I wonder if the flood story is a reference to how the earth originally was. The story got jumbled up and out of context. Since the earth's surface is covered mostly by water, it could be that originally the entire planet was covered by water and flood and rain references added to explain it, though perhaps not the actual cause. Later, the climate changed by some evaporating to create the atmosphere. The emergence of some land, noah and land animals as being archetypes of seeding the land and modern humans today.
Humans came on the scene fairly late in the formation of Earth, and it took them a while longer to make language and tell stories. It's far more likely, since pretty nearly every human settlement was built on a riverbank, that every civilization has stories of great big epic floods.
There are two ways to interpret the great flood; literally or symbolically. Literally, scientists have found an ocean of water, the size of the Arctic Ocean, in the earth's mantle, below southeast Asia. Beyond that pocket of water there is a lot of water below the earth's crust, under high pressure. Another group of scientists found a huge scar, on the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, where the mantle is exposed. If we put these two observations together; one might speculate that a great flood could have been cause by a large pool of mantle water, below the Atlantic ocean, breaching and eroding the crust. The high pressure mantle water would force its way into the Atlantic ocean and into atmosphere; warm the ocean and atmosphere. There would have been huge clouds and tidal waves, with the entire earth impacted by the imbalance. The receding flood water might be the hydraulics sending water back to the mantle where the crust is subverting. http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/scientists-detect-evidence-oceans-worth-water-earths-mantle Symbolically, a great flood would be connected to the unconscious mind overwhelming the ego. Humans have two centers of consciousness; ego and inner self. A great flood would be symbolic of the inner self and unconscious overwhelming the ego; for a system upgrade. The symbolism of two of each animal being gathered has a connection to the gathering all the natural male and female instincts for the upgrade. A symbolic flood would have suggested that humans, through willpower and choice, had become unnatural to the point it was damaging the natural control systems of the brain and DNA; sickness and compulsions. This led to an unconscious reaction to restore balance. Noah senses the impending flood in advance, and begins to prepare. After the great flood, civilizations advance; ego 2.0. A small scale analogy for the symbolism might be a young person experimenting with drugs. At first, their willpower and choice seems to be rewarded, with the excitement of discovery and new experiences. But as this behavior persists, it starts to lead to a routine and addiction; all the lessons have already been learned. Unconscious potential builds since they are willfully shifting the personality and the physical body away from he natural set point. The cleansing affect may be a flood of emotions; rage and sadness, leading to rock bottom; reborn from death. Now the young person has a new perspective based on the wisdom of experience. This impacts them deeply; inner self. A world wide flood, in the symbolic sense, would sort of be proof for evolution from a common genetic base. Parallel myths in separated cultures would imply a coordination of human advancement, where the same change is occurring in all places; global system upgrade. It would imply something like Microsoft or Apple announcing the next operating system release months in the future. Noah had access to a beta version. This has bugs, so nobody wishes to use it just yet. But even with bugs, it gave Noah time to prepare for the change and get used to it. Noah stresses before everyone else, for decades. When the new OS is finally released; flood, all the people are confused and unprepared. Everyone but Noah so used to the old interface that the new OS screws up all that you do. Religions are the caretakers of the operating system and help prepare humans for system upgrades.
(speculation) Picture a peaceful settled society living on the rich continental edge where the climate was moderated by the sea circa 14000 years ago. Life was good with food in abundance in an almost ideal and idyllic rich and diverse biome. And then: Came the almost ceaseless massive storms accompanying the end of the glacial period followed by rapidly rising sea levels which flooded their homes and fields of wild fruits and grains circa 11,700 years ago. And the people fled the rising flood and built places like Göbekli Tepe on high ground wherein "Noah's" gathering of animals was represented. Klaus Schmidt had claimed that the oldest of the megalithic structures was the best constructed (attempts at recreating the life and land that was lost to the flood?), then buried to represent what was lost to the flood. Generation after generation the people gathered to share the stories of the life that was lost, and build another "temple?" then bury it. And the stories were told and retold and handed down generation after generation until almost forgotten. And then: Came another series of massive storms and a massive flood that destroyed the settlements around the Mediterranean and black sea basins and the red sea and Persian gulf and doggerland circa 6500-6200bce, and again the settled people fled to higher ground leaving behind their homes, villages, and fields and monuments. And began again to tell the stories of what was lost, and remembering some of the almost forgotten stories from roughly 5000-6000 years previously. Again, the stories were told and retold and handed down generation after generation until the 2 storied floods were merged into one. And then: Someone wrote down the memories morphed by time and distance.(in a language whose meanings have been lost or morphed into confusion and obfuscation by the winds of time) For early civilizations of modern humans, the best archaeological stuff is hidden by the waves and waters of the gulfs, seas, and oceans. .......................... "This is my grandfather's ax. My father had replaced the handle, and i have replaced the head, but this is my grandfather's ax."
If there were any truth to the story of the great flood, I always though the most plausible explanation was the flooding of the Black Sea, which happened quite catastrophically around 5600BC. That's pretty close to the modern cradle of Western civilisation in both date and location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
I think almost as plausible is a memory of the flooding of the Gulf, which would have occurred with similar timing, though perhaps a couple of thousand years earlier. This has not been as thoroughly researched (yet).
From DaveC426913 Post #5 There is evidence of villages circa 200 feet below he current level of the Black Sea. This supports the above remarks. Knowledge transmitted orally for centuries is plausible & the above should be considered evidence supporting the Noah Flood myth. Consider the above in the context of a culture with no knowledge of the size of the Earth & little knowledge of cultures beyond the Middle East. Eratosthenes as the first to estimate the size of the Earth in circa 240 BC.
'Surface of the deep' is implying above water and the jewish translation refers to spirit as 'wind' so the first signs of atmosphere. There doesnt seem to have been any land as the earth is described as 'formless' and water is formless. there was only water and no land originally.
Well that is taking a primitive people's creation myth literally. Nobody does that, apart from 7th Day Adventists and less educated churchgoers in the US Bible Belt.
Many archeologists think that the most plausible explanation for the legends of a flood among the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean is the fact that there actually was a flood in the eastern Mediterranean around 1500BCE. A volcano near the island of Thera (now renamed Santorini) erupted with such force that it may be the largest volcanic eruption in the last 5,000 years, estimated to have expelled more than 50 cubic kilometers of solid matter. The resulting tsunamis flooded many of the various islands in the vicinity, causing many of the nations to fade into history. The largest and most famous to be destroyed was that of the Minoans, who, essentially, had controlled all commerce and politics in the region. Their demise left a vacuum of leadership, which resulted in a lot of fighting among the surviving smaller states.
"great flood" is common part of all culture's oral history. Here is a link broken down by areas of more than 600 great floods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths Sometimes the flood cause is that an inland lake has more evaporation than flow into it. This was the case of the Mediterranean lake once and it became a great salt sea far below sea level. The Mediterranean is still salter than the ocean but now it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean. When it was first reconnected, erosion rapidly increased the ocean water inflow. A wave front more than 100 feet high may have rushed into the eastern end.
What i find strange is that its way too obvious that earth is an aquatic planet. There is less habitable landmass than water so we are an anomaly but the idea of the planet having been ever completely covered by water is just unbelievable to some. Lol
You may be thinking of the Enuma Elis, the Babylonian creation myth, which talks about the Earth starting out as an ocean with the waters slowly receding to reveal land. (And of course a lot of details about which gods did what to make that happen.) For them that was not the same as a flood myth, which occurred after the gods created Earth.
I'm talking about the Epic of Gilgamesh. "You know the city Shurrupak, it stands on the banks of the Euphrates. That city grew old and the gods that were in it were old. There was Anu, lord of the firmament {earth}, their father, and warrior Enlil their counselor, Ninurta the helper, and Ennugi, watcher over canals; and with them also was Ea. In those days the world teemed, the people multiplied, the world bellowed like a wild bull, and the great god was aroused by the clamor. Enlil heard the clamor and he said to the gods in council, 'The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel {everyone talking at once}.' So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind. Enlil did this, but Ea warned me in a dream. He whispered their words to my house of reeds, “Reed-house, reed-house! Wall, O wall, hearken reed-house, wall reflect; O man of Shurrupak, son of Ubara-Tutu; tear down your house and build a boat, abandon possessions and look for life, despise worldly goods and save your soul alive. Tear down your house, I say, and build a boat. These are the measurements of the barque {boat} as you shall build her: let her beam equal her length, let her deck be roofed like the vault that covers the abyss; then take up into the boat the seed of all living creatures."
Myths do tend to get exaggerated. The original arc (if there was just a single one (probably not)) was more like a coracle. Scientists even tried to build one. In fact, it didn't have to go anywhere like a boat, so a raft would be better suited to the task. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...d-tablet-s-instructions-build-hand-India.html
The question is not if there was a flood that could have inspired the Biblical Flood tale, but which one (if any) of the several easily sufficient candidates we know about was the particular one involved. There was only "land" (rock in some form) and no (liquid) water, originally. According to whose who have checked. The surface was too hot. The problem is that liquid water runs down hill. So in order to cover the planet with liquid water, it has to have no hills more than so high. It seems very unlikely that the surface of the planet - once the liquid rock had cooled - was ever that smooth. And it is borderline impossible that it attained that smoothness temporarily and then reverted to what we have today.
