Noah's Flood Black Sea - from Steve Burdic - 244 LexiLine Journal

From Steve Burdic
January 16, 2004
...
http://www.webmesh.co.uk/nice/arcnews1.htm
"Remains found at bottom of the Black Sea indicate that Noah's Flood
was real

By Steve Connor
'The discovery of a manmade structure at the bottom of the Black Sea
off northern Turkey has lent powerful support to a controversial
theory suggesting Noah's Flood really happened. Marine
archaeologists have found the first evidence to suggest the floor of
the Black Sea had been inhabited about 7,500 years ago, until it was
inundated with a massive influx from the Mediterranean. Stone tools,
wooden branches and beams are among well-preserved remnants of the
structure 300ft down on the muddy seabed 12 miles off the coast. An
expedition funded by the National Geographic Society in America said
first pictures indicated people lived around the fertile shores of
an ancient freshwater lake before the area was transformed into the
Black Sea. Terry Garcia, head of mission programmes for National
Geographic, said: "The significance of this find is that for the
first time we will have established that human beings had settled in
this area and were occupying this area at the time of this
cataclysmic event." The excavation of the underwater site, once a
fertile river valley running into the ancient lake, has not as yet
shed light on whether the flood was instantaneous or a more gradual
event that allowed people to evacuate the area gradually. The
discovery supports the theory that the seabed was once populated
with a prehistoric farming community who had to flee the rising
waters, which could have prompted stories of a giant flood.
Historians have noticed similarities between the biblical account of
Noah's Flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Babylonian poem written in
the third millennium BC, suggesting both may be based on the same
historical event. Two American geologists, William Ryan and Walter
Pitman, suggested four years ago that the floor of the Black Sea was
once a freshwater lake surrounded by fertile valleys and plains
inhabited by the world's first farmers. They believe that as melting
glaciers from the last Ice Age raised sea levels, the Mediterranean
suddenly broke through the strip of land separating it from the
lower freshwater lake. Calculations suggested the inundation could
have caused a giant waterfall many times bigger than Niagara Falls,
pouring enough water into the freshwater lake to cause its surface
to expand by more than a mile a day. The marine archaeologists are
trying to retrieve samples of the submerged structures for
radiocarbon dating. Fredrik Hiebert, chief archaeologist on the
project, said: "This is a major discovery that will begin to rewrite
the history of cultures in this key area between Europe, Asia, and
the ancient Middle East.'"

Thanks Steve. Great article.