 Undersea ruins point to Noah's flood
Undersea ruins point to Noah's flood
BY MARK HENDERSON, SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
THE remains of a Bronze Age village have been found more than 300ft below the Black Sea, offering the most compelling evidence yet for the Great Flood described in the Old Testament story of Noah. The Neolithic settlement 12 miles off the Turkish coast was found on Sunday by a team of scientists led by Robert Ballard, the American oceanographer who located the wrecks of the Titanic and the Bismarck, the National Geographic Society, which funded the expedition, said yesterday.
The discovery appears to prove that human beings lived on the coast of the Black Sea about 7,500 years ago, when it was a much smaller freshwater lake, before they were driven inland by a cataclysmic flood. Geological studies, including one by Dr Ballard last summer, have already uncovered strong evidence that such a flood did happen, when rising sea levels at the end of the Ice Age caused the Eastern Mediterranean to break through the natural dam of the Bosphorus and inundate the Black Sea.
Dr Ballard's latest findings show for the first time that human beings were killed or displaced by the flood, and suggest that an apocalyptic tale could explain the catastrophic inundations recounted in both Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. "We now know that people were living on that surface when that event took place, because we are now finding evidence of human habitation," he said yesterday. "This is an incredible find. It's clear a vast amount of real estate is underwater and that a vast amount of people were living around the Black Sea."
The remains, 12 miles northwest of the Turkish port of Sinop, consist of a building 12ft wide and 45ft long, with carved wooden beams. The architecture identified it as from the Neolithic Bronze Age, from 7,000 to 7,500 years ago, Dr Ballard said. It was found with the aid of sonar imaging from the surface ship Northern Horizon, and photographed from a remotecontrolled mini-submarine, which also found stone tools that appear to date from the same period. The structure is close to the mouth of a river,
No human remains have yet been discovered, which may suggest that the site was abandoned as the waters rose.
The researchers, who are in the third week of a five-week expedition, are now surveying the surrounding area for further evidence of human settlements. They plan to send divers to recover some of the artefacts for radiocarbon dating.
Fredrik Hiebert, the team's chief archaeologist, said the site was a "Pompeii of landscapes", and that the building seemed typical of other wattle and daub homes of the same period. "This find represents the first concrete evidence for the occupation of the Black Sea coast prior to its flooding," he said. "It will begin to rewrite the history of cultures in this key area between Europe, Asia and the Middle East."
Flood legends are common to several civilizations with roots around the Black Sea. In the biblical version, Noah's Ark is said to have come to rest on the summit of Mount Ararat, to the southwest of the sea.
Walter Pitman, a geologist from Columbia University who first advanced the Black Sea flood theory in the 1997 book Noah's Flood, said: "I certainly believed there had to be people living there but finding the structure was like finding a needle in a haystack."
www.nationalgeographic.com
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Dispatch 12: Analysis Begins
October 6, 2000
The following dispatch was supplied by Dr. Fredrik Hiebert, Chief Archaeologist of the Black Sea 2000 Expedition.
Since the report of the discovery of the habitation site (site 82) and its initial reporting the following has happened: We were granted permission from the Turkish authorities to move to a further stage of investigation sampling and actual testing of some of our observations. Thus, when we went in and investigated the site further, we found that suggested mud slabs were actually stone, and that the suggested stone artifacts were actually wood, etc. We now have samples from the site which we collected. I am sending them for scientific analysis.
Scientific Method in Action
We are in the process of learning about this flooded coastline. Every exposed rock and stone we see was clearly part of the landscape when this was dry land. It is very exciting to be the first to see this landscape since it flooded. With the discovery of this site, we now are in a position to fit it into our larger picture of the ancient cultures of the Black Sea area.
Archaeologists use the scientific method. Our assignment of this site as an ancient habitation site is a hypothesis. To test this hypothesis, we first need to have a model (something which is only partially known or unknown) in our heads of what the objects we could see were, and how they came to lie together on the floor of the Black Sea.
While the video images look just like ancient structures that we had seen on land, we had to consider other scenarios that could have produced a similar arrangement. Other interpretations that we must consider are that we were observing a natural geological outcrop that had accumulated wood over the years, a broken-up shipwreck, or even the debris from a modern depth charge.
Our job as scientists is now to devise tests that would allow us to exclude these interpretations and/or to offer support to our hypothesis the site was a human-built and used archaeological site. Using still cameras, we compiled a photographic map of all the features that we could see. Armed with this tantalizing picture, we approached the Turkish Ministry of Culture for permission to sample the site for scientific analysis. We were granted permission and the Northern Horizon returned to the site location. The opportunity to visit this submerged site was the thrill of a lifetime.
Twist of the Depths!
We jury-rigged a special recovery device for 'Little Hercules' an experimental addition that was put together on the boat.
It worked! We watched on the video while a flexible probe touched and lifted some of the objects. The texture, density, and shape of the objects on the screen became clear as Little Herc circled only a few feet above the Black Sea floor. For now, this is the closest that we will ever get to actually "seeing" the site with our own eyes. Later, a sampling bag allowed us to raise a few carefully chosen artifacts and other objects to the surface for examination and testing. In addition to these objects, we collected samples of the mucky deposit on the surface of the site.
What did this device allow us to learn? First of all, we found that the sedimentary blocks that appeared to be clay are actually stone, not mud. Second we retrieved several of the artifacts, and they turned out to be wood, not stone.
Many Neolithic and Bronze Age buildings have such stone foundations, just as many have wood and mud type architecture. We have to understand that people in the past used many types of building techniques, depending on the situation (I like to use the Three Little Pigs concept) during the same period. A culture can build buildings out of sticks, brick and stone. It is quite likely that the stones could have made a solid foundation for a building that was partially constructed under the ground, like a shallow pithouse. This new hypothesis is based upon learning from our testing and revising our model. Following this new scenario, the original surface might have been eroded by water to leave the surface that we see today.
Our closer look at the wooden artifacts confirms our first impression that they are the result of shaping by humans. They have smooth, symmetrical shapes and unmistakable traces of drilling to produce the holes visible on the videos. We don�t know a lot about ancient wooden tools since wood is rarely preserved in any form, but we can compare these objects with the tools for woodworking that have been found at sites on land, and with wooden objects produced by craftsmen in today�s traditional societies.
Scientific Analysis Begins
With samples in hand, we rapidly developed a plan for the analysis of materials that might represent an ancient land environment but which have also been in a cold, wet, Black Sea environment for an unknown number of years. Once we had consulted with an expert on conserving waterlogged wood samples, we proceeded with our highest priority, dating the wood samples using the supersensitive accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon technique. Only tiny samples are used for this technique. We chose fragments of six worked and natural wooden objects to submit to the laboratory. (Extracting these fragments did not destroy the objects.)
One test of the integrity of an archaeological site is whether a series of radiocarbon dates fall in a cluster in time. If we are told that the dates are quite recent, or represent a wide range of dates, we will have to reconsider our hypothesis of how the site was formed.
Using a new, refined model of what to expect if site 82 is an ancient structure, we plan to study the artifacts and deposits at a number of levels. The muck will be analyzed to determine its microscopic structure, its phosphate content (a signal for human occupation and trash), its possible content of charred or waterlogged seeds, bones, and shells, and any occurrence of pollen or silica cell wall remains of crops or other land plants. The wood itself will be identified and compared to modern and prehistoric forest cover in northern Turkey. At the same time, we will be examining the contours of the Black Sea floor to most precisely locate site 82 in its geographic context, both during the period it would have been on dry land, and since the time it must have flooded.
Our visual fix on site 82 using remote video technology was immediate and compelling. Now, we are excited to be able to test and evaluate our impressions, and to tie these finds to our other research projects on ancient Black Sea peoples.
Dr. Fredrik Hiebert
� 2000 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
Interview with Chief Archaeologist Dr. Fredrik Hiebert
September 9, 2000
The following is an abridged transcript of an interview with Dr. Fredrik Hiebert, Chief Archaeologist of the Black Sea 2000 Expedition. Hiebert is a professor of anthropology and archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania�s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, adjunct researcher at the Institute for Exploration, and an adjunct professor at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. The interview was conducted by online correspondent Sean Markey in the expedition control room onboard the Northern Horizon following the expedition team�s visual inspection of the settlement site with the remotely operated vehicle Little Hercules.
From my perspective, what we�ve done today is of world importance. We�ve discovered, for the first time, an ancient settlement which is located underwater in the Black Sea which relates to the settlements that we�ve been finding on land on the Black Sea coastline.
During [the] time...the Black Sea was a freshwater lake, it had a rich coastline. It had been proposed that people had been living around this coastline. But we had no proof of this. It was just an idea.
This morning we went back to one of the most promising of these sites. A site that was located right along a submerged river valley. A place that according to our on-land archaeological surveys would have been a key place for human settlement. As we approached the site, we were coming along the flat, slightly sloping plane of the bottom of Black Sea today. It was almost featureless. And then we approached our target and it was quite distinct. There really was very little change around this site. But as we approached it, we found a rectangular site some four meters, or 10-12 feet, across and maybe double that in length. It was astonishing, because rather than being a typical underwater feature that we�d seen before; a shipwreck or an anchor or any other of the debris that you might see on the bottom of the Black Sea; here were hewn beams in a rectangular form along with branches that seemed to be stuck in layers of mud. What we were looking at was a melted building made out of wattle and daub. Now, this is the typical type of construction for the ancient inhabitants along the Black Sea coast.
And here we�re seeing it under 300 feet [91 meters] of water. It was one of the most astonishing things I�ve ever seen.
We had a chance to drive over that and inspect it very carefully with our remotely operated vehicle. As we went very carefully over this site we began to see stone tools. These stone tools are pecked stone...not small blades...but seemed to be pecked or ground stone. I don�t know if they�re hammers or chisels. We are not touching anything. We�re just photographing them. We�re mapping them so that we have a good understanding of what this site is. So I�m not actually sure what these stone tools are. But it�s quite clear that they were worked by human hands. Some of them appear to be quite strongly polished.
We also found fragments of ceramics. These ceramics were literally exposed on the floor of this structure. It was amazing to see this because we imagine that the sediments would have covered them. But here on the ancient coastline sedimentation is so low that the ceramics were exposed. We were able to see that this structure more or less is in the shape of what we would think is an ancient house. It had ceramics. It had these ground stone implements. It had the clear remains of walls made out of mud with sticks and beams as their major construction.
This is a remarkable find. We need to study it more to understand its date. And also to look at the surrounding land to understand this building in the context of its settlement structure all along the coast.
So this is the first of what I hope to be is a really exciting series of discoveries this season, looking for ancient settlements along the submerged coastline.
� 2000 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
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If you will the rat race, your still a rat!
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2001-08-21, 03:08
