A series in nine essays
Myths of the Great Deluge
Flood traditions read against the coasts they remember: which sea rose, which plain went under, and who was standing on the shore when it did.
Begin with SahulThe reading path
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August 10, 2026
Myths That Remember Sahul
Ninety-five Sahul traditions hand back the coast, the island and the law, and one Arnhem Land python is at once the flood, the serpent and the roaring board.
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August 11, 2026
Flood Myths of Sundaland
Fifty-seven Island Southeast Asian flood traditions hand back the harvest law, the moieties, the order the domains were founded in and the fire in the bamboo.
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August 11, 2026
Flood Myths of East Asia
Seventy-two East Asian flood traditions end by handing back the present world, its surnames, its marriage rule, its coastline and the peoples living on it.
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August 14, 2026
Flood Myths of South Asia
From Manu’s ship to the gourds of Bastar, the South Asian flood ends not in survival but in law: descent, marriage, craft, taboo, and three drained countries.
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August 11, 2026
Flood Myths of the Mediterranean Near East
Fifty-one flood traditions from the Aegean to the Persian Gulf end one world and issue the next, handing back the ark, the sanctuary, the seating plan and the law.
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August 14, 2026
Doggerland: The Stories Around the Drowned Country
Doggerland left no known myth of its own. Fourteen postglacial memories and four later North Sea legends show what the surrounding coasts remembered.
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August 11, 2026
Flood Myths of North America
Eighty North American flood traditions hand back the world people still live in, the corn, the crests of a whole coast, and the red stone of the peace pipe.
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August 11, 2026
Flood Myths of South America
Fifty-six South American traditions make the flood build a society. The drowned climb out of the mountain as the two Kaingang halves that still intermarry.
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August 14, 2026
Where the Flood Is Not Remembered
South of the Sahara, Africa holds one Ice Age flood tradition; northern Asia three; Sahul ninety-five. The flood myth is not universal, and the gaps say why.
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Read alongside
September 30, 2026
The Bullroarer and the Flood
Across Australia and New Guinea, strikingly similar myths bind the bullroarer to catastrophic water, ancestral law and the making of the world.
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August 10, 2026
Twelve Drowned Worlds
The front door to the flood series: twelve animated maps of the coasts rising water redrew, each wired to the essay that carries its traditions.
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