Is that really true the Inca had a flood account (like Noah) before the White man?

Question

I'm not sure how to take that story. I do know that the Inca didn't have writing. All we know about their mythology comes to us via European friars. (Are they neutral witnesses? You be the judge.)

Answer 1

Yes they did and the Spanish thought it was the work of the devil, Native American indians have the same story, the flood probably was the ice melting then building back up as ice ages do not just stop, they ebb like waves just not as fast of course

Answer 2

I have heard this brought up as an argument that the story of the great flood is real. I do not know if the Inca had these stories, but if you grew up in a rain forest, do you think that you might see a flood at least once in your life?

Another thing that is interesting, cultures all over the world have stories about vampires and werewolves. Does that mean that they are real as well?

Answer 3

I don't know about the Incas. But I remember coming across this when I was in college. There were something like 37 different flood accounts from different cultures around the world. Many of them resembling the Biblical account. It is an interesting study, you should do one.

Answer 4

All prehistoric cultures have had a flood myth. However, this does not mean that Noah's flood myth is a real story... At the end of an ice age (and the beginning of another ice age cycle), ice on earth melts, causing the oceans to rise. Seeing as most primitive men lived near the shores (travel, food...water is life after all), they saw their homes being destroyed in floods. This is where the stories come from.... Not from a God destroying the earth....

As for lack of writing, I am aware that the Mayans (close neighbors of the Incans) had the most advanced calendar in use - more advanced than the calendar we use today....so they had writing. Ive not heard that the Incans didnt have writing....

Answer 5

Yes that in the translations of any text that been made. It has been pretty much proven that there have been at least several world floods. and in each tale one person of each race was given the warning and told to build a water craft to save the clean things in the area.

Answer 6

Yes they did. They passed down their history via stories. Storytellers were high members of the society and their job was to remember the exact details of what happened and when. They also suffered a great famine. Indigenous people and their history is remarkable.

Answer 7

I never heard of that. I doubt that it is true. it all happened to the world only once,so if they got it ,then it was at the same time.

Answer 8

no

Answer 9

The great deluge myth occurs in many cultures:

The Sumerian myth of Ziusudra tells how the god Enki warns Ziusudra (meaning "he saw life," in reference to the gift of immortality given him by the gods), king of Shuruppak, of the gods' decision to destroy mankind in a flood - the passage describing why the gods have decided this is lost. Enki instructs Ziusudra to build a large boat - the text describing the instructions is also lost. 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.

Sound familiar?

In the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, toward the end of the He who saw the deep version by Sin-liqe-unninn (tablet 11), there are references to a great flood. The hero Gilgamesh, seeking immortality, searches out Utnapishtim (whose name is a direct translation into Akkadian of the Sumerian Ziusudra) in Dilmun, a kind of terrestrial paradise. 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.

The Assyrian god Chronos warned Xisuthrus of a coming flood, and Chronos ordered Xisuthrus to write a history and to build a boat measuring 5 stadia by 2 stadia to carry his relations, friends, and two of every kind of animal. The flood came, rose, and killed everyone except those in the boat. After the floodwaters subsided, Xisuthrus sent birds out from the boat, and all of them returned. He sent them out a second time, and they returned with their feet covered in mud. He sent them out a third time, and the birds did not return. The people left the boat and offered sacrifices to the gods. Xisuthrus, his wife, daughter, and the pilot of the boat were transported to live with the gods.

Greek mythology brings us the Deucalion legend as told by Apollodorus in The Library, which has some similarity to Noah's flood: Prometheus advised his son Deucalion to build a chest. All other men perished except for a few who escaped to high mountains. 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. Appollodorus gives this as an aitiology for Greek laos "people" as derived from laos "stone". The Megarians told that Megarus, son of Zeus, escaped Deucalion's flood by swimming to the top of Mount Gerania, guided by the cries of Cranes.

In Norse mythology, Bergelmir was a son of Thrudgelmir. He and his wife were the only frost giants to survive the deluge of Bergelmir's grandfather's (Ymir) blood, when Odin and his brothers (Vili and Ve) butchered him. They crawled into a hollow tree trunk and survived, then founded a new race of frost giants.

The Aztec myth is considered controversial due to fact that most of the tales of the Great Flood were heard well after missionaries had entered the region, but in the interest of completeness:

When the Sun Age came, there had passed 400 years. Then came 200 years, then 76. Then all mankind was lost and drowned and turned to fishes. The water and the sky drew near each other. In a single day all was lost, and Four Flower consumed all that there was of our flesh. The very mountains were swallowed up in the flood, and the waters remained, lying tranquil during fifty and two springs. But before the flood began, Titlachahuan had warned the man Nota and his wife Nena, saying, 'Make no more pulque, but hollow a great cypress, into which you shall enter the month Tozoztli. The waters shall near the sky.' They entered, and when Titlacahuan had shut them in he said to the man, 'Thou shalt eat but a single ear of maize, and thy wife but one also'. And when they had each eaten one ear of maize, they prepared to go forth, for the water was tranquil.

In Inca mythology, Viracocha destroyed the giants with a Great Flood, and two people repopulated the earth. Uniquely, they survived in sealed caves.

In Maya mythology, from the Popol Vuh, Part 1, Chapter 3, Huracan ("one-legged") was a wind and storm god who caused the Great Flood (of resin) after the first humans (made of wood) angered the gods (by being unable to worship them). He supposedly lived in the windy mists above the floodwaters and spoke "earth" until land came up again from the seas.

In Hopi mythology, the people moved away from Sotuknang, the creator, repeatedly. He destroyed the world by fire, and then by cold, and recreated it both times for the people that still followed the laws of creation, who survived by hiding underground. People became corrupt and warlike a third time. As a result, Sotuknang guided the people to Spider Woman, and she cut down giant reeds and sheltered the people in the hollow stems. Sotuknang then caused a great flood, and the people floated atop the water in their reeds. The reeds came to rest on a small piece of land, and the people emerged, with as much food as they started with. The people traveled on in their canoes, guided by their inner wisdom (which, it is said comes from Sotuknang through the door at the top of their head). They travelled to the northeast, passing progressively larger islands, until they came to the Fourth World. When they reached the fourth world, the islands sank into the ocean.

In Caddo Indian mythology, four monsters grew in size and power until they touched the sky. At that time, a man heard a voice telling him to plant a hollow reed. He did so, and the reed grew very big very quickly. The man entered the reed with his wife and pairs of all good animals. Waters rose, and covered everything but the top of the reed and the heads of the monsters. A turtle then killed the monsters by digging under them and uprooting them. The waters subsided, and winds dried the earth.

In Menominee mythology, Manabus, the trickster, "fired by his lust for revenge" shot two underground gods when the gods were at play. When they all dived into the water, a huge flood arose. "The water rose up .... It knew very well where Manabus had gone." He runs, he runs; but the water, coming from Lake Michigan, chases him faster and faster, even as he runs up a mountain and climbs to the top of the lofty pine at its peak. Four times he begs the tree to grow just a little more, and four times it obliges until it can grow no more. But the water keeps climbing "up, up, right to his chin, and there it stopped": there was nothing but water stretching out to the horizon. And then Manabus, helped by diving animals, and especially the bravest of all, the Muskrat, creates the world as we know it today.

In Mi'kmaq mythology, evil and wickedness among men causes them to kill each other. This causes great sorrow to the creator-sun-god, who weeps tears that become rains sufficient to trigger a deluge. The people attempt to survive by traveling in bark canoes, but only a single old man and woman survive to populate the earth.

China has several deluges:

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".

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.

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 Nuwa. Nuwa is generally represented as a female who repairs the broken heavens after a great flood or calamity, and repopulates the world with people. There are many versions of this myth.

In India, according to the Matsya Purana and Shatapatha Brahmana (I-8, 1-6), the mantri to the king of pre-ancient Dravida, Satyavata who later becomes known as Manu was washing his hands in a river when a little fish swam into his hands and begged him to save it's life. He put it in a jar, which it soon outgrew; he successively moved it to a tank, a river and then the ocean. The fish then warned him that a deluge would occur in a week that would destroy all life. Manu therefore built a boat which the fish towed to a mountaintop when the flood came, and thus he survived along with some "seeds of life" to re-establish life on earth.

In Batak (Indonesian) 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.

Note that many of these culture predate Christianity. The flood myth is a common facet of many cultures, and it's hard to say exactly whose came first. Of course, it is also possible (though extremely unlikely) that all myths refer to different perspectives of a single momentous event, but if this is the case, whose is the correct origin?