Around 6 million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up after the Straight of Gibraltar was closed up. Eventually, the straight reopened, and water flooded back into the basin.
This is a known fact and may well account for the “flood story”.
A story told by who? This guy?
No, This guy: When the Mediterranean Dried Up: The Great Flood That Refilled a Lost Sea – Trust in Science
Did that guy get in a time machine and relate this story to the writers of Genesis?
Six million years ago is too long.
Yeah. That is a flaw in the theory, but what’s a million or two years in these time scales?
It’s a little difficult to create legends about events that happened long before people existed.
Floods are big and scary. Any culture that’s ever seen a flood probably has myths about them.
It clearly isn’t, since this world with its current diversity was populated by a single celled organism that hadn’t even figured out how to breed yet.
It just took a lot longer than a few thousand years.
This is only story I have faith in (I love Mila Kunis’ voice) —
I recall as a kid reading a book written by Christian geologists and archaeologists who had spent years and huge sums of money searching the mountain for the Ark. Their rationale was that finding the Ark would be a massive boost to Christian credibility. On the way, the lead explorer was struck by lightning but survived with only minor injury. They used helicopters and airplane flights for detailed photography, too.
In particular the shoreline of what is now southern Iraq on the Persian Gulf receded so quickly that inhabitants would have had to have moved away every year. And that is of course right in the area where these flood stories became embedded in the various myths mentioned above.
Many cultures manage it.
For example: Odin and his brothers (Vili and Vé) killed the primordial frost giant Ymir. They used Ymir’s body to build the physical cosmos. His flesh became the earth, his blood became the oceans and rivers, his bones formed the mountains, his hair grew into trees, and his skull became the sky
Another theory was that an ice dam on melting glaciers cause a flood from the mountains north of Mesopotamia. Although freak climate action could just as easily have caused a flood from massive rainfall, particulary in the delta.
And a post I saw once was a picture from a children’s book, Noah loading the animals two by two. Among the animals are two proud lions with full fluffy manes marching up the gangplank. The caption “Who’s going to tell him?”
Noah was an early proponent of marriage equality.
Out of curiosity, I googled the leader of “research” group and it looks like he has been with the group for 30 years. They do tours and he appears in TV shows and documentaries.
Is he a nut job or a scam artist?
Yes?
IIRC, the Talmud says the ark landed near the Temple Mount.
The key word is “repopulate”. And in the time and in the way it is is described, it is.
Way back in high school, I got interested in archaeology. A couple of the books I found in the library were fairly old, dating from the early 20th century. In them, I found references to things found that were “pre-Deluge”. I assumed at the time that the cities they’d excavated had some layer of mud that had been deposited by a local flood. In retrospect, I think it more likely those cites had been abandoned for some reason and then rebuilt some time later. The layers they ascribed to the Deluge being the dirt deposited during the Interregnum.
I’m afraid I don’t remember which cites they were talking about nor the names of the authors, although I do remember the cites were in Mesopotamia.