Is the Flood Myth Universal? Flood Myths From Around the World

The story of the great flood and Noah’s Ark is one of the most well-known and important in the Bible. But the idea of a great deluge, that destroyed all of humanity except for a few good souls who are forewarned and manage to survive on a boat, appears in many cultures around the world.

There is scientific evidence that a great flood may have occurred around the Mediterranean around 7,500 years ago, which could explain the existence of common myths in that region of the world. But flood stories also survive in China, the Americas, and Australia. What is the explanation for this shared cultural phenomenon? Below are summaries of flood myths from around the world.

Gilgamesh was a King of Uruk, a city on the Euphrates River. While probably not all the adventures recorded in his epic are true, Gilgamesh seems to have been a real king who ruled around 2700 BCE. Parts of his story are told in five Sumerian poems dating from around 2100 BCE, and this is the source material for a singular epic written in Akkadian in the 18th century BCE or earlier.

The epic contains one of three known Mesopotamian flood myths, and it bears a striking resemblance to the biblical flood myth. This is perhaps not surprising since both myths come from the same region of the world. Gilgamesh is not the hero of the flood myth but instead hears the story when he seeks out another man named Utnapishtim to learn how he acquired eternal life.

Utnapishtim explains to Gilgamesh that a long time ago, the gods became irritated with the constant noise caused by mankind and decided to destroy everyone in a great flood. But the god Ea warned Utnapishtim and told him to tear down his house and use the material to build a boat in the shape of a cube and to take within the boat the seed of all living creatures.

Utnapishtim built the boat over a period of seven days, and on the next day, the rain began to fall. Utnapishtim filled the boat with his family and craftsmen, all his gold, and animals both wild and tame. Within 24 hours, the world was inundated by a flood so intense that even the gods fled to the highest heaven from the rising water.

The intense rain continued for six days and six nights, and on the seventh day, the water became calm. Eventually, Utnapishtim managed to perch his boat on the exposed tip of Mount Nasir (possibly near the city of Sulaymaniyah in modern Kurdistan). He regularly sent out birds—doves, swallows, and ravens—until one day a raven did not return, indicating that it had found land.

But Utnapishtim could not simply sail to this emerging land, because the flood had been caused by the gods to kill mankind. Instead, he made sacrifices to call the gods to him. They were so shocked by the destruction that they had wrought that they granted Utnapishtim and his wife eternal life as an apology. The land could then be resettled and repopulated by the occupants of the boat.

There are also several flood myths in Hawaiian mythology, perhaps unsurprising considering the low-lying islands are susceptible to flooding. The one that most closely resembles the Biblical and Mesopotamian myth is the story of Nu’u.

Like other heroes, Nu’u realized that a great flood was threatening his people, so he built a large boat with a house on top of it for his family. When the flood finally subsided, the first land to appear was the summit of Mount Kea in Hawaii, so Nu’u set down here. Nu’u originally thought that it was the moon that had saved him, and so made sacrifices to it. But the creator god Kane descended to earth on a rainbow to explain that he was the one who saved Nu’u and his family.

This flood myth as it is told today may have been influenced by Christian missionaries who heard the story and tried to align it with their own. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the Hawaiians have a native flood myth.

Another Polynesian flood myth is called Kekaiakahinalie. It starts with a large, peaceful, and prosperous kingdom ruled over by Konikonia. However, things changed when the fisherman failed to catch a single fish for three days. The god of fishermen, called Kuula, told them that their lines were being cut by his sister, who lived under the sea.

Kuula taught the fisherman how to lure her onto land and prevent her from ever returning to the sea. But her parents Kahinalie and Hinakaauaumoana missed their daughter and searched for her, causing the sea water to rise to the top of Mount Kea, where the people took refuge. Eventually, not finding their daughter, they returned to the ocean and the waters receded. The new land was more fertile than before, and King Konikonia had a new wife, a woman from under the sea.

China has a flood myth that the legend suggests occurred between 2300-2200 BCE, which may have lasted two generations. Geological evidence suggests that a devastating flood may indeed have affected China for several decades in around 1920 BCE. The Chinese flood myth is much more practical and less mystical than other flood myths.

According to one version of the story, during the reign of Emperor Yao, both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River overflowed, causing a massive flood that left none of the emperor’s territory unscathed. It is described as a natural phenomenon, but one serious enough to threaten the heavens.

The floods continued for an extended time, so Yao turned to his advisors to find a way to mitigate the damage. They suggested that they make his relative Gun his co-ruler and let him deal with the problem. Gun stole a continuously self-expanding soil called Xirang from the Supreme Divinity to ensure that land stayed above water, but annoyed the god in the process, who blocked Gun’s efforts for the next nine years.

After these years of failure, Yao made another relative, Shun, his co-ruler. Shun took a more administrative approach and tried to better organize the people to work harder. This included standardizing things such as the calendar, weights, and measures, and he divided the kingdom into four new administrative regions centered on the mountains. While his reforms helped the problem, after four years, the realm was still devastated by floods.

Next, Yao made another relative, Yu, a co-ruler. He came up with a plan to drain the water away, which required the help of supernatural beings such as a channel-digging dragon. He was successful in controlling the floods, which allowed him to become the sole ruler and establish the Xia Dynasty.

In Greek mythology, Deucalion is the son of Prometheus, the Titan who shared the secret of fire with mankind. Deucalion reportedly lived around the end of the Greek Bronze Age (c. 3200-1100 BCE).

At around this time, Zeus became irritated with the Arcadian king Lycaon. We are told that Zeus was unhappy when Lycaon sacrificed a boy to him. This may be a reference to another surviving story about Lycaon that saw him kill and cook his son Nyctimus and serve him to Zeus to see if the god would recognize human flesh. In this alternate story, Zeus turns Lycaon into a wolf and kills all his children. But in Deucalion’s story, Zeus decides to send a great flood to kill everyone.

Prometheus helped his son avoid the flood by building a giant floating chest. While the chest was carefully provisioned for Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, they did not rescue any animals. They survived on the ship for nine days before the waters began to recede.

But the pair weren’t expected to repopulate the world the old-fashioned way. Instead, the oracle at Themis told Deucalion that he should cover his head and throw his mother’s bones behind him. The husband and wife understood their mother to be the great Mother Earth, Gaia and threw stones to represent her bones. The stones thrown by Deucalion became men and the stones of Pyrrha became women.

Flooding the World With Ymir’s Blood in Norse Mythology

Norse mythology also has a version of the flood myth. At the beginning of time, the world was populated by gods and giants. The gods were all descended from the first god, Buri. His son Borr had three sons with his wife, Odin, Vili, and Ve. But while the gods were procreating the old-fashioned way, the first giant Ymir was asexual, and other giants sprung forth from his body in great numbers.

Odin and his brothers soon became concerned about how many giants there were in the world compared to their own number. So, they decided to kill Ymir. When they did, they flooded the universe with Ymir’s blood, killing almost all his giant offspring. A single giant, Bergelmir, and his wife made a boat that enabled them to survive the bloody deluge. They became the progenitors of a new race of giants, who reproduced in much more controlled numbers.

Odin and his brothers also used the body of Ymir to shape the universe. They used his flesh to create the earth, his blood the sea, and his bones and teeth to make rocks. They hung his skull above the earth as the sky and used his brains to make the clouds. Within this new world, they created a fortified world which they protected with a great wall made from Ymir’s eyelashes. They then created mankind to populate this fortress and concerned themselves with protecting their fragile creations from the giants.

Native North American tribes also told flood myths, but as in the case of the Hawaiian tale, what survives today is probably influenced by Christian ideas imported by missionaries. The following legend belongs to the Ojibwe people.

A long time ago, men and women had lost respect for one another and turned to evil practices. This upset the Creator, who decided to send a flood to purify the earth. But one man, named Waynaboozhoo, was able to survive by making a log raft for himself and several animals. They were left floating on the raft for an entire lunar month.

Eventually, Waynaboozhoo could not wait any longer. He decided to send an animal into the water to retrieve mud from the old world to make a new world. First, he sent a loon, but it was unable to reach the bottom. Then he sent a beaver, but it too was unable to reach the bottom. Next, a small coot offered to try, but Waynaboozhoo did not believe he could do it. Instead, all the animals on the boat started to argue about the best way to complete the task.

Everyone fell asleep after much arguing, and when they woke up, they discovered that the coot was missing. His dead body was seen in the water and retrieved. In his beak, they found a small particle of mud from the world below. The other animals were ashamed of themselves for not treating the coot better.

Fortunately, Waynaboozhoo was able to breathe life back into the coot. He then commanded the small particle of mud to multiply and start to create new land. When he needed a place to put it, a turtle with a broad shell offered up his back. As the land grew, the animals were transported to it, starting with the ants, and eventually the moose. Finally, Waynaboozhoo joined them on the land and made it the new home of mankind.

The Aztecs believed that the world had already gone through four major destructions and that this world is the fifth iteration. The gods caused the destruction each time because they were unhappy with the behavior of mankind and wanted to start over.

The first world was ended when the sun was knocked out of the sky, plunging the world into darkness, and jaguars were sent to eat all of mankind. The second time, mankind was turned into monkeys and then blown away by a hurricane. The third time, a rain of fire was released onto the earth, leaving nothing behind but ashes.

The fourth time, the water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue cried so much at the idea that the people did not love her that she flooded the earth for 52 years. Many humans were turned into fish to survive, but there were also human survivors of the deluge.

A man called Coxcox and his wife Xochiquetzal survived the deluge on a small boat. When the waters receded and they returned to the land, they had many children, but they were all born without the ability to speak. Soon a dove descended and taught each of them a language, but the languages were so different that they could not understand each other. Consequently, each traveled into the world in different directions and formed the different tribes of those regions.

The myth also suggests that another god stole the bones of some dead people from the underworld and bathed them in his blood to bring those people back to life.

In Indian mythology, it is said that during the Satya Yuga, the first and best age, the people of Earth became irreligious, so the gods decided to cleanse the Earth and start over with a great flood. Lord Brahma, the creator, prepared to do the work, but Vishnu decided to visit a pious man named Manu and warn him.

Vishnu arrived in fish form and swam into Manu’s hands while he was washing them in a river. Not revealing himself, the fish called itself Matysa and asked Manu to save him. Manu did his best, first putting the fish in a jar. But the fish grew quickly, and Manu kept having to move him to larger containers. Eventually, the fish had to return to the ocean.

Vishnu was impressed with Manu’s kindness and warned him that in seven days a great flood would come that would destroy all life. The fish advised Manu to build a boat and stock it with all medicinal herbs, all varieties of seeds, and all types of animals.

As the flood raged, Manu asked Matysa why the gods had done this. Matsya told Manu that he was the only moral man left alive and would become the father of future generations. Vishnu, as Matysa, protected Manu throughout the flood. When the flood waters receded, the boat landed in the Himalayas, where Manu began to rebuild human civilization.

Lizards and Platypuses in the Australian Aboriginal Flood Myth

Many Australian Aboriginal tribes have flood stories, and while they are told as part of the Dreamtime before mankind walked the earth, they share many themes with other flood myths.

In one flood myth, the world had become overpopulated by animals which was causing conflict between different groups. The lizards, in particular, had a problem with the Platypuses. They decided to use their secret knowledge of how to make it rain by conducting certain rituals to flood the land and kill the platypuses.

The lizards did this with success and caused chaos in the animal kingdom, but eventually the waters subsided. The lizards assumed that their plan had been a success, but soon reports came in of Platypus tracks. It turns out that platypuses can live both on land and in the water.

The Platypuses told the other animals what the lizards had done, and they ended up being ostracized from the rest of the animal kingdom for their cruelty.

While this is a very different myth from some of the others, it is further evidence of how fundamental the idea of great floods is in human cultures.