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The Déluge is a widespread Mythe in many cultures. It is also oldest. He reports catastrophic Pluie S and the consecutive Inondation S which decimated men and animals except for one only couple of the Espèce S which were going to repopulate the Ground then.

Accounts of the Flood

The texts mésopotamiens

detailed Article: the epopee of Gilgamesh

the epopee of Gilgamesh in the tradition Mésopotamie nne: It is towards 2700 before our era that in the myth of Gilgamesh appears, with more details than in the later versions, the episode of a man named Ziusudra according to the sources sumériennes, ATU-Napishtim or Atrahasis with Babylon. This man makes the account with Gilgamesh of the anger of the gods which depopulated all the Earth. However, a god prevented it and learned how to him to build a boat. He could thus save to them his as well as a couple of each species which was to repopulate the new world. At the time of the deportation with Babylon, the Judaïsme was most probably in contact with this history; the Old Testament being partly a consequence of this deportation, this epopee could have been one of the sources of the history reported in the Genèse. One could however object that the Pentateuque, the five books of the mosaic law, can be composed before the deportation.

The biblical account

detailed Article: Arch of Noah

In one of the most known episodes of the Bible, chapter 6 of the Genesis, God decides to put an end to the corruption spread on the ground. The appearance of the Nephilim and the spite of the men make him horror. He speaks then with Noah, a wise man, and asks him to build an arch and to bring to it a couple of each animal of the world. Then, once Noah finished building his arch, God starts pouring rain which will last 40 days and 40 nights, recovering the whole Earth and its more high mountains, killing all the living beings, like specifies it the Bible, in order to build a new Humanity around the 8 people of the Noah family and the animals safeguarded in the arch. This planetary catastrophe occurred when Noah was 600 years old (genesis 7-6), that is to say 1.656 years after the creation of Adam by God of the Bible. After nearly one year spent in the arch, Noah sends successively corbels then doves. One day, a dove returns holding in its nozzle a branch of olive-tree, sign which the shore is close. It can then accost (according to the account, on the Mont Ararat), with all its animals, to repopulate the world with its family, i.e. his wife, her three sons and its three beautiful-girls. A rainbow takes shape in the sky, signs alliance with God.

The dove and the olive branch remained symbols of hope in all the countries of Christian culture . In that this account had a very strong influence on the culture of the Western countries.

The rainbow is always a symbol of alliance with God.

The modern Interpretation of the Genesis, through the documentary assumption, estimates that the biblical account of the Flood consists of the fusion of two distinct sources: many sentences or events are described there twice, in slightly different terms.

Greek and Roman texts

the myth of Deucalion: in the Greek Mythology, the Déluge caused by Zeus leaves two survivors, Deucalion and Pyrrha, which repopulates then the Earth; 4 texts report this myth:

the Olympic Odes of Pindare: " Sing the city of Protogénie rather where, by the order of Jupiter-Thundering, Deucalion and Pyrrha, going down from the sky, found their first asylum, where, without following the natural laws, they propagated their race and made leave the stones people whose name alone points out the origin. Devote to them harmonious, but new songs; because if old age is creditable in liquor of Bacchus, the innovation always lent charms to the accents of poetry. I will thus say that at that time, a flood absorbs the ground under the depth of its waves; but that soon, the floods, driven back with far, returned in the abysses dug by the powerful Jupiter hand. This famous couple, O Épharmoste! was the stock of your aïeux magnanimes. (Olympic IX-157 -158)
the Meteorologica of Aristote (I-14 Book);
the Library of Apollodore: " Prométhée had a son, Deucalion, king of the territory of Phthie, and husband of Pyrrha, girl itself of Épiméthée, and Pandora the first woman. When Zeus decided to make disappear the race from the bronze men, Deucalion, on the council of Prométhée, built an arch, and embarked all the necessary one there, then it went up there with Pyrrha. Sky, Zeus poured an interminable rain, and submerged to it quasi totality of the ground of Greece: all the men were destroyed, except for some which had taken refuge on the tops of the close mountains. The mounts of Thessalie remained isolated, and all the areas, apart from the isthmus and of the Peloponnese, were submerged by water. The arch of Deucalion sailed, ballottée by the floods, nine days and nine nights during; at the end, it was immobilized on the Mount Parnassus. When the rain ceased, Deucalion left and offered a sacrifice to protective Zeus of the fugitive ones. Then the god sent Hermes to him, charged to transmit this message to him: no matter what he wanted, that would be granted to him. And Deucalion required to be able to have men. Zeus gave its agreement; Deucalion then started to collect stones and to throw them behind him: the stones launched by Deucalion became men, and those launched by Pyrrha became women. Since then, by metaphor, the people took their name ( làos ) of that which means the stone ( làas ) " (Book I, 7,1-2)
the Metamorphoses of Ovide (Book I, 313sq)

the myth of Philémon and Baucis are also connected there: two right, an old man and his wife, is saved water by Jupiter. ( the Metamorphoses of Ovide, Delivers VIII, 616sq).
the myth of Atlantis evoked in two texts of Plato: Timée and Critias tell the brutal immersion of an island under the sea.

The Koranic account

The Coran speaks about the flood and Noah in these terms:

“And it was revealed in Noah: 'Of your people, there will not be any more believers but those which already believed. Do not afflict you with what they did. And build the arch under Our eyes and according to Our revelation. And does not challenge Me any more about the unjust ones, because they will be noyés'.

And it built the arch. And each time the notable ones of its people passed close to him, they made fun of him. He says: “If you make fun of us, eh well, we will make fun of you, as you make fun (of us)”. And you will know soon to whom will come a punishment which will humiliate it, and on which will fall down a durable punishment! ”

Then, when Our command came and that the furnace started to bubble (of water), We said: “Load (in the arch) couple of each species as your family - except those against which the decree is already marked - and those which believe”. However, those which had believed with him were very few. And he says: " Go up inside. That its race and its damping are in the name of Allah. Admittedly my Lord is Pardonneur and Miséricordieux". And it sailed by carrying them in the middle of the waves like mountains.

And Noah called his son, who remained in an isolated place (not far from the arch): " O my child, goes up with us and does not remain with the mécréants". He answered: " I will take refuge towards a mount which will protect me from the eau". And Noah says to him: " There is today no guard against the order of Allah. (All will perish) except that with which It makes miséricorde". And the waves interposed between the two, and the son was then number of drowned.

And it was known as: " O ground, absorbs your water! And you, sky, cease (to rain)! " Water dropped, the order was carried out and the arch was installed on Joûdî, and it was known as: " What disappears pervers" people;!” (Coran, XI: 36-44)

This version of the flood is related to the Old Testament, but there are some notable differences. Firstly it is not known as that the flood was total, it could very well have been local. Secondly Noah is a prophet in Coran and in addition to its family, the good people, who believe in a God, followed it in the arch.

Other cultural traces making think of the Flood

In the Hindouisme, where the first man Manu is saved by the first misadventure of Vishnou, Matsya. He also escapes the flood by building a boat. Manu will become thereafter the first legislator of the hindouism;
In mythologies précolombiennes, in particular incas and Maya (Popol Vuh)

Did the flood take place?

One must attach an particular importance to the biblical Flood. Indeed it belongs to a whole. This whole is at the base of the three beliefs monotheists. The Hebraic Bible, the Old will for the Christians, makes it possible to rather precisely date all the great moments from the monotheism. The Flood occurred well, according to the Bible, 1.656 years after the creation of Adam when Noah was 600 years old (Genesis 7-6). Thus 2105 years before the birth of Jesus-Christ. To validate or not the supervening of the biblical Flood, it is advisable to say that many Egyptian buildings were built towards 2700 and 2500 years before Jesus-Christ, that is to say several hundred years before the flood. It is in particular the case of the pyramid of Djoser with Saqqarah and the three of Gizeh. However, these pyramids did not show any damage which their total immersion during twelve months could have caused. The same applies to other historical vestiges, found intact, the such caves of Lascaux, Cahuvet, Altamira, however the Sphinx of Gizeh gone back to -2500, seems to have undergone an erosion by the bad weather according to the geologist Robert Schoch of the university of Boston.

Are the myths of the flood the memory of a real event? Various researchers tried to bring the geological proof or archaeological of the existence of the flood. Others advance that the events considered cannot have marked various civilizations (they would be too old, too slow or too distances), and that this myth would be thus a pure fabrication, or exaggeration of a local event. Is the flood a real event and localisable in time and space? So for some the apparent universality of the account and the details sometimes nearly identical (construction of a boat, many survivors, couples of animals to be saved, etc) tend to confirm a catastrophe major and planetary, it can be to them objected on the one hand that the strongest similarities are explained above all by the transmission of the myth mésopotamien to the religions monotheists and on the other hand why the presence of such a myth returns above all to the feeling of brittleness which the old companies vis-a-vis the natural disasters had.
The myths of the Flood have all the same simplistic screen: the men aggravate the gods or they do not adore it enough. At the times when the men imagine this myth, where the gods the human beings, they must exterminate cannot imagine that only one weapon of massive destruction, drowning.

Old geological designs

As long as the datings of the geological layers were only relative and that the order of magnitude of passed of the Earth was badly established, the sedimentary rocks and their Fossile S sailors, were held by the Western scientists as pilot of the biblical flood which had covered to the mountains. At the 19th century still the geologists saw his trace in certain recent sediments (Pléistocène): coarse riverwashes present in the valleys or on their slopes (called for this reason diluvium ) and deposits of Loess on the plates (their homogeneity intrigued and was interpreted as a muddy decantation following a gigantic flood which had deposited the diluvium ). Until the beginning of the 20th century century, authors bound the flood to a hypothetical collapse of old continents, or continental bridges, in the place of the Atlantic Ocean.

Whimsical scenarios or subjects to deposit

the thesis of Graham Hancock

The glacial period of the Earth (which is cyclic) would have formed two layers of ices of more than 16 km in height, on Western Europe, and Canada. The progressive warming of planet would have formed two immense inland seas, large about like the Mediterranean. The pressure exerted by these two immense blocks would have inserted the earth's crust, while making it go up on its edges. Exactly as when you press on a balloon. The cast iron of the ices would have little by little made yield the stoppings which maintained these two immense seas, for finally causing a tidal wave of almost 600 m in height . In parallel, the pressure of the earth's crust slackening itself brutally would have caused gigantic earthquakes, while D-immersing the grounds which had emerged only thanks to the relief due to the pressure. This theory will have pushed it to seek the vestiges of old civilizations under the sea, and this for spectacular proclaimed results: blocks mycéens (several tons) cut and trailed on a hundred meters found to 16 km of the coasts. And of the examples as this one a little everywhere in the world (a very widespread myth evoked a hypothetical civilization of before Sumer, and described it like being only coastal). Even if it brings into play sometimes real processes, this thesis is strongly prone to guarantee: the thickness of ice is about 3 km (because the ice creeps) and movements of " rebonds" had with its installation and its cast iron are measurable by the datings of the staged beaches. Finally the tidal waves leave characteristic traces in the marine sediments: the assumptions of Hancock were not received by the academic scientific research.

The local assumption of the Black Sea

The American geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman (1998) show, starting from an American-Russian research campaign at sea Noire of 1993, a rather brutal passage in their carrots of a fresh water level with water salted which they go back 7500 years; there they think of having the proof of the Re-connection of the Marmara Sea with the Black Sea which occurred then by the entry of sea water by the Bosphorus. Their theory is founded on a series of return tickets in the evolution of the marine level at the time of the end of the glaciations:

the marine level drops following the glaciations, and isolates the Black Sea from the Mediterranean.
the ices base on the Russian plains, causing a massive fresh water surge at sea Noire. The Black Sea is thrown then in the Mediterranean, and becomes a fresh water lake.
At the end of fusion, time becomes drier, and the Black Sea is not fed any more. It is drained gradually (like does it for example the sea of Aral), but the weak duration of this episode does not make it possible salinity significantly to increase. The Black Sea is then a lake of fresh water, located under the sea level (about 200 m), and always isolated from the Mediterranean by the threshold of the Bosphorus. The primitive tribes are installed on its shores, it is the beginning of agrarian civilizations.
Lastly, the Mediterranean goes up gradually, with the general increase of the marine level. When the level exceeds that of the threshold of the Bosphorus, it is the catastrophe: “the doors of the sky opened”, and the Mediterranean falls into the Black Sea in a large cataract. The marine level of the Black Sea would have gone up in two years of 150 m, flooding more 100 000 km ² of ground and involving, undoubtedly, a displacement of the populations. The date of the catastrophe, its effects on the populations, and its geographical location make it possible to think that the event could be at the origin of the myth which one will find transcribed in the accounts mésopotamiens (Épopée of Gilgamesh) and later in the Genèse.

This assumption is based from now on on a certain number of confirmations: trace cañon under the sea level with the right of the Bosphorus, anomalies still sensitive in the distribution of the layers of water, fresh water deposits marine under the sea level and covered with sediments of turbidity, fossil traces of dunes under the current level of the sea…

If one admits the assumption of the catastrophic discharge of water by the Bosphorus, one can also seek the source in a seismic episode of it on the Anatolian northern fault, in the Marmara-Dardanelles zone, this seismic area most active in the world after California. It is possible that the exploitation, currently in hand, of the results of forwarding ASSEMBLY of the éponyme European project (HTTP: /www.ifremer.fr/assemblage) carried out in 2004 at sea of Marmara and at sea Noire by the Ifremer on Marion Dufresne clears up the question.

Confrontation of the assumption of the Black Sea to the old texts

The ages of the edges of the Black Sea (towards -6000) were the proto-Celts, at the beginning of agrarian civilization: it was thus about a relatively dense population, cultivated, but not having discovered the writing yet. Such an event was traumatisant, largely able to engrave forever a legend in the collective memory. In the West, Greek side, the memory of the catastrophe could be brought by the invasions doriennes come from the north of Greece, which one locates towards -1100 front J.C. Taking into account the possible flow in the Bosphorus, and weak slope of the Ukrainian and Rumanian plains, the effect of the flood was spectacular: the line of shore moved back on average about at the speed of a man moving. It is too fast for an escape with foot, because water progresses more quickly along the valleys, and ends up trapping the runaways on the local heights. The only “last hope” could be indeed to entrust to a boat or to take refuge on the highest mountains. The text of the Métamorphoses of Ovide describes such a situation in the way more seizing: “Overflowed, the rivers spring through the plains discovered; with harvests, they carry the trees, the herds, the men, the houses, the furnace bridges domestic and their crowned objects. If a house remained upright and could resist such a disaster without collapsing, the ridge disappears absorbed by water and their attack makes stagger the turns in the abyss… /.../ the immense overflow of water had covered the hills; floods hitherto unknown beat the top of the mountains.” According to Apollodore, “all the men were destroyed, except for some which had taken refuge on the top of the close mountains”. This in memory of this cataclysm is which the Greeks initially baptized the Black Sea " Axine" i.e. “unfriendly sea”, before it becomes later Euxine (or Euxine Sea) i.e. the friendly sea?

Confrontation of the assumption of the seism and the old texts

In the West, three Western texts evoke a seism release of the flood:

Timée of Plato: “In the days which followed, took place of great earthquakes, the floods, and in only one day, and only one night fatal, all that there was warriors on your premise was absorbed at the same time in the half-opened ground, and the island of Atlantis disappeared under the sea”
Critias from Plato " an island vaster than Libya and Asia, and which once after being absorbed at the time of an earthquake, "
the Metamorphoses of Ovide: “The god himself struck the ground of his three-pronged fork; it trembled and by its jolt opened the retirements of water”.

In the East, only one text, the epopee of Gilgamesh, which is also oldest, evokes a flood started by a seism: “Bases of the immense ground broke like an earthenware jar”

The other Eastern texts are much less evocative than the Western texts; they describe sources which spout out of the ground or under the sea:

the Bible: “in this day all the sources of the large abyss spouted out”
Coran: 54, 12: “and we made spout out the ground in sources. ”

Indeed, on the assumption of the discharge of water of the Mediterranean by the Bosphorus, the origin of the rise of sea waters could not be included/understood by the inhabitants of the banks East of the Black Sea, located at meadows of 600 km of the Bosphorus. The “sources of the large abyss” which raise the sea level take their direction then. And it is then possible that allusion to the Ararat mount comes from the collective memory of a population which the flood had pushed back on escarpées banks of the Caucasus, and who from there had passed in Mésopotamie, thus locating its origin on the side of Arménie, which is precisely on the way.

Lastly, the few toponymic mentions identified in the ancient texts locate the flood at the north of a line mount Ararat Parnassus-mount.

Quotations on the Flood

Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort: “There is only the uselessness of the first flood which prevents God from sending a second of it. ”
Ambrose Bierce: “ Flood : first and remarkable experiment of baptism which made disappear from the world all the sins and all the sinners. ”

Artistic and scientific evocations

Artistic

the Gospel S often take again this topic, in particular the Golden Spoils Four-bit byte with its remarkable " Did it rain? "

Cinema

the prophecy of the frogs of Jacques-Rémy Girerd, cartoon.

Literature

the Elected officials , news of Alejo Carpentier (1965).
absorbed Civilizations , Graham Hancock (official site), ED. Pygmalion

Scientists

W.B. Ryan and W.C. Pitman, Noah' S Flood: The new scientific discoveries butt the vent that changed history , 1998
V. Yanko-Hombach and Al , The Black Sea Flood Question: Exchanges in Coastline, Climate and Human Settlement (Springer, 2007,971 pages)

References

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