Is every single flood myth grounded in the end of the Last Glacial Period?

[WalterWhite]

Cultures around the world---from ancient Native American to ancient Middle Eastern to ancient South Asian ones---have some form of flood myth---a myth that involves the world flooding (obviously).

It is widely speculated that these could be related to the end of the last Ice Age: as glaciers melted, sea levels rose, causing coastal communities around the globe to get flooded.

Do you think every single flood myth (without exception) is based on the end of the last Ice Age/start of the Holocene Era?

[Georg Ebner]

Cultures around the world---from ancient Native American to ancient Middle Eastern to ancient South Asian ones---have some form of flood myth---a myth that involves the world flooding (obviously).

It is widely speculated that these could be related to the end of the last Ice Age: as glaciers melted, sea levels rose, causing coastal communities around the globe to get flooded.

Do you think every single flood myth (without exception) is based on the end of the last Ice Age/start of the Holocene Era?

Perhaps in memory of a tsunami caused by volcanic eruptions? Of course: Myths are not about historical happenings, they express eternal (semi)truths symbolically.

[Samof94]

Isn't the Japanese version a subversion as their myth has their islands not get flooded?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Isn't the Japanese version a subversion as their myth has their islands not get flooded?

Well, for what its worth, as someone who has seen a fair amount of Japanese media, I would say that the "things have gotten so bad our cities are getting flooded" does seem to appear at least occasionally.

[Person Man]

Maybe

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

No, because "every single....without exception" is a very ambitious claim and should be presumed against as a matter of course. But lots of them probably are.

[Blue3]

Not every… but it probably influenced all cultures.

[John Dule]

I like this theory, but I also don't think it's necessary to explain how these myths get started. It's hardly implausible that a moderately imaginative bronze-age storyteller saw rain fall and said "What if this happened... but a LOT?"

[Stranger in a strange land]

No. Some probably are, but not all. Also, there are a lot of misconceptions about "flood myths":

- Noah-type Flood Myths (where a Deity floods the entire world and a righteous man and his family have to take two of every animal aboard a ship) are indeed common throughout the world, but they mostly occur in cultures in the Old World that had contact with one another in antiquity, however infrequent.
- Many "Flood Myths", especially from the New World, are indeed myths about floods, but have little in common with the Noah/Gilgamesh/Decaulion story other than that they involve floods.
- You'll often hear that every culture has a flood myth, and while they're common, they aren't universal. Japan doesn't have a flood myth, as has already been noted, and some Australian aboriginal cultures have them, while some don't.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No. Some probably are, but not all. Also, there are a lot of misconceptions about "flood myths":

- Noah-type Flood Myths (where a Deity floods the entire world and a righteous man and his family have to take two of every animal aboard a ship) are indeed common throughout the world, but they mostly occur in cultures in the Old World that had contact with one another in antiquity, however infrequent.
- Many "Flood Myths", especially from the New World, are indeed myths about floods, but have little in common with the Noah/Gilgamesh/Decaulion story other than that they involve floods.
- You'll often hear that every culture has a flood myth, and while they're common, they aren't universal. Japan doesn't have a flood myth, as has already been noted, and some Australian aboriginal cultures have them, while some don't.

What's interesting about Australian aboriginal cultures is they have myths about the creation of the Great Barrier Reef and reference a land bridge to New Guinea, meaning they must be over 10,000 years old. They weren't written down at all until the 19th century.

[pbrower2a]

I don't know them all, and timing may not match. Large releases of floodwaters would have caused extensive (but not worldwide) flooding.

I would guess that during the colder, drier times the Persian Gulf was above the sea level of the time, but that it flooded. "All around the world" might have been a couple hundred miles for someone with a raft who knew no better how big the world is. 

[Hindsight was 2020]

More likely connected to the fact that ancient civilizations were so dependent on agriculture based near water (think Mesopotamia, Egypt) that any local flooding probably felt like the world ending and thus would generate such stories

[Blue3]

I'd say it's a big part that was underrated until recently, but there have been other areas submerged by the sea (see the Persian Gulf, other areas around the Near East, and the Harappan cities).

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

there's theories that western versions of it are related to the Mediterranean breaching into the modern Black Sea and flooding it, iirc.