Thursday, October 14, 1999
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
33rd and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia
www.upenn.edu/museum

Co-sponsored by:
The Institute for Environmental Studies
The Center for Ancient Studies
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Have scientists discovered physical evidence of Noah's Flood? Could it be the same natural disaster described in the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, composed in Southern Mesopotamia sometime before 2000 BCE? Geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University believe that they may have found the key. Their core samples from the bottom of the Black Sea demonstrate a sudden and massive influx of salt water around 5600 BCE. They postulate that rising water levels in the Mediterranean due to interglacial period warming were forced into a bottleneck by the Bosporus Strait resulting in a massive tidal wave. Further excavations must determine whether there was large-scale settlement on the shores of the Black Sea prior to the catastrophe and what the nature of that settlement was. But the stimulating new theory has already been creating waves in the scientific community.

You are cordially invited to attend a public presentation of this thesis by Dr. Ryan with commentary on its implications by leading Penn anthropologists and environmental scientists. This event inaugurates a program of collaborative research between the Center for Ancient Studies, the Institute for Environmental Sciences, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum on the impact of natural disasters on human culture. Much attention has been paid by geologists and paleontologists to the effects of dramatic environmental changes on the evolution of plant and animal life. This new program of research, lectures, and symposia will address relatively little understood questions about the effects of the environmental change on the course of human cultural development.

4:00 p.m.
Introduction
Jeremy Sabloff, The Williams Director
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Presentation of evidence Noah's Flood
William B. F. Ryan, Adjunct Professor
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Senior Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University

Comments
Robert Giegengack, Professor of Geology
Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania

Fredrik Hiebert, Robert H. Dyson Assistant Curator Near East Section
University of Pennsylvania Museum and Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology

Closing Remarks
Holly Pittman, Curator, Near East Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum
Professor, History of Art; Director, Center for Ancient Studies

Question and Answer period

6:00 p.m. Reception (separate fee)