Why Mass Shooters Often Wear Masks

The Oregon mall shooter was dressed all in black and his face was covered by a white hockey mask.

The mask, the black clothes, the age of the gunman and a weapon are becoming a familiar and deadly pattern.

The gunman, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts of Portland, is one of a string of killers before him, including Aurora shooter James Holmes, who chose to wear black and cover their faces with masks.

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For these cold-hearted killers, the costume bolsters their confidence and power as they carry out their depraved fantasies, said Dr. Mary Ellen O'Toole, a retired FBI profiler.

"They're doing it because it's a role. It's almost like a big game and like they're the puppet master. They've got the control, the power, the weapons," she told ABCNews.com.

"The biggest thing for a mass shooter is the control and empowerment for the shooting," said former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett. "It isn't uncommon for a shooter to wear a costume, or sometimes simply to dress in black.... He went there being someone other than who he is in reality because it gives him power."

From the costume to his age and ethnicity, Roberts fit the mold of who FBI profilers expected the shooter to be.

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"Its clear the majority [of shooters] are white males, but we can't say anything statistical about that," O'Toole said, pointing to the Virginia Tech shooting, which was perpetrated by a Korean, and the Red Lake shooting, where the gunman was Native American.

Nevertheless, she acknowledged the preponderance of whites among the list of mass killers.

"I think it's a question that needs to be put out there," O'Toole said

There is one thing that can be predicted, however -- age. Most mass shooters are between the ages of 15 and 25, O'Toole said.

"This is where we see young men acting out in a different way," she said, citing increased levels of testosterone. "It has to do with their biological make-up and development."

Garrett said that the age period between 15 to 25 years can also be a time when young men might feel the world is passing them by, stifling what they could have been. The desire to be remembered, he said, can be a factor that can cause unstable young men to kill.

They may have thoughts of, "I can be more than I am if you didn't stop me," Garrett said, adding that the "you" didn't necessarily refer to a specific individual.

Shooting Was Survivor's Second Brush With Death

Psychiatric issues are another commonality with mass killers, said Garrett.

"The idea that you can walk into a mall or any other location and shoot people is very intoxicating for these people. They typically do not feel empowered during the day," he said. "Depression, manic depression play into feelings of inadequacy."

As Roberts walked through the Clackamas Town Center, intent on killing as many people as possible, witnesses said he was looking straight ahead, shooting along the way.

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Two people were killed and one wounded before Roberts took his own life.

While investigators try to piece together what made Roberts snap, O'Toole warned the cycle of gun violence will continue.

"Somewhere, there is a male in this age range thinking of outdoing the shooter in Aurora and outdoing the shooter in Oregon and they are watching this and saying, 'I am going to do it.'"

ABC News' Colleen Curry and Jared Weiner contributed to this report

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UN court sentences Srebrenica commander to life for genocide

THE HAGUE: The UN's Yugoslav war crimes court found Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir guilty of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, and sentenced him to life in jail.

"The majority of the court finds you guilty" of crimes including genocide, judge Christoph Flugge told the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

"Zdravko Tolimir, you are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment," the judge then told the gaunt former commander, who crossed himself three times before the verdict was handed down.

The majority of the court's judges agreed with prosecutors who had asked for a life sentence, saying Tolimir, now 64, was involved in "massive" crimes committed at the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves in July 1995.

They said they were "of a massive scale, severe in (their) intensity and devastating in (their) effect."

Judges said Tolimir -- whom they called the "right-hand man and eyes and ears of (Bosnian Serb army commander) Ratko Mladic," -- who is also being tried by the court -- had overseen Bosnian Serb army officers conducting the slaughter of at least 6,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.

Conducting his own defence, Tolimir said that what happened at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995 amounted to "fighting against terrorist groups", rather than the murder of Muslim men and boys after Dutch peacekeepers at the "safe" enclave were overrun by Mladic's forces.

Tolimir, said Judge Flugge, "had full knowledge of the despicable criminal operations and himself furthered their goals," in this brutal episode in the Balkans country's bloody 1992-95 war that claimed 100,000 lives and left 2.2 million others homeless.

Apart from genocide, Tolimir was found guilty on six other counts including extermination, murder, persecution and forcible transfer.

Judges said prosecutors did not prove a count of deportation beyond reasonable doubt in relation to the attacks on Srebrenica and Zepa.

During his trial prosecutors said the former intelligence chief was part of a grand scheme to murder thousands of Muslim men and boys and expel thousands of woman and children from the enclave in order to create a "mono-ethnic Serb state."

The prosecution also alleged that about 25,000 women, children and elderly people were forcibly transferred from the enclaves to Muslim-controlled territories, while thousands of men and boys old enough to bear arms were executed and dumped in mass graves.

Tolimir was involved in a "joint criminal enterprise" to "summarily execute and bury thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys aged 16 to 60 captured from the Srebrenica enclave," according to the charge sheet.

During the trial, prosecutors said Mladic relied on Tolimir to "carry out the slow strangling of the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves" to create conditions which would force the Muslim population "to give up hope of survival."

Tolimir is the most senior Serb to have a verdict handed down by the UN war crimes court since two Croatian generals and two former Kosovar guerrillas were acquitted last month, sparking Serbia's ire.

In 2004, Radislav Krstic became the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb officer to be sentenced on appeal to 35 years in jail for his role in the Srebrenica massacre.

Arrested in May 2007 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Tolimir had seen his trial delayed several times due to ill-health.

Mladic, also dubbed "the Butcher of Bosnia," was arrested in Serbia last year, and now faces 11 counts before the same Hague-based court, including for the Srebrenica massacre.

-AFP/ac

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Egyptian army to host unity talks as crisis deepens

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's army chief will host national unity talks on Wednesday, seeking to end a growing political and economic crisis in the Arab world's most populous nation.

The meeting scheduled for 1430 GMT was called in response to a wave of protests since President Mohamed Mursi awarded himself sweeping powers on November 22 to push through a new constitution shaped by his Islamist allies, which is due to go to a referendum on Saturday.

"We will not speak about politics nor about the referendum. Tomorrow we will sit together as Egyptians," armed forces chief and Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at a gathering of army and police officials on Tuesday.

Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which propelled him to power in a June election, were expected to attend, while the main opposition coalition said it would decide on Wednesday morning whether to participate. The opposition stayed away from an earlier reconciliation meeting called by Mursi last weekend.

Outside the presidential palace - where anti-Mursi protesters are demanding the Islamist postpone the vote on a constitution they say does not represent all Egyptians - there was skepticism tinged with some hope.

"Talks without the cancellation of the referendum - and a change to the constitution to make it a constitution for all Egyptians and not the Brotherhood - will lead to nothing and will be no more than a media show," said Ahmed Hamdy, a 35-year-old office worker.

But the fact that the army was calling such talks "is an indication to all parties that the crisis is coming to a head and that they need to end it quickly", he said.

Earlier, finance minister Mumtaz al-Said disclosed that a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan, a cornerstone of Egypt's economic recovery hopes, would be delayed until next month because of the crisis.

The delay was intended to allow time to explain a widely criticized package of economic austerity measures to the Egyptian people, Said told Reuters.

REBUILD CONSENSUS

Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said the measures would not hurt the poor. Bread, sugar and rice would not be touched, but prices of cigarettes and cooking oil would go up and fines would be imposed for public littering. In a bid to rebuild consensus, he said there would be a public consultation about the program next week.

In Washington, the IMF said Egypt had asked for the loan to be postponed "in light of the unfolding developments on the ground". The Fund stood ready to consult with Egypt on resuming discussions on the stand-by loan, a spokeswoman said.

On the streets of Cairo, thousands of opposition supporters gathered outside the presidential palace to demand that Mursi postpone Saturday's referendum.

A bigger crowd of flag-waving Islamist Mursi backers, who want the vote to go ahead as planned on Saturday, assembled at two mosques and remained on the streets as night fell over the Egyptian capital. There were also protests in Alexandria and other cities.

The extended upheaval following the fall of Hosni Mubarak last year is causing concern in the United States, which has given Cairo billions of dollars in military and other aid since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland emphasized "deep concerns" over the situation in Egypt and repeated calls on protesters to demonstrate peacefully and on security forces to act with restraint. She declined to be drawn on whether Washington believed the referendum should be postponed.

The latest unrest has so far claimed seven lives in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the opposition. But the Republican Guard has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the presidential palace, now ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades.

(Additional reporting by Tamim Elyan and Edmund Blair in Cairo, and Andrew Quinn in Washington; writing by Giles Elgood; editing by David Stamp)

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Now, Haryana khap bans disc jockeys

HISAR: A khap panchayat in Hisar, Haryana banned disc jockeys on Tuesday for "creating noise in marriages and other functions" in 42 villages of the district.

Phool Kumar, a spokesperson of the Satrol khap panchayat, said that the violators would have to pay a fine of Rs 5100.

On Sunday, one man was shot dead while five others were injured following the clash after few villagers objected to the presence of a DJ in Khurda village of Kaithal district.

Addressing the panchayat, Inder Singh, a khap leader, said, "The DJ system is causing noise pollution and is also harmful to the animals kept by farmers. Due to high volume of music, people can't milk buffaloes and cows in the morning as the animals are unable to sleep at night."

"With DJs around, youngsters dance under influence of liquor and sometimes misbehave with women. Because of this women can't participate in celebrations, preferring to stay indoors. It's a waste of money, especially when the villagers are facing financial crisis," Singh added.

There are more than 100 villages in Rohtak, Mahendergarh, Rewari and Bhiwani districts where khap panchayats have prohibited DJs in the last five years.

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APNewsBreak: DA investigating Texas cancer agency

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas prosecutor responsible for investigating public corruption among state officials said Tuesday that he has opened an investigation into the state's troubled $3 billion cancer-fighting agency.

Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit, told The Associated Press that an investigation has begun into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The agency also is under investigation by the Texas attorney general's office after an $11 million grant to a private company did not receive the proper review.

Cox said his unit, which prosecutes crimes related to the operation of state government, is beginning its investigation not knowing "what, if any, crime occurred" at CPRIT.

His announcement came on the same day that CPRIT said its executive director had submitted his resignation letter and amid escalating scrutiny over the management of the nation's second-biggest pot of cancer research dollars.

CPRIT has not been able to focus on fighting the disease due to "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" during the past tumultuous eight months, Executive Director Bill Gimson wrote in a resignation letter dated Monday. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.

Gimson has led the state agency since it launched in 2009. But he fell under mounting criticism over the recent disclosure that an $11 million award to a private company was never reviewed. It was the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight.

"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote.

The Texas attorney general's office has said it is looking into CPRIT's $11 million grant to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics. An internal audit performed by the agency revealed that Peloton's proposal was approved for funding in 2010 without being reviewed by an outside panel.

Gimson said last week that Peloton's funding was the result of an honest mistake that happened when the agency was still young and in the process of installing checks and balances. Agency emails surrounding the Peloton grant are no longer available, Gimson said, and state investigators said they will work to find them.

Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far. The agency's former chief science officer, Nobel laureate Alfred Gilman, resigned earlier this year over a separate $20 million award that Gilman claimed received a thin review. That led some of the nation's top scientists to accuse the agency of charting a politically-driven path.

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Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber

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Serial Killer 'Broke Own Rule,' Lost Control

Serial killer Israel Keyes' capture was his own undoing. It was the meticulous murderer's loss of control and violation of his own careful rules of murder that ended years of traveling to kill for fun.

When Keyes, 34, approached an Anchorage coffee stand Feb. 1, he told himself that if the person working inside did not have her own car, he would only rob the place and leave.

But when he approached and found teenage barista Samantha Koenig by herself, he couldn't help himself, Keyes told police. He dragged her out, into his own car, raped her, strangled her and was eventually arrested for her murder.

"In prior cases, he had enough self-control to walk away from it, to not commit the kidnapping, to not commit the abduction and with Samantha he didn't," Anchorage homicide Det. Monique Doll said Monday. "He broke his own rule. He had drawn his line in the sand and he couldn't help himself, he said. He took her anyway."

The arrest of Keyes on March 12 ended more than a decade of traveling around the country to find victims to kill or to prepare for future crimes by burying murder kits of weapons, cash and tools to dispose of bodies. Since March he had been slowly telling police about his hidden life and how he operated. But the tale abruptly ended when Keyes committed suicide in his jail cell on Dec. 1.

Police are now left trying to fill in the details of his vicious life. Police believe he killed between 8 and 12 people, including Koenig, but only three victims have been definitively tied to Keyes so far.

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Before his jail cell suicide, Keyes gave authorities some clues on how he managed to remain undetected for so long.

"He basically had this rule, this unwritten rule, that he would travel outside and go to great lengths to distance himself from any of his victims," Doll said. "He told us he was losing control. He was losing the massive amount of self-control that he had."

Koenig's abduction broke Keyes' rules on two levels. First, she was in Anchorage, which was also Keyes' home. Second, she did not have her own vehicle.

"Mr. Keyes told us that he was deciding as he walked up the coffee kiosk that if the person working inside did not have a vehicle he was only going to rob the [place] and walk away because he did not want to transport his victim in his vehicle," Doll said.

Keyes quickly discovered that Koenig did not have a car, but when he saw her, his desire to kill overpowered his discipline.

This admission was among many startling revelations Keyes made over about 40 hours of interviews with police in which he discussed topics ranging from torturing animals as a child to the way he fantasized his own death.

"He didn't plan on being taken alive," Anchorage Police Officer Jeff Bell said at the news conference.

Keyes envisioned himself being caught robbing a bank and dying in a police shootout, Bell said. For this reason, he would bring two guns with him to bank robberies--the gun used to rob the bank and a second gun hidden in his coat with 100 rounds for a shootout.

Keyes also talked about his interest in serial killers, though he was adamant about not being called a serial killer.

"He had researched and read other serial killers. He knew a lot about Ted Bundy," Doll said. "He was very careful to say that he had not patterned himself after any other serial killers, that his ideas were his own. He was very clear about that distinction. That mattered a lot to him."

"He never identified himself as a serial killer," she said. "That was one of the things that he wanted very much, as this investigation progressed, to keep from being identified as."

Doll said Keyes was interested in suspense and crime movies and books, which he said he enjoyed because he recognized himself in the characters in a way that he could never talk about.

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Mass protest as Michigan curbs union rights

CHICAGO: Thousands of protesters descended on Michigan's state capitol Tuesday as lawmakers prepared to pass union-curbing "right-to-work" legislation in a state seen as the heart of the labor movement.

The measure would weaken unions by allowing workers who get the same wages and benefits as union members to decline to pay any union dues.

Democratic lawmakers begged their Republican colleagues not to pass the controversial bill, which they warned would unleash deep social and political strife.

"There will be blood. There will be repercussions," state representative Douglass Geiss told the chamber.

Geiss reminded his colleagues of the violent clashes that accompanied the struggle to form unions in the 1930s and warned that people feel just as strongly about solidarity today.

"If ten people walk in and say I'm not going to pay dues anymore, there's going to be fights," he warned.

State representative John Switlaski lashed out at the fact Republicans were pushing the bill through in a lame duck session using a parliamentary maneuver that limits debate and means Democrats can't stop it unless they regain control in the 2014 election.

"The next two years are going to be terrible. They're going to be ugly," Switlaski said.

"I think we should pause and take a step back... let the people have a say. we'll vote for it. Put it on the ballot."

Republican state representative Lisa Lyons insisted the law was about giving workers their constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of association.

"We are witnessing history in the making," she said. "This is the day that Michigan freed its workers."

Boos and chants of "veto" poured into the chamber from the gallery after the House voted 58-51 to pass the bill, sending it to Governor Rick Snyder for final approval.

Hundreds of union members and supporters crowded into the capitol dome, blowing whistles and chanting "the people are united" and "What's disgusting? Union busting!"

Thousands more shivered in the cold outside, television news footage showed.

"The right-wing forces in Michigan are trying to take power away from working families," United Auto Workers union chief Bob King told reporters.

"They want working families to have less income, less security. This is about partisanship, not bringing the state together."

Currently, the state operates a "closed shop" policy that requires workers who profit from collective bargaining to pay fees but does not make it mandatory for them to become union members.

The right-to-work law creates an incentive for people not to join the union in what is known as the "free rider" problem because it allows them to benefit from collective bargaining without paying for it.

Snyder insists the law is necessary "to maintain our competitive edge" and attract new jobs, especially after neighboring Indiana became the 23rd US state to enact right-to-work legislation earlier this year.

But while business may profit from weakening unions, the real motivation for lawmakers is political, said Roland Zullo, a labor relations expert at the University of Michigan.

"This whole right-to-work thing is retribution," Zullo told AFP. "It's really about the fact that unions in Michigan were very important actors in helping to elect Democrats this last election."

Unions are a key source of financial and grassroots get-out-the-vote support for President Barack Obama's Democrats, and he was quick to slam the controversial bill in an appearance at Michigan auto plant Monday.

"You know, these so-called right-to-work laws -- they don't have to do with economics: they have everything to do with politics," Obama told a cheering crowd of unionized workers.

"What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money."

-AFP/ac

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Cairo faces rival protests over constitution crisis

CAIRO (Reuters) - Opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's plans to vote on a new constitution will take to the streets in central Cairo later on Tuesday, risking more violent confrontation after last week's deadly clashes.

Leftists, liberals and other opposition groups have called for marches to the presidential palace in the afternoon to protest against the hastily arranged referendum planned for Saturday, which they say is polarizing the country.

Islamists, who dominated the body that drew up the constitution, have urged their followers to turn out "in millions" the same day in a show of support for the president and for a referendum they feel sure of winning and that critics say could put Egypt in a religious straitjacket.

Seven people were killed and hundreds wounded last week in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and opponents besieging Mursi's graffiti-daubed presidential palace.

The elite Republican Guard has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the palace, now ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades, but a decree issued by Mursi late on Sunday gives the armed forces the power to arrest civilians during the referendum and until the announcement of the results.

Leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahy, one of the most prominent members of the National Salvation Front opposition coalition, said Mursi was driving a wedge between Egyptians and destroying prospects for consensus.

As well as pushing the early referendum, Mursi has angered opponents by taking sweeping temporary powers he said were necessary to secure the country's transition to stability after a popular uprising overthrew autocratic former president Hosni Mubarak 22 months ago.

"The road Mohamed Mursi is taking now does not create the possibility for national consensus," said Sabahy.

If the constitution was passed, he said: "Egypt will continue in this really charged state. It is certain that this constitution is driving us to more political polarization."

The National Salvation Front also includes Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa.

The opposition says the draft constitution fails to embrace the diversity of 83 million Egyptians, a tenth of whom are Christians, and invites Muslim clerics to influence lawmaking.

But debate over the details has largely given way to noisy street protests and megaphone politics, keeping Egypt off balance and ill equipped to deal with a looming economic crisis.

Lamia Kamel, a spokeswoman for Moussa, said the opposition factions were still discussing whether to boycott the referendum or call for a "no" vote.

"Both paths are unwelcome because they really don't want the referendum at all," she said, but predicted a clearer opposition line if the plebiscite went ahead as planned.

Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Muslim Brotherhood's spokesman, said the opposition could stage protests, but should keep the peace.

"They are free to boycott, participate or say no; they can do what they want. The important thing is that it remains in a peaceful context to preserve the country's safety and security."

The army stepped into the conflict on Saturday, telling all sides to resolve their disputes via dialogue and warning that it would not allow Egypt to enter a "dark tunnel".

The continuing disruption is also casting doubts on the government's ability to push through tough economic reforms that form part of a proposed $4.8 billion IMF loan agreement.

(Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Is SC right in shutting our legal rights, asks 2G scam accused

NEW DELHI: A 2G scam accused on Monday questioned the Supreme Court's strict monitoring of the CBI investigation into alleged irregularities in spectrum allocation in 2008 under then telecom minister A Raja and challenged its orders asking other courts not to entertain appeals against trial court decisions.

Accused Asif Balwa's writ petition also questioned the legality of a two-judge bench's November 9 order, by which the SC had issued notices to all accused asking why their petitions in the Delhi High Court against the decision of the trial court to frame charges against them be not transferred to the apex court.

Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani mentioned the petition before a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and sought an urgent hearing on the ground that precious rights of the accused facing trial were being breached by the two-judge bench's orders. The CJI-headed bench said it would examine the contents of the petition and consider giving a hearing to the petitioner.

Balwa, who was a director of Swan Telecom (now known as Etisalat DB Telecom Pvt Ltd), also questioned the two-judge bench's method of monitoring the investigation, during which the judges had looked into the draft chargesheet of the CBI against the accused. "The role of constitutional courts in monitoring investigation and the jurisdiction to adjudicate issues arising there from have to be dealt with, in order to ensure that the prosecutor, investigator and the judge are not seen to be same person," he said.

Balwa said it was well-settled in law that on filing of chargesheet by the investigating agency, the monitoring by a constitutional court must come to an end to allow the trial to proceed under the statutory provisions.

"Merely because the Supreme Court has monitored the investigation does not mean that all the remedies available to the accused as well as the prosecution in accordance with law has been subverted," he said questioning the apex court's orders asking the HC not to entertain pleas of the accused facing trial in the case relating to alleged irregular allocation of spectrum.

Balwa also said the special bench, which monitored the 2G scam, had passed orders against the accused on a petition in which they were not even included as parties. "Thus, there is a complete failure of principle of natural justice as the orders and directions have been passed without giving an opportunity of hearing to the affected parties including the petitioner," he added.

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New Evidence Suggests Biblical Flood Happened

The story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood is one of the most famous from the Bible, and now an acclaimed underwater archaeologist thinks he has found proof that the biblical flood was actually based on real events.

In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC News, Robert Ballard, one of the world's best-known underwater archaeologists, talked about his findings. His team is probing the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey in search of traces of an ancient civilization hidden underwater since the time of Noah.

Tune in to Christiane Amanpour's two-part ABC News special, "Back to the Beginning," which explores the history of the Bible from Genesis to Jesus. Part one airs on Friday, Dec. 21 and part two on Friday, Dec. 28, both starting at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. See photos from her journey HERE

Ballard's track record for finding the impossible is well known. In 1985, using a robotic submersible equipped with remote-controlled cameras, Ballard and his crew hunted down the world's most famous shipwreck, the Titanic.

Now Ballard is using even more advanced robotic technology to travel farther back in time. He is on a marine archeological mission that might support the story of Noah. He said some 12,000 years ago, much of the world was covered in ice.

"Where I live in Connecticut was ice a mile above my house, all the way back to the North Pole, about 15 million kilometers, that's a big ice cube," he said. "But then it started to melt. We're talking about the floods of our living history."

The water from the melting glaciers began to rush toward the world's oceans, Ballard said, causing floods all around the world.

"The questions is, was there a mother of all floods," Ballard said.

According to a controversial theory proposed by two Columbia University scientists, there really was one in the Black Sea region. They believe that the now-salty Black Sea was once an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland, until it was flooded by an enormous wall of water from the rising Mediterranean Sea. The force of the water was two hundred times that of Niagara Falls, sweeping away everything in its path.

Fascinated by the idea, Ballard and his team decided to investigate.

"We went in there to look for the flood," he said. "Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed... The land that went under stayed under."

Four hundred feet below the surface, they unearthed an ancient shoreline, proof to Ballard that a catastrophic event did happen in the Black Sea. By carbon dating shells found along the shoreline, Ballard said he believes they have established a timeline for that catastrophic event, which he estimates happened around 5,000 BC. Some experts believe this was around the time when Noah's flood could have occurred.

"It probably was a bad day," Ballard said. "At some magic moment, it broke through and flooded this place violently, and a lot of real estate, 150,000 square kilometers of land, went under."

The theory goes on to suggest that the story of this traumatic event, seared into the collective memory of the survivors, was passed down from generation to generation and eventually inspired the biblical account of Noah.

Noah is described in the Bible as a family man, a father of three, who is about to celebrate his 600th birthday.

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