Donnmathan

I agree with David B...in combination with the fact that most early civilizations appeared near rivers or oceans, most would be at least familiar with the idea of a flood. Give them sea shells in the nearby hills/mountains, and/or maybe one year of too-heavy rain or snow (leading to a MASSIVE river flood), and/or (better yet) old stories from a nearby city/tribe/clan/village about a flood that nearly wiped them out, and you have the perfect recipe for a catastrophic flood myth. Thanks, Malachi...now I've got something to keep me occupied for a good while...

Doug Shaver

Yes, indeed. But one would also expect to find evidence for it in the geological record.

Malachi151

I agree completely. I can see it as them witnessing major floods and understanding that the water would come way up, and then go back down, and of course, when that happens, again you see marine life stranded on the banks of the flood zones, and fish, shells, etc. left in your fields.

Then you go up into the mountians and you see sea shells and the logical conclusion (if you don't know about tectonic plates) is that the flood waters once covered the mountians.

Yes, a combintion does the job nicely.

BTW, for reference, quoted from The First Fossil Hunters:

mountainman

A number of authors postulate global flooding via tsumamis caused by meteor and/or comet impactor in deep ocean, as the wave generated will be related in size to the depth of water at the (oceanic) impact site. Depths exceeding 5kms will generate waves of that order.

Lomax and Knight (in "Uriel's machine") provide a date of 7640 BCE for a global flood caused by the multi-part impact of a comet, claiming correlating data in respect of a number of parameters, such as iridium levels. They claim this is associated with a geological layer of sand across the entire british isles.
Part of the above book gathers international global flood "traditions" and "legends".

They and other independent authors also claim a more recent impactor in the Mediteranean region circa 3100 BCE, attributable to massive flooding, and out of which ashes [they claim] the Egyptian dynasties were reborn afresh.



Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

skeptic dave

that's interesting. is there an impact crater *near* the british isles?

fromdownunder

As far as I am aware, there are no flood myths among the many Australian Aboriginal tribes and evidence indicates an unbroken history going back 40-50,000 years.

It's probably not surprising, given that they live on the dryest inhabited continent on the entire planet.

Norm

Norm

David B

I'm sure I've seen compelling evidence that Australia has been hit by tsunamis much bigger than the Boxing Day tsunami in the past. Which means that the the tsunami was driven either by an impact or by part of a volcanic island falling into the sea.

I forget the the dating, such as it is, of that, though.

You do, in parts of Australia, get cyclones, or typhoons, or whatever you call hurricanes down there. Surely in the last 40000 years there has been one of Mitch like proportions or bigger.

ETA http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

Further ETA - I forgot to get the URL, but there follows a quote from it.



'For example, there are numerous piles of boulders aligned like fallen dominoes along the top of cliffs at Jervis Bay, New South Wales. The waves that overwashed these cliffs also deposited shelly sand that can be radiocarbon dated around AD 1500. This event produced one wave that overran the 130 m high headland flanking the south of Jervis Bay.

The photographs in the linked windows show this evidence. At Gum Getters Bay, boulders as large as a boxcar were moved. They are stacked parallel with each other to the top of a 30 m high cliff. In this regard, cliff collapse did not produce the deposit. Rather the boulders were deposited from a wave that overwashed the cliff.'


David B (is just going to google search for aboriginal flood myths)

Julian

A global flood is impossible since there would be no significant life on Earth today if one had indeed happened.

Julian

David B

True - but the near ubiquity of flood myths is an interesting topic in itself.

David B

Julian

Not really. Flooding is an extremely common and frequently devastating phenomenon. One of the few I can think of that happens almost all over the world.

Julian