How did the Black Sea become salty? Was it because of a global flood circa 5,600 BC when the Sea of Marmara..?

Question

burst through where Istanbul and the Bosporus now are, filling the Black Sea with saltwater?

Or did the Bible story of a global flood simply affect the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq?

Or could global stories of a flood (reported in Alaska and Terra del Fuego) be the result of the melting of the continental ice masses 10,000 years ago?

I've just been reading a fascinating book by Frank Westerman - Ararat - In Search of the Mythical Mountain. Of course, Ararat is not mythical. It's in Armenia, Turkey, has an altitude of 5,165 metres, is a strato volcano and lies 39 degrees 42' north and 44 degrees 17' east.

Answer 1

If something flooded only the area of the Black Sea, how on earth can you call it a 'global' flood? Obviously it's not global, it's a local flood.

Stories of floods can be found throughout the world, simply because floods occur throughout the world. Humans have always lived in proximity to rivers and seas, and floods have always happened in those areas.

There is absolutely no evidence that a real *global* flood - ie one that covered the whole planet - has occurred. In fact we have lots of evidence that it didn't happen: geological, genetic (no genetic bottleneck in all species at the same time), cultural (written records from the Egyptians and the Chinese right through the period of the flood which supposedly drowned them all) and basic common sense (where did the water come from? where did it go to? How did Noah get all the millions of species on the ark, etc).

Answer 2

Yes, but ...

>Of course, Ararat is not mythical. It's in Armenia, Turkey, has an altitude of 5,165 metres,<

How sure can you be that the mountain we call Ararat is the one referred to in the Bible?  And if Noah landed on Ararat as the waters went down, that means that 5,165 meters worth of water went somewhere - the Bible doesn't mention God vanishing it.  That is a lot of water, would fill up a lot of caves, etc., and produce damage around the world like silt in all the caves - not seen.

Answer 3

It is the dead sea that is salty. No sea life can live in it that is why it is so called.

Answer 4

A lot of evidence points to the Mediterranean Sea flowing into the Black Sea about 5,600 BC (+/- a few hundred years).  Some scientists think it might have happened earlier, perhaps around 7500 BC.  William Ryan and Walter Pitman write that the in-flow was a flood, happening in one year.  Many other scientists think it was a gradual in-flow, taking a 1000 years or more.

Answer 5

the same way the Caspian Sea got salty. with no outlet the epaporation left the salt and others minerals in the water and over time it reached a point where it could be called saline.

Answer 6

The British Broadcasting Corporation put out a documentary in 1996 on Noah's Flood. William Ryan and Walter Pitman suggested that the Bosporus must have been formed suddenly circa 5,600 BC. They reckon that the salt waters of the Sea of Marmara cut through the low-lying ground and saltwater filled the Black Sea. They reckoned that this deluge, which probably destroyed all settlements around the Black Sea, was the same flood mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, the Quran and in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'.

Answer 7

By the late Miocene and early Pliocene (3-5 million years ago) the Sarmatic Sea had shrunk to the size of the Maeotic Sea. During that period a link to the ocean was again established, salinity increased and marine species of plants and animals settled in the sea. In the Pliocene (1.5 - 3 million years ago) the connection to the ocean was again severed, and the salty Maeotic Sea was replaced by the almost freshwater Pontian Sea-Lake. Within it the future Black and Caspian Seas were connected through the present-day northern Caucasus. Marine fauna disappeared from the Pontian Sea-Lake and were replaced by brackish-water fauna. To this day its representatives can still be found in the Caspian Sea, the Azov Sea and the regions of the Black Sea with reduced salinities. These species are today referred to Pontian relics or Caspian fauna, since they have been best preserved in the reduced salinities of the Caspian Sea. In the late Pontian stage the Earth's crust began to rise in the northern Caucasus, gradually isolating the Caspian Sea from the basin. From that period onwards the Caspian Sea, on the one hand, and the Black Sea and the Azov Sea, on the other, went their separate ways, although temporary links between them were formed from time to time.

  With the onset of the Quaternary Period and the Ice Age the salinity and species composition of the developing Black Sea continued to change, as did the outline of the sea. By the late Pliocene (less than one million years ago) the Pontian Sea-Lake had shrunk to the size of the Chaudian Sea-Lake. It had a reduced salinity, was isolated from the ocean and inhabited by fauna of the Pontian type. Evidently, the Azov Sea had not yet come into existence.