Remains found at bottom of the Black Sea indicate that Noah's Flood was real

The discovery of a manmade structure at the bottom of the Black Sea off northern Turkey has lent powerful support to a controversial theory suggesting Noah's Flood really happened.

The discovery of a manmade structure at the bottom of the Black Sea off northern Turkey has lent powerful support to a controversial theory suggesting Noah's Flood really happened.

Marine archaeologists have found the first evidence to suggest the floor of the Black Sea had been inhabited about 7,500 years ago, until it was inundated with a massive influx from the Mediterranean.

Stone tools, wooden branches and beams are among well-preserved remnants of the structure 300ft down on the muddy seabed 12 miles off the coast. An expedition funded by the National Geographic Society in America said first pictures indicated people lived around the fertile shores of an ancient freshwater lake before the area was transformed into the Black Sea.

Terry Garcia, head of mission programmes for National Geographic, said: "The significance of this find is that for the first time we will have established that human beings had settled in this area and were occupying this area at the time of this cataclysmic event."

The excavation of the underwater site, once a fertile river valley running into the ancient lake, has not as yet shed light on whether the flood was instantaneous or a more gradual event that allowed people to evacuate the area gradually. The discovery supports the theory that the seabed was once populated with a prehistoric farming community who had to flee the rising waters, which could have prompted stories of a giant flood.

Historians have noticed similarities between the biblical account of Noah's Flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Babylonian poem written in the third millennium BC, suggesting both may be based on the same historical event. Two American geologists, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, suggested four years ago that the floor of the Black Sea was once a freshwater lake surrounded by fertile valleys and plains inhabited by the world's first farmers.

They believe that as melting glaciers from the last Ice Age raised sea levels, the Mediterranean suddenly broke through the strip of land separating it from the lower freshwater lake.

Calculations suggested the inundation could have caused a giant waterfall many times bigger than Niagara Falls, pouring enough water into the freshwater lake to cause its surface to expand by more than a mile a day.

The marine archaeologists are trying to retrieve samples of the submerged structures for radiocarbon dating. Fredrik Hiebert, chief archaeologist on the project, said: "This is a major discovery that will begin to rewrite the history of cultures in this key area between Europe, Asia, and the ancient Middle East."