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Originally Posted by politicophile
Yes, but a 400-foot rise in sea levels over the course of several centuries isn't a "flood" as such. According to Wiki, recent ice ages have occurred in 40,000-100,000 year cycles. So while you are correct about the change in sea level, there is simply no way that the melting of said ice could possibly have been perceived by humans living at the time as a flood - the change was far too gradual for that. A better explanation is that people living in river valleys sometimes experienced catastrophic localized flooding that they interpreted as being worldwide, resulting in their authorship of the mythology in question. |
If the mediteranean and black sea were dry, during the height of the last ice age and ice dams held back the atlantic. When rising sea levels broke these dams, the ensuing flood would certainly be epic. Thats not as simplistic, but plausible. It may have been a compination of rising sea levels, catastophic flooding, and localized flooding. The simplest explanation tends to be correct, but not always.