On the Fabric of Old World Civilizations:
Human Response to the Black Sea Flood and Subsequent Climatic Change

Harald Haarmann (Finland)

Abstract

The geological discovery of the Black Sea flood has spurred a lively debate about the changing ecological conditions in the eastern Mediterranean region. These findings, which continue to accumulate, challenge traditional patterns of research on Old World civilizations. How did the flooding of the prehistoric freshwater Euxine Lake and the extension of its coastline to the present size effect the surrounding environment, and what was the human response to the ecological changes that occurred? The answers to these pertinent questions will provide a basis for laying the groundwork for a new paradigm of research on Old World civilizations.

A novel paradigm of cultural chronology can be constructed for the Old World in relation to a sequence of climatic changes. In the framework of this paradigm it is possible to assess cultural institutions and their interplay in a chronological continuum. Many properties of Old World civilizations draw on cultural institutions of the seventh millennium BCE, while other traditions emerge as innovations in the sixth millennium BCE. Out of the refinement of older institutions and the interplay with younger innovations rises the amalgam which we call “civilization.”

The Great Flood functioned not only as a cultural divide between Europe and Asia in time and space; its aftermath also affected the collective cultural memory of the populations in the circum-Pontic zone. As an imprint of cultural memory, the catastrophe lived on in the manifold flood myths of the Old World for many generations. The flood, as a crystallizing focus of cultural memory, may even have acted as a major arbitrator in the formation of local civilizations in that the spiritual unrest of the post-deluge era challenged survivors and their offspring to speed up cultural development to a more efficient level of organization.

This contribution attempts to outline a picture of those Old World civilizations and their formative processes which were, directly or indirectly, affected by specific geological events.