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42-691: Around 1575, the Spaniard Cristòbal de Molina wrote about the origins of the site in Relación de las fábulas y ritos de los Incas (Account of the Fables and Rites of the Incas). According to him, after consulting with his llamas, a shepherd foresaw the great flood. He took refuge with his 6 children on top of the Ancasmarca hill, which elevated as the waters rose. When the water cleared, the shepherd's children repopulated

84-463: A Stone Age society which lived close to the Mediterranean Sea could have been wiped out by the rising sea level , an event which could have served as the basis for the story. Archaeologist Bruce Masse stated that some of the narratives of a great flood discovered in many cultures around the world may be linked to an oceanic asteroid impact that occurred between Africa and Antarctica , around

126-707: A culture hero , who "represents the human craving for life". The flood-myth motif occurs in many cultures, including the manvantara -sandhya in Hinduism , Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greek mythology , the Genesis flood narrative , the Mesopotamian flood stories, and the Cheyenne flood story. One example of a flood myth is in the Epic of Gilgamesh . Many scholars believe that this account

168-433: A deluge myth is a myth in which a great flood , usually sent by a deity or deities, destroys civilization , often in an act of divine retribution . Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primeval waters which appear in certain creation myths , as the flood waters are described as a measure for the cleansing of humanity, in preparation for rebirth . Most flood myths also contain

210-488: A meteor or comet crashed into the Indian Ocean around 3000–2800 BCE, and created the 18-mile (29 km) undersea Burckle Crater and Fenambosy Chevron , and generated a giant tsunami that flooded coastal lands. Mesopotamia , like other early sites of riverine civilisation , was flood-prone; and for those experiencing valley-wide inundations, flooding could destroy the whole of their known world. According to

252-539: A boat so that life may survive. Both the Epic of Gilgamesh and Atra-Hasis are preceded by the similar Eridu Genesis ( c.  1600 BCE ) —the oldest surviving example of such a flood-myth narrative, known from tablets found in the ruins of Nippur in the late 1890s and translated by assyriologist Arno Poebel . Academic Yi Samuel Chen analyzed various texts from the Early Dynastic III Period through to

294-402: A cometary flood, but from cometary fire, and a cometary rain of stones." Footnotes Citations Ziusudra Ziusudra ( Old Babylonian Akkadian : 𒍣𒌓𒋤𒁺 , romanized:  Ṣíusudrá [ṣi₂-u₄-sud-ra₂], Neo-Assyrian Akkadian : 𒍣𒋤𒁕 , romanized:  Ṣísudda , Ancient Greek : Ξίσουθρος , romanized :  Xísouthros ) of Shuruppak (c. 2900 BC)

336-476: A constant menace to its people. Kur also came to mean 'land' in general". The last sentence can be translated as "In the mountain of crossing, the mountain of Dilmun, the place where the sun rises". A Sumerian document known as the Instructions of Shuruppak dated by Kramer to about 2600 BC, refers in a later version to Ziusudra. Kramer stated "Ziusudra had become a venerable figure in literary tradition by

378-454: A flood myth similar to the earlier versions. In it, the Bronze race of humans angers the high god Zeus with their constant warring. Zeus decides to punish humanity with a flood. The Titan Prometheus , who had created humans from clay, tells the secret plan to Deucalion , advising him to build an ark in order to be saved. After nine nights and days, the water starts receding and the ark lands on

420-468: A missing section in the tablet, we learn that the gods have decided to send a flood to destroy mankind. The god Enki (lord of the underworld sea of fresh water and Sumerian equivalent of Babylonian god Ea) warns Ziusudra, the ruler of Shuruppak, to build a large boat; the passage describing the directions for the boat is also lost. When the tablet resumes, it is describing the flood. A terrible storm raged for seven days, "the huge boat had been tossed about on

462-566: A mountain. The Cheyenne , a North American Great Plains tribe, believe in a flood which altered the course of their history, perhaps occurring in the Missouri River Valley . Floods in the wake of the Last Glacial Period (c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago) are speculated to have inspired myths that survive to this day. Plato's allegory of Atlantis is set over 9,000 years before his time, leading some scholars to suggest that

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504-594: A saviour agrees with that assigned to his counterpart Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh Epic. ... both epigraphical and archaeological discovery give good grounds for believing that Ziusudra was a prehistoric ruler of a well-known historic city the site of which has been identified." That Ziusudra was a king from Shuruppak is supported by the Gilgamesh XI tablet, which makes reference to Utnapishtim (the Akkadian translation of

546-485: A shock of a comet would produce. A similar hypothesis was popularized by Minnesota congressman and pseudoarchaeology writer Ignatius L. Donnelly in his book Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (1883), which followed his better-known book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882). In Ragnarok , Donnelly argued that an enormous comet struck the Earth around 6,000 BCE to 9,000 BCE, destroying an advanced civilization on

588-487: A worldwide flood had been the result of a near-miss by a comet. The issue was taken up in more detail by William Whiston , a protégé of and popularizer of the theories of Isaac Newton , who argued in his book A New Theory of the Earth (1696) that a comet encounter was the probable cause of the Biblical Flood of Noah in 2342 BCE. Whiston also attributed the origins of the atmosphere and other significant changes in

630-702: Is listed in the WB-62 Sumerian King List recension as the last king of Sumer prior to the Great Flood . He is subsequently recorded as the hero of the Eridu Genesis and appears in the writings of Berossus as Xisuthros. Ziusudra is one of several mythic characters who are protagonists of Near Eastern flood myths, including Atrahasis , Utnapishtim and the biblical Noah . Although each story displays its own distinctive features, many key story elements are common to two, three, or all four versions. In

672-722: The Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 30th century BC), which immediately preceded the Early Dynastic I period, was discovered directly below the Shuruppak flood stratum. Max Mallowan wrote that "we know from the Weld Blundell prism [i.e. WB-62] that at the time of the Flood, Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah, was King of the city of Shuruppak where he received warning of the impending disaster. His role as

714-504: The Matsya Avatar of the Vishnu warns the first man, Manu , of the impending flood, and also advises him to build a giant boat. In Zoroastrian Mazdaism , Ahriman tries to destroy the world with a drought, which Mithra ends by shooting an arrow into a rock, from which a flood springs; one man survives in an ark with his cattle. Norbert Oettinger argues that the story of Yima and

756-629: The Vara was originally a flood myth, and the harsh winter was added in due to the dry nature of Eastern Iran, as flood myths did not have as much of an effect as harsh winters. He has argued that the mention of melted water flowing in Videvdad 2.24 is a remnant of the flood myth, and mentions that the Indian flood myths originally had their protagonist as Yama, but it was changed to Manu later. In Plato 's Timaeus , written c.  360 BCE , Timaeus describes

798-434: The "lost continent" of Atlantis . Donnelly, following others before him, attributed the Biblical Flood to this event, which he hypothesized had also resulted in catastrophic fires and climate change . Shortly after the publication of Ragnarok , one commenter noted, "Whiston ascertained that the deluge of Noah came from a comet's tail; but Donnelly has outdone Whiston, for he has shown that our planet has suffered not only from

840-463: The Earth to the effects of comets. In Pierre-Simon Laplace 's book Exposition Du Systême Du Monde ( The System of the World ), first published in 1796, he stated: [T]he greater part of men and animals drowned in a universal deluge, or destroyed by the violence of the shock given to the terrestrial globe; whole species destroyed; all the monuments of human industry reversed: such are the disasters which

882-622: The Greek god Cronus , the father of Zeus ; and the assertion that the reed boat constructed by Xisuthros survived, at least until Berossus' day, in the "Corcyrean Mountains" of Armenia . Xisuthros was listed as a king, the son of one Ardates, and to have reigned 18 saroi . One saros ( shar in Akkadian) stands for 3600 and hence 18 saroi was translated as 64,800 years. A saroi or saros is an astrologolical term defined as 222 lunar months of 29.5 days or 18.5 lunar years equal to 17.93 solar years. Ziusudra

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924-550: The Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea basin. This has become the subject of considerable discussion. The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis offered another proposed natural explanation for flood myths. However, this idea was similarly controversial and has been refuted. The earliest known hypothesis about a comet that had a widespread effect on human populations can be attributed to Edmond Halley , who in 1694 suggested that

966-722: The Old Babylonian Period, and argues that the flood narrative was only added in texts written during the Old Babylonian Period . With regard to the Sumerian King List , observations by experts have always indicated that the portion of the Sumerian King List talking about before the flood differs stylistically from the King List Proper. Essentially Old Babylonian copies tend to represent a tradition of before

1008-503: The Old Babylonian Period, as the Sumerian King List went through updates and edits. The flood as a watershed in early history of the world was probably a new historiographical concept emerging in the Mesopotamian literary traditions during the Old Babylonian Period, as evident by the fact that the flood motif did not show up in the Ur III copy and that earliest chronographical sources related to

1050-488: The Sumerian name Ziusudra) with the epithet "man of Shuruppak" at line 23. The tale of Ziusudra is known from a single fragmentary tablet written in Sumerian, datable by its script to the 17th century BC ( Old Babylonian Empire ), and published in 1914 by Arno Poebel. The first part deals with the creation of man and the animals and the founding of the first cities Eridu , Bad-tibira , Larak , Sippar , and Shuruppak . After

1092-503: The WB-62 Sumerian king list recension, Ziusudra, or Zin-Suddu of Shuruppak , is listed as son of the last king of Sumer before a great flood. He is recorded as having reigned as both king and gudug priest for ten sars (periods of 3,600 years), although this figure is probably a copyist error for ten years. In this version, Ziusudra inherited rulership from his father Ubara-Tutu , who ruled for ten sars . The lines following

1134-510: The ark perishes. After the waters recede, all those aboard the ark disembark and have Yahweh's promise that he will never judge the earth with a flood again. Yahweh causes a rainbow to form as the sign of this promise. In Hindu mythology , texts such as the Satapatha Brahmana ( c. 6th century BCE) and the Puranas contain the story of a great flood, manvantara -sandhya , wherein

1176-563: The discovery of such remains in such locations; the Greeks hypothesized that Earth had been covered by water on several occasions, citing the seashells and fish fossils found on mountain tops as evidence of this idea. Speculation regarding the Deucalion myth has postulated a large tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea, caused by the Thera eruption (with an approximate geological date of 1630–1600 BCE), as

1218-507: The excavation report of the 1930s excavation at Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara, Iraq), the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic layers at the site were separated by a 60-cm yellow layer of alluvial sand and clay, indicating a flood, like that created by river avulsion , a process common in the Tigris–Euphrates river system . Similar layers have been recorded at other sites as well, all dating to different periods, which would be consistent with

1260-485: The flood "king Ziusudra ... they caused to dwell in the KUR Dilmun , the place where the sun rises". The Sumerian word "KUR" is an ambiguous word. Samuel Noah Kramer states that "its primary meanings is 'mountain' is attested by the fact that the sign used for it is actually a pictograph representing a mountain. From the meaning 'mountain' developed that of 'foreign land', since the mountainous countries bordering Sumer were

1302-580: The flood apart from the actual King List, whereas the Ur III copy of the King List and the duplicate from the Brockmon collection indicate that the King List Proper once existed independent of mention of the flood and the tradition of before the flood. Essentially, Chen gives evidence to prove that the section of before the flood and references to the flood in the Sumerian King List were all later additions added in during

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1344-552: The flood show up in the Old Babylonian Period. Chen also concludes that the name of " Ziusudra " as a flood hero and the idea of the flood hinted at by that name in the Old Babylonian Version of " Instructions of Shuruppak " are only developments during that Old Babylonian Period, when also the didactic text was updated with information from the burgeoning Antediluvian Tradition. In the Hebrew Genesis ( 9th century BC ),

1386-743: The floor of the Gulf, which was a huge (800 km × 200 km, 500 mi × 120 mi) low-lying and fertile region in Mesopotamia, in which human habitation is thought to have been strong around the Gulf Oasis for 100,000 years. A sudden increase in settlements above the present-day water level is recorded at around 7,500  BP . The historian Adrienne Mayor theorizes that global flood stories may have been inspired by ancient observations of seashells and fish fossils in inland and mountain areas. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans all documented

1428-445: The god Yahweh , who had created man out of the dust of the ground, decides to flood the earth because of the corrupted state of mankind. Yahweh then gives the protagonist, Noah , instructions to build an ark in order to preserve human and animal life. When the ark is completed, Noah, his family, and representatives of all the animals of the earth are called upon to enter the ark. When the destructive flood begins, all life outside of

1470-521: The great waters," then Utu (Sun) appears and Ziusudra opens a window, prostrates himself, and sacrifices an ox and a sheep. After another break, the text resumes, the flood is apparently over, and Ziusudra is prostrating himself before An (Sky) and Enlil (Lordbreath), who give him "breath eternal" and take him to dwell in Dilmun . The remainder of the poem is lost. The Epic of Ziusudra adds an element at lines 258–261 not found in other versions, that after

1512-554: The mention of Ziusudra read: Then the flood swept over. After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kish. The city of Kish flourished in the Early Dynastic period soon after a river flood archaeologically attested by sedimentary strata at Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara ), Uruk, Kish, and other sites, all of which have been radiocarbon dated to ca. 2900 BC. Polychrome pottery from

1554-527: The middle of the third millennium B.C." Xisuthros (Ξίσουθρος) is a Hellenization of the Sumerian Ziusudra, known from the writings of Berossus , a priest of Bel in Babylon, on whom Alexander Polyhistor relied heavily for information on Mesopotamia. Among the interesting features of this version of the flood myth, are the identification, through interpretatio graeca , of the Sumerian god Enki with

1596-512: The myth's historical basis. Although the tsunami hit the South Aegean Sea and Crete , it did not affect cities in the mainland of Greece, such as Mycenae , Athens , and Thebes , which continued to prosper, indicating that it had a local rather than a region-wide effect. The Black Sea deluge hypothesis offers a controversial account of long-term flooding; the hypothesis argues for a catastrophic irruption of water about 5600 BCE from

1638-613: The nature of river avulsions. Shuruppak in Mesopotamian legend was the city of Uta-napishtim , the king who built a boat to survive the coming flood. The alluvial layer dates from around 2900 BC. The geography of the Mesopotamian area changed considerably with the filling of the Persian Gulf after sea waters rose following the last glacial period. Global sea levels were about 120 m (390 ft) lower around 18,000  BP and rose until 8,000 BP when they reached current levels, which are now an average 40 m (130 ft) above

1680-582: The region. For Molina, this was proof that the Andes had experienced the great flood told in the Bible by Noah. Other versions of the story explain that the llamas were sad because the stars were high in the sky and the animals understood what was coming. The word Ancasmarca is of Quechua origin and could have two different meanings: This Cusco Region geography article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Flood myth A flood myth or

1722-403: The time of a solar eclipse , that caused a tsunami . Among the 175 myths he analyzed were a Hindu myth speaking of an alignment of the five planets at the time, and a Chinese story linking the flood to the end of the reign of Empress Nu Wa . Fourteen flood myths refer to a full solar eclipse . According to Masse these indications point to the date May 10, 2807 BC. His hypothesis suggests that

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1764-517: Was copied from the Akkadian Atra-Hasis , which dates to the 18th century BCE. In the Gilgamesh flood myth , the highest god, Enlil , decides to destroy the world with a flood because humans have become too noisy. The god Ea , who had created humans out of clay and divine blood, secretly warns the hero Utnapishtim of the impending flood and gives him detailed instructions for building

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