Re: [tied] Re: Language - Area - Routes

From: Rex H. McTyeire
Message: 5926
Date: 2001-02-05

Torsten:
> caused by the latest rise in sea level. This means Sundaland and
Euxine occurred simultanéously (now I can't find it, of course).

Piotr:
> No they didn't. The Black Sea flood was a long-delayed consequence
of the postglacial sea-level rise. The Bosphorus remained blocked long
enough for the level of the Euxine to drop by some 200 m and for a
freshwater
lake half the size of the present sea to form in that part of the Tethys
basin. The waters of the Mediterranean cut through the barrier about 5500 BC
(give or take a few decades), that is at least two and a half millennia
after the submergence of the Sunda Shelf, which was an instant result of the
Holocene warming.

Torsten:
>Did too (this is getting ridiculous). This is my fault, I must learn
to distinguish between BP, BPE, and BC.
I checked "Eden in the East". Citing reliable sources (I think), the
last great rise in the level of the oceans was 8000 BP, 6000 BC.
So was the flooding of the Black Sea.

I have to favor Piotr on these points, which have been discussed here in
detail in the past with Mark Odegard also contributing. I don't think you
will find any simultaneity of the discussed events. 5500 BC is as solid a
date as we can expect for the period relative to the Black Sea rise, and
even if you could get as reliable a date for Sundaland..it would be off. (2
and a half, to at least one half millennium using your dates.) Piotr is
correct that the proposed mechanics of the Black Sea fill include a
relatively sudden breach of a significant geobarrier, following the gradual
(centuries?) sea level increases in the Med/Aegean.

See Ryan and Pittman, Columbia University - 1997. Also see: Cornell
University Dendrochronology Project.
Mediterranean into the Black Sea ca. 5500 BCE.
and another significant subsidence (Dendrochronology attested) after 2715
+/- 10 years http://www.arts.cornell.edu/dendro/98news/98adplet.html
(an old link, but will get you to index)

See also: Toby Harnden, Robert Ballard re the mollusc evidence, radiacarbon
dating salt water molluscs, also supporting 5,500 BCE as the Black Sea fill
date.

Cu Stima;
Rex H. McTyeire
Bucharest, Romania
<rexbo@...>