The Old World is a reference to those parts of Earth known to Europeans before the voyages of Christopher Columbus; it includes Europe, Asia and Africa.
According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft.
The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while serving in the RAF from 1945 to 1948.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
A "passion for history" seems a liberal exaggeration when one does not write down where and when one found what...
But that tablet reinforces the raft hypotheses and vindicates Thor Heyerdahl's exploits once again.
He had a green parrot on board!
(Until it was washed overboard 3,000 miles offshore... )
Strange that its not Ut-napishitim (sp?), as in other versions.
Different names from different cultures. This was a very old story long before the Jews borrowed it and named the lead character "Noah." I seem to recall that the oldest variant from EBA Sumeria was Ziasdra or Ziasodra or something likt that.
Of course, that is merely the oldest variant for which we have found evidence.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
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