The topic of Noah and the Ark never vanishes from the public view for very long, though the Ark itself seems to have disappeared. Now Russell Crowe’s latest movie Noah is currently making a big splash (it’s hard to resist these puns!). A couple of years ago, archaeologist Robert Ballard, was in the news for his latest project, an exploration of the Black Sea. "We went in there to look for the flood," Ballard said. "Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed ... The land that went under stayed under." But concerning this project, he hasn’t been heard from since the news report of 2012.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/evidence-noahs-flood-ark-real-robert-ballard-archeologist-titanic_n_2273143.html

   In the 1990s, geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman had presented evidence that showed a flood may have occurred in the Middle East region about 7,500 years ago. The theory, reported in the Guardian at the time, was that a rising Mediterranean Sea pushed a channel through what is now the Bosphorus, submerging the original shoreline of the Black Sea in a deluge flowing at about 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls, and extending out for 100,000 square miles. Following up on this evidence, Robert Ballard’s involvement, using his underwater robotic technology, began in 2000.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/sep/14/internationalnews.archaeology

   The Urantia Book (The UB) gives an account of this geological event in paper 78:7, The Floods in Mesopotamia, dating this “period of unprecedented floods” to 5,000 B.C., a close correlation to Ryan and Pitman’s date of 7,500 years ago.

   The UB is also careful to point out the scientific facts in 78:7.4 (pg. 875). “The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth's surface are universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a universal flood since life was established on Urantia. The only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had begun to appear.”

   From my knowledge of Woodlands American Indian lore, I can attest to the fact that the tribes of the Eastern woodlands shared a creation story that began with a universal flood covering the surface of the earth, a story that definitely predated the influence of Christianity.

   Here is what The UB says about Noah. “But Noah really lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He kept a written record of the days of the river's rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.” (78:7.5, pg. 875)

   We find a reference in the UB that confirms why the search is in the Black Sea/Mt. Ararat region (Turkey), not the ancient site of Babylon in Mesopotamia, present day Iraq (site of ancient Babylonian city, Erech).

   “Mount Ararat was the sacred mountain of northern Mesopotamia, and since much of your tradition of these ancient times was acquired in connection with the Babylonian story of the flood, it is not surprising that Mount Ararat and its region were woven into the later Jewish story of Noah and the universal flood.”  (77:4.12, pg. 860)