Chapter 10
London 2010
‘Dead Virgins,’ said Brandon again, ‘Does it mean anything to you?’
‘I had forgotten,’ answered India.
‘Forgotten what?’
‘The man in the car park, Mr Jones, they were the last words he said. I couldn’t quite make them out then, but now it seems so obvious. He said Mortuus Virgo.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘I don’t know, perhaps it is a reference to the dead girls.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, ‘He could have said it in English but he used Latin, why use a dead language? None of this makes sense, two tortured girls, another missing, a technician who kills himself and a murdered man in a car park. The only thing they have in common is a link to this.’ He pushed the coin back into the middle of the table. ‘We are missing something here India but everything comes back to the coin. Are you sure there is nothing more you can tell me about its history.’
‘Only what I’ve said so far,’ she said.
‘Then tell me the rest of your story, perhaps there is something in the past that can help.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Start where you left off, the Noah thing. It may be desperate but it seems to me that this is the only clue we have to go on at the moment, no matter how obscure.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘But I don’t know where this is going.’ She took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Okay, just to review, the Black Sea Basin was an enormous fertile valley containing a fresh water lake surrounded by a prosperous people. Isis was long dead but her memory had become almost a religion and they were thriving.’
‘Yes, yes you’ve covered this already what about Noah?’
She glared at his impatience before continuing.
‘What you have to remember, is the world was emerging from the greater Dryas period.’ She picked up on the unspoken question written all over his face. ‘Sorry,’ she explained, The Greater Dryas was the name we call last Ice age. Anyway, for tens of thousands of years sea levels had been far, far lower than they are now. Climatic conditions meant that much of the water evaporating from the seas was being deposited over the poles as snow and the ice sheets were miles thick in places locking in much of the water. The fresh water lake in the Black Sea basin was hundreds of feet lower than the Mediterranean but it didn’t matter as there was a natural dam of land over twenty miles wide keeping them apart. As the climate warmed up the ice started to melt and the sea levels started to rise until eventually over a period of time the Mediterranean along with the Aegean and subsequently the sea of Marmara must have reached the same level as the land dividing it from the basin.’ She paused to sip her tea.
‘And?’ asked Brandon.
‘What happened next is historical fact,’ she continued, ‘Though we don’t know the actual details. The sea of Marmara overflowed into the Black sea, flooding the basin and forming the saltwater sea as we know it now.’
‘What, just like that?’
‘You have to remember, Brandon, the climate must have been all over the place. Who knows what factor was the final straw. All we can do is imagine the series of events. There was probably already a valley running most of the way between the Marmara and the Black sea basin where the Bosphorus now stands. All it needed was a catastrophic event of some sort to open the way for the sea to make the breach.’
‘Like an Earthquake?’ he asked.
‘Possibly, the area lies near a fault and suffers badly from earthquakes but more probably it was a deluge of rain.’
‘You reckon a rainstorm can wash away that amount of land.’
‘Don’t underestimate the power of water Brandon,’ she said, A couple of years ago, one night of rain caused a village to be washed away not far from here in Cornwall. Every year millions of square miles of the Amazon forest are flooded by the river. For heaven’s sake look at what has just happened in Pakistan. Areas bigger than Great Britain lay under several feet of water for months, causing thousands of deaths and affecting tens of millions. Rain is one of the most devastating yet underestimated forces of nature on the planet. All it would have taken is for a downfall of rain to wash away just a small amount of soil to start a leak and the natural pressures of the sea would do the rest. Imagine a small trickle, turning into a rivulet and then a river, each second the water washing more and more soil away until it eventually became a self feeding monster and the weight of the immense sea unstoppable. As it found its way to the Black Sea basin it would have turned into a huge waterfall, pouring into the valley below. Scientists reckon that at its peak it would have been a torrent over ten times the size of Niagara as it is today. The noise would have been heard over a hundred miles away and the population of the Basin must have been in awe at the sudden emergence of this waterfall from nowhere.’
‘And this actually happened?’
‘It did, approximately seven thousand years ago. Scientists have proved the Black sea was once a freshwater lake and the Bosphorus was formed by the breakdown of land between Asia and Africa. Now assuming that this coincided with a prolonged rainstorm, all of a sudden the great flood referred to in the Bible, which by the way, was written almost three thousand years later, takes on a certain familiarity wouldn’t you say?’
‘Forty days and forty nights,’ suggested Brandon, quoting the Biblical reference.
‘Exactly,’ answered India, ‘The thing is, this was a disaster of huge proportions. Don’t forget hundreds of thousands if not millions of people would have relied on the lake for food and water and all of a sudden, over a period of only a few weeks this resource would have been taken from them. The level of the lake would have risen hundreds of feet flooding tens of thousands of square miles of land, wiping out crops and villages almost overnight. The seawater would have overwhelmed the lake and as the salinity rose, every living thing within its fresh waters would have died. Every fish, mussel, shrimp, plant; everything would have died within days. Food would have been wiped out and drinking water disappeared for anyone not living near a stream. Who knows how many shore based animals would have died as well as humans, possibly tens of thousands dead and rotting throughout the whole basin. The smell must have been horrendous and disease would have been rife.’
‘I suppose there must have been some who managed to save themselves on boats,’ suggested Brandon.
‘No doubt, and throw in a prolonged period of rain and some animals and you have the basis of the Noah story. It’s not for me to debate the origins of the bible stories but allowing for exaggeration over the millennia it is very possible.’
‘So did everyone die?’
‘No on the contrary, it would seem that by far the majority survived but they were dispersed by the flood. We don’t think many went East as there were already other established societies that way and wouldn’t have looked kindly on a sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees. The climate was far colder to the North and modern day Turkey was already populated so many migrated westward into the Aegean and Mediterranean, forming new societies and taking their beliefs with them.’
‘Isis?’
‘Yes. The most obvious manifestation of this was on the southern shores where they settled in what is now known as Egypt. Over the next few thousand years they flourished along the banks of the Nile and the great Egyptian society arose. As the climate warmed up the scrublands of Egypt died out leaving more and more desert and isolating the Nile from the bigger societies of the East. Egypt became more polarised and their pantheon of Gods became based around the legends of those original peoples from the black sea. Assur became Osiris and Aset became Isis.’
‘And you think the link is there?’
‘No actually I don’t. I think the link, if indeed there is one, lies in the history of the people who spread out throughout the Aegean, populating the islands and shores of Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece. Though the continuation of the cult of Isis wasn’t as strong as it became in Egypt it was still there beneath the surface. Female goddesses are rife throughout all the ancient cultures and most can be traced in one way or another back to one mother figure.’