I'm not sure this is the place for it...but it seems almost all cultures have their Flood Myth...my thought is that something must have happened to spur people from all over to come up with basically the same story, I'm not sure what, but something....

what are everyone's thoughts here?

i would have to agree...

my thoughts are that maybe the flood wasn't global, even though it does seem possible given the recent discovery of a vast subterranean "oceans". the bible is focused on a very specific area in asia/africa, so maybe an area got flooded so bad that they thought the whole earth had flooded.

Umm...this has been discussed quite a bit before.Check in the Alternative History forum for threads regarding the Flood.

Edit: Also,look for threads about "Noah's Ark".

Virtually all the major civilizations (in particular, the Chinese around the Yellow River, and the Egyptians around the Nile), and most of the minor ones as well, were born in river valleys. Flooding varies in frequency, but is usually present, and would have been highly disastrous for many of these civilizations (it still is a disaster for the Yellow River basin inhabitants) until they developed mechanisms to control it (like the Egyptians). It's not surprising that a natural disaster that would have been widely known among these people would have been figured into their mythology.

Then add on to the fact that closely-located societies not-infrequently influenced each others' mythology, and you get a slew of flood legends with varying details and the like. Contrary to what is commonly said, they are not all basically the same story.

Many cultures with a flood myth doesn't necessarily mean they are talking about the same flood. Then again it doesn't necessarily mean that it's different floods either.

I agree. Common sense.

I ask this in every "Great Flood" thread and it never get's answered.

The Earth was flooded for 40 days and 40 nights with either salt or fresh water...why weren't the salt water/fresh water creatures negatively affected by this?

God Magic.

Here's an excerpt that asks some good questions and points out some problems with the great flood from this LINK.


"Problems with the Bible flood story
1) The story of Noah in the bible is based on an earlier legend. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written by the Sumerians long before Genesis was written down. We have tablets dating as far back as 2000 BCE which contain portions of the Gilgamesh story, with the earliest surviving record of the flood dating to 1900 BCE. The Old Testament of the Bible was not pulled together until about 600 BCE from primarily oral tradition, and the oldest surviving versions of the old testament are even more recent than that.

There is little question that the Hebrew story is based on the Sumerian/Babylonian story, as the Hebrews, even according to the bible, came from this region and their language is descended from Akadian, spoken by the ancient Babylonians and in which the most complete existing version of the Gilgamesh legend is written.

Instead of Noah, we have Utnapishtim. Instead of a single god, we have *many* gods. But the basic story of building a boat, taking the animals on, letting birds out to find land, and even the rainbow are all elements captured in this earlier book.

The point being, the Hebrews probably took this story into their oral tradition, over many years it was changed, and it wound up in Genesis. We see no reason to believe that the story in the bible is any more true than any other story in any other of the countless religious and mythological texts.

2) There is no evidence of a worldwide flood of the proportions described in any of the stories. If such a flood were to have taken place in the past 6,000 years, there would be a vast amount of geological evidence of such a flood. So far, there is no verifiable evidence in support of such a flood. The geologic evidence simply does not exist.

3) The story in the bible is impossible.

3a) For Noah and his sons to build such a boat, even given several hundred years, without modern manufacturing equipment would be impossible.

3b) Collecting two of each animal would be an equally impossible task (did Noah travel to Australia to pick up some kangaroos, or to Antarctica to grab some penguins?)

3c) The combined weight of the animals and the food to keep them all alive for over 100 days would cause such a wooden ship to collapse under its own weight.

3d) There wouldn’t even be enough time for Noah and his family to feed and shovel all the dung out of all the stalls of these tens of thousands of animals.

3e) There is the problem of the fresh-water fish surviving in the salt water (or the salt-water fish surviving in the fresh water, depending upon your definition of the flood)

3d) When the flood receded, how did the kangaroos get all the way back to Australia?

4) If you claim two of each species around today, the boat isn’t big enough. If you claim that there were certain “types” of animals, then there isn’t enough time for these “types” to speciate into the vast variety of species we see today.

5) A single pair of any animals is not enough to develop a significant population due to the inbreeding problem. Take a couple of hamsters and try this. After a couple dozen generations, the offspring will be sick and malformed due to this interbreeding."

Also, we're still discovering new species on a daily basis and have been doing so for hundreds of years...how'd one man and his family accomplish this in a matter of what, weeks? Ugh, can't believe I'm asking that...it's absolutely ridiculous. It's like those members with 1 post that come here claiming they can lift car's with their thoughts...it's not even worth debunking.

Which leads me to ask...is there anyone who actually believes the tale of Noah's Ark to be 100% true after reading that post? And, I'm just wondering...do your parents look remarkably similar?

That and Noah couldn't have possibley built and ark to house 2 of EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL SPECIES. Does that even include incests? There are thousands and thousands of different species of insect.

And then you gotta stop em from eating eachother. And then you have to take into consideration that the surviving males and females won't mate, and so on. The whole story is full of crater-sized holes. The only reason it made it this far into history is because people are stupid.

Lmao, yeah. Will believe anything they read. I know a lot of Religious experts think it was just a story to teach a lesson about being good or something like Santa Claus.