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Gatekeeper
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United States of America
Feb 2000
time: 23:29
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Everyone:
OK, here's the article I promised over the weekend, but had to hang on to due to an embargo that conveniently expired earlier on Monday. Read through it — it's fascinating, but quite lengthy — and contribute to this thread as you see fit afterwards.
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quote:
Scientists hunt for evidence of Noah’s flood
Examine ancient ships in Black Sea
By RICHARD C. LEWIS
Associated Press Writer
NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — In 1994, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert rode around northern Turkey in a dirty white Toyota van looking for evidence of ancient civilizations around the Black Sea.
Every time he and his team would ask locals for the whereabouts of centuries-old ruins, they’d get the same response. ‘‘Everyone kept pointing us to the sea,’’ Hiebert recalled.
Hiebert knows now why they did. After some preliminary trips, the University of Pennsylvania professor and other scientists will go on a first-ever effort to excavate ancient ships and a possible human settlement left mummified in the Black Sea’s oxygen-free waters.
Scientists hope what they retrieve will help them understand vastly unknown chapters in human history, covering perhaps the Bronze Age, the Roman and Byzantine empires, and when Christianity first made inroads into Russia.
Another goal of the $5 million, two-week expedition beginning July 27 is to find evidence of a great flood about 7,500 years ago that inundated the Black Sea, turning the freshwater lake into a saltwater ocean. Some scholars have said the engulfing could be the Biblical flood of Noah. Others say the theory lacks any scientific premise and complain it could overshadow the more noteworthy experiments that will take place.
The expedition will be watched live by academics and experts worldwide who may be called upon by those on the ship to comment on any discoveries. Schoolchildren also will able to tune in, at Robert Ballard’s Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Conn., and other places.
The so-called ‘‘telepresence’’ is the brainchild of Ballard, the underwater explorer who discovered the Titanic. He has established the Black Sea’s command center at the University of Rhode Island. There, engineers will take satellite feeds from the ship, and broadcast them on a separate Internet channel.
‘‘Exploration by its very nature means you don’t know what you’re going to find,’’ the 61-year-old Ballard said. ‘‘So, in fact it’s very probable you’re not going to have the right mix of specialists when you make a discovery.’’
Ballard chose Rhode Island as the mission’s nerve center because he’ll chair a first-ever graduate program in oceanography and archaeology beginning in fall 2004. Ballard got his doctorate in marine geology and geophysics from the school in 1974.
The team will be working off the coast of Sinop. Scholars have determined it was a major trade hub for centuries. Scientists believe the locals transported olive oil, honey and iron in carrot-shaped shipping jars called amphorae north to Crimea in exchange for wine and other goods.
Hiebert and other archaeologists had thought the traders hugged the coast on their routes. But Ballard suggested explorers look for north-south trade lanes in the middle of the Black Sea, which would have been a direct, shorter route for the merchants. He knew the deepest waters had no oxygen, meaning any finds would be in immaculate condition.
Searchers have found four shipwreck sites in previous expeditions. One of them, dubbed ‘‘Shipwreck D,’’ is so well-preserved in the Black Sea’s anoxic waters that its hand-carved mast protruding above the seabed looks as good as new.
On this trip, archaeologists hope to get a better look at ancient shipbuilding, and if they’re lucky, some cargo. The ship could contain burlap bags with grapes, a trader’s lunch of lentils, or goods such as silk from Asia, said Cheryl Ward, a nautical archaeologist at Florida State University.
‘‘It’s the wood and what’s inside that is a secret,’’ said Ward, who’s leading Shipwreck D’s study.
Underwater settlement
At another location about 330 feet underwater, the explorers think they may have found a settlement that could be more than 7,500 years old. Scientists theorize the rectangular-shaped site was a hunter or fisherman’s house on a bluff overlooking the water before the Black Sea flooded, wiping out the homestead.
Ballard and his team of engineers have built a 7-foot-tall robot named Hercules that will gingerly dig around the ruin and gather artifacts, much like an archaeologist would on land.
‘‘If we’re successful with this, we’re going to change the field of archaeology,’’ said Hiebert, the 42-year-old who’s leading the settlement project. ‘‘It’ll open coastlines all over the globe (to excavation).’’
Scientists also are interested in the ruin, because it could finally clinch the Noah flood theory that has gained the most attention for the trip — and the most criticism.
Monstrous Black Sea Flood
There’s no dispute that the Black Sea was flooded when rising world sea levels caused the Mediterranean to fill the Black Sea. Prior expeditions show the flood was so monstrous it raised water levels by 511 feet, and submerged up to 60,000 square miles of land, an area the size of Georgia.
The questions are when did it happen, and how rapidly? Until recently, scholars believed the drowning occurred about 9,000 years ago and was gradual. But marine geologists Walter Pitman and William Ryan wrote in 1997 that the flood was sudden and took place about 7,150 years ago. The scientists’ conclusions reinvigorated the Noah flood debate, which the Bible chronicles as a calamitous event spanning 40 days and 40 nights.
Scholars are wary of the revised theory, saying it’s virtually impossible to prove an event from an ancient text. Also, some scholars note that the Bible’s version has Noah living in a desert in Mesopotamia, while the pre-flood coastline of Turkey was a lush, forested area.
‘‘It bugs me a little bit,’’ Hiebert said, ‘‘because I like the Noah story as much as anybody. I think we shouldn’t try and peg what we’re doing to either prove or disprove it. We’re never going to get there.’’
Nevertheless, even skeptics such as Hiebert acknowledge the debate has given the expedition more attention than it would have gotten otherwise.
‘‘I wish all my classes had a million and a half people in it,’’ he joked.
On the Net:
Institute for Exploration: http://www.ife.org
National Geographic Society: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea
University of Rhode Island: http://www.uri.edu |
***
If these scientists really do uncover drowned settlements hundreds of feet beneath the waters of the Black Sea, it will really upset the established historical record, IMO.
Also, in regards to the Great Flood story, it's well-known that stories often change and are embellished as time passes by. It's likely the same thing happened here — perhaps Noah's people came across the story (which is possible; I've read that it may have ties to the Gilgamesh epic) and simply "customized" it to fit their own experience.
I'm rooting for a shocking discovery ...
Gatekeeper
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Jack the Bodiless
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Converted underground reservoir tank.
Jan 1970
time: 05:29
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quote:
Scholars are wary of the revised theory, saying it’s virtually impossible to prove an event from an ancient text. Also, some scholars note that the Bible’s version has Noah living in a desert in Mesopotamia, while the pre-flood coastline of Turkey was a lush, forested area. |
Then "some scholars" are none too bright (let me guess: fundies?)
The Hebrews got the story from the Babylonians, who got it from the Sumerians. Who may have gotten it from older peoples, who may well have come from the Black Sea region. There's no way of knowing how many of the details have changed. "The Bible doesn't say that..." is such a braindead argument.
As for why there are Flood stories all over the place: yes, the rise in sea level at the end of the Ice Age was a worldwide phenomenon, and would have triggered various events like the Black Sea inundation. There's also the fact that civilizations tend to grow around rivers (which flood), and also the existence of marine fossils on dry land: not knowing about plate tectonics, our ancestors could make exactly the same erroneous assumption as modern creationists who get excited about seashells on Everest.
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Gatekeeper
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United States of America
Feb 2000
time: 23:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Boris Godunov
How so? We've known for sometime that there was a huge flood in the area of the Black Sea c. 9,000 BC. The fact that there are ancient settlements doesn't change any history--such ancient settlements were all over the ME at the time. Whether or not the flood was a sudden catastrophe or gradual is interesting, but it will hardly change the historical record significantly. |
Actually, it was quite controversial to even suggest — until the last few years, anyway — that the seabed of the Black Sea might contain the remnants of indunated home, villages and whatnot.
Furthermore, it's fascinating that what they suspect they're finding is often *hundreds* of feet beneath the waters of the Black Sea. This isn't some podunk settlement washed out beneath 30 feet of water 2000 years ago. This could be settlements — advanced settlements, given the timeframe — that were wiped out between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago by a rapidly-rising sea. Who knows? Maybe these lost civilizations were the true source of the Atlantis myth, hmm? Perhaps Noah's Flood and Atlantis are entertwined, and now we're just beginning to uncover this commonality.
Gatekeeper
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Gatekeeper
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United States of America
Feb 2000
time: 23:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Lung
I love it how creationists are salivating at this prospect, as though somehow the flood at the heart of the Noah myth will prove the myth, hence the ark, hence the bible, hence god 
And they dare criticise scientists of using circular reasoning! 
In any case, lies usually are originally based in truth. The happenstance of a flood proves nothing more than that there was... a flood  |
Insofar as I can tell, Lung, there's not a single creationist quoted in the article I posted. It's all about scientists who are using ancient source material to see if there's anything to events such as the Great Flood other than mythology or legend.
I am certainly not a creationist, nor a Bible-thumping religious person. But that doesn't mean you simply disregard everything that's written in these ancient tomes. They're often decent *starting* points for serious archaeological exploration (although that has been abused in the past by, ahem, religous-minded "researchers").
Ballard, et al., are hardly ones to go after something like this on a whim. It's a serious effort to ascertain if the Black Sea is hiding ancient secrets about our common past. Hell, if they find anything, they'll start looking all over the Med next (recently, an ancient Egyptian city ... Alexandria, I think ... was found offshore, sunken beneath water). And off the coast of Cuba, there's supposed to be a mysterious alleged city sitting on the sea bottom.
Gatekeeper
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Lord Merciless
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quote:
Originally posted by Olaf Hårfagre
I think it is a very amazing thought that pre-historic people that we know very little about were as smart and social as us. |
Smart and ignorant. Without knowledge, you are still a moron regardless how well your brain is built.
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22-07-2003 11:39
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