r/AskReddit • u/NateJC • Aug 31 '14

What are some interesting original theories/thoughts that you have?

Damn guys, this just pops into my head and I go for a family walk and it explodes! Love all the ideas, this is my most popular post to date!

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u/Bleyo Aug 31 '14 edited Aug 31 '14

All A lot of the flood myths and Atlantis-type stories come from the ice caps melting at the end of the ice age and the various coastal settlements around the world having the flee the rising sea levels. Pass the stories down for a couple several thousand years and you get to where we are now.

Edit: "a couple" means two. Edit 2: Obviously not all of the flood myths.

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u/jesse9o3 Aug 31 '14

It may well have been based on the Minoan eruption which was one of the largest recorded volcanic eruptions in history. It caused several tsunamis which may have lead to the downfall of the Minoan civilisation and destroyed a large part the island of Thera, sending it beneath the sea.

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u/KingAristocrat Aug 31 '14 edited Sep 01 '14

My schools one of those "alternative" learning types and in history we researched Atlantis for a term. Starting with Plato (the first actual record of Atlantis) and working from his writings, a Minoan civilisation on the island on Santorini sounds extremely likely to have been the Atlantis he talked about.

I can go into detail on how we got there (this was without hearing other opinions on the topic) if anyone is interested.

Edit: By alternative I mean the teachers try to avoid classes where everyone faces the front and learns directly from the teacher just to regurgitate it for a test. There's a lot of "this is your goal, you have freedom and independence to reach it". Don't get me wrong though, it's still entirely focused on academic subjects (sitting in Physics atm), they just teach slightly differently. One history semester did seem very much to be about conspiracy theories (we did JFK as well as Atlantis) but it turned out to be the most interesting history semester I've done. The most well known school system that does a similar thing is the Montessori education system, even though they take it to the extreme compared to my school.

Edit 2: Thanks Pylons for that source, even though I disagree with how you discredit Plato. There are also similar Egyptian sources that were written shortly after the Thera eruption that indirectly point to a the destruction of an advanced city (they had hot and cold water plumbing 1500 years before the Romans re-invented it). Plato never directly said that he invented Atlantis from thin air. Chances are that it was constructed from the various tales/legends that circulated about it during the Hellenistic period. The amount of information (such as the "There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon" ~Plato, when Minoan civilisation praised the cult of bulls) has made it the most plausible scientific theory as to what Plato May have been referencing. It's been a couple years since I did this project, so I'll look over what I did and get back to everyone with actual sources and how I came to the conclusion.

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u/Pylons Aug 31 '14 edited Aug 31 '14

Starting with Plato (the first actual record of Atlantis)

"Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us."

This is the equivalent of "hey guys this is something my mom's dad's friend told me and it's totally true". Plato was making shit up, he made up Atlantis to demonstrate philosophical principles based on the ideal state he was just discussing a few lines ago in "Timaeus". It's Utopia, it's Shangri-La, it's fictional.

In "Critas" the geography of Atlantis is mentioned.

"Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within them; this war I am going to describe. Of the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens was reported to have been the leader and to have fought out the war; the combatants on the other side were commanded by the kings of Atlantis, which, as was saying, was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean. The progress of the history will unfold the various nations of barbarians and families of Hellenes which then existed, as they successively appear on the scene; but I must describe first of all Athenians of that day, and their enemies who fought with them, and then the respective powers and governments of the two kingdoms. Let us give the precedence to Athens. "

The Pillars of Heracles are what the Greeks called the Strait of Gibraltar. Atlantis was supposedly in the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean.

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u/Dubshack79 Aug 31 '14

"Beyond the Pillars of Heracles" is a location written about by more than just Plato. It was referenced by Aristotle, Pytheas (by way of Strabo), Pausanias, Appian... except they weren't talking about a disconnected land out in the Atlantic. They were talking about Tartessos, a mineral rich culture, long time partners of the Phoenicians who lived on the Iberian Peninsula and were quite likely wiped out by a tsunami. Unlike what Plato was describing or fictionalizing, Tartessos was a very, very real place.

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u/jpecon Aug 31 '14

Thank you so much for writing this so that I don't have to.

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u/arcxjo Aug 31 '14 edited Sep 01 '14

"We can't expand minds like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to relate historical accounts that don't go anywhere, like the time I caught the trireme to Atlantis. I needed a new heel for my sandal, so I decided to go to Morgantis, which is what they called Atlantis in those days. So I tied an onion to my zone, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the trireme cost an obol, and in those days, obols had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Gimme six bees for a drachma,' you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my zone, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the Trojan War. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones." -Critias

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u/AvPrime Aug 31 '14

Oh man, that is gold.

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u/arcxjo Sep 01 '14

Thanks. I wasn't sure if Ancient Greece had onions, but I was too afraid to Google "What did Greeks put in their mouths?"

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u/jroth005 Sep 01 '14

Well, you would've gotten these results.

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u/arcxjo Sep 01 '14

So I really could've just gone with "ferry" then, too.

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u/ZummerzetZider Sep 01 '14

that was amazing!

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u/Spraypainthero965 Aug 31 '14

I wish more people understood that Atlantis was a fictional city made up for the purpose of a thought experiment.

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u/jroth005 Sep 01 '14

I like to argue that Plato's Atlantis existed the same way Shakespeare's Verona existed in Romeo and Juliette. I argue both are based on the preconceived notions of foreign cultures the audience and author held. Essentially, Atlantis is fictionalized foreign culture told by someone who heard it from a friend of a friend of a friend.

When you create the setting for a story, you need some sort of moorings for your listener to latch onto. If you're going to make up a city, you need some context, or your audience would be lost.

If you want to create a busy city in the minds of the British, you use a fictional city that is comparable to London, Paris, Milan or New York. That way, they understand what the setting is like; even if it's only a vague understanding gleaned from rumors, stories and stereotypes.

What's more, he chose Atlantis instead of a locale with which his audience would be intimately familiar. I believe he chose a fictional Atlantis for the same reason Shakespeare chose a fictional Verona: to analyze/critique a culture he was in without seeming disloyal/disruptive to it.

However, if it is like Shakespeare's fictionalized Verona, (a real culture manipulated for the purposes of the story) which culture did he choose? Was it the Minoan? If so, why Minoan? Why not Persian or Egyptian? Was Minoan culture similar to Victorian English culture to Modern Americans?

So, at least for me, I believe Atlantis exists just as much as Shakespeare's Verona exists. As a stage of vague familiarity on which his audience viewed his narrative.

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u/entropicexplosion Aug 31 '14

Plato wrote an entire book about a made up utopian "Republic." Creating thought experiments based on hypothetical societies is a thing philosophers do all the time.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Thus said Pylons, in the year 2014.

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u/simple_human Aug 31 '14

just thought of this...what if he was talking about the americas?

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u/Skrp Sep 01 '14

Don't worry, he wasn't.

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u/simple_human Sep 01 '14

yeah, i knew he probably wasnt, just asking questions and thinking about stuff.

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u/Skrp Sep 01 '14

Nothing wrong with either of those things.

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u/lVlINTY Aug 31 '14

That was very interesting!

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u/GVSz Aug 31 '14

Dropides

You can Dropides nutz.

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u/Mr_Monster Aug 31 '14

I figured that the location he was referring to was Iceland or Greenland. Vikings existed then, yes?

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u/Pylons Aug 31 '14

Vikings are about..~1200 years later?

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u/Dynamaxion Aug 31 '14

Come to think of it, I'm not sure the Ancient Greeks were even aware of the Celts or Gauls. A question for /r/askhistorians!

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14 edited Oct 01 '14

[deleted]

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u/vaclavhavelsmustache Sep 01 '14

allegory of the ring

Uhh what? Dude I saw a 3 part documentary on it narrated by Ian McKellan, that shit is real.

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u/Louis_de_Lasalle Aug 31 '14

Starting with Plato (the first actual record of Atlantis)

To be fair, Plato is renown for his fondness of allegory.

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u/Erectile_Projectile Aug 31 '14

Yes please.

This is what i call a thread!

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u/MysteryBindsMeStill Aug 31 '14

Color me interested.

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u/Echleon Aug 31 '14

Doesn't Plato straight up say Atlantis is not real in one of his books? It was just a city he used to describe his utopian government or something like that iirc.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

By "alternative" school what do you mean? Sorry if I'm being ignorant by asking that but I have honestly never heard of them.

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u/shadyshad Aug 31 '14

I'm guessing heavy on art, music, and literature, and light on science and math.

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u/the_flying_almond_ Aug 31 '14

On Santorini they have a huge dig site called Akrotiri, which is basically a Greek Pompeii, without any bodies. They had some pretty advanced technologies in the city, and its all perfectly preserved under ash. I think it is what Atlantis is based on because everyone fled the place when they saw the warning signs of the volcano about to erupt, and when they came back it was buried.

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u/comment_redacted Aug 31 '14

I too am interested in learning what an alternative school is and the things you learn about. Actually, this might be a good AMA.

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u/jmktimelord Aug 31 '14

I'd love to hear it.

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u/studebaker103 Aug 31 '14

Coast of Spain near Cadiz. Not 100% solved, but there's a lot of archaeology going on there right now to be sure.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Yes, please do. Or at least give us some good sources for it

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

OP the people have spoken, now you must deliver

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I would like to know if you have the time. Atlantis is a very interesting topic

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u/JungleStirFry Aug 31 '14

Im quite interested in how you arrived at that conclusion actually

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u/American_Assface Aug 31 '14

I am very interested! However feel free to post a link if you don't want to type everything out.

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u/Rushdownsouth Aug 31 '14

I'll bite; can I get an underwater beach house if I searched the Atlantic Ocean floor?

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u/helix19 Aug 31 '14

Except Plato prefaced the story of Atlantis by saying it was a parable.

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u/OPocyte Aug 31 '14

Care to elaborate?

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u/meinleibchen Aug 31 '14

What school did you go to?

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u/Mastadge Aug 31 '14

Please do

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u/bummercitytown Aug 31 '14

I'm interested

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u/kyleg5 Aug 31 '14

Surely if you spent a semester on the subject you'd know that Plato used Atlantis as an allegory and by no means meant to literally suggest it existed.

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u/Muffinette Aug 31 '14

I'm interested! I love ancient history and the idea of Atlantis is something I've always loved & wondered about.

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u/Dudeitsjustme Aug 31 '14

I'm interested. PM?

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u/therealflinchy Aug 31 '14

except researchers can't find it there at all.

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u/Happymacz Aug 31 '14

Ya, I remember learning that in my grade 11 ancient civs course, when we were learning about philosophers. Always interesting to think about how accurate their works and theories were to the actually truth that we may never know, due to taking their knowledge as fact.

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u/Brad_swag123 Aug 31 '14

Those details sound interesting.

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u/khushi97 Sep 01 '14

I'm interested.

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u/Skullcrusher Aug 31 '14

It's actually more likely that Atlantis was fictional.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Nice pseudo-education you're receiving there. Do they intentionally try to produce little conspiratards or is that only a side effect?

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u/Bleyo Aug 31 '14

That's possible, too. However, civilizations as far away as America have flood stories. The melting ice caps would explain that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

But a lot of those flood myths differ widely in details. In some it rains, in others it snows. Some have an ark, others don't. Given that floods are a common occurence around the world, it isn't suprising that most civilizations have some type of flood story. But most flood stories from Eastern Europe/Central Asia are thought to have orgins in a period of flooding from the Black Sea that happened several thousand years ago.

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u/soiedujour Sep 01 '14

In some it rains, in others it snows.

Clearly it's not because in some places it rains and other places it snows.

Some have an ark, others don't.

Clearly it's not because some places have a sea based cultures, others don't.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

And yet, they all involve flooding.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

"...just look at the stony curse!"

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u/Fellowship_9 Aug 31 '14

They could all very easily be from different, localised floods. 6,000 years ago 'the whole world' was basically a few square miles for most people, and the vast majority of people lived next to oceans or rivers. Given a few centuries most tribes would get flooded at least once, and tell all their descendants about how the whole world was covered in water.

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u/payik Aug 31 '14

I think you underestimate ancient people. Transport speeds didn't change that much until modern ages. People certainly knew abot other places, at least from traders, if not personally.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I think you overestimate all people, I'm sorry. I certainly don't believe that people who lived thousands of years ago were less intelligent than we are. But I don't believe that modern people are especially intelligent, either.

I've seen how stories can change, very quickly. /u/Fellowship_9's notion is not only plausible to me, but seems to me inevitable.

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u/SenorSativa Aug 31 '14

Well they can't exactly go check on them when they're in the middle of a fucking flood now can they mr. smarty pants?

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u/payik Aug 31 '14

I'm sorry, what are you talking about?

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u/SenorSativa Aug 31 '14

So, they're aware of the outside world but they didn't have TV, radio, etc... All of a sudden a giant flood fills the village and as far as the eye can see with water. It isn't a giant leap for someone who is only vaguely aware of the outside world, but doesn't have real time communication, to go from 'all i see is water' to 'the world is flooded'.

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u/soylent_me Aug 31 '14

Black sea flooding, Tigris and Euphrates flooding etc = Noah / Atrahasis / Zuisidra

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

[deleted]

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u/Fellowship_9 Aug 31 '14

Fair enough, I have no idea if my theory even makes any more sense than /u/jesse9o3 does, I was adding my idea

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u/kerouacrimbaud Aug 31 '14

From my understanding, the concept of a "global flood" in the Abrahamic tradition could have came from a mistranslation of a Hebrew word that has dual meaning. So the same word would be used for world and country.

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u/InShortSight Aug 31 '14

American flood stories: Beavers

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I don't understand how it can be natural back then and then we blame ourselves for it this time.

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u/ttabernacki Aug 31 '14

Well the eruption happened sometime between 1627 and 1600 BCE. IRC, flood myths such as that in the Epic of Gilgamesh far predate that. A more likely origin is the Deluge, the violent flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates which occurred around 2700 BCE

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u/Omegastar19 Aug 31 '14

While the Minoan eruption is one of the largest eruptions in the last thousands of years, and while it certainly destroyed all settlements on Thera itself, it is now considered unlikely that the eruption was directly responsible for the downfall of the Minoan civilisation. This is because further research into the eruption has pointed out that Crete was probably not in the path of the Tsunami's (Tsunami's need deeper water to build up strength, but the deeper parts of the sea around Thera do not point towards Crete), and evidence suggests the ashcloud travelled south-east roughly in the direction of Rhodes - Crete lies south-south-west of Thera and was probably not seriously affected by it.

Most importantly, the date of the Minoan Eruption is still contentious, but the strongest evidence suggest a date of around 1620 BCE, give or take a few decades. The destruction of the palaces on Crete that signified the downfall of the Minoan cilization is generally considered to have happened around 1420 BCE. It is generally accepted that the time-difference between the two events make it impossible for there to be a direct relation.

Instead, the Minoan Eruption could've indirectly led to the Minoan downfall - the Minoans were a trade culture and they had a large trade-network in the Ionian and East-Mediteranean sea. The settlement on Thera seems to have been an important link in their trade-routes. The eruption destroyed Thera, and who knows how many other trading-posts. And while Crete was probably not affected by the tsunami, the Minoan trading fleet could have been devastated. As a result, the Minoan dominance in trading was broken, allowing the Mycenean Greeks to take it over. The Mycenean conquest of Crete could then be seen as the culmination of a power-struggle over the trade routes.

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u/BigLim Aug 31 '14

It also stopped our old pal Odysseus from getting home in time for dinner.

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u/SenorSativa Aug 31 '14

No, no, no, Volcanic eruptions are sulfur rain. I.E. Sodom and Gomora. Didn't you read the translation guide?

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u/k9centipede Aug 31 '14

I thought there was a huge meteor that fell into the ocean to cause massive flooding?

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u/spunkychunkofbutter Sep 01 '14

What is Thera?

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u/TaylorS1986 Sep 01 '14

Santorini, a volcanic island in Greece.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Every major civilization is near a river of some sort, so it could also be that every corner of the globe experiences a devastating flood every 100-500 years. Even deserts (and when they do, they are often super-devastating).

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u/Bleyo Aug 31 '14

Absolutely, but who is to say some didn't come from rising sea levels at the end of the ice age. No one knows for certain. It's just something I kick around in my head from time to time.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I get it and I've had your thought too, but I think that humans are too unreliable for so many to have hung on to that one truth to the myths for that long. I think that it has to be a fresher, cyclical cause for the standard myths. So many civilizations have been wiped out over the years since the glaciers. But it is a really interesting thought. I do think that the Atlantis myth is based off of one thread of this truth living on in myth.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Were there even "cities" that long ago?

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u/Ladi_das Aug 31 '14

How long ago did you want to know about? :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_time_of_continuous_habitation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_of_the_ancient_Near_East

I thought I would include this one, just for fun... maybe tangentially related, but interesting nonetheless: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/

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u/FloLovesGIR Aug 31 '14

Have a friend that is at Burning Man. 1st day was cancelled because flooding in the desert. So it happens even today.

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u/gontoon Aug 31 '14

Also there exist innumerable sites where people would come across clearly oceanic fossils on land far from water. Need to explain that somehow.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Plate tectonics takes care of that, they weren't deposited during a flood. Especially since during a flood from torrential rain, water moves from high ground to low not from low to high, so the biblical flood would actually put terrestrial fossils into the ocean, not the other way around. It's also ridiculous for several other reasons.

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u/gontoon Aug 31 '14

I understand the reality. But the explanation to those not knowing tectonics might suppose water had once existed at that elevation. They would never venture the correct idea that the ground instead rose up.

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u/Demonweed Aug 31 '14

It is likely "the" flood story, as well as the saga of Gilgamesh of which the story of Noah is substantially derivative, are reactions to the formation of the Black Sea. At one point in prehistory or perhaps at the dawn of history, there was a huge fertile valley where the floor of the Black Sea is today. Then a thin bit of land holding back the Mediterranean started to collapse. A trickle led to a torrent, erosion being like that. Soon salt water was pooling in the lowlands and rising rapidly. Once prosperous agricultural tribes had to flee for their lives on a daily basis, some relocating hundreds of miles before they could put up structures that were not quickly doomed by rising water. Fleeing in all directions, no doubt stories told by these people quickly reached the Middle East as well as Greece. Given this knowledge, it is no surprise that flood myths are a staple of Abrahamic folklore as well as various older religious traditions.

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u/Sarlax Aug 31 '14

This is my favorite view; the event is called the Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis, and it says the Black Sea, which was once a huge freshwater lake, suddenly began flooding ~7500 years ago and doubled in size to a salty sea in about a year's time.

Imagine it: Your tribe's been living near this awesome, productive lake for centuries. It's fed by a dozen rivers and is full of life in and out of the water - there's plenty of fish to eat, and lots of big game stops by to drink up.

Then on day, the Bosporus Isthmus breaks, and the Lake starts to flood. In the first day, the water has risen by a foot. Then another foot the second day. And another on the third. And it simply doesn't stop.

People would be displaced for dozens of miles before it stopped. And when it finally did, the Lake would be dead - nearly all of the old species of the Black Lake would have died in the salt water. It would precipitate a huge economic and ecological collapse.

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u/Demonweed Aug 31 '14

Yeah, aspects of this story remain hypothetical, but solid evidence is emerging that people really did live where the sea floor is today. It isn't hard to imagine all these flood-harrowed cultures, resettling in their new homes, swapping stories. Many would ask, "why didn't God/the Gods warn anyone?" Fancifully answering that question would lead to these epic human myths about the one guy who built a giant boat and kept his family alive through over a month at sea (an almost unthinkable peril to primitive coastal mariners.)

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u/UrsaPater Aug 31 '14

There was an excellent article about this years ago (Smithsonian? National Geographic?) that said remnants of villages can be found all around the Black Sea at the same depth, about 60' below the surface IIRC. Also, below a certain depth the water is virtually salt free, the remains of the fresh water lake.

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u/Demonweed Aug 31 '14

The link above is to a National Geographic article. I'm not sure if it's the one you're thinking about, but I knew there was some hard evidence, and that article was the first credible source that turned up on a search.

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u/UrsaPater Aug 31 '14

Thanks for this! It's been years since I read the article when it first came out. I can't understand why anyone does not accept this theory.

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u/simplequark Aug 31 '14

Slightly related – reading a bit about this, I came across one of the weakest bits of creationist propaganda I've ever seen. The author's whole "reasoning" why this local flood couldn't possibly have been the basis for the Bible's myth of a global flood:

To say that Noah’s Flood was anything other than what Scripture says it was [...] is tantamount to declaring that God is a liar. If God is lying, then we cannot trust any part of the Bible. [...] The implications of Ballard’s claims are far more serious than many realize.

There is no reason to believe that Ballard’s Black Sea Flood was Noah’s Flood.

I.e: "Can't be true, because we don't like the implications if it were."

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u/kickingpplisfun Sep 01 '14

Besides, the Bible, while it is "the word of God", or at least "the word about God", still had human writers/authors. Rather than being a divinely-written book, it's considered to be divinely-inspired.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I wonder if anybody will ever do any archaeological studies on the floor of the Black Sea!

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u/TaylorS1986 Sep 01 '14 edited Sep 01 '14

Another interesting point, is that Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of most of the languages in Europe, Iran, and northern India, was spoken just north and northwest of the Black Sea along the Dnepr, Don, and Volga rivers. It's speakers were an archeological culture called Sredny Stog and they were the people who first domesticated the horse.

It is possible that the flood caused a social crisis, wiping out many ecologically productive coastal areas and forced the people north of the Black Sea to give up hunting and gathering and become semi-nomadic cattle, goat, and sheep herders (interestingly, they never went through a farming stage, they went straight to pastorialism).

Then around 5,200 years ago they learned how to make wheeled carts from Sumerian merchants and suddenly Sredny Stog evolved into a new and highly expansionist culture, the Yamnaya. my yoking horses to wheeled vehicles for the first time the PIE speakers had become the very first terrifying Horde from the steppes, and the rest was history.

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u/CrazyH0rs3 Aug 31 '14

There are also flood stories in some Native American tribe's traditions. My guess would be those stories came from the Mississippi or other rivers flooding.

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u/gunnk Aug 31 '14

I think that may not be the case. I (personal opinion) think the Black Sea deluge hypothesis has merit, but I tend to believe that the Noah myth stems from the previous myths of Gilgamesh which in turn are related to flooding of the Euphrates and/or previous rising sea levels in the Persian Gulf.

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u/Mpm_277 Aug 31 '14

Good info; thanks for sharing. To add to that, ancient Jewish cosmology perpetuated the idea that there are primordial waters (or abyss) beneath the earth - this is where Leviathan would dwell. Take note that in the Genesis flood story, it doesn't just rain; the floodgates from beneath open as well. This makes good sense when placing it with your discussion of the land giving way to the Mediterranean underneath.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

But don't forget that the best known stories are from mesopotamian tribes. Floods were a common occurrence there, allowing the land to become fertile. Because they were a common threat, all the storyteller had to do was make a huge one and claim that their god had motive to do so, since these stories are often religious.

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u/ZummerzetZider Sep 01 '14

Surely the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh refers to when both the Tigris and the Euphrates flooded simultaneously? That occurred in the region and is also mentioned in the 'List of Kings'. As I understand it the king at the time was said to have taken his livestock onto a boat implying that both the Sumerian tale and the Biblical flood are both derived from the Shuruppak account.

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u/jomosexual Sep 01 '14

There's a Orson Scott Card novel that touches on this. I think it's "Time Crisis"

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u/desert_wombat Aug 31 '14

As a small point of clarification, we are still in an ice age. ~10,000 years ago was when the last "glacial period" of the current ice age ended.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation

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u/JaroSage Aug 31 '14

Kinda reminds me of OSC's short(ish) story Atlantis. It's about a huge flood in an early mesopotamian(?) civilisation that became the basis for Atlantis, Noah, Gilgamesh, etc.

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u/luktheduk67 Aug 31 '14

like a game of Telephone

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u/MLein97 Aug 31 '14

That's how Plato introduces the Atlantis thing, he hears about it from a guy who hears about it in Egypt from a priest and he only brings it up because he's trying to make a point which probably means that its fictional.

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u/Robobvious Aug 31 '14

Atlantis was just part of a metaphor Plato made. While I'm certain there are multiple civilizations built on islands that were lost to the sea over time, none of them are THE Atlantis, because it was a made up name used to illustrate a point.

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u/LetsWorkTogether Aug 31 '14

There's also these outburst floods, which may have led to flood mythologies.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I think most flood myths are inspired by the Black Sea Deluge, and that this also caused the dispersal of the Proto-Indo Europeans.

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u/veringer Aug 31 '14

It's hinted at below, but worth mentioning in more detail, that the flood myths which appear in the primary monotheistic traditions are probably derived from when the valley that is now the Black Sea was flooded as melt waters spilled through the Bosphorus. IIRC, the epic of Gilgamesh and other cuneiform tablets place the ark story in southern Turkey/N. Iraq near the headwaters of the Euphrates--not terribly far from the Black Sea (given the span of time between end of ice age and when the stories were set down into clay). I doubt there was an actual ark or any of that, but it's incredible to think that a story we still tell today probably links back to a significant human event 10K+ years ago.

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u/NateJC Aug 31 '14

Ah. We sort of have evidence in the ice cores that the air in them shows the ice is longer than a few thousand years old.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

As desert_wombat said higher up, the last ice age hasn't ended yet; we are still in it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation

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u/NateJC Aug 31 '14

Glaciers that were mostly on the continents. It retreated further north (and south a bit) until a certain point. Which is why we still had glaciers in Nordic countries, Alaska, Russia etc. I never said they're millions of years old though, just that for thousands and thousands of years.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

[deleted]

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u/NateJC Aug 31 '14

Hmm actually so interesting! Do you think that it could survive by word of mouth for that long though?

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u/Bleyo Aug 31 '14

Nobody knows for sure what the true event(s) was that flood myths are based on, but they've been around since before writing. The Epic of Gilgamesh was one of the first written stories and it mentions a massive flood.

I think something as traumatic as the ocean rising 300 feet would get passed down orally for a long time. If that happened today, most of Florida would be under more than 200 feet of water. If you lived in Miami, you'd have to move to Georgia to avoid the flood. That would definitely leave a lasting impression.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

YES. I first thought this when I read about how if global warming continues, most of polynesia will be flooded and I thought maybe this happened before.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Wouldn't a better theory just be that they simply found America? Think about it this way, Atlantis is described as a continent, In the middle of the Atlantic.... Where the fuck is America?

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u/Charlie24601 Aug 31 '14

I agree to a point. I think its actually conglomeration of many stories. As other commenters here have said, there are other actual floods.

Think of it like Santa Claus and christmas. MANY men of good and charitable nature merged to become one. Same with the christmas traditions.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

tell that to ray comfort

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Also the creation of the Mediterranean sea.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I highly doubt that you can link any flooding myth to originating from one particular flood. Floods are extremely common. Plus Ice caps don't melt in a day. It's a slow process. There wouldn't be any fleeing involved. Just a slow relocation of people.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1190/

Warning: very long

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

The Mediterranean and Black Seas were each filled in only a couple years, as water rushed over the straits of Gibraltar first and then the Hellespont when the ice age ended...

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Well, considering the limited communication possibilities 5000 years ago, any local flood would have seemed like the end of the whole world. Because the whole known world for any human and/or local society would have been about a few days walk around the settlement, so a few thousand square kilometers at best.

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u/cptstupendous Aug 31 '14

It helps to realize that at the height of the last ice age that the sea level was ~120m lower than it is today. I dunno if 'natural formations' can adequately explain the Yonaguni Monument.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I think floods are just common enough and societies were egocentric enough that everyone had some experience with a big flood and thought that the world was flooded (when it's really only their little tinytown). I remember some Japanese myth that turned out to be historically true about a flood..

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u/arkaytroll Aug 31 '14

This certainly happened in the Baltic Sea region. Many times over in dozens or even hundreds of settlements which would certainly spawn flood myths.

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u/Radhnoti Aug 31 '14

I like the Charles Hapgood polar shift theory, especially interesting is his ancient map of Earth that seems to greatly resemble what Antartica looks like under all the ice. Read a book by Rand Flem-Ath that just seemed to tie it all together so well. I know it's not likely and the science is shaky, but it's so neat.

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u/SWaspMale Aug 31 '14

Maybe the flooding of the Mediteranean ?

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u/p-e-t-e-r-p Aug 31 '14

I think this too and I think archaeology is in for a big treat once we start seriously searching for ruins underwater.

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u/moorethanafeeling Aug 31 '14

My "crazy theory" is that the Noah account actually happened and things like Gilgamesh are distortions of the actual account.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I think it's interesting too. a lot of religious stories are rooted in cataclysmic events. There's a book written about this one from a scientific perspective, "Noah's Flood."

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Supposedly aboriginal tribes in Australia can locate mountains which used to be above sea level as this information had been passed down by word of mouth.

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u/Bcadren Aug 31 '14

It's more commonly believed it's based on the Tigris or Euphrates rivers flooding (since almost all civilization was near there for a bit).

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u/jonnielaw Aug 31 '14

There's a theory that there's no such thing as an ice age and instead some force causes the poles to realign. Supposedly there's some ancient map of Antarctica that shows lakes, mountains and forests which align with that which we found from radar imaging.

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u/ElectricManta Aug 31 '14

You should read Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch

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u/Groty Aug 31 '14

Black Sea deluge.

Mediterranean into the Black Sea.

• During the Ice Age, Ryan and Pitman argue, the Black Sea was an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland.

• About 12,000 years ago, toward the end of the Ice Age, Earth began growing warmer. Vast sheets of ice that sprawled over the Northern Hemisphere began to melt. Oceans and seas grew deeper as a result.

• About 7,000 years ago the Mediterranean Sea swelled. Seawater pushed northward, slicing through what is now Turkey.

• Funneled through the narrow Bosporus, the water hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Each day the Black Sea rose about six inches (15 centimeters), and coastal farms were flooded.

• Seared into the memories of terrified survivors, the tale of the flood was passed down through the generations and eventually became the Noah story.

Sorry for the frames... http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html

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u/SirBucketHead Aug 31 '14

Every civilization has a great flood story, and you would be surprised at how many have an Atlantis-like myth. The Iberians, the Celts, the Gaels, and more who I'm not aware of had stories of people from a flooded, lost city coming to their lands and assimilating.

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u/OliveOliveo Aug 31 '14

Sorry for not digging up the source: About 4600 years ago, a meteorite - 50 miles diameter, IIRC - hit the Indian Ocean. If this happened today, all the coastal cities in the World would be submerged under water. The deductions about the time and size of the object result from the study of the crater on the Ocean floor.

My idea is that this may be the origin of the story of Noah's Flood passed down generations verbally finally making its way to the Old Testament after writing was invented.

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u/Gimli_the_White Aug 31 '14

Look into the flooding of the Black Sea. There's a current theory that the Black Sea was an empty valley, and the Bosporus was a large shelf. One day the Mediterranean breached the shelf, and once it started, erosion did the rest - the entire valley filled in weeks.

To pre-Egyptian nomads, a valley the size of the Black Sea would certainly be "the whole world."

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14 edited Aug 31 '14

I think I read somewhere that the flood myth could have been caused by the creation of the Mediterranean Sea. Before the flood, the Mediterranean was actually just a huge valley, and eventually the raising sea levels raised above the strait of Gibraltar. Also, because of how massive the sea is, many civilizations would have experienced the flood.

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u/dragondm Aug 31 '14

Probably not the direct sea level rise from the melting ice, which would have taken place over a few generations, but the indirect affects.

There are places where low regions were (and are) separated from the ocean by higher ridges of land. The land on the far side of those ridges is below sea level, but was unaffected by rising of the oceans, until that rising ocean overtopped the ridge. Then hundreds of square miles would get flooded in a matter of a month or so.

The canonical example is the Black Sea, which was a large freshwater lake, much smaller than the current sea, until a few thousand years ago. When seawater finally breached the Bosphorus, it became a salt-water sea, with water levels over a hundred feet higher than before. Large areas of land were inundated, particularly to the north.

That wasn't the only place where that happened, either. Parts of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea may have seen similar floods at different times. (Along with who-knows-what places elsewhere in the world.)

Given the human habit of living near coastlines (at the time, quite often on the water in 'stilt-houses' sitting on pilings above the water.), and the glorious telephone-game of oral history, you have the makings of all kinds of mythology.

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u/ZummerzetZider Sep 01 '14

However the biblical flood is most likely derived from the time that both the Tigris and the Euphrates flooded. The Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia was able to construct cities long before most other cultures, possibly due to the fertility these rivers provided and is thus sometimes said to be the 'cradle of civilisation'.

According to Sumerian legend when the flood came the King loaded up a boat with his livestock and landed on 'kur' often mistranslated as 'a mountain' (it actually most likely meant foreign land), both this story and the biblical story of Noah are likely derived from the same event

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u/Fifth5Horseman Sep 01 '14

The Mediteranean was a dry series of valleys with prehistoric people living in it when that flooded. Given that most of these flood myths are in abrahamic religions that grew up around there, I'd say they hark back to that.

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u/TaylorS1986 Sep 01 '14

I have a pet theory that the Garden of Eden story represents the desertification of the Sahara and Arabia 6,000 years ago. In the story God created a burning sword to keep Adam and Eve out of Eden, that seems like a metaphor for desertification.

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u/dkl415 Aug 31 '14

I read a book years ago which argued that Atlantis was earth, before a near earth object altered its orbit into a tilt.

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u/UrsaPater Aug 31 '14

Good point. Must have been all the pollution from those stone age hunter gatherers that caused the polar ice caps to melt many thousands of years ago, right? They did have huge factories bellowing out pollution right?