Black Sea trip yields no conclusions on Noah flood
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 recounted in the Biblical story of Noah.
That story told of a calamitous flood occurring over 40 days and nights. Scientists had largely dismissed it, believing the Black Sea filled up gradually with gently rising waters. That wisdom was rocked, however, when two scholars claimed several years ago that the Black Sea's flooding was more recent _ and so rapid and widespread that it forced people to move as far away as mainland...