there are lots of parallels in cultures not all about floods,of course there will be such story's  because we all live in the same world and floods are a part of that world just has we have hero story's creationists tales etc and has for flooded cities the world is littered with them ,The world is not a static place rivers change course suddenly ,the Mediterranean was once dry land so it impacts man and leaves cities underwater .

Bonkers.

I haven't read much of the thread, but the Black sea for example was created (flooded) relatively recently (ie during human civilisation) along with a number of other great floods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(prehistoric)

a few thousand years ago of course "The Whole World" to some cultures could easily be the flooding of a relatively small area (as such not really a global flood, but as far as they could concievably travel)

Someone needs to read a bit of Joseph Campbell.

Just an idea.  Civilization tends to settle by sources of water, ports, rivers, etc.  Floods are common enough in such areas, particularly over long periods of time.  Historically such events get ascribed significance beyond what they really are, often involving deities, trials and punishments.

In short - easy explainable common roots and proof of absolutely nothing except how similar various human societies are in how they historically tried to explain events outside their control.

Maybe its just me but usually (read: always) a prophecy needs to be written before an event not several thousand years after. The book of Adam and Eve is believed to have been written around 5th century if I recall and Noah's flood was what 4,000 years ago

Math don't work

Edit:  Also, I live in Essex in the UK, a place that is expected to be under water in 100 yrs due to rising sea levels so does that mean Noah existed because my house will be at the bottom of the sea in a century?

There was a big flood once?? No way!

Especially not almost 10 000 years ago when the earth was so warm that Poland had a mediterranean/near equator like climate whereas currently it has a mixed-cold climate (roughly speaking 10 degrees celsius difference on average).

For crying out loud, if in the 16th century the winters were so cold and frosty that people were traveling from Poland to Sweden by sleighs ACROSS THE BALTIC SEA then why the hell couldn't there be a giant flood dooming all people living near depressions?. Seriously, the fact there could have been a giant worldwide flood due to glacier melting isn't news. Pointing out that the story of Noah is true because something happened is a different and ultimately plain wishful thinking.

There are probably a thousand different fairy tales about the moon spread across many cultures, but that doesn't mean a giant sky wolf is biting out chunks of it every day to make it a crescent.

Actually, very few civilizations have myths about the moon comparatively.  There are ton about the sun tho.

I don't know who wrote the article, but it seems fairly biased.  Although, it could be that since Noah's ark and the flood is the most well known flood myth, it is using that as the grounding point.

I would like to point out that Noah's ark has not been found.  The claims were made by sensational evangelicists.  When scientists sent teams out there to investigate, they found nothing.  The investigation is still going on actually, but its been nearly 6 months, and absolutely nothing has been found.

I do agree with the article that the scientific community does needs to be more open minded.  But one should not jump to so many of the conclusions the article is making.  There are many flood myths throughout history and some of those flood myths have much stronger evidence that it is related to a large area specific flood.  So there are a lot of flood myths that arent related to anything at all.

I disagree with the conclusion based on the percentages.  If I saw:

1. Is there a favored family? 88%
2. Were they forewarned? 66%
3. Is flood due to wickedness of man? 66%
4. Is catastrophe only a flood? 95%
5. Was flood global? 95%
6. Is survival due to a boat? 70%
7. Were animals also saved? 67%
8. Did animals play any part? 73%
9. Did survivors land on a mountain? 57%
10. Was the geography local? 82%
11. Were birds sent out? 35%
12. Was the rainbow mentioned? 7%
13. Did survivors offer a sacrifice? 13%
14. Were specifically eight persons saved? 9%

I would conclude the original story is, some deity or deities, or perhaps that is the nature of nature deemed that man was wicked.  the deity or deities warns a favored family or the favored family gets an omen, who builds a boat, loads some animals onto the boat for some practical purpose, live and land on a mountain.

I believe there have been flood, but honestly..

How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers.A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?

How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.

Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time.