The ancient beach and the mollusk shells left little doubt that the Mediterranean Sea had flooded the Black Sea basin. But had people witnessed it? And how cataclysmic was the change?

	Little Hercules begins its dive to the bottom of the Black Sea.

"It's not clear how rapidly it happened," says Brendan Foley, a student of Maritime Archeology at MIT's program for Science, Technology and Society. " But, if the flooding happened quickly, then there's a possibility dwelling sites were inundated and the sites would have been just covered with water and not beaten up by waves."

With that hope in mind, the expedition searched for remains of human settlements in the fall of 2000. The garbage heaps and tools they discovered were significant finds. But for Ballard, the Holy Grail was the remnants of a dwelling - what Ballard and the others only half-jokingly referred to as "Noah's House" - the surest sign of human presence. This time, Ballard and his colleagues sailed back and forth in 100-meter deep waters, over what would have been dry land before the flood, concentrating on channels carved by the ancient rivers that fed the once freshwater lake. Archaeologists familiar with the region suspect that the once-dry land of river deltas would have been attractive real estate for the farmers who may have lived here before the flood.

Once again, Ballard's team hit pay dirt.

Early images from "Site 82," which may be remains of a human dwelling destroyed by the flood.

"We looked at I don't know how many dozens of square kilometers of seafloor," recalls Foley. "We didn't see anything that was similar to this. This really looked special."

Foley refers to what the team calls "Site 82," a decidedly manmade structure submerged in 95 meters of water, nestled between the beds of two rivers that once fed the ancient freshwater lake. The researchers deployed the ROV called "Little Hercules" to obtain images of the promising site. Stunned scientists stared at the ship's monitors as the ROV sent back pictures of manmade wooden beams, ceramic shards and stone tools. Disappointingly, radiocarbon dating proved the wood to be too young to have been the actual walls and roof of "Noah's house." However, sediment samples collected from the site revealed what may be a stone foundation similar to other Neolithic dwellings found in the region. While scientists cannot say for certain that Site 82 was a Neolithic dwelling before the flood, the tantalizing possibility exists. Only further exploration will tell for sure.
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Photos: National Geographic Society; Institute for Exploration