September 8, 2008 • 10 mins
Versions of the Great Flood float around in nearly every human culture, and Christianity, Islam and Judaism share the overarching plot points of a man, a flood, and animals marching two by two. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn whether this sto
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today by staff writer Josh Clark.
How's it going. Oh, well, it's been raining today, It
(00:21):
has been. It has been. Luckily, it's not raining so
much that anything's gonna flood as the Midwest has been
seeing this whole summer. Huh. Indeed, there's been a lot
of flooding out there, although um, nothing that that comes
even close to uh, the stories of the Great Flood, Yeah,
and and great it was. Um. Scientists today have surmised
(00:43):
that in order for the world to flood as much
as it reputedly did during the Great Flood, there would
have to be five times the amount of water in
the oceans and the atmosphere to fill up the world
to the tops of mountains. I know you're talking about. Also,
that much water present the atmosphere would change the pressure
so much that people's lungs would be totally crushed before
(01:04):
you even drowned. Right, So it'd just be a bad
day all around for everybody, right, unless you were right
and and Noah, of course, is known to fans of
the Bible as the guy who built an arc and
UH basically saved a pair of every animal he could
get his hands on and breeding pair ostensibly. Um, the
thing is is no, Uh, Well, the Biblical version of
(01:28):
this great flood isn't the only account. Did you know that?
There are cultures throughout the world that have stories of
a great flood that took place? Yes? I did know that. Actually,
and the great flood story throughout Christianity and Islam and
Judaism all share some pretty similar elements, namely a man,
his wife, a boat, and pairs of animals. Well, there's
(01:50):
also other variations around it. Um. You know, there's people
as disparate as the Ottawa tribe in North America. There's
Juang people in China, The Massai, and East Africa all
have tales of flood stories, and there are some commonalities
among those two. Most of the time, there's usually at
least one human who has either angered the gods or
(02:13):
has been worn by the gods. That are big floods coming,
and usually either in concert with animals or in rescue
of animals. UH grabs a bunch of different species and
UH basically either rediscovers or recreates the world or rides
out the flood and lands you know somewhere like on
a mountain or that kind of thing, and the world's repopulated, right,
(02:36):
So don't you find it kind of odd that there's
all these different stories from all these cultures around the
world of a great flood? Um, do you do I
find it on? Yeah? Do you find it on? I mean,
think about it, like that's really weird? Uh? There there?
We We just entered the age of artificially technical, technologically
enabled communication, what within the last hundred or so years?
(02:59):
So how would these stories have spread with people living
so far flowing around the globe. I don't really think
it's not at all. I think that any sort of
history like that has been passed down for millions of years,
sometimes through oral storytelling, and so these stories just, you know,
they continue to gain traction and import as they go
(03:21):
throughout different generations. And I think that in different parts
of the world, perhaps it's more of an um environmental phenomenon.
In another part to the world, it's more of a
spiritual phenomenon, and people assign you know, spiritual or environmental
values to what these stories mean to them. I think
that maybe um, the Ottawa tribe, for instance, I was
(03:43):
reading that story earlier today myself, I think that that
would speak more highly to the fact that this is why,
you know, the population sprang up here and this part
of the world, whereas I think that in Christian or
Jewish or Islamic traditions it would be more about, you know,
this is how we came to be descendant from this
group of people. These are our leaders. Well, it's funny
(04:05):
that the that you bring up the Ottawa believing in
um migration or for or flood forced migration, because there's
actually um scientists who theorized that there was a flood
and that it did force migration. That um there was
a an ice cap that melted in Greenland, causing massive
flooding and basically taking a humanity and spreading it out
(04:27):
from the centralized area to you know, Europe and elsewhere,
which would also account for why there would be oral
traditions of of floods and different cultures around the world.
You know, it could have taken place at a time
when people were living in a relatively small area. The
flood happens, everybody's kind of scattered throughout the world and
and formed their own cultures, but that one tradition remains.
(04:50):
The thing about the ice cap melting, uh is somewhat
poignant today, what with climate change in our own ice
caps undergoing a a nice quick melt, And you find
that a little titillating, you better keep on the straight narrow,
Mr Clark. Yes, I'm melting the ice caps with my
pure evil right. Well, if you're looking at some of
the stories that have more of a religious residence to them,
(05:13):
we know from the Koran and from the Bible that
the earth was made to flood on purpose. Apparently this
was something that the hand of God constructed in order
to wash away the sons of the world, and he
chose only the most righteous to survive it. And I
think that anytime, especially in our modern era, where or
in which empirical evidence speaks volumes louder sometimes than faith
(05:38):
and spiritual elements, people are going to doubt that something
like that happened. And that certainly is the case with
a great flood. Well, there does seem to be some
evidence of it. At the very least. The theories are
pretty sticky, they seem reasonable. But if you start to
look into the fact that Noah pops up in different
religious texts, and even further back than that with the
(05:59):
Sumerian and the Babylonians. Um, that kind of lends a
little credence to the existence of some guy with a
boat when you get down to the brass text. Apparently,
the the boat that Noah built was, you know, an
acre in size. According to the Book of Genesis, it
was three d cubits long, fifty wide, and thirty tall,
which is enormous. It's like, that's an acre and I mean,
(06:22):
in this day and age, it's it's tough to imagine. Well, actually,
to tell you the truth, in this day and age,
it's kind of easy to imagine a boat that size.
But we're talking that this would have been built with wood, right,
and some people argue that there wasn't even shipbuilding technology
at that time that would have existed to help Noah
guide his efforts. Well, let me ask you this then,
I mean, is is Noah and is you know three
(06:43):
cubit boat fact or fiction? Is there evidence to support
it one way or the other? Well, that's a tough
question to answer, So I'm gonna say it's a little
bit fact, it's a little bit fiction. That does know
a character existence that has arc did too um. Even
in the Sumerians and the Epic of Gilgamesh, we we
read about a Noah type character who builds a boat
(07:06):
to survive a great flood, and then a Kuran we
read about a similar neotype character who builds this boat,
and the Bible will read about a nootype character in
his boat. But where's the boat? Well, some people say
that would being in organic compound would have decomposed by
these But people ask, if the waters of the world
rose to the tops of the highest mountains, the arc
(07:27):
would have settled somewhere. So where is this boat? Well,
scholars have proposed, based on the answers given in the Bible,
it would have been either Mountain Judai or Mount error At.
And when they investigated these sites, they found a rock
formation that looked like perhaps it could have been the
petrified wood of a boat, but then people dismissed that theory.
(07:48):
On another mountaintop, they found a very dark spot within
what appeared to be some sort of glacial formation, and
the CIA actually had photos of this that they kept
under wrapped for a while. They they had a satellite
photo and they circled it and labeled it the air
at anomaly and just filed it away secretly. Yeah, and
then there was a bit of legislation came out that
caused it to be released to the public and people
(08:11):
looked at it and some people said, well, yeah, that
could very well be out an arc, and then others
said no, because with glacial formations I would have pushed
the arc down instead of freezing it in place mountain. Also,
as you mentioned the the it's just impossible, um, atmospherically,
meteorologically for the the water to have risen to the
(08:34):
point where it would have been deposited at the top
of a mountain, right. Didn't the guy who raised the
Titanic have another theory that he investigated? He did, um,
This was Robert Ballard. He found the Titanic, as you mentioned,
so he went diving at the bottom of the Black
Sea to see if he could find any remained and
he didn't. But that's not to say that the arc
didn't exist and then it was never built. It could
(08:56):
be simply that it wouldn't have sunk near the Black Sea.
Perhaps there was a differ front locale And so really
it comes down to your question of you know, how
much evidence do people really need it. Sounds like it
comes down to a question of fake. There you go.
So if you want some empirical, uh answer to whether
or not the ark existed, you could simply say the
(09:17):
wood disintegrated, or skeptics could say it never really did happen.
But we know for sure that there was the possibility
that the world could have flooded based on the annual
rise and fall of the Tigers and Euphrates river, or
it could have been an ice cap. Whether or not
anyone built up an art to withstand the flood is
a question that I think people have to answer on
their own. If you want more facts about it, you
(09:37):
can read Didn't Know Is arc Really Happen? On how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today by staff writer Josh Clark.
How's it going. Oh, well, it's been raining today, It
(00:21):
has been. It has been. Luckily, it's not raining so
much that anything's gonna flood as the Midwest has been
seeing this whole summer. Huh. Indeed, there's been a lot
of flooding out there, although um, nothing that that comes
even close to uh, the stories of the Great Flood, Yeah,
and and great it was. Um. Scientists today have surmised
(00:43):
that in order for the world to flood as much
as it reputedly did during the Great Flood, there would
have to be five times the amount of water in
the oceans and the atmosphere to fill up the world
to the tops of mountains. I know you're talking about. Also,
that much water present the atmosphere would change the pressure
so much that people's lungs would be totally crushed before
(01:04):
you even drowned. Right, So it'd just be a bad
day all around for everybody, right, unless you were right
and and Noah, of course, is known to fans of
the Bible as the guy who built an arc and
UH basically saved a pair of every animal he could
get his hands on and breeding pair ostensibly. Um, the
thing is is no, Uh, Well, the Biblical version of
(01:28):
this great flood isn't the only account. Did you know that?
There are cultures throughout the world that have stories of
a great flood that took place? Yes? I did know that. Actually,
and the great flood story throughout Christianity and Islam and
Judaism all share some pretty similar elements, namely a man,
his wife, a boat, and pairs of animals. Well, there's
(01:50):
also other variations around it. Um. You know, there's people
as disparate as the Ottawa tribe in North America. There's
Juang people in China, The Massai, and East Africa all
have tales of flood stories, and there are some commonalities
among those two. Most of the time, there's usually at
least one human who has either angered the gods or
(02:13):
has been worn by the gods. That are big floods coming,
and usually either in concert with animals or in rescue
of animals. UH grabs a bunch of different species and
UH basically either rediscovers or recreates the world or rides
out the flood and lands you know somewhere like on
a mountain or that kind of thing, and the world's repopulated, right,
(02:36):
So don't you find it kind of odd that there's
all these different stories from all these cultures around the
world of a great flood? Um, do you do I
find it on? Yeah? Do you find it on? I mean,
think about it, like that's really weird? Uh? There there?
We We just entered the age of artificially technical, technologically
enabled communication, what within the last hundred or so years?
(02:59):
So how would these stories have spread with people living
so far flowing around the globe. I don't really think
it's not at all. I think that any sort of
history like that has been passed down for millions of years,
sometimes through oral storytelling, and so these stories just, you know,
they continue to gain traction and import as they go
(03:21):
throughout different generations. And I think that in different parts
of the world, perhaps it's more of an um environmental phenomenon.
In another part to the world, it's more of a
spiritual phenomenon, and people assign you know, spiritual or environmental
values to what these stories mean to them. I think
that maybe um, the Ottawa tribe, for instance, I was
(03:43):
reading that story earlier today myself, I think that that
would speak more highly to the fact that this is why,
you know, the population sprang up here and this part
of the world, whereas I think that in Christian or
Jewish or Islamic traditions it would be more about, you know,
this is how we came to be descendant from this
group of people. These are our leaders. Well, it's funny
(04:05):
that the that you bring up the Ottawa believing in
um migration or for or flood forced migration, because there's
actually um scientists who theorized that there was a flood
and that it did force migration. That um there was
a an ice cap that melted in Greenland, causing massive
flooding and basically taking a humanity and spreading it out
(04:27):
from the centralized area to you know, Europe and elsewhere,
which would also account for why there would be oral
traditions of of floods and different cultures around the world.
You know, it could have taken place at a time
when people were living in a relatively small area. The
flood happens, everybody's kind of scattered throughout the world and
and formed their own cultures, but that one tradition remains.
(04:50):
The thing about the ice cap melting, uh is somewhat
poignant today, what with climate change in our own ice
caps undergoing a a nice quick melt, And you find
that a little titillating, you better keep on the straight narrow,
Mr Clark. Yes, I'm melting the ice caps with my
pure evil right. Well, if you're looking at some of
the stories that have more of a religious residence to them,
(05:13):
we know from the Koran and from the Bible that
the earth was made to flood on purpose. Apparently this
was something that the hand of God constructed in order
to wash away the sons of the world, and he
chose only the most righteous to survive it. And I
think that anytime, especially in our modern era, where or
in which empirical evidence speaks volumes louder sometimes than faith
(05:38):
and spiritual elements, people are going to doubt that something
like that happened. And that certainly is the case with
a great flood. Well, there does seem to be some
evidence of it. At the very least. The theories are
pretty sticky, they seem reasonable. But if you start to
look into the fact that Noah pops up in different
religious texts, and even further back than that with the
(05:59):
Sumerian and the Babylonians. Um, that kind of lends a
little credence to the existence of some guy with a
boat when you get down to the brass text. Apparently,
the the boat that Noah built was, you know, an
acre in size. According to the Book of Genesis, it
was three d cubits long, fifty wide, and thirty tall,
which is enormous. It's like, that's an acre and I mean,
(06:22):
in this day and age, it's it's tough to imagine. Well, actually,
to tell you the truth, in this day and age,
it's kind of easy to imagine a boat that size.
But we're talking that this would have been built with wood, right,
and some people argue that there wasn't even shipbuilding technology
at that time that would have existed to help Noah
guide his efforts. Well, let me ask you this then,
I mean, is is Noah and is you know three
(06:43):
cubit boat fact or fiction? Is there evidence to support
it one way or the other? Well, that's a tough
question to answer, So I'm gonna say it's a little
bit fact, it's a little bit fiction. That does know
a character existence that has arc did too um. Even
in the Sumerians and the Epic of Gilgamesh, we we
read about a Noah type character who builds a boat
(07:06):
to survive a great flood, and then a Kuran we
read about a similar neotype character who builds this boat,
and the Bible will read about a nootype character in
his boat. But where's the boat? Well, some people say
that would being in organic compound would have decomposed by
these But people ask, if the waters of the world
rose to the tops of the highest mountains, the arc
(07:27):
would have settled somewhere. So where is this boat? Well,
scholars have proposed, based on the answers given in the Bible,
it would have been either Mountain Judai or Mount error At.
And when they investigated these sites, they found a rock
formation that looked like perhaps it could have been the
petrified wood of a boat, but then people dismissed that theory.
(07:48):
On another mountaintop, they found a very dark spot within
what appeared to be some sort of glacial formation, and
the CIA actually had photos of this that they kept
under wrapped for a while. They they had a satellite
photo and they circled it and labeled it the air
at anomaly and just filed it away secretly. Yeah, and
then there was a bit of legislation came out that
caused it to be released to the public and people
(08:11):
looked at it and some people said, well, yeah, that
could very well be out an arc, and then others
said no, because with glacial formations I would have pushed
the arc down instead of freezing it in place mountain. Also,
as you mentioned the the it's just impossible, um, atmospherically,
meteorologically for the the water to have risen to the
(08:34):
point where it would have been deposited at the top
of a mountain, right. Didn't the guy who raised the
Titanic have another theory that he investigated? He did, um,
This was Robert Ballard. He found the Titanic, as you mentioned,
so he went diving at the bottom of the Black
Sea to see if he could find any remained and
he didn't. But that's not to say that the arc
didn't exist and then it was never built. It could
(08:56):
be simply that it wouldn't have sunk near the Black Sea.
Perhaps there was a differ front locale And so really
it comes down to your question of you know, how
much evidence do people really need it. Sounds like it
comes down to a question of fake. There you go.
So if you want some empirical, uh answer to whether
or not the ark existed, you could simply say the
(09:17):
wood disintegrated, or skeptics could say it never really did happen.
But we know for sure that there was the possibility
that the world could have flooded based on the annual
rise and fall of the Tigers and Euphrates river, or
it could have been an ice cap. Whether or not
anyone built up an art to withstand the flood is
a question that I think people have to answer on
their own. If you want more facts about it, you
(09:37):
can read Didn't Know Is arc Really Happen? On how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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