ITS SHORT DURATION 73 



10. THE BEARING OF THE SUBMERGENCE ON THE 

 TRADITION OF THE FLOOD. 



In reviewing the phenomena which we have de- 



0* ** 



scribed we cannot escape 'noticing the analogy which 

 many of the facts present with some of the main 

 physical events recorded in the narrative of the 

 Flood, whether in the Biblical or the Babylonian 

 version. There is the same gradual rise of the 

 waters, for to those peoples who witnessed the event 

 the slow land-movement would not, as we have 

 already pointed out, be apparent, and they would 

 only be conscious of the gradual encroachment of the 

 waters over the land inhabited by them. 



There is the same wide-spread though, on our 

 hypothesis, only partial and local destruction of life, 

 the higher hills and mountain summits beyond reach 

 of the flood having served as places of refuge for the 

 life that survived the catastrophe ; and from those 

 centres the land was re-peopled after its re-elevation. 



Other phenomena have led us likewise to suppose 

 that the Submergence was transient or of short 

 duration, as there is an absence of all the conse- 

 quences that would follow on a long submersion. 



That Man lived at the time is now a question not 

 necessary to argue, since the fact of the existence of 

 (Palaeolithic) Man over the whole of the area we 

 have described is, at the present day, a well-estab- 

 lished fact. Therefore, as the dispersion of the 

 Rubble-drift took place at the close of the Quater- 



