Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About The Event That Changed History

If you're in a hurry, here is my short-version:"All myths are based on at least some actual history." With this bit of conventional wisdom in mind, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, both with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, take us on a multi-disciplinary tour of the waning centuries of the last glaciation, including one of the most traumatic events in human history, the flooding of the immense freshwater glacial lake "Euxine" by the Mediterranean Sea, and its sudden conversion (and expansion) into the poisonous, treacherous Black Sea.The authors weave together History, Archaeology, Linguistics, Paleo-Anthropology, Geology, Marine Geology, Organic Chemistry, Biology, and Marine Biology into a seamless, elegant tapestry. The writing is fluid and graceful, at times even poetic. The erudition is impressive but never oppressive; we get the sense that they had a lot of fun researching & writing the book (in spite of one of them apparently having lost a son at far too young an age), which makes it fun for us as well. There is enough technical detail to make their case, without getting bogged down - I don't believe the technical stuff should be a problem for any reasonably intelligent reader. There are copious maps and diagrams, and as a charming bonus, the illustrations are all done in free-hand black waterpaint - no photographs. Lastly, the bibliographical notes are exhaustive - at least a half-dozen books that I feel I can't live without.Recommendation: If any of the above-listed topics interest you, buy it. Easily one of my 10 best reads of the last 5 years.-------------------------------------------------------------If you'd like a little more detail, please read on:We are also given a concise survey of the beginnings of paleo-human research in the 19th century. As is well known, flood stories are ubiquitous across Eurasia, starting with our oldest epic, Gilgamesh, and the authors do an excellent job of conveying the mounting excitement in Europe as expedition after expedition sent back reports and artifacts confirming the historicity of the biblical flood (of course by the end of the 19th century this excitement would be tempered by the realization that flood stories were not confined to the Judeo-Christian world, and in fact were almost universal).Serendipitously, one of the authors was a junior researcher on the sea-floor coring & mapping expedition of the late `60s that discovered the mother of all floods, the Gibraltar waterfall of some five-million years ago which re-filled the Mediterranean Basin - it had been isolated from the Atlantic several million years before by the collision of North Africa and Spain and was completely desiccated. Imagine what a furnace that must have been, with an average depth of almost a mile and the Calypso Deep over three miles deep! (the Black Sea & Caspian Sea basins are also remnants of the ancient Sea of Tethys, which was "balkanized" by the collision of three crustal plates) And then a waterfall that refilled the basin in less than a century and probably made the ground shake for a thousand miles. If any of our hominid ancestors were in North Africa by then they must have been terrified.Having laid a solid foundation of scholarship, physical evidence and analytical techniques, Ryan and Pitman then consider the evidence for the Black Sea flood being The Flood. Very contrary to the Publisher's Weekly review above, the case is compelling - close to airtight in fact - and multi-threaded: Oral tradition, physical evidence and linguistics all point to a traumatic event and subsequent diaspora in the correct epoch; Germanic settlements have been identified as far away as the Takla Makan desert in western China. The physical evidence for a flooded shoreline and enlargement of the lake is irrefutable; evidence for a poisonous layer-cake combination of fresh water & salt water is well attested, both from modern testing and oral tradition (again, as far back as the Gilgamesh epic). Recent soundings of the Bosporus Strait have confirmed that the deep inner channel was gouged. Drowned villages have been found as far as twenty miles off-shore.Too, there is corroborating evidence in other floods - the mega-floods of the American northwest, including the channeled scablands of eastern Washington state, the Younger Dryas era which may have been caused by the collapse of the ice dam impounding glacial lake Agassiz, which engulfed the entire modern great lakes; and just this year, the discovery that the English Channel was gouged by a monster flood - another ice dam collapse. The Black Sea Flood was a special case where the world's oceans were literally beating down the door of a freshwater glacial lake, but there must have been thousands of collapsed ice-dam floods along the latitudes of the retreating glaciers. This raises the possibility of a new line of research, a new earth sciences sub-discipline - Eluvieology or something - which would also combine Archaeology, paleo-anthropology, and the exact earth sciences.

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.

This is a record of authors experiences during scientific research in Mediterranean and Black seas. The gathered facts and the conclusions summarize some of the most recent discoveries related to geological and biological history of the seas providing new evidence the flooding of the seas were historical events. It would be more useful and more informative if the literature figures and travel narratives were less and the science information more. Nevertheless the story is captivating and expands the worldview of the reader tremendously.

Great research by two scholars , explaining the original Flood stories .

Nice book, it said it was in good condition, to be honest it's in very good condition considering it's a second hand book, delivery was great, fast and efficient

Ottimo libro.Fatto bene e buone anche le rifiniture.Arrivato prima dei giorni previsti e l'mballo era ben curato. Lo trovato grazie ad amazon.

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A must-read book!