The Black Sea Flood Question: Changes in Coastline, Climate and Human Settlement

Stimulated by "Noah's Flood Hypothesis" proposed by W. Ryan and W. Pitman in which a catastrophic inundation of the Pontic basin was linked to the biblical story, leading experts in Black Sea research (including oceanography, marine geology, paleoclimate, paleoenvironment, archaeology, and linguistic spread) provide overviews of their data and interpretations obtained through empirical scientific approaches. Among the contributors are many East European scientists whose work has rarely been published outside of Cyrillic. Each of the 35 papers marshals its own evidence for or against the flood hypothesis. No summary or overall resolution to the flood question is presented, but instead access is provided to a broad range of interdisciplinary information that crosses previously impenetrable language barriers so that new work in the region can proceed with the benefit of a wider frame of reference. The three fundamental scenarios describing the late glacial to Holocene rise in the level of the Black Sea-catastrophic, gradual, and oscillating-are presented in the early pages, with the succeeding papers organized by geographic sector: northern (Ukraine), western (Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria), southern (Turkey), and eastern (Georgia and Russia), as well as three papers on the Mediterranean. The volume thus brings together eastern and western scholarship to share research findings and perspectives on a controversial subject. In addition, appendices are included containing some 600 radiocarbon dates from the Pontic region obtained by USSR and western laboratories.

Audience Scientists, researchers and students in geology, climatology, archeology, oceanography, linguistics, history, geography as well as Black Sea specialists.

Contenu

General.- Oxic, suboxic, and anoxic conditions in the Black Sea.- Molluscan paleoecology in the reconstruction of coastal changes.- Climate modeling results for the Circum-Pontic Region from the late Pleistocene to the mid-Holocene.- Principal Flood Scenarios.- Status of the Black Sea flood hypothesis.- The Marmara Sea Gateway since ~16 ky BP: non-catastrophic causes of paleoceanographic events in the Black Sea at 8.4 and 7.15 ky BP.- The late glacial great flood in the Ponto-Caspian basin.- Controversy over Noah's Flood in the Black Sea: geological and foraminiferal evidence from the shelf.- Research in the Northern Sector.- On the post-glacial changes in the level of the Black Sea.- The post-glacial transgression of the Black Sea.- Climate dynamics, sea-level change, and shoreline migration in the Ukrainian sector of the Circum-Pontic Region.- The Middle Paleolithic and early Upper Paleolithic in the northern Black Sea region.- Environment, sea-level changes, and human migrations in the northern Pontic area during late Pleistocene and Holocene times.- Holocene Mediterranization of the southern Crimean vegetation: paleoecological records, regional climate change, and possible non-climatic influences.- Pontic-Caspian Mesolithic and Early Neolithic societies at the time of the Black Sea flood: a small audience and small effects.- Fluctuations in the level of the Black Sea and Mesolithic settlement of the northern Pontic area.- Research in the Western Sector.- The northwestern Black Sea: climatic and sea-level changes in the Late Quaternary.- Sea-level fluctuations and coastline migration in the northwestern Black Sea area over the last 18 ky based on high-resolution lithological-genetic analysis of sediment architecture.- Water-level fluctuations in the Black Seasince the Last Glacial Maximum.- Archaeological and paleontological evidence of climate dynamics, sea-level change, and coastline migration in the Bulgarian sector of the Circum-Pontic Region.- Dendrochronology of submerged Bulgarian sites.- The Neolithization of the north Pontic area and the Balkans in the context of the Black Sea floods.- Holocene changes in the level of the Black Sea: Consequences at a human scale.- Research in the Southern Sector.- Morphotectonic development of the southern Black Sea region and the Bosphorus channel.- Sea-level changes modified the Quaternary coastlines in the Marmara region, northwestern Turkey: What about tectonic movements?.- Sea-level changes during the late Pleistocene-Holocene on the southern shelves of the Black Sea.- The frozen Bosphorus and its paleoclimatic implications based on a summary of the historical data.- Coastal changes of the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara in archaeological perspective.- Submerged paleoshorelines in the southern and western Black Sea-Implications for inundated prehistoric archaeological sites.- New evidence for the emergence of a maritime Black Sea economy.- Research in the Eastern Sector.- Holocene sea-level changes of the Black Sea.- Sea-level changes and coastline migrations in the Russian sector of the Black Sea: Application to the Noah's Flood Hypothesis.- Language dispersal from the Black Sea region.- Research in the Mediterranean.- Timing of the last Mediterranean Sea Black Sea connection from isostatic models and regional sea-level data.- Climatic changes in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Last Glacial Maximum to the late Holocene.- Climate, sea level, and culture in the Eastern Mediterranean 20 ky to the present.