The great flood story is a common trope found in Levantine and Mesopotamian mythology as well as Greek and Indian folklore, such as the Genesis great flood myth and the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh. While the stories and their regional variations are fictional, they are probably based on mystified oral history that developed during the relatively recent (~8,000 BCE) expansion of the Black Sea due to the retreat of glaciers causing the Mediterranean's sea level to rise and eventually spill over the bosporus and flooded into the Black Sea basin, causing the Black Sea to rise rapidly and violently and likely destroying many lives and towns in the process.