Did ‘the real’ Noah’s Ark flood reconstruct early European society?

The concept of a nation being completely consumed by the waves is an alien one, and generally considered a new challenge for humans to confront. Whilst that may be true within modern society, historically, widespread forced migration in the aftermath of dramatic sea level rise appears to have occurred during the Holocene epoch. A study by Turney and Brown (2007) discussed the relationship between the catastrophic collapse of the Laurentide ice sheet, and a concurrent societal overhaul in Europe.

Between 8740 and 8160 BP, the ice sheet collapse released a dramatic deluge from Lake Agassiz in Canada. This became the biggest freshwater pulse in the North Atlantic for 100,000 years, and global sea levels rose by 1.4 m. It is also believed that this rise led to a breach of the Bospourous Strait, which had previously isolated the Black Sea as a freshwater lake, separate from the Mediterranean Sea. This initiated the event believed to be behind the biblical Noah’s Ark story; mass flooding of the Black Sea coastal areas.

The study used high precision marine dating to reconstruct the consequential shoreline changes to the Black Sea, and calculated a loss of nearly 73,000 square km of land over a 34-year period. This information was then correlated with available archaeological records of the area. The paper proposes that the coastal areas were originally populated by the first Neolithic, or farming communities. When sea levels rose, migration initially began as a direct result of the flooding, but there is evidence of high population pressure in neighbouring areas soon after the event. This appears to have initiated a second wave of movement and sparked an agricultural revolution. Originally, much of Europe was inhabited soley by Mesolithic hunter gatherers, but this point in history witnessed an abrupt transition to a sedentary, farming-based society. Therefore, Turney and Brown conclude that early Holocene sea level rise and the associated flooding played a significant role in the onset of the Neolithic across Europe.

This is just one example of the use of paleoscience to aid our understanding of past social change. Paleoclimate research has become, and will continue to be, an integral part of major debates concerning future adaptation and mitigation policies. The more complete our knowledge of the interactions between humans and past natural systems is, the more adequate our response is likely to be when similar pressures impose upon our modern society.