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

by Walter Pitman (Author), William Ryan (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2000

  $20.71

  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.

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $4.70

  Stories of major floods are preserved in the Bible and in the epic of Gilgamesh. But did they actually occur? This book details archaeological, genetic, linguistic and scientific evidence in attempting to answer this question. Archaeologists and oceanographers provide evidence that the sea once broke through the Strait of Gibraltar and flooded what was a fresh water Mediterranean basin. The repercussions of such an event are discussed.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $4.24

  For thousands of years, the legend of a great flood has endured in the biblical story of Noah and in such Middle Eastern myths as the epic of Gilgamesh. Few believed that such a catastrophic deluge had actually occurred. But now geophysicists have discovered an event that changed history, a sensational flood 7,600 years ago in what is today the Black Sea. Using sound waves and coring devices to probe the sea floor, they discovered 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. The authors explore the archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence suggesting that the flood rapidly created a human diaspora that spread as far as Western Europe, Central Asia, China, Egypt, and the Persian Gulf. They suggest that the Black Sea People could well have been the mysterious proto-Sumerians, who developed the first great civilization in Mesopotamia, the source of our own.