Memories of The Ice…
Those who study human history tend to envision a largely unbroken arc leading from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (with perhaps a quick glance at the culture of the Indus valley) through the Greek and Roman cultures… culminating in the ‘glories’ of European civilisation. This is what any high school textbook on ‘World History’ will tell you.
In the generally ‘accepted’ version, around 5,000-6,000 years ago, people started building large stone and brick structures, from the circular ‘henges’ of the British Isles to the great pyramids of Egypt and the ziggurats along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Writing soon followed, according to this account, and thus – ‘history’ began.
But is it true?
The last Ice Age ended around 12,000 years ago or ca. 10,000 BCE. By this time modern humans were well established as nomadic hunter-gatherers throughout the ‘Old World’ and were beginning to populate the ‘New World’ as well…
► Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori and Çatal Hüyük:
The earliest signs of ‘settling down’ that we’ve found so far occur in ancient Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). The apparent birthplace of the ‘Neolithic Revolution’ (ie: farming), the ideas radiated at the speed of wheat across the ‘known world’. People became attached to the land they farmed. ‘Civilisation’, with all the good and bad that implies, was only a logical step or two away.
The ‘venuses’ who had ruled the Paleolithic were slowly supplanted by the angry warrior gods of the Neolithic… including the one who eventually became the vengeful ‘Yaweh’ of Torah.
► Noah’s Flood, Gilgamesh and the Black Sea:
As the ice began to melt, sea level began inexorably to rise, cutting off the British Isles from mainland Europe, and drowning the Bering ‘land bridge’ between northeast Asia and North America. Sea kevel has risen more than 120 meters since the last glacial maximum ~21,000 years ago:
Then, around 5600 BCE [7600 BP], according to a persuasive (IMHO) hypothesis put forward by William Ryan and Walter Pitman (see references), the rising Mediterranean Sea overtopped a sill at the Bosporus (or ‘Bosphorus’), causing a cataclysmic flood and inundation of the populated lowlands to the north. A large glacial (freshwater) lake was drowned to become the Black Sea.
The Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh may very well describe this world-shaking event which in turn showed up in the Genesis stories as the Flood of Noah. Many direct quotations from Gilgamesh in the biblical account lend credence to this likely pedigree of the story.
But it should be remembered that these flood stories would have relied on oral transmission for some 3,000 years before the invention of writing! On the other hand, they were told by wandering ‘poets’ who typically rendered tales such as this in metric verse as ‘songs’ – often to musical accompaniment… which tends to ‘freeze’ verses in place, making them remarkably resistant to change. The epic tales of ‘Homer’ (whoever he was) came down to us the same way.
Did Gilgamesh describe a real-life catastrophic Flood? We can never know for sure, but circumstantial evidence supports the idea. Any event of the magnitude of a Black Sea flood would surely have remained emblazoned on the minds of anyone who witnessed it (and survived) to pass it down the many generations.
A late but direct consequence of The Ice.
Wikireference:
Comment on January 25, 2013 @ 12:42 pm
This stuff is so cool. Can’t wait to watch the video. Sky strikes again.
Comment on January 25, 2013 @ 1:34 pm
BTW Sky, where’d you get that cool pic?
Comment on January 25, 2013 @ 2:13 pm
Max: I googled ‘glacial ice’ and then filtered by ‘images’. Lots of good pix!
Comment on January 25, 2013 @ 2:25 pm
How did we ever get by before google?
Comment on January 25, 2013 @ 2:27 pm
Another doc with more science and less hyperbole which I pasted together for your dining and dancing pleasure. Includes interesting information on the peculiarities of the Bosporus straight and of the Black Sea itself. Enjoy!
Comment on January 25, 2013 @ 4:34 pm
Another possible factor could lie in the nature of the origins of the Mediterranean itself. Formed as the result of plate tectonics – also the reason there are volcanos still active in the region – earthquakes sometimes result when the African plate subducts underneath the European plate, broadly speaking as there are other related geologic features that include some sea floor spreading. It is possible that a sea floor – not necessarily even in close proximity – in conjunction with sea level rise from melting glaciers could have created a tsunami that served as the ultimate catalyst for the overflow.
In addition in the latter part of the first video it seems the researchers are overlooking some details. The location of site 82 and Sinop are not at a place where the flooding would have been so torrential to have washed/scrubbed it clean, likely one of the reasons other than other data demonstrating that people were in that vicinity. So, if you were one of those people that had some time to take things -tools it seems to me would be just the kind of thing one would take and small things that could be carried. Also wood floats so wood debris could have been scattered and distributed almost anywhere in the inundated region. If you want to find a village, better to look where the land bridge edges buried one and it is encapsulated more or less intact in the muck. Of course, that is no easy task to either locate nor to excavate. Just some observations from vid #1.
Comment on January 26, 2013 @ 8:36 am
I hasten to caution those who are sufficiently intrigued by the Black Sea flood hypothesis to look into the ideas presented above more deeply. It’s an absolutely fascinating topic but there is a lot of utter bullshit out there!
Partly this is due to the speculations on the Noah’s Ark story. Whenever amateur (and many professional) Biblical ‘scholars’ get involved, any objectivity goes right out the window. There are STILL people wandering the Turkish mountains of Ararat hunting for the remains of the ‘Ark’ and every few years someone claims to have ‘found’ it. Nonsense. The Noah’s Ark myth is provably fantasy. No boat made of ‘gopher wood’ (or ANY wood) that was anything near ’300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide’ (~450 feet long x 75 feet abeam) could hold together. It would just tear itself apart and sink. Period. It wouldn’t last 40 minutes – let alone 40 days and 40 nights in a storm! And I won’t even START on ‘all the animals going two by two’
So be careful. Those hoping to ‘prove’ a foregone conclusion are NOT doing science and they are doomed to failure. But that doesn’t seem to stop a certain type of person from trying!
My interest is in the critical period of time when people started living in villages, then towns and eventually building great cities. The change from largely egalitarian tribal life to highly stratified kingdoms. The rise of authoritarian religions and all the blood and grief that that entailed. All in the name of ‘solidarity’ or ‘social stability’.
Comment on January 26, 2013 @ 8:40 am
Re #7: All good points, Cat-eyes. Actually, the entire Mediterranean basin has dried up and been flooded in fairly recent geologic time. Long before people though… Watching the Atlantic come crashing though Gibraltar (from a safe distance!) must have been quite a sight!
Were I looking for the remains of habitation, I’d look in the vicinity of river mouths that fed into the ‘Old Black Sea’ (the pre-flood, freshwater lake) – I’d pick the ancient delta of the Danube in present-day Bulgaria as a likely spot to look. Along the ancient lake shore might also be productive.
Because of the Black Sea’s anoxic properties, general preservation is likely to be quite good at sufficient depth.
We should hope to find artifacts from a critical time and place… glimpses into the ‘pre-dawn’ of civilisation!
Comment on January 26, 2013 @ 10:02 am
re #8: Not to mention that there was no way anyone predicted that kind of torrent because it was not – emphatically not, a 40 rain storm – that caused this particular flood.
I was aware of the Mediterranean’s history but since it’s drying up and also the breaking of the Gibraltar bridge pre-dates any inkling of us, I skipped it. Insofar as the rain part of the myth the best analysis is that people on the far side of the old Black Sea (lake) heard the incredible “thundering” of the pouring water and not having anything else to relate to assumed it was actually thunder. I admit I was puzzled by the vid #1′s use of storm images since it is a complete non-sequitur as far as I know. It may have stormed but that too is irrelevant.
I too am interested in the shift in cultural perspectives that “civilization” seems to have brought about. As creatures of the planet it seems less civilized and way more arrogant and may even be the roots of our seemingly ubiquitous exploitation mindset. Conquer rather than co-exist. I always wonder how gender roles played a role – matriarchies vs. patriarchies. I wonder if this occurred because of agriculture and the new found value of “seed.” Ironically, the seed could only form because of soil – mother earth. The most basic forms of life trace back to female, once a sex can be assigned. But if I were to assign a sex to RNA or DNA it would be female not male simply because it is the source of the replication. Thoughts?
Comment on January 26, 2013 @ 11:51 am
Yes, I thought the lightning was a bit over the top and misleading too. They were trying to strengthen the ‘Biblical deluge’ idea. Ick.
It was women after all, who began saving the seeds of the tastiest plants and planting them in ‘good’, well-watered spots. When the group came that way again, a few months later, there were little patches of good tasting plants – ready to harvest, cook and eat.
The cereal grains like wheat and barley, through ‘unnatural’ (ie: human) selection, grew rapidly in size. Crush, add water, knead and bake – et Voilà! Bread. Put the grains in water and steep for a few weeks – et Voilà! Something REALLY important – BEER!
Meat, typically supplied by the men’s hunting parties, was still important, but if the hunt failed… at least everybody didn’t starve.
The metaphor of Earth as ‘Mother’ seems an obvious one to me. The ‘seeding’ part is clearly male in nature, but it’s the Mother that does the real work and produces the desired end-product.
The cult of the Mother goddess and the symbolism of the time and space we’ve been discussing are described nicely here by Joseph Campbell [1904-1987]:
Joseph Campbell [video]: Gods and Goddesses of the Neolithic
Marija Gimbutas [1921-1994] championed the Mother Goddess idea:
A lot of good information, particularly on the many symbols and totems of the Mother.
The question then becomes how, when and where did the male ‘seed’ gods gain ascendancy over the Mother?
Comment on January 27, 2013 @ 4:49 am
I do indeed enjoy this article.
Comment on January 27, 2013 @ 9:09 am
Sky – here is a tangential interesting read:
http://www.nature.com/news/social-evolution-the-ritual-animal-1.12256
Comment on January 28, 2013 @ 6:57 am
Cat-eyes: Ritual as bonding agent strikes me as obvious. No argument here!
An impressive photo-essay of ancient Anatolia showing aome magnificent early sites and artifacts. Some of the dates shown are problematic… (12,000 years BCE for Göbekli Tepe seems really pushing it!), and I don’t read Turkish at ALL – but still, some really beautiful stuff!
‘Anatolia’ means ‘Land of Mothers’ – very appropriate given our emphasis here on the Mother Goddess.
The more I look at this region, the more I see our ‘UR-civilisation’ right HERE.
Although often called a ‘European’ culture, the Minoan civilisation and people of ancient Crete actually derived more from the Hittites of (guess where) Anatolia. Troy/Ilium was Anatolian, etc, etc.
Comment on January 29, 2013 @ 5:22 am
And meanwhile, on the western side of the Black Sea, we have the Bulgarians (Thracians), whose women have the voices of angels. I was captivated the moment I first heard these nightingales in the 1980′s. Lots of seconds and fourths – and (blessedly!) NO VIBRATO.
Just gorgeous.
Comment on January 29, 2013 @ 6:03 am
Truly beautiful. Perfect accompaniment for the glorious double moonlit nights of ancient Thrace.
Comment on January 29, 2013 @ 7:29 am
Gorgeous. Transportive.
Comment on January 29, 2013 @ 7:35 am