Black Sea anomalies?

[daybrown]

Surfing shows several expeditions, but I have to wonder what they didnt look for. Like one report I saw said the Bosporus was 750 foot deep. Another said the Black Sea on the SW end is shallow, with an anerobic layer at 150 meter.

I can see that if the Bosporus burst thru in 5600BC like Ryan & Pitman says, the channel there were would be scoured out to 750 ft., and then spread out like a shallow delta north of the channel.

But if the debunkers are right, then the submerged channel of the outflow would run along the bottom of the Black sea like the Don and Danube channels do all the way down to the putative sea level in ancient times.

Why hasnt anyone noticed? it aint like trying to find just a shipwreck.

That the people's who lived along the great rivers from India to Egypt had great flood myths seems almost inevitable. But Ryan & Pitman point out that the earliest record we have, in Gilgamesh, was written in Mitanni.

WTF is an upland Aryan horse culture doing with a great flood myth if they didnt bring it with them from their origin someplace up North?

i did notice that while the 'Black Sea Flood' links were not very informative, mostly dwelling on the reports of ancient shipwrecks, the debunker sites seem to be gone. But nobody will come right out and say that they know it happened because of the *evidence* they found. They dont say they looked for the evidence and didnt find it either. That'd be nice.

[Beagle]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(prehistoric)

This is type 3. The recently disclosed and much-discussed refilling of the freshwater glacial Black Sea with water from the Aegean, was described as "a violent rush of salt water into a depressed fresh-water lake in a single catastrophe that has been the inspiration for the flood mythology" (Ryan and Pitman, 1998). The marine incursion, which was caused by the rising level of the Mediterranean, occurred around 7,600 years ago. It remains an active subject of debate among archaeologists, with subsequent evidence discovered to both support and discredit the existence of the flood, while the theory that it formed the basis for later flood myths is subjective and unprovable. Although this theory has to withstand pressure from other scientists, German researchers maintain the concept of a catastrophic flood around 5,500 BC and present the theory that this event also is the basis for Plato's Atlantis account.[1]

From what I have read the channel was breached on two occassions, the first flowing outward from the Black Sea, and the latter, at 5600 BC, being into the Sea.

This is type 1. An alternative theory proposed by Andrey Tchepalyga of the Russian Academy of Sciences dates the flooding of the Black Sea basin to an earlier time and from a different cause. According to Tchepalyga, global warming beginning from about 16,000 BP caused the melting of the Scandinavia Ice Sheet, resulting in massive river discharge that flowed into the Caspian Sea, raising it to as much as 50m above normal present-day levels. The rise was extremely rapid and the Caspian basin could not contain all the floodwater, which flowed through the Kuma-Manych Depression and Kerch Strait into the ancient Black Sea basin. By the end of the Pleistocene this would have raised the level of the Black Sea by some 60–70m to about 20m below its present-day level, and flooding large areas that were formerly available for settlement or hunting. Tchepalyga suggests this may have formed the basis for legends of the great Deluge. [2]

Wiki lists some other ancient deluge theories in the same article. Key words - ancient deluge.

The drainage of the combined glacial era Tigris-Euphrates made its way down the marshes of this proto-Shatt-al-Arab to the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea. Reports of the exploration ship "Meteor" have confirmed that the Gulf was an entirely dry basin about 15,000 BC. Close to the steeper Iranian side a deep channel apparently marks the course of the ancient extended Shatt al-Arab, being called the "Ur-Schatt".

Also some info on Persian Gulf flood theories. And others.
I know that Cogs has good info on the Altai flood.

[Minimalist]

WTF is an upland Aryan horse culture doing with a great flood myth if they didnt bring it with them from their origin someplace up North?

The same thing that the Lakota Sioux are doing with one?

Lakota
Unktehi, a water monster, fought the people and caused a great flood. The people retreated to a hill, but the water swept over them, killing them all.
Unktehi was turned to stone; her bones are in the Badlands now. A giant eagle, Wanblee Galeshka, swept down, saved one girl from the flood, and made her his wife. (In another version, the thunderbirds fought and defeated Unktehi and her children before the waters washed over the highest mountain.)

[john]

WTF is an upland Aryan horse culture doing with a great flood myth if they didnt bring it with them from their origin someplace up North?

The same thing that the Lakota Sioux are doing with one?

Lakota
Unktehi, a water monster, fought the people and caused a great flood. The people retreated to a hill, but the water swept over them, killing them all.
Unktehi was turned to stone; her bones are in the Badlands now. A giant eagle, Wanblee Galeshka, swept down, saved one girl from the flood, and made her his wife. (In another version, the thunderbirds fought and defeated Unktehi and her children before the waters washed over the highest mountain.)

Check out the geohistory of Lake Agassiz.

john

[daybrown]

Ryan and Pitman were aware of earlier outflow from the Black Sea, but say it went out the Sakarya river valley. But after that flow shrank back, and the water level fell because of evaporation, the Sakarya was subject to tectonic uplift which changed the direction of flow back into the Black Sea, as it is today, but fed only with the relatively trivial water from the Anatolian mtns.

Not only was the flow different, but so was the population. In the Paleolithic, all there were were some few rather nomadic hunting tribes whose lives would not have been nearly as seriously affected as the Neolithic farmers having to leave setttled communities and farms.

But why hasnt anyone used a map of the bottom north of the Bosporus to enlighten us on what happened? Hasnt there long been a map based on soundings from the area? Where is it?

As for the Lakota, they only recently moved onto the Great Plains, after horses became available. Prior to that, surviving a buffalo stampede was a real challenge. They were a mixed bag of many individuals, but the Sioux were formerly in the Minnesota and upper Mississippi valleys. Floods there have always been a real problem, besides whatever they may have inherited from the Paleolithic.

I dunno how many came from the Red River of the North either. But as you may recall, that raised hell with Fargo not many years ago.

[Cognito]

Surfing shows several expeditions, but I have to wonder what they didnt look for. Like one report I saw said the Bosporus was 750 foot deep. Another said the Black Sea on the SW end is shallow, with an anerobic layer at 150 meter.

The Bosporus is 36 to 124 meters deep. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosporus

As I understand it the anaerobic layer does run below 150 meters in the Black Sea. Nasty stuff further down, toxic soup. With the Bosporus only being 36 meters deep at the highest point, Ryan & Pittman's catastrophic scenario seems suspect. Especially since the walls along the sill average about 80 to 100 feet. Ergo, whatever cut the sill went in the opposite direction as the Black Sea was discharging glacial melt.

[john]

As for the Lakota, they only recently moved onto the Great Plains, after horses became available. Prior to that, surviving a buffalo stampede was a real challenge. They were a mixed bag of many individuals, but the Sioux were formerly in the Minnesota and upper Mississippi valleys. Floods there have always been a real problem, besides whatever they may have inherited from the Paleolithic.

Hmm.

I seem to remember that the Lakotas were Athabascans pushed out of the North and East, and the horses came much later. Perhaps you can enlighten me?

john

[Cognito]

But why hasnt anyone used a map of the bottom north of the Bosporus to enlighten us on what happened? Hasnt there long been a map based on soundings from the area? Where is it?

The analysis is being done. From Science Magazine, 17 August 2007, Kerr , p. 886:

"Richard Hiscott and Ali Aksu of Memorial University of Newfoundland and colleagues have reported several signs that the Black Sea filled slowly and gently. In the Quaternary International issue, they describe a core from the shallow Black Sea shelf that contains sediment laid down beneath tens of meters of water when Ryan would have that spot high and dry. On the Black Sea floor just north of the Bosporus, they have mapped old beach ridges and lagoons formed as the lake level slowly rose. And south of the Bosporus, they found a delta built by outflowing waters 10,000 years ago, when Ryan's scenario would have the Black Sea totally cut off."

I have Aksu's report laying around at home and will post it when I find it. Further, he found a second delta on the south side of the Bosporus that is estimated at about 14,400 years old. Source: personal correspondence.

[Rokcet Scientist]

So all that seems to indicate the Black Sea breached the Bosporus into the Med around 15,000 BP, then the whole situation reversed, and the Med breached through the Bosporus into the Black Sea around 7,600 BP.

Enough occassions to give rise to epic flood tales.

[Forum Monk]

How much water will it take to create an epic flood tale? I can flood the bosphorus with 60 meters of water in my visualization program and a lot of land goes underwater, but much of the area around there (turkey, greece, etc) is high elevation and many-many survivors are assured.

The flood(s) which spawned the epic legends affected many, many cultures from around the black and caspian seas. So I am wondering...according to the geologists, how deep did the water get?

[Rokcet Scientist]

I can flood the bosphorus with 60 meters of water in my visualization program

You can?
Tell us about that 'visualisation program' please, FM?
Can you lower sea levels by 400 feet too, and make that visible in (an) image(s)? That would make it clear where early hominids could get to before they developed seafaring of any kind. Could be very interesting images.

[Ishtar]

The Rig Vedas also has a huge flood, and the only survivor was Manu. The Atharva Vedas says that the ship (ark?) descended and landed on the Himalayas. There is a temple in Northern India, in the hills of Manali, that purports to mark the spot where the ship was finally able to berth.

Also talking of the Caspian Sea, this is said to be named after the Vedic seer Kashyapa Muni. One of his wives was the famous Danu, who went on to be worshipped along the Danube and was the primary goddess of the Celts.

[Forum Monk]

Now IMO, Manu is an interesting name as it is a name used in Egypt since Manu and Bakhu were the twin peaks which cradled the sun and are supposedly depicted in the akhet sign of the horizon. There are also some who see direct parallels in the Caucasus region.

Obviously Manu as a mountain would have stood above the flood. Unless the flood was of truly biblical proportions.

So it seems there is some definite evidence of correspondence between upper mesopotamia, northern egypt and probably Indus Valley. However, I tend to think the tradition originated in the north: Anatola, Black Sea, and environs.

[Forum Monk]

You can?
Tell us about that 'visualisation program' please, FM?
Can you lower sea levels by 400 feet too, and make that visible in (an) image(s)? That would make it clear where early hominids could get to before they developed seafaring of any kind. Could be very interesting images.

Yes.
A while back I wrote a program to visualize the USGS etopo5 database which records the elevation of the entire earth (including undersea) to a resolution of 5 arc minutes in latitude and longitude. Recently I have improved the software and converted it to a 3D visualization, but in order to maximize the performance of the software I limited the area under consideration to 100 square degrees (10 x 10) It is suffcienet for looking are certain coast lines in detail but not good for looking at continents. (my old version did that). With this program I can change the sea level to any value I want.

Note that inland seas and rivers are not correctly differentiated from sealevel. I also have a version which works on the etopo2 database with even finer resolution.

[Minimalist]

I remember that program. It was great.

Did you happen to keep it?