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Ian Wilson is a big name in investigative historical writing, having turned his hand to such diverse subjects as Columbus, The Turin Shroud and Shakespeare; here he tackles another difficult subject, Noah's Flood. The flood of the Bible is largely seen as a myth, a fundamental creation story common to most cultures that provides a defined starting point for the distant ancestors of the culture in question, here the Hebrews of the Old Testament. There is however a couple of contexts that provides a possible reality for such a flood. One is the flooding of the river systems of Iraq, which came into the Hebrew tradition during the exile period in Babylon, but there is an earlier place for a near eastern flood legend to sit historically and this is where Wilson begins exploring.

The outline of the main idea in the book regards the creation of the Black Sea. Around seven thousand years ago this sea was as yet unconnected to the Mediterranean Sea, unlike today, but was a much smaller fresh water lake fed by Russian rivers. The Black sea shore has long been known to be an important area in the cultural evolution of man, agriculture, viticulture and metallurgy are just three important developments which are found in the archaeological record in this region and as such the villages and camps of this area were paramount in the development of these new technologies and ideas. As the sea levels were slowly rising due to the warming of the world climate the inevitable happened and the salt waters of the Mediterranean spilt over into the Black sea basin causing a massive inundation of the area. The populations of this area would have fled as the waters advanced on their homeland causing a mass migration, a migration that many generations down the line would be remembered as an epic flood that only their chosen ancestors survived by the will of their god.

Evidence for this flood has been previously documented in the book "Noah's Flood" by two eminent marine biologists named Ryan and Pitman whose study of fresh water organic remains and submerged geology were the first steps to the formation of this theory. Weight was added to their idea when Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the locations of both the Titanic and the Bismarck, found the evidence of ancient settlements lying deep under the waters of the Black sea on the original fresh water shoreline, thus showing that the sea was once much lower.

This book is very much a case of "standing on the shoulders of giants" to quote

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