2 of 6

Write now Article Tools

In many past cultures of the world, starting from the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Asian there's the legendary tale of a great global Deluge fed by very intense and continuous rains that had covered the largest part of the Earth.

It's not easy to understand what real facts were behind these tales, common to many civilizations, but there's a recent theory that could place a catastrophic flood few century after the end of the last glaciation, about 10.000-9000 years B.C., when the melting of the wide ice caps that covered up to 1/3 of the Earth crust, made increase the seas level of 100-120 m, to the actual levels.

Just this can already be considered a deluge, although we know that this sea level increase was slow, lasting, at least, some centuries and leaving to population all the time to migrate and settle elsewhere.

The Black Sea, instead, remained insulated from the Mediterranean Sea by a subtle land strip where today are the Dardanelles Straits, and its surface was smaller, with wide planes around it at very lower level respect to the Mediterranean Sea.

But after few centuries, the pressure of the Mediterranean waters destroyed this land strip, maybe, suddenly, so that immense water amounts poured into the Black Sea flooding those wide planes around it.
We also well know that all the Dardanelles area, between Europe and Anatolia, is highly seismic, then, also a powerful earthquake could have caused a sudden break of that land strip.

It's likely that some relatively advanced civilizations were already present in that area, living in towns and practicing agriculture; their destruction was total, but the memory of this terrible event has been transmitted to the following generations for thousands years.

Then, besides the flooding of the Black Sea, we know that, in that post-glacial period (10.000-8000 B.C.) there were a strong increase in rains and consequent floods also in the Middle East, that could have enhanced the legend of a deluge in all the world, as a God's punishment for human sins.

The alternative hypothesis of a great tsunami is less likely because this event is sudden, it devastates wide areas, as we have painfully seen last time on December 26th 2004 in the Indian Ocean, but it lasts very little, with a fast withdrawal of waters within few minutes.
Instead, the Deluge is always described as a total covering of wide lands for a long period, caused by long rains.

Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about The Black Sea deluge theory and the Biblical flood?
We want to hear your view. Write now!