5 ms·

is that the flood the bible refers too?

johnloeber 11y ago
No, this happened about 5.6 million years ago, according to the study. That's well before the advent of the homo sapien or any prehistoric ancestors developing a language complex enough to tell such a story. Fwiw, there are more recent large floods that serve as possible inspiration for the flood stories you can find in any major religion.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  For example: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-for-a-flood-102813115/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-for-a-... A lot of the older books of the bible were collected from Mesopotamian mythology. Based on the stories it's likely something big really did happen, but no one is quite sure what. I've always been fascinated by the Scottish Tsunami/Storegga Slide of ~6000BC, which was about 70ft high at the coast and ran some 50 miles inland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide
  - duaneb 11y ago
    I mean, Mesopotamia was flooding quite frequently. I don't think much further inspiration is necessary.
shiro 11y ago
I thought the world wasn't 5 million years old according to the bible.
- ygmelnikova 11y ago
  A common myth. The bible doesn't say the world was created in 6 days, but in 6 'yoms'. A yom in Hebrew means 'a defined period of time'. Like an epoch, or a year, a day or a minute etc. The bible was translated into English in the middle ages. Wikipedia has a definition as 'A long, but finite span of time', among others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom
  - shiro 11y ago
    This is all great info, thanks, but the flood came well after the world creation, didn't it? Actually at the first reading it occurred to me, too, that the fact became the base of the flood legend, but it happened before Australopithecus...
    - ars 11y ago
      > but the flood came well after the world creation, didn't it? It's not that simple. Before the flood human lifetimes are listed as up to 969 years. After the flood human lifetimes are same as modern ones. The flood was not just water on the earth, it was a total transformation of the earth and its inhabitants. Did the clock they used to define "year" change? It's not known.
      - shiro 11y ago
        It's interesting that the similar "stretch of lifetime" is seen in Japanese ancient document (Kojiki), and probably in other cultures, too. Those ancient tales were inherited orally before recorded. Could it be that the storytellers tend to exaggerate? Or maybe counting the number of years wasn't that objective but had more subjective significance?
        kijin 11y ago
        There is a theory that the age of Biblical patriarchs were originally recorded in months (969 months = 80 years and 9 months, which is quite reasonable) and somehow got mistranslated into years sometime later. This, however, doesn't quite work with Enoch who is said to have had a son at age 65.
        conceit 11y ago
        So, maybe he had been married very young to an older female and had a, for him at the age of 5 a half years surprising, pregnancy attributed to him. His age of 365 days is still rather symbolic. His father's 81 years at that time are rather a lot. I'm not even sure that kind of arranged marriage was common. He was said to be living amongst sinners, anyhow, while his father was said to have had many children. The Grandfather of the family would have reached fatherhood at the same 65 (yoms, then), so, whatever.
- jammycakes 11y ago
  It's not as clear cut as that. The Hebrew word used for a "day" in Genesis 1 can also mean an extended period of time.
espadrine 11y ago
The Zanclean flood seems to have occured 5.3 million years ago, while the genus Homo has emerged 2.5 million years ago. Another way to look at it is that the first human was closer to witnessing Lee Sedol's win against AlphaGo than it was to seeing that flood. Humans started developing their first language around 1.8 million years ago. Unless apes were able to somehow express the idea of a flood before having a language, it seems unlikely.
- vortico 11y ago
  >Lee Sedol's win against AlphaGo Haha, yes. A truly epoch-defining event.
maaku 11y ago
Not sure why you are being down-voted, as it is a fair question. But it was too long ago to be a part of human memory. Perhaps the Black Sea deluge though...
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  Maybe, however we have recent flooding events that are almost biblical. There are the recent in my lifetime floods in the Mississippi valley 1993 and 2011. Not to mention the 1927 flood. Ohio River flood of 1937 which I think is mythologized in the Johnny Cash song 5ft high and rising. In the Great Flood of 1862 the California Central Valley flooded, 6000 square miles, some of which was still under water 6 months later. While I suspect such floods don't occur in the Euphrates and Tigris basins now, 5000 years ago when the climate was wetter, perhaps such floods similar to the Great Flood of 1862 did occur every few hundred years.
wyldfire 11y ago
Wouldn't it be interesting if ancient historians found evidence of the flood and it made its way into mythology? "Science inspires religion."
- anotheryou 11y ago
  you might want to read this: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160118-the-atlantis-style-myths-of-sunken-lands-that-are-really-true http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160118-the-atlantis-style-m...

No, this happened about 5.6 million years ago, according to the study. That's well before the advent of the homo sapien or any prehistoric ancestors developing a language complex enough to tell such a story. Fwiw, there are more recent large floods that serve as possible inspiration for the flood stories you can find in any major religion.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
For example: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-for-a-flood-102813115/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-for-a-... A lot of the older books of the bible were collected from Mesopotamian mythology. Based on the stories it's likely something big really did happen, but no one is quite sure what. I've always been fascinated by the Scottish Tsunami/Storegga Slide of ~6000BC, which was about 70ft high at the coast and ran some 50 miles inland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide
- duaneb 11y ago
  I mean, Mesopotamia was flooding quite frequently. I don't think much further inspiration is necessary.

shiro 11y ago

I thought the world wasn't 5 million years old according to the bible.

ygmelnikova 11y ago
A common myth. The bible doesn't say the world was created in 6 days, but in 6 'yoms'. A yom in Hebrew means 'a defined period of time'. Like an epoch, or a year, a day or a minute etc. The bible was translated into English in the middle ages. Wikipedia has a definition as 'A long, but finite span of time', among others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom
- shiro 11y ago
  This is all great info, thanks, but the flood came well after the world creation, didn't it? Actually at the first reading it occurred to me, too, that the fact became the base of the flood legend, but it happened before Australopithecus...
  - ars 11y ago
    > but the flood came well after the world creation, didn't it? It's not that simple. Before the flood human lifetimes are listed as up to 969 years. After the flood human lifetimes are same as modern ones. The flood was not just water on the earth, it was a total transformation of the earth and its inhabitants. Did the clock they used to define "year" change? It's not known.
    - shiro 11y ago
      It's interesting that the similar "stretch of lifetime" is seen in Japanese ancient document (Kojiki), and probably in other cultures, too. Those ancient tales were inherited orally before recorded. Could it be that the storytellers tend to exaggerate? Or maybe counting the number of years wasn't that objective but had more subjective significance?
      - kijin 11y ago
        There is a theory that the age of Biblical patriarchs were originally recorded in months (969 months = 80 years and 9 months, which is quite reasonable) and somehow got mistranslated into years sometime later. This, however, doesn't quite work with Enoch who is said to have had a son at age 65.
        conceit 11y ago
        So, maybe he had been married very young to an older female and had a, for him at the age of 5 a half years surprising, pregnancy attributed to him. His age of 365 days is still rather symbolic. His father's 81 years at that time are rather a lot. I'm not even sure that kind of arranged marriage was common. He was said to be living amongst sinners, anyhow, while his father was said to have had many children. The Grandfather of the family would have reached fatherhood at the same 65 (yoms, then), so, whatever.
jammycakes 11y ago
It's not as clear cut as that. The Hebrew word used for a "day" in Genesis 1 can also mean an extended period of time.

espadrine 11y ago

The Zanclean flood seems to have occured 5.3 million years ago, while the genus Homo has emerged 2.5 million years ago. Another way to look at it is that the first human was closer to witnessing Lee Sedol's win against AlphaGo than it was to seeing that flood. Humans started developing their first language around 1.8 million years ago. Unless apes were able to somehow express the idea of a flood before having a language, it seems unlikely.

vortico 11y ago
>Lee Sedol's win against AlphaGo Haha, yes. A truly epoch-defining event.

maaku 11y ago

Not sure why you are being down-voted, as it is a fair question. But it was too long ago to be a part of human memory. Perhaps the Black Sea deluge though...

Gibbon1 11y ago
Maybe, however we have recent flooding events that are almost biblical. There are the recent in my lifetime floods in the Mississippi valley 1993 and 2011. Not to mention the 1927 flood. Ohio River flood of 1937 which I think is mythologized in the Johnny Cash song 5ft high and rising. In the Great Flood of 1862 the California Central Valley flooded, 6000 square miles, some of which was still under water 6 months later. While I suspect such floods don't occur in the Euphrates and Tigris basins now, 5000 years ago when the climate was wetter, perhaps such floods similar to the Great Flood of 1862 did occur every few hundred years.

wyldfire 11y ago

Wouldn't it be interesting if ancient historians found evidence of the flood and it made its way into mythology? "Science inspires religion."

anotheryou 11y ago
you might want to read this: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160118-the-atlantis-style-myths-of-sunken-lands-that-are-really-true http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160118-the-atlantis-style-m...