Noah's Flood - Walter Pitman

Everyone knows the story of Noah, his Ark and the world flood. Unfortunatly there is no evidence for a flood on that scale, so what is the story trying to portray. The book like many of its genre require the reader to regard the stories as a folk memory and not a literal story as laid out in the bible. So if the flood myth has a historical counterpart, what and more importantly where was it.

Ryan and Pitman, scientists from the Lamont-Doherty ...
...events that in their opinion not only provide the material for the Noah flood myth but also for other flood tales in the near east, such as Gilgamesh.

There theory in brief runs thus. About 7500 years ago the Black Sea area was the home land of a group of people who were pushing ahead the emerging technologies of the day. This is borne out by the archaeological evidence which shows that agriculture, metallurgy and vintnery all have ... more

Everyone knows the story of Noah, his Ark and the world flood. Unfortunatly there is no evidence for a flood on that scale, so what is the story trying to portray. The book like many of its genre require the reader to regard the stories as a folk memory and not a literal story as laid out in the bible. So if the flood myth has a historical counterpart, what and more importantly where was it.

Ryan and Pitman, scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York present a historical series of events that in their opinion not only provide the material for the Noah flood myth but also for other flood tales in the near east, such as Gilgamesh.

There theory in brief runs thus. About 7500 years ago the Black Sea area was the home land of a group of people who were pushing ahead the emerging technologies of the day. This is borne out by the archaeological evidence which shows that agriculture, metallurgy and vintnery all have their roots in this region. The Black Sea at this time was a fresh water lake, fed by the great Russian rivers in the north and unconnected to the salt water Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean broke through to inundate the fresh water lake, vastly raising the lakes water level. The sudden rise in water level caused the shore line cultures to desperse taking with them their cultural developments as well as a folk memory of a massive flood which almost wiped out mankind. This was adapted by their descendants and placed in a religious context to form the bulk of the flood stories, which all have many similarities because they all have a common stating point.

The evidence provided is convincing, and is helped by the fact that it is written from a geographical point of view and not a religious one, as these studies so often are. Using the latest techniques to find the evidence, such as sound wave and coring equipment, and working with scientists from the Black Sea region, they clearly show that the waters were not only lower, fresh and the home of an ancient culture long dispersed by the cataclysmic events. What also aids the story is that they start with a host of possible theories and one by one knock them down until only one plausible theory remains. This shows the path of objectivity taken to reach their final conclusions, which stand up well to scrutiny and are hard to deny as a likely candidate for Noahs Flood.
 

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