General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Cosmos & Neil Degrasse Tyson state that Great Flood occurred in Sumeria & retold as Noah's Ark [View all]dawg
(10,629 posts)Even if the origin of the flood myth turned out to be an epic river flood, Sumeria is a very unlikely place for it to have originated. Mountains figure prominently in almost every version of the tale. Manu's ship was tethered in the Himalayas. Noah, of course, landed on Mr. Ararat. Even Utnapishtim landed on a mountain (somewhere in the Zagros, if I remember correctly).
Wherever this story originated, people carried it far and wide. It doesn't seem specific to Southern Iraq at all. In fact, much of it seems out of place there, even in the Sumerian version of the tale.
I think the story goes back deep into the Neolithic, and was handed down for hundreds or even thousands of years before the Sumerians eventually got around to writing down their version of it.