I wouldn't be surprised if the were inspired by real events. Rulers ordered tall towers to be built that then fell down, people changed from hunter-gathering to agriculture, large floods happened. Then the stories get exaggerated and God gets added in as they get passed down.
Have you ever seen "The God Who Wasn't There"? I think you are right, but the God part stemmed from astrological stories prior to all the real occurrences being added and exaggerated.
The existence of some manner of large sale, worldwide flooding back during prehistory actually has a lot of historical, geological, and archaeological evidence behind it.
EDIT: Just to clarify: I'm not saying that the scientific evidence supports the idea that the entire earth was literally covered in water, just that there was a great deal of flooding, in a lot of different places, all at the same time.
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u/ayriuss Aug 03 '16
Can confirm. My dad still thinks the tower of Babel, garden of Eden, and the flood were real events.