In mythological history, the flood universal It is described as a great flood sent by divinities to punish the human being. Around the 2,500 BC. Noah, the biblical patriarch that builds the ark, faces the flood in chapters 6-9 of the Old Testament. Gilgamesh, hero of the Sumerian epic, in the same era, meets the flood on the journey in search of immortality. We find descriptions of the flood Also in the Koran, in the Indian sacred books and in Chinese poems, and in many other mythological narratives of Asia and Oceania. But not only that: in the mythology of Hawaii we come across a story similar to that of Noah, Azteci, Maya and the Inca have left us trace of an induction who submerged the land known by them, and we meet the flood Both in Norse and Irish mythology. But this universal flood whose mythology has narrated so much, and that in the past centuries has inspired the works of artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Donizetti, was there really it was?
If the voice of the ancients tells us yes, historians and scientists have not yet found the actual test that the water really covered all the Earth’s globe At the same time, and the theories are still discordant.
The possible archaeological confirmation of the universal flood: the flood of the Black Sea
In the 90s William BF Ryan and Walter C. Pitmanmarine biologists of Columbia University They went in search of the archaeological traces of the flood narrated in the myths, claiming that the populations of the area had taken inspiration from a fact in ancient times. They then installed underwater cameras over 100 meters deep in the Black Sea basin, thanks to which they identified dunes made up of wind sands. Their investigations therefore show how, about 7,500 years ago, the level of Mediterranean Sea he got up to such an extent to be overflowing in Black Seaflooding all surrounding territories. According to Pitman and Ryan’s theory, therefore, the flood would be a plausible fact, even if very prior to the narratives of our heroes Noah and Gilgamesh.
The great flood in China, a possible trace of the flood?
The Chinese mythological hero Yu also survives a big flood In 4,000 BC and founded the Xia dynasty, starting the history of Chinese civilization. In 2016, the researchers of the Nanjing Normal Universityled by Dr. Wu Qinglong have actually found the traces of a catastrophic flood that devastated the area of Jishi’s throat, along the yellow river, not far from the archaeological site of Lajia, said “Chinese Pompeii” Because swept away by a natural cataclysm.
The scientists found traces of debris up to 50 meters thick, and estimated the scope of the waves up to 300-500,000 cubic meters per second. A flood Of this entity would certainly have changed the face of China of the time but, also this time, the period is not compatible: the use of carbon dating, the mega-high also by scientists of theAmerican University Purdue and from theNational University of Taiwantherefore, is not so much a confirmation of the universal flood, but of the Chinese flood which saw Yu emerge as a hero, even if at times other than those narrated.
Cataclysms yes, universal flood no: scientists do not agree
David Montgomeryprofessor of Geomorphology atUniversity of Seattlesaid that throughout the earth it could not exist then – as it could not exist now – a sufficient amount of water to cover the lands that emerged mountains included. According to an estimate made by Montgomery, in fact, it appears that if all the water present in the atmosphere also descended to our planet even the world, the world we know could be submerged, but below about 2.5 centimeters of water. Even if all the glaciers melted simultaneously, the raising of the sea would reach a height of about 60 meters: certainly a catastrophic situation, but not sufficient to hold the emerged land.
And, although our planet in a very distant past, about 233 million years agohas been affected by the so -called carnic multvial episode, a adverse climatic condition that has seen rain for a million years, we are however too far from the appearance of human life in order to overlap this event to universal flood narrated in the myths. Although stories of heroes to the four corners of the globe tell a similar story, it is possible that in scientific terms it has never happened.
What is certain that there was only one flood of flood, but multiple: that all these narratives have merged in the myth of a universal flood?
