Wrecks & submerged finds of the Black Sea

The Black Sea has a great potential considering that it is anaerobic (no oxygen) below c 200 m depth. Where there is no oxygen, deep-sea wrecks can be preserved for millennia. Also, recent evidence show that the Black Sea was flooded sometime 5500-5000 BC, and remains of prehistoric settlements have been found underwater.
  

• Mesolitic settlement. This stone-age settlement was found in 2000 by the Robert Ballard team. Named "Site 82", it is located on 95 m depth north of Sinop on the Turkish coast. Wooden beams and branches are laying intact on the site. The settlement must be from before the flood, thus at least 7000 years old.
• Bulgarian log boat. During the summer of 2001, Bulgarian trawler fishers caught a log boat from c 120 m depth (partially anaerobic depth) near Sozopol. It was dated to c 4000 BC. This find is possibly connected with a Stone Age settlement that was found underwater in the Sozopol Bay 15 years previously. Ref Metro, Stockholm, 4 September 2001.
• Shipwreck A. Discovered in 2000 by the Ballard team. The site is north of Sinop off the Turkish coast on 100 m depth. This is deep enough to be undisturbed by fishing nets. Aslo this depth has so little oxygen that no organisms eat the wood. The wreck is Late Roman, 23 m long, loaded with amphoras. The hull is broken but several large ship timbers are preserved on the sea bottom.
• Shipwreck D. This ship, as well as others, was located in 2000 by Robert Ballard's team. It lays very well preserved on 320 m depth. Radiocarbon dated to 410-520 AD. Frame ends stick up from the dead bottom sediment, indicating that an intact hull is embedded in loose sediment. The mast is still standing, 11 m tall. The hull is about 12-13 m long and 3½-4 m wide. The ship remains to be investigated. The photo by Robert Ballard is made from an ROV. Ref New York Times, 3 November 2000. Link.
• 13th century shipwreck at Soldaya, on 12 m depth, investigated since 1999 by University of Kiev.
• A Seagoing Ship of c1650 AD in Bessarabia, Ukraine 
    

Related info

• Black Sea projects
• Project Phasis in Georgia 2000
• Deepwater Archaeology of the Black Sea – The 2000 Season at Sinop, Robert Ballard et al.
• Black Sea Mysteries, National Geographic
• National Geographic, May 2001

Black sea project links

• IFE report 1998
• MIT reports 1998-2000
• University of Pennsylvania 1996-98
• National Geographic project 1999-2000
• National Geographic update 2000
• INA Survey 1998

Remark: Violent flood?

Some suggest that this "flood" was violent, and perhaps origin of the Biblical Flood. However, Professor Emeritus Eric Olausson, Gothenburg University, says that the Black Sea was indeed a separate sweetwater lake. At the end of the Ice Age, melting ice raised the global sea levels so much that the Mediterranean finally reached the Bosporus, and started leaking in seawater, very slowly. Perhaps the filling started 9000 BC and ended 5-3000 BC. Since then, the Black Sea has had its present sea level, perhaps 150 m higher than the old level. (Ref: Populär Arkeologi 4/2000)