You can perhaps understand the consternation of the multitudes who lived (and died) in the basin that is now the Mediterranean Sea, and then also those who lived in what is now the Black Sea.
Not to mention all those that lived along the Indian coast line or the uncountable millions that perished in the land masses stretching from Asia to Australia and up the Japan and Korea and over to North America. And also the submergence of Doggerland connecting the UK with Europe. The ME was just a small part of the world effected by the unimaginably enormous volumes of water released into the oceans.