Are the floods this summer a sign of divine wrath or simply a natural swing in climate (Letters, July 5)?
Perhaps the recent inundations stir up fears of the biblical story of Noah’s flood. Indeed, there are many other ancient legends of gigantic floods in cultures from all over the world, and some scientists suspect that these were rooted in real events in prehistory.
When the last Ice Age drew to a close about 12,000 years ago, the vast icesheets covering much of the temperate world began to melt. These unleashed torrents of meltwaters, contributing to the greatest floods in human history.
One such flood is thought to have deluged the Black Sea. At the time this was a freshwater lake separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a narrow strip of land, now broken by the Bosphorus Strait.
As the fresh waters of the icesheets gushed into the oceans, world sea levels rose and about 7,600 years ago the rising Mediterranean spilled over into the Black Sea. A raging torrent of seawater poured through at 200 times the flow of Niagara Falls for almost a year. It flooded 155,000 sq km (60,000 sq miles) of land, and Stone Age people in the region would have been obliterated under the onslaught. But no doubt survivors told their stories of the mega-flood that would have been passed down through the generations.