“And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein [is] the breath of life, from under heaven; [and] every thing that [is] in the earth shall die.”
Genesis 6:17, King James Bible
A great flood in ancient times sent by angry gods to destroy humanity is a very common story in religions – indeed, one might even say that the flood is present in almost all religions today. For example, the Abrahamic tradition of Noah escaping in his Ark, the story of Manu in the Hindu tradition, Pyrrha and Deucalion in Greco-Roman stories, and Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh are all well-known examples of this story. In all the stories, the hero is the one devout person on Earth and a deity warns him and his family only of an upcoming flood and commands him to build a boat to escape. After that, the hero is the father of all humanity.
This story is common among religions separated by thousands of years of migration, such as among Australian Aboriginals, Native Hawaiians, and the Ojibwe peoples. As such, the myth must be founded in fact. There are simply too many flood myths to be a coincidence. There are many theories, and some give different explanations for the stories. So, what are the most likely?
The most obvious answer that pokes at us is that sea levels rose rapidly after the last ice age (you know, the one where we killed off our cousins the Neanderthals and speared mammoths to death) and the effects were felt everywhere. Both seas and rivers would have flooded rapidly. However, there are other solutions and the flood was at least five millennia before any of these myths came into circulation.
A solution special to Noah/Utnapishtim’s Ark is that in Mesopotamia, where this specific story originated, the Euphrates and Tigris were… turbulent, to say the least. They would flood irregularly and with violence, and the drowning of whole valleys would have seemed like the end of the world for ancient Sumerians who lived there.
Another specific solution to the Deucalion story is that of the Santorini volcano that caused the destruction of Atlantis- I mean, the Minoan civilization. The effects would haven’t been felt on mainland Greece as much, but they definitely heard about a 100 foot tall tsunami that drowned an entire empire. Like a broken game of telephone, this story was passed down until it emerged as the myth we know today. Or, similarities to the Utnapishtim myth may show that Mesopotamian influence extended to religion as well.
Well, that’s it for today!
Anay Ganesh 