The collapse of a massive ice sheet 8,000 years ago caused a dramatic rise in sea level and triggered an agricultural revolution across Europe, according to new research by geographers at the universities of Exeter and Wollongong, Australia.

By trawling through archaeological records, the researchers discovered that the collapse of the Laurentide ice sheet, which covered much of North America, released a deluge of freshwater. This raised sea levels by as much as 1.4 metres, diluting the North Atlantic Ocean and causing the Black Sea (a once isolated freshwater lake) to flood – an event thought to have inspired the biblical story of Noah’s ark.

Reconstructions of the Mediterranean and Black Sea shorelines before and after the sea-level rise suggested that over a period of 34 years, around 73,000 square kilometres of land was lost to the sea, which would have led to the displacement of as many as 145,000 people.

Although archaeological records show that early agricultural techniques were being practised in southeastern Europe before the flood, the collapse corresponds to a sudden expansion of agriculture and pottery production across Europe, indicating that the catastrophic rise in water levels forced people to move west, taking their culture and farming know-how into areas inhabited by hunter-gatherer communities.

‘People living in what is now southeastern Europe must have felt as though the whole world had flooded,’ said the study’s lead author, Professor Chris Turney of the University of Exeter. ‘Entire coastal communities must have been displaced, forcing people to migrate in their thousands, taking farming with them.’


January 2008