Why do so many of the earth's ancient cultures have flood legends?

Question

Cultures that were so far removed from each other. It's obvious that something large-scale happened to have so many people write about it. If there was a total lunar eclipse and all cultures wrote about it, we would assume they were all observing the same phenomenon. Why not assume that the flood actually happened, too?

Answer 1

Because it really did happen!

Answer 2

Because the supposed dates vary by at least a thousand years.

Also consider this: If only Noah's family survived this worldwide deluge, were did the people in the the Americas or the Far East, who had their own flood stories, come from?

Flood was a scary thing to ancient peoples. Any widespread one was ;likely seen as the destruction of the world( Which to them was only as far as the could see} and so worthy of becoming a legend.

Answer 3

Archaeologists have found evidence for several large floods, but never did they occur at the same time. By large, I mean massive, but again, no evidence of a world wide flood. The story Gilgamesh is about the same flood but it was written a thousand years earlier and had different characters.
There's a mention in Matthew of time standing still for 3 hours after Jesus died but nobody, not even the other three gospel writers, say anything about it. There are plenty of other questionable stories about world-wide events that aren't even remotely backed up by other sources so why believe that one?
There was a period in time when areas had great floods at different times. I've seen a website about it before but I'll have to look it up again.

Edit: www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

Answer 4

Many cultures tel stories of floods thousands of years before Christ also, because there undeveloped minds made them believe the whole world was flooded, and if the flood in the bible took place, why do all these cultures recall it? Weren't they destroyed? Shouldn't every culture have a story about how the descended from someone on a giant ship that had 2 of every animal on it? USE LOGIC FOR FU*KS SAKE

Answer 5

I'll buy that a flood actually happened. I'm sure when the last Ice Age ended there was suddenly water in a lot of places there was no water before. No problem here.

Answer 6

Actually, if they all observed a lunar eclipse, no one would assume that they were all observing the same eclipse. Lunar eclipses are not that rare, and neither are floods.

Answer 7

Cultures around the world had Jesus stories. The Aztecs and Incas had the story of a tall bearded man who preached love was percecuted and eventually, in one instance walked across the water and disappeared in the distance, in another he floated off the top of the mountain in a cloud. The good christian missionariers did their best to destroy any of the written information about these dieties and killed anyone who didn't deny it totally. Gotta hand it to them good christians.

Answer 8

Because these ancient cultures were grouped around Mesopotamia, and when the region flooded, it was the known world.

Answer 9

Lots of the Earth's ancient cultures have legends about dragons, too.

Answer 10

How could they if only Noah's family survived


Oh and there isn't enough water on this planet to submerge it totally.
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/mearth.html


Oh and Chinese records that go back 10,000 years, at least 4,000 years before your flood, have no flood recorded and the Chinese are still around.

Answer 11

if it was true, then the bibles account is totally wrong, not isn't it? In the bible, those are the only people to survive it.

More likely it is a telling and retelling of an old Sumerian flood.