"Long before the splendid palaces and minarets of Istanbul lined its shore, the Bosporus was little more than a narrow spillway where fresh water from the ancient Black Sea flowed out to the Aegean Sea and on to the Mediterranean. Then rising sea levels worldwide brought about a cataclysmic reversal. Suddenly, sen water cascaded through the Bosporus with a force 400 times mightier than that of Niagara Falls, the terrifying sound carrying for at least 60 miles

Could it be. Dr. Ryan and Dr. Pitman speculate, that people driven from their land by the flood were, in part, responsible for the spread of farming into Europe and advances in agriculture and irrigation in the South, in Anatolia and Mesopotamia?

Could it also be, they ask, that the Black Sea deluge left such enduring mem-ories that this inspired the later story of a great flood described in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh?

If a memory of the Black Sea Flood indeed influenced the Gilgamesh story. then it could also be the source of the Noah story in the Book of Genesis."

-JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, THE NEW YORK TIMES