Flood tales

You may have read or heard of Noah and his ark, or Utnapishtim and the Gilgamesh epic, or the even earlier Sumerian Epic of Ziusudra, and of the great flood (or floods?) that caused boats to be built by the belivers and destroyed the unbelievers. Well the genetic diversity of mankind - or the limited diversity - suggests that at some time when there were numerically few modern humans around we did indeed become greatly reduced in number - perhaps perilously so - and quite obviously recovered (although the facts are disputed, as always). Whilst the deluge stories may be hard to believe, there may be a grain of truth in there, too. Mankind did settle near rivers after all (we still do) and they did on occasion flood, so at least some flood-plain based civilisations at various times would have experienced a widespread and devastating flood.

The story of a great flood is also mentioned in ancient Hindu texts, particularly the Satapatha Brahmana. Not Noah but Manu was informed of the coming deluge and was protected by the Matsya Avatara of Lord Vishnu (the 8th Avatara was Krishna, by the way) who had come to rid the world of the morally depraved and save the pious, and the animals and plants. Sound at all familiar?