Mapping Flood Myths: The Divine Power of Water

11 Feb 2025

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Ashley Rojas | Researcher

Ashley Rojas
arojas1@gradcenter.cuny.edu

Water, as the source of all life, has the power to create and destroy. Floods, prior to modern meteorology, would have been seen as acts of the divine, leading to the creation of flood myths, stories, and legends from many civilizations. The power of water transcends time and connects all of humankind. Present day examples including hurricanes here in the US (Katrina, Maria, Irene to just name a few) and tsunamis like at Fukushima. Mapping Flood Myths will look at flood myths and legends from all over the world and plot the locations of these myths on web map with interactivity allowing users to read the stories as well.

A majority of the current flood myth analyses have been targeting Euro-centric civilizations (Ex: Noah’s Ark/Christianity, Gilgamesh’s flood/Babylon, and Deucalion’s flood/Greek). With this project as a starting point, flood myths from other civilizations can be discovered and further researched. Aside from expanding upon disfavored flood myths, this project can be a starting point for further analysis of the importance of flood myths and how they shaped civilizations. This project can be a starting point for many new analyses to be made in the fields of geomythology, archaeology, meteorology and many more.

• https://mappingfloodmyths.github.io/
• https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4698

Publication DOI
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4698

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