The Great Flood Around the World
Noah's Ark is the best-known version, but it isn't the only one. From clay tablets in Iraq to temple texts in India, from the Andes to the Great Lakes, people all over the world tell of a time when the waters rose and almost everyone was lost. Here's what those stories say, how they compare, and what the ground itself remembers.
Where the stories come from
Each numbered pin marks roughly where a tradition was told or first written down. Click a pin to jump to its story.
Locations are approximate and show where a culture lived, not where the flood itself happened.
The stories
Summaries of each tradition in plain language, with the text or record it comes from. Filter by region.
What the stories share
Some details show up again and again. The Mesopotamian and biblical accounts are the closest, sharing even the birds sent out to look for dry land. Others share only the core idea: a flood that wipes out the world and a few survivors who start it again.
| Story | Warned in advance | Boat or vessel | Animals or seeds saved | Birds sent out | Lands on a mountain | Humanity renewed |
|---|
Yes = in the story. Later = added in later retellings. — = not in the story.
What the evidence shows
Geologists haven't found evidence of a single flood that covered the whole planet at once. They have found evidence of real, enormous floods. The biggest was the ocean itself rising about 120 meters (roughly 400 feet) as the Ice Age glaciers melted, drowning coastlines where people lived.
Global sea level since the last Ice Age
Meters below today's level. Approximate values from published sea-level reconstructions.
Show as a table
| Years ago | Approx. date | Sea level vs. today |
|---|
The oceans rise
As the ice sheets melted, the seas rose about 120 m. At times they rose several meters in a single lifetime. Land bridges and wide coastal plains went under, including Doggerland, the plain between Britain and Europe, and the land linking Australia to Tasmania and New Guinea.
The Missoula floods
In what is now Montana, an ice dam holding back a giant glacial lake broke again and again. Each time, a wall of water swept across Washington State to the Pacific and carved the "Channeled Scablands."
The Storegga tsunami
A huge undersea landslide off Norway sent a tsunami across the North Atlantic. It struck Scotland, Norway and the last of Doggerland, which the rising sea soon swallowed completely.
The Black Sea hypothesis
Geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman proposed that the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus and quickly flooded a lower, freshwater Black Sea. Their 1998 book tied this to Noah. Other scientists think the rise was slower and smaller, and the debate continues.
Flood layers in Mesopotamia
In 1929 Leonard Woolley dug up a thick layer of clean flood silt at Ur, and other Sumerian cities like Shuruppak (Ziusudra's home city) and Kish have flood layers too. They come from different dates, so they point to many big local river floods, not one single event.
Memories in Aboriginal stories?
Geographer Patrick Nunn and linguist Nicholas Reid studied 21 Aboriginal Australian stories about the coast being drowned. They found the stories match the old, lower coastlines, which suggests oral tradition may keep real events alive for thousands of years.
Why are there so many flood stories?
People have explained this in different ways, and more than one can be true at once.
One real event
Many Jews, Christians and Muslims believe these stories are memories of a single real flood, the one in Genesis and the Qur'an. In that view, the stories were scattered and changed as people spread out afterward.
Floods are universal
Most people have always lived near rivers and coasts, and floods are one of the most destructive things they face. Cultures that had nothing to do with each other could each make a disaster they lived through into a story about the world ending.
The end of the Ice Age
Rising seas drowned lands where people really lived. The Australian research suggests that memories of lost land can last a very long time.
Stories travel
Some versions are clearly related. The Hebrew account and the Babylonian accounts share specific details. Some stories were first written down by Christian missionaries or monks, who may have shaped them to look more like Noah. Flood stories are also rarer in some places, like much of Africa.
Sources & further reading
- The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI; Atrahasis; the Sumerian "Eridu Genesis" tablet from Nippur.
- Genesis chapters 6–9; Qur'an, Surah Hud (11) and Surah Nuh (71).
- Apollodorus, Library 1.7.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 1.
- Shatapatha Brahmana 1.8.1; Matsya Purana.
- Book of Documents (Shujing); Mencius; Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing).
- Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda (Gylfaginning); Lebor Gabála Érenn.
- Popol Vuh (K'iche' Maya); Legend of the Suns (Leyenda de los Soles, 1558).
- Juan de Betanzos, Suma y narración de los Incas (1551); Cristóbal de Molina, Fables and Rites of the Incas (c. 1575).
- Basil Johnston, Ojibway Heritage; Abraham Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race.
- Nunn & Reid, "Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago," Australian Geographer (2016).
- Ryan & Pitman, Noah's Flood (1998); Leonard Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees (1929).
- Alan Dundes (ed.), The Flood Myth (1988), a classic collection comparing flood stories from around the world.