Noah’s Ark and the Black Sea

As far as we can tell, the earliest flood myth comes from the Sumerians, ancestors to the Babylonians and present-day Iraqis. It is the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of Noah are almost uncanny. Both tell of a patriarch who received divine warning of a coming flood. The patriarch was ordered to build a vessel, which would carry him, his family, and animals. Both stories even include the release of a dove, and the rainbow in the sky when the flood abates.

It could be that the Sumerians knew about the flood and developed the story of Gilgamesh. We can postulate that the story got passed around, until different nations and cultures in the region had a version, each reflecting certain nationalities and religions.

It could also be that the Hebrew, descendants of the Sumerians (and once victims of Babylonian conquest), took the story and added a Jewish spin to it.

That, however, is up for debate.

Yet, we should remember that the flood myths that inspire Jews, Christians and Muslims come from the Mid-East, the very region where these three faiths began.

(On a side note, other cultures, including the Maya (of Central America) had similar Flood legends. There are flood myths from China, India . . . all over the world. Each reflects a man and his family building some sort of vessel that will save them from the deluge, though each reflects particular nationalities, customs and religions.)

What does the geology do for the story of Noah? Not much, really.

The geology proves that a great flood from the pregnant Mediterranean created the Black Sea. We know that this is the home region of Noah and the Hebrew people; also, the various cultures that interacted with them. But the geology cannot prove anything of Noah or, for that matter, Gilgamesh.

But would Neolithic people have known about the flood that happened after the last Ice Age? No one can say for sure, but I would think that an advanced culture such as the Sumerians would have known something of it. They had knowledge of the stars that mirrors our own; their stone tablets show that they knew about Pluto six thousand years ago.

How they would know is another story altogether. Yet there must have been survivors – perhaps a man and his family – that passed down the story of the Flood.

Some believers take the story of Noah literally. Others take it symbolically, as a beacon of hope in dire times. But for believers and non-believers alike, it’s a matter of interpretation.

It’s not my job to prove or disprove any myth or legend. Whether any ancient story is true or not is a matter of belief. As a researcher, I see my job as trying to find how these stories develop and, possibly, why.

In either case, we know that a flood happened. It’s only natural, after all, for glaciers to melt and to raise the sea level at the end of an ice age. And we know that it was catastrophic; seventy percent of all life perished. It’s my feeling that the flood that created the Black Sea was one of many across the globe. To various cultures, it would appear that the entire world was flooding, for most of them did not know of distant lands.

Even though we’ll probably never know the full truth of the matter, the story of Noah leaves me pondering:

In the wake of our leaving nature behind, if we faced another Ice Age, and then another Flood, would we survive? Our ancestors did; otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. But we have yet to be tested on such a scale.