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11600—5500 years ago

The Great Flood — studies of the Greenland ice sheet revealed a sharp warming of approximately 15 degrees Celsius around 11,600 years ago, followed by massive glacial melting. This time interval with abrupt climate change is traced in paleo-finds worldwide. Most likely, it is this period that many religions and legends describe as the "Great Flood."

In 1927-1928, during excavations of ancient Ur, Leonard and Catherine Woolley were excavating the so-called "Royal Tombs of Ur," which apparently belonged to the Sumerian period. Unexpectedly, right beneath them, the researchers encountered a 20-meter layer of alluvial clay without any traces of human presence. The most likely explanation for the appearance of such a layer in this area could have been a catastrophic flood in its force and consequences, caused by many days of torrential rains and, as a result, the catastrophic overflow of both rivers. This discovery led Woolley to an exceptionally bold conclusion that the "pious priest" — Ziusudra, Utnapishtim — also the biblical Noah — could have been a historical figure, a Sumerian by origin, observant enough to notice the formidable signs of an impending flood and take timely measures. Traces of flooding have also been found at Kish and other Mesopotamian cities. However, all the floods occurred at different times, indicating their local rather than global nature.

During the Age of Enlightenment, ideas about the Great Flood, having moved beyond the normativity of sacred tradition, still remained relevant to natural science. Before the advent of Darwin's evolutionary theory, changes in biological species were explained by catastrophism theories. In particular, Cuvier believed he was describing antediluvian animals. Boulanger explained changes in the earth's surface by the Flood and derived many religious rituals from the horror of primitive people who experienced this global catastrophe.

The story of the Great Flood is widespread among many peoples living tens of thousands of kilometers apart. Reconstructions of the absolute age of the Flood yield a roughly similar range of data from 8 to 11 thousand years ago. From paleogeographic data, it is known that the last ice sheet (the Laurentide Ice Sheet in North America) in the Northern Hemisphere disappeared between 8 and 10 thousand years ago.

There is the Ryan-Pitman hypothesis (William Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University) that the flood story is a reflection of the global process of rising sea levels. According to V. A. Safronov, the planetary catastrophe caused by rapid glacial melting should be dated to 8122 BC.

In particular, Ryan and Pitman associate the Great Flood with a 140-meter rise in the Black Sea water level around 5500 BC (see Black Sea deluge hypothesis). They established (based on analysis of submerged shorelines and the distribution of sedimentary layers) that at this time the sea level rose by tens of meters from -50 to 0 meters (in the modern absolute coordinate system), one consequence of which was the formation of the Bosphorus Strait and an almost 1.5-fold increase in the area of the Black Sea. The effect of such flooding of significant coastal areas could, according to the researchers, have played a role in the emergence and global spread of the flood story.

Renowned deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard believes he has found confirmation of the Ryan-Pitman hypothesis. Using underwater robots, he surveyed submerged settlements off the coast of northern Turkey. Data analysis showed that the flooding was sudden and the dating of this event is close to the biblical one. Additional arguments are provided by Lev Regelson and Igor Khvartsia based on analysis of Abkhaz mythology, which clearly reflects the memory of the Flood.

In favor of the Flood hypothesis could be the change in the base level of river erosion associated with rising sea levels and the corresponding sharp synchronous restructuring of all river valleys on Earth. This restructuring would involve the widespread flooding of river floodplains and adjacent river terraces. In theory, the entire space from the river's edge to the melting of the ice sheets and up the slopes of the river valley to a height of 50 meters should have been flooded by the river and covered with its sediments. Naturally, such areas adjacent to rivers were places of high population concentration, and observing such processes, man could create a story about the Flood. Having received information about the "flood" on the seacoasts and data about the "flood" along all the rivers of the Earth, any intelligent person (and especially a group) would create a myth about the global scale of the observed phenomenon. The flooding of a river valley during the Flood halts the linear erosion inherent in the work of a water stream in a channel, which would certainly leave an imprint in the geological record and the structure of the ancient valley, affect the structure of sediments, and also shift the base level of erosion.

Russian paleogeographer, leading researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr. Andrey Chepalyga, has been conducting long-term studies of traces of grand floods in the Black Sea-Caspian region and its catchment basin during the deglaciation of the last (Valdai) glaciation in the interval of 16-10 thousand years ago. He considers these floods as a prototype of the Great Flood. According to his hypothesis, geological evidence of the Flood may include bottom and coastal deposits of flood basins, as well as paleontological remains in them. Their detailed analysis, including lithological, mineralogical, geochemical indicators, as well as the isotopic composition of sediments and fossil remains, makes it possible to reconstruct sedimentation conditions, the composition of flood waters, and the sequence of flood events. The epicenter of the Flood is the ancient Caspian (Khvalyn) Sea. It was here that the bulk of the Flood waters was concentrated, and the excess waters drained into the Black Sea. As a result of the Flood's development, the Khvalyn Sea spread over an area of about one million square kilometers, and together with the Aral-Sarykamysh basin, its water area exceeded 1.1 million square kilometers, which is 3 times larger than the modern Caspian. The volume of accumulated water masses (130 thousand cubic kilometers) exceeded the modern one by 2 times. As for the Flood events themselves, almost 1 million square kilometers of lowland territories were flooded up to elevations of +48 +50 m abs. in the Caspian lowland.