Chapter 6
Boreal Submerged Black Sea Landscapes
Gilles Lericolais
Abstract In 1999 William B. F. Ryan and Walter C. 3rd Pitman suggest in their
book: “Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed
History”, that the Black Sea, once a much smaller land-locked freshwater lake, was
deluged about 7,500 years ago with salty water destroying the fertile plains around
the once-shallow freshwater lake. For them, this would have happened when sea levels rose beyond a Bosporus critical point letting the Mediterranean Sea overflowed
into the Black Sea basin. In this, Ryan and Pitman proposed that such a catastrophic
event is likely to have remained in the collective memory leading to the creation of
the story of Noah and the great flood. Since then, a vigorous debate arose between
researchers in this region and the scientific community. As this debate concerns more
the question of flood myths that are common in many early cultures, most of concerned researchers get to a point where they can’t see the wood for the trees meaning
they did not consider the scientific results obtained from observations collected by a
series of expeditions and showing that outside the cultural concerns, the Black Sea
encountered a late major sea level rise during the Holocene. Here a synthesis on the
assessment of the last sea-level rise in the Black Sea is presented. Numerous underwater surveys had collected data which interpretations evidence recent submerged
landscapes somewhere around—100 m depth on the western Black Sea shelf consistent with a major low stand level witnessing that the Black Sea shelf was emerged at
the beginning of the Holocene. Such important collections of data bring highlights to
the debate regarding the precise timing and amplitude of the reconnection between
the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea about 9,000 years ago.
Keywords Holocene · Rapid sea-level rise · Bosporus · Underwater surveys · Flood
G. Lericolais ()
IFREMER, Direction des Affaires Européennes et Internationales,
92138 Issy-les-Moulineaux Cedex, 155, rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, France
e-mail: Gilles.lericolais@ifremer.fr
O. Musard et al. (eds.), Underwater Seascapes, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03440-9_6,
73
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
Boreal Submerged Black Sea Landscapes
Gilles Lericolais
Abstract In 1999 William B. F. Ryan and Walter C. 3rd Pitman suggest in their
book: “Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed
History”, that the Black Sea, once a much smaller land-locked freshwater lake, was
deluged about 7,500 years ago with salty water destroying the fertile plains around
the once-shallow freshwater lake. For them, this would have happened when sea levels rose beyond a Bosporus critical point letting the Mediterranean Sea overflowed
into the Black Sea basin. In this, Ryan and Pitman proposed that such a catastrophic
event is likely to have remained in the collective memory leading to the creation of
the story of Noah and the great flood. Since then, a vigorous debate arose between
researchers in this region and the scientific community. As this debate concerns more
the question of flood myths that are common in many early cultures, most of concerned researchers get to a point where they can’t see the wood for the trees meaning
they did not consider the scientific results obtained from observations collected by a
series of expeditions and showing that outside the cultural concerns, the Black Sea
encountered a late major sea level rise during the Holocene. Here a synthesis on the
assessment of the last sea-level rise in the Black Sea is presented. Numerous underwater surveys had collected data which interpretations evidence recent submerged
landscapes somewhere around—100 m depth on the western Black Sea shelf consistent with a major low stand level witnessing that the Black Sea shelf was emerged at
the beginning of the Holocene. Such important collections of data bring highlights to
the debate regarding the precise timing and amplitude of the reconnection between
the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea about 9,000 years ago.
Keywords Holocene · Rapid sea-level rise · Bosporus · Underwater surveys · Flood
G. Lericolais ()
IFREMER, Direction des Affaires Européennes et Internationales,
92138 Issy-les-Moulineaux Cedex, 155, rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, France
e-mail: Gilles.lericolais@ifremer.fr
O. Musard et al. (eds.), Underwater Seascapes, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03440-9_6,
73
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014