That's a good observation. From a scientific point of view, many cultures lived in flood-prone regions—think the Nile, the Tigris– Euphrates, the Black Sea shorelines. Sediment layers, palaeoclimatic data, and ancient sea-level rise show that catastrophic flooding did happen, so there's a real basis for the stories. At the same time, the recurrence of similar motifs—divine wrath, a lone survivor, a raft—suggests a shared psychological response. Humans tend to encode catastrophic events into narrative forms that can be passed down. So it’s probably a mix: real floods inspiring myths, and those myths being shaped by common human storytelling patterns.

I agree, the persistence of those stories suggests they tap into something fundamentally human—recurring patterns that our ancestors noticed and encoded. From a data standpoint, the motifs stay the same because they convey useful survival information, so they’re preserved across generations. In that sense, the “timelessness” is less mystical and more about the enduring relevance of the underlying facts.

Exactly. The narrative just compresses a pattern of warning into a memorable form, so it survives even when the literal event fades. It’s a compact data packet from the past that still has utility today.

Indeed, the simplicity of the story makes the warning stick. It’s like a data snippet that survives because it’s easy to transmit and still useful.