Ancient Ship Graveyard Embroiled In Biblical Flood Mystery

Can a subaquatic ship graveyard really help solve the biblical mystery of Noah’s Ark?

The mysterious ancient site was discovered thousands of feet below the Black Sea off the old town of Nessebar on the Bulgarian coast, which is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, and news reports are saying it might explain the origins of the tale of Noah's Ark.

Maritime archaeologist, Zdravka Georgieva, and scientists from Bulgaria’s Centre for Underwater Archaeology (CUA) in Sozopol generally work on the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (Black Sea MAP), which surveys the seabed to better understand how the seas and coastlines have changed since the last Ice Age. But in 2016, an Anglo-Bulgarian team led by Professor Jon Adams from the University of Southampton, in partnership with the CUA, spent a month onboard the exploration ship 'Stril Explorer’ mapping the sea floor between 1,000 feet (305 meters) and almost 6,000 feet (1,830 meters) below the surface.

Researchers using a MMT surveyor to study the ship graveyard. (CUA)

Deploying sonar technology and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) the scientists constructed high resolution 3D models of 60 wrecks, spread out over 700 square miles (1,813 square kilometers) and dating back as far as 400 BC, and this so called “Dead Zone” included a Greek trading ship which is the oldest of its type ever discovered.

The Deluge That Wasn’t There

A BBC report says at those depths there is so little oxygen that the timbers have hardly decayed and that some of these ancient boats are in such good condition that “individual chisel marks” appear on the planks of the hulls. According to both the BBC and The Sun, further studies might help explain the origins of the biblical flood that was sent by God to wipe out corruption and violence in the story of Noah's Ark. What? I hear you say.

• 3 Wrecks Found in Ship Graveyard in Aegean Sea in Just 22 Days
• Bronze Age Ship Found in the Mediterranean is World’s Oldest Shipwreck!
• Secrets of 829-Year-Old Post-Viking-Era Shipwreck Revealed

The Black Sea Flower shipwreck, 17th century AD Ottoman wreck in pristine conditions. (Black Sea MAP)

In 2000, Marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman suggested in their book titled Noah's Flood that the real flood that inspired the legendary “biblical flood” actually occurred about 20,000 years ago when what is now the Black Sea was a small freshwater lake cut off from the Mediterranean by a land bridge. At the end of the last Ice Age, according to the authors, the Mediterranean began to rise and a seawater deluge “200 times stronger than Niagara Falls” causing the Black Sea to “explode" in size, flooding an area “the size of Ireland within months”.

And while this theory has its skeptics, in 2000, the foundations of ancient buildings were found along the Black Sea's pre-flood shoreline, 12 miles (19.3 kilometers) off the Turkish Black Sea coast, somewhat adding credence to this idea. However, when we do a little more probing the bottom falls out of this fringe theory and if this scientific study proves anything related to the legendary flood it is that it never happened.

Close to the ship graveyard, the old town of Nessebar on the Bulgarian coast is a dense stack of layered ruins that stretch back more than 3,000 years. (Martyr / CC BY-SA 2.5)

Spreadsheets Have No Cells For God

You will read reports that will have you think the team of scientists are actively looking to prove or disprove the biblical flood, but this is really not the case. Of course, studying soil samples from around the Nessebar shipwrecks will inevitably answer whether or not waters did or didn’t fill the Black Sea at a rapid and destructive rate many thousands of years ago, but today, according to the scientists from Black Sea MAP, they “don't believe” any such flood happened. Dr. Zdravka Georgieva said very clearly “there’s no evidence to support this theory and believes that the seas changed over great periods of time”.

In fact, so far, all evidence gathered by the project stands against all catastrophic flood hypothesis’ and the data more accurately demonstrates a more “gradual sea level rising”. If this project has revealed anything new about the flood described in Noah’s Ark, it is that it simply didn’t happen outside the pages of the Bible, that can never be accused of being ‘science dense’.

Trillions Of Tell Tale Signs Negate The Biblical Flood

That’s done it, I‘ve now perhaps offended a sizable proportion of my God fearing readers but I should add that if any further evidence is sought after, to help clear up the fact the biblical flood is nothing more than fiction, this well researched 2018 Skeptical Enquirer article titled Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened will help ‘you see the light’.

The Bible story of Noah's Ark. (DcoetzeeBot / Public Domain)

Maybe the most evocative scientific proof against any such flood occurring has billions upon billions upon billions of tangible and observable testimonies - “raindrop prints”. All over the world, which could not possibly have been formed and preserved if the muds (now in shales) containing these prints were deposited under water during Noah’s flood, there are rain drops, trillions of them, each one’s geological story shadowed by a legend in the Bible.

Top image: Researchers study a ship graveyard discovered in the Black Sea. Source: Paul Vinten / Adobe Stock.

By Ashley Cowie