sea Noah's Flood:
Geology, Archaeology, Language and Myth

Walter Pitman

Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory
Columbia University

The investigation of the floor of the Black Sea reveals an abrupt transition from a freshwater, ice-age lake to a saltwater sea in the mid-sixth millennium BCE. The signal occurs as 1) a distinct fauna and flora replacement; 2) a drowning of shorelines, coastal dunes and desert landscapes; 3) a conversion of river valleys into deep estuaries; 4) a shift in the isotopic composition of shells. The change in the environment occurred when the rising global sea breached the sill of the Bosporus Strait to allow ocean water from the Mediterranean to pour into an isolated Neoeuxine lake that lay about 100 meters below the spillway. It is surmised that the intrusion began as a trickle but then evolved into a catastrophic flood as the valley that we now call the Bosporus was cut. The event caught the lake margin in a warm and arid environment as confirmed by submerged soils with steppe flora and transformed it into a more moist, cooler maritime woodland. The timing of this flood coincides with the initial divergence of the Indo-European language family now shown to have had an Anatolian origin and to be linked with the spread of farming into Europe. Excavated materials from settlements on the banks of the Dnieper River record a simultaneous appearance of bones of fish that migrate in from the ocean to spawn and the first signs of agriculture using domesticated grains. The earliest flood myth appears in Sumerian script and is followed by more elaborate renditions in Akkadian, Babylonian and the Hebrew version in Genesis. Themes in the myth include advanced warning heard through the wall of a reed hut, the building of a boat to rescue seeds and animals, the bursting of dikes and fountains in the sea, and landing on the side of a mountain. In Genesis, the flood of Noah directly precedes the Tower of Babel that recounts the breakup of a single language into many. The names of Noah's sons mark this dispersal of races and tongues. Although impossible to link the Black Sea flood with a specific legend, many of the particular features of the permanent Black Sea drowning, as distinct from flooding by rain or typhoon, resonate with properties of the Genesis story.

Walter Pitman