Atra-Hasis? Being a fan of ancient history, every once in a while a come across something that stands out and is very interesting, this is probably one of the earliest things I have seen for the first time. It is interesting to me that most of us have never heard of the language called Babylonian, much less the flood epic, which I had always assumed incorrectly had come from the Epic Of Gilgamesh! Not so . . . . Its origin is far earlier. Somewhere I read, in some of my recent explorations that there is a hypothesis that the flood legend actually was an account of a peoples who lived in the Persian Gulf, around the end of the last ice age, and that as a result of the global warming, they were flooded out. Anyway, this article is about an account far earlier. Who has ever heard of Atra-Hasis before? [en.wikipedia.org]
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.You’re thinking of the Black Sea, it was a huge valley eleven thousand years ago when rising Mediterranean water found a route into the valley. To this day fish can’t live more than 600 feet under water due to a lack of oxygen because of decaying vegetation and gives us a hint about how long it takes the Earth to recover from epic environmental disasters caused by global warming.
Willow_Wisp
Level 8
Oct 25, 2020
0
Actually, from the article I read, the hypothesis was that during the ice age, the Persian Gulf was actually land between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and that was where they though it was that the story of the flood came from. However . . . . recently came across a story about the flood of the ancient city of Shuruppak, where archaeologists did indeed find evidence of a flood, and in some of the surrounding cities, so it really is a lot of conjecture at this point.
More interestingly, I was reading about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, found a person who had worked on the issue and contacted her with an idea about how the Hanging Gardens could be found using the similar, but more modern means Heinrich Schliemann used to discover Troy . . . . in this case, some particular information from Herodotus.
Guess what? I've heard of this myth. Like many accounts of that area, it tells of a big flood and many events which sound familiar if you know of other tales from those cultures.
LucyLoohoo
Level 9
Oct 24, 2020
0
Interestingly, Atrahasis was said to have been the ruler of the city of Shuruppak, which is truly ancient and in itself a very interesting subject.
Interesting too, that in Ammi-Ditana’s Hymn to Ishtar . . . the earth is referred to as an "orb". [soas.ac.uk]
Around the world many cultures have a flood story in their cosmology. When I was an anthropology student we were presented with an interesting hypothesis regarding the reason that so many culturals share similar flood stories.
Let's first begin by realizing in the earliest times of Homo sapian dissemination, most cultures lived adjacent to shore lines. Be it lakes, rivers or the oceans and seas. Many early human habitations were built near the lower reaches of major rivers, and deltas like the Nile, Euphrates, Indus.etc.
Because many cultures early on depended upon the waterways and oceans for sustenance and resources, the biggest habitations were located nearby.
An episode of Ecstatic sea level rise began to reclaim land adjacent to the same waterways. River heights commensurate with sea level rise drowned and reclaimed much shoreline land. The ecstatic rise did not need to have occurred quickly, but was a steady process over an extended number of years.
But the result was the same. Shoreline communities were driven out, people forced to relocate further inland. It was a significant increase in ecstatic rise and enough adjacent land reclaimed that it became immortalized around the world in folk cosmology as a flood.
t1nick
Level 8
Oct 24, 2020
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