Significance of Black Sea Find
“Discovery Lends Credence to Account of Noah’s Flood” (Sept. 13), regarding the discovery of ancient dwellings below the Black Sea, is newsworthy for the light it sheds on Earth’s geologic history and possible anthropological data. In no way, however, does it lend credence to the biblical account of Noah’s flood, nor is it an isolated, seminal archeological discovery. Sea levels have varied dramatically throughout the relatively short existence of humans, and given man’s propensity to dwell near water, it is likely that many more as-yet-undiscovered submerged ruins exist.
In the fanciful biblical account, it rained for 40 days and nights and flooded the entire Earth, whose sum total of life forms were saved on a giant boat--all this as punishment from God for immorality. The universality of myths and legends is well documented. A front-page headline crediting a minor archeological discovery with lending credence to such a myth is an affront to the reasonable thinker and an insult to the atheist.
H. MARK ISENBERGER
Los Angeles
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Robert Ballard’s search for evidence of Noah’s flood in the Black Sea raises provocative questions, not the least being: So what’s on Turkey’s Mt. Ararat? In the ‘90s, I produced a segment of TV’s “Unsolved Mysteries” on this subject and continue to receive information regarding eyewitness and high-tech sightings of a large, broken, organic, rectilinear, man-made structure preserved in the ice high on greater Ararat.
William B.F. Ryan and Walter C. Pittman III don’t mention Ararat in their intriguing book. Nevertheless, highly trained, professional observers of planet Earth have described to me a structure much like the biblical ark on Ararat. There are also confirming anecdotal stories of the ark from the Armenian community as well as from Kurdish shepherds in the region.
Was the flood of Noah a much greater event than the “mere” flooding of the Black Sea? Is it possible the biblical metaphor is the thing itself?
ROBIN EVERETT SIMMONS
Desert Hot Springs
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