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To us the modern coastline is a fixed picture, but by the standards of geological time it is a still from an action film. During the last Ice Age, which ended 12,000 years ago, water levels were much lower than they are now. Britain, for instance, was connected to Europe by a land bridge where the town of Dover stands today. Similarly, it has been argued, there was a land bridge from European to Asiatic Turkey where the Bosporus now flows, separating the Mediterranean from the freshwater lake that has become the Black Sea.

The seas were lower because much of the water which is currently found in the oceans was locked up in the continental ice sheets. When the ice began to melt, it set off a chain of reactions around the world, which still continues today. Some Swedish estuaries, for instance, have risen by several centimetres over the last century, as land previously pushed down by the ice slowly 'bounces' back.

According to the Black Sea deluge theory, in the 6th millennium BC meltwater flowing into the Mediterranean increased the pressure on the Bosporus isthmus. Like the New Orleans levee, the land held for a while, but once the banks burst the sea flooded through.

The scale of the flood would have been beyond anything recorded history has witnessed. An estimated 60,000 square miles of land would have been inundated, at a rate two hundred times that of the Niagara Falls.

The theory is vigorously disputed. For instance, it has been argued that there is evidence that the Bosporus predates this time, and that the sedimentary data does not support the proposed rate or volume of flooding.

Proponents of the flood theory have linked it to mythical flood stories, for instance Noah's flood in the Old Testament and Plato's account of the sinking of Atlantis. There is of course no conclusive evidence for any of this, and it is hard to see the value of such hypotheses. History has seen many floods, and these would have provided plenty of experience for myth-makers to generate stories from.

Learn more about this author, Jon Eccles.
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