Sons of Shem
Noah’s Semitic Legacy
Origins of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Noah sacrifices after the flood (Joseph Anton Koch, 1768-1839)

Deep history

This is a history of a culture. Of people who gave rise to three religions that control humanity, the Abrahamic triad Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Three members of a family of religions who for centuries now, millenniums, are at loggerheads as befits an intense family. A history of hurt and humiliation, of rejection and turned backs, thrusting a dagger therein. A history of curses and cull, contained in formalities and dimensions that continue to remain unchanged to this day - now there is tradition for you. A history of images, imagery, the imaginary and iconoclasm. Of the desire to know the highest. It is therefore the history of people with a broken heart, people who need the truth so badly, people who therefore will fiercely defend that truth with fire and sword needing to promulgate it while annihilating those who will not recognize it.
Now then, are we then not our brother’s keeper? Are not we responsible or at least partly responsible for what befalls our fellowmen? Yes, of course, when this contains it is everyone’s responsibility to avoid anything that may harm anyone else. No, certainly not, because no one else save you is answerable for walking your own path. For how profound the truth you have learned may be, that truth only applies to you - it is your unalienable share of the truth. There is absolutely no use, it never had and it will never have, in propagating the truth according to you. Simply make sure that the truth you have found allows you not to harm anyone or anything - that already is a big ask. The urge to harm usually comes from the damages oneself have suffered - the pain of lost love. It therefore makes absolutely no sense to seek the truth from and thereby be kept by your brother or sister. In fact, you invite them therewith to harm you. The truth everyone is looking for is not found outside of you, but exclusively in you. Your lost love can only be found there, how unsure you are whether you can handle the inner journey - yet, only the first step on your road proves to be arduous.

The mother of all religions

Science has long assumed the exodus of man from Africa has passed through the western part of Asia, the Levant. The genus Homo Sapiens, the Cro-Magnon subspecies, has indeed used this route to the rest of the world north of the Red Sea, as long as the climate permitted^link-note1). This migration route, however, knew more climatic limitations than the one via the Bab El Mandeb, the crossing from Djibouti to Yemen on the south side of the Red Sea, the main route.
The groups that migrated in the north from Africa through the Levant, there made contact with the genus Homo Neanderthalensis, as excavations in the Jebel Qafzeh cavern²⁾ point out. In another cave near Tabun, and not far away from there in the Skhul Cave and also in Amud, discoveries have been dated 40,000 to 15,000 years ago. Findings that suggest that Sapiens and Neanderthalensis did not just live there subsequently, but also simultaneously, including in cohabitation - obvious hybrids are found. That was also the conclusion after excavations outside the Levant in Shanidar in northern Mesopotamia and in Jebel Irhoud in the Maghreb. Outside the Afro-Asian territory Sapiens Neanderthal hybrids have been discovered in Portugal and Romania.
This indicates all overlooking a mixture of one part of the population of Sapiens with Neanderthal, the Neanderthals, however, numerically outnumbered. Obviously Sapiens did not regard, as in later times, Neanderthal as a hideous half-ape, but as a fellowman. About the rituals and the religion of these people nothing is known, other than what is to be expected, the adoration and invocation of natural forces and nature gods.
In the period following the Palaeolithic, the Neolithic, the humans in the Levant have left more than just their bones, for example, their ceramics. In the Middle East the Neolithic lasts from about 12,000 to circa 3,000 bce³⁾. In and around the Fertile Crescent, the area that roughly covers Egypt and Mesopotamia, and all the coastal country in between, at the beginning of the Neolithic a form of ancestor worship was practised. Ancestors were buried under the house and even under the bed. On the skulls of the dead faces were reshaped in clay, as found at Tell Aswad, Syria. In this way, the honoured ancestors were present with the living and could be involved in important decisions. Large plaster ancestor statues were found in Ain Ghazal, Jordan. In some places human remains, often with animal remains, were buried between the walls of the house. Only later, the dead were buried outside the settlement.

A more as such formulated form of religion, as far as can be determined, surfaced for the first time around 7,000 bce in Mesopotamia, believed to have arisen initially in the social upper class of society. Statuettes dated to that period depict the Great Mother or the Mother Goddess with undeniable and pronounced sexual characteristics. In the early religious history of the Middle East the Mother Goddess is the most common revered figure. One and the same goddess comes under different names: Astarte in Assyria, Ishtar -also known as Ashtoreth or

Asherah	Ashtoreth
Isis	Ishtar

Asherah- in Akkâd, Ašerdu to the Hittites and Isis in Egypt - later, we meet her as Aphrodite to the Greeks and to the Romans as Venus, but also, in a derivative form, as Mary with the Christian Roman Catholics. In Canaan -in Akkâdic: “Ki-na-ah-num”- Asherah -Ishtar or Ashtoreth- was revered in the cities of Ugarith, Sidon and Tyrus. Asherah was the consort of the god El. Therefore, Asherah was also called Elat, the feminine form of El - a name whose root word even in modern Hebrew means to struggle or rule.
The word "ha asherah" -not capitalized- means pillar or pole, a symbol associated with the cult of the Canaanite Mother Goddess. This word was also the name of the sacred tree of life. Usually there were two such trees in front of a temple of Asherah⁴⁾. Ašerim was also the Egyptian word for the fig tree and in ancient Egypt was regarded as "the body of the Queen on Earth." Here on the one hand probably is a connection between the two obelisks that always stood in front of every Egyptian temple, as the two trees before the Asherah Temple, and on the other hand the fig tree or the Tree of Life in the Paradise of Adam and Eve from the ancient books of the triad - the Tanakh, Bible and Koran.
Apart from Elat, Asherah was also known as Ba’alat. The Ba’alat or mistress in the early matriarchal society was the leader of the tribe, the people. In order to secure offspring and thus of a successor, the Ba’alat had a new Ba’al as companion each year. Ba’alat was associated with and symbolized by a lion, an animal that was seen as very powerful. Ba’al was associated with and symbolized by a bull, a symbol of power and potency throughout the ancient world.
In Semitic Canaanite matriarchal society the ruler derived his power from his mistress, not the other way around as in a patriarchal society. Possessions such as houses, lands and boats, were the property of the woman, the mistress, whichever Ba’al she had at her side. Moreover, it is obvious that in matrilineal societies lands and houses were seen as the possession of the woman. The role of the man was traditionally that of the hunter-herder and the traditional role of women was that of the gatherer - plants and roots for consumption and as medicine. The development of agriculture, from about 8,500 bce in the area of the fertile crescent, is logically linked to the traditional economic role of women. Along the path of agricultural development women gained their power base.

In any culture of man a distinctive master, or mistress in this case, often is celebrated already during life and well into his or her death, considered as special and godsend, as sent by the gods. A development further, often one or two generations later, and the person as sent by the gods him- or herself is deified, while the stories about that person become ever more grandiose, legendary and mythical. Another step further and the tribal ruler in the course of generations is seen as the goddess, complete with worship, with stories and myths, and a priestly class to maintain and perpetuate the system. In the case of Asherah the priestly class consisted of temple priestesses, who later in more patriarchal times were ascribed a reputation far more negative as temple prostitutes - a yearly fresh Ba’al became each youth initiated by them.
In the old books of the Abrahamic triad -Tanakh, Bible and Koran- for these religions the image was created of a pure monotheistic religion with Yahweh, God the Father or Allah as the sole God. A representation which, as will be discussed further on, is in need of essential differentiation. Asherah -Elat- and El were still revered in Jerusalem^{video 1)} in the Old Testament times deemed monotheistic⁵⁾. Further on it will be shown that the origin of monotheistic Judaism was an intellectual creation. In daily life, people long continued to worship the other older gods - actually, they were polytheistic. Old habits die slowly, such as ancestor worship has long persisted as the worship of the Mother Goddess got in vogue, like Elat and El -Ba’alat and Ba’al- were honoured as Jehovah, God the Father and Allah became the only god. However, the supremacy of the single god marked the end of the matriarchy and the new dominance of patriarchy.

From Palaeolithic times is noteworthy as the most special element found, the partial blend between Neanderthal and Sapiens. Although more examples of mixing in this part of the world are found than elsewhere, it is impossible to determine whether it was widely diffused, or in absolute proportions a sporadic phenomenon.
These Palaeolithic people practised a form of ancestor worship, though it is not entirely impossible that they also already worshipped the Mother Goddess, as the European Venus of Willendorf is dated more than 20,000 bce. No findings in the Levant are made that can substantiate such an age there.
The first real evidence for the worship of the Mother Goddess dates from the period after the Palaeolithic, the Neolithic - from 12,000 bce onward. In the fertile crescent she is worshipped as Asherah, although there are many local variations on her name known, such as Ba’alat or Elat. The fact that Asherah took a new Ba’al or El as consort, shows that early society in this region was organized along a matrilineal line.
Inheritance through the female line is very likely related to the development of agriculture, through which the economic power base of society was in the hands of women. The end of the matriarchal society and the transition to the patriarchal is accompanied by the transition to the first Abrahamic religion. That being a present day Jew is inherited through the maternal line, may be an ancient remnant of matrilineal society.
This too brief overview of the Palaeo-and Neolithic in the Middle East leaves remaining one as yet undiscussed topic, an event of unparalleled importance for the triad Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the flood^{video 2)}.

The water covers the world

In every part of the world flood stories are told. Can this wide spreading be seen as evidence for an actual disaster that engulfed the whole world? Once the world has been a big snowball, just during the period that life developed more complex than single-celled. For the snowball Earth hypothesis, which states that the earth 650-600 million years ago has been covered with glacial ice to the tropics, sufficient scientific evidence is available^{video 3)}. No scientific evidence whatsoever exists for a deluge that at one time covered the whole earth with water. Data used to prove a global flood happened anyway is believed only by creationists, within a theory that is no theory in the proper sense - a hypothesis with evidence. Grounds for a torrent of water are found throughout the world, but only regionally, within local cultures that physically had to do with the end of the last glacial period. That end of the last glacial is precisely determined to 9.711 bce⁶⁾. The warming of the Earth thereafter went very quickly, geologically speaking. The end of the last Ice Age was not a global event, but locally felt around the world. Sometimes a series of linked events, as we shall see, rather than one great event. No waterworld.
A second relativistic preliminary remark regarding flood stories is about the notion world and noting what the world is. The best known flood story tells about the inundation of "the entire world". What is meant with entire world? The answer depends on the knowledge of the world and hence information and education. The date of September 6, 1522 in this context represents the watershed moment of quintessential change. It was the date the Basque Juan Sebastián Elcano^illustration arrived home after as the first man on earth having circumnavigated the globe. He was the first man who could actually claim, though still fragmentary, that he had seen the entire world. He sailed on one of the ships of Fernão de Magalhães, Magellan, a Portuguese in Spanish service. However, de Magalhães died during this first world voyage, so Elcano, or del Cano, really became the first man who travelled around the world - plus of course the crew of de Magalhães' only remaining ship, the Victoria. After this epic voyage the notion of world and the actual image of the world of man continually was expanded and refined, until finally a global perception arose.
Before the caesura of 1522 the worldview of a person was linked to where he was born. Alexander the Great extended this view on the world as seen from Western perspective, drastically to the east, to India, as the Romans did to the west and north. Genghis Khan ruled the largest empire ever. But for all of them the world was mainly their world. For someone who probably lived about six thousand bce north of Mesopotamia, as Noah and his family did, that part of the world was the world, at any rate north of Mesopotamia - perhaps slightly expanded through trade contacts. A resident of the northern part of Mesopotamia who saw his part of the world completely devastated did not know better than that the whole world was flooded and destroyed. When the protagonist of the flood story would have proclaimed, "My world has been destroyed", he would have been correct. That was nowhere near the world the later readers of the Abrahamic books knew. In fact, it is a strange phenomenon that people in later better informed times for the sake of a belief prefer the more limited knowledge of past times, to be able to live in accordance with their religion, but that aside.

Atrahasis, or Noah, thus exists within a religious context and within a mythological context, but within the historical context his existence is probably unprovable. Noah may have really existed, but he can also be a created character in whose life story the flood was embedded. Alongside the comparison the personification is a style element used in many religions. The answer to the question whether Noah existed or not, also depends on the answer to the much more interesting question, was there a flood? That last question is easier to answer and for the answer must be sought in the area where the Atrahasis epic originates. That was probably Mesopotamia, but also a relatively wider area has to be considered.
In this area people lived, including a man with his family, someone who might be called Atrahasis, or Noah. Miraculously, he survived a deluge and he thanked his god for it.

Even more water

There is no evidence of a global flood. Only evidence for regional disasters exists. Each one was caused by the melting of ice masses at the end of the last glacial. Both areas in the north inhabited by people in the earliest settlements there, as areas which were inhabited by people in more advanced cultures in the subtropics. In the search for the flood that may have guided the story of the deluge in the Gilgamish epic and in the triad of Abrahamic religions, a wide choice of regional floodings is available. Which of them indeed stand alone and which may be associated with the story that was told in Mesopotamia. The location of the water cannot be searched for too far, because the world of the Neolithic, as we saw, was not much larger than in this case the north of the fertile crescent. This under the assumption that indeed a flood occurred.

The rise of sea levels caused by melting glaciers had two appearances. The first was the gradual increase. Many coastal areas globally were increasingly threatened by rising sea levels, without a catastrophic disaster being imminent. Concerning a now flooded area between the United Kingdom and mainland Europe it is reported that the height of the rise in sea level occurred with about the size of a pebble a year. Catastrophic flash floods, the other form, however, have occurred throughout the world and had devastating effects.
A well-documented example of a sudden deluge is found in western North America in the case of the "Channelled Scablands¹⁰⁾ that formed when "Glacial Lake Missoula¹¹⁾ poured out onto the land to the south. In this example, the melting glacier water collected behind an ice dam. A not uncommon phenomenon - in Iceland, this process still can be observed. The ice dam that retained "Glacial Lake Missoula" was two thousand feet high. Weak spots in the dam were eroded away by meltwater, and eventually the dam was unable to stop the nearly five thousand square miles glacial lake. Eventually the ice dam succumbed to the outside pressure. More than two thousand two hundred cubic miles of water were released at once and flooded the "Camas Prairie Valley", the "Channelled Scablands"^{video 4)}.
This phenomenon at this site has occurred not once, but probably forty times over a period of two thousand years between 13,000 and 11,000 bce. The outflow of the glacier water is situated in western North America and most likely that water drained into the Pacific Ocean. It is likely that these events have led to local flood myths, but on the whole the global influence of the outflow of the glacial lake is reflected mainly in the gradual rise of the oceans. Moreover, the last time this geological phenomenon occurred is twice as far back in time than the time at which the flood story of Noah, Atrahasis, it is believed to have occurred. So, no candidate for the origins of the Abrahamic flood story.
This is different with another flood on the North American continent, the outflow of "Lake Agassiz" into the Atlantic Ocean¹²⁾. Glacial "Lake Agassiz" was at its greatest in magnitude larger than the current three Great Lakes in North America combined. Like "Lake Missoula", "Lake Agassiz" at least partially emptied several times, of which at least once in the Arctic Ocean. The largest area the lake has reached was 275,000 square miles, larger also than any present day lake or inland sea. The last time "Lake Agassiz" again filled with glacier water was from about 7,900 bce and emptied for the last time almost completely in about 6,400 bce into the Atlantic, probably in less time than a year -see also: Glacial Lakes World Wide. This had drastic consequences for the whole planet. The exact impact of the outflow of "Lake Agassiz" is assessed differently by different geologists, but a global rise in sea levels by at least forty inches seems likely. The outpouring of freshwater into the salty ocean had also effect on the warm Gulf Stream, with a major climate change as result. In one study¹³⁾, this event around 6,400 bce is linked to the spread of agriculture from the Near East to the west of Europe. There are also several studies exploring the possibility that this event is associated with various flood myths.

Doggerland^{14) and video 5)}, the Stone Age Atlantis, is named after the Dogger Bank, an increase in the current seabed in the southern North Sea -see the red outline in the inset- where fishermen regularly find mammoth bones and other ancient artefacts as bycatch in their nets. The Dogger Bank was the very last area of land that until at least 5,000 years bce came out rising above sea level. Before, the landscape of Dogger Land had been tundra, taiga and boreal forest, with deciduous trees to the south and with settlements of people who lived permanently in this Neolithic almost Eden. It connected mainland Europe with the current United Kingdom. Sea level at the time of Dogger Land depicted on the above photo was about 400 feet below the present sea level. On the southern plains of Dogger Land the Thames, the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt came together to flow as one big wide river slowly through the endless lowlands of what is now the Channel, finally to flow into the Atlantic Ocean to the south. Before Dogger Land finally disappeared under water, it had an undulating landscape with many meandering rivers, streams, ponds and lakes. With the gradually rising sea levels, large parts of coastal area became wetlands. As a result of the outflow of "Lake Agassiz" Dogger Land got marshy and virtually submerged.
The final demise of Dogger Land, however, came from a secondary consequence of the melting of the glaciers in the north. Because less and less ice rested on the Scandinavian earth crust, the lesser weight caused this part of the Eurasian tectonic plate to heave. In it’s turn this caused around 6,200 at the edge of the continental shelf 60 miles of the Scandinavian coast an undersea landslide, the last of three, known as the "Storrega landslide". Traces of the subsequent tsunami can still be found, with deposited sediment being discovered in Montrose Basin, the Firth of Forth -Scotland-, up to 50 miles inland and 15 feet above current normal tide levels^{video 6)}. The huge tidal wave that resulted from the "Storrega landslide" was the event that separated Britain and mainland Europe. There were irreversible catastrophic consequences for the coastal areas around the southern North Sea and the Neolithic population in this once prosperous area - everything was engulfed by water.

The Mediterranean region also experienced the effects of rising sea levels. The part of the Mediterranean Sea whereto part of this introduction specifically is concentrated is the land bridge that connected Europe with Asia, the Bosporus area. Today it is a sea strait, but around 6,000 bce this area formed a land connection of about 19 miles wide between the European and Asian parts of now Turkey. In practical terms, this Bosporus Dam fulfilled the same function as the ice dams that blocked off the waters of "Lake Missoula" and "Lake Agassiz". The Bosporus Dam prevented the rising waters of the Mediterranean flowing into the lower Black Sea. Here and there some water did spill over the Bosporus Dam in the form of minor waterfalls. The bottom of the Black Sea shows traces of the consequent erosion that show the Coriolis effect. The water seeped over the dam, then flowed along the south coast of the former Black Sea, counterclockwise due to the rotation of the earth. Whether the Bosporus Dam in the long run would have succeeded in restraining the rising Mediterranean water is a question that must remain unanswered, as yet another catastrophe caused a flood.
Mount Etna in Sicily was also in ancient times a very active volcano and around 5,800 bce the site of a rare cataclysm. An eruption of exceptional size destabilized the entire eastern flank of the volcano the size of over twenty cubic miles and dumped this into the Mediterranean, with a huge tidal wave for the Eastern Mediterranean as result¹⁵⁾. The south coast of present day Turkey, of Syria, Lebanon and Israel and the coast of Egypt, were the hardest hit by the tsunami. Part of the tidal wave swept north of Crete towards the Bosporus Dam. The sudden influx of water caused the Bosporus Dam to collapse and the higher water level of the Mediterranean to gush into the much lower Black Sea.

A tidal wave or tsunami can have disastrous effects, even at great distance. The “Sunda tsunami”, the second largest ever in the area, resulted in 230,000 casualties. Most in Sumatra, but also many in Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and across the Indian Ocean in Madagascar and even on the east coast of Africa. A much larger tsunami, some geologists say, is waiting to happen due to the sliding into the ocean of the western flank of the “Cumbre Viejo”, an old but still active volcano on La Palma, one of the Canary Islands. About 310 cubic miles of rock, approximately 1,200 billion tons, then will collapse into the Atlantic Ocean with a mega-mega-tsunami as result and devastation on the other side of the Atlantic, the entire eastern seaboard of the Americas, potentially causing millions of victims.
A tsunami is lethal. With the now rising sea levels, the "La Palma tsunami” may have the same impact on the eastern coast of the Americas as the "Storrega tsunami” had on Dogger Land. Some land will disappear, other parts will change into wetlands. The "Etna tsunami" brought comparable devastation in the eastern Mediterranean basin and the Bosporus Dam collapsed, water occupying the Black Sea.

The deluge
the facts

On close inspection, the breaking of the Bosporus Dam is not yet definite proof for any disaster which directly can serve as a basis for Noah’s flood story. Just as, despite an almost continuous search, there is not yet any evidence for the existence of Homer's Atlantis, or the separating of the Red Sea by Moses after the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. The way the stories of these times in the days themselves were told and written, is completely different from the way modern man wants to read his reports. Modern man wants a clear distinction between facts and opinions and moralities, he does not appreciate. Those who fail to keep this simple rule, is considered at least a bad writer. Contrarily, until the beginning of modernity, the beginning of the Enlightenment mid-17^th century, the moralistic lesson or the educational aspect of a text was the positively charged part of the text. This was a long-standing tradition that is also found for instance in the Abrahamic texts. Also for this reason, in none of the ancient texts other than by chance, verifiable factual clues can be found - it was all about morality, the wise lesson and honouring the all-powerful God.
Nevertheless, there are natural phenomena that can be designate to possibly have caused Noah’s flood. No global flood, but regional episodes of a series of deluges that hit several places the world over - it has been demonstrated. The most likely region where the flood story must have occurred -Mesopotamia, or northern Mesopotamia or north of Mesopotamia-, the most obvious candidate natural phenomenon, is the catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea.

The Black Sea has two coastlines. The freshwater coastline and the saltwater coastline. The freshwater coastline is deeply grooved into its bedding and is age-old. The freshwater lake on the site of the present Black Sea’s location is recognizable as freshwater lake by soil samples that indicate only freshwater animals, molluscs among others, have lived here and also by the remains of plants of the kind that occur only in fresh water. The current upper coastal waters between the present shoreline and freshwater shoreline, originates from a time when the Black Sea got connected with the Mediterranean Sea. Here only soil samples exhibit marine life that comes with a seawater environment. On this basis can be established that the Black Sea basin has not always been connected with the Mediterranean Sea, as now, but that until a certain moment it was a closed system with fresh water fed by rivers including the Danube and Dnieper.

Whether in the area between the former freshwater coastline and the current seawater coastline, when this country was dry, people have lived, is difficult to determine. Some findings with underwater robots indeed seem to point into this direction. However, only a small part of the bedding is studied -the little rectangle in the above map in the south of the Black Sea- near a seawater coastal town, known to be inhabited in Neolithic times. Furthermore, only an educated guess is possible. If in the underlying period of the last glacial people lived around the current Black Sea coast, it may be assumed that these people, or maybe their family, inhabited the old the country towards the freshwater coastline. In the rolling countryside they have grazed their herds and perhaps have experimented with the early forms of agriculture.
Göbekli Tepe is a sanctuary from approximately 9,500 bce and is the oldest known temple complex in the world, but it is far from the Black Sea coast. Çatal Hüyük was an important settlement in the southern part of central Anatolia, dating from around 7,500 bce. Yesilova Höyük near current Izmir in western Anatolia was inhabited from about 6,500 bce. Also at the Black Sea coast close to now Sinop traces of Neolithic occupation were found which gave rise to archaeological research of the seabed off the coast near that place with a rov, a robotic submarine.
There has been habitation between the old freshwater coast and the current seawater coast. This country flooded and people had to find a safe haven for the rising water. This in itself is enough to justify a flood story. The ancients told their tales in equations and magnified to paint certain aspects clearer, which makes the flood story acceptable based on this event. The debate between geologists whether the filling of the Black Sea went very gradually in the span of many years, with continuous water cascades over the Bosporus Dam, or specifically as a sudden catastrophic disaster, is not essential for the development of the flood story - still assuming that the flood story has a basis in reality and that reality was the Black Sea flood. It is more dramatic, however, for a reader, especially if, for example, this reader has a Christian background, to believe in a catastrophe story and the sudden catastrophic rise in sea level, because it goes so well with the catastrophe that is narrated in Noah’s flood story. Besides, the scientifically verified data also indicate that direction with reasonable certainty.
The Mediterranean flows through the Sea of Marmora towards the Black Sea. Approximately 7,000 bce, just before the final draining of "Lake Agassiz", the level of the Mediterranean Sea was 115 feet lower than now. This level was sufficient for the Mediterranean to flow over a submarine threshold, the Dardanelles, to the Sea of Marmora, but not high enough to flow over the Bosporus Dam to the Black Sea, then having a level of 500 feet below the present level. The water of the Mediterranean rose, like every sea, and eroded parts of the Bosporus Dam whereupon water spilled over the Bosporus Dam into the Black Sea, but not yet catastrophic. A catastrophe occurred when the "Etna tsunami" sent a 50 feet high tidal wave direction Bosporus Dam. The flood broke off a portion of the Bosporus Dam and salt water flowed into the Black Sea. The current dragged off more of the Bosporus Dam into the waves, so more water could flow through the opening, allowing more Bosporus Dam to be eroded away. This process grew faster and fiercer. The flooding of the Black Sea therefore can be called a catastrophic flood, a deluge. On the bottom of the Black Sea erosion traces are observed of an enormous amount of incoming water. These tracks do not run according to the Coriolis effect, but clockwise - a movement that is more likely based on the local geology. Shortly before 6,000 bce the flood took place^{video 7)}.

The "Etna tsunami" took place around 5,800 bce and the breakthrough of the "Bosporus Dam" with the flooding of the Black Sea around 5,600 bce. Is two hundred years a too large time window for these events to place on a line of cause and effect? Although the literature presents clearly that the above dates are ‘about’ dates, it is too easy and too artificial to stretch the dates towards each other based on this approximation - it is not satisfactory. Although a two hundred years dating used by geologists represents less than a bit of a heartbeat, a thousand years is geologically barely distinctive, there may be a much more appropriate solution to explain the discrepancy between the two dates.
The rise in sea level, the flow of water and the erosion of Bosporus Dam is put in a particular sequence by researchers, after which the year 5,600 bce was calculated for the breakthrough of the Bosporus Dam and hence the probable date of the catastrophic deluge. Their sequence of events, however, was produced on the basis of a gradual rise in sea level and does not take the "Etna tsunami" -the forgotten tsunami- into consideration. It is obvious that the breakthrough of the Bosporus Dam was speeded up precisely because of this tidal wave.
Through the narrow of the Dardanelles, the "Etna tsunami" may have faded somewhat, and then again may have been boosted caused by the relative shallowness. A tidal wave up to 50 feet was enough for Bosporus Dam to collapse. Moreover, the Bosporus Dam did not consist of rocky material, but of sediments to a certain degree already waterlogged by rising sea levels. If indeed the "Etna tsunami" and the breakthrough of the Bosporus Dam thus can be seen as cause and effect, then the date of the catastrophic cause of the flood can be placed two hundred years further into the past and the tsunami and the breakthrough then coincide perfectly.

Except for the Black Sea basin, there is another candidate for Noah's residence and therefore for the location of the flood. In the north or north of Canaan, in now Turkey, in a relatively sharp bend in the Mediterranean coast right in the middle at the end of a bay, the present town of Dörtyol is located. When one studies the sea bottom in front of this coastal village, one sees that the seabed for dozens of miles remains quite shallow. The long sharp tip of the island of Cyprus, the Karpaz Peninsula, points exactly toward the centre of this bay¹⁶⁾. While, as far as is known, no geological or archaeological study of this area is done related to the tsunami that resulted from the collapse of the eastern flank of Mount Etna, it is not difficult to hypothesize that the flood must have struck here at least as bad as to the south in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Possibly even more severe, because into the direction of Dörtyol the bay is so shallow that the tidal wave must have been pushed up here to an even greater height. That the sharp tip of Cyprus, a ridge, points precisely into the direction of Dörtyol must also have meant that the tsunami from the northern coast of Cyprus onwards was funnelled straight for Dörtyol. The ridge on Cyprus also points directly towards the Turkish-Armenian border, the site where Noah and his ark ran aground on Mount Ağri Daği, Ararat.
On the other hand, although the tidal wave, given the effects elsewhere, must have been monstrous here also, it will not have been that big a wooden ark was washed from the Mediterranean coast al the way to Turkish-Armenian border - problematic, given the distance and the intervening mountainous terrain. Also, despite its size, this tsunami must have withdrawn within two or three days. Much shorter than the twelve months designated in the religious tradition, despite this material cannot be taken as factual. The "Dörtyol flood" certainly deserves to be investigated in this context, but the tidal wave into the Black Sea basin by duration and especially by volume remains the likeliest candidate for the catastrophic flood that has most possibly formed the basis of the story of Noah's flood.

Noah's flood is not historical, because at as proof can be associated with the mythological narratives. What is demonstrated is the existence of catastrophic tidal waves and floods, and not exclusive to the area where Noah is believed to have lived. The devastating floods and tidal waves have indeed played within a short time, between 8,000 and 5,800 bce, but that is not a matter of a global and simultaneous flood. All data considering it can be determined that the connection between a tsunami in the Black Sea and the story of Noah only can be an assumption. A plausible assumption, but an assumption nonetheless.
The only undeniable proof that can be given for the existence of Noah at the time of Black Sea Flood is the discovery of a partially buried settlement or farm at the bottom of the Black Sea with on the fallen fence a nameplate with the name, Noah. Until this discovery is made, if ever, the reader of the Tanakh, Bible or Koran has to do with an assumption. A tidal wave as in the Black Sea will have caused hundreds and perhaps thousands of victims. That there has been only one survivor, with his family, is very unlikely. However, it is obvious that the story of a survivor is used by shamans and priests to convey an edifying lesson and to emphasize the power of the god they served and to expand on his authority. Noah was possibly such a shaman, as one of the many alternative survival myth claims.