Noah’s Not-so-big Flood

Top: When sea levels were lower 10,000 years ago, the Black Sea was a large freshwater Black Lake. It was dammed off from the salty Mediterranean Sea by the then high-and-dry Bosphorus Sill. Some say the water level in Black Lake was 80 meters lower than it is today, but new research claims it was only 30 meters lower.

Bottom: Why is that important? Because as the ice age waned and sea levels rose, water overtopped the Bosphorus Sill into Black Lake. A controversial theory says this might be the source of the Noah’s flood story, but a new study claims that the Black Sea rose only about 5 to 10 meters, not a more catastrophic 50 to 60 meters. (Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)