Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Pyrrha of a great flood the gods were sending to punish mankind. The pious pair built a
ship, loaded it with provisions, and rode the rising floodwaters to the only unsubmerged
peak. As the flood receded, they disembarked on Mount Parnassus and thanked the gods
for delivering them from the deluge. Finding themselves alone in a devastated world, they
went to Themis's shrine to ask how mankind might be restored. Advised to throw the
bones of the great mother (Earth) behind them, the lonely couple tossed stones over their
shoulders. Deucalion's stones became men and Pyrrha's became women.
The satirist Lucian's second-century retelling of the story expanded to include a great
ark onto which Deucalion loaded pairs of every kind of creature on Earth. The Greek flood
story was evolving to track the increasingly popular Old Testament story. Whether or not
they originally represented different versions of the same event, ancient flood stories were
transmitted from one culture to the next, demonstrating the attraction this story held for
succeeding Middle Eastern societies.
Thousands of miles to the east, on the far side of Mesopotamia, Hindu society also had
flood traditions. In the earliest version, recorded in the
Satapatha Brahmana
sometime
between the fourth and second centuries
BC
, a tiny fish swam into the hands of a man named
Manu as he was washing himself. The fish called out, “Rear me, and I will save you.”
When Manu asked what it would save him from, the fish replied that one day a great flood
would carry away everything. So Manu raised the fish in a jar, and then a pit, until the fish
grew large enough to avoid predators. He then returned it to the sea. The grateful fish told
Manu when to build a boat, and as the flood came the now very large fish towed Manu to
a Himalayan peak and helped him fasten his boat to a tree. When the floodwaters receded,
Manu found himself alone in the world and began to pray. His prayers were answered with-
in a year when a woman grew from his offerings of butter and sour milk. The new couple
enthusiastically set about repopulating the world.
Later iterations of this story demonstrate its evolution, but could it originally have come
from the Babylonian flood story? Possibly. Indian seals and jewelry found in Mesopotami-
an excavations document exchange between the two cultures as early as 2500
BC
. Sea trade
routes provided for cultural exchange in later times. Such links led some to argue that the
Mesopotamian flood story spawned Hindu flood stories. Advocates of this view point to
the basic plot as paralleling the broad outline of the biblical flood.
