floods

78:2.1For thou­sands of years the sons of Adam la­bored along the rivers of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, work­ing out their ir­ri­ga­tion and flood-con­trol prob­lems to the south, per­fect­ing their de­fenses to the north, and at­tempt­ing to pre­serve their tra­di­tions of the glory of the first Eden.

78:7.2For thou­sands of years af­ter the sub­mer­gence of the first Eden the moun­tains about the east­ern coast of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean and those to the north­west and north­east of Mes­o­po­ta­mia con­tin­ued to rise. This el­e­va­tion of the high­lands was greatly ac­cel­er­ated about 5000 B.C., and this, to­gether with greatly in­creased snow­fall on the north­ern moun­tains, caused un­prece­dented floods each spring through­out the Eu­phrates val­ley. These spring floods grew in­creas­ingly worse so that even­tu­ally the in­hab­i­tants of the river re­gions were driven to the east­ern high­lands. For al­most a thou­sand years scores of cities were prac­ti­cally de­serted be­cause of these ex­ten­sive del­uges.

78:7.6These floods com­pleted the dis­rup­tion of And­ite civ­i­liza­tion. With the end­ing of this pe­riod of del­uge, the sec­ond gar­den was no more. Only in the south and among the Sume­ri­ans did any trace of the for­mer glory re­main.

78:8.2It was dur­ing the flood­times that Susa so greatly pros­pered. The first and lower city was in­un­dated so that the sec­ond or higher town suc­ceeded the lower as the head­quar­ters for the pe­cu­liar artcrafts of that day. With the later diminu­tion of these floods, Ur be­came the cen­ter of the pot­tery in­dus­try. About seven thou­sand years ago Ur was on the Per­sian Gulf, the river de­posits hav­ing since built up the land to its pres­ent lim­its. These set­tle­ments suf­fered less from the floods be­cause of bet­ter con­trol­ling works and the widen­ing mouths of the rivers.

78:3.7The Sa­ha­ran civ­i­liza­tion had been dis­rupted by drought and that of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin by flood. The blue races had, as yet, failed to de­velop an ad­vanced cul­ture. The An­don­ites were still scat­tered over the Arc­tic and cen­tral Asian re­gions. The green and or­ange races had been ex­ter­mi­nated as such. The in­digo race was mov­ing south in Africa, there to be­gin its slow but long-con­tin­ued racial de­te­ri­o­ra­tion.

80:2.4About the time of these cli­matic changes in Africa, Eng­land sep­a­rated from the con­ti­nent, and Den­mark arose from the sea, while the isth­mus of Gibral­tar, pro­tect­ing the west­ern basin of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, gave way as the re­sult of an earth­quake, quickly rais­ing this in­land lake to the level of the At­lantic Ocean. Pres­ently the Si­cil­ian land bridge sub­merged, cre­at­ing one sea of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean and con­nect­ing it with the At­lantic Ocean. This cat­a­clysm of na­ture flooded scores of hu­man set­tle­ments and oc­ca­sioned the great­est loss of life by flood in all the world’s his­tory.

78:7.3Al­most five thou­sand years later, as the He­brew priests in Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity sought to trace the Jew­ish peo­ple back to Adam, they found great dif­fi­culty in piec­ing the story to­gether; and it oc­curred to one of them to aban­don the ef­fort, to let the whole world drown in its wicked­ness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to trace Abra­ham right back to one of the three sur­viv­ing sons of Noah.

78:7.4The tra­di­tions of a time when wa­ter cov­ered the whole of the earth’s sur­face are uni­ver­sal. Many races har­bor the story of a world-wide flood some time dur­ing past ages. The Bib­li­cal story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an in­ven­tion of the He­brew priest­hood dur­ing the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity. There has never been a uni­ver­sal flood since life was es­tab­lished on Uran­tia. The only time the sur­face of the earth was com­pletely cov­ered by wa­ter was dur­ing those Archeo­zoic ages be­fore the land had be­gun to ap­pear.

78:7.5But Noah re­ally lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river set­tle­ment near Erech. He kept a writ­ten rec­ord of the days of the river’s rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon him­self by go­ing up and down the river val­ley ad­vo­cat­ing that all houses be built of wood, boat fash­ion, and that the fam­ily an­i­mals be put on board each night as the flood sea­son ap­proached. He would go to the neigh­bor­ing river set­tle­ments ev­ery year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Fi­nally a year came in which the an­nual floods were greatly aug­mented by un­usu­ally heavy rain­fall so that the sud­den rise of the wa­ters wiped out the en­tire vil­lage; only Noah and his im­me­di­ate fam­ily were saved in their house­boat.

79:6.4Like the peo­ples of In­dia and the Lev­ant, vic­to­ri­ous tribes of the yel­low man es­tab­lished their ear­li­est cen­ters along the coast and up the rivers. The coastal set­tle­ments fared poorly in later years as the in­creas­ing floods and the shift­ing courses of the rivers made the low­land cities un­ten­able.

98:5.3The Mith­raic cult por­trayed a mil­i­tant god tak­ing ori­gin in a great rock, en­gag­ing in valiant ex­ploits, and caus­ing wa­ter to gush forth from a rock struck with his ar­rows. There was a flood from which one man es­caped in a spe­cially built boat and a last sup­per which Mithras cel­e­brated with the sun-god be­fore he as­cended into the heav­ens. This sun-god, or Sol In­vic­tus, was a de­gen­er­a­tion of the Ahura-Mazda de­ity con­cept of Zoroas­tri­an­ism. Mithras was con­ceived as the sur­viv­ing cham­pion of the sun-god in his strug­gle with the god of dark­ness. And in rec­og­ni­tion of his slay­ing the myth­i­cal sa­cred bull, Mithras was made im­mor­tal, be­ing ex­alted to the sta­tion of in­ter­ces­sor for the hu­man race among the gods on high.

59:2.1The pe­ri­odic phe­nom­ena of land el­e­va­tion and land sink­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of these times were all grad­ual and non­spec­tac­u­lar, be­ing ac­com­pa­nied by lit­tle or no vol­canic ac­tion. Through­out all of these suc­ces­sive land el­e­va­tions and de­pres­sions the Asi­atic mother con­ti­nent did not fully share the his­tory of the other land bod­ies. It ex­pe­ri­enced many in­un­da­tions, dip­ping first in one di­rec­tion and then an­other, more par­tic­u­larly in its ear­lier his­tory, but it does not pre­sent the uni­form rock de­posits which may be dis­cov­ered on the other con­ti­nents. In re­cent ages Asia has been the most sta­ble of all the land masses.

59:2.2350,000,000 years ago saw the be­gin­ning of the great flood pe­riod of all the con­ti­nents ex­cept cen­tral Asia. The land masses were re­peat­edly cov­ered with wa­ter; only the coastal high­lands re­mained above these shal­low but wide­spread os­cil­la­tory in­land seas. Three ma­jor in­un­da­tions char­ac­ter­ized this pe­riod, but be­fore it ended, the con­ti­nents again arose, the to­tal land emer­gence be­ing fif­teen per cent greater than now ex­ists. The Caribbean re­gion was highly el­e­vated. This pe­riod is not well marked off in Eu­rope be­cause the land fluc­tu­a­tions were less, while the vol­canic ac­tion was more per­sis­tent.

59:2.3340,000,000 years ago there oc­curred an­other ex­ten­sive land sink­ing ex­cept in Asia and Aus­tralia. The wa­ters of the world’s oceans were gen­er­ally com­min­gled. This was a great lime­stone age, much of its stone be­ing laid down by lime-se­cret­ing al­gae.

59:2.4A few mil­lion years later large por­tions of the Amer­i­can con­ti­nents and Eu­rope be­gan to emerge from the wa­ter. In the West­ern Hemi­sphere only an arm of the Pa­cific Ocean re­mained over Mex­ico and the pres­ent Rocky Moun­tain re­gions, but near the close of this epoch the At­lantic and Pa­cific coasts again be­gan to sink.

59:2.5330,000,000 years ago marks the be­gin­ning of a time sec­tor of com­par­a­tive quiet all over the world, with much land again above wa­ter. The only ex­cep­tion to this reign of ter­res­trial quiet was the erup­tion of the great North Amer­i­can vol­cano of east­ern Ken­tucky, one of the great­est sin­gle vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ties the world has ever known. The ashes of this vol­cano cov­ered five hun­dred square miles to a depth of from fif­teen to twenty feet.

59:2.6320,000,000 years ago the third ma­jor flood of this pe­riod oc­curred. The wa­ters of this in­un­da­tion cov­ered all the land sub­merged by the pre­ced­ing del­uge, while ex­tend­ing far­ther in many di­rec­tions all over the Amer­i­cas and Eu­rope. East­ern North Amer­ica and west­ern Eu­rope were from 10,000 to 15,000 feet un­der wa­ter.

59:2.7310,000,000 years ago the land masses of the world were again well up ex­cept­ing the south­ern parts of North Amer­ica. Mex­ico emerged, thus cre­at­ing the Gulf Sea, which has ever since main­tained its iden­tity.

59:2.8The life of this pe­riod con­tin­ues to evolve. The world is once again quiet and rel­a­tively peace­ful; the cli­mate re­mains mild and equable; the land plants are mi­grat­ing far­ther and far­ther from the seashores. The life pat­terns are well de­vel­oped, al­though few plant fos­sils of these times are to be found.

59:2.9This was the great age of in­di­vid­ual an­i­mal or­gan­is­mal evo­lu­tion, though many of the ba­sic changes, such as the tran­si­tion from plant to an­i­mal, had pre­vi­ously oc­curred. The ma­rine fauna de­vel­oped to the point where ev­ery type of life be­low the ver­te­brate scale was rep­re­sented in the fos­sils of those rocks which were laid down dur­ing these times. But all of these an­i­mals were ma­rine or­gan­isms. No land an­i­mals had yet ap­peared ex­cept a few types of worms which bur­rowed along the seashores, nor had the land plants yet over­spread the con­ti­nents; there was still too much car­bon diox­ide in the air to per­mit of the ex­is­tence of air breathers. Pri­mar­ily, all an­i­mals ex­cept cer­tain of the more prim­i­tive ones are di­rectly or in­di­rectly de­pen­dent on plant life for their ex­is­tence.

59:2.10The trilo­bites were still promi­nent. These lit­tle an­i­mals ex­isted in tens of thou­sands of pat­terns and were the pre­de­ces­sors of mod­ern crus­taceans. Some of the trilo­bites had from twenty-five to four thou­sand tiny eye­lets; oth­ers had aborted eyes. As this pe­riod closed, the trilo­bites shared dom­i­na­tion of the seas with sev­eral other forms of in­ver­te­brate life. But they ut­terly per­ished dur­ing the be­gin­ning of the next pe­riod.

59:2.11Lime-se­cret­ing al­gae were wide­spread. There ex­isted thou­sands of species of the early an­ces­tors of the corals. Sea worms were abun­dant, and there were many va­ri­eties of jel­ly­fish which have since be­come ex­tinct. Corals and the later types of sponges evolved. The ceph­a­lop­ods were well de­vel­oped, and they have sur­vived as the mod­ern pearly nau­tilus, oc­to­pus, cut­tle­fish, and squid.

59:2.12There were many va­ri­eties of shell an­i­mals, but their shells were not then so much needed for de­fen­sive pur­poses as in sub­se­quent ages. The gas­tropods were pres­ent in the wa­ters of the an­cient seas, and they in­cluded sin­gle-shelled drills, peri­win­kles, and snails. The bi­valve gas­tropods have come on down through the in­ter­ven­ing mil­lions of years much as they then ex­isted and em­brace the mus­sels, clams, oys­ters, and scal­lops. The valve-shelled or­gan­isms also evolved, and these bra­chiopods lived in those an­cient wa­ters much as they ex­ist to­day; they even had hinged, notched, and other sorts of pro­tec­tive ar­range­ments of their valves.

59:2.13So ends the evo­lu­tion­ary story of the sec­ond great pe­riod of ma­rine life, which is known to your ge­ol­o­gists as the Or­dovi­cian.

59:3.1300,000,000 years ago an­other great pe­riod of land sub­mer­gence be­gan. The south­ward and north­ward en­croach­ment of the an­cient Sil­urian seas made ready to en­gulf most of Eu­rope and North Amer­ica. The land was not el­e­vated far above the sea so that not much de­po­si­tion oc­curred about the shore lines. The seas teemed with lime-shelled life, and the falling of these shells to the sea bot­tom grad­u­ally built up very thick lay­ers of lime­stone. This is the first wide­spread lime­stone de­posit, and it cov­ers prac­ti­cally all of Eu­rope and North Amer­ica but only ap­pears at the earth’s sur­face in a few places. The thick­ness of this an­cient rock layer av­er­ages about one thou­sand feet, but many of these de­posits have since been greatly de­formed by tilt­ing, up­heavals, and fault­ing, and many have been changed to quartz, shale, and mar­ble.

59:3.2No fire rocks or lava are found in the stone lay­ers of this pe­riod ex­cept those of the great vol­ca­noes of south­ern Eu­rope and east­ern Maine and the lava flows of Que­bec. Vol­canic ac­tion was largely past. This was the height of great wa­ter de­po­si­tion; there was lit­tle or no moun­tain build­ing.

59:3.3290,000,000 years ago the sea had largely with­drawn from the con­ti­nents, and the bot­toms of the sur­round­ing oceans were sink­ing. The land masses were lit­tle changed un­til they were again sub­merged. The early moun­tain move­ments of all the con­ti­nents were be­gin­ning, and the great­est of these crustal up­heavals were the Hi­malayas of Asia and the great Cale­do­nian Moun­tains, ex­tend­ing from Ire­land through Scot­land and on to Spitzber­gen.

59:3.4It is in the de­posits of this age that much of the gas, oil, zinc, and lead are found, the gas and oil be­ing de­rived from the enor­mous col­lec­tions of veg­etable and an­i­mal mat­ter car­ried down at the time of the pre­vi­ous land sub­mer­gence, while the min­eral de­posits rep­re­sent the sed­i­men­ta­tion of slug­gish bod­ies of wa­ter. Many of the rock salt de­posits be­long to this pe­riod.

59:3.5The trilo­bites rapidly de­clined, and the cen­ter of the stage was oc­cu­pied by the larger mol­lusks, or ceph­a­lop­ods. These an­i­mals grew to be fif­teen feet long and one foot in di­am­e­ter and be­came mas­ters of the seas. This species of an­i­mal ap­peared sud­denly and as­sumed dom­i­nance of sea life.

59:3.6The great vol­canic ac­tiv­ity of this age was in the Eu­ro­pean sec­tor. Not in mil­lions upon mil­lions of years had such vi­o­lent and ex­ten­sive vol­canic erup­tions oc­curred as now took place around the Med­i­ter­ra­nean trough and es­pe­cially in the neigh­bor­hood of the British Isles. This lava flow over the British Isles re­gion to­day ap­pears as al­ter­nate lay­ers of lava and rock 25,000 feet thick. These rocks were laid down by the in­ter­mit­tent lava flows which spread out over a shal­low sea bed, thus in­ter­spers­ing the rock de­posits, and all of this was sub­se­quently el­e­vated high above the sea. Vi­o­lent earth­quakes took place in north­ern Eu­rope, no­tably in Scot­land.

59:3.7The oceanic cli­mate re­mained mild and uni­form, and the warm seas bathed the shores of the po­lar lands. Bra­chio­pod and other ma­rine-life fos­sils may be found in these de­posits right up to the North Pole. Gas­tropods, bra­chiopods, sponges, and reef-mak­ing corals con­tin­ued to in­crease.

59:3.8The close of this epoch wit­nesses the sec­ond ad­vance of the Sil­urian seas with an­other com­min­gling of the wa­ters of the south­ern and north­ern oceans. The ceph­a­lop­ods dom­i­nate ma­rine life, while as­so­ci­ated forms of life pro­gres­sively de­velop and dif­fer­en­ti­ate.

59:3.9280,000,000 years ago the con­ti­nents had largely emerged from the sec­ond Sil­urian in­un­da­tion. The rock de­posits of this sub­mer­gence are known in North Amer­ica as Ni­a­gara lime­stone be­cause this is the stra­tum of rock over which Ni­a­gara Falls now flows. This layer of rock ex­tends from the east­ern moun­tains to the Mis­sis­sippi val­ley re­gion but not far­ther west ex­cept to the south. Sev­eral lay­ers ex­tend over Canada, por­tions of South Amer­ica, Aus­tralia, and most of Eu­rope, the av­er­age thick­ness of this Ni­a­gara se­ries be­ing about six hun­dred feet. Im­me­di­ately over­ly­ing the Ni­a­gara de­posit, in many re­gions may be found a col­lec­tion of con­glom­er­ate, shale, and rock salt. This is the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of sec­ondary sub­si­dences. This salt set­tled in great la­goons which were al­ter­nately opened up to the sea and then cut off so that evap­o­ra­tion oc­curred with de­po­si­tion of salt along with other mat­ter held in so­lu­tion. In some re­gions these rock salt beds are sev­enty feet thick.

59:3.10The cli­mate is even and mild, and ma­rine fos­sils are laid down in the arc­tic re­gions. But by the end of this epoch the seas are so ex­ces­sively salty that lit­tle life sur­vives.

59:3.11To­ward the close of the fi­nal Sil­urian sub­mer­gence there is a great in­crease in the echin­o­derms—the stone lilies—as is ev­i­denced by the crinoid lime­stone de­posits. The trilo­bites have nearly dis­ap­peared, and the mol­lusks con­tinue monar­chs of the seas; coral-reef for­ma­tion in­creases greatly. Dur­ing this age, in the more fa­vor­able lo­ca­tions the prim­i­tive wa­ter scor­pi­ons first evolve. Soon there­after, and sud­denly, the true scor­pi­ons—ac­tual air breathers—make their ap­pear­ance.

59:3.12These de­vel­op­ments ter­mi­nate the third ma­rine-life pe­riod, cov­er­ing twenty-five mil­lion years and known to your re­searchers as the Sil­urian.

61:2.1This pe­riod was char­ac­ter­ized by the fur­ther and rapid evo­lu­tion of pla­cen­tal mam­mals, the more pro­gres­sive forms of mam­malian life de­vel­op­ing dur­ing these times.

61:2.2Al­though the early pla­cen­tal mam­mals sprang from car­niv­o­rous an­ces­tors, very soon her­biv­o­rous branches de­vel­oped, and, ere­long, om­niv­o­rous mam­malian fam­i­lies also sprang up. The an­giosperms were the prin­ci­pal food of the rapidly in­creas­ing mam­mals, the mod­ern land flora, in­clud­ing the ma­jor­ity of pres­ent-day plants and trees, hav­ing ap­peared dur­ing ear­lier pe­ri­ods.

61:2.335,000,000 years ago marks the be­gin­ning of the age of pla­cen­tal-mam­malian world dom­i­na­tion. The south­ern land bridge was ex­ten­sive, re­con­nect­ing the then enor­mous Antarc­tic con­ti­nent with South Amer­ica, South Africa, and Aus­tralia. In spite of the mass­ing of land in high lat­i­tudes, the world cli­mate re­mained rel­a­tively mild be­cause of the enor­mous in­crease in the size of the tropic seas, nor was the land el­e­vated suf­fi­ciently to pro­duce glaciers. Ex­ten­sive lava flows oc­curred in Green­land and Ice­land, some coal be­ing de­posited be­tween these lay­ers.

61:2.4Marked changes were tak­ing place in the fauna of the planet. The sea life was un­der­go­ing great mod­i­fi­ca­tion; most of the pres­ent-day or­ders of ma­rine life were in ex­is­tence, and foraminifers con­tin­ued to play an im­por­tant role. The in­sect life was much like that of the pre­vi­ous era. The Floris­sant fos­sil beds of Col­orado be­long to the later years of these far-dis­tant times. Most of the liv­ing in­sect fam­i­lies go back to this pe­riod, but many then in ex­is­tence are now ex­tinct, though their fos­sils re­main.

61:2.5On land this was pre-em­i­nently the age of mam­malian ren­o­va­tion and ex­pan­sion. Of the ear­lier and more prim­i­tive mam­mals, over one hun­dred species were ex­tinct be­fore this pe­riod ended. Even the mam­mals of large size and small brain soon per­ished. Brains and agility had re­placed ar­mor and size in the prog­ress of an­i­mal sur­vival. And with the di­no­saur fam­ily on the de­cline, the mam­mals slowly as­sumed dom­i­na­tion of the earth, speed­ily and com­pletely de­stroy­ing the re­main­der of their rep­til­ian an­ces­tors.

61:2.6Along with the dis­ap­pear­ance of the di­no­saurs, other and great changes oc­curred in the var­i­ous branches of the saurian fam­ily. The sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the early rep­til­ian fam­i­lies are tur­tles, snakes, and croc­o­diles, to­gether with the ven­er­a­ble frog, the only re­main­ing group rep­re­sen­ta­tive of man’s ear­lier an­ces­tors.

61:2.7Var­i­ous groups of mam­mals had their ori­gin in a unique an­i­mal now ex­tinct. This car­niv­o­rous crea­ture was some­thing of a cross be­tween a cat and a seal; it could live on land or in wa­ter and was highly in­tel­li­gent and very ac­tive. In Eu­rope the an­ces­tor of the ca­nine fam­ily evolved, soon giv­ing rise to many species of small dogs. About the same time the gnaw­ing ro­dents, in­clud­ing beavers, squir­rels, go­phers, mice, and rab­bits, ap­peared and soon be­came a no­table form of life, very lit­tle change hav­ing since oc­curred in this fam­ily. The later de­posits of this pe­riod con­tain the fos­sil re­mains of dogs, cats, coons, and weasels in an­ces­tral form.

61:2.830,000,000 years ago the mod­ern types of mam­mals be­gan to make their ap­pear­ance. For­merly the mam­mals had lived for the greater part in the hills, be­ing of the moun­tain­ous types; sud­denly there be­gan the evo­lu­tion of the plains or hoofed type, the graz­ing species, as dif­fer­en­ti­ated from the clawed flesh eaters. These graz­ers sprang from an un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated an­ces­tor hav­ing five toes and forty-four teeth, which per­ished be­fore the end of the age. Toe evo­lu­tion did not pro­gress be­yond the three-toed stage through­out this pe­riod.

61:2.9The horse, an out­stand­ing ex­am­ple of evo­lu­tion, lived dur­ing these times in both North Amer­ica and Eu­rope, though his de­vel­op­ment was not fully com­pleted un­til the later ice age. While the rhinoceros fam­ily ap­peared at the close of this pe­riod, it un­der­went its great­est ex­pan­sion sub­se­quently. A small hog­like crea­ture also de­vel­oped which be­came the an­ces­tor of the many species of swine, pec­ca­ries, and hip­popota­muses. Camels and lla­mas had their ori­gin in North Amer­ica about the mid­dle of this pe­riod and over­ran the west­ern plains. Later, the lla­mas mi­grated to South Amer­ica, the camels to Eu­rope, and soon both were ex­tinct in North Amer­ica, though a few camels sur­vived up to the ice age.

61:2.10About this time a no­table thing oc­curred in west­ern North Amer­ica: The early an­ces­tors of the an­cient lemurs first made their ap­pear­ance. While this fam­ily can­not be re­garded as true lemurs, their com­ing marked the es­tab­lish­ment of the line from which the true lemurs sub­se­quently sprang.

61:2.11Like the land ser­pents of a pre­vi­ous age which be­took them­selves to the seas, now a whole tribe of pla­cen­tal mam­mals de­serted the land and took up their res­i­dence in the oceans. And they have ever since re­mained in the sea, yield­ing the mod­ern whales, dol­phins, por­poises, seals, and sea li­ons.

61:2.12The bird life of the planet con­tin­ued to de­velop, but with few im­por­tant evo­lu­tion­ary changes. The ma­jor­ity of mod­ern birds were ex­is­tent, in­clud­ing gulls, herons, flamin­goes, buz­zards, fal­cons, ea­gles, owls, quails, and os­triches.

61:2.13By the close of this Oligocene pe­riod, cov­er­ing ten mil­lion years, the plant life, to­gether with the ma­rine life and the land an­i­mals, had very largely evolved and was pres­ent on earth much as to­day. Con­sid­er­able spe­cial­iza­tion has sub­se­quently ap­peared, but the an­ces­tral forms of most liv­ing things were then alive.

77:4.12Mount Ararat was the sa­cred moun­tain of north­ern Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and since much of your tra­di­tion of these an­cient times was ac­quired in con­nec­tion with the Baby­lo­nian story of the flood, it is not sur­pris­ing that Mount Ararat and its re­gion were wo­ven into the later Jew­ish story of Noah and the uni­ver­sal flood.