IMO, the flood happened 12,500 years ago. And what we currently call civilization is the last bitter dregs, the lowest point in the Great Cycle. Being that the lowest point was Dec. 21, 2013.
:’) Thanks bhf. There are other flood stories all over the world, and other than “a one-time event happened, lots of water, a lot of people died”, they don’t have the same details. And since the tales from all over the world and differ, it means there wasn’t a single surviving family in just one place.
Sedentary species like the sloth and koala (and the panda, which eats bamboo) were unknown in other parts of the world, and more to the point, would be found right by Noah’s original landfall. But they aren’t found in the same small part of the world.
The rabbinical sources note that there were other craft during the Deluge, and that the survivors of the Deluge could not light fires, which is an odd detail. Dr V attributed this to the arrival of ionized hydrogen from space, which combined on the way down with Earth’s atmospheric oxygen to produce the waters of the Deluge itself and for the time being at least greatly reduce the oxygen content of the atmosphere.