late as 15,000 years ago. In this alternative scenario, much depends on the evolution of the Bosphorus. According to a study from 2001, the modern sill is below sea level and consists of Quaternary sand over-lying Paleozoic bedrock in which three sills are found at below sea level. Sedimentation on these sills started before 10,000 years ago and continued until 5,300 years ago. A large part of the academic geological community also continues to reject the idea that there could have been enough sustained long-term pressure by water from the Aegean to dig through a supposed isthmus at the present Bosphorus or enough of a difference in water levels (if at all) between the two water basins. In 2007, a research anthology on the topic was published which makes much of the earlier Russian research available in English for the first time and combines it with more recent scientific findings. According to a 2009 study by Liviu Giosan, Florin Filip, and Ștefan Constatinescu, the level in the Black Sea before the marine reconnection was below present sea level, rather than the (or lower) of the catastrophe theories. If the flood occurred at all, the sea level increase and the flooded area during the reconnection were significantly smaller than previously proposed. Since the depth of the Bosphorus, in its middle furrow, at present varies from , with an average depth of , a calculated Stone Age shoreline in the Black Sea lying lower than in the present day would imply that the contact with the Mediterranean might never have been broken during the Holocene, and hence there could have been no sudden waterfall-style transgression. The flooding could have been "not so big". In 2011, several authors concluded that "there is no underwater archaeological evidence to support any catastrophic submergence of prehistoric Black Sea settlements during the late Pleistocene or early Holocene intervals". A 2012 study based on process length variation of the dinoflagellate cyst Lingulodinium machaerophorum shows no evidence for catastrophic flooding. Geophysical, geochronological, and geochemical evidence points to a "fast transgression" of the submergence lasting between 10 and 200 years. See also , flooding of the Mediterranean References Further reading Dimitrov, Petko.; Dimitrov, Dimitar. 2004. The Black Sea, the flood, and the ancient myths. Varna (Bulgaria): Slavena. National Geographic News. 2009-02-06. "Noah's Flood" Not Rooted in Reality, After All? Nature. 2004. Noah's Flood. 430: 718–19 Yanko-Hombach, Valentina. 2007. The Black