ИСТИНА

Reconstruction of the climate and water runoff from the territory of the East European Plain in the early Holocene is of key importance for testing the hypothesis of catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea basin in the Holocene (Ryan et al. 1997). According to this hypothesis, up to the end of the Boreal period of the Holocene, the level of the Black Sea stood at 100 m below sea level and then geologically instantaneously climbed to minus 40 – 30 m as a result of the overflow of the World Ocean waters through the Bosporus sill. Preservation of low levels of the Black Sea was possible only with a deficit of the incoming part of the water balance, the bulk of which is composed of river runoff from the catchment area. Palynological data on the sections located in the basins of the Don and Dnieper rivers and in the adjacent territories dated by the radiocarbon method, allow us to reconstruct the state of vegetation and climate in this part of the Black Sea basin in the Boreal, 9.3-8 kyr 14С BP (10.5-8.8 kyr BP calibrated). These data make it possible to assess the probability of the existence of dry conditions postulated in a number of works that caused a decrease in the Black Sea level below the Bosporus sill.