Are there any ancient myths about time travel?

[Jed Dilligan]

Just curious... I can't think of any off the top of my head. I wouldn't count Rip Van Winkle-type stories where someone is in suspended animation for a long time--I mean stories where time becomes space-like and someone actually voyages across it.

Are there any pre-nineteenth century (say) stories about this that anyone in the Lounge can think of?

[jobycom]

1. I can't think of anything other than prophecy

Most mythologies have an end-of-times myth, like Revelations or Godderdammerung (No idea how to spell that, might even be the wrong word :) ) which involves looking forward to the end of days. Not really what you're looking for.

[Jed Dilligan]

2. I wonder why, then

People started thinking about it all of a sudden in the late 1800s.

Aeneas' shield also comes to mind, in the genre of prophesy... you know, the magical one with a picture history going all the way up to the Battle of Actium.

[jobycom]

3. Concept of time changed, I guess. Might be connected to emergence

of science and a greater awareness of space. These concepts would give people a greater sense of the unknown, especially space. Before, the "unknown" was just land that hadn't been discovered, or the supernatural. With more awareness of space, the idea of realities beyond easy comprehension would begin to grow.

Another possibility might be the death of the supernatural. Not that people have ever really abandoned it, but in the Middle Ages demons and ghosts lived right alongside humans in the general consciousness. Maybe by the 18th century, as science began to replace religion as a world view, and as observation became more important than revelation as the basis of knowledge, science-based mystery began to replace the supernatural in literature. For instance, whereas horror stories used to involve demons, ghosts, and vampires, they began to change to Frankenstein-esque stories, where science went wild and created the types of horrors people used to use the supernatural to create. Once thinking about science as a source of mystery, time and space travel would flow from that mentality.

Just some thoughts. Comes from the interdisciplinary approach to history I was taught at UT Dallas, maybe. :) If you haven't got the rest of your life mapped out, that would be an interesting dissertation topic in literature, or even anthropolgy and folklore.

[Jed Dilligan]

4. Headed out to breakfast now, but

Interesting thoughts. Maybe we'll pick this up some other time.

I'm mostly interested as an aspiring sci-fi writer... Though I'm also a PhD. in social science (human geography). So it might make an interesting article/book.

I wonder if photography had something to do with it, too--the idea of an actual window into another time.

[jobycom]

5. Photography--interesting thought

It would capture a moment of the past, and make people think about what that meant.

I guess you've read Gene Wolfe's books. He does interesting things with time, having characters move across it and encounter aspects of themselves, or more traditional travels to other places, always in interesting means, where it isn't clear if the travel was in mind or in reality. I suspect he'd have a lot of thought on the subject, and may know more about concepts of time throughout history. I wonder if he's written anything on it. I mention him mainly because he puts his characters in other worlds with more primitive concepts of culture and mythology, and so his concept of time travel feels more like what you'd expect in less science-oriented cultures than ours. Also, with as much research as Wolf does, he may have encountered such myths from history.

[DBoon]

15. in the 19th century, we bacame aware of a vast different past

previously, people pretty much assumed the past was like the present, and the future would be more of the same.

Technical advances and social change made Victorian intellectuals aware that they lived in an era that was changing rapidly, and would continue to change. The past was different from the present, and the future was assume to be different too.

Also, modern geology and evolutionary biology made it obvious that the earth was far older than anyone suspected, and that past eras were very different from the present. The strange creatures that ancient myths believed lived in far-flung lands were known to live in the far distant past. Where myths placed dragons in dark, distant forests, science place dinosaurs in a past millions of years prior.

Time travel doesn't make sense unless you are going somewhere different and unusual.

[jobycom]

33. I thought of that, too , but wasn't convinced.

I had a paragraph in my first post saying almost the same thing (Though not nearly as well as you said), but I deleted it. I think it had to be more than that. Even though most ancients and medievals didn't see the past as vastly different, they still recognized it as the past. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hebrew, Sumerians, etc, wrote a great deal about the past, in historical and fictional works (Greek plays, Aenead, for instance).

The medieval scholars believed that the past was more important than the present, and did see some major differences from present to past. While many medieval paintings and writings simply transport medieval clothing and titles and thought patterns back to ancient Rome, they still seemed to feel that Rome was very different in substance. It was an era closer to Christ, for instance, and one of greater learning and writing.

What's missing is the idea of putting a contemporary character into the past or future. Heroes of the past were glorified in these tales, but for time travel, you have to have a contemporary go back or forward. I can't think of any tales--whether entertainment fiction, parable, folklore, mythology, or any other didactic form--where someone from the "present" met someone from the past or future, aside from prophecy, such as Revelations.

So I think it took more than a recognition of change--something that was happening during the Renaissance, anyway, when the term "medieval" was coined to describe the Middle Ages as different. It took a shift in metaphysics.

And something else. It took a different attitude towards fiction. Fiction never had the purpose of creating things vastly different than contemporary culture before. From "Medea" to "The Song of Roland," stories about the past were meant to describe a culture, to try to make sense of past events in contemporary context. Fiction wasn't meant to entertain, or transport someone to a different world. It wasn't that people didn't know about different worlds--the Greeks, Romans and Europeans all knew about worlds completely different from their own, and wrote historical works and "travel" style literature about them. But they didn't right fiction (and I'm including myth or historical tales like "Song of Roland") about them. Even Shakespeare, who wrote about different places and times, focused more on the lessons contemporaries could learn from the stories, than on the great differences between Venice and London, or Denmark and London.

It's not just time travel that's missing, it's any form of science fiction. There was fantasy of a sort, but it wasn't really an attempt to be fantasy. It's like fiction couldn't be too fictional, or people weren't interested.

I haven't worked this into a firm thesis or anything, these are just the thoughts that occur to me as I'm writing them, so they may not be completely consistent, or even remotely accurate. :)

[tigereye]

39. aren't there some Hopi, Navajo and other American Indian

creation myths that do this? I think many cultures creation stories have some type of suspension of time, although I don't know if it would be time travel in the sense that we think of it now. Interesting question, though.

[DBoon]

40. maybe what's missing is change during one's own life

One thing for a Renaissance man to look back on the ancient Greeks centuries prior.

Another for a Victorian born in 1830 to witness the growth of telegraphs, telephones, and other innovations in his/her own life.

Science fiction was a direct result of this process. Jules Verne and HG Wells basically invented the genre (though the early Victorians EA Poe and Mary Shelly made some initial efforts)

[jobycom]

45. Yeah, that does make sense.

People could put themselves in different times because they had seen different times themselves.

[Jed Dilligan]

48. Have you read "Coming up for Air" by Orwell?

Simple childhood reminiscence takes on a time-travel-like quality for a middle-aged man in the 1930s. The difference between the two worlds (country/city as well as then/now) is pictorially as great as the difference between Victorian London and the world of the Eloi.

[UncleSepp]

6. Time passing at variable speeds is more common

There are stories of time speeding up and slowing down. In Irish myth, a typical story would have someone entering a magic place, spending an evening there, and discovering on emerging that they've been gone for years. Also typical would be someone entering a magic place, spending years there, and discovering on emerging that they've only been gone for an evening. Time is flexible in its passage in those stories, but it only seems to go forward, not back.

[pitohui]

13. not really time travel though

the society that you re-entered after spending 400 years in faery was no different from the society you'd left -- it's just that everyone you knew was dead

but you didn't actually travel in time to a different age w. different technology

it wasn't a myth abt time, it was a myth abt isolation or exile in my humble view

[UncleSepp]

53. Mostly true - the exception being Oisin's tale

He came back, and not only was everyone dead, but the people themselves had changed in character. Technology wasn't different, but the society was. He'd gone from a storied past to an unknown future. That part of the Oisin tale, though, I think is the romantic age invention and not the authentic myth. Not sure about that one, I know some of the Oisin stories were modern fiction.

It seems like people's capacity to imagine a future radically different from their own present - unless that future is an apocalypse - has changed in some way. Imagining these fabulous Golden Ages of the past has always been with us, but imagining a golden future is something else.

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. Only the ones I started in the 32900th century, 3288000 years from now

when I invented the time machine and went back to 50000BC and started the myths.

[bridgit]

19. .

:spray:

[Rabrrrrrr]

22. Don't let the good skin fool you, I'm OLD

And I mean OLD beyond even a Biblical sense of old.

Well, old to those of you still chained to the oppression of a linear sense of time. I always laugh about that.

[bridgit]

26. .

:spray: :rofl: :thumbsup: :kick: OK, i'll try the veal, i'll tip my waitress, just stop it will'ya you're killing me :rofl: :hi:

[Arkham House]

8. There were stories that circled around the concept, if you will...

...am thinking of Odysseus visiting the Underworld, the attempts by the Pharoahs to gain immortality, and most of all, maybe, the epic of Gilgamesh, and his quest for immortality...but none of these is time travel in the strictest sense. I suspect the idea of this wasn't really possible until the Romantic era, when--thanks mostly to Scott--the whole idea of "the past", as a place *different* from the present, really began...

[Jed Dilligan]

9. Yes, I was thinking

About those medieval paintings of the sack of Troy that showed the Greeks in contemporary chainmail, etc. Not exotic at all, just another thing that happened in the great chronicle of things that happened.

I can also see that pre-modern cultures view all of life as a kind of time travel--time traveling in circles (like the apparent flow of the heavens) back and forth between the present world and the spirit world that contains the past and future.

[sakabatou]

10. URASHIMA TARO

[Jed Dilligan]

11. I'd put that in the Rip Van Winkle category

There's no sense that time is traversed, only that it passes at a different speed for different people. But thanks for sending me on an interesting Google search!

[pitohui]

12. time used to be cyclical

what would be the point of time traveling from say one pre-industrial clay cottage in B.C. 2500 to another pre-industrial clay cottage in A.D. 200?

back in the day, time did not exist in the way it has existed since, oh, around 1400 or so

[Jed Dilligan]

14. My thoughts too...

See post 9 above. I think the changes were a little broader than you indicate in the pre-modern world--Sumerian peasant could learn A LOT of useful stuff from Roman peasant--but I get your point. I'd say that time was conceived as cyclical then and that it remains almost as cyclical--just a lot faster in the simultaneous forward progression of science and knowledge (for now).

[Ivan Sputnik]

16. Perhaps ghost stories would be the closest

to it. The spirit of someone from the past appearing to someone in the present. Can't think of an example right now, though.

[Jed Dilligan]

17. So maybe time was binary

The spirit world and the present, with things passing between them constantly. When time becomes an infinitely subdivided linear series it seems more spatial and therefore suggests the possibility of travel. Interesting...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/through.html

snip

One of the earliest methods for fictional time travel didn't involve a machine; the main character in Washington Irving's "Rip van Winkle" (1819) simply fell asleep for decades. King Arthur's daughter Gweneth slept for 500 years under Merlin's spell. Ancient legends of time distortion are, in fact, quite common. One of the most poetic descriptions of time travel occurs in a popular medieval legend describing a monk entranced for a minute by the song of a magical bird. When the bird stops singing, the monk discovers that several hundred years have passed. Another example is the Moslem legend of Muhammad carried by a mare into heaven. After a long visit, the prophet returns to Earth just in time to catch a jar of water the horse had kicked over before starting its ascent.

[dysfunctional press]

18. one of the things left out of most time-travel stories...

is that it would also have to be time & space travel- meaning that if you wanted to visit earth in 1912- you would have to also get yourself physically to the point in space that the earth occupied on that day...and since there are absolutely no fixed points to navigate by- since EVERYTHING is in motion- that's gonna be a REALLY dificult thing to do.

[swimboy]

20. I've thought of that aspect.

My partner laughed out loud when one day clear out of the blue I said, You know, time travel is gonna be a lot harder than you think it is.

Some stories make a little bit of accounting for this by linking the travel to a talisman or object fixed through time such as a standing stone.

This is a really fascinating question Mr. Dilligan has posed.

[Ivan Sputnik]

23. Only if you're "jumping" from one time to another?

In H.G. Well's "The Time Machine," the time traveler "speeds" through time -- he actually sees time passing at an incredibly fast rate. He's not instantly jumping from one time to another. So he's moving along with the Earth.

[Jed Dilligan]

24. That's right

His time machine is stationary, presumably fixed in one place as it travels. The place changes around the machine and presumably moves with the earth. Doesn't he describe being able to see the sun move at low time-speeds? Long time since I read that book.

[dysfunctional press]

27. i didn't read the book...

but in both movies he goes back and forth thru time, and the time machine remains in the same position on the earth- i'll give him one trip forward in some kind of time "bubble"- but going backwards is going to require space travel.

another one- driiving a delorean, and jumping to the same position on the earth- but in a different time.

[Frank Cannon]

43. Gregory Benford handled that well in the classic "Timescape"

This was the classic, Hugo-award winning novel where a scientist tries to send a tachyon message back 30-some years to warn the earth about a coming global environmental disaster.

The scientist had to aim the tachyon beam in the right direction to make sure the earth was in the right place at the right time to receive it.

But you're right in the sense that this was the ONLY time I've ever seen that aspect of time travel addressed. And yes, it's NOT easy to do.

[wildhorses]

21. am bookmarking this, as time has interested me, too...

thanks for all these thought provoking posts.


would it be remiss to say: time=god


:shrug:

[Jed Dilligan]

25. To me

it seems more like time constraint is what separates everything else from God. Maybe God is the opposite of time?

[wildhorses]

28. okay ...I can see the paradox of that statement

how could one write that mathematically?

[jobycom]

34. Many theologies, even ancient and medieval, see God as existing outside of

time. Many see God as the creator of time itself, and thus questions like "If God created everything, how and where did he exist before he created everything" aren't meaningful. God existed outside of what we call time in a way that we have absolutely no ability to concieve, since God created everything we can experience. Time is just a function of the universe we live in. God is outside that.

I've always been interested in that idea, because it basically negates any real question of whether God even exists. What does existence mean to an entity that created existence? It's a meaningless question, then.

Disclaimer: It makes sense to me, anyway! :)

[Jed Dilligan]

36. "In the beginning"

Is that accurate to the Hebrew? Or were Jacobean Englishmen "on the clock" and the calendar enough that they needed to make it linear to understand it?

[jobycom]

38. I don't know the Hebrew, but interesting question

The same interpretation of God being outside of time was raised in Islam, to the point where God was considered outside of all creation, and therefore unable to influence existence without destroying it, by bringing it into contact with a reality in which it could not exist. Miracles happened because God programmed them into creation as he created the world. The ultimate "clockmaker god." Sounds like Stephen R Donaldson's "THomas Covenant" series, too.

Disclaimer: this was a school of medieval Islamic theology. I have no idea what current Islamic theology would say on the matter.

[wildhorses]

44. I think I understand you ....(I think) and I think that is why

I find myself wanting to say that
time is God or, mathematically time = God


I want to find a way to put this in mathematical terms...

thanks for this thread

[jobycom]

50. Hm, now it's my turn to say I think I understand.

I can read your equation in a way that equals what I said above, so if you see the similarity, we may be saying the same thing. If that makes sense. :)

[wildhorses]

51. cool, then can you understand why I want to put it in

mathematical terms...along the lines of einstein's theory of relatvity...somehow I think this could be the "proof" that atheists are "needing" to prove that God exists. I understand that God is outside of all things and the creator of all things but, He is also inside all things and therefore can be proved, I think, both scientifically and mathematically. Of course it is simpler than this conversely it is more complicated than this. While I have chosen to take the simple path, my friendly adversaries have decided to box themselves in and, must take the complicated path. It is challenging but, given "time" I think we will be able to meet their requirements and package it all up in that nice, neat box in which they feel so comfortable. Personally, I find their box way to constraining but, because I love them I want to help them. Somehow, I feel that this time conundrum is a key to unlocking this metaphorical box.

Am I making any sense? I am posting this after pulling a 15 hour shift and have had no sleep in the past 24 hours.

thank you so much for trying to help me...

peace, wh

[jobycom]

52. Anselm's proof works pretty well, for those who get it.

Anselm of Bec's famous proof, roughly that God is that than which there can be nothing greater, is proof of "god," though not what form god takes. The god of Anselm's proof can work hand in hand with Joseph Campbell's description of god as metaphor for itself. I'm an atheist, but words like that are so meaningless as anything more than a label to express a politico/religious alliance.

I'm not sure that time is the key, though I can see what you are getting at. You'd have the same problem as Anselm, in that the god you proved wouldn't have to be any specific god, or wouldn't even have to be a being or sentient entity. Again, back to the clockmaker god. If I understand you correctly. I see why you want an equation, it's difficult putting it in words. Something like, something has to exist beyond time, or time would have no framework in which to exist, and that existence must have a source and a connection in the something that existed before time, and that source and connection would be god. Okay, that's not very good, because it doesn't explain why time must exist within a larger framework, though it makes sense once you grasp it--beyond the words. But is that what you're getting at?

Disclaimer: using small 'g' to avoid confusion with any gods named "God."

[wildhorses]

54. why am I NOT surprised that you "claim" to be an atheist...

somehow ya'll give off the MOST spiritual vibe...I think it is because (and correct me if I am wrong) that ya'll truly WANT to believe but, NEED proof.

I "feel" proved but, ya'll need to "think" proof...

gotta run pull another shift...

have a wondrous evening..."time"

peace, wh

[jobycom]

55. Can't speak for all atheists, but

I'm not looking for proof. I've found what I believe. I believe there is no god. There are atheists who don't believe in god, which is a different form of belief--a denial more than an affirmation.

As for why I sound spiritual, it's complicated. I've told people that I can claim to be an atheist, a Christian, or an agnostic, and be telling the truth each time. I believe that "god" is a fiction made up to answer real questions and describe a reality that can't be described. The thing "god" is describing is real, but it's not a sentient being, or any form of self-aware entity. It is simply a collection of ideas and concepts and questions that can't really be defined. Things like "Why are we here, is there a right way to live, is killing wrong?" I believe that the answers to all of those questions lie within each of us, and yet outside of each of us, as a collective, social answer. The being that religions describe as god is the answer to all of those questions. "God created us, there is a right and wrong, it is wrong to kill, because god created us that way." God didn't create us that way (I believe), but the answer works as a metaphor--a shortcut, really--for the real answers, which are based on the human collective.

And I believe that all religions at their highest levels say the same thing, and that in essence it really doesn't matter whether god is real or a metaphor. For us, the answers are the same, and the distinction is so small as to be meaningless. So to me all religions, and most forms of atheism, capture about the same amount of truth. SO I don't generally criticize religions, and wind up getting called a fundie from time to time.

I don't, however, feel any kindred spirit with literalists in any religion, meaning those people who believe their religion is the only right one, and everything they believe is the only way to believe. I don't even believe MY belief is the only one to believe.

Different athiests have different conclusions, obviously. :) But for me and others with similar beliefs, I don't think we are more spiritual because we "truly want to believe but need proof." I think we, or a least I, are spiritual because we've had to think hard about what we do believe. When I realized I no longer believed in God (around 17), I had to work out a lot about what I did believe, and what it meant. I didn't need proof, I just needed to understand what I did, do, believe.

Have fun at work!

[wildhorses]

58. okay, I can get behind everything you are saying and

for the most part I have come to those same conclusions. Do you separate "spirit" from the "physical body"? As in...do you believe there is "life" after "death"? Can the "soul" continue in another "form"? Aren't we essentially just "energy" changing "form"?

I too, went through an "atheist/agnostic" phase in my teenage years and, in my worst moments of anger/despair I still can have doubts. However, there is "something" within me that "bounces" back and I "return" to a faith of a "spiritual" awareness. I also can NOT pigeonhole my beliefs into any ONE religion.

I fear we are getting away from the "time travel" topic...oh well, like threads NEVER get off topic in the lounge;)

If you don't mind may I ask how old you are now? I am not sure why this is of relevance to me and if you don't want to post it in a public thread I will understand. I have an idea formulating but, I can't quite put it in words...language can be so confining when trying to express these topics and that is why I have wrapped so many words in qoutation marks.

peace, wh

[jobycom]

59. 41

I'm 41. I'm the opposite of you--any time I begin to experience doubts about my atheism, something in me always bounces back to an inability to find anything in me that believes in a god. I never tried to convince myself to become atheist, I just finally admitted my beliefs to myself, so maybe that's the difference. I never went through an "atheist phase," I went through a "believing phase," as a teen and child. I can't swear that my beliefs will not change, since I can't predict everything I will learn :) , so I don't attack others for their beliefs or tell them I think they are wrong. Belief is something people can't really control, I believe. Sometimes my lack of aggressiveness leads people to think I'm wavering in my atheism, but I'm not, and never really have.

I don't believe in anything separate from the body that lives past death. "Spirit" and "soul" are also metaphors to explain part of us, and in some ways "eternal life" (like reincarnation) are metaphors to explain that our influence lives well beyond us. It is better to be good in all things, for instance, because our behavior influences people--our children, others around us--and they carry that influence, and pass it down from generation to generation. Thus, our "souls" are reincarnated, as our influence lives on. I don't believe in anything that retains any self-awareness after death.

For whatever that's worth. Maybe we should talk about Dr. Who, to get the thread back on topic? :)

[tinfoilinfor2005]

29. Hmm, good question.

Maybe Shamans...seems I've read or watched something about the lore of time transfer in some Indian tribes associated with the Shamans. But I think that has more to do with smoking those strange and wild drugs.

Edited to include:
SPIRIT TRAVEL
Shamans may separate their spirits from their physical bodies and travel the various planes of existence. Their bodies drop into a comatose state and remain vulnerable during this time, and will suffer normally from lack of food and water etc, unless someone tends to them (even then they can only do very little). Basically a shaman can normally leave their body for 24 hours at a time safely, after that problems with their physical body may become an issue.

When a shaman leaves their body the two entities are run completely separately, but when they re-merge all affects are combined.

Now whether or not these other planes include past and future time frames...I couldn't find anything on that.

[liontamer]

30. yes,there's a part in the mahabharata

where a queen is taken into the future to see how much pain is still going on as a result of the actions of her time.

[Jed Dilligan]

31. Cool, do you have a reference?

If not I'll try to hunt it down.

[liontamer]

32. no

the mahabharata is huge and I haven't read it in awhile. sorry.

[jobycom]

35. That's the type of story I was trying to remember. I seem to recall

a couple of myths that have people brought to a future or past time (usually by the spirits--as in A Christmas Carol) to see the results of their actions, or the reasons behind something that they are dealing with. I keep thinking there are Native American myths with this theme, but I can't bring any to mind.

[Pacifist Patriot]

41. I can't think of any Native American myths with this theme.

[El Fuego]

37. No, but that's interesting.

It's like the modern concept of time didn't exist until relatively recently.

[pitohui]

46. it isn't "like" -- it IS that the modern concept of time didn't exist

for all of prehistory and even most of history time didn't really exist in our modern sense

it was more of a circle that repeatedly endlessly when people lived for generations without any discernable change in lifestyle -- in spring you plant, in autumn you harvest, in winter you rest up and celebrate and drink, and then it starts all over again

even reincarnation is not theory but simple observation -- the eagle in the nest grows up to look just like the one you shot for the ceremony, the grand child in the cradle looks just like you did at that age

so there was no real time to travel through, just one year that repeated over and over and over for hundreds of thousands or at least tens of thousands of years

it took technology to create our modern sense of time, a world of constant change, where every person is so different and individual, where there were 300 people living in nairobi in 1900 and now there are 5 million, where there were a couple thousand living in london a couple thousand years ago and now there are -- god? -- who even knows how many? and your grand child might have your nose or your lips, but there's enough diversity in the background that he really looks nothing like you, he's his own individual so now reincarnation and cycles are not easily observable truth but just another cute religious story

my theory anyway

not too sure i have expressed it clearly but i'm sure some professor somewhere has said it better!

i actually heard this idea first from the wiccans but it makes perfect sense to me

[El Fuego]

47. "...a circle that repeatedly endlessly " - Sounds like my life! LOL

For some of us, that part of human existence hasn't changed much! :D

[Jed Dilligan]

49. This might be a bit of a generalization

Things did happen, and were remembered. Every culture in the world retained a memory of the Paleolithic ice melt in the form of a flood story. But recordkeeping was not considered important, so after a couple of generations an event like this would be commemorated only as myth.

Within the scope of living memory, people experienced famines and other natural disasters, fought wars, dreamed about things that happened in the past, and simply generated the sorts of anecdotes that families do. Events like this were used to relate a person's age, as in the Story of Abu Hasan's Fart from the Arabian Nights. (Google it if you don't know, I wouldn't want to give away the punchline!)

So there was a certain sense of time passing in a straight line. It was more that the cycles were stronger than that they totally overwhelmed a linear sense of time.

[pitohui]

56. certainly a generalization or we'd be typing all night

a tiny nit to pick there -- while your main point is of course correct (and every one understood that events did happen in the past) -- the example you give of the flood is not a good one

every culture in the world remembered the story of the flood because all rivers flooded every spring prior to control by humanity in the form of levees, earthworks, etc.

the nile flooded every year for thousands of years, farmers depended on it

but sometimes floods get out of hand and kill the people they feed, they didn't do it just once 10,000 years ago either, it would be a semi-regular part of human experience -- in other words part of the cycle!

people in the past did have eyes (well, homer was blind, but you know what i mean), if they had meant that the flood was caused by melting glacial ice and snow, they would have said so

the best known flood myth to modern culture, the myth of noah, clearly specifies that the water fell from the sky -- spring rain, the rivers overflow, and there it is

my humble opinion anyway

[Jed Dilligan]

57. Most "Ice Age" people lived nowhere near the ice

They would have experienced the end of the climactic era as a preponderance of rain (as trapped glacial ice was released into the global water budget) and flooding.

The flood story is global and is not confined to river valley cultures, even people from arid lands that never experience flooding today tell it.

[Pacifist Patriot]

42. I have never seen this as an interest in ancient myth.

Even in the mythologies that see time as linear such as Levantine systems of myth. The time travel elements added to the Arthurian cycle of folk tales are even late additions.