My skepticism related to the Black Sea diaspora is truly based on the evidence. Its been a while since I wrote that review and read the related source materials I relied upon, but the gist of it is that there isn’t enough physical evidence to support the hypothesis that farming was introduced to other places because of the displaced peoples of the Black Sea shores. In looking at temporally and geographically relevant pollen samples, the evidence points to the Black Sea region being primarily wooded during the period of its inundation.

I’m also skeptical of the title premise of the book, which implies that Noah was a resident of the Black Sea. But this is mainly because I see the Sumerian story of Dilmun and an inundation of the Persian Gulf as a more likely candidate as the origin of the Noah tale.

But I certainly don’t discount Ryan and Pittman! I found their book to be wonderfully engaging and thought provoking! I loved it and I loved the sense of discovery and wonder I felt from reading it. And I think that they are spot on in the core premise, which is that some of our most sacred myths may not have occurred precisely as religious adherents might like us to accept willingly and without question -but they may very well be based in a kernel of truth.

I think it is beyond argument that the Euxine Lakeshore represented one of the friendliest environments on earth. A well watered, fertile, level plain protected from bad weather would have attracted grazing animals and humans right behind them, if the rivers teeming with fish had not already brought a human presence.

Near the river deltas, very simple irrigation systems would have distributed water over large areas. If farming didn’t start there, where conditions were ideal, then that would seem to require more of an explanation than any suggestion that it did.

It also seems to be beyond argument that the basin was flooded some 8000 years ago, a date which is very close to the first evidence we have of villages and farming activities.

Using only one, not very far-fetched assumption, i.e. that farming activity would be most likely to start in an area idea for the practice, what might have been the fate of those living by the shoreline?

Far from the area of the breakthrough, news of it may have reached residents at the pace of a fleeing human, perhaps 50 miles a day. Even at a couple of feet a day, the water would have risen at a rate easy to stay ahead of by walking away from the water, but the cropland that sustained a population would have been destroyed.

Many if not most of the Euxine flood’s victims would have died of starvation rather than drowning. Even the worst disaster does not kill everyone, and some would have survived, either by luck or pluck or both. These people would have founded clans who revered the heroic effort and the blessing from the gods that saved them from wholesale destruction when it consumed the rest of their world.

After the Black Sea Flood, there were probably many “Noahs.” Any surviving patriarch would have been revered as a near-godlike figure. If indeed farming got its start on the Euxine shoreline, one would reasonably expect that anyone who survived would need to use the technology developed there, spreading it by necessity.

Not only do I see the Flood legend arising from the Euxine event, I see the ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden as arising from the same source. The most fertile place on earth, a hundred meters below sea level and well watered, was taken away from humanity forever, and this must have been seen as a divine intervention, explainable only by extreme sin.

Adam and Eve may have been no more than a pair of Euxine flood survivors who founded their own clan, an explanation of Genesis that makes a lot more sense to me than any other I have seen.