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Over the millennia, the legend of a great deluge has endured in the biblical story of Noah and in such Middle Eastern myths as the epic of Gilgamesh. Now two distinguished geophysicists have discovered a catastrophic event that changed history, a gigantic flood 7,600 years ago in what is today the Black Sea.
Using sound waves and coring devices to probe the sea floor, William Ryan and Walter Pitman revealed clear evidence that this inland body of water had once been a vast freshwater lake lying hundreds of feet below the level of the world's rising oceans. Sophisticated dating techniques confirmed that 7,600 years ago the mounting seas had burst through the narrow Bosporus valley, and the salt water of the Mediterranean had poured into the lake with unimaginable force, racing over beaches and up rivers, destroying or chasing all life before it. The rim of the lake, which had served as an oasis, a Garden of Eden for farms and villages in a vast region of semi-desert, became a sea of death. The people fled, dispersing their languages, genes, and memories.
- Sales Rank: #181748 in Books
- Published on: 2000-01-25
- Released on: 2000-01-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.44" h x 1.00" w x 5.50" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Review
David Brown The Washington Post A fascinating lesson in geology, oceanography, archaeology, and inductive reasoning.
Amanda Heller The Boston Globe A complex but thoroughly plausible solution to this intriguing mystery in a narrative of surprisingly dramatic intensity.
Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison Scientific American As engaging as it is important...exciting...full of surprises, rivalries, and partnerships.
Richard Ellis The New York Times Book Review An interesting and provocative story...Ryan and Pitman have thoroughly researched every aspect of this intricately woven story. They are articulate, enthusiastic, and dedicated.
From the Back Cover
Over the millennia, the legend of a great deluge has endured in the biblical story of Noah and in such Middle Eastern myths as the epic of Gilgamesh. Now two distinguished geophysicists have discovered a catastrophic event that changed history, a gigantic flood 7,600 years ago in what is today the Black Sea.
Using sound waves and coring devices to probe the sea floor, William Ryan and Walter Pitman revealed clear evidence that this inland body of water had once been a vast freshwater lake lying hundreds of feet below the level of the world's rising oceans. Sophisticated dating techniques confirmed that 7,600 years ago the mounting seas had burst through the narrow Bosporus valley, and the salt water of the Mediterranean had poured into the lake with unimaginable force, racing over beaches and up rivers, destroying or chasing all life before it. The rim of the lake, which had served as an oasis, a Garden of Eden for farms and villages in a vast region of semi-desert, became a sea of death. The people fled, dispersing their languages, genes, and memories.
About the Author
William B. F. Ryan and Walter C. Pitman are senior scientists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and recipients of the Shepard Medal of excellence in marine geology.
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Myth as Coded Verbal History
By G. Joy Robins
William Ryan and Walter Pitman took up an exciting scientific puzzle and in solving it have answered a biblical question. Was Noah's flood real and if so, how and when did it happen? With state of the art underwater probing tools and laboratory techniques they carefully reconstructed the story of the Black Sea, once a fresh water lake that dried out and sunk far below sea level. As the melt water of the last glacial age filled the Mediterranean to overflowing, the natural dam on the Bosporus burst. The resulting rush of salt water quickly filled the lake and flooded large portions of the surrounding area.
They have dated the event to 7,500 years ago when humans, already engaged in agriculture, would have thickly populated the area, in response to the drought. An overwhelming event like this would surely have been recorded in the oral history and eventually came down to us in the Bible. As Elizabeth and Paul Barber point out in "When They Severed Earth from Sky" there are numerous mechanisms that condense and shape such stories of real events into myths. They are too important to be forgotten but over millennia they become coded.
In a kind of Tower of Babel effect, Ryan and Pitman imagine that this event propelled the migrations that may have spread agriculture into Europe and started the Semites, the Proto-Indo Europeans and the pre-dynastic Egyptians, among others, on their way. While there must have been a ripple effect from such a disaster, I think that is a stretch. In any case I plan to read more about that era, and reread the book just in case they are right about that too.
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
An epic adventure within an epic's origins
By Nils Young
Near the end of their chronicle of the discovery of the catastrophic Black Sea flood, authors Pitman & Ryan quote another researcher's wonder at the power of the oral tradition. The quote, from Albert Lord's analysis of the Trojan War epic, speaks to Pitman's and Ryan's research and their part in the oral tradition.
In truth, the story of the Black Sea covers more than plate tectonics, glaciation, human evolution or ten cubic miles of water flowing through a narrow channel in less than a day over seven thousand years ago. The neat trick with this book is that the authors have managed to include all that and more.
There are really two stories here. One is about the evolution of the human species from the Pleistocene to the present day, told in scientific language with scientific explanations for the actions & discoveries of the story's scientific participants. The other story is an epic tale of crafty researchers, cooperating scientists, story-tellers, myths and legends, told in skillfully written & documented prose that sweeps the reader along in the current of human successes, failures & terrors.
Beginning with Rawlinson's work in 1835 on a monument in Persia, Pitman & Ryan weave the reader through a fabric of time that is, as Lord is quoted saying, a past "of various times . . . assembled into the present performance." Using this motif, the authors introduce themselves only as two participants in a story of discovery, narrated by a fictive bard who is present only in the words. However the authors' parts in the discovery of the Black Sea flood event deserves respect. Meanwhile they have written a book that shows the respect they have for all who have been part of the story. Most importantly, they also have not forgotten the story itself.
In the final chapters Ryan & Pitman review the Black Sea's effect on history from the geological, genetic, linguistic and archeological evidence. They then compare this evidence with the numerous universal flood legends. Ryan & Pitman show how the power of the historical and geological event that created the Black Sea is the power behind the oral tradition. They then close the last chapter with the final lines of the story of Atrahasis: "I shall sing of the flood to all people! Listen!"
Most intriguing of all the information in this book is a dedication that includes a quote from the Gilgamesh epic. The dedication reveals the epic nature of the science and the mythos involved the Black Sea. It shows the sensitivity that the authors have for a legend and event that made humanity the species smart enough to wonder why and sensitive enough to pursue the wonder of life itself.
Whether you're interested in the science or the myth, Noah's Flood is a marvelous read. Clearly written, scientifically concise, sensitive to the human heritage in the rise of agriculture, language & story, it is worth the time you'll take in reading it. And you'll gain a sense for timeless wonder of the story within the words.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Away all boats!
By Mr. Joe
In NOAH'S FLOOD, oceanographers turned authors William Ryan and Walter Pitman propose an alternative scenario to Noah's tempest in a teapot.
With the help of other scientific disciplines - archeology, linguistics, geology, climatology, biology, paleoanthropology, paleography, paleontology - Ryan and Pitman hypothesize that the Great Flood tale in the Book of Genesis, as well as similar myths in older cultures, actually had as its source an apocalyptic flooding of the freshwater New Euxine Lake around 5,600 BC when the Adriatic, 500 feet above the lake, broke through the Bosporus isthmus and poured seawater into the former at a rate of ten cubic miles per day for at least a year, raising the lake's level six inches per day over that period, and forming the present-day Black Sea over perhaps two years. The water bill for that one must have been astronomical; don't try this at home.
The authors argue their case methodically. First, they describe a proven precedent, i.e. when the Atlantic breached the junction of North Africa and Spain at Gibraltar roughly 5 million years ago to flood a vast desert and create the Mediterranean. Second, they present data derived from underwater sonar scans and seabed core sampling that give evidence of a Black Sea basin that was originally a glacial melt-water repository, which subsequently shrunk through evaporation until it was those hundreds of feet below an Adriatic Sea swelling (like the rest of the Earth's oceans at the time) with that same glacial runoff. Third, they postulate the nature of the human residents that bore witness to the inundation of their lakeside homes and fields and subsequently fled towards all points of the compass to higher ground. And, more importantly, how the collective memories of the event were preserved and transmitted down through subsequent centuries in oral and written tradition. How far did those refugees flee? Amazingly, Ryan and Pitman have them and their immediate descendents traveling as far west as Paris, as far south as Egypt, and as far east as Chinese Turkestan.
The book included a few small maps, which were adequate, and some scattered drawings, some apparently based on photographs, that were pretty much useless as illustrative aids.
NOAH'S FLOOD is a fascinating and convincing exposition, especially if you don't take the Bible's Noah as "gospel" and you haven't been exposed to any other scientific explanation of the event. (I don't and haven't, and don't intend to ponder further an ancient people's mad rush to the boats. One credible explanation is satisfying enough. I'll leave the controversy surrounding the Ryan-Pitman theory to the theologians, historians, and scientists, who have turf to defend to the death.)
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