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The Sand Dune Forgotten by Time Archaeologists working in the extreme desert terrain of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have moved a step closer to unraveling the mystery of a 40-century-old civilization. They unearthed 163 tombs containing mummies during their ongoing and long excavation at the mysterious Xiaohe tomb complex. And it's all thanks to the translation of a diary kept by a Swedish explorer more than 70 years ago. "We have found more than 30 coffins containing mummies," said Idelisi Abuduresule, head of the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute and the excavation team. The complex is believed to...

Dr Irving Finkel In 1985 a man called Douglas Simmonds brought a bag of miscellaneous antiquities to the British Museum for inspection. Dr Irving Finkel, the museum’s assistant keeper of ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures, went through the curiosities and quickly discovered that one of them, a small Babylonian tablet covered in cuneiform (an ancient form of script) was a historical document of great significance. As an expert in Assyriology and cuneiform, Finkel only needed to read the first few lines of this small, craggy tablet to realise that this was a segment of an ancient Mespotamian myth, the...

Flood Expedition Inspires 'Noah's Ark' in Bulgaria Tue Aug 27, 7:17 AM ET SOFIA, Bulgaria (Reuters) - An expedition looking to prove that the great biblical flood occurred in the Black Sea has inspired Bulgarian entrepreneurs to build a replica of Noah's Ark aimed at luring tourists. The wooden vessel, 368 feet long, will shelter exotic animals while actors play the biblical figures of Noah and his family, project manager Nikolai Kanchev said Monday. The Ark will be built near the Black Sea resort of Slanchev Bryag and open for visitors next year, Kanchev told Reuters. Last year U.S. geologist...

Ballard Chases History Again In The Black SeaExcavation of shipwreck part of 3-leg research trip By Katie Warchut Published on 8/14/2007 It's a painfully slow process, watching a robotic arm brush, inch-by-inch, the sediment off a 900-year-old shipwreck 400 feet underwater in the Black Sea. But when the dust settles, Robert Ballard, president of the Institute for Exploration at Mystic Aquarium, and his team hope to have a better look into a time capsule of early human history. About 6 miles off the coast of Ukraine, Ballard watched from a NATO research vessel Monday on a high-definition plasma television screen....

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. - In 1994, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert rode around northern Turkey in a dirty white Toyota van looking for evidence of ancient civilizations around the Black Sea. Every time he and his team would ask locals for the whereabouts of centuries-old ruins, they'd get the same response. "Everyone kept pointing us to the sea," Hiebert recalled. Hiebert knows now why they did. After some preliminary trips, the University of Pennsylvania professor and other scientists will go on a first-ever effort to excavate ancient ships and a possible human settlement left mummified in the Black Sea's oxygen-free waters. Scientists hope...

Questions about Noah's Flood Theory Many scientists accept the idea that the biblical story of Noah's flood was inspired by a sudden inundation of the Black Sea by the Mediterranean 7500 years ago. But new research suggests no such flood occurred. Geologists Bill Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University crafted the "Noah's Flood Hypothesis" in 1997 to explain the sudden appearance of saltwater mollusks in 7500-year-old Black Sea sediments. They proposed that during the last Ice Age, some 18,000 years ago, sea levels dropped enough to isolate the Black Sea from the Mediterranean Sea. Rain and rivers then turned...

The story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood is one of the most famous from the Bible, and now an acclaimed underwater archaeologist thinks he has found proof that the biblical flood was actually based on real events. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC News, Robert Ballard, one of the world's best-known underwater archaeologists, talked about his findings. His team is probing the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey in search of traces of an ancient civilization hidden underwater since the time of Noah. Tune in to Christiane Amanpour's two-part ABC News special,...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...

Noah's Ark flood spurred European farmingAncient Canadian flood cascaded changes across Europe Randy Boswell , CanWest News Service Published: Monday, November 19, 2007 A British scientist has found evidence linking the catastrophic collapse of a glacial ice dam in Canada more than 8,000 years ago and the rapid spread of agriculture across Europe around the same time. The dramatic discharge of freshwater from prehistoric Lake Agassiz - which covered much of Central Canada at the end of the last ice age - has long been blamed for altering global climate patterns and raising sea levels around the world by at...

Explorer who discovered the 'Titanic' sets out to prove that Noah's flood formed Black Sea By David Usborne 23 July 2003 The Bible tells us how the Great Flood happened, compelling Noah to herd all of animal life into his Ark. The skies opened and it rained incessantly, in fact for 40 days and 40 nights. But some scientists have another theory altogether and this week an expedition will leave for the Black Sea to try to prove it. Among the team will be Robert Ballard, the American underwater explorer who became famous when he found the Titanic beneath the...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. July 30, 2004 — Four years ago, scientists thought they had found the perfect place to settle the Noah flood debate: A farmer's house on a bluff overlooking the Black Sea built about 7,500 years ago just before tidal waves inundated the homestead, submerged miles of coastline and turned the freshwater lake into a salty sea. Some believed the rectangular site of stones and wood could help solve the age-old question of whether the Black Sea's flooding was the event recounted in the Biblical story of Noah. That story told of a calamitous flood occurring over 40 days...

Making Waves Over Noah’s FloodSome research backs the biblical story and some finds no evidence of the catastrophe By Robert Cooke STAFF WRITER January 14, 2003 Scientists are seriously challenging a recent, fascinating proposal that Noah's epic story - setting sail with an ark jam-full of animal couples - was based on an actual catastrophic flood that suddenly filled the Black Sea 7,500 years ago, forcing people to flee. In a detailed new look at the rocks, sediments, currents and seashells in and around the Black Sea, an international research team pooh-poohs the Noah flood idea, arguing that all the...

<p>In 1994, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert rode around northern Turkey in a dirty white Toyota van looking for evidence of ancient civilizations around the Black Sea. Every time he and his team would ask locals for the whereabouts of centuries-old ruins, they'd get the same response. "Everyone kept pointing us to the sea," Hiebert recalled.</p>

Posted 7/16/2003 2:45 PM Scientists hunt for evidence of Noah's flood in Black Sea NARRAGANSETT, R.I. (AP) — In 1994, archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert rode around northern Turkey in a dirty white Toyota van looking for evidence of ancient civilizations around the Black Sea. Every time he and his team would ask locals for the whereabouts of centuries-old ruins, they'd get the same response. "Everyone kept pointing us to the sea," Hiebert recalled. Hiebert knows now why they did. After some preliminary trips, the University of Pennsylvania professor and other scientists will go on a first-ever effort to excavate ancient ships...

Black Sea Trip Yields No Flood Conclusions By RICHARD C. LEWIS Associated Press Writer July 30, 2004, 2:06 PM EDT PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Four years ago, scientists thought they had found the perfect place to settle the Noah flood debate: A farmer's house on a bluff overlooking the Black Sea built about 7,500 years ago -- just before tidal waves inundated the homestead, submerged miles of coastline and turned the freshwater lake into a salty sea. Some believed the rectangular site of stones and wood could help solve the age-old question of whether the Black Sea's flooding was the event...

"And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered." Genesis 7, verses 19-20 Stories about cataclysmic floods prompted by angry deities have abounded in European and Asian mythology for thousands of years, but geologists paid little heed. Then, in 1997, two Columbia University geology professors, Walter Pitman and William Ryan, stunned the earth-science community with their theory that there had, in fact, been a great deluge around 7,000 BC -- the same time that the Bible says ...

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin. Geologists have long known that the Mediterranean became isolated from the world's oceans around 5.6 million years ago, evaporating almost completely in the hundreds of thousands of years that followed. Scientists also largely agree that the Mediterranean basin was refilled when the movements of Earth's crustal plates caused the ground around the Gibraltar Strait to subside, allowing the ocean waters of the Atlantic to cut through the rock separating the...

Lava left its mark on Grand Canyon Friday, 15 February 2008 Larry O'Hanlon Discovery News Volcanic lava flows onced dammed the river that ran through the Grand Canyon (Source: iStockphoto) The Grand Canyon was not just carved by water. It has also been the scene of periodic wars between the Colorado River and volcanic eruptions that dammed the river, then burst. New airborne elevation survey data and radioisotope dating of Grand Canyon lava flows sheds new light on the battle between water and molten rocks there over the past 725,000 years. Over that time there have been no fewer than...

Remembering The Genesis Flood by John C. Whitcomb December 8, 2010 “A word fitly spoken” has incredible power (Proverbs 25:11). Burdened by the rampant disregard for God’s Word, two young men collaborated to write a book called simply The Genesis Flood. Fifty years later their shout still reverberates round the world. In February 1961 a small publisher in New Jersey—Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company—brought into this world a 518-page, somewhat ponderous, volume entitled The Genesis Food: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications. The co-authors were a little-known theologian (myself) and a hydraulic engineer, Henry M. Morris. Little did we...

Researchers have analysed the oldest obsidian bracelet ever identified, discovered in the 1990s at the site of Asikli Höyük, Turkey. A high level of technical expertise Using high-tech methods developed by LTDS to study the bracelet's surface and micro-topographic features, the researchers have revealed the astounding technical expertise of craftsmen in the eighth millennium BCE. Their skills were highly sophisticated for this period in late prehistory, and on a par with today's polishing techniques. This work is published in the December 2011 issue of Journal of Archaeological Science, and sheds new light on Neolithic societies. Dated to 7500 BCE, the...