[LNHY/ACRA] The Daily Super Short-Short Story #63 [Long, again]
Daryl Krupa
icycalmca at yahoo.com
Fri Nov 26 21:24:35 PST 2004
Eagle <eagle at eyrie.org> wrote in message news:<87pt21kxat.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu>...
> In rec.arts.comics.creative, Daryl Krupa <icycalmca at yahoo.com> writes:
> > Eagle <eagle at eyrie.org> wrote:
>
> >> There is some archeological evidence for two significant local floods
> >> in that area, either of which may be the underlying historical event
> >> behind the Biblical flood account (probably with some intervening oral
> >> retellings before the account was written down). There was a
> >> significant flooding and expansion of the Black Sea around 5600 BC at
> >> the end of an ice age, and it's believed that the Persian Gulf was dry
> >> land during the ice age period at around 10000 BC and at some point
> >> reflooded.
>
> >> I think both of those events are a bit early for a wiping out of
> >> Sumerian civilization, though (and unless I'm misremembering my
> >> geography, the Black Sea flood was a little far north for that).
Yes, the supposed BSFlood was over the hill and far away, and
was dated at about 3000 years earlier than the fall of Sumer.
> > Sadly, you, and maybe millions of other people, have been misled on this
> > subject.
>
> Well, you clearly care a great deal more about this than I do! *laugh*
>
> For the point that I was making, I'm not sure that any of these details
> really make a lot of difference. If the dates are off by 4000 years,
> that's interesting and moderately significant, but it's pretty clear that
> whatever the Biblical account might have been based on wasn't world-wide
> and was coming out of some oral memory at best regardless.
>
> (Also doesn't change the original point that the Sumerian civilization
> wasn't wiped out by a flood. Note that the flood myth is also found in
> Sumerian mythology, which is probably where the Jews got it from
> originally.)
Sumerian civilisation declined because of salt contamination of
their irrigated farmland, and fell much later, at about 2400 BC:
http://www.students.s.csbsju.edu/sagonsior/deathofacivilization.htm
http://www.crf-usa.org/bria/bria18_4a.htm
> Anyway, I don't feel particularly misled, as I never cared enough about
> the exact details to do real research, but I appreciate the additional
> information.
You might want to check out Ronald Wright's book,
A Short History of Progress.
You can hear the first lecture in a series based on the book, here
(IIRC, it was the one dealing with the rise and fall of Sumer):
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey/massey2004.html
Daryl Krupa
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