Before the Flood - Ian Wilson

Author's product rating:   

Degree of Information	High
How interesting was the book?	Mildly stimulating
How useful was it?	Of some use
Would you read it again?	Probably not
Value for money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	a good introduction to near eastern flood myth
Disadvantages:	a cut and past of ideas found elsewhere

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Ian Wilson is a big name in investigative historical writing, having turned his hand to such diverse subjects as Columbus, The Turin Shroud and Shakespeare; here he tackles another difficult subject, Noah's Flood. The flood of the Bible is largely seen as a myth, a fundamental creation story common to most cultures that provides a defined starting point for the distant ancestors of the culture in question, here the Hebrews of the Old Testament. There is however a couple of contexts that provides a possible reality for such a flood. One is the flooding of the river systems of Iraq, which came into the Hebrew tradition during the exile period in Babylon, but there is an earlier place for a near eastern flood legend to sit historically and this is where Wilson begins exploring.

The outline of the main idea in the book regards the creation of the Black Sea. Around seven thousand years ago this sea was as yet unconnected to the Mediterranean Sea, unlike today, but was a much smaller fresh water lake fed by Russian rivers. The Black sea shore has long been known to be an important area in the cultural evolution of man, agriculture, viticulture and metallurgy are just three important developments which are found in the archaeological record in this region and as such the villages and camps of this area were paramount in the development of these new technologies and ideas. As the sea levels were slowly rising due to the warming of the world climate the inevitable happened and the salt waters of the Mediterranean spilt over into the Black sea basin causing a massive inundation of the area. The populations of this area would have fled as the waters advanced on their homeland causing a mass migration, a migration that many generations down the line would be remembered as an epic flood that only their chosen ancestors survived by the will of their god.

Evidence for this flood has been previously documented in the book "Noah's Flood" by two eminent marine biologists named Ryan and Pitman whose study of fresh water organic remains and submerged geology were the first steps to the formation of this theory. Weight was added to their idea when Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the locations of both the Titanic and the Bismarck, found the evidence of ancient settlements lying deep under the waters of the Black sea on the original fresh water shoreline, thus showing that the sea was once much lower.

This book is very much a case of "standing on the shoulders of giants" to quote Newton, that is to say that a lot of the theories put forward in this book are the tail end of someone else's work, but that takes nothing away from it, this could be argued for most research. But that is possibly being a bit unfair to Wilson here, although the main thrust of the theory here is based on Ryan and Pitman's work there is a lot also the expands the boundaries they set on their work. I must confess even when Wilson moves the theory into other related areas I found none of what it had to offer that is particularly new. The threads that are explored here are paths that are well travelled and the book seems to have little to offer that isn't found elsewhere.

Although the book is easily followed and generous with its diagrams and maps, I would suggest that the book would only appeal to those new to this area of history. Between those authors I have already mentioned and others such as James Mellaart, and Stephen Oppenheimer, this ground is already covered and Wilson's book serves only to bring together relevant pieces of other peoples work. It is a good exploration of the theory of the Black Sea flood displacement of early cultures but not the best and had the book been released with a lesser-known authors name on the cover, I'm sure it would have gone unnoticed.