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An ancient flood some say could be the origin of the story of Noah's Ark may have helped the spread of agriculture in Europe 8,300 years ago by scattering the continent's earliest farmers, researchers said on Sunday. Using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence, a British team showed the collapse of the North American ice sheet, which raised global sea levels by as much as 1.4 meters, displaced tens of thousands of people in southeastern Europe who carried farming skills to their new homes. The researchers said in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews their study provides direct evidence linking the flood...

Ocean explorer Robert Ballard, who is responsible for the discovery of the Titanic shipwreck, says he may have discovered evidence of the Great Flood described in the Book of Genesis. Ballard is now on a mission to find evidence that the "mother of all floods" actually occurred, he told Christiane Amanpour of ABC News. "We went in there to look for the flood," he told ABC News. "Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed... The land that went under stayed under." The explorer's mission was prompted by research conducted...

The story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood is one of the most famous from the Bible, and now an acclaimed underwater archaeologist thinks he has found proof that the biblical flood was actually based on real events. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC News, Robert Ballard, one of the world's best-known underwater archaeologists, talked about his findings. His team is probing the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey in search of traces of an ancient civilization hidden underwater since the time of Noah. Tune in to Christiane Amanpour's two-part ABC News special,...

Archaeologists have found evidence that appears to support the theory that a catastrophic flood struck the Black Sea region more than 7,000 years ago, turning the sea saline, submerging surrounding plains and possibly inspiring the flood legends of Mesopotamia and the Bible. In their first scientific report, the expedition leaders said that a sonar survey conducted in the summer of 2000 in the sea off Sinop, a city on the northern coast of Turkey, revealed the first distinct traces of the preflood shoreline, now about 500 feet under water. At one site, the sonar detected more than 30 stone blocks ...

Did a catastrophic flood of biblical proportions drown the shores of the Black Sea 9,500 years ago, wiping out early Neolithic settlements around its perimeter? A geologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and two Romanian colleagues report in the January issue of Quaternary Science Reviews that, if the flood occurred at all, it was much smaller than previously proposed by other researchers. Using sediment cores from the delta of the Danube River, which empties into the Black Sea, the researchers determined sea level was approximately 30 meters below present levels—rather than the 80 meters others hypothesized. “We don’t...

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Part of International Research Group Refuting Popular Theory In 1996, marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman published a scientifically popular hypothesis, titled Noah's Flood Hypothesis. The researchers presented evidence of a bursting flood about 7,500 years ago in what is now the Black Sea. This, some say, supports the biblical story of Noah and the flood. But, such a forceful flood could not have taken place, says Jun Abrajano, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer. He is part of an international team of scientists who refute the so-called Noah's Flood Hypothesis. Abrajano cites...

Did the great flood of Noah's generation really occur thousands of years ago? Was the Roman city of Caesarea destroyed by an ancient tsunami? Will pollution levels in our deep seas remain forever a mystery? ~snip~ "When I was looking for a partner, I needed to find a team of marine scientists who were leaders in their fields," says Weil, a Swedish environmental philanthropist who helped conceive and fund the idea of giving a free, floating marine research lab to any scientist who needed it. "I didn't want us to be just another Greenpeace group of environmental activists. My dream...

<p>Scientists are seriously challenging a recent, fascinating proposal that Noah's epic story - setting sail with an ark jam-full of animal couples - was based on an actual catastrophic flood that suddenly filled the Black Sea 7,500 years ago, forcing people to flee.</p> <p>In a detailed new look at the rocks, sediments, currents and seashells in and around the Black Sea, an international research team pooh-poohs the Noah flood idea, arguing that all the geologic, hydrologic and biologic signs are wrong. Little that the earth can tell us seems to fit the Noah story, they say.</p>

"And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered." Genesis 7, verses 19-20 Stories about cataclysmic floods prompted by angry deities have abounded in European and Asian mythology for thousands of years, but geologists paid little heed. Then, in 1997, two Columbia University geology professors, Walter Pitman and William Ryan, stunned the earth-science community with their theory that there had, in fact, been a great deluge around 7,000 BC -- the same time that the Bible says ...

A group of scientists and archeologists from Canakkale (Dardanelles) University have found traces of a lost city, older than famed Troy, now buried under the waters of Dardanelles strait. Led by associate professor Rustem Aslan, the archeology team made a surface survey in the vicinity of Erenkoy, Canakkale on the shore. The team has found ceramics and pottery, what led them to ponder a mound could be nearby. A research on the found pottery showed that the items belonged to an 7000 years old ancient city. The team has intensified the research and discovered first signs of the lost city...

<p>In 1994, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert rode around northern Turkey in a dirty white Toyota van looking for evidence of ancient civilizations around the Black Sea. Every time he and his team would ask locals for the whereabouts of centuries-old ruins, they'd get the same response. "Everyone kept pointing us to the sea," Hiebert recalled.</p>

Making Waves Over Noah’s FloodSome research backs the biblical story and some finds no evidence of the catastrophe By Robert Cooke STAFF WRITER January 14, 2003 Scientists are seriously challenging a recent, fascinating proposal that Noah's epic story - setting sail with an ark jam-full of animal couples - was based on an actual catastrophic flood that suddenly filled the Black Sea 7,500 years ago, forcing people to flee. In a detailed new look at the rocks, sediments, currents and seashells in and around the Black Sea, an international research team pooh-poohs the Noah flood idea, arguing that all the...

Bulgarian scientists have found the ancient shores of the Black Sea, currently deep beneath the waves, which they claim were the original shores about 7500 years ago, when the Black Sea at the time was just a fresh water lake... The team, led by Professor Petko Dimitrov of the Institute of Oceanology in Varna, which is part of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), returned from an expedition aboard the research vessel Akademik, saying that they have found the ancient coastline close to the Cape of Emine. Archaeological evidence suggest that this particular spot was part of the ancient coastline,...

Questions about Noah's Flood Theory Many scientists accept the idea that the biblical story of Noah's flood was inspired by a sudden inundation of the Black Sea by the Mediterranean 7500 years ago. But new research suggests no such flood occurred. Geologists Bill Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University crafted the "Noah's Flood Hypothesis" in 1997 to explain the sudden appearance of saltwater mollusks in 7500-year-old Black Sea sediments. They proposed that during the last Ice Age, some 18,000 years ago, sea levels dropped enough to isolate the Black Sea from the Mediterranean Sea. Rain and rivers then turned...

Posted 7/16/2003 2:45 PM Scientists hunt for evidence of Noah's flood in Black Sea NARRAGANSETT, R.I. (AP) — In 1994, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert rode around northern Turkey in a dirty white Toyota van looking for evidence of ancient civilizations around the Black Sea. Every time he and his team would ask locals for the whereabouts of centuries-old ruins, they'd get the same response. "Everyone kept pointing us to the sea," Hiebert recalled. Hiebert knows now why they did. After some preliminary trips, the University of Pennsylvania professor and other scientists will go on a first-ever effort to excavate ancient ships...