No great flood

[Tyr]

One of the suggested stories for the basis of Noah's Ark is the flooding of the Black Sea region (I know there are others though this is the one I am on about here).
So what if the Black Sea area doesn't flood and remains looking like this -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Black-sea-hist.png

What effect would this have on classical civilization and beyond?
I see major effects for the Greeks (assuming they come along).
WI a major civilization grows up next to this fresh water lake squashed between the Persians and Greeks?

[Anthony Appleyard]

Anybody wanting to sail between the Aegean and the Black Sea Lake would have to drag their ships overland between or portage. There would likely be much profit for whoever controlled the portage route between. Portaging might be easier if the Sea of Marmara was a lake rather than a dry hollow.

Also, no defensive moat between Thrace and Anatolia.

[wkwillis]

You could sail all the way to the Channel, go up the Rhine to the Main, portage twenty miles there, go all the way down the Danube to the Black sea, portaging around the Iron Gates, and still beat the overland trade cost. Or maybe not. It is a long way to the Channel, and then rowing upriver on the Rhine and the Main....but it's all downhill from there!
If the Sea of Marmara was there, then it's cheaper to portage the twenty miles than the 100 necessary to cross the dry lake bed of the Marmara.
There is also the question of why the Black Sea would be smaller, since in OTL it is brackish. Wouldn't it be overflowing into the Mediterranean by now? And stretching over to the Caspian and Aral seas?

[Norman]

One writer suggests that the initial dispersal of the Proto-Indo-European was caused by the flooding, people along the Black Sea were refugees from this flood, spreading agriculture and other learning through out the region.

[Tyr]

I think that might be a bit far to drag ships over land, I'll stab at it being like dragging your ship right over Italy.