Black Sea deluge theory

The Black Sea deluge is a hypothesized catastrophic rise in the level of the Black Sea circa 5600 BC due to waters from the Mediterranean Sea breaching a sill in the Bosporus Strait. The hypothesis made headlines when The New York Times published it in December 1996, shortly before it was published in an academic journal.NYT 1996Yanko-Hombach et al. 2007 The oscillating hypothesis specifies that over the last 30,000 years, water has intermittently flowed back and forth between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea in relatively small magnitudes, and does not necessarily presuppose that there occurred any sudden "refilling" events.

Flood hypothesis

In 1997, William Ryan and Walter Pitman published evidence that a massive flooding of the Black Sea occurred about 5600 BCE through the Bosporus, following this scenario. Before that date, glacial meltwater had turned the Black and Caspian Seas into vast freshwater lakes draining into the Aegean Sea. As glaciers retreated, some of the rivers emptying into the Black Sea declined in volume and changed course to drain into the North Sea.National Oceanographic and......
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