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| WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 — Archaeologists said yesterday they have discovered the remains of a man-made structure more than 300 feet below the surface of the Black Sea, providing dramatic new evidence of an apocalyptic flood 7,500 years ago that may have inspired the Biblical story of Noah. | |||
| ‘It
is beyond our wildest imagination.’
— ROBERT D. BALLARD leader of the expedition |
THE EXPEDITION ALSO spotted planks, beams, tree branches and chunks of
wood untouched by worms or mollusks, a strong indication that the oxygen-free
waters of the Black Sea’s 7,000-foot-deep abyss may shelter intact shipwrecks
dating back to the dawn of seafaring.
“It is beyond our wildest imagination,” explorer Robert D. Ballard, leader of the expedition, said yesterday. “Wood is existing much shallower than we thought. When we do go deep, it can only get better.” The discovery is the latest from the Black Sea project to look for ancient shipwrecks and perhaps evidence of a great flood. Late last year, the team discovered the outlines of an ancient coast 550 feet below the current waterline, the first visual evidence that a flood had occurred in the region eons ago. This month, working from a ship 12 miles east of the Turkish port city of Synope, Ballard’s team used special “side-scan” sonar to map anomalies on the sea floor, then sent a robotic submersible to investigate the most promising sites. At 311 feet, the submersible found a collapsed rectangular building 39 feet long and 13 feet wide, “about like a good-sized barn,” Ballard said in a telephone interview from the site. University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert described the construction technique as a “cluster of wood stuck in a clay matrix” – traditional Black Sea “wattle and daub” architecture: “This struck a bell, because it was familiar to me from land,” Hiebert said. “Literally my jaw dropped.” The expedition also found old tree branches, pieces of wood and a trash heap with polished stones and other debris indicating human habitation, Ballard said. In the same general area, the submersible identified two old shipwrecks with many intact wooden planks and ceramic amphorae – jars used in ancient times to transport liquids such as olive oil or wine. Researchers are unsure if they are from the same period or related to an ancient flooded settlement. INTENSE AREA OF INTEREST |
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Archaeologists have long been interested in the Black Sea, because its
waters are anoxic – lacking in oxygen – below a depth of 500 feet. In theory,
organic material that shipworms quickly gobble elsewhere would lie untouched
in the Black Sea’s sterile depths. Later this month Ballard plans the first-ever
exploration of the Black Sea floor.
Interest in the Black Sea quickened last year with the publication of “Noah’s Flood,” by Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman, suggesting that the modern-day sea was formed 7,500 years ago when melting glaciers raised sea level until the waters of the Mediterranean breached the natural dam at the Bosporus. According to the theory, a cataclysmic deluge followed. Seawater from the Mediterranean poured into the Black Sea basin at 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls. The heavier salt water plunged to the bottom of the existing fresh water lake and began to fill the basin like a bathtub. The theory holds that the rising lake-sea inundated and submerged thousands of square miles of land, destroying communities, killing people and wiping out uncounted species of plants and animals as the ecosystem flipped from fresh water to salt water in a period of only two years. The flood also created a two-layered body of water, which permanently interfered with the normal convection that brings deep water to the surface for oxygenation. The less dense fresh water lay like a lid on top of the denser Mediterranean water, sterile once its original oxygen had been used up. Today the top 500 feet of the Black Sea supports a thriving marine life, but the rest is as dead as the ancient day when the flood waters settled. |
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Scholars regard both the book of Genesis and the story of Noah as legends
written between 2,900 and 2,500 years ago, and have questioned whether
any natural disaster could be conclusively identified as the inspiration
for Noah’s flood.
Still, the event described by Ryan and Pitman appears horrible enough to be remembered by scribes and poets long enough to become the source of the Biblical story. JOLT FOR BIBLICAL
SCHOLARS
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
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