From The Times
November 19, 2007
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Was Noah’s flood a sign of climate change devastation to come?*

Yepoka Yeebo

Noah’s flood may have been responsible for the birth of modern
civilisation across Western Europe, according to research.

A deluge 8,000 years ago in what are now the Balkans is believed by some
to have given rise to the biblical story. It is being seen as a model
for the social upheaval that may result from sea-level rises caused by
climate change.

The research, led by Chris Turney, a geologist at the University of
Exeter, found that as early farmers from the Balkans travelled west
because of the flooding, their culture replaced that of the
hunter-gatherer tribes that they encountered. As they settled around
Italy and France, they established farming communities, which eventually
led to the growth of villages, towns and cities.

“People living in what is now southeast Europe must have felt as though
the whole world had flooded,” Professor Turney said. “This could well
have been the origin of the Noah’s Ark story. Entire coastal communities
would have been displaced, forcing people to migrate in their thousands.”

Those most affected by the flooding would have lived on low-lying land
around the shores of the Black Sea. Professor Turney said that the rise
in sea level 8,000 years ago is roughly in line with that expected
between now and the end of the century.

“It’s quite a sobering thought,” he said. “Something of the order of 145
million people are living within a metre of sea level today. This
research shows how rising sea levels can cause massive social change.
Eight thousand years on, are we any better placed to deal with rising
sea levels?”

Before the flood, the early farmers seemed disinclined to migrate. “They
didn’t expand any further across Europe,” Professor Turney said. “It
looks like they just stopped.”

The flood occurred at the end of the last Ice Age when the Laurentide
ice sheet covering much of North America collapsed, releasing vast
amounts of water and increasing global sea levels by up to 1.4 metres.

As the sea rose, it breached a ridge across the Bosphorus in Turkey,
that dammed the Mediterranean and had, up to that time, cut off the
Black Sea, which was a freshwater lake. Over 34 years the Black Sea
filled and overflowed.