“Where?” Costas enquired.
“Central Turkey, on the Konya Plain about four hundred kilometres south of here. Possibly the earliest town in the world, a farming community established ten thousand years ago at the dawn of agriculture. A tightly packed conglomeration of mud-brick buildings with timber frames just like these.”
“A unique site,” Katya said.
“Until now. This changes everything.”
“There’s more,” said Macleod. “Much more. The sonar shows anomalies like this along the ancient coast as far as we’ve surveyed, about thirty kilometres either way. They occur every couple of kilometres and each one is undoubtedly another village or homestead.”
“Amazing.” Jack’s mind was racing. “This land must have been incredibly productive, supporting a population far larger than the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia and the Levant.” He looked at Macleod, a wide grin on his face. “For an expert on deep-sea hydrothermal vents you’ve done a pretty good day’s work.”
CHAPTER 9
Sea Venture cut a white-flecked swath as she made her way south from her position above the submerged ancient shoreline. The sky was clear but the sea was a dark and forbidding contrast to the deep blue of the Mediterranean. Ahead loomed the forested slopes of northern Turkey and the crest of the Anatolian Plateau, which marked the beginning of the uplands of Asia Minor.
As soon as the ROV had been recovered, Sea Venture had made maximum headway for the IMU supply base at Trabzon, the Black Sea port whose whitewashed buildings nestled against the shoreline to the south. Katya was enjoying her first chance to relax since arriving in Alexandria three days previously, her long hair blowing in the breeze as she stripped down to a bathing costume that left little to the imagination. Beside her on deck Jack was finding it hard to concentrate as he talked to Costas and Macleod.
Costas had been advising Macleod on the best way to map the sunken Neolithic village, drawing on their success with photogrammetry at the Minoan wreck. They had agreed that Seaquest would join Sea Venture in the Black Sea as soon as possible; her equipment and expertise were essential for a full investigation. Another vessel had already been despatched from Carthage to assist at the wreck site and it would now take over from Seaquest.
“If the sea was rising up to forty centimetres a day after the Bosporus was breached,” Costas said, his voice raised against the wind, “then it would have been pretty obvious to the coastal population. After a few days they’d have guessed the long-term prognosis was not good.”
“Right,” Macleod agreed. “The Neolithic village is ten metres higher than the ancient shoreline. They would have had about a month to get out. That would explain the absence of artefacts in the rooms we saw.”
“Could this be the biblical flood?” Costas ventured.
“Virtually every civilization has a flood myth, but most can be related to river floods rather than some oceanic deluge,” Jack said. “Catastrophic river floods were more likely early on, before people learned to build embankments and channels to control the waters.”
“That’s always seemed the most likely basis for the epic of Gilgamesh,” Katya said. “A flood story written on twelve clay tablets about 2000 BC, discovered in the ruins of Nineveh in Iraq. Gilgamesh was a Sumerian king of Uruk on the Euphrates, a place first settled in the late sixth millennium BC.”
“The biblical flood may have had a different origin,” Macleod added. “IMU has surveyed the Mediterranean coast of Israel and found evidence for human activity dating back to the end of the Ice Age, to the time of the great melt twelve thousand years ago. Five kilometres offshore we found stone tools and shell middens where Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers ranged before it was submerged.”
“You’re suggesting the Israelites of the Old Testament retained some memory of these events?” Costas asked.
“Oral tradition can survive thousands of years, especially in a tightly knit society. But some of our displaced farmers from the Black Sea could also have settled in Israel.”
“Remember Noah’s Ark,” Jack said. “A huge ship built after warnings of a flood. Breeding pairs of every animal. Think of our Black Sea farmers. The sea would have been their main escape route and they would have taken as many of their animals as possible, in breeding pairs to start up new populations.”
“I thought they didn’t have big boats that early on,” Costas said.
“Neolithic shipwrights could build longboats able to carry several tons of cargo. The first farmers on Cyprus had giant aurochs, the ancestor of today’s cattle, as well as pigs and deer. None of these species were indigenous and they can only have been brought by boat. That was around 9000 BC. The same thing probably happened on Crete a thousand years later.”
Costas scratched his chin thoughtfully. “So the story of Noah might contain a kernel of truth, not one huge vessel but many smaller vessels carrying farmers and livestock from the Black Sea.”
Jack nodded. “It’s a very compelling idea.”
Sea Venture’s engines powered down as she made for the harbour entrance at Trabzon. Beside the eastern quay they could see the grey silhouettes of two Dogan-class FPB-57 fast attack craft, part of the Turkish Navy’s response to the increasing scourge of smuggling on the Black Sea. The Turks had taken an uncompromising view, striking hard and fast and shooting to kill. Jack felt reassured by the sight, knowing his contacts in the Turkish Navy would ensure a swift response should they encounter any trouble in territorial waters.
They were standing by the railing on the upper deck as Sea Venture edged towards the western quay. Costas peered up at the densely wooded slopes above the town.
“Where did they go after the flood? They wouldn’t have been able to farm up there.”
“They would have needed to go a long way inland,” Jack agreed. “And this was a large population, tens of thousands at least, to judge by the number of settlements we saw on the sonar read-out.”
“So they split up.”
“It may have been an organized exodus, orchestrated by a central authority to ensure the greatest chance of finding suitable new lands for the entire population. Some went south over that ridge, some east, some west. Malcolm mentioned Israel. There are other obvious destinations.”
Costas spoke excitedly. “The early civilizations. Egypt. Mesopotamia. The Indus Valley. Crete.”
“It is not so far-fetched.” The words came from Katya, who had sat up and was now fully absorbed in the discussion. “One of the most striking features about the history of language is that much of it stems from a common root. Across Europe, Russia, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, most of the languages spoken today have one origin.”
“Indo-European,” Costas offered.
“An ancient mother tongue which many linguists already thought came from the Black Sea region. We can reconstruct its vocabulary from words held in common by later languages, such as Sanscrit pitar, Latin pater and German vater, the origin of English father.”
“What about words for agriculture?” Costas asked.
“The vocabulary shows they ploughed the land, wore woollen clothing and worked leather. They had domesticated animals including oxen, pigs and sheep. They had complex social structures and wealth differentiation. They worshipped a great mother goddess.”
“What are you suggesting?”