Read Ryan / Pitman: "Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About The Event That Changed History." Very interesting, about findings in the Black Sea. These geologists together with others have found proof of a huge flood around 4,000 BC, when the Black Sea basin was dry land and then was drowned within days or weeks at the most, as the Mediterranean broke through at the Strait of Bosporos. THAT again, the rising of the Mediterranean, was due to the Atlantic breaking through at Gibraltar. The Mediterranean was dry land for periods, as can be seen from fossils of dwarf elephants and hosts of other species massed together on Malta, Cyprus etc. - as these islands would be the final areas to where they fled as the water rose. So in stead of these huge fossil findings being remains from the global flood, they fit in neatly with being remains from the Mediterranean/Black Sea floods. Rivers flushed down from the Black Sea to the Mesopotamian area, and people who fled the same way, told about the huge flood affecting them. Very interesting. The water also ran into the Gobi area, and stories were told about some large, shallow lakes in desert area till as late as the 13th - 14th centuries. On his journey to China, Marco Polo would have travelled only a few miles away from one of these lakes - imagine if he had taken the detour and actually seen it and written about it! He would have seen the remains of what was the basis for the deluge story, in stead of us today having to wait for more core drill samples to be taken.
The only question mark in my mind is this, if there was "just" a huge, but still a local flood - then what about the striking similarities in the stories of various tribes, among which are tribes that have never seen oceans?
