Undoubtedly the story is the primeval version of Noah’s flood, written thousands of years ago, covering many generations before Ezra dictated his version to five scribes in reconstructing Genesis I, II, and III.
One of the most important things about it is that we have a firsthand, on-the-spot report of the laying down of a strata as we see exposed in the walls of the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly, with a vivid description of the terrorizing wind and inundation which are a part of the event. Language scholars say that for anyone to write such a description, he had to be there and see it with his own eyes.
More important also, the great archaeologist Leonard Woolley found Utnapishtim’s rooftop-high layer of mud in the 1920’s – by then clay, about nine feet thick – in the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers region; further, beneath it a civilization which was buried, and totally different from any found above it.
Of course, we have the more than 8,000 survival legends in the Malay Peninsula region as uncovered by the great legendarian Fraser; we have other survival legends from the southwestern American Indians; and from Dine bajane, The Navajo Creation Story, by Paul G. Zolbrod,* we have this striking legend:
“At the end of the fourth night as they were at Last about to end their meeting, they all noticed something
‘University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1985
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white in the east. They also saw it in the south. It appeared in the west, too. And in the north it also appeared.
It looked like an endless chain of white mountains. They saw it on all sides. It surrounded them, and they noticed it was closing in on them rapidly. It was a high, insurmountable wall of water! And it was flowing in on them from all directions, so that they could not escape neither to the east nor to the west; neither to the south nor to the north could they escape.
So, having nowhere else to go, they took flight. Into the air they went. Higher and higher they soared, it is said.”
From this description of flight, and from following parts of the legend, it is my interpretation that the entire legend is one from the cataclysm of 11,500 years ago. It would take years of work on my part to nail down the time of that one legend. I don’t have years.
Let’s take the story which we know is from two cataclysms ago. Historians tell us that for a 4,500 year period before 7,000 years ago there is no written history from anywhere in the world. India, Greece, and Egypt follow this characteristic. It’s interesting that 7,000 plus 4,500 equals 11,500 years ago, isn’t it?
In light of the priests of Egypt telling Solon of a great antediluvian Hellenic civilization, let’s take a look at the Greek alphabet. It is written today as it has
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