Bosporus - Bogaziçi

The biblical flood

Following the theory of two American geologists, the biblical flood has its origin at the Bosporus. Place of the flood was the Black Sea that had dried up after the last ice age to a salty brackish water lake. A connection with the oceans did not exist. 7500 years ago the rock dam suddenly broke, which had held back the glaze floods in the Mediterranean Sea. The water flowed out years with high pressure through the rock tube between Asia and Europe, making the level of the Black Sea rise by 15 centimetres each day. A leveling of the seas resulted. The people fled before the floods – the event engraved so deeply into the collective memory, that the biblical flood myth took its origin.

Gradual increase

Another theory claims, the rivers Danube, Don and Dnjepr poured into the Black Sea. They all led large amounts of melt water. The sea rose and slowly ran over, resulting in a flood. Nevertheless, this was far less spectacular than in the first scenario. During about thousand years the water about the Bosporus threshold flows out by a deep gulch in the just twenty metre deeper situated Marmara Sea.

Two currents

So conflicting as the theories of its history, are the two currents are of the Bosporus. One flows in the surface and a weaker undercurrent in about 40 metre depth. The upper stream comes from the Black Sea. It is less salty and -  hence - lighter. It flows to the lower situated Marmarameer. The unterstream flows with its saltier water in opposite direction.

Naming

Bosporus means translated "cattle ford” or “cow ford" - a name with mythological origin. God's father Zeus fell in love with the nice Io, one of the priests of his wife Hera. He kidnapped her and transformed her into a cow to hide her from his jealous spouse. But Hera noticed the cheat and sent a gadfly after Io, who escaped in her animal figure. On the escape, the beauty crossed the ford between Asia and Europe, which, from now on, got its name.