Roughly 5.3 million years ago, our planet experienced a cataclysm unlike anything in human memory: a deluge so immense and sudden that it redefined the landscape of an entire region. This event, now known as the Zanclean flood, was ultimately the dramatic rebirth of the Mediterranean Sea.
For over half a million years before this flood, the Mediterranean basin had become a vast, sun-scorched wasteland. Cut off from the Atlantic Ocean by shifting tectonic plates, the sea evaporated under the relentless sun and left a patchwork of salty plains and thick deposits of minerals.
Everything that humanity can see in the Mediterranean today is thanks to this devastating torrent that filled an area that now covers around 965,000 square miles (2.5 million square kilometers). So how did a single flood change the entire landscape of southern Europe and northern Africa? Click through this gallery to find out.