Everyone knows the biblical story of the Flood and Noah's Ark. However, this story is not the only one - the legends of the flood (sometimes in writing) are found among very many peoples inhabiting various parts of the globe.

According to the Japanese version, the first ruler of Japan, who lived before the flood, settled on the islands immediately after the water began to subside.

Of the 130 Indian tribes of North, Central and South America there is not one in whose myths this theme would not be reflected. One of the ancient Mexican texts - "The Chimalpopoca Code" tells about it this way. “The sky came close to the earth, and in one day everything perished. Even the mountains disappeared under the water. ... They say that the rocks that we see now covered the whole earth, and tenzontli boiled and seethed with great noise, and mountains of red color rose ... ".

In the manuscripts of ancient Mexico, a legend about a worldwide flood that destroyed a race of giants objectionable to God has been preserved. All people turned into fish, with the exception of one couple, who hid in the branches of a tree.

Among the Indians of California, the hero of many myths, Coit, like Noah, escaped from the flood, accompanied by a fiery rain.

Memories of the terrible flood that flooded the highest mountain peaks are also preserved in the myths of the Canadian Indians.

Interestingly, in all the legends about the flood among the inhabitants of the New World, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are mentioned.

In the story of the Indians from the Yagan tribe inhabiting the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, some cosmic phenomenon appeared as the cause of the flood, perhaps it was a large meteorite falling into the sea: “...many centuries ago, the Moon fell into the sea. The waves of the sea rose like water in a bucket when a large stone is thrown into it. This caused a flood, from which only the happy inhabitants of this island, which broke away from the seabed and floated on the sea, escaped. Even the mountains on the mainland were flooded with water... When, finally, the Moon emerged from the depths of the sea, and the water began to decrease, the island returned to its original place.”

It is easy to see that the legends of the flood are preserved in the memory of the peoples of all continents of the globe. Only in the interior regions of Asia and Africa, remote from the seas and large rivers, the stories of the flood are relatively rare.

The question involuntarily arises: if the legends about the flood are so ubiquitous, then does this not indicate a global phenomenon that captured all continents, that is, was the flood really worldwide?

Changing the position of the boundaries of land and sea constantly occurs in the history of the Earth. The repeated change of marine conditions by continental ones is a ubiquitous phenomenon and is characteristic of geological history our planet.

Such transgressions (advance) and regressions (retreats) of the sea are caused by geological causes. During the epochs of mountain building, when the contrast of the relief increases, sea regressions occur: during this period, the waters of the World Ocean are concentrated in deep-water basins. The seas are getting deeper and the mountains are getting higher. On the contrary, in epochs of relative tectonic calm, when the topography of the bottom of the seas and land is gradually leveling out, the waters of the World Ocean cover the low plains of the continents with a thin film - another transgression of the sea begins.

In the geological history of the Earth, the largest transgressions were at the end of the Cambrian - the beginning of the Ordovician, in the Carboniferous, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

However, such changes in the contours of land and sea, which occur unusually slowly, cannot be classified as catastrophic phenomena.

It is much easier to explain catastrophes with the help of fluctuations in the level of the World Ocean, caused by a change in the amount of water in it. More recently (with geological point vision, of course), about 10 - 20 thousand years ago, ice covered a significant part Northern Europe and America. Then the ice melted. As a result, the World Ocean additionally received such an amount of water that its level rose by 100 m.

As if an explanation for the global flood has been found. The melting of glaciers is not so different from the biblical and other traditions, and the widespread rise in the level of the ocean is the same as the complete flooding of all coastal countries.

But no matter how tempting is the explanation of the flood legends by melting continental ice or, more precisely, eustatic fluctuations in the ocean level caused by this melting, such a hypothesis has to be abandoned. The fact is that the natural melting of glaciers is an extremely slow process, lasting many centuries, and, of course, like any other geological or meteorological phenomenon, cannot serve as an impetus for a catastrophically fast and significant rise in ocean level, which is simultaneous throughout the globe.

Numerous legends about the flood are undoubtedly associated with certain local phenomena that caused a sudden rise in the water level.

There are three or four most likely causes of the floods. Certainly one of the most frequent tsunamis. In terms of effect, the waves from the fall of a large meteorite into the sea are also close to them (although this happens much less often).

Underwater earthquakes and meteorites can cause only a short-term wave invasion. Meanwhile, from many legends it is known that the flood lasted several days, or even weeks. Obviously, the reason for the long rise in water was another phenomenon - strong winds who drove sea ​​water at the mouths of large rivers and, as it were, locked them up with a natural dam. In this way, the most severe floods occur. An example of a relatively weak flood of this type is the rise in the water level in the Neva, described by A. S. Pushkin in the poem “The Bronze Horseman”.

The cause of the floods could also be accidental breakthroughs of water from closed reservoirs and basins as a result of earthquakes, karst processes, etc. Powerful mountain collapses and landslides are able to dam even the most big river and cause severe flooding.

Finally, typhoons. P. A. Molan believes that, except for a typhoon, not a single geophysical phenomenon is capable of generating a flood simultaneously with the help of a downpour and giant waves similar to tsunami waves. Undoubtedly, the floods mentioned in the legends in most cases belong to this category. But let us return to the biblical version of the flood as the most famous one. Only at the end of the last century was it established that the direct source of the biblical legend is the Assyrian myth of Gilgamesh, written in cuneiform on clay tablets in the 21st century. to p. e. The Flood occurred in ancient times, and the Assyrian Utnapishty escaped from it in an ark with various animals, who tells Gilgamesh about this event in this way: “... loaded it (the ark) with everything that I had. I loaded it with everything that I had silver, I loaded it with everything that I had gold, I loaded it with everything that I had living creatures, I raised all my family and kind, steppe cattle and beasts, I raised all the masters on the ship ...

In the morning it rained, and at night I saw the grain rain with my own eyes. And he looked at the face of the weather - it was terrible to look at the weather ...

The first day is raging South wind, quickly swooping in, filling the mountains, as if with a war, overtaking people. They don't see each other...

At the onset of the seventh day, the storm with the current stopped the war ... The sea calmed down, the hurricane subsided - then it stopped ...

In twelve fields an island rose. At Mount Ni tsir the ship stopped. Mount Nitsir held the ship, does not allow to swing ... ".

It is not difficult to find very significant differences between the descriptions of the flood in the Bible and in the myth of Gilgamesh. If the Bible does not say anything about the wind that accompanied the flood, then in the Assyrian source the indications of the wind are the most direct. On the contrary, the Bible indicates that the wind contributed to the cessation of the flood (“...and God sent the wind on the earth, and the waters stopped”).

The duration of the flood also looks completely different. If according to the Bible the flood lasted almost a year, then according to Assyrian sources it was only seven days.

At the same time, the description of the construction of the ark, as well as the method by which Utnapishty and Noah determined the level of the fall of the water, surprisingly coincide. The first released from the ark, first a dove, which returned without finding a place to rest, then a swallow; Noah sent out a raven for the same purpose, and twice a dove. “And the dove returned to him in the evening; and behold, an olive leaf plucked in his mouth: and Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.”

Babylonian historian and priest Beross, who lived around 330-260 BC. BC e., in the "History of Chaldea" also states that, according to legend, a severe flood occurred in his country.

The amazing similarity of the Assyrian legend with the biblical one, reaching the complete identity of individual expressions, indicates that the biblical version is only a retelling of the Chaldean (Assyrian) tradition. All well-known Assyrologists have now come to this conclusion.

The Chaldean story reduces the flood to a very small and quite plausible size - It is raining only seven days, the water does not cover the tops of the mountains. The stopping of the ship on the mountains of Nisir at the time when the flood reached its maximum, gives us an idea of ​​the height of the rise of the water. The height of the Nitsir mountains is about 400 m.

The well-known Austrian geologist E. Suess was the first to use information about the flood, recorded in cuneiform and discovered during excavations in Nineveh. He came to the following conclusions: the deluge must be understood as a devastating flood that occurred in the lower reaches of the Euphrates, which captured the Mesopotamian lowland; its main reason was the attack on the mainland of a tsunami wave formed from an earthquake in the Persian Gulf or south of it; it is very likely that the period of the strongest earthquake was accompanied by a cyclone coming from the south.

Subsequent researchers only slightly refined Suess's version. They found that strong earthquakes are not typical for the Persian Gulf and the tsunami wave, no matter how high it was, could not flood the entire Mesopotamian lowland. Most likely, the flood described in the Chaldean legend was a grandiose flood as a result of heavy rains and a strong wind blowing against the flow of the rivers.

In the Bay of Bengal, located to the east, major floods caused by a cyclone occurred in 1737 and 1876. The first of them raised the water by 16 m, the second - by 13 m. The death toll in each case is more than 100 thousand people. Apparently, similar phenomena have long occurred at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, with the only difference being that 4000-5000 years ago the floods captured the mainland much further than now. While Persian Gulf Nitsir came close to the mountains, and therefore the ship, driven, according to legend, up the river, could reach the mountains in a short time.

Among the catastrophic floods that affected European civilization, one can note the breakthrough of the Atlantic waters into the Mediterranean Sea, which sharply raised its level, and the Dardanov Flood. The latter is associated with the breakthrough of waters into the Black Sea. The level of the Black Sea in the era of the last glaciation was more than a hundred meters lower than the current one. The vast expanses of its modern shelf were land masses, especially in the northwestern part. The waters of the paleo-Danube flowed along this shelf, connecting the waters of the Danube, the Dniester, the Bug, and they flowed into the salty waters that filled the deep Black Sea depression. From the same depression, the flow of water went to the Sea of ​​Marmara (then still a lake) through a powerful sea river - the current Bosphorus (an analogue to it may be the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Strait). And on the site of another strait, Kerch, flowed fresh water Paleo-Don, uniting the Don, Kuban and other smaller rivers of the Black Sea region into a single river system. Paleo-Don flowed into the Black Sea off the southeastern coast of Crimea.

Studies of the sedimentary rocks of the Black and Marmara Seas have shown that up to a depth of one hundred meters there was no sedimentation earlier than 2 - 6 millennium BC, since at that time these areas were dry land. The breakthrough of the isthmus of the Dardanelles, caused by an earthquake of monstrous force, led to the formation of the Sea of ​​​​Marmara, which had previously been a lake. The consequences of the disaster were enormous. The water level in the Black Sea has risen by more than 100 meters in a short time. Huge areas were flooded Black Sea coast. Coastline on the low-lying eastern coast of the sea, it moved back almost 200 km, and on the site of a large lowland, along which the paleo-Don and paleo-Kuban rivers flowed (and flowed into one channel), the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov formed.

Thus, there are many possible disasters associated with floods, and scientists are inclined to believe that in many parts of the Earth there was a Flood at one time.

Based on materials from http://katastrofa.h12.ru

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep broke open, and the windows of heaven were opened; and it rained on the earth for forty days and forty nights(Gen 7:11-12).

The fall hurt human nature. The state of the world after the expulsion of the ancestors from paradise testifies to the growth of human weakness. Sin is spreading across the face of the earth and deeper rooted in human nature. True worship of God continued to be preserved among the descendants of Seth. But after a few generations they sons of god) began to mix with the descendants of Cain ( daughters of men). The life of people has become carnal, unspiritual: And the Lord said, My Spirit will not forever be despised by men, for they are flesh.(Gen 6:3). When the whole measure of universal corruption was revealed on earth, the Lord brought global flood. It was God's judgment on humanity that has forgotten God and plunged into the abyss of corruption. St. Philaret of Moscow explains in this way why the flood was an inevitable measure against ancient humanity: "God saw man in such a state in which he did not at all correspond to the design of Wisdom, revealed in his creation, and could no longer be involved in the love and goodness of the Creative."

Only Patriarch Noah there was a man righteous and blameless and walked with God (Genesis 6:9). The Lord told Noah to build a large ark. Some researchers based on the words of Divine Justice: let their days be one hundred and twenty years(Genesis 6:3) conclude that Noah built it for a hundred and twenty years. This means that Noah's contemporaries had one hundred and twenty years to repent.

The ark was a huge houseboat with three floors and many compartments. The water poured out for a hundred and fifty days and covered the whole earth. Antediluvian mankind perished in the waters of the flood. Then the water began to subside. The ark landed on Mount Ararat.

The pious patriarch, leaving the ark, arranged altar to the Lord. This is the first mention of an altar in Holy Scripture. On it Noah offered a burnt offering, taking from every clean animal and from every clean bird. This sacrifice was pleasing to God. She was brought from the whole world and for the whole world and "was therefore the most perfect prototype of the all-natural and universal sacrifice of Christ" ( Saint Philaret of Moscow. Notes leading to a thorough understanding of the book of Genesis. M., 1867. Part 2. S. 6). The Holy Fathers call Noah's Ark a prototype of the Church, which is the ship of salvation in the sea of ​​life.

For us, believers, there is not a shadow of doubt about the authenticity of the described event. The Savior himself points to its historicity (see: Lk 17:26). The holy Apostle Peter also speaks of this (see: 2 Peter 2:5).

There is extra-biblical evidence of the remains of the ark on Mount Ararat. The oldest mention is contained in the Chaldean historian Berossus (c. 350/340-280/270 BC). “In our time, only a small part of the ship that stopped in Armenia remains lying in the Kordui mountains in Armenia, and some go there, scraping off the asphalt” (Babylonian History, Book 2). The Jewish historian of the 1st century Josephus writes: “Armenians call this place the place of landing, and still the natives show there the remains of the ark. All those who wrote the history of non-Jews also mention this flood and the ark ”(Jewish Antiquities. I. 3. 5).

In the most ancient layers of culture of more than a hundred peoples (Sumerians, Greeks and others) there are legends about the flood. With significant differences in the narrative, what they all have in common is that they all talk about a gigantic flood. Fish and shell fossils are found high in the mountains on different continents.

How people discovered their land Tomilin Anatoly Nikolaevich

When was the Flood?

When was the Flood?

Over time, the fossilized remains of animals and plants gathered so much that they even began to restore the appearance of animals that inhabited the Earth in ancient times. But why did they all die? The most simple and clear explanation was given by the Bible.

“In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month ... all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened; and the rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights... And the waters multiplied and lifted up the ark, and it was exalted above the earth; but the waters increased and greatly increased on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the waters.

And the waters increased exceedingly on the earth, so that all high mountains which are under the whole heaven: fifteen cubits the waters rose above them...

And all flesh that moved on the earth, and birds, and cattle, and beasts, and all creeping things that crawled on the earth, and all people, lost their lives; everything that had the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils on dry land died.

Every creature that was on the surface of the whole earth was destroyed; from man to livestock, and creeping things, and the birds of the air, everything was destroyed from the earth: only Noah remained, and what was with him in the ark. The waters were strong on the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

And God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all the cattle, and all the birds, and all the reptiles that were with them in the ark; and God sent a wind upon the earth, and the waters stopped. And the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were closed, and the rain from heaven stopped. The water gradually returned from the earth, and the water began to decrease at the end of one hundred and fifty days ...

The six hundred and first year of Noah's life, by the first day of the first month, the water on the earth dried up; And Noah opened the roof of the ark and looked, and, behold, the surface of the earth dried up. And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth dried up.”

In short, the world existed. There was a disaster. old world perished and a new one was born, the one in which we live now. Quite a convincing hypothesis. The evidence is there. Almost all the peoples inhabiting different continents have myths about a grand flood.

Most of the stories are based on true incidents. So the myth of the global flood could be born as a result of numerous floods and disasters, which are so rich in the history of our planet. By the way, scientists argued a lot about when exactly the Flood occurred. The Englishman John Woodward, in his book The Natural History of the Earth, said that he had found fossil nuts in one of the layers of the Earth. And those nuts were unripe. So, he concluded, the flood occurred in late spring. The fruits on the trees have already formed, but have not yet ripened.

However, his compatriot J. Parsons, who studied the fossil remains of fruits from other places, came to the conclusion that they were completely ready. And he declared that he was convinced of the autumn beginning of the flood.

Irish Archbishop James Asher gave the most the exact date flood. He wrote that water gushed from the sky on Sunday, December 7th...

However, not all scientists agreed that the world on our planet was changed only as a result of the flood. In 1757, the work of Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov, “The Word on the Birth of Metals from Earth Shaking,” was published in Russia, and six years later, the second: “On the Layers of the Earth.”

“In vain do many people think that everything, as we see, was created from the beginning by the creator; as if not only mountains, dales and waters, but also various kinds of minerals came into being together with the whole world; and therefore it is not necessary to investigate the reasons for which they differ in their internal properties and the position of places.

Such reasoning is very harmful to the growth of all sciences, and therefore to the natural knowledge of the globe of the Earth, and especially to the art of mining, although it is easy for these wise men to be philosophers, to learn to say three words: God created it this way, and this giving in response instead of all causes "- so he wrote great Russian scientist in his writings.

According to Mikhail Vasilyevich, changes on the Earth's surface occur both due to external geological factors, that is, due to the destructive work flowing waters, sea waves, strong winds and frost, and because of the internal. The internal causes Lomonosov called the single word "earthquakes", associated with the action of underground fire.

At that time the whole world was under the influence of the news of the strongest earthquake in 1755, which destroyed the city of Lisbon.

According to the plan of Lomonosov, the first academic expeditions were organized to study the vast territory of the state. Russian traveler and naturalist Ivan Ivanovich Lepekhin explored the occurrence of rocks in the Urals, in the Volga region and came to the conclusion that Ural mountains rose under the influence of the forces of underground fire.

Another Russian naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas, traveled around the Volga region, the Orenburg Territory, part Western Siberia, Western Sayan and the lower reaches of the Volga. In 1777, Pallas delivered a speech at a ceremonial meeting of the St. Petersburg Academy, in which he outlined his theory of the structure of the Earth and the formation of mountains. He believed that initially Earth was covered by the oceans. Only here and there were granite islands. Then pyrite nests caught fire in the depths and colossal volcanic eruptions. It was they who raised from the bottom of the sea not only islands, but also continents. During the eruptions, underground caves were opened, where glass excess water. Such catastrophes in the history of the Earth, according to Pallas, have occurred more than once. They were accompanied by gigantic land uplifts and incredible floods. At the same time, the waters that flowed into the lower parts of the Earth brought with them the bones of animals that died during the floods.

The end of the 18th century was marked by great earthworks in the southwest of England. There, a man named William Smith worked as a surveyor on the canal. He noticed that in each layer of the Earth there are fossilized remains of animals and plants. The English surveyor thought: is it possible to determine the sequence from them, who lived behind whom, and then divide the rocks by age? Smith was the first to geological map England. His discovery gave rise to an important branch of historical geology - STRATIGRAPHY, which studies the sequence of formation of rocks.

It was this science that eventually enabled scientists to form an idea of ​​the earth's geological history.