Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About The Event That Changed History |
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Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About The Event That Changed History
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by William Ryan and Walter Pitman
Sales Rank: 204765
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List Price: $15.00
$10.20
At Amazon
on 6-21-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 320 pages
Published by: Simon & Schuster January 25, 2000
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0684859203
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0684859200
Book Dimensions:
8.4 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
Weighs: 1 pounds
Product Review
The Deluge of Noah has long been one of the points of tension between geology and Christianity. Scientific diluvianism--the theory that the earth's history was shaped by a universal flood--collapsed in the early 19th century, well before Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species. Since that time, scientists and historians have assumed that the flood story derived from local events in Mesopotamia.
In 1997, geologists Walter Pitman and William Ryan proposed the first truly novel interpretation of the flood in over 150 years. Their studies of sediments in the Black Sea convinced them that the body had been a freshwater lake until about 5600 B.C. When the rising waters of the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus, "ten cubic miles of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara Falls."
With great intellectual daring, Pitman and Ryan have moved outside of their academic niche to suggest that this event had enormous consequences for human history. They marshal evidence from archeology, mythology, linguistics, and agriculture to describe a flood-driven diaspora of early farmers. Subsets of these people became (variously) proto-Indo-Europeans, Sumerians, Beaker People, Vincas, Tocharians--the founders of the early cultures of Europe and western Asia. --Mary Ellen Curtin
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Archeologists have long sought to prove that the great flood described in Genesis and in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh was a historic event. Columbia University geologists Ryan and Pitman weigh in with a highly conjectural theory that seems as good as any other, if no better. Around 5600 B.C., they maintain, Noah's flood occurred when rising Mediterranean waters roared through the narrow Bosporus Strait, transforming the Black Sea, then a freshwater lake, into a bloated saltwater body. Taking a cue from Australian prehistorian Gordon Childe, who posited that Europe's first farmers came from Asia, the authors contend that the Black Sea at the time of the alleged flood was a fertile oasis, a cultural magnet where diverse peoples?farmers, animal breeders, artisans?exchanged techniques and possibly genes. They point to the sudden appearance in Europe, shortly after 5600 B.C., of "outsider" tribes, advanced farmers who, the theory goes, were fleeing the flooded Black Sea region. Other flood refugees, in this scenario, migrated to Russia's steppes, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the Middle East, preserving memory of the catastrophe in mythic and oral traditions later enshrined on clay tablets and ultimately in the Bible. Ryan and Pitman base their theory partly on radiocarbon dating of marine sediments that they collected in 1993 during a Black Sea expedition and partly on Ice Age climatic patterns, modern linguists' quest for a proto-Indo-European mother tongue and genetic studies of population migrations over the millennia. Their complicated detective tale is intriguing, but much more solid evidence would be required to convince skeptics. Illustrated with drawings by Anastasia Sotiropoulos and maps by William Haxby. Agent, Roger Jellinek.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History (Hardcover)
Imagine standing on a the crest of a long hill. To one side is a broad, deep valley, a lake glistening in the morning sun. On the other side is the sea, the wind whipping the surf against the hill. One large wave sweeps up the beach into a cleft. Seawater pushes over the top, cascading into the valley, 150 metres below. Following waves enlarge the opening - within hours there's a steady flow of seawater. In days, the cascade is a deafening roar and the distant lake is rising 15 cm per day. People are fleeing as villages and fields are swept away or drowned forever. It's an event you will recount to your grandchildren. This is the scenario postulated by Ryan and Pitman that transpired less than seven thousand years ago. The Ice Age, they remind us, tied up immense amonts of sea water, dropping coastlines and leaving lowlands isolated. The cold, dry air spilling off the glaciers swept over a freshwater lake northeast of the Mediterranean Sea. The lake evaporated faster than the rivers feeding it could replace. Ultimately, the lake's surface was far below sea level, but the sea was restrained by a land barrier. Once breached, the salty ocean water poured through what is now the Bosphorus to flood the lake's basin. At its height, the flow must have been ten times that of Niagra Falls and gushed through the break at over seventy kph. Evacuation of settlements scattered populations in many directions. The Tigris-Euphrates valley provided one major refuge. There, people settled and the story of the great flooding would have been paramount in their legends. The revelation of how a flood myth became so important in the arid lands of Mesopotamia and Palestine was slow in exposure. The authors narrate the explorations of early researchers in these areas. Among the many revelations was that the Noachean Flood myth of the Hebrew Bible was actually taken from Babylonian sources during the Jewish Exile. Why should a desert people have a story about the inundation of the entire world? Ryan and Pitman relate how samples from the sea floor sediments indicate a bizarre and sudden shift in ancient sea life offered the first clues. It took high technology to reveal the details, the authors note, but hints were visible to those who knew how to look. Small boats still hang rock-filled nets deep into the waters of the Bosphorus because the deep, northward-flowing currents can pull small boats to the Black Sea against the surface water coming out of it. This is an excellent account of how scientific detective work merged with innovative thinking. The methods of investigation are well-detailed and the analyses explained clearly. The writers even studied the methods of passing oral traditions and how basic themes persist even when presentation style and emphasis may change. There are excellent maps and the illustrations are "personalised" by transforming photographs into drawings. The footnotes are page-referenced, making sources easily understood by the reader new to the topics, although a full bibliography would have enhanced the work. Since this book was published, support for the thesis has come from the finding of human habitation deep underwater along the Turkish Black Sea coast. On the other hand, a research team has challenged the idea of the Aegean Sea flooding the Black Sea, proposing that the process was reversed. Such is the delightful experience of reading science! [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About The Event That Changed History
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