The Still-Persistent Myth of the World Flood

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In LOTS of media it's still just ASSUMED ... that at
some point, maybe 10-15000 years ago, the entire world
was completely, deeply, flooded (usually by act of
some very unhappy sociopathic god).

Thing is, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. Many studies/surveys
make this clear.

There WERE big floods - so big the locals likely
THOUGHT it was the whole world. At the end of
the last ice age there was a HUGE amount of
water/moisture locked up in ice. The moisture
caused big rains and the melt-water backed up
for as long as it could until it burst down
river systems to the south (where most civs
existed).

Now very old data, from like Egypt, shows that
things went on pretty much as normal all during
the supposed 'world flood'. Civ in Australia
went on as usual. The world was NOT covered
in water - can't really happen. At least one
archeologist doing Egypt was forbidden by his
backers to mention ANYTHING that suggested
there wasn't a world flood (or life before
4004 BC) - but he did anyway.

Genetic studies also show there was no drastic
shrinkage in the gene pool 15000 years ago.
Was way BEFORE then, but not because of any floods,
mostly ice-age climatic chaos - droughts and
such - and the victims may not have been mostly
homo sapiens sapiens.

Sea levels DID rise after the ice age - still are.
Looks to be maybe 300 feet on the whole. However
this was kinda gradual, not some god-induced
sudden event. China, for example, went much
further out into the Pacific, almost joined with
Japan, and there seem to be drowned cities.
Again though, this didn't happen overnight.

So WHY do SO many sources keep talking about
"The World Flood" ??? What IS the attraction,
fixation, with this old mythology ???

[Dhu on Gate]

Post by ***@ud0s4.net
In LOTS of media it's still just ASSUMED ... that at
some point, maybe 10-15000 years ago, the entire world
was completely, deeply, flooded (usually by act of
some very unhappy sociopathic god).
Thing is, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. Many studies/surveys
make this clear.

Yes. What did happen is the ICE AGE ended and the Oceans
rose about 400 feet, give or take, flooding most of the
Weirld occupied by us beach apes at the time.
Lotsa folks without boats drowned and the giant forests on
which mesolithic seafaring cultures depended went under the wave.

Dhu

[v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com]

The timing is off by orders of magnitude, but it did happen when the Atlantic
opened up and the Alps-Apallachians folded upwards. Is it possible some
pre-human people actually had a memory of this they passed down orally? And
the Caucasian peoples did originate in the Cavcas Mts where Mt Ararat does
have what seems as Noah's Ark. Iranian and Armenian are the proto Cavcasian,
aka IndoEuropean, languages.

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Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
The timing is off by orders of magnitude, but it did happen when the Atlantic
opened up and the Alps-Apallachians folded upwards.

Ummmmm ... were barely any mammals back then. They
looked like shrews.

The Appalachians formed because the spread of the
Atlantic put pressure there. The Alps formed (and
are still forming) because the African plate is
pushing up and under Europe. Someday, no more Med.

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
Is it possible some
pre-human people actually had a memory of this they passed down orally?

PRE-human ? You're talking just the past maybe 3 million
years there. That's barely a blink in geo time.

As said, there no doubt WERE huge floods as the ice-age
quickly ended. Early civs, and story trees, already
existed. The floods weren't all at the same time and
certainly did NOT cover the world. However the whole
of the, say, Tigris/Euphrates flood plain MAY have
turned into a big lake for awhile. That would have
SEEMED to be a 'world flood' to anyone there. It'd
be a compelling story, likely to stick.

Genetic archeology however does NOT show any especially
large human DNA bottleneck from that time. MOST people
did NOT get flooded away. However seacoast settlements
had to be abandoned, moved much further inland, as the
overall sea level rose. LOTS of archeology to be had,
under 300' of ocean.

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
And
the Caucasian peoples did originate in the Cavcas Mts where Mt Ararat does
have what seems as Noah's Ark. Iranian and Armenian are the proto Cavcasian,
aka IndoEuropean, languages.

Well, 'caucasians' and friends are hardly the whole
of Humanity.

However Caucs and Semites DID write down the old
stories eventually - the ones we find in various
religious texts from in and around the Levant and
Mesopotamia. Adding a 'religion' angle made the
stories all the more 'sticky'.

[Dhu on Gate]

Post by ***@ud0s4.net

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
The timing is off by orders of magnitude, but it did happen when the Atlantic
opened up and the Alps-Apallachians folded upwards.

Ummmmm ... were barely any mammals back then. They
looked like shrews.
The Appalachians formed because the spread of the
Atlantic put pressure there. The Alps formed (and
are still forming) because the African plate is
pushing up and under Europe. Someday, no more Med.

Most people don't get "deep time".

Post by ***@ud0s4.net

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
Is it possible some
pre-human people actually had a memory of this they passed down orally?

PRE-human ? You're talking just the past maybe 3 million
years there. That's barely a blink in geo time.

The oldest remembrances we have are from the beginning of the
"stone-age": that Jawbone of an Ass we used to genocide the
Hyenas of Africa (and conquer Jericho ;) is at least 3 million YA.

Post by ***@ud0s4.net
As said, there no doubt WERE huge floods as the ice-age
quickly ended. Early civs, and story trees, already
existed. The floods weren't all at the same time and
certainly did NOT cover the world. However the whole
of the, say, Tigris/Euphrates flood plain MAY have
turned into a big lake for awhile. That would have
SEEMED to be a 'world flood' to anyone there. It'd
be a compelling story, likely to stick.
Genetic archeology however does NOT show any especially
large human DNA bottleneck from that time. MOST people
did NOT get flooded away. However seacoast settlements
had to be abandoned, moved much further inland, as the
overall sea level rose. LOTS of archeology to be had,
under 300' of ocean.

Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
And
the Caucasian peoples did originate in the Cavcas Mts where Mt Ararat does
have what seems as Noah's Ark. Iranian and Armenian are the proto Cavcasian,
aka IndoEuropean, languages.

Well, 'caucasians' and friends are hardly the whole
of Humanity.
However Caucs and Semites DID write down the old
stories eventually - the ones we find in various
religious texts from in and around the Levant and
Mesopotamia. Adding a 'religion' angle made the
stories all the more 'sticky'.

About right.

Dhu

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In LOTS of media it's still just ASSUMED ... that at some point, maybe
10-15000 years ago, the entire world was completely, deeply, flooded

Make that “Christian media”.

I always wondered: was the flood supposed to be fresh water or salt water?
If it was fresh water (as rain normally is), it would have killed off much
of the ocean life that could only survive in salt water. Conversely, if it
somehow rained salt water, then freshwater-adapted life would not have
survived.

And for some reason Noah only took animals on his Ark, and left out the
land plants. What did the animals eat? Where did all their excrement go?

[v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com]

*+-I always wondered: was the flood supposed to be fresh water or salt water?
*+-If it was fresh water (as rain normally is), it would have killed off much
*+-of the ocean life that could only survive in salt water. Conversely, if it
*+-somehow rained salt water, then freshwater-adapted life would not have
*+-survived.

The reason Jews and Christians see fish as a particularly religious food is
because fish survived the flood, hence are somehow purer.

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Post by v***@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com
*+-I always wondered: was the flood supposed to be fresh water or salt water?
*+-If it was fresh water (as rain normally is), it would have killed off much
*+-of the ocean life that could only survive in salt water. Conversely, if it
*+-somehow rained salt water, then freshwater-adapted life would not have
*+-survived.
The reason Jews and Christians see fish as a particularly religious food is
because fish survived the flood, hence are somehow purer.

Post-glacial flooding would have been mostly FRESH
water ... meaning potentially heavy losses for coastal
aquatic life.

FISH can MOVE - so they'd have moved away from the
fresher water front as much as possible. More fixed
kinds of life however - all depends on their real-
world tolerances.

Hmmm ... 'death layers' of aquatic life that is
decidedly not fresh-tolerant could be a good
proxy dater ! :-)

BTW, *rain* is always gonna be fresh.

But then this was all supposed to be MAGIC
stuff, right ? :-)

[Dhu on Gate]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Make that “Christian media”.

The "Flood" happened about 8000 YA:

Loading Image...

and it *adversely* affected everyone living on the seacoasts, everywhere.

Which is most of us.

Dhu