The Science Behind the Flood Myths

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http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/the-great-flood-and-population-migrations.html

"When we look back in the geological record, we find that around 8,200 years ago (6400 BCE), global temperatures dropped drastically. Scientists believe this sudden drop in temperature occurred when Lake Agassiz - a vast, prehistoric glacial lake that covered much of North America - finally melted out of the glacial walls that contained it and poured into the world's oceans. Sea levels may have risen by as much as two meters."

That website is very useful by the way.

Actually, I think that most flood myths probably originated with something that was nothing more than a local flood. Floods are quite common, so it's not surprising that flood myths are common.

The great mythical floods were quasi-local phenomena associated with the break down of ice dams at the end of the least Ice Age. So, the floods were real, but they were not World Floods.

ruveyn

Yea. Eastern Washington is full of geologic flood debris.

Not "World Floods" in the sense that the entire world was covered with water, but maybe in the sense that coastal villages all around the world were inundated with from 2 to 10 meters of sea water sometime between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago.

This could explain why nearly every culture seems to have its own flood myth.

The ice melted! No supernatural angry God there.

ruveyn

Don't I know It! My parents had had a backyard garden when I was growing up, and believe me, the soil was filled with rocks, rocks, ROCKS!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Left there by the Glaciers, Glaciers, Glaciers.

ruveyn

That's right!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Human consciousness is equipped to grasp these distant events. It's as if these ideas exist in the air and are free to pop in the minds of receptive people. This is why humans are able to come up with these myths. Also, they were able to figure out how to erect pyramids just by studying the shapes of mountains.

Homo sapien sapien is a very smart ape. We are the smartest baddest apes in the apiary.

ten thousand years ago the smartest humans were just as smart as the smartest humans today. They just didn't know as much.

ruveyn

no they werent,

they had an almost identical brain but intelligence has been rising according to the flynn effect.
how the brains actual structures are arranged is easily changed and dependant on what you learn and how and as such it is only logical that intelligence has changed with human development.

I go by the Stonehenge and Great Pyramid effect.

You are conflating the ease of accessing knowledge with the ability to think creatively and originally.

ruveyn

I recently visited Albuquerque and it was easy to see the shape of a great pyramid in the background. It was uplifting indeed. No wonder Pyramids were believed to bring a Pharoah closer to the afterlife. Mountains have powerful effects on the human psyche. I felt totally different in Alburquerque so close to that mountain. All of NM, in fact. That place is otherworldly.

I kinda know how Jesus felt being in the desert for 40 days and nights. If I was going to spend that time in the desert, it would be in NM.

and you are forgetting that learning is simply forming connections physically in the brain,
that means that the expanded knowledge horizon does have a direct effect on brain physiology no matter what, the flynn effect in itself however has been show to show more than good correlation with intelligences even across cultures, you should read up on it, it is widely accepted and shown by testing, it isnt a thought experiment.

also intelligence isnt defined by weither of the two factors you mentioned.

The Flynn effect is likely a recent phenomenon though and I think you are underestimating the ancients. I for instance admire someone like Archimedes, who I think was probably at least as smart as Einstein. That guy's a legend even 2000 years later for some of the stuff he thought up in his day and age.