(Minghui.org) Many cultures have recorded stories of major flooding in ancient times. Floods were recorded by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, British Druids, Polynesians, Eskimos, Greenlanders, Africans, Indians, and American Indians. Although details vary between cultures, one common theme is that the floods destroyed these ancient civilizations.
Below are some brief details about a few of these stories. If one believes—as we do—that good is rewarded and evil is punished, these stories can be read as historical evidence to support this belief.
Written Records
The ancient city of Atlantis is believed to have ended with flooding and earthquakes. Plato mentioned Atlantis in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias as a continent with advanced civilization about 10,000 years go. He described how this civilization ended, “But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.” Psychic Edgar Cayce, known as the “sleeping prophet,” revealed that the destruction of Atlantis was related to its moral degeneration.
Mahabharata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, described how a flood destroyed cities. This is consistent with the sinking of Dwarka, a civilized city that was submerged by water about 9,000 years ago.
Records from other cultures have similar stories of worldwide floods.
“The flood and wind lasted six days and six nights, flattening the land...” from the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia.
The Sumerian Flood Story (also known as the Eridu Genesis) has this description:
All the evil winds, all stormy winds gathered into
one and with them, the Flood was sweeping over the cities of the half-bushel baskets,
for seven days and seven nights.
After the flood had swept over the country,
after the evil wind had tossed the big boat about on the great waters,
the sun came out spreading light over heaven and earth.
One of the best records of a flood is given in the Bible. Because human beings became so corrupt and violent, God decided to wipe them out, saving only Noah and his family. Following God’s instructions, Noah built an ark out of cypress wood. The ark was 300-cubits long, 50-cubits wide, and 30-cubits tall. After Noah and his family boarded the ark, taking with them a pair of every creature on earth, it started to rain. The rain continued for 40 days and 40 nights, flooding the whole land. It took an entire year for the flood waters to recede, before Noah’s family could get off the ark. The first thing Noah did when he stepped onto dry land was worship God.
Evidence of the Flood
Many scientists have found evidence of this catastrophic flood. In 1997, Walter Pitman and William Ryan, two geophysicists from Columbia University, found evidence that the Black Sea was actually a freshwater lake until about 7,000 years ago. It became sea a after it was flooded by rising water from the Mediterranean. “Ten cubic miles of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara Falls,” according to Pitman and Ryan in their 1999 book Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History.
This was confirmed by Robert Ballard, the scientist who discovered the wreck of the Titanic. The exploration in the Black Sea area found evidence of humans living there about 7,000 years. “All we can say is that there has been a major flood, that people were living here when it happened,” Ballard said.
In April 2010, a team from Hong Kong announced that they had located Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat. The team found wooden planks 20 meters long, which were too heavy to have been carried up such a high mountain. Their only explanation for finding such parts of a ship on Mount Ararat is that it was Noah’s Ark.
According to Shang Shu (Book of Documents), one of the classics of Chinese literature, Yu the Great controlled water in ancient times. Huai Nan Zi from the Han Dynasty wrote about how Nuwa stopped the flooding. This time period was similar to that described in the Bible.
Archaeologists and humanities scholars have found over 600 records of prehistoric flooding around the world. The time period ranged from between 13,000 to 3,500 years ago. As more and more evidence is uncovered, these floods can no longer be dismissed as coincidence or legends.
These records and discoveries also show that human civilization was very advanced before the flood. It was estimated that the population was as high as 3.5 billion people at the time. Many artifacts from architecture and art have revealed mysteries from history, such as pyramids and Saharan rock paintings.
Cause of the Catastrophes
Scientists have their own theories about these catastrophes. Some propose that global hurricanes, triggered by earthquakes, caused sea flooding due to the Earth’s crust sinking. But this doesn’t explain why the water level was high in mountainous areas and low in other regions. In addition, sometimes rocks, hail, and other burning substances fell from the sky, along with flooding and sandstorms. That indicates that some of these disasters might not have started on Earth.
Almost all these records across different ethnic groups describe the moral decline of humanity, with people no longer believing in divine beings. Humankind’s reckless behavior brought serious consequences, and only a few upright people were spared. For example, there are stories about humans, including the father of Fuxi (the first mythical emperor of China) defying the Thunder God. This led to a major flood and only Fuxi and his sister survived, due to their kindness. In another story from the Incan mythology in South America, Pariacaca (the Incan god of rains and storms) disguised himself as a beggar. But everyone ignored him except for one woman. As a result, only the woman and her family lived, while everyone else died in the flood. In another story, a Babylon god was upset by the corruption of mankind. He instructed an elderly man to build a boat for survival, before causing seven days of destructive rain.
Ancient Greek stories share a similar theme. During the Bronze Age of civilization, people became greedy, rude, and brutal. They stopped upholding justice and obeying laws. Zeus disguised himself as a human and visited Earth. Dissatisfied with the hideous crimes, he let the rainy South Wind (Notus) loose and the sea god Poseidon assembled river gods to flood the entire world. Everyone died except for one innocent, upright couple.
The story of Noah was more vividly described. “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God,” according to the Bible. “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood.”
Parallels for Today
Several thousand years have passed since these times. Yet for the past 100 years, Communism has once again brought danger to mankind. With its promotion of hatred, brutality, and lies, it has ruined traditional values and killed over 80 million people during numerous political campaigns. Through globalism and corrupt ideology, it has undermined moral values around the world. Although the recent global pandemic was not a flood, it nonetheless served as a warning for mankind.
It took Noah and family more than 100 years to build the ark. People at the time thought he was insane and so they lost their chance of survival. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to suppress Falun Dafa and the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance 24 years ago, practitioners have been reminding people about the importance of cherishing our conscience and severing ties with the CCP. This is yet another warning that the world’s people should not ignore.
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