One more comment, and then I promise to depart, never to be heard from again.
The account of the Flood is not just a Middle Eastern story, nor is it just a Biblical story. Memories of a devastating, world-wide deluge are found among the ancient mythologies of the following regions and peoples (this is not an exhaustive list; there are at least twice as many accounts from different sources as I have listed here):
In Europe: the Druids (Britain), the Voguls (Russia), the Finns, Lapps, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes (Scandinavia); the Greeks, the Welsh, the Irish, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Romanians.
In Asia: the Hebrews, the Muslims, the Arabs, the Andaman islanders, Afghans, Borneans, Babylonians and Assyrians; the Copts, the Chingpaw people from Burma, the Cambodians and Laotians; the Chinese, the Banum people of Taiwan, several different peoples from India, the Dusan people in Indonesia, the Bataks from Sumatra; the natives of Ceram, Flores, Timor, and West Irian; the Japanese, Malaysians, the Selung people of the Mergui Archipelago; the Mongolians, Persians, Filipinos, the Buriats from Siberia, the Sikkimese, the Kalyani people from Ceylon, the Tibetan Lepcha people, and the ancient Sumerians.
In the Americas: the Aleuts, Tlingits, and Kolushes from Alaska; the Papagos, Pawnees, and Pimas from Arizona; the Kaskas, Loucheux, and Okanagans from British Columbia; the Katos, Utes, and Wintuns from California; the Dakotas, Chickasaws, Delawares, Greenland Eskimos, Tahoes, Zunis, Haidas, Chocktaws, Hopis, and the Chimakums, Chippewas, Makahs, Mandans, and Quilentes. In Central and South America, the Aztecs, Maya, Mixtecs, Caribs, Nicaraguas, Araucanians; and the Aberdervs, Botocudos, Cashinauas, Coroados, Ipurianas, Kataushis, Parrays, Tupis, and Guaranis from Brazil; the Yurucares, Chibchas, Cararis, Macusis, Mbocobis, and numerous other tribes from Peru and Venezuela.
From Oceania: the Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maoris, Fiji Islanders, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Papuans, and Samoans.
Finally, from Africa, we have accounts from the following peoples: the Bantus, Bermagais, Egyptians, Hottentots, Kangas, Loangas, Masai, Basutos, Ovahereros, Somalis, Sudanese, and Wanyoros.
Now, surely, that many parallel accounts of the same event, referenced by that many different peoples, located that far apart from one another, cannot be coincidence. Taken as a whole, these ancient stories add up to a shared memory of an actual disaster, that took place a long, long time ago, and which lodged in the human psyche.
"So," we now ask, "if this is an actual memory of an actual event, how could such a thing possibly take place? It's impossible!"
Well, no, not exactly; it
could happen; you just have to think outside the box.
If we can step away from the flawed and outworn idea of Lyellian uniformitarianism for a bit, it's quite plausible that such an event could happen. In this particular case, the present is
not the key to the past. A goodly portion of our current geography can be explained (better, in my humble opinion) by catastrophism than it can by uniformitarianism. A disastrous event took place that changed things forever, which is only dimly recalled in ancient writings, and which the august minds of our present day have sniffingly dismissed as mythical nonsense. So, what was this catastrophic event, we ask? A short summary I will recount below, but first, this disclaimer:
I am fully aware that there are those of you reading this who will, shall we say, disagree with the scenario presented. You know who you are, so I will simply recommend that you might want to warm up your scorn, sarcasm, derision, and ad hominem machines, because what follows will undoubtedly fill you with no end of mirth and hilarity. For myself, I have already braced for the inevitable wave of attacks and abuse that will be heaped upon my head by my fellow, compassionate Christians, who have no bounds in their tolerance and kindness towards poor, miserable beings like me, who dare to suggest that there just may an alternative interpretation of things that varies from The Standard Template®™. I have, as I mentioned earlier, been through this before; and the reactions that will result are invariably both predictably repetitive and tiresome. So, with that out of the way.....
Approximately 13,000 years ago, a large star in the general vicinity of the constellation Vela exploded in a supernova. Massive chunks of this star whipped away from the supernova site in all directions, headed out into space. One large chunk, which may not have been all that sizeable, but which undoubtedly possessed an extremely dense mass and a powerful magnetic field, headed towards our solar system. It probably entered the outer edges of our system about 11,500 years ago.
As the supernova remnant sped towards the Sun, it crossed paths with Neptune. Due to the remnant's mass and electromagnetic strength, it wrenched one of Neptune's moons out of its orbit and sent it off on a new, eccentric orbit that was asymmetrical to the other bodies in the solar system; today we call that moon and its satellite Pluto and Charon. Moving further into the system, the remnant encountered Uranus, and the heavy gravitational pull it exerted may be the reason that Uranus is flipped over on its side, rotating in what we would view as a horizontal fashion, rather than vertical.
The remnant's effect on Saturn and Jupiter was negligible, probably because their orbits were out of the remnant's direct line of flight. However, at that time, orbiting between Jupiter and Mars, there was likely another large planet, boasting at least one large moon; the ancient Akkadians listed this planet as being located between
Lahmu (their name for Mars) and
Kishar (their name for Jupiter). They referred to this planet as
Tiamat, and its large moon they called
Kingu. As the supernova remnant approached, however, the electromagnetic and gravitational forces between the remnant (which the Akkadians called
Marduk, the Egyptians called
Set, and the classical Greeks called
Phaeton or
Typhon) caused the planet to break up and implode. A huge amount of rocky debris from Tiamat's destruction now orbits between Mars and Jupiter as an asteroid belt. Meanwhile, an additional cloud of debris was pulled along in the remnant's wake, along with Tiamat's moon, Kingu.
The remnant's next target, of course, was Earth. Earth, at this time, probably rotated straight up and down on a vertical axis; it probably had more land area because it had less water, it's seasons were much gentler, and the land masses were probably distributed on an east-west arrangement, rather than the north-south situation we have now. Earth's Moon probably orbited a bit differently than it does now, as well.
The remnant passed very, very close by Earth; had it been any closer, this planet likely would have been completely torn apart just as Tiamat was. As it was, the geographic upheaval on Earth was beyond description, although the ancient chroniclers tried. The Greeks described the remnant as resembling "a ball of fire; it was twisted like a coil, and it was very grim to behold". The ancient Hindus described it as "a dreadful spectacle", inspiring fear and terror in everyone who saw it. The "coil" effect was probably residue from Tiamat, whirling in the remnant's wake. The gravitational and electromagnetic interchanges between the remnant and Earth were of such a scale that the Earth's crust literally cracked---if you examine any map of the ocean floor, you will plainly see the planet-wide crack that runs around between the continental areas on the ocean floor. The crust upheaved, and seas poured into the abysses, causing oceans to literally boil; volcanic activity increased on a titanic scale, and while new areas were thrust up from the mantle and crust (high mountains such as the Andes, Himalayas, Alps, and Rockies), other areas that had been land sank into the ocean (the "submerged continent" lying east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean---and, possibly, Atlantis? Lemuria? Mu?) Some areas that had been seas, such as the Gobi Desert, were drained of their waters and would become desolate wastelands.
The remnant's incredible gravitational pull literally swung Earth around and tilted its axis from vertical to the current 23.4°; it also exerted a tremendous pull on the Earth's seas---sort of like the lunar tidal system we all know, but unbelievably more powerful---the oceans were pulled towards the remnant until they reached a state of being "heaped". While all this was going on, Kingu, Tiamat's moon, became caught in Earth's gravitational pull as the remnant passed by on Earth's opposite side. Kingu slammed up against Earth's Roche Zone, exploded, and disintegrated. Huge flaming chunks of Kingu rained down on the planet, creating literal "rains" of meteors---gravel, boulders, dust, hydrocarbons, and huge quantities of ice, all of which hit the Earth, leaving craters behind such as the Carolina Bays, the ostensible craters at the bottom of Hudson Bay and Lake Michigan, and various other areas around the world. These flaming missiles, along with Earth-oriented volcanism and the hydrocarbon content from Tiamat and Kingu, started a huge worldwide conflagration, attested to in multitudinous accounts.
The remnant now broke its contact with Earth, and pulled free of gravitational influence; it sailed past Venus, slowing Venus' orbit and flipping the planet completely upside-down, so that it is now the only planet in the system that orbits right-to-left instead of left-to-right. It apparently missed Mercury completely, went on into the Sun, and was destroyed. On Earth, however, things went from bad to worse. Once the gravitational pull of the remnant was broken, the "heaped-up" seas were released, and they literally sloshed across the continents, seeking new basins. Many accounts describe this activity as an "approaching wall (or mountain) of water". As might be expected, whatever was in the way of these titanic waves was washed away.
Scattered small groups of humans survived, either by being aboard boats or other objects that might float, or by being sealed up in caves at the tops of high mountains. The Navajo Indians relate an ancient account of a small band of survivors who dug their way out of a cave, and found themselves on the side of a mountain, surrounded by water. After several weeks, the water dissipated, leaving behind a sea of deep mud, which eventually dried out, leaving a thick layer of salt over everything. On the other side of the world, a Babylonian epic tells how people had to eat "couch-grass" for upwards of a year; there was no other food. The second year they suffered from skin conditions caused by malnutrition, and went about with "the itch".
The heavier objects such as gravel and metal and boulders, etc., already having fallen, the lighter elements, such as water, that had entered the Earth's atmosphere, began falling. Numerous accounts relate heavy rainfalls that lasted from six to eight weeks, which probably consisted of billions of tons of water from Tiamat and Kingu that fell to Earth and added to the already considerable amount of water that had been here to start with. There was a heavy fog that lasted months, and heavy, dark clouds that lasted years. Numerous accounts describe that the "sky had collapsed". All in all, Earth experienced something very similar to a nuclear winter---it was dark, cold, with scarce food, and very windy, wet conditions, all of which lasted for upwards of twenty-five years. Gradually, however, things improved, the sky cleared up, plants started growing again, and animals began to multiply---provided that they hadn't been wiped out in the Deluge, such as huge numbers of so-called "Pleistocene mammals" like mastodons and woolly mammoths.
And man? Man had to do the best he could; his world had been nearly destroyed, and any cities or objects he had built or constructed had been washed away, burned up, or sunk. He was left with making hunting spears out of rocks and wearing the skins of animals he killed, because that's literally all he had. The "Stone Age" had arrived.
Now is a lot of this pure speculation? Of course it is----but no more than the usual accounts of early prehistory according to The Standard Template®™ are likewise pure speculation. Again: it is just as plausible as the stories they teach us all in public schools about "Early Man" and Lyellian uniformitarianism; all it requires is that you think outside the box.
And now, I am really finished, and I will officially retire. For those who may be interested, I have already given you the title of one book; there are others if you look. For those of you who label everything "pseudoscience" if it happens to disagree with your preconceived viewpoints, I'm sure this post will give you ample material to malign my mental stability, my obvious gullibility, my dubious ancestry, and various other means to reveal to the world what an obvious drooling imbecile I am for even entertaining such nonsense. As I said: I have been through this before.
Have fun, and now, I really am finished here. For those of you who may have found something useful or intriguing to take away from this, please know that the only reason I spent several hours typing this all out was purely for your benefit; I hope you appreciate it.
God bless all here.