Flood Legends (2 page)

Despite the numerous tales, though, naturalists for several centuries dismissed the Kraken as an imaginary creature. A sighting, they seemed to argue, had never been "confirmed," and therefore the beast could not possibly be real. Elsewhere in the world, tales of other giant cephalopods were told, but these were dismissed, as well. Even in 1861, when a French crew on the
Allecton
actually
harpooned
a giant squid, or
Architeuthis
, managing to save the tail section, tales of the Kraken were still soundly ignored by naturalists.
⁴
It was not until a full specimen of a giant squid washed up on the shore of Newfoundland 12 years later that giant cephalopods were finally taken seriously by the scientific community.

From that point on, specimens of the giant squid — always dead and badly decomposing when they washed ashore — were studied intently. It became the general belief that they could achieve lengths of up to 60 feet. The first living giant squid to be photographed was in 2004, when a team of Japanese researchers at the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association managed to catch sight of one in the waters off the coast of Japan. In 2006, that same group was able to videotape, for the first time, a living giant squid.
⁵
Incidentally, the squid was "only" 24 feet long, and considered a juvenile. Whether or not the giant squid is the precise creature that the Norwegian fishermen had in mind when they told each other tales of the Kraken is of little relevance. The point is that giant cephalopods — and therefore the Kraken —
do
exist. However, despite the earlier tales, the Kraken as an actual living creature was blatantly disregarded by scientists until the latter part of the 19th century.

Once more, this is the first approach to mythology: utter disbelief. The mantra seems to be, "If we don't believe it, then it
can't
be true." I wonder, though, how much of our history — and
natural
history — is being disregarded each time we take this stance. What insights into ancient Greece might we have gained by now if we had taken Homer's poem seriously? Would biological research into giant cephalopods be further along if we had begun it, say, in 1773, instead of 1873? Some mythologists, realizing this, have taken a different approach to their study. This approach is to accept some myths as not
simply
fact, but as
embellished
fact. In other words, the myths are partially true, but not entirely accurate.

We see this, once again, in the story of the Deluge. Because so many cultures speak of a flood, it is argued, they each must have experienced some form of flooding. The prevailing theory is that, because cultures settle near water, each would have experienced the destructive force of a "local flood" at some point. In my own town, on the banks of the James River, we experience severe flash flooding whenever a hurricane comes through the area; local floods are a necessary evil when living near water. A relatively new book, published in 1998, even suggests that the Genesis account was based on the flooding of the Black Sea, sometime at the end of the last Ice Age.
⁶

This interpretation — that the myths are based on localized flooding — is exceptionally convenient, because it accounts for all of the differences that we find between Native American, Greek, Hebrew, Indian, and other versions of the myth.
⁷
After all, if each culture developed the story based on local events, then we would
expect
variation between the different cultural versions. However, what it fails to account for are the striking
similarities
among the different versions, several of which we will address in later chapters. If separate cultures invented separate stories, of course they would differ. But if separate cultures developed separate stories, why would they be identical in some aspects? The "independent evolution" stance cannot account for that.

Not only does the "independent evolution" theory fail to account for the similarities among the stories, it also severely undermines the intelligence of these cultures. Surely cultures intelligent enough to build ocean-going vessels know the difference between river valley floods and a global flood. Few would question the intelligence of the advanced Hindu culture that produced the
Mahābhārata
and
Ramayana
, and yet many scholars attribute its flood story (
Mahābhārata
, Book III) to the cyclic flooding of the Ganges River. On the same token, do we believe that the Greeks, whose governmental, philosophical, and artistic ideas still influence us today, truly mistook a local flood for a global deluge, as is reported in their story of Deucalion and Pyrrah? Does it really seem sensible that such intelligent cultures would make such simple oversights? It does not seem likely at all.

There is, therefore, one other alternative, and that is to accept that the different versions all refer to the
same event
. In other words, what if we accept that there was a group of people that survived a global deluge, and that the story of the event was passed on from generation to generation through various developing cultures? What would that look like? We would expect to see two things. First, we would expect to see similar, if not identical, plots spread throughout the various versions. At the same time, we would expect to see diverging details — perhaps even
contradictory
details — as the story spread. I call this process — the process of one story being told many different ways as it progresses through time — telephone mythology.

Telephone

Most of us have played the game. A dozen people sit in a circle, and one person whispers a phrase to the person next to him or her. That person then whispers the phrase to a third person, who, in turn, whispers to the next, and so on. When the very last person has "received" the message, he or she speaks it aloud, only to discover — usually to the delight of everyone — that it has been changed and distorted. History is really no different.

Anthropology more or less
requires
one of two views when analyzing the development of cultures. The first view requires the separate major cultures found throughout the world to have evolved in their homelands, independent of each other, in an amoeba-to-man process. Each culture, as it developed, would create its own set of mythologies for such things as the elements, sickness, and so forth. One such myth that each culture would have developed would have been a story of a deluge, sent by an angry deity to wipe out life on earth. Those who survive do so because of a miraculous intervention in their lives by a creator god who provides them with either the instructions for building a vessel, or the vessel itself. What we often find is that this deluge story is followed by a story of a diaspora, or a spreading of cultures from a central point. According to some, the flood portion of the tale is inspired by something like the annual flooding of a local river. The diaspora portion, then, would be nothing more than an attempt on the part of the storytellers to describe the origins of other existing cultures with which they may have come into contact from time to time. This view is commonly held among mythologists, anthropologists, and the scientific and literary community as "accurate."

The second — and less common view — requires an
actual
deluge, followed by an
actual
diaspora, which
results
in separately evolving cultures, each of which carries a part of the story with it. When the vessel of the deluge lands and the families begin to disperse and develop their own cultures, they each hold onto the details that pertain to their own evolving belief systems. As time passes and those cultures begin to fragment into other cultures, we would expect to see other changes in the story; this is only natural. In fact, we would expect that the further from the source (both temporal and physical) the story moves, the more it would change. However, even more curiously, when we then add thousands of years, countless people, and a scattering of these people, we find that, despite changes, there are
still common threads
. The first view — the "local flood" or "independent evolution" view — can reasonably explain the differences in the versions. It cannot, however, explain all of the similarities. Indeed, how can we account for these common threads, unless we admit that the stories all originate from the same source? The telephone mythology view is the only view that explains both the similarities and the differences.

This is in no way an attempt to undermine the other mythological disciplines, for they each have their place. While we need not believe that Apollo sails across the sky in his chariot, is it distasteful to believe in someone with the characteristics of Hercules? Should we fictionalize Samson? This is simply presenting
another
way to look at myth. So what are we to do? Are we to blindly accept every story we hear as children? Should we believe that a pernicious little rabbit hopped about in a blue coat, stealing vegetables from a certain farmer's garden? Should we rewrite history books to include, as fact, every novel published? Do we admit that H.G. Wells'
Time Machine
really happened?

No, of course not! Yet to immediately dismiss mythology outright, or to oversimplify mythology in an attempt to make it more palatable to our modern way of thinking, is intellectually irresponsible because it
potentially dismisses our very own history
. We once disregarded the
Iliad
simply because we
chose
to disregard it. We once dismissed tales of the Kraken simply because we
chose
to dismiss them. Just because we
regard
certain things as fictional does not give us the right to immediately
dismiss
them as fictional.

Yet if we are to discuss whether or not to dismiss mythology, we have to decide whether or not a myth is reasonable. After all, we cannot — in a very practical sense — examine
every
myth for historical accuracy, for there are far too many, and several of them contradict each other. Where, then, do we start in this process? What criteria do we use to determine the "reasonability" of a myth? How do we know if a myth is historical, without actually having been there to witness the events?

Furthermore, how do we even
define
myth? Is "myth" one broad category in literature or is there more than one kind of "myth"? Is myth always fictional, or
can
it be historical, as well? The next chapter looks at some of these questions.

Endnotes

. William Shakespeare,
Venus and Adonis
. Line 145.

. Michael Bright,
There Are Giants in the Sea
(London: Robson Books Ltd., 1989), p. 156.

. E. Pontoppidan,
The Natural History of Norway
, 1775. Quoted by Richard Ellis,
Monsters of the Sea
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 125.

. Ibid, p. 121.

. "Japanese Researchers Capture Giant Squid," Fox News, December 22, 2006.

. William Ryan and Walter Pitman,
Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).

. See appendix B for several versions of the Flood story.

Chapter 2

What is Myth?

Hearken! And I shall tell you the whole tale.

— Edgar Allen Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"

Our word "myth" comes from the Greek word
mythos
, meaning "story, speech, or legend." To the Greeks, a
mythos
"may" have been fictional, but it may also have been true. I could, for example, tell you the myth of Santa, his toy-making elves, and his eight flying reindeer. On the other hand, I could tell you the wholly truthful myth of my trip to the market yesterday morning. This basic definition of myth — that "myth" is simply a story, which may or may not be true — is the definition we will be using throughout this book. Whenever I refer to "myth," therefore, I am not necessarily commenting on the
historical value
of the myth, but am simply using the word interchangeably with "story."

If, in the scope of this study, "myth" can be either true or false, how do we initially assess the accuracy of a myth? After all, without being there to witness the events described, can we
truly
tell if a myth is accurate? Honestly, no …not with any guarantee, at least. So how do we do this? If we cannot assume
everything
written is false, but neither can we
guarantee validity
without witnessing the event, then what approach do we take when studying mythology? Can we continue to study it, or are we at an impasse? There are, I believe, two aspects that we need to evaluate before determining whether or not a myth is worth pursuing as history.

Many prefer to pursue the validity of a myth by first assessing whether or not the storytellers believed the myth to be true. This is the first aspect. William Bascom, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, breaks down "myth" into three categories: myth, folklore, and legend. Myth, he argues, is regarded as fact by the culture, while folklore is regarded as fiction, even by the storytellers. Legend is regarded as true, he asserts, but the events of the legend are not quite as distant as the events of a myth.
¹
What does this all mean? What I believe he is arguing is that the real key lies in determining the
motivation
behind the storytellers. If we are to pursue myth as history, we must determine whether or not the cultures themselves believed the stories to be true.