![]() It's likely the earliest biblical tales originated in the Mesopotamian region. We know the Black Sea levels rose at some point in the past. ![]() Just to figure this out, we need better climate history data. There also must be reasons why humanity survived that period. For example, there must be good reasons why certain animal species became extinct at the end of the ice age. The only way to find more evidence is by combining multiple scientific disciplines, such as archeology, geology, biology, and climate history sciences and draw conclusions from there. But, the data we have in this respect is still sketchy at best. We know the melting ice around 11k BCE flooded many coastal areas when sea levels lifted around 300 ft. Prehistoric oral tales are hard to decipher in terms of which parts are connected to historical events, and when exactly they occurred. The same is true for stories from the seismically active coasts of South America and the South Pacific islands.Īnother likely scenario for the flood stories is the end of the ice age, which apparently wasn't exactly a peaceful transition. Montgomery said that many Indigenous American stories in the Pacific Northwest, for example, involve floods that sound a lot like tsunamis, with great waves crashing onto the shore. But while the inspiration for the story of Noah's flood is open to debate, there are plenty of other flood stories from around the world that have been seemingly inspired by regional events. "That would have been a disruptive event that flooded the whole known world to the people who were living there, and that could have gone on to seed the story of Noah's flood with some of the survivors who fled to Mesopotamia," Montgomery said.Ī 2009 study published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews argued that the flooding would have been much more minor than what Ryan and Pitman proposed, if it happened at all. What's the minimum number of people needed to survive an apocalypse? What's the world's oldest civilization? Montgomery explained that some "geologically plausible" floods could have occurred that inspired the story.įor example, in the late 1990s, oceanographers William Ryan and Walter Pitman hypothesized at an American Geophysical Union meeting that around 7,500 years ago, the Mediterranean Sea started flowing into the then-isolated Black Sea, causing massive flooding around the Black Sea, which could be the origins of Noah's flood, the journal Science reported in 1998. If we consider the sources of Noah's flood to be regional floods and not a global flood, then it's not so far-fetched. "Who knows how far back the story goes?" Spar said. Spar noted that there's a Sumerian flood story recorded in fragments that dates back to the late third millennium B.C. There are slightly different accounts of Noah's flood story in other religious books, such as the Quran, while earlier versions of a cataclysmic flood stem from ancient Mesopotamian texts. and 500 B.C., likely came from older oral traditions and multiple sources. Ira Spar, professor of ancient studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey, told Live Science that the biblical stories in the Old Testament, which were written down between 800 B.C. What's more, it's unclear how every animal would be capable of making it to the ark in the first place - imagine penguins waddling from Antarctica to the Middle East.Īccording to historical documents, Noah's flood is a retelling of older stories, and it's likely allegorical rather than a literal recounting of an event. For example, Noah was 600 years old when the flood started - we know humans don't live that long - and most species wouldn't survive being reduced to just two animals as they wouldn't have enough genetic diversity to create a viable population. The biblical tale has other questionable sections. ![]() Related: Are flat-earthers being serious?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |