Stolen form various internet sources including Wikipedia but many hundreds more can be found at Talk.Origins at Link
The "flood Myth" is a widespread theme among many cultural myths, though it is perhaps best known in modern times through the biblical story of Noah's Ark, the Hindu Puranic story of Manu, and through Deucalion in Greek mythology or Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Sumerian "Epic if Atrahasis"
The earliest known flood myth is contained in the fragmentary Sumerian "Eridu Genesis," datable by fragemnts of the story that were dated to 1600 years BC.
The story tells how the Sumerian god of Creation 'Enki' warns a human named Ziusudra of the gods' decision to destroy mankind in a flood. Enki instructs Ziusudra to build a large boat -- the text describing the instructions is lost but it probably measured by cubits. After the flood, Ziusudra is left to repopulate the earth.
After a flood of seven days, Ziusudra makes appropriate sacrifices and prostrations to An (sky-god) and Enlil (chief of the gods), and is given eternal life in Dilmun (the Sumerian Eden) by An and Enlil.
Babylonian (Epic of Gilgamesh)
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Ancient Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literary fiction dating back to 2150-2000 BCE. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the mythological hero-king Gilgamesh, which were gathered into a longer Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) poem much later. It was originally titled " He who Saw the Deep ." You reading this Deep?
In the poem, the hero Gilgamesh, seeking immortality, searches out Utnapishtim in Dilmun, a kind of paradise on earth. Utnapishtim tells how Ea (equivalent of the Sumerian Enki) warned him of the gods' plan to destroy all life through a great flood and instructed him to build a vessel in which he could save his family, his friends, and his wealth and cattle. After the Deluge the gods repented their action and made Utnapishtim immortal.
Jewish
The best-known version of the Jewish deluge myth is contained in the Book of Genesis (Genesis 6–9), but the two non-canonical books of Enoch and Jubilees also contain similar flood stories.
Genesis tells how "...the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, ( ...) And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth. So the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am grieved that I have made them.'"
God selects Noah, a man who "found favor in the eyes of the Lord" and commands him to build an ark to save Noah, his family, and the earth's animals and birds. After Noah builds the ark, "all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened". Rain falls for 40 days, the water rises 150 days, and all the high mountains are covered. The ark rests on the mountains, the water recedes for 150 days, until the waters are gone and Noah opens up the ark. Noah and the animals leave the ark, Noah offers a sacrifice to God, and God places a rainbow in the clouds as a sign that he will never again destroy the Earth by water.
The non canonical "1st Book of Enoch" adds to the Genesis flood story by saying that God sent the Great Flood to rid the earth of the Nephilim, the titanic children of the Grigori, the "sons of God" mentioned in Genesis, and of human females.
Islamic
The Quran, written in the 7th century AD, tells a similar story to the Judeo-Christian Genesis flood story, the major differences being theological: in the Islamic version, Allah sends the Flood at Noah's request to punish those who refuse to listen to Noah's preaching of the oneness of Allah. The Quranic ark comes to rest on Mount Judi, traditionally identified with a mountain near Mosul in modern Iraq; the name appears to derive from the local name of the Kurdish people.
China
There are many sources of flood myths in ancient Chinese literature. Some appear to refer to a worldwide deluge:
* Shujing, or "Book of History", probably written around 700 BC or earlier, states in the opening chapters that Emperor Yao is facing the problem of flood waters that "reach to the Heavens". This is the backdrop for the intervention of the famous Da Yu, who succeeded in controlling the floods. He went on to found the first Chinese dynasty. The translator of the 1904 edition dated the Chinese deluge to 2348 B.C., calculating that this was the same year as the biblical flood. In fact, the Mideast flood myth tradition (including the biblical flood) was erroneously linked to a flood mentioned in the Sumerian king list, which was actually dated to 2900 BC.
* Shanhaijing, "Classic of the Mountain & Seas", ends with the Chinese ruler Da Yu spending ten years to control a deluge whose "floodwaters overflowed [to] heaven".
* Shiji, Chuci, Liezi, Huainanzi, Shuowen Jiezi, Siku Quanshu, Songsi Dashu, and others, as well as many folk myths, all contain references to a personage named Nüwa. Nüwa is generally represented as a female (although not always) who repairs the broken heavens after a great flood or calamity, and repopulates the world with people. There are many versions of this myth.
Indonesia
In Batak traditions, the earth rests on a giant snake, Naga-Padoha. One day, the snake tired of its burden and shook the Earth off into the sea. However, the God Batara-Guru saved his daughter by sending a mountain into the sea, and the entire human race descended from her. The Earth was later placed back onto the head of the snake.
Malaysia
According to the legend of the Temuan, one of the 18 indigenous tribes of Malaysia, the "celau" ( storm of punishment )is for the sin of the people whom angered the gods and ancestors so much that a great flood was sent in punishment.
Ancient Greeks
Greek mythology knows three floods. The flood of Ogyges, the flood of Deucalion and the flood of Dardanus. Plato (500-ish BC) in his book "Laws, Book III," estimates that this flood occurred 10,000 years before his time.
The theory of the flood in the Aegean Basin, proposed that a great flood occurred at the end of the Late Pleistocene or beginning of the Holocene (10,000 BC). This flood would coincide with the end of the last ice age, estimated approximately 10,000 years ago, when the sea level rose as much as 390 feet. According to geologic evidence, this flood would have taken place in the "blink of an eye" in geologic time where the sea level rose more than 75 feet in less than 500 years.
These geological findings support the hypothesis that the Ogygian Deluge may well be based on a real event.
Another Greek myth, The Deucalion legend has some similarity to Noah's Ark: Prometheus advised his son Deucalion to build a chest. The mountains in Thessaly were parted, and all the world beyond the Isthmus and Peloponnese was overwhelmed. Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, after floating in the chest for nine days and nights, landed on Parnassus. An older version of the story told by Hellanicus has Deucalion's "ark" landing on Mount Othrys in Thessaly. Another account has him landing on a peak, probably Phouka, in Argolis, later called Nemea. When the rains ceased, he sacrificed to Zeus. Then, at the bidding of Zeus, he threw stones behind him, and they became men, and the stones which Pyrrha threw became women.
And, one more, from the Germanic tribes (these guys alwyas have such manly gods!)
In Norse mythology, a flood occurred at the dawn of time before the world was formed. Ymir, the first giant, was killed by the god Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve, and when he fell, so much blood flowed from his wounds that it drowned almost the entire race of giants with the exception of the frost giant Bergelmir and his wife. They escaped in a ship and survived, becoming the progenitors of a new race of giants. Ymir's body was then used to form the earth while his blood became the sea.
Irish
According to the mythology of pre-Christian Ireland , the first inhabitants of Ireland led by Noah's granddaughter Cessair were all but one person was wiped out by a flood 40 days after reaching the island. Later, another flood rose and killed all but thirty of the inhabitants, who scattered across the world.
Hypotheses of origin of flood myths
The publication of "The First Fossil Hunters" by Adrienne Mayor, followed by "Fossil Legends of the First Americans," have caused the hypothesis that flood stories have been inspired by ancient observations of fossil seashells and fish inland and on mountains to gain ground. Though the Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Chinese all commented in ancient writings about seashells and/or impressions of fish that they found inland and/or in the mountains, it was no less than Leonardo da Vinci who postulated that an immediate deluge could not have caused the layered and neatly ordered strata he found in the Italian Apennines. The Greeks hypothesized that the earth had been covered by water several times, and noted the seashells and fish fossils that they found on mountain tops as the evidence for this belief. Native Americans also expressed this belief to early Europeans, though they had not written these ideas down previously.
Some geologists believe that quite dramatic, greater than normal flooding of rivers in the distant past might have influenced the myths. One of the latest, and quite controversial, hypotheses of this type is the Ryan-Pitman Theory, which argues for a catastrophic deluge about 5600 BC from the Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea.
Another theory is that a comet crashed into the Indian Ocean in prehistoric times, generating a giant tsunami that flooded coastal lands
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