Global flood stories in many ancient cultures

[Agnostic75]

The following is from another thread:

Originally Posted by Man of Faith

Over 350 cultures around the world have a great flood story and 80% of the stories have commonalities.

Who wrote the stories? According to global flood advocates, the stories could only have been written by people who were on Noah's ark, and/or their descendants, since the flood killed everyone else in the world.

If all flood stories were written by people who were on Noah's ark, and/or their descendants, there would probably be far more commonalities in the flood stories than there are. A very detailed list of global flood stories is at Flood Stories from Around the World. The great differences among them are much more obvious than the similarities.

It is important to note that many of the flood myths might have been written as deliberate fiction.

Consider the following:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

Originally Posted by talkorigins.org

Why is there no mention of the Flood in the records of Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time?

Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1, Gal 3:17, various generation lengths given in Genesis) place the Flood 1300 years before Solomon began the first temple. We can construct reliable chronologies for near Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, from many kinds of records from the literate cultures in the near East. These records are independent of, but supported by, dating methods such as dendrochronology and carbon-14. The building of the first temple can be dated to 950 B.C. +/- some small delta, placing the Flood around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egyptians (among others) have written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.

How did the human population rebound so fast?

Genealogies in Genesis put the Tower of Babel about 110 to 150 years after the Flood [Gen 10:25, 11:10-19]. How did the world population regrow so fast to make its construction (and the city around it) possible? Similarly, there would have been very few people around to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, rebuild the Sumerian and Indus Valley civilizations, populate the Americas, etc.

Why do other flood myths vary so greatly from the Genesis account?

Flood myths are fairly common worldwide, and if they came from a common source, we should expect similarities in most of them. Instead, the myths show great diversity. [Bailey, 1989, pp. 5-10; Isaak, 1997] For example, people survive on high land or trees in the myths about as often as on boats or rafts, and no other flood myth includes a covenant not to destroy all life again.

[Iti oj]

This reminds me most cultures have dragon myths does this make dragons any more real

[shawn001]

Sin-Leqi-Unninni, one of the first authors known in history with a flood story, which even predates him to the sumerians.


The ice ages for one caused a lot of floods in which we have a lot of evidence for them, but no global flood. People like now even live close to waterways that flood. Most people in ancient times lived next to waterways or water.

Every date they try and give you for a global flood you can show something going on at that time in the world with people or places.

[outhouse]

Who wrote the stories?

Its a fact at one tine or another, floods have occured around the planet.

River floods and tsunami's account for most of them.

There has never been a global flood


If we take noahs flood there is no mystery at all. Historians know that the Sumerian legends were handed down and these same semetic speaking people that came from that culture, brought the legends with them.

The bible states the flood story originates from mesopotamia and in fact it really does. The Euphrates river overflowed in 2900 BC this is a attested flood [means it really happened] a story was recorded of a man who went down the river in a barge that went down the river and landed next to a hill where a animal sacrifice took place. This flood story is the earliest one in the levant and predates hebrews by 1700 years. many other flood stories spawned from teh real flood that caused major devistation to the area.


One has to realize that ancient people built their civilizations next to rivers to keep their agraculture alive. There were no major cities or civilizations until about 6000 ish years ago. There was no communication that there were in fact 500 or 1000 year floods that would wipe them out. They didnt know any better and built on these floodable grounds, this we all have flood stories. As civilizations started to realize where and where NOT to build, were not loosing as many civilizations to river floods the way they used to.

[Krok]

There are thousands of cultures in the world. According to this thread, only around 350 have a story about a flood.

That's weird. I'm sure that every culture experienced some flood in the past. According to the geological evidence in my country, lots of floods occurred in human history. Somehow the indigenous people missed it lots of times in their myths. And the indigenous people here are some of the first humans. Maybe some myth about a global flood missed them....they didn't all drown at all. "Hydrological sorting", I guess. These people just don't remember being "hydrologically sorted". Neither a big flood...

[shawn001]

Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World

Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

[Agnostic75]

In the opening post, I mentioned an article about global flood stories from ancient cultures at Flood Stories from Around the World. The very detailed article shows that the differences with the biblical accounts are far greater than the similarities.

[Madhuri]

Originally Posted by Agnostic75

Who wrote the stories? According to global flood advocates, the stories could only have been written by people who were on Noah's ark, and/or their descendants, since the flood killed everyone else in the world.

Maybe the Noah's Ark version is the wrong one.
According to the Hindu version, this flood happened a lot further back in history. Hinduism is also one of the most ancient religions and it is my personal opinion that the major religions of the world evolved from the Vedic religions. As we know, time causes things to change and so it's possible that this story changed over time in different places to suit cultures and ideas.

Just a theory.

[Madhuri]

Originally Posted by Iti oj

This reminds me most cultures have dragon myths does this make dragons any more real

Not saying it is true, but according to Hindu descriptions, dragons were just flying (wings) snakes. They weren't particularly large and they didn't breath fire. Is it impossible that this sort of creature existed once?

[Jayhawker Soule]

(it's gotta be the season)