When we turn our thoughts to Noah's flood and the momentous events it precipitated,
we naturally think of Mount Ararat and the various expeditions which have visited
it and reported finding fragments of the celebrated Ark.
Ararat is an ice-capped 17,000ft mountain on the border between Turkey and
Russia. Climbers have explored it on several occasions and have reported finding
the remains of a wooden ship there. Radiocarbon dating of samples reputed to
have been taken from the site has indicated an age of 1,250 to 1,700 years,
far too recent for the biblical flood. However, recent findings not far away
in the Black Sea, and reported in Science for September 22, have yielded evidence
that dwellings there were inundated by the sea some 7,500 years ago. Whether
this event led to the Noah legend is controversial.
Underwater surveys some 91m below the present level of the southern Black Sea
have revealed what are apparently the remains of a house made of wood and mud
together with some human artefacts. It is argued by oceanographers that an enormous
flood of water descended from the Mediterranean 7.5 millennia ago and drove
a Neolithic population along the Black Sea coast into higher ground.
On a slightly sloping plain on the sea bed the explorers found a rectangular
site about 4m by 8m cluttered with rectangular wooden beams interlaced with
branches and mud. This was interpreted as the remains of a wattle and daub construction,
typical of the ancient dwellings of the southern Black Sea coast. Among the
debris were stone artefacts, possibly hammers or chisels, and fragments of pottery.
It is hoped that wood samples suitable for radiocarbon dating can be retrieved.
Oceanographers argued three years ago that rising sea levels in the Mediterranean
after the last ice age would have breached the shores of the Bosphorus and expanded
the then existing freshwater lake to the extent of a kilometre or more per day.
Whether the result of this event forced the population into a migration which
spread universal flood myths and also promoted the expansion of agriculture
is so far highly controversial.