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William B. F. Ryan
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Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History Paperback – 31 Dec. 1998

by William Ryan (Author), Walter Pitman (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 114 ratings
on any 2 Qualifying items | Terms
Two geophysicists investigate a huge flood 7600 years ago in the region of the Black Sea. Discoveries about the history of rapid climate change suggest that mounting seas over a wide area rapidly created a human diaspora, who have since passed on the legends and epic tales of a Great Flood.
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  1. Print length
    319 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Touchstone
  4. Publication date
    31 Dec. 1998
  5. ISBN-10
    0684810522
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0684810522
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0684861372
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Touchstone
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 31 Dec. 1998
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 319 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0684810522
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0684810522
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 700 g
  • Best Sellers Rank: 2,237,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 114 ratings

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William B. F. Ryan

William B. F. Ryan

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4.3 out of 5 stars
114 global ratings

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Spencer D'Mellow
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 April 2024
    Verified Purchase
    Nice book, it said it was in good condition, to be honest it's in very good condition considering it's a second hand book, delivery was great, fast and efficient
    One person found this helpful
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  • M. M. Bennett
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Origin of the Noah Story explored & probably explained: a solid historical & underwater archaeological study.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 November 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Stunning. Increasingly it is clear that there was a Universal Flood - it's called the post Ice Age and it took place around 12,000 years ago & the world (their world not ours) was consumed in a deluge. What was their world? Dogger Bank; the Black Sea etc... Their local world disappeared and characters of various titles/names are credited with survival. This book deals with the inundation of the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. Ryan and Pitman provide a convincing explanation for the roots of the Old Testament story - though the wider effects of global ocean lift clearly provide alternatives. They posit a possible connection between the event and the creation of the Biblical account - geographically speaking. I have to say, I tend to accept, for now, that this is the source for friend Noah and his wooden ship. Noah's Flood is that convincing.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Fenella Fay
    4.0 out of 5 stars Noah's Flood
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 March 2011
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    This book was very interesting. It suggests all kinds of things about water levels and the Black Sea. There is apparently evidence in the form of plant remains.

    I had no idea currents behaved in such a peculiar way.
    One person found this helpful
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  • michael g. smith
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent solid work
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 April 2014
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    The writer lays the facts out in excellent form and leaves the reader to reach the conclusions. The writer does not link religion with the facts and leaves many questions unanswered where facts simply do not exist.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Johannus
    3.0 out of 5 stars Noahs Flood
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 February 2013
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    The book is interesting from the point of view of the evidence for great floods of the Mediterannean and Black seas, but the severity of Noah`s Flood was far mor world wide which does not come through with this tale.
    Compare Charles Hapgood`s "Path of the Pole" and the theory of a major Earth crust movement and then you can appreciate that the resulting devastation caused by the resulting Tsinamis etc would be a nearer representation of the world wide event recorded by many regions in history.
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  • Squirrel
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and well written book
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 August 2012
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    This is a really interesting read - it needs concentration and I found myself re-reading whole sections as the concepts being covered were so boggling that once was not enough.....excellent throughout - plenty of food for thought.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Maya Hristova
    5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely insightful
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 July 2013
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    Initially I found it hard to concentrate on this book as the style of writing is rather academic, however once I was used to it, I was into it. It's very interesting and enlightening!
    One person found this helpful
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  • maaji
    4.0 out of 5 stars Science or journalism?
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 September 2014
    This is a very interesting book but has not made up its mind whether it is a serious scientific paper or a piece of journalism. The actual fascinating story of how the Mediterranean poured into the Black Sea does not need so much distracting stuff as "he circled the lecture on his calendar with a fat felt tip pen" or "he shook the drops from his umbrella as he entered the hall" or pages and pages ot highly technical information incomprehensible and boring to the lay reader. If there is another edition I hope the authors would reduce it by half.
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Todd Imrie
    5.0 out of 5 stars Human History Well Explained.
    Reviewed in Canada on 28 November 2024
    Verified Purchase
    As one might guess this book examines of the theories about early human life on this planet as to how it developed. I think it explains that theory quite well. It explains the biblical story. It compares it to reality. I think it comes off quite well as to the closeness to how that biblical story might have played out in reality. I appreciate the seller sending it along so quickly as well as in such good condition as this is a fine history book to have in my collection of books.
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  • Satisfied_or_Not
    1.0 out of 5 stars 印刷がひどくて返品、内容は面白そう
    Reviewed in Japan on 21 December 2012
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    パラパラとめくった限りでは、内容は期待通りとても面白そうです。

    しかし印刷がひどくて、読めない箇所が10ページ以上もありました。
    ペーパーバック本の印刷品質をもう信用できないので、
    交換ではなく、返品・返金しました。

    電子ファイル版があったらなあと思います。
    ハードカバー本の印刷品質を確認してから、再購入するつもりです。
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  • Giupao64
    5.0 out of 5 stars Noah's Flood: The New...
    Reviewed in Italy on 22 June 2017
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    Ottimo libro.Fatto bene e buone anche le rifiniture.Arrivato prima dei giorni previsti e l'mballo era ben curato. Lo trovato grazie ad amazon.
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  • Libris Vermis
    5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough, compelling, fascinating, and charming
    Reviewed in the United States on 1 May 2011
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    If you're in a hurry, here is my short-version:

    "All myths are based on at least some actual history." With this bit of conventional wisdom in mind, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, both with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, take us on a multi-disciplinary tour of the waning centuries of the last glaciation, including one of the most traumatic events in human history, the flooding of the immense freshwater glacial lake "Euxine" by the Mediterranean Sea, and its sudden conversion (and expansion) into the poisonous, treacherous Black Sea.

    The authors weave together History, Archaeology, Linguistics, Paleo-Anthropology, Geology, Marine Geology, Organic Chemistry, Biology, and Marine Biology into a seamless, elegant tapestry. The writing is fluid and graceful, at times even poetic. The erudition is impressive but never oppressive; we get the sense that they had a lot of fun researching & writing the book (in spite of one of them apparently having lost a son at far too young an age), which makes it fun for us as well. There is enough technical detail to make their case, without getting bogged down - I don't believe the technical stuff should be a problem for any reasonably intelligent reader. There are copious maps and diagrams, and as a charming bonus, the illustrations are all done in free-hand black waterpaint - no photographs. Lastly, the bibliographical notes are exhaustive - at least a half-dozen books that I feel I can't live without.

    Recommendation: If any of the above-listed topics interest you, buy it. Easily one of my 10 best reads of the last 5 years.

    -------------------------------------------------------------

    If you'd like a little more detail, please read on:

    We are also given a concise survey of the beginnings of paleo-human research in the 19th century. As is well known, flood stories are ubiquitous across Eurasia, starting with our oldest epic, Gilgamesh, and the authors do an excellent job of conveying the mounting excitement in Europe as expedition after expedition sent back reports and artifacts confirming the historicity of the biblical flood (of course by the end of the 19th century this excitement would be tempered by the realization that flood stories were not confined to the Judeo-Christian world, and in fact were almost universal).

    Serendipitously, one of the authors was a junior researcher on the sea-floor coring & mapping expedition of the late `60s that discovered the mother of all floods, the Gibraltar waterfall of some five-million years ago which re-filled the Mediterranean Basin - it had been isolated from the Atlantic several million years before by the collision of North Africa and Spain and was completely desiccated. Imagine what a furnace that must have been, with an average depth of almost a mile and the Calypso Deep over three miles deep! (the Black Sea & Caspian Sea basins are also remnants of the ancient Sea of Tethys, which was "balkanized" by the collision of three crustal plates) And then a waterfall that refilled the basin in less than a century and probably made the ground shake for a thousand miles. If any of our hominid ancestors were in North Africa by then they must have been terrified.

    Having laid a solid foundation of scholarship, physical evidence and analytical techniques, Ryan and Pitman then consider the evidence for the Black Sea flood being The Flood. Very contrary to the Publisher's Weekly review above, the case is compelling - close to airtight in fact - and multi-threaded: Oral tradition, physical evidence and linguistics all point to a traumatic event and subsequent diaspora in the correct epoch; Germanic settlements have been identified as far away as the Takla Makan desert in western China. The physical evidence for a flooded shoreline and enlargement of the lake is irrefutable; evidence for a poisonous layer-cake combination of fresh water & salt water is well attested, both from modern testing and oral tradition (again, as far back as the Gilgamesh epic). Recent soundings of the Bosporus Strait have confirmed that the deep inner channel was gouged. Drowned villages have been found as far as twenty miles off-shore.

    Too, there is corroborating evidence in other floods - the mega-floods of the American northwest, including the channeled scablands of eastern Washington state, the Younger Dryas era which may have been caused by the collapse of the ice dam impounding glacial lake Agassiz, which engulfed the entire modern great lakes; and just this year, the discovery that the English Channel was gouged by a monster flood - another ice dam collapse. The Black Sea Flood was a special case where the world's oceans were literally beating down the door of a freshwater glacial lake, but there must have been thousands of collapsed ice-dam floods along the latitudes of the retreating glaciers. This raises the possibility of a new line of research, a new earth sciences sub-discipline - Eluvieology or something - which would also combine Archaeology, paleo-anthropology, and the exact earth sciences.
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  • Nils Young
    5.0 out of 5 stars An epic adventure within an epic's origins
    Reviewed in the United States on 1 November 2001
    Verified Purchase
    Near the end of their chronicle of the discovery of the catastrophic Black Sea flood, authors Pitman & Ryan quote another researcher's wonder at the power of the oral tradition. The quote, from Albert Lord's analysis of the Trojan War epic, speaks to Pitman's and Ryan's research and their part in the oral tradition.
    In truth, the story of the Black Sea covers more than plate tectonics, glaciation, human evolution or ten cubic miles of water flowing through a narrow channel in less than a day over seven thousand years ago. The neat trick with this book is that the authors have managed to include all that and more.
    There are really two stories here. One is about the evolution of the human species from the Pleistocene to the present day, told in scientific language with scientific explanations for the actions & discoveries of the story's scientific participants. The other story is an epic tale of crafty researchers, cooperating scientists, story-tellers, myths and legends, told in skillfully written & documented prose that sweeps the reader along in the current of human successes, failures & terrors.
    Beginning with Rawlinson's work in 1835 on a monument in Persia, Pitman & Ryan weave the reader through a fabric of time that is, as Lord is quoted saying, a past "of various times . . . assembled into the present performance." Using this motif, the authors introduce themselves only as two participants in a story of discovery, narrated by a fictive bard who is present only in the words. However the authors' parts in the discovery of the Black Sea flood event deserves respect. Meanwhile they have written a book that shows the respect they have for all who have been part of the story. Most importantly, they also have not forgotten the story itself.
    In the final chapters Ryan & Pitman review the Black Sea's effect on history from the geological, genetic, linguistic and archeological evidence. They then compare this evidence with the numerous universal flood legends. Ryan & Pitman show how the power of the historical and geological event that created the Black Sea is the power behind the oral tradition. They then close the last chapter with the final lines of the story of Atrahasis: "I shall sing of the flood to all people! Listen!"
    Most intriguing of all the information in this book is a dedication that includes a quote from the Gilgamesh epic. The dedication reveals the epic nature of the science and the mythos involved the Black Sea. It shows the sensitivity that the authors have for a legend and event that made humanity the species smart enough to wonder why and sensitive enough to pursue the wonder of life itself.
    Whether you're interested in the science or the myth, Noah's Flood is a marvelous read. Clearly written, scientifically concise, sensitive to the human heritage in the rise of agriculture, language & story, it is worth the time you'll take in reading it. And you'll gain a sense for timeless wonder of the story within the words.
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