BLACK SEA
REVELATIONS
IA
ALBAN
An interesting scientific story about
the Black Sea was reported recently in
Science magazine (February 20, 1998).
Two U.S. oceanographers propose that
the sudden filling of the Black Sea by
Mediterranean Sea waters 7,550 years ago
had major impacts on the spread of agriculture throughout much of Europe.
This is a classic case of human-environmental relationships with major geographic connotations. The filling of the
Black Sea rates as the world’s most cataclysmic water event ever witnessed by
humans, and the regional human impacts
may well have been enormous.
The Black Sea is located in a structural
lowland north of Turkey’s Anatolian Plateau. Its east-west length is 750 miles and
its north-south width is 380 miles (1,207
by 612 km). With 196,100 square miles
(507,900 sq. km), its size is six times larger
than the largest U.S. Great Lake, Lake
Superior.
Today the Black Sea borders Turkey,
Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia and
Georgia. The Danube River is its largest
source of fresh water, but lesser source
rivers include the Dnieper and the Don.
The Black Sea and the Mediterranean
Sea are connected by two sets of straits
and two seas: the Bosporus strait, the Sea
of Marmara, the Dardanelles strait and
the Aegean Sea, an arm of the Mediterranean Sea.
To place the origin of the Black Sea in
perspective, it is important to realize that
the Mediterranean and Black seas occupy
depressions formed by plate tectonics.
Africa’s collision with Eurasia 40 million
years ago drove up the Alps and the
Anatolian Plateau and closed the Mediterranean basin from the ocean.
Since the Mediterranean basin freshwater sources were less than evaporation, the basin dried up except for a few
the time of the Black Sea’s being filled.
This leads the oceanographers to propose
that the relocation process involved the
rapid diffusion of Neolithic cultivated
agriculture and sedentary animal husbandry across central Europe.
Further speculation about the effects
of this event on humans and our history
involves the biblical flood and Noah’s
ark. The researchers propose that the rapid
filling of the Black Sea would have been
so traumatic for those farmers driven out
by the rapidly rising waters that stories of
the flood may have become part of
Sumerian myth and later the source of the
biblical flood.
Although scientific evidence supports
the filling of the Black Sea under the cataclysmic conditions described above, the
impacts on human patterns and agricultural diffusion remains a hypothesis.
There is no question that Europe’s climate warmed considerably following the
continental glaciers retreat about 10,000
years ago. This warming set the stage for
cultivating new crops. However, the 30
percent increase in surface area of the
Black Sea after its expansion and the warm
Mediterranean water that entered could
have moderated the regional climate, extended
Black Sea Shoreline Change
the growing season and
U K R A I N E
increased precipitation
of
R U S S I A
a
throughout Eastern EuSe zov
A
Krasnodar
rope. All of these factors
probably played a role
ROMANIA
in the regional geoB l a c k
Bucharest
graphic expansion of agS e a
Belgrade
Varna
riculture, as well as the
HUNGARY
BULGARIA
variety and successes of
Sofiya
crops.
0
300 mi
Istanbul
Skopje
0
Given these points, the
500
km
Ankara
Black Sea
hypothesis by the reBosporus
Aegean
TURKEY
GREECE
searchers in Science that
T U R K E Y
Sea
Istanbul
the relocation of people
a
r
a
m
ar
f M
a o
from around the Black
Se
Athens
Adriatic
TURKEY
Sea
Sea fueled the surge of
Dardanelles
e r r a n e
agriculture into Europe
a
i t
Black Sea Prior to Inundation
d
n
e
will be intensely tested
S e a Source: From R. Kerr, 1998. Science, 279:1132
M
CRETE
Geography in the News (#442)
maps.com ©2000 and debated.
The scientific method involves just such
to 6,000 feet (1,000 to 2,000 km.) of shoretesting of new hypotheses, or educated
line daily. This would have resulted in a
guesses. This is how new knowledge is
significant relocation of the inhabitants,
discovered, tested and either accepted or
not only along the shoreline but on the
rejected in both the physical and social
surrounding plain as well.
sciences.
Agriculture arose in Southwest Asia
And that is Geography in the News,
about 9,000 years ago and diffused within
May 7, 1998.
about 1,000 years to Greece, Romania and
Bulgaria. Its spread stagnated for a few
(The author is a professor and the chair of
hundred years, then it surged to spread
Appalachian State University’s Department
throughout Europe.
of Geography and Planning.)#442
The surge would have happened about
salt lakes.
About 5.3 million years ago, Africa
moved away from Europe, opening a fault
at the Strait of Gibraltar. A tremendous
cataract of salt water from the Atlantic
Ocean rushed through the opening and
filled the basin in the next 100 years.
The Black Sea, however, did not fill at
this time because the uplift of the
Anatolian Plateau blocked the future connection of these two water bodies. The
Black Sea depression resembled the
Caspian Sea of today, both being below
sea level.
According to the recent Science article,
the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea
were finally connected 7,500 years ago.
Although the cause of the event is not
fully known, a cascade of Mediterranean
water began pouring into the Black Sea at
the Bosporus.
Resembling the filling of the Mediterranean, although of lesser magnitude, 30
cubic miles (50 cubic kilometers) of water
poured daily through the narrow strait,
cascading about 500 feet (150 m.) into the
Black Sea.
The level of the Black Sea rose six inches
(15 cm.) per day, inundating perhaps 3,000
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