The survivors of the Great Flood
Until the end of the 1800s, the Great Flood was considered a sort of religious tale or myth from the Bible (Genesis 8:4) with no connection to reality. But around 1880, the first copies of the translation from Akkadian of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an Assyrian text in which the same situation as the biblical Flood is described under different names, began circulating. A story disconnected from reality can exist, but two similar stories suggest a clue, as detective novel heroes would say.
When we speak of a Flood, there is a bit of confusion: it refers both to sudden rains that lasted a very long time and to a massive rise in sea levels due to rain. Some think that rain raised sea levels to the point of submerging all lands. This is simply impossible; neither Earth nor its surrounding atmosphere contains enough water to do this. These are two different things: rain that lasted a very long time, and one (or more) waves that swept everything away — where “everything” refers to what was known by the few survivors.
If you’re on a boat lifted by a wave, it will seem as if “the whole” world (shoreline or other boats) is below you. The higher the wave, the more it will feel like the world around you has been swallowed by the sea. Humans, being inherently egocentric, find it easier to believe the world is being swallowed by water than to realize they’ve been lifted from the surface they were on a moment before.
In the early 1900s, the remains of Noah’s Ark, or of someone else's, were reportedly sighted near a glacier on Mount Ararat in Turkey, at an altitude of about 3,500 meters. Dozens of expeditions were undertaken, some fossilized wood samples of the Ark were brought back, and photos were taken.
The Flood myth has now taken on absurd connotations: it is implausible that it rained so much as to bring a 110-meter-long ship to over 3,000 meters, as there couldn’t be that much water on Earth. Nor is it plausible to think that someone built a ship at that altitude, where even with modern technology, people can only survive a few hours. Yet the ship is there and proves that something “remarkable” must have happened.
In 497 BCE, Plato wrote Timaeus, the text most cited by Aristotle, in which he discusses the sphericity of Earth, its movement, and the movement of stars and planets. There he makes an intriguing statement.
An Egyptian priest from Sais (the ancient cultural, political, and administrative capital of Egypt) spoke with Solon, saying:
“You Greeks are young and know nothing of what happened… humans have been destroyed and will be destroyed again in various ways. The greatest destructions happened from fire and water, but others have occurred, like the legend told among you that Phaethon stole the sun god’s chariot, and, failing to drive it along the usual path, set everything on earth ablaze and perished himself… The truth is this: at long intervals, the movements of celestial bodies change. From time to time, everything on Earth perishes from an excess of fire. Those who live in the mountains and dry places perish more than those living near seas and rivers. Conversely, when the gods purify the world with water, all those living near rivers and seas are swept away, while only those on high mountains survive. Thus only the rough mountain people survive, and civilization must begin again from scratch.”
There is no doubt that the priest was referring to several destructions that occurred on Earth, brought on by different factors, during ancient times but still within human existence. A Chinese document describing floods due to rivers reversing course corresponds closely with Plato’s mention of water-driven destruction. China and Egypt speak of similar disasters.
Agriculture
About twelve thousand years ago, the Paleolithic revolution took place: humans began cultivating the land. This occurred simultaneously worldwide. After over a hundred thousand years of existence, Homo sapiens suddenly started farming. Why not before, why not after, why all at once, and most intriguingly, why did people worldwide start farming on mountains? Everyone knows farming on plains is easier than on mountains; no one would farm mountainous land unless forced by necessity. The three most fertile places on Earth are the Po Valley, the Yellow River Valley, and the Mekong Delta. Yet the Paleolithic human who created the greatest invention in history, agriculture, despite having the entire world at his disposal, was “foolish” enough to start farming on mountains.
The renowned Russian botanist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887–1943) discovered that agriculture began simultaneously worldwide in highlands above 1,500 meters. This discovery coincides remarkably with Plato’s claims in The Republic, where he says civilization began in highlands, and with the Egyptian priest’s statement in Timaeus that after a water catastrophe, only the mountain people survive, allowing civilization to start anew. But there’s more: from the studies of Vavilov and J.R. Harlan, it is inferred that agriculture began around 11,600 years ago, precisely the date Plato gives for the destruction of the mythical continent Atlantis. Plato says Atlantis was destroyed 9,000 years before Solon; if we consider that Solon lived 2,600 years ago, Atlantis’s end would have been in 9,600 BCE, or 11,600 years ago — exactly the date calculated by botanists.
To explain why agriculture began on mountains, let’s consider what could have happened if Earth’s axis shifted.
Suppose a large meteorite struck Earth; everything within hundreds of kilometers would have been instantly destroyed by the impact and energy released. The Earth’s axis would have begun to shift, causing earthquakes, landslides, and floods everywhere. The ocean water, pushed by the mass of moving continents, would have begun flooding the lands moving toward it and receding from those moving away. After flooding the plains, the sea, as it receded, would have formed an enormous wave. Drawn by the void left on the opposite side of the oceans, it circled the Earth multiple times, destroying everything in its path. Once its destructive force was spent, lands below 1,500 meters were flooded or soaked with seawater, which, being salty, prevented farming until rain eventually washed out the salt, allowing lower regions to be farmed. The earliest farmlands outside highlands and the first civilizations were located along river valleys, starting from the high ground. The few survivors of this catastrophe, as written in Timaeus, were those who happened to be on mountains above 1,500 meters.
If something like this happened today, how many people would survive? Very few. They might not be “rough mountain people” as Plato described, but they would certainly be scarce, and only with great hardship would they manage to find food and revive civilization, restarting agriculture “on the highlands.”
Notes
- An “odd” fact is that the photos are identical to the drawing of the Ark on Mount Ararat in the 1492 world map by Grazioso Benincasa. Cartographers of the 1400s knew the world better than American astronauts 500 years later!
- Plato, Timaeus, 20e.
- Plato, Timaeus, 22b.
- Plato, Timaeus, 22d.
