| www.CuriousTaxonomy.net |
| The Flood in World Myth and Folklore |
| © 2021 Mark Isaak |
The deluge story has excited imaginations for millennia, and all the more so when it was found that other cultures throughout the world have other such stories. This website collects many of them. The criteria for a story's inclusion are (1) that it be a story; (2) that it is folklore, not a historical account or fiction by a known author; and (3) that it involve a flood. In many borderline cases, I included the story here anyway. A couple of the stories even tell of a flood which was avoided and never occurred. A few which are of doubtful authenticity or are known frauds are labeled as such and printed in a gray font.
The stories are summarized both to save space and to avoid copyright infringements. References are given with each story. Some common references are abbreviated (Author, date, pages); in those cases, the full reference is given in the bibligraphy (linked also at the end of this page).
For convenience, the myths are grouped by region. I have tried to use regions which are more-or-less similar in culture (North American regions are taken from National Geographic's Indians of North America), but there is still some arbitrariness. The regions, and the cultures within regions, are roughly (often very roughly) arranged east to west, north to south. Maps are given to indicate where the various cultures are located, but they should be considered approximations only.