trunks2k

I remember hearing that the guy who discovered the Titanic was doing research in the Red Sea (I think) and he found several submersed villages the villages seem to have suddenly been submerged by water. I don't remember it all in any sort of detail, but he also found other evidence that there was a natural dam between the two bodies of water he was studying, and that the dam suddenly broke, probably during an extended period of heavy rain, which suddenly flooded the area. He suggests that's where the story of the flood originated.

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: trunks2k ]</p>

FreeToThink

Yes, Dr. Ballard is the guy who found the Titanic, and it was the Black Sea.

The breach of the strait was most likely caused by rising ocean levels after the last ice age.

Jayhawker Soule

You continue to assert the existence of this boat without offering a shred of evidence. Why?

As for the rest, I've transferred my comments below from another thread ...

To which I responded ...

I would be very interested to read your arguments for this "more likely explanation", since I have always speculated that just the opposite was the case. For example, there was apparently a rather significant event that impacted the Black Sea area roughly 5600 BCE. But, so what? This occurred some 3000 BG (before Gilgamesh). That's a hell of a long time to hold onto a memory.

Not surprisingly, Early Bronze Age civilization was wholly reliant on an accessible source of fresh water. Occasionally, but inevitably, this source became the source of significant (though local) flood catastrophy. As I have suggested elsewhere, all disaster, much like all politics, is local. The EB tribesmen lacked the perspective provided by CNN. For them, the local flood disaster and the "devastating world-wide flood" would look very much the same - unexpected, unimaginable, and unexplainable. That those effected would weave tales of their experiences with such frightening catastophy seems inevitable, as does the likelihood that, as people mingled, they would conflate and exaggerate these stories to mythical proportions.

Any web search on "flood disaster" should provide ample evidence of just how catastrophic such an event can be. And you don't have to be an Early Bronze Age farmer to view such things with awe: even today they're commonly called "acts of God." Again, this is pure speculation on my part, but I see no requirement for a world-wide flood to explain common flood myths.

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Mike Rosoft

&gt;What is the vessel that is located in the upper reaches of Mt. Ararat and how did it get there?

It is <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax/jammal.html" target="_blank">not a vessel</a>.


Mike Rosoft

Answerer

Relax guys, he is just a newcomer.

kookiejar

AMD, don't forget that the Hebrew word "eretz" that was translated to mean "Earth" in the Bible can also mean "local area" or "local land" or just "land".

Jayhawker Soule

I almost fell out of my chair when I got to ...

Bruce Wildish

The flood story is built on the popular mythic motif of the "divided waters." The motif makes its first appearance in the creation story of Gen. 1 when God divides the waters and allows the land to appear between the waters below and the waters above. The flood is desribed as a direct reversal of that original separation: the waters of the flood come both from above and from the fountains of the deep. You see the same motif of the divided waters again in the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus (and the parting of the River Jordan by Joshua, Elijah and Elisha).

This motif was borrowed from Babylonian mythology, and the Babylonians derived it from an even earlier Sumerian myth. The ancient Sumerians and Babylonians built the first cities in the plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and these rivers had annual flooding which at times very destructive to the local villiages and farmlands. Archaeology has uncovered evidence of one or more particularly severe floods in this area in ancient times. The most probable scneario then is that the earliest Sumerian and Babylonian cultures began telling stories of floods (or a flood) inspired by one or more actual severe floods in their area, and that because the flooding came from the two Rivers the myth took the form of flood waters coming from two directions. The story of a survivor and his boat is a later addition which also goes back to Sumerian and Babylonian times.

Bane

NOVA covered this a few years ago. It was an interesting show.

The Other Michael

Hi Bane,

the book is worth getting - it was a very interesting read.

cheers,
Michael