ice. When the lake rests against an esker, water pressure increases with the increased depth. The esker may then fail under the load and burst, creating a new outflow. Lake Pielinen in Finland is an example of this. Tectonic basins The Black Sea (around 7,600 years ago) A rising sea flood, the proposed and much-discussed refilling of the freshwater glacial Black Sea with water from the Aegean, has been described as "a violent rush of salt water into a depressed fresh-water lake in a single catastrophe that has been the inspiration for the flood mythology" (Ryan and Pitman, 1998). The marine incursion, caused by the rising level of the Mediterranean, apparently occurred around 7,600 years ago. It remains an active subject of debate among geologists, with subsequent evidence discovered to both support and refute the existence of the flood, while the theory that it is the basis of later flood myths is not proven. Persian Gulf Flood (24,000 to 14,000 years ago, or 12000 to 10000 years ago) Flooding of this area scattered peoples to both sides of the gulf depression. It was an area fed by four rivers. Rose calls it the "Gulf Oasis" which may have been a demographic refuge fed by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Batin rivers. It was suggested to be an area of freshwater springs and rivers. Glacial floods in North America (8,000 to 15,000 years ago) In North America, during glacial maximum, there were no Great Lakes as we know them, but "proglacial" (ice-frontage) lakes formed and shifted. They lay in the areas of the modern lakes, but their drainage sometimes passed south, into the Mississippi system; sometimes into the Arctic, or east into the Atlantic. The most famous of these proglacial lakes was Lake Agassiz. As ice-dam configurations failed, a series of great floods were released from Lake Agassiz, resulting in massive pulses of freshwater added to the world's oceans. The Missoula Floods of Oregon and Washington states were also caused by breaking ice dams, resulting in the Channeled Scablands. Lake Bonneville, a pluvial lake, burst catastrophically in the Bonneville Flood about 14,500 years ago, due to its water overflowing and washing away a sill composed of two opposing alluvial fans which had blocked a gorge. Lake Bonneville was not a glacial lake, but glacial age climate change determined the lake level and its overflow. The first scientific report of a