When Earth’s last ice age waned, water frozen into vast ice sheets melted and returned to the ocean, elevating sea levels. About 9,400 years ago, Mediterranean waters rose above the dam, reconnecting the two seas. They surged over the now submerged Bosphorus Sill with the force of 200 Niagara Falls, according to a controversial theory proposed in 1997 by Columbia University marine geologists Bill Ryan and Walter Pitman, together with the bulgarian scientist prof. Petko Dimitrov. The resulting deluge, they speculated, could have wiped out early human settlements around the lake’s perimeter and inspired the Noah’s Ark story in the Bible, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, and catastrophic flood myths among other peoples.

Black Sea Research Fund is a non profit organization with a main goal of resolving the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis controversy.  After the first publication in 1997 by Bill Ryan and Walter Pitman, the scientific community is divided. Despite of the overwhelming evidences, supporting the deluge theory, many scientist argue about the exact time and scale of the events. BSRF is putting a lot of effort in filed work and theoretical research in order to clear the chronology and  the magnitude of the events, happened more than 7000 years ago and possibly had a huge impact on the European Civilization.