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A more likely explanation for flood myths is that all ancient civilizations lived on the banks of mighty rivers that occasionally flooded.
by charonn0 7y ago
A more likely explanation for flood myths is that all ancient civilizations lived on the banks of mighty rivers that occasionally flooded.
- sliken 7y agoDunno, that seems a bit to regular. Humans weren't that stupid and rivers change all the time. Seems much more likely it's something really unusual. Like say the Mediterranean basin and the resulting Zanclean flood. Back before humans were in North America it was a giant fertile basin with numerous rivers. Then one river that happened to come from the Atlantic ocean started to make some progress with erosion and kept getting bigger. The feedback loop turned into something that embarrasses Niagara fall by many orders of magnitude. If you lived in the Mediterranean basin this would have made quite an impression. I believe this event was well depicted in https://xkcd.com/1190/ https://xkcd.com/1190/ or https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/ https://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/ As big as that mega flood was, there have been others and certainly seems like very good source material for the numerous flood myths.
- rshnotsecure 7y agoThat flood is terrifying btw. I can barely watch the 3G geographic movie models without feeling terrified. That would have been 5 million years ago though I think. The #1 rule of humans and archaeology and anthropology is whatever your dates are, it probably happened sooner :) But tough to imagine that flood could have been it (although amazing story) and agree with your final paragraph.