Before the Flood : The Biblical Flood as a Real Event and How It Changed the Course of Civilization

Rating:
Summary: Noah's Flood: Still Unconfirmed
Review: Biblical scholars have been trying for centuries to prove--or to disprove the events of the Old Testament. Most of these events are especially tricky to validate since the evidence needed to point in one way or another most often rested on biblical exegesis and archeology rather than on geology. The biblical flood is the exception. The vestiges of a world wide flood are easier to identify. Ian Wilson in BEFORE THE FLOOD argues that the flood of Noah was not a world flooding event as depicted in the Old Testament. Rather, he sees the flooding as limited to the cradle of civilization, the holy lands north of Turkey in what is now known as the Black Sea. Wilson describes a pre-flood world that had recently emerged into a warming trend, ending millenia of ice-age growth. As the earth's temperature gradually rose, the ice caps correspondingly melted with localized flooding. However, in the Mediterrranean Sea, this increase in volume undermined the barrier that separated the saline Mediterranean from the fresh water Black Sea. Eventually, a crush point was reached and the barrier between the two seas burst with the vastly larger salt water of the former pouring into the Black Sea. So far, so good. Wilson was not the first to suggest this, but to his credit, he presents as evidence radio-carbon dating of samples of molluscs that had died en masse. Studies of these molluscs indicate that they had died suddenly and over widely scattering areas, an event that could be explained only if the salinity of the Black Sea had abruptly been altered toward heightened salinity. He estimates that the collapse of the barrier released more than 200 times the flow of water that daily passes down Niagara Falls. Anyone unlucky enough to have been anywhere nearby would surely not have had enough time to board a ship, let enough time to build one. This 'burst through' hypothesis occupies the first third of Wilson's book, and is convincing. The remaining two thirds is limited to archeological and mythical evidence, and is thus less compelling. In fact, it becomes a chore to read assorted and lengthy historical, biblical, and mythological exegeses, none of which approaches the hard evidence of the mollusc extinction. Wilson's core thesis is, therefore, more suggested rather than nailed down. Circumstantial evidence of past historical events is not unlike the validity of such evidence in our courts. They point the way towards the prosecution's case, but lacking hard evidence, a tricky defense lawyer can usually suggest an alternate explanation.

Rating:
Summary: A tedious work full of non-sense!
Review: I am neither an expert in Bible Archeology nor science. However, this book struck me as having a well thought out hypothesis. It is backed up by much research and evidence.

The author was able to write convincingly and to keep my interest at the same time. There was much information and the book could easily have become mired down in facts and proof and could easily have become boring. This did not happen. THe author was able to present the facts and research and keep it interesting.

Although his theory does not back up a world flood as depicted in the Biblical story of Noah, the theory is none the less interesting and believable.

Well worth reading.
Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting hypotesis
Review: I'm always fascinated by the books who try to unveil the mystery that shrouds the time when the first Mediterranean civilizations were forming. This book advances the "Black Sea Flood" theory as an explanation of the biblical flood and the mystery of the origin of the Sumerians, the first civilization. The Author advances his point convincingly and whit scientific honesty (he admits needing of more substantial proofs). For those interested in the civilization's birth period, this is a very interesting read.

Rating:
Summary: Tunnel visioned conclusion
Review: It is inevitable that we will begin to see historic works that claim the Flood legend was really a local event, based on Ryan and Pittman's discovery in the Black Sea. Wilson's research is fine to the extent that he takes it. His contention that there is no evidence for the Flood or its effects elsewhere is unfounded. There are more than 650 cultures around the world that have flood stories. Wilson would have to extend his hypothesis to include all of them as having been spawned from the Black Sea.

As the Ice Age ended, during several thousand years the ocean level rose 400-600 feet. Recent submarine archaeological finds off the coast of India and in the Caribbean indicate that the Black Sea was not the only vicinity whose population became displaced. There are in excess of 200 megalithic sites under the Mediterranean, and roads leading away from the site on Malta go straight under the sea. Other undersea sites include off the coast of Denmark and Germany. Like the Black Sea, the Baltic was also once a fresh water lake.

To be sure, refugees from the Black Sea region resettled in what is now Turkey. From there, elements of that culture migrated southeastward to found the civilization of Sumer. The archaeological record demonstrates that. In Ancient times, Phrygia (north central Anatolia, now Turkey) vied with Egypt for the distinction of being the oldest civilization, and Phrygia eventually won the argument (on flimsy grounds). Geographic evidence embedded in the Garden of Eden story points to the Zagros Mountains in the same area for its origin.

Please read the book. It contains a lot of valuable information. However, its sweeping conclusion fails to address all of the evidence.

Rating:
Summary: interesting conjectures
Review: Mr. Wilson presents and interesting compendium of archaeological evidences and conjectures to advance his theory. There's certainly a plethora of evidence to support the idea that advanced cimilization spread from the general area of Turkey.

Ian goes wrong with his assumption that the biblical flood event was not correct. He assumes the occurance of some LOCALIZED flooding, which was responsible for the diaspora from Turkey. The biblical flood did, of course, cover the whole world, and only Noah and his family survived.

To combine the biblical account with the compiled archaeological evidence, it's possible that Noah and his family lived in Turkey in an advanced neolithic culture. After the biblical flood, Noah's offspring were responsible for the diaspora from Turkey to which Mr. Wilson refers.

If you can look past the author's obviously anti-biblical bias, the archaeology/history in his book is fascinating.

Rating:
Summary: The Biblical Flood
Review: The entire book is devoted to a list of places and people who at some time in the past have had a flood. It hardly even discusses the biblical flood and appears to just put it into the broad catagory of just another flood.Boring to read

Rating:
Summary: Modern, enjoyable, and organized.
Review: This book is good reading for understanding some of the recent advances of research pertaining to the Biblical flood. It focuses on the history of the Black Sea area and how a plausible flood in this area had far reaching implications in the world.

I liked how the author provided various links, some speculative, between the migration of the people of the Black Sea area as a result of rising water, to the development of human civilization.

I'm sure the notion that the cradle of civilization not being in Egypt will get some unwelcome reviews, but they are presented as theories that warrant investigation and not as fact. I like a book that stretches accepted knowledge.

The die hard 6000 year old Earth believers will be irritated that the "global" flood didn't happen in the literal sense, but they are descended from those who excommunicated those who didn't believe the Earth revolved around the Sun.

Finally, the book is an overall easy read and written in a logical fashion that is non-flammatory.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Archeology But Poor Conclusion
Review: This book is too shallow to draw any conclusions, especially to support a local flood theory. The archeological evidence is interesting. But this says nothing in particular about a flood. Had Mr. Wilson concerned himself with GEOLOGICAL evidence, he may have had a completely different conclusion. Geological evidence from around the world supports the Biblical description of a worldwide catastrophic flood, the magnitude of which, would leave little or no evidence of antediluvian cultures. The ARCHEOLOGICAL evidence in the book only serves to show how primitive mankind still was after for some indeterminate time AFTER the flood.

Rating:
Summary: The real origin of civilization?
Review: This fascinating book investigates a lost culture that thrived in northern Turkey before an inundation in 5600BC turned a freshwater lake into what is now the Black Sea by connecting it to the Mediterranean. Such a cataclysmic event must have caused major destruction and caused the death of thousands of people. It would also not have been restricted to the area under consideration.

By looking at the archaeological evidence brought to light by Robert Ballard's submarine explorations and by comparing the flood myths of the world, Wilson connects this disaster with the Biblical account of the Great Flood. He demonstrates that the Biblical account is composed of two different texts that were integrated, texts that he calls J and P. The opening part of original separate strands are displayed side by side. I found this very interesting; each of them is coherent in its own right but has a different emphasis. Both are in fact more coherent on their own than integrated as in the Bible.

Wilson suggests that Turkey and the Black Sea area may be the real cradle of civilization. It was the first Post Ice Age civilization and it flourished until about 6000BC. The metropolis of this culture was what is today called Çatal Hüyük, a city that was abandoned around this time, most probably because of climate change. It gets really interesting when he looks at the diaspora caused by these natural disasters; Wilson points out shared characteristics of the Minoan culture and the megaliths on the islands of Malta and Gozo. This includes the worship of bulls and the prevalence of the Mother Goddess which is found over an even larger geographic area.

There are far flung cultures displaying similarities to traits found at Çatal Hüyük, including in Egypt and Sumeria. I found his discussion of loan words in Sumerian very enlightening. Although Wilson is not a linguist, I would have liked a deeper exploration of historical linguistics to cast more light on the matter. He does look at the work of Indo-Europeanists Marija Gimbutas and Colin Renfrew. According to the consensus, the original Indo-European language is considered to have broken up into daughter languages between about 5000 and 4000BC.

Another puzzle is why the Indo-European and Semitic parent languages share so many common vocabulary items. Looking at the bigger picture of the Nostratic (or Eurasiatic according to Joseph Greenberg) language family, one finds that there is a great structural similarity between Indo-European, Uralic-Yukagir and even Eskimo, but relatively few shared vocabulary items, the fewer the further North and Northwest you from the Black Sea/Caucasus area. Semitic (a member of the large Afro-Asiatic family) and Indo-European display fundamental structural differences, but share certain phenomena that are clearly linked across their family lines, including key words for concepts like "full, horn, ear, eye, bull, earth."

Wilson refers extensively to the work of Dr James Mellaart, the excavator of Çatal Hüyük. This theory of an original civilization in the Anatolian/Black Sea area before Egypt and before Sumeria is highly original and very plausible. Wilson is just scratching the surface and further investigation would no doubt lead to more remarkable discoveries. According to the Good Book, there is no end to many books. In this case, the more the merrier.

This is a bold direction and needs an interdisciplinary approach. It would be of great value if the author incorporates the work of linguists like Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen in his further writings. The book concludes with notes & references, a bibliography, an appendix of some key documents and an index. The text is illumed by some really gripping maps and illustrations. I would not classify Before The Flood as "alternative history" - rather the cutting edge of historical research, already underpinned by significant archaeological discoveries.

Rating:
Summary: Decoding a myth
Review: This is a good upgrade/progress report on the work of Ryan and Pittman attempting to find the historical source of the long tradition of myths of the Flood in the Black Sea rise in the sixth millennium. To what degree the thesis is still mixed with speculation is still not entirely clear, but, taken with caution, the case overall is convincing, and extremely interesting. Worth checking out.