Do you think the story of The Great Flood probably has a factual basis in history?

Local floods, maybe, but certainly not a global one, because there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

Yes, I believe that something like that could have happened, for two reasons.

1) if you look at religions – NOT just Jewish, but all of the religions from all over the world – their sagas or stories all include some sort of story about a great flood, and great waters. If it were one single religion, then I would tend to dismiss it. But when a dozen disparate religions ALL mention a huge deluge, then it is clear that SOMETHING happened.

2) Any geology book that I have read has mentioned that glaciation was FAR more extensive than it is today. That’s a fact. So it stands to reason that as the earth warmed up, the water trapped in he glaciers had to go somewhere. So it’s believable to me that the melt did cause floods, which ultimately collected in the oceans and lakes and ponds that we have now.

Finally, there is incontrovertible evidence that large portions of China (Gobi desert) and the Sahara Desert (Egypt and Sudan) were at one point lakes (or even mini-oceans). That doesn’t necessarily mean floods caused it, but it does mean that there was significantly more water there than we see today.

So, I’ll buy the idea as a possibility.

I agree @elbanditoroso, that all religions have stories of a great flood, but that doesn’t mean that the floods all happened at the same time, and certainly didn’t encompass the entire globe.

Also, the melting of the ice caps, and flooding of areas that we now call gulfs would have been painfully slow, occurring over generations. It wouldn’t have been anything like a sudden flood.

The religion of Colorado now has a Great Flood story to be passing down to its children.

See above.

Ancient humans began to dabble in cultivation of crops instead of roaming to gather food.

They did this along side great rivers, like the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates.

And soon enough, they experienced their first flood that wiped out the crop. The event was certainly catastrophic to the fragile early civilizations.

They had no well developed epistemology, and thus no real idea of the “science of flooding”.

It is likely that they assumed that they had offended one of the many spirits and deities that they imagined surrounded them.

Hence, the ever recurring tales of Great Floods.

Josie, I think the stories were about more than your every day floods. They had witnessed floods before they started experimenting with agriculture. And the Nile floods like clockwork every year. Nothing to write home about.

Colorado has seen flooding over the years, but they’re calling this year’s flood “The Thousand Year Flood.” That’s something for the history books.

Noah’s Ark? Oh please. It is a nice children’s story. But logic and historical geology doesn’t not support it.

Visit Glacier National Park in Montana. You will see a couple of thousand feet of thousands of layers of sediment deposited between 1.6 billion years ago and 6.6 million years ago when large parts of Washington, Idaho and Montana were submerged in an inland sea.

There were many other inland seas that each lasted millions of years. The Mississippian period (190 to 160 million years ago) as well as during the Triassic period (130 to 100 million years ago) indicates that 6 other huge inland seas came and went through the the North American continent. (Reference: “Historical Geology” by Dunbar).

Yes the Lord works in mysterious ways.

Gotta go back further than that. Instead of 3–5000 years BCE, think about 30K to 10K years BCE.
Anyway, the answer to your question is no. Most of the known civilizations on earth tell ancient stories about their origins, and they all have common themes; Emergence of material from a formless primordial substance, the creation of human beings from one of the subsequent emanations, death and resurrection, etc. And floods.

@josie The question DID go back 110K to 10K, to the last ice age. I never said anything about 3000 to 5000 years ago.

@gondwanalon um, exactly HOW are you reading my question? I do believe you misinterpreted it.

@elbanditoroso “But when a dozen disparate religions ALL mention a huge deluge, then it is clear that SOMETHING happened.”

No, that’s a logical fallacy. You can’t say, because a, b, and c says something is true, therefore it’s true. You need objective evidence, not just stories written on parchment (or stone tablets, as in the case of Gilgamesh).

Well, floods can be pretty devastating so if there was a big one, it would be carried thorough to oral tales of the people….and getting exaggerated along the way, long before it was ever written down. I happen to think exaggeration is a big part of the story of the ark too.

Have you ever heard of the game “telephone”?

That was a fun game!

Yes, as I said, exaggerated and changed, but there was probably an actual, factual basis for the stories to begin with. Fires, floods, plagues, all of these things actually happened, but probably not to the degree that were eventually recorded.

The more I think of the final melting of the ice caps as the last ice age was ending, only 10,000 years ago, the more I think that may have had something to do with the folklore. But those are only my thoughts.

Oh, and when I said “if there _was a big one it would be carried through….“_ I meant if there was a big one locally.

Of course the flood myth is true… specifically the Noah and his Ark version.

Had he not forgotten to get male and female Dodo Birds, then we’d have them today. He mistook Bob and Paul for Bob and Pauline. Clerical error you know.

Such proof should be obvious to all.

Could be. Perhaps not an entire planet flood, but if some badass flood happened centuries ago, it could have easily been grossly exaggerated, especially if back then, people didn’t know the world was as big as they imagined, as you suggested. The Inuits thought that they were the only people around, that’s what Inuit means in their language; ’‘the world’’ or ’‘the people’’ or something like that. So things can get mixed up real good, you know?
For example, I believe that the idea of lycanthrope comes from rabies, or that the myth of vampires comes from disease and parasites. Science may have been bashed and condemned for like, three quarters of man’s history, but the Greek and the Romans and the Pagans still knew what planets were. Don’t fucking ask me how, but apparently, they did. But centuries of turmoil, ignorance and fear can mutate shit to no end. I have no doubt there was a man named Jesus who didn’t act like a product of his times, and I have no doubt that some giant flood or other natural disaster may have easily influenced The bible. However it has to be said, most of what you find in The Bible when it comes to its stories and mythologies has been ripped off from even older mythologies, at least according to all those Zeitgeist videos on YouTube. Older Bible versions even spoke of things like dragons and hydras, usually to denote the Apocalypse. Norse myth cough cough But to go back to my idea of scientific minds being older than some think, I have no doubt that theories about the ice age have been presented by people quite a while back. There’s gotta be some fact somewhere in there. I mean, I don’t know yet, but Vikings probably invented airplanes.

even as someone who is religious, I have to recognize that drowning holds a pretty standard biological fear level, and I think most cultures would naturally find a flood story to leverage that fear.

Why are those who are reacting as if I said, “Could Noah and the flood be true?” Read the details, people.

@Dutchess_III I think the Noah flood is what most people think of when they hear Great Flood. Re-reading the details I see you don’t specifically mention the bible, but that’s what I thought you meant.

I WAS referring the the story of Noah. That’s not the problem I’m having. Some people are reacting sarcastically, apparently assuming I said something I didn’t, apparently assuming that I buy into the story, which I don’t.

Witnessing a tsunami might also have led to such a legend.

Exactly @mattbrowne. Good case in point.