The giant wave that transformed the Mediterranean forever.

A recent scientific study reveals how about 5.33 million years ago the Mediterranean Sea was hit by a tsunami of colossal proportions that filled the basin in just a couple of years.

Imagine an event so catastrophic that it surpassed any flood we have ever witnessed. It happened 5.33 million years ago and forever changed the face of the Mediterranean Sea. We are talking about the Zanclean Mega-Flood, a phenomenon of unimaginable proportions that marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.

But let’s take a step back. Before this mega-flood, the Mediterranean was experiencing a critical period, the so-called “Messinian Salinity Crisis.” The Gibraltar area, for some geological reason, rose up, isolating the Mare Nostrum from the Atlantic Ocean. Without the constant supply of ocean water, the Mediterranean then began to dry up, turning into a salt desert with hypersaline basins and the disappearance of many sea creatures. An alien landscape, very different from the one we know today.

The catastrophic return of water: the Zanclean Mega-Flood.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Like a cork popping out of a bottle, the Gibraltar barrier gave way. Millions and millions of cubic meters of ocean water poured into the drained basin in an incredibly short period of time, perhaps only a couple of years. Estimates speak of a flow of water greater than any other known flood on Earth. Sort of like a giant wave that crashed over the salt desert with unimaginable force.

But how do we know that this actually happened? The answer lies in Sicily, between Syracuse and Ragusa. Here, scientists recently discovered a landscape sculpted by the power of this flood. Elongated hills, arranged in a precise direction, separated by deep parallel furrows. An unmistakable imprint of the force of the water that reshaped the region, bearing witness to the catastrophic event that brought life back to the Mediterranean and forever marked the history of our planet. The Zanclean Mega-Flood, a story of drainage, catastrophe and rebirth that reminds us of the unstoppable power of nature.

The Zanclean Mega-Flood is a testament, however ancient, to how the Mediterranean is by no means sheltered from major catastrophic events.

As indeed evidenced by the most recent “Medicane,” i.e., extremely powerful storms and cyclones that for years now from tropical areas, accomplices of climate change, have been pushing ever further into our Mediterranean.