Black Sea anomalies?

[Beagle]

No doubt about that Min, at least in my opinion. But given the sea level rise after the LGM, some underwater village or town or culture is going to be found, and people will say it's Atlantis.

For myself, I am interested in submerged land masses that may have been "stepping stones" to global migration. I believe there may have been early contact between continents that ended with the sea level rise.
So I have looked at the Azores in that context. Pretty interesting.

[Minimalist]

I prefer Hancock's term: Remote Common Ancestor.

Sounds a whole hell of a lot less nutty than "Atlantis."

[Ishtar]

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.

According to my research, those who compiled the Indian Vedas more likely came from the north, north-east (i.e. Siberia and Kashmir).

[Ishtar]

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.

According to my research, those who compiled the Indian Vedas more likely came from the north, north-east (i.e. Siberia and Kashmir).

I think I'm right in saying that the whole Anatolia/Black Sea thing doesn't stand up in terms of archaeology and is based on linguistics, a shaky science at the best of times.

[daybrown]

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

I was born on a farm in Minnesota. the version of history that the Chippewa gave me, included spitting on the ground. I dont doubt that *some* of the "Lakota" are as you describe. But let us disabuse ourselves of the scriptural model. There was no Moses leading his people onto the Great Plains.

According to the Chippewa I heard (others may have other reports), The Sioux drove them out of Southern Minnesota. This is somewhat consistent with the notorious hanging at Mankato of 50 Sioux, who thot they could take advantage of the civil war in the same fashion that they took what had belonged to the Chippewa.

The Chippewa had been driven north to survive on Wild Rice, but when the whiteman brought in much more useful plank hulled John boats, production rose and they have gotten on well ever since. The white men who moved in were farmers, so they were not competing for the same resource base.

Meanwhile the Indians all along the Mississippi, all the way down to the Caddo, got horses, and mostly moved onto the Great Plains where the living was gonzo easier hunting buffalo rather than deer or elk. Or growing corn. But it was all very chaotic. The Osage were using the Ozarks as a hideout, and treating the Caddo as prey animals down on the Arkansas river valley. So, the smaller villages were either wiped out or saw what was coming down, and fled into Oklahoma.

when the Caddo as game became harder to come by, the Osage turned east and then North, having similar effects on other tribes. But in 1827, an alliance emerged to commit genocidal warfare against the Osage. They even advertised in the St. Louis newspaper for white mercenaries to help them go into the Ozarks and clean out the Osage.

So- you had some Indians from various tribes involved in that, some who had no taste for war in the admittedly intimidating Ozarks- who just went to KS & NB and buffalo, and some who hooked up with various white men to go into the farming business after US Gen White brokered a peace to stop the genocide in Ft. Smith in the spring of 1828, giving the Osage a separate reservation in OK

During the Cherokee Trail of Tears, lots of Cherokee dropped off while going thru the Ozarks to live with the Scots/Irish who had moved into the recently abandoned area, and their mixed breed descendants are still here. But there's just no way to sort out how many did that, how many Sioux went to the Dakotas, or moved south to join other tribes. Its a very messy history.

[daybrown]

Forum Monk posts maps:"Recently I downloaded the etopo2 dataset from USGS/NOAA"
Look at the area north and south of the Bosorus. Had there always been a channel there, during the ice age meltdown, there'd be a really obvious river channel gouged out such as we see with other rivers in the area today.

I've read that the valleys of the Don & Dneipr are vastly larger than they need to be to handle the current flow. Unlike the Bosporus, they are not, by any means, as stated here, "narrow channels". Even tho sufficient for the outflow today, over time rivers gouge at one bank or the other, and therefore the Bosporus would show the signs of meandering over time.

It does not do that. The channels on the bottom both north and south would also be gouged out to accommodate the same kind of wide valley we see with the Don, whose channel, laying on the bottom out past the Kirch straits, started this whole investigation.

For really obvious reasons Christian fundies have funded anyone who can debunk the case, so the reports posted and published contradict each other. This was why I asked for a detailed topographical map of the bottom of the Bosporus and the channels both north and south. I really appreciate the graphic Forum Monk posted, but greater precision would be helpful.

[Forum Monk]

One of the principle problems with my graphics, I think, is I compute the colors algorithmically instead of using a predefined palette optimized for topographical maps. I will correct this in a later edition. Probably sometime tomorrow I will post some images of the areas you are requesting DB. And I will flood them just to get an idea of the water levels required to pass through the channels. I can tell you, I remember seeing some wide valleys which could pass huge volumes of water but I don't recall if they were open at both ends.

The etopo30 database is available for 30 arc second resolution but I have not attempted to download it as it is huge. Fortunately, its available in conveniently sized "tiles" but the Bosporus is unfortunately split between two tiles. In any case, two tiles is easier to handle than the entire database. Displaying the data would take a rewrite of the code, which I intend now to make it self-adjusting according to the size of the dataset. High resolution images are forthcoming but will not be released by me in the near term.

[Forum Monk]

And how do we get it?

Contact me by email.

[daybrown]

Thanx FM; I appreciate real data rather than opinions limited by group think.

The Great Flood solves a lotta problems. Gimbutas argued that the original home of the Aryans was between the Urals and the Caspian. JP Mallory, "In Search of the Indo-Europeans", saying in 1989 that ecosystem does not match with the PIE vocabulary.

He mentions all the words for watercraft, lakes, swamps, rivers, fish, etc, then all the words related to intensive agriculture which was not going on there. Both of them reject the obvious choice around the Black sea cause they both know that PIE does not have any words for the salt water environment. Hello?

[Cognito]

DB, not a detailed topo map of the north and south sides of the Bosporus, but the article by Aksu et al might be helpful:

http://ees2.geo.rpi.edu/abrajanoCourses ... AToday.pdf

From page 8: "Perhaps the best physical evidence for early and strong Black Sea outflow is a 10–9 ka delta lobe at the southern exit of the Bosphorus Strait."

[Forum Monk]

Where do you always find these links Cog. I can never seem to find such interesting papers.

We may not have to look north or south of Bosporus to find the avenue of the flood. Playing a little last night, I noticed the entire Bosporus strait went under water after about a 5-10 meter rise in sea level. It vanishes!

Istanbul is very vulnerable to floods and I suppose a Mediterranean-based tsumani would be catasptrohic.

Look for some images this evening.

[daybrown]

<From page 8: "Perhaps the best physical evidence for early and strong Black Sea outflow is a 10–9 ka delta lobe at the southern exit of the Bosphorus Strait.">
I've seen that outflow. Compare it to either the Danube or the Don delta, and explain how it can be smaller than either, rather than larger than both. The Sea of Marmara is a rift valley, and there is another channel on the NE end, which is where Ryan & Pitman say the Sakarya formerly drained into it.

The area is still undergoing uplift and subsidence, and the topography was not the same in the era of the outflow during pre-historic times. It has not been that many years since a photo was posted on the net of a beach resort on the coast of the Marmara showing beach umbellas sticking up out of the water because the land had subsided 2 meters in a quake over nite.

When I post the C-14 dates for the land grasses found in the bottom cores, which lay under salt water sea shells from the mid 6th mil, they tell me the dates are wrong, yet when they think they have a date which supports their position, now C-14 is reliable.

Be that as it may, if there was a continuous drain thru the Bosporus, then how is it that land grasses lay preserved in the mud under salt water? Had the water risen gradually, they would have died and composted as they do everywhere else. But they were only preserved by a rapid flood and the anerobic conditions since.

More to the point perhaps is to recognize that this issue has enormous religious power behind it, and anyone who can post or pubish anything to challenge Ryan and Pitman will get the Fundy money to do that. It is not like this is a dispassionate logical debate among archaeologists and paleontologists. I've seen way too much flaming for that.

If you read "Noah's Flood" you find out that Ryan and Pitman did not set out to prove the great flood, but started with the bottom cores the Russians had pulled up in doing a survey for a new bridge across the Kirch strait.

Looking at the land grasses below marine deposits, they organized an expedition to pull up bottom cores in a number of locations, and by finding the freshwater crustaceans in beach sand were able to outline the shores of the pre-historic Euxine lake. About half the size of the Black Sea, and centered in a basin on the East end.

the western third was a vast floodplain fed with the outflow of both the Danube, Dneistr, Bug, & Dneipr, and the map I saw showed them all combine with the Danube before finally spilling into the lake. But- there is no such outflow channel going to the Bosporus. I'm looking for a more detailed map of the bottom. I do have one from the National Geo of the Black Sea bottom but at the time, I didnt notice what was not there.

That is a chronic problem in archeology. On the fly leaf of Goodison & Morris, they make mention of the controversy over Gimbutas saying that there was no sign of warfare in the Chalcolithic SE European tels, and they say they set out to dig into a virgin tel to settle this.

But if you read the work, you find out that they did indeed find a layer of burnt rubble- the dead givaway of a place that had been sacked and burnt (which they do not say), but then trenching out, find it is a single house fire, and go on at length because of the placement of artifacts in the corners of the house that make it look like the place was ritually burnt.

But- in 193 pages they dont have the balls to mention that which they got the funding for- to search for evidence of warfare, or the fact that they did not find any. I would wish for better scientific rigor.

[Beagle]

FM - cudos on that program, I hadn't realized that you wrote it.

Cogs - nice link. What is your take on the Black Sea history? From what I have read, it outflowed through the Bosporus around 13K BC. That seems too late to be associated with the Altai floods but I don't know.

The recent research has also strengthened Ryan and Pitmans theory about the influx of water around 7600 BP, in my opinion. The slight salinity of the Caspian sea also points to a recent overflow.

To my untrained eyes, there seems to be evidence on the seabed when I view Google Earth, although the resolution is not that good there.

[Cognito]

FM, in addition to the article here is a personal correspondence snippet wherein Aksu mentions that he has found two deltas at the southern end of the Bosporus:

Dear Patrick,

I am back at MUN. ... Rick Hiscott and I are looking at the sedimentary and seismic reflection data ... and we like what we see: (1) I mentioned to you that we have two deltas at the southern exit of the Strait of Bosphorus ... our delta started to form ~10,000 yrBP). We now think that the older delta is ... ~14,000 yrBP.

... what caused the upper delta? Can we reconcile with simply glacial meltwater/increased fluvial input during the post glacial and an interval of rigurous outflow before the two-way flow? (2) We mapped a notch on the channel floor across the Strait of Dardanelles, which is blanketed by a thin veneer of post-glacial sediments. We intend to go back there during the next year or so to better map and sample with this idea in mind.

Cheers,

Ali

So, instead of investigating the delta last summer Ali had the audacity to go on a Mediterranean cruise instead without inviting me along! Where are his priorities, anyway?

[Cognito]

Cogs - nice link. What is your take on the Black Sea history? From what I have read, it outflowed through the Bosporus around 13K BC. That seems too late to be associated with the Altai floods but I don't know.

The recent research has also strengthened Ryan and Pitmans theory about the influx of water around 7600 BP, in my opinion. The slight salinity of the Caspian sea also points to a recent overflow.

Beags, Occam's Razor. The LGM ended at 16,000bce. Keep in mind the fact that Eurasian glaciers were 3km thick at that time (almost 2 miles) and that the northern continental shelves were depressed by 1km due to the extreme weight of the ice. Huge lakes formed in Eurasia (such as Lake Mansi) prior to rapid and consistent discharges of water south (since pathways north were initially blocked). The discharge of water had to be from the Aral through the Caspian through the Black to the Mediterranean. Rivers such as the Don and Danube were flowing into the Black Sea at 40 times current flood volumes during the spring and summer during the Big Melt.

The Caspian and Black Seas swelled during the late Pleistocene with the Caspian emptying into the Black through the Manytsch Straights area from 15kya to 11kya (Ref: Professor Alexander Svitoch, Moscow State University). It was that activity that cut the Bosporus from north to south. After the melting was over and/or the flow of northern rivers changed direction(circa 10kya) the Black Sea began to dessicate since it was not connected to the Mediterranean. Worldwide sea levels were below Bosporus bedrock at that time. About 5600bce, as suggested by Ryan & Pittman, the Mediterranean topped over the Bosporus cut from south to north to fill the Black Sea gradually with salt water. That gradual filling was nonetheless catastrophic toxic soup to the shorelines and could have been as much as a few meters per week. The Caspian is brackish today to due extreme dessication (it was twice its current size during the late Pleistocene) and due to potential overflow from the Aral which is a saltwater sea (also undergoing extreme dessication).

With regard to the Altai floods there was more than just one. Due to complex hydraulics, only two of them apparently overflowed the Bosporus in such a manner as to cut the sill. That is what Ali Aksu is returning to Turkey to investigate. Imagine a land bridge from Anatolia to Greece that had been in existence "forever" suddenly cut off by a rushing torrent of water half a mile wide. It would make an impression on anyone wanting to market kebabs to the Greeks or baclava to the Anatolians. No wonder they don't get along!