Pontus Euxinus

The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Black Sea is supplied by major rivers, principally the Danube, Dnieper, and Don. Consequently, while six countries have a coastline on the sea, its drainage basin includes parts of 24 countries in Europe.

The Black Sea covers (not including the Sea of Azov), has a maximum depth of , and a volume of . Most of its coasts ascend rapidly. These rises are the Pontic Mountains to the south, bar the southwest-facing peninsulas, the Caucasus Mountains to the east, and the Crimean Mountains to the mid-north. In the west, the coast is generally small floodplains below foothills such as the Strandzha; Cape Emine, a dwindling of the east end of the Balkan Mountains; and the Dobruja Plateau considerably farther north. The longest east–west extent is about . Important cities along the coast include Odessa, Varna, Samsun, Sochi, Sevastopol, Constanța, Trabzon, Novorossiysk, Burgas, and Batumi.

The Black Sea has a positive water balance, with an annual net outflow of per year through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea. While the net flow of water through the Bosporus and Dardanelles (known collectively as the Turkish Straits) is out of the Black Sea, water generally flows in both directions simultaneously: Denser, more saline water from the Aegean flows into the Black Sea underneath the less dense, fresher water that flows out of the Black Sea. This creates a significant and permanent layer of deep water that does not drain or mix and is therefore anoxic. This anoxic layer is responsible for the preservation of ancient shipwrecks which have been found in the Black Sea.

The Black Sea ultimately drains into the Mediterranean Sea, via the Turkish Straits and the Aegean Sea. The Bosporus strait connects it to the small Sea of Marmara which in turn is connected to the Aegean Sea via the strait of the Dardanelles. To the north, the Black Sea is connected to the Sea of Azov by the Kerch Strait.

The water level has varied significantly over geological time. Due to these variations in the water level in the basin, the surrounding shelf and associated aprons have sometimes been dry land. At certain critical water levels, connections with surrounding water bodies can become established. It is through the most active of these connective routes, the Turkish Straits, that the Black Sea joins the world ocean. During geological periods when this hydrological link was not present, the Black Sea was an endorheic basin, operating independently of the global ocean system (similar to the Caspian Sea today). Currently, the Black Sea water level is relatively high; thus, water is being exchanged with the Mediterranean. The Black Sea undersea river is a current of particularly saline water flowing through the Bosporus Strait and along the seabed of the Black Sea, the first of its kind discovered.

Name

Modern names

Current names of the sea are usually equivalents of the English name "Black Sea", including these given in the countries bordering the sea:
* ab, Амшын Еиқәа, translit=Amšyn Eiķa̋a,
* ady, Хы шӏуцӏэ, translit=Xı Ş́uts’ə,
* hy, Սեւ ծով, translit=Sev tsov,
* bg, Черно море, translit=Cherno more,
* crh, Къара денъиз, translit=Qara deñiz
* ka, შავი ზღვა, ''shavi zghva''
* Laz and xmf, უჩა ზუღა, translit=Ucha Zugha, , or simply , , "Sea"
* ro, Marea Neagră,
* russian: Чёрное мо́рe, Chyornoye móre,
* tr, Karadeniz,
* uk, Чорне море, translit=Chorne more,

Such names have not yet been shown conclusively to predate the 13th century.

In Greece, the historical name "Euxine Sea", which holds a different meaning (see below), is still widely used:
*, , lit. "Hospitable Sea"; the name ''()'', , lit. "Black Sea" is used, but is much less common.

Historical names and etymology

The earliest known name of the Black Sea is the sea of Zalpa, so called by both the Hattians and their conquerers the Hittites. The Hattic city of Zalpa was “situated probably at or near the estuary of the Marrassantiya River, the modern Kızıl Irmak, on the Black Sea coast.”

The principal Greek name ''Póntos Áxeinos'' is generally accepted to be a rendering of the Iranian word ("dark coloured"). Ancient Greek voyagers adopted the name as , identified with the Greek word (inhospitable). The name (Inhospitable Sea), first attested in Pindar (), was considered an ill omen and was euphemized to its opposite, (Hospitable Sea), also first attested in Pindar. This became the commonly used designation in Greek, although in mythological contexts the "true" name remained favoured.

Strabo's ''Geographica'' (1.2.10) reports that in antiquity, the Black Sea was often simply called "the Sea" ( ). He thought that the sea was called the "Inhospitable Sea by the inhabitants of the Pontus region of the southern shoreline before Greek colonisation due to its difficult navigation and hostile barbarian natives (7.3.6), and that the name was changed to "hospitable" after the Milesians colonised the region, bringing it into the Greek world.

Popular supposition derives "Black Sea" from the dark colour of the water or climatic conditions. Some scholars understand the name to be derived from a system of colour symbolism representing the cardinal directions, with black or dark for north, red for south, white for west, and green or light blue for east. Hence "Black Sea" meant "Northern Sea". According to this scheme, the name could only have originated with a people living between the northern (black) and southern (red) seas: this points to the Achaemenids (550–330  BC).

In the Greater Bundahishn, a Middle Persian Zoroastrian scripture, the Black Sea is called . In the tenth-century Persian geography book , the Black Sea is called ''Georgian Sea'' (). ''The Georgian Chronicles'' use the name (Sea of Speri) after the Kartvelian tribe of Speris or Saspers. Other modern names such as and (both meaning Black Sea) originated during the 13th century. A 1570 map from Abraham Ortelius's labels the sea (Great Sea), compare Latin .

English writers of the 18th century often used ''Euxine Sea'' ( or ). During the Ottoman Empire, it was called either or , both meaning "Black Sea" in Turkish, with the former consisting of Perso-Arabic .

Another assumption is related to the Turkish. Turkic peoples marked the directions with colours. In ancient Turkish mythology, black represents the north, white represents the west, blue represents the east, red represents the south and yellow represents the center. According to Chinese sources, the horses with red colour in the Xiongnus were in the south, and the black ones were in the north; they sent gray horses to the East and white horses to the West. In Old Uyghur, the north was represented by the ''qara yılan'' ("black snake") and the south was the ''qızıl sagızgan'' ("red magpie"). When the Turkomans entered Anatolia, the Black Sea was in the north and therefore it was called Kara ("black"); the Mediterranean was in the west (according to the direction of Turkomans entering Anatolia), hence it was named Ak ("white"). (Also the Red Sea was named Red because it was in the south.) Since the Black Sea was controlled mostly by the Turks for centuries, it can easily have been borrowed by other languages in the Black Sea coast. In addition, the emergence of the name coincides with the arrival of the Turks in Anatolia.

Geography

The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Black Sea as follows:

The area surrounding the Black Sea is commonly referred to as the ''Black Sea Region''. Its northern part lies within the ''Chernozem belt'' (black soil belt) which goes from eastern Croatia (Slavonia), along the Danube (northern Serbia, northern Bulgaria ( Danubian Plain) and southern Romania (Wallachian Plain)) to northeast Ukraine and further across the Central Black Earth Region and southern Russia into Siberia.

The littoral zone of the Black Sea is often referred to as the Pontic littoral or Pontic zone.

The largest bays of the Black Sea are Karkinit Bay in Ukraine; the Gulf of Burgas in Bulgaria; Dnieprovski Bay and Dniestrovski Bay, both in Ukraine; and Sinop Bay and Samsun Bay, both in Turkey.

Coastline and exclusive economic zones

Drainage basin

The largest rivers flowing into the Black Sea are:

# Danube
# Dnieper
# Don
# Dniester
# Kızılırmak
# Kuban
# Sakarya
# Southern Bug
# Çoruh
# Yeşilırmak
# Rioni
# Yeya
# Mius
# Kamchiya
# Enguri
# Molochna
# Tylihul
# Velykyi Kuialnyk
# Veleka

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