A:The last Ice Age began to melt around 16,000 years ago.
After some gradual warming over several thousands of years there was suddenly a reversion to a short sharp mini Ice Age that scientists call the Younger Dryas. This event is dated to sometime around the 10th and 9th millennia BCE. Only after this final part of the last Ice Age did the earth gradually become as predominantly free of ice as we continue to be at present.
Around 5600 BCE, as the ocean waters rose with the melting of the ice, the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosphorus and inundated the low-lying area that is now the Black Sea. Ian Wilson (Before the Flood) believes that the inundation of the Black Sea is what led to the biblical story of Noah's Ark, as well as many other flood legends, lelu including that told in the Epic of Gilgamesh.