Did the great flood really happen?

[steve25805 121,264]

Another question of the week.

Did the great flood of the bible, featuring Noah and his Ark, ever really happen in any form? Was there ever a great flood?

Historically, many ancient peoples in that region had stories passed down through the generations involving an epic flood and often featuring some kind of saviour hero. The Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh is very similar to the biblical account but long predates it, leading to the obvious possibility that the biblical tale was a plagiarised version of it.

Many ancient peoples thereabouts had such tales, the biblical one coming to prominence in comparison only through it's incorporation into world religions.

Here is what I think.

It is known that as sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, the area that was to become the Black Sea was a freshwater Lake well below the new sea level and much smaller than the Black Sea would become, with much land around it that was well below the new higher sea levels.

In about 7200 BC, water from the Mediterranean Sea broke through the Bosporus and began flooding the Black Sea basin, creating a vast waterfall with about 200 times the volume per second as Niagara Falls. All those ancient, pre-writing, communities living around or near the shores of the fresh water lake would have seen it begin to rise and keep on rising, flooding ever more land. Some would have been cut off on hillocks and ultimately drowned if unable to swim to safety. It would have been remembered as a terrifying flood lasting for many weeks, seeing ever more land flooded, and would indeed have seemed almost inexplicable and likely to have been attributed to the wrath of gods.

Such a tale would have been much spoken about by all and likely handed down through the generations, with bits added here, sensationalised characters invented there. By the time writing emerged to allow them to be recorded, the tales had evolved into semi-mythical imaginings, but nevertheless an echo of that ancient flood that really happened. Though of course it was a perfectly natural event which had nothing to do with the wrath of any gods.

Wonder what others think.

[2prnot2p 1,071]

@steve25805

I wrote a paper in college on the Great Flood.  What scientists believe is that Mesopotamia, the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq, flooded.  To those living in that area, it would have seemed as though the whole world was flooded.  Most people in that area rarely ventured more than a few miles from their village.

But, a flood where the whole world was flooded never occurred except when earth was a new planet.  A scientist I know asked, "If that really happened, what happened to the water?"  LOL!  Good point.

But, if you ask the fundamentalists, they'll tell you that the earth is only 6,000 years old and that people lived at the same time as the dinosaurs and that all were killed in the Great Flood.  This is stupidity at its worst.

Yes, you are correct.  There can be a tiny kernel of truth in some ancient folklore.  But, most of it is pure myth.

[F.W 5,652]

I agree.An ancient tale explaining concepts of geology etc.The Chinese Dragons are so obviously Dinosaur fossils,China is a recent goldmine of paleontology and they would have dug up bones and teeth,thus the "Dragon".

[nopjans 1,142]

Yes, when the ice age came to an end, and the glaciers melted, flooding would have been rampant across the northern hemisphere. It's no surprise that memories of these events would survive through the oral tradition.

[steve25805 121,264]

4 minutes ago, peeingone said:

All cultures talk about a great flood. It is very likely that the great flood probably refers to the flooding that happened right after the last Ice Age ended. 

This is known to have happened in about 7200 BC in the Black Sea basin.