A foundling infant grew up incredibly fast and soon showed signs of fantastic strength. He earned the name "Iron-shoes" from the footwear he needed. He set out on a journey and met with and joined three other extraordinary men--
"Nose-wind", who had extraordinarily powerful breath;
"Long-rake", who crumbled mountains with his rake, and
"Waterfall", who made rivers by pissing.
They went to an old woman's home and were invited to spend the night, but the woman locked them in, and the men realized that she and her four sons were tigers in disguise.
The tigers tried to kill them by roasting the room, but Nose-wind kept it cool by his blowing.
The next day, the woman challenged them to a contest of gathering pine trees while her sons stacked them.
When it became clear that the four brothers ripped up the trees faster than the tigers could stack them, the woman set fire to the logs.
Waterfall, though, made water which not only put out the fire, but created a flood that nearly drowned the tigers.
Nose-wind blew on the water and froze it. Iron-shoes skated out and kicked the heads off the tigers, and Long-rake broke up the ice and threw it far and wide, eliminating any trace of the flood...
Hmmm...something appeared very fast, grew huge, there was a powerful storm, great heat...trees were uprooted, mountains crumbled, then the water froze suddenly, the ice was smashed and broken...
Samothrace:
The sea rose when the barriers dividing the Black Sea from the Mediterranean burst, releasing waters from the Black Sea in a great torrent that washed over part of the coast of Asia and the lowlands of Samothrace. The survivors on Samothrace retreated to the mountains and prayed for deliverance.
On being saved, they set up monuments to the event and built alters on which to continue sacrifices through the ages. Fishermen still occasionally draw up parts of stone columns in their nets, signs of cities drowned in the sea. [Frazer, pp. 167-168]
That Frazer quote is also in “Noah’s Flood” — the authors of that book claim that the folklore about the flood coming *out* of the Black Sea was a consequence of the migration of some survivors of the Black Sea flood from the now-submerged basin to Samothrace. That’s a pretty weak explanation IMHO, particularly since the submerged towns could still be seen off Samothrace during antiquity. :’)
Another one from that site:
Iskender-Iulcarni (Alexander the Great), in the course of his conquests, demanded tribute from Katife, Queen of Smyrna. She refused insultingly and threatened to drown the king if he persisted. Enraged at her insolence, the conqueror determined to punish the queen by drowning her in a great flood. He employed Moslem and infidel workmen to make a strait of the Bosporus, paying the infidel workmen one-fifth as much as the Moslems got. When the canal was nearly completed, he reversed the pay arrangements, giving the Moslems only one-fifth as much as the infidels. The Moslems quit in disgust and left the infidels to finish the canal. The Black Sea swept away the last dike and drowned the workmen. The flood spread over Queen Katife's country (drowning her) and several cities in Africa. The whole world would have been engulfed, but Iskender-Iulcarni was prevailed upon to open the Strait of Gibraltar, letting the Mediterranean escape into the ocean. Evidence of the flood can still be seen in the form of drowned cities on the coast of Africa and ship moorings high above the coast of the Black Sea. [Gaster, pp. 91-92]
Had not heard of these ship moorings before. Will have to do some looking around to see just how high they might be. What appears obvious is that the Black Sea(and the Med?) along with most other bodies of water have undergone large transformations over the millennea.