h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think I read somewhere that some paeleogeographers (ooh what a long word) had decided that the flood could have been the flooding of the black or caspian seas (I think it was the black sea)

It's certainly possible, but would that have had such an effect on cultures such as the Semites? In fact, even the Easter Islanders and some of the Central American cultures (I believe the Mayans, but I'm probably wrong) have either similar records or there is archaeological evidence of huge upheavals in their geography. Could the Black Sea flood have caused all of this?

Actually, I've just remembered that there's a guy in my College doing Ancient Near Eastern History as a BA, I'll ask him about it.

I've no idea, it's just something that I read somewhere and then forgot about
Where were the semites from then?

Israel I think, I'm not sure. I believe they had something to do with the people who became Judea, but again I may be making this up.

Seems sensible as an anti-semitic is someone who rather dislikes the jewish people.

Yes, but the Semites didn't become the Jews. I'm not sure what happened, but they are probably from the same geographical area.

Arabs are semites, too. That's why Arab leaders tend to call their attitudes towars jews 'anti-zionist' rather than 'anti-semitic' thus camouflaging their racist prejudice.
I think that all the Middleeast cultures (Assyrians, Babylonians ...) are called 'semitic' but I'm not sure. Certainly their languages are semitic languages (as opposed to indo-european languages).

Just to add my two-penneth of confusion and uncertainty, I definitely read something about flooding in the Black or Caspian sea recently as well. But I can't remember exactly what.

So there ya go.

Oh good at least it wasn't just me then

I saw a program on PBS some time ago where they said a huge flood occurred when the Mediterranean broke into the Black Sea basin and flooded human settlements there, possibly leading to verbal folklore (too early for written stuff) about a "great flood."

The Earth seems to have had lots of local disasters (floods, desertifications, etc.) and a few global ones like the meteor that is supposed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago -- or maybe the dinosaurs went because of massive volcanism at the same period in peninsular India -- or both cataclysms may be related ...

These are the sorts of things we'll never find out. Amazingly, written records from preliterate civilisation are few and far between...

Big shame that is

Well, we might unearth a stash of home movies one day, you never know....

What, you mean you've never seen re-runs of the Easter Island version of Candid Camera?

There was a very funny one, where these guys got really drunk and decided to scratch big heads into the rocks.