The artifacts clearly show a massive flood swept an area north of Turkey 7,500 years ago, killing people in its wake, Ballard told two dozen local and international journalists yesterday.
But was it the cataclysmic flood that sparked the Biblical story of Noah's ark?
"There's wishful thinking . . . and certainly there's circumstantial evidence" to link the flood to the Old Testament account of Noah, Ballard said. "I don't think there's any doubt that people were down there when the water came in. But," he added, "who were they?"
In July, Ballard's Institute for Exploration will try again to find out.
Working with the National Geographic Society and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, a group of scientists will use a new sonar device to scour the coast of Bulgaria, a region the Greeks called inhospitable because of violent storms and hostile tribes.
Explorers will likely find ships or artifacts from ancient trade routes, in part because the waters of the Black Sea are devoid of oxygen.
"It's really a giant bathtub full of salt water . . . that has gone stagnant," Ballard said. "The absence of oxygen means there are no wood-boring organisms" to destroy the hulls and masts of sunken ships.
Last September, Ballard found the pristine remains of a 1,500-year-old wooden ship in the Black Sea near Sinop, Turkey. Experts say the hand-carved, 45-foot-long ship is from the late Roman or early Byzantine period.
Ballard became intrigued with the idea of a Biblical flood after the publication of Noah's Flood , a book by scientists William Ryan and Walter Pitman. The authors suggested the rising waters of the Mediterranean burst through an earthen dam and flooded the Black Sea area, a freshwater inland lake settled more than 7,000 years ago.
Ballard invited journalists to his Institute for Exploration -- a research center with exhibits in a corner of the Mystic Marinelife Aquarium -- to unveil an ambitious plan to explore three areas of the globe this summer.
Next month, explorers from the institute will search for 60 to 80 shipwrecks in Thunder Bay on Lake Huron in Michigan. Because the fragile sites are part of a marine sanctuary, cameras will eventually allow people to view the wrecks without disturbing them, Ballard said.
In addition to the Black Sea trip, explorers in July will revisit the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where Ballard in 1999 found two Phoenician trade ships off the coast of Israel.
Scientists on both trips are expected to uncover early trade routes used by Egyptian, Greek and other ancient mariners.
There may be as many as "a million ships in the deep sea," said Ballard, who received a doctorate in marine geology and geophysics from the University of Rhode Island.
"That number is staggering. There are 5,000 years of human history waiting for us in the deep sea."
Ballard won't make the overseas trips this year. But Dwight F. Coleman, a Saunderstown resident and marine geologist for the institute, will.
During much of the time, he'll watch a black and white sonar screen for bright spots and shadows -- acoustic pictures of the sea floor. "The big shipwrecks stand out like sore thumbs," he said.
Coleman will help map the new discoveries. Then, in the summer of 2002, explorers will take a closer look.
"Right now we're sort of in a feeding frenzy in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean," said Ballard, who decided to become an explorer after reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a boy.
"I'd love to go after Kublai Khan's invasion ships," or unearth other war ships from different eras, he said of the founder of the Mongol 13th-century empire. "There's plenty to do."
Researcher Ballard Resuming Search For Biblical Flood Evidence
STONINGTON, Conn. -- Last summer, Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard found stone blocks, ancient shells and a freshwater shoreline 550 feet below the murky surface of the Black Sea.
[Original headline: It's back to the Black Sea for Ballard ]
The Providence Journal / RI | Paul Davis - May 18 2001
