Episode 22: Grandfathers of History, part 6
Hints of the true history of the world might be scattered among the islands of the world’s largest ocean.
All the quotes from the Bible for the main story were were taken from the English Standard Version (see ESV copyright here) or the New King James Version. For the other sources, including commentaries, websites, or articles, you can find links and references in the show notes below in the order they appeared. If you have any questions, there’s a link to contact me at the bottom of the page.
Show notes:
For the time between Captain Cook leaving a small flat island and spotting the Hawaiian archipelago, see pg. 134 here which mentions that they left Christmas island at dawn on January 2, 1778 and pg. 135 in the same source that notes the discovery of land on January 19. The source here claims that they spotted land on January 18. I assume this discrepancy is due to Cook traveling eastward across what is now the international date line but not subtracting one day from his calendar, but that is just my guess. For the islands Cook discovered now being known as Hawaii, see pg. 106 in volume “H” of Boylan, D & Wester, L. (2020). Hawaii. In The world book encyclopedia (Vol 9. pg. 106). Chicago, IL: World Book. Google maps was used to measure the distance Hawaii is from the mainland of Asia, Australia, or North America. For canoes paddling out to meet Cook’s ships, see pg. 135 here.
For Samuel Wallis as the first European to find Tahiti, but that Polynesians were there before him, see Lewis, N.D. (2020) Tahiti. In The world book encyclopedia. (Vol. 19, pgs. 13-14). Chicago, IL: World Book. and a reference to being met with over 150 canoes when he arrived here.
For the European discovery of Easter Island by Jacob Roggeveen, see Langdon, R. (2020). Easter Island. In The world book encyclopedia. (Vol. 6 pgs. 44-45). Chicago, IL: World Book. That Roggeveen encountered people living there when he arrived is given by pg. 161 here.
For people already being present in New Zealand when Abel Tasman arrived in 1642 as the first European explorer, see here.
While many islands did have local inhabitants when European explorers mapped the Pacific, not all islands did. The last landfall Cook made prior to the discovery of the Hawaiian archipelago was a small flat uninhabited island according to pgs. 133-134 here. Even so, while that section notes there was no evidence humans had been there before, it also mentions that it looked barren and there was no water there so it’s not surprising to me that they found it uninhabited.
Regarding the legends discussed in this episode, I should offer some warnings. First, the legends I mention are ones that show the most interesting similarities to the history in Genesis, not a fair sampling of all the legends found in the places discussed. In short, I cherry picked. There are many legends with unknown origins that don’t relate well to the history in the Bible. They could be heavily modified versions of what’s found in Genesis, corrupted versions of stories from local history that happened after people left Babel (stories Genesis says nothing about), or pure fiction. I’m not endeavoring to explain the origins of all myths, only present some of the stories that appear to resemble the history found in Genesis. Second, while I try to go back to the oldest stories I can find, for places in the Pacific Ocean that isn’t very old, only going back a few hundred years at most, so we don’t know if these are ancient or recent legends, we don’t know how they might’ve changed, and we don’t know if the people writing them down got everything right or let their own beliefs influence what they recorded. Finally, perhaps the biggest challenge is that we don’t know how long the natives of an place lived in that location or what contact they had with people from elsewhere in the world over the centuries before their stories were recorded. They might’ve moved to an island 3000 years ago, or only 800. They may have traveled the ocean and heard stories from traders or the legends they share could be their own family memories. None of this makes these stories necessarily incorrect or corrupted by outside influences, only that we can’t prove the stories are authentic ancient legends.
For a history of the study of bird migration including the stork with a spear in its side, see here. For details on the 7,000 mile trip of the Godwit across the Pacific, see here.
For the maximum estimated drop in sea level during the Ice Age for southeast Asia see table 9.1 on pg. 203 here where it notes a that sea level might’ve been 135 meters below the present level or just short of 443 feet. How the coastlines were affected by this loss of water is more complicated. In a simple model you would say that sea level went down, exposing more of the island and making it larger, but that’s not the only way the ice from the Ice Age affected the shoreline. As the ice built up on land, it pushed the land down, but on the edges where there wasn’t the weight of ice, the land bulged upward. For more, see the article here and here. How exactly this affected relative sea and land levels on the continental shelves around southeast Asia and Australia isn’t clear, though, if anything, given that the ice sheets were far away from that part of the globe (see image here which also shows extended coastlines) I would expect the land elevations around southeast Asia and Australia to stay the same or be pushed up out of the sea meaning that more land would be exposed as water moved from the oceans to the land-based glaciers. According to this article that there may also have been a land bridge between Asia and Australia though the article here supports the position that there was no land bridge between Asia and Australia due to the deep sea trenches in that part of the sea floor. All that said, the data suggests the coastlines of the islands of southeast Asia and Australia were likely nearer to one another than they are today even if there weren’t full land bridges. For a map of the ocean floor between southeast Asia and Australia, see here. For another source suggesting land bridges as a method for animals to spread between continents, see here which also offers the opinion that the Ice Age and the land bridges it exposed were part of God’s plan for animals to repopulate land around the world after the Flood.
For a discussion of volcanoes and earthquakes that might’ve taken place during the Flood, see Episode 13.
For iguanas colonizing a new island in the Caribbean after floating there on a mat of plants after hurricanes, see here
For details about the floating logs on Spirit Lake near Mount St. Helens, see here. For the distance between Mount St. Helens and Spirit Lake, I measured the map here.
In another example of drift wood that keeps drifting rather than sinking, a log in Crater Lake in the U.S. state of Oregon has been floating about the lake vertically for over 100 years. For more, see here.
While the idea of floating debris islands transporting animals over larger bodies of water after the Flood is not my speculation, the article here) does point out a series of challenges to that idea including whether they would be able to carry large animals across oceans, whether the rafts could survive the storms they’d probably run into crossing an ocean, and concerns about how the islands would supply enough fresh water for the animals riding on them. To the last point, I wonder if the rain might be sufficient given the warm oceans and the rapid evaporation during that part of history (see other discussions about the Ice Age environment), but that is just my speculation. As for the question of whether mats of tangled vegetation could be large enough for big animals or survive ocean crossings, those are fair points, though perhaps it is underestimating the scale of the Flood to think that it couldn’t form very large and robust floating mats of vegetation as suggested by the articles here and here.
As for the idea that land animals might’ve been transported by people, see the note on Genesis 8:17 here and the note here that mentions New Zealand didn’t have mammals until Europeans arrived.
To me, when considering people leaving Babel or settling the world after the Flood, I think what mattered in navigating the oceans was how hard it was to find land and how long you had to travel. With that in mind, rather than using standard labels of Indonesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia found today, I’ve divided this episode into whether the island in question was nearby and presumably easy to reach from the mainland of Asia, such as the large islands of Sumatra and Borneo or the continent of Australia with the little islands close to those larger lands, versus the small or faraway islands that would’ve taken much more skill and determination to reach, such as places in Polynesia (including New Zealand) and Micronesia. Whether islands like Fiji belong in one group or the other is up for debate in my opinion, but I chose to group it with the distant outlying islands.
A few sources in this episode come up repeatedly. The first of them is a was written by Sir James George Frazer, whose material I’ve also used in other episodes. Frazer was not a proponent of the reliability and truth of the Bible (as an example, see comments on pgs. 332-338 and pgs. 343-344 here), but in the early 1900s he did helpfully publish a collection of many legends and myths found around the world that dealt with creation, floods, and other stories and compared them to what is found in the Bible. Beyond Frazer, I have also used some references from another author who republished and expanded Frazer’s material about 50 years later. That author, too, dismisses the validity of the Bible (see pgs. 35 and 39 here). Finally, I used a book that contains a collection of the mythology of the lands of the Pacific written by Roland Dixon as a source of legends from people who live in that region (see here). I’ve used other books from this series in other episodes. None of these books are perfect. Two of them were published over 100 years ago and are in the public domain and the other was published over 50 years ago, so they might lack more updated research on various legends. These authors do, however, reference their sources and at least appear to be scholarly works studying the legends of the lands of the Pacific, and as such I have treated the information they provide as factually accurate without tunneling down in most cases to the original reference they used in collecting a given legend. It is possible the sources they used were inaccurate, or that the authors themselves reported it incorrectly on purpose or by accident. At least two of the sources are not supportive of the accuracy of the history in Genesis (see comments above) which means that any evidence that does support that history cannot, at least, be blamed on their personal biases.
For the distance across the strait of Malacca between the mainland of Asia and Sumatra, see here. The minimum distance is given as 40 miles in that article, but there are smaller islands that would’ve allowed shorter segments in certain places if you look at a map and measure distances, such as here.
For the Portuguese discovering Sumatra in 1508 and putting outposts there, see pg. 74 here which also outlines briefly the history of Sumatra prior to European arrival.
It is suggested on pg. 160-161 here that the Toba Battak people of Sumatra were probably the least affected by outsider beliefs, such as those from Hinduism or Islam, and therefore it is implied that their legends might be more genuine rather than mixed with outside elements. On the other hand, evidence of Hindu influence among the natives of Sumatra, including the Battas (another spelling of Battak) is suggested by the comment on pg. 74 here that Sanskrit (the sacred language of Hinduism) words are used including for a tree considered sacred among both the Battaks and Hindu.
The legend of the Toba Battak, found on pgs.160-161 here might be a mix of several stories from Genesis since it mentions a great ocean, and the first world involving both a woman and a large snake (Genesis 1-3), the world destroyed by water (Genesis 6-8), and history starting from three sons (Genesis 9-10), but these parallels are only my speculation as the Battak story puts the elements and relationships in a different order than Genesis.
Another legend from the Battak people, found on pgs. 162-163 here describes a god and his spouse trying to have children and going to live in a house by the sea. They make a garden but a giant snake comes and destroys it. The god gets a magic ring from the snake and has three sons and three daughters. The earth is made but the sons fight and the world is destroyed by earthquakes seven times until it is made more firm so that, while there are still earthquakes, the world isn’t destroyed by them. This series of details could be muddled memories of the history in Genesis as it includes a garden being destroyed because of a serpent (Genesis 3), the arrival of three sons and three daughters (which might be a memory of Noah’s three sons and three daughters-in-law), and the world being destroyed by earthquakes until it was fixed so that wouldn’t happen any more (perhaps a memory of God promising the world would no longer be destroyed) but these parallels are, once again, only my speculation. Combine those details with what is found in a further version of the legend on pgs. 217-218 here, and it sounds an awful lot like there might be Christian influence in the story since it includes reference to people going to heaven or being thrown into a vat that is on fire until their sins are burned up before the sun and the fire do the same to the physical universe, elements that would suggest certain Christian beliefs have worked their way into native stories rather than the tale being a genuine native history.
Another story from the Battak people says that a raven once flew over a dark ocean, before a god came, made light and a raft and put dirt on it to create land. This sounds like a combination of the creation of the world in Genesis 1 that mentions a great ocean, light, and land, and the events at the end of the Flood with a raven searching for land in Genesis 8, but this story, mentioned on pgs. 161-162 here also notes that this tribe had contact with Islam, which could imply that there was information from Genesis leaking into the local legend.
Another Battak story tells of a flood sent by the creator to kill everything on earth. The water had gotten up to the knees of the last two humans who stood at the top of the highest mountain when the creator changed his mind. He gave the people a little dirt to stand on. They had children to repopulate the world, and the dirt grew larger to make room for them until it covered the world. For the story, see pg. 100 here. I don’t know if there is Christian influence in it or not (the author makes no comment about it) though other Battak stories, mentioned in show notes above, might be influenced from Christian or other outside sources.
For Borneo as the third largest island in the world, see here.
For the story from Borneo of a great snake swimming in a worldwide ocean at the start of creation, see pg. 159 here.
For the story from Borneo of two trees, a snake, a woman, and the birth of sons and evil spirits from the sky-world, see pg. 159 here. While there are lots of muddled similarities to the story in Genesis, the author who recorded the story made no suggestion that it was due to missionaries having interacted with the tribe, though that is not proof that such contact never happened.
In some stories collected on pgs. 174-175 here it talks about how two birds went through some trial and error to create people. There are different versions of the story. In one, they started with clay, then went to wood, and then a different kind of wood before they were successful, but when they went back to make more people they couldn’t remember how and ended up making monkeys and orangutans instead. Other versions have them starting with wood and only succeeding in making people when they used clay or using stone, then wood, before finally successfully using dirt with people descended from this final success.
For the stories from Borneo of trial-and-error creation of humans using different materials until a successful version was found, see pgs. 174-175 here.
For God taking a rest on the seventh-day of creation after finishing the creation of the world in six days, see Genesis 1:26-2:2.
For the story from Borneo of the first people coming from eggs and getting the breath of mortality rather than immortality, see pgs. 169-170 here as well as pgs. 174-175 noting that a story like it is also told on the nearby island of Sulawesi. In another story from Borneo, plants got the water of life rather than humans, so that humans die while plants do not as noted on pgs. 173-174 here. Once again, the author makes no mention that missionaries might’ve affected the local legend, though we cannot say for certain whether it did or did not happen.
For the story of killing and skinning a giant snake only to be swept away in a Flood that distributed people in different places, see pg. 181 here.
For the story of the Dyaks of Borneo who also mention killing a great snake before a flood came, see pg. 101-102 here. According to the story, only a woman and a few animals survived the flood. The legend rapidly diverges from any parallels to Genesis from there. Another version of the story has them killing the snake after seeing it come down from the sky to eat their rice (see pgs. 180-181 here.
For the legend from Borneo of a Flood where only the tallest mountain stayed above the water and it took 3 months for the water to go down, see pg. 102 here.
For the reference to the son of the sky-god coming from heaven on a rainbow, see pg. 156 here.
In a legend from Sulawesi on pg. 173 here the author notes that god formed man and woman from the dirt and brought them to life by blowing ginger into their ears and head. In another source, on pg. 723 in Kearsley, G. R., Mayan Genesis (2001) Yelsraek publishing the author says the names of the people were Adam and Ewa along with references to a tree and a god saying that it was good after land appeared from the ocean. That author argues that the names show outside influence, and I’ll admit that the similarity in names supports that belief. As with all legends that show parallels to the history in Genesis, it is difficult to tell whether a close detail is evidence of an outside story getting mixed in or simply evidence of history being handed down exceptionally well.
For the story from Sulawesi of a woman and mouse surviving a flood, see pg. 102 here.
For a map of Indonesia, see here.
For the origin of the name and the Spanish history of the Philippines, see here.
For stories from the Philippines that mention people being made from grass or reeds, see pgs. 175-176 here. For the comment of the creator making people from the ground and then spitting on them to bring them to life, see pg. 173 in the above source. For the note that the people thought to be least affected by foreign sources have no stories of creation, see pg. 155 in that source. In another reference, pg. 225 here tells of eight people being made from grass before most of their descendants die in a Flood. To me this sounds like a confused memory of the Flood and the eight people who survived it, but that is just my speculation.
For the note that while stories of creation are lacking among people who might be least affected by outsiders, stories of a Flood show up among all the people, see pg. 155 here and often are the start of history legends according to pgs. 178-179 in the above source.
For the story from the Philippines of everyone drowning in a Flood except for a pregnant woman, see pg 225 here.
For a brother and sister surviving the a flood on separate mountains and then repopulating the world after it, see pg. 170-172 here. See also pgs. 179-180 in the same source.
For New Guinea being the second largest island in the world, see here.
For some tribes in New Guinea saying that the first man came from the ground and the first woman from a tree, see pg. 110 here. A parallel to Adam being made from the ground in the history in Genesis is clear. Perhaps the woman being born from a tree shows that they remembered something of Eve and the forbidden fruit (a woman associated with a tree) rather than being made from a rib, but that is my speculation.
The comment on pg. 103 here suggests that legends from people living away from the coasts of New Guinea is limited, which I assume is due to only limited contact with the outside world, at least as of the writing of the book in question in the early 1900s.
For the story from New Guinea of the king of the snakes stopping a great Flood, see pgs. 119-120 here.
For the story of a man who told people not to eat a certain big fish, but they ate it anyway and then died in a flood, see pg. 237 here. To me, this story has elements not only of the flood, but of the forbidden food as well, though that is only my observation.
For the story from the Admiralty Islands (see pg. 205 here) near New Guinea of a large snake calling for a reef to rise and make land out of a worldwide ocean, see pg. 105 here.
For other stories of people made from wood found near to the Admiralty islands see pgs. 106-107 here. That story includes the creation of three men and three women from wood by a good being with a bad being later making more which decayed, which is given as the reason people die. In an alternate story, the first man was made of clay and the first woman from trees. Regarding the first legend, it is purely my speculation, but given how long Shem and Noah, and presumably the other 6 people on the ark, lived after the Flood compared to people later on, I wonder if there could be some memory of Noah’s sons and their wives versus everyone else in this story. For the ages of Shem and Noah at their deaths, see Genesis 9:29 and Genesis 11:10-11.
For the story of a woman who met a snake that could talk, had children with him, and the snake gave them food the children thought was better than their previous food, see pg. 116 here. It is easy to draw links between this story and the events of Eve talking to a serpent and eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil found in Genesis 3, though that is my speculation. It is possible the parallels are due to outside influence, but the author makes no suggestion that outsiders affected the story in the above reference.
Another story from the Admiralty islands says that a man and woman, floated on the ocean on a piece of driftwood and wondered whether the water would ever dry up. Eventually it did and a land of hills appeared, but with no plants, so the two people planted trees and made food according to pg. 105 here. Given that this story doesn’t say where the people, the driftwood, or the belief in land came from it sounds to me more like the story of the end of a worldwide Flood than a creation story, though it could be a cobbled together memory of both stories since according to Genesis creation began and the Flood ended with the world covered in water.
For the story of people in the Admiralty islands who tried to construct a building that reached the sky only to be told to stop, have water dripped on them, and have their language confused, see pgs. 383-384 here, though the author in that case says that there “can be little doubt” that the story is a memory from missionaries.
For the sun offering immortality, and snakes and stones living forever but people not listening so they die instead, see pg. 119 here.
For Australia being about 20% desert today, see here. For the current size of Lake Eyre in Australia, see here which reports 5.7 meter max depth and 30 cubic kilometers of water, which is as large as it got during the flood in 1974 according to the article here. That’s about 1.5 times the combined volume of the north and south parts of the Great Salt Lake according to figures here and here. The study here also suggests that Lake Eyre had a depth of over 80 feet and a volume of around 520 cubic kilometers when filled during past Ice Age events. Compare that with data here that says Lake Erie in North America has 484 cubic kilometers of water at low level. Erie is also deeper and has less surface area than the proposed past extent of Lake Eyre.
For the river system that used to flow through what is today the Simpson desert in Australia, see here.
The idea of a lush forest in Australia might be supported by stories from aborigines. In one story from near lake Eyre found on pgs. 3-5 see here they say the deserts in the center of Australia used to be like a garden covered in giant trees with a thick canopy of leaves. They tell of the sky covered with continuous clouds. The legend also includes references to Kadimakara animals that came down from the gum trees, got stuck on earth when the gum trees were destroyed, and that the bones of those animal are sites of ceremonies by the aborigines. Reading further in that source, pgs. 80 and 230-235 connect the Kadimakara bones to the Diprotodon (see here). The author who tells the story notes that the legends might be made up, or a memory of some other place people lived before coming to Australia given that ancient legends also talk about sandy hills. Eventually, the author concludes (on pg. 235) with his belief that given the variation of the legends he thinks the aborigines came from somewhere else and imported stories of an ancient rainforest from where they used to live rather than there once being a rainforest in the center of Australia. That source, however, was from the early 1900s. A century later, we gained the insight that there were rivers in the Simpson desert and Lake Eyre was much larger in the past (see above show notes) but I couldn’t find updated references to whether scholars now think the aborigines were remembering Australia or some other place they used to live before migrating there. There are other references, such as the article here and reference in another work (see pg. 194 here which points back to this earlier author and notes that the legend from the Dieri aligns with what we now know about what Australia used to be like. Personally, given what we’ve found of ancient rivers and lakes in the deserts there and that detail about a thick cover of clouds that matches what the world might’ve been like after the Flood, I wonder if the aborigines are remembering Australia in the centuries after the Flood, but that’s only my speculation.
Supporting a general idea that Australia used to be more lush, see the article here which theorizes how Australia went from lush to arid over a long period of time. For one proposed alignment of the geologic column with a creationist understanding of history, see here. In that comparison, the more forested period of Australia’s history aligns with when the floodwaters were falling, but, to me, it suggests in the early years after the Flood Australia was a wetter continent than it is today, though I don’t know how quickly that changed or when pioneers leaving Babel might’ve arrived.
As stated earlier, a source I used for the mythology of native Australians was written in 1916 and pg. 269 here mentions that there isn’t a lot of mythology from native Australians because so many had died and parts of the continent were still unknown. Presumably the second part of that statement has changed in the last century, but it is worth noting that some of the details of Australian mythology I present in this episode may be out of date. That said, the main issue would not be that the recorded stories are inaccurate, only that additional legends found in the last 100 years add data that is lacking in the material published in 1916.
For the comment that native legends of creation aren’t common in Australia, see pg. 270 here. That source mentions that one region of Australia does talk about all things being made in the beginning by some being, but then says, “these statements may not necessarily mean all that seems to be implied” and suggests that only certain features of the land were thought to have been created. That page goes on to say that stories claim people either appeared on their own, appeared incomplete but were finished somehow, or were made by a god. For the argument that monotheism is not native to Australia, see the article here that says that any stories of a monotheistic god (called “All-Father”) in Australian mythology were brought there by Christians are not an original Australian belief.
For men and women in Australia being made from clay and mud or thrown from the sky by an angry god, see pgs. 273-274 here.
For the belief in part of Australia that an evil spirit in the shape of a snake caused death, see pgs. 24-25 here.
For the number of snake species and number of venomous snake species in Australia, see here as referenced in an earlier episode.
The “rainbow serpent” of Australian legends comes in lots of different formats, but it is noted as both a creator and a being that controls rain and droughts here.
For Australian flood legends, the author on pgs. 165-166 here notes that Australia has lots of legends, but none that parallel the history in Genesis.
For the story of some people being taken to heaven, most people dying, and only one man and woman escaping a flood by climbing a tree on a mountain, see pg. 236 here
For the story of a creator cutting people into pieces due to their evil behavior and the wind scattering them around the world where they developed into people again, see pg. 274 here. The author argues the story is at least somewhat due to the influence of missionaries but suggests at least some of it is probably original to native Australians.
For the size of Taiwan compared to other countries, see here. For its distance from the mainland of Asia and a description of the the mountains on the island, see here.
To calculate that Taiwan was once connected to the mainland of Asia, I assumed sea levels used to be 100 meters lower during the Ice Age and measured the sea floor depth on the map here. I did not take into account any land level changes due to the weight of ice discussed earlier. See earlier show note for a more complete discussion.
For the story from Taiwan of a snake and crab fighting before a Flood came and covered all the world but two mountains, see pgs. 232-233 here. There is also an alternate version of the story (on pg. 232) where rain fell for a long time but a giant snake blocked the river causing it to back up into a flood. In that case people survived on a mountain until a crab cut the snake’s body apart to let the water drain away. In both cases a snake is involved in the story and in the first some idea that the flood made some of the mountains where the land had been flat before.
For a brother and sister repopulating the world after a flood according to the Ami people of Taiwan, see pgs. 226-227 here. Note that while it doesn’t say it was a worldwide flood, it does describe the brother and sister finding themselves alone in the world, perhaps implying that the flood killed everyone else, though you could also argue that other people survived but only at some far distance where they were unknown.
For the second version of the Ami legend where the flood is caused by an earthquake, see pgs. 227-229 here. Once again it doesn’t say the flood was global, but the survivors didn’t find anyone living afterward, and when they went back to their boat to try to sail back to their homeland, it was rotten and they couldn’t use it. It is possible that other people survived, or that it was a local flood and the survivors didn’t hunt far enough to find people, but that’s all speculation. The gist of the story is that there were initially only three survivors. In addition, the story doesn’t explicitly say that the brother and sister became the ancestors of people in the world today, but it does have them giving birth to a stone out of which four children eventually come, some with shoes and some without, with the author suggesting the children who wore shoes were probably thought to be the Chinese, though he doesn’t speculate on who the barefooted children were. To me, it is interesting that this legend not only mentions water coming out of the ground which parallels the “fountains of the great deep” from Genesis 7:11 but also notes that there was smoke rising from a mountain after the flood that frightened the survivors, which makes me wonder if their story has some recollection of the condition of the world after the flood with ongoing volcanic activity, but that is just my speculation.
Looking at ocean floor depths here around Japan to decide whether Japan would’ve been connected to the mainland of Asia if sea levels were 100 meters lower than they are today suggests that some places would be connected, but that parts of Japan would still be islands. For instance, the straits between Japan and Korea are more than 100 meters deep in places today so there might still be some water there. To the north, though, the island of Hokkaido looks like it would be connected to the island of Sakhalin and Sakhalin would be connected to the mainland. To the south, the channel between Hokkaido and Honshu looks to be deep enough that those two islands would still have water between them, even if the waterway was quite narrow. All this said, I am only using sea floor depth for these estimates and ignoring the degree to which the earth’s crust moved up or down in that location due to the weight of ice on the Asian mainland (see earlier show note for a more detailed discussion) so take the assumptions of what islands may or may not have been connected as a best guess.
For the suggestion that the Ainu may have been the first people to live in what is today Japan, see the article Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. “Ainu.” The World Book Encyclopedia, 2020 ed. There are legends of the Ainu defeating other people who lived there prior, but the comment on pg. 12 here suggests that this is just a memory of another Ainu clan and not a different people group. For the Ainu living on all the major islands of Japan at one point, before being forced to the northern region of Japan, see here.
The actual origins of the Ainu are a mystery. They don’t look like the other people around them, as mentioned here, with their language being dissimilar as well according to the article Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. “Ainu.” The World Book Encyclopedia, 2020 ed. which notes that the Ainu language has not be “clearly classified,” with the suggestion that the Ainu language isn’t linked to Japanese going back to at least the early 1900s as given by pg. 11 here. The article mentioned above from Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. “Ainu.” The World Book Encyclopedia, 2020 ed. also notes that some researchers suggest the Ainu are related to Europeans, but doesn’t elaborate on who these researchers are or how they think the Ainu and Europeans are connected.
For Ainu legends that parallel some of the history in Genesis, I used the book found here. It was published in 1901 and written by a missionary to the Ainu (see title page here). This might make the book sound quite biased, but evidently the value of it as a scholarly resource was considered sufficient for the editors of the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica to use it as one of their references when writing their entry on the Ainu found on pgs. 441-442 here with the book above mentioned at the end of the article. Assuming the material in that book is accurate, it offers several interesting Ainu legends that show similarities to the history in Genesis. Starting with pgs. 35-37 it describes their belief that the world was originally only an ocean of land mixed up with water to form a muddy swamp. The author notes the parallel between this Ainu story and creation in Genesis, but also states that the story fits so well with standard Ainu beliefs that if their beliefs were influenced by knowledge of Genesis, it must have been very long ago. In the same source, pgs. 4-5 note the Ainu belief that the creator god made the first man from dirt, plants, and a willow branch. Though there are a couple of versions of how a tree that brought disease came into the world, the standard belief offered on pg. 44-45 in the above source is that the tree causing diseases and suffering grew from the rotting tools the creator used to shape the world (the less standard story, offered on pgs. 45-46, is that this tree came from heaven and was planted on Earth fully grown). As for the tree itself, the author notes that it wasn’t the source of “moral evil” (as in sin) but the cause of pain and suffering, noting that the Ainu think it was from the bark rotting, turning to dust, and then blowing around on the wind. The author also notes that fresh bark from the tree could be used to make a medicine for diseases as described on pgs. 45-47 in that reference. In introducing this tree that brought pain and suffering into the world on pg. 45, the author mentioned that he’d been telling people about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from Genesis and a man said he thought this alder from their legend was the same tree. For discussion of the Ainu legends about snakes see pg. 357 in the above reference where it mentions the first snake used to be in heaven along with the belief that he is a good god who is worthy to be worshiped. In one version of the story of how the snake came to Earth, the author notes (on pgs. 358-359) that the creator sent the goddess of fire to the Earth to be in charge of it on his behalf and the snake wanted to be with the woman and eventually got permission and came to Earth as a flash of lightning. Further legends (on pg. 360) mention that when snakes went underground they took looked like people and the belief that snakes are evil and want to hurt people. The legend on pgs. 361-362 tells of a large beautiful snake that tried to tempt an Ainu man to sin, but he refused, was cursed to live for a thousand years, and when the snake was killed she became stinging ants and wasps. This story is a bit confusing in that it says the Ainu man refused to sin because he was “God-fearing” which sounds very Christian, but that may just be an English term for a similar Ainu concept. Furthermore, such ideas as fearing God pre-date the dispersion at Babel so it doesn’t necessarily show the Ainu to have been influenced by Christianity, but as with all these oral legends, that is a possibility. The author also notes (on pg. 365) that the Ainu do not link snakes to how sin came into the world, but they do think they are an enemy of humans and especially hate women and will try to get power over them and make them insane or crazy if they get the chance, with the Ainu believing that having a snake control you or bing possessed by a devil are the same thing. This idea has obvious connections to Genesis 3 where a woman was tricked by the devil in the form of a snake (for the devil and the snake linked together, which isn’t explicit in Genesis 3, see Revelation 12:9). For a discussion of worshiping an idol of a snake when there are difficulties with child birth and the belief that snakes are the causes of these difficulties, see pgs. 366-368 in the above source. That could be seen as a link to Genesis 3:16 where childbirth became more difficult after Eve gave into the temptation from the snake in Eden, though that is only my speculation, and worshiping snakes isn’t specifically limited to that situation as pg. 368 notes that it was also used in at least one example for someone suffering from fevers and chills. As with all these stories that are oral traditions, we don’t know whether the legends from the Ainu that sound like the history in Genesis come from some previous contact with people telling that history or were remembered and handed down through the generations since their forefathers received the story from Noah and his sons. For previous discussions of people who twisted the history from Genesis and came to believe the snake was good rather than evil, see stories in Episode 7.
The Ainu legend of the first snake descending to the Earth as lightning from heaven makes me think of Jesus’ comments in Luke 10:18 of seeing Satan fall from heaven like lightning. I suppose one could argue that the Ainu legend comes from some past knowledge of that comment from the New Testament, but no reference to that idea was made in the sources I found. Furthermore, it would mean the Ainu recalled that comment from Jesus, but forgot all other references to how this first snake was evil since they believe the first serpent is good and worthy to be worshiped as noted in the above show note. In addition, one could wonder whether the snake idols they make and use during diseases or after snake bites (see pg. 367 here) were based on knowledge in the past of the bronze serpent set up by Moses (see Numbers 21:4-9) but no mention of such a possibility was noted by the author and I didn’t notice parallels to other stories related to Moses that you might expect if this behavior was because of memories of the bronze serpent. While there is no evidence Christians influenced Ainu beliefs, there is always room for that accusation, though similarities aren’t necessarily evidence of Christian influence. If the stories in question come from before people separated at Babel, it might simply be evidence that people remember their ancient history and a validation of the accuracy of the history in Genesis, albeit with various differences having crept in through many generations of handing the story down. In short, if a legend sounds like the history in Genesis, it can be either evidence of recent influence from Christianity or of imperfect memories of everyone’s common origins. For another explanation of the bronze serpent, see Episode 7.
The distances between small islands dotting the Pacific can be measured here.
For a description with references for the ocean-going boats used by people living in the Pacific, see the source here which mentions on pg. 54 that these catamaran ships they were 50 to 75 feet long, pgs. 56-58 that note different versions of the open ocean vessels, pgs. 70-71 that records Captain Cook’s estimate that these watercraft could go 120 miles or more per day (with the author of the source adding that this depended on wind direction and whether the ship had to tack), and pg. 80 where another person who traveled with Cook saw one boat he thought carried 80 to 100 people.
We don’t know how long Ham or Japheth lived, but if they lived a similar length of time to the 500 year lifespan of Shem recorded in Genesis 11:11 and people were migrating across the sea within those first five centuries, Japheth and Ham might’ve been able to explain much about how to build and provision a ship for surviving on the open ocean. See further reference to people possibly migrating by boat given the family’s boat-building heritage here. Whether Japheth and Ham did pass that information along is only speculation.
I tried to go through the legends from the more distant islands of the Pacific starting near to Australia and working further and further out. For this I searched locations (such as for the Marshall islands) here and assumed that map to be sufficiently accurate.
One author notes a lack of legends in Micronesia due to early explorers failing to record them. They note that there aren’t many detailed stories and what we do have shows many differences between one legend and another on pgs. 247-248 here. For the tendency to believe that people were originally supposed to live forever, see pg. 252-253 in the above source.
For the story from Palau of a bird causing the water of life to be spilled on trees rather than people, see pgs. 252-253 here See pg. 254 in that source where “Obagat” is called a god. The book says the Pelew islands, but that is the same as Palau according to this source. Also note that the water of life was spilled on plants in Borneo story mentioned earlier from pgs. 173-174 in the same book.
For the story from Palau (called Pelew islands, see above show note) of a flood, see pgs. 253-254 here.
For the Flood story from the island of Yap, see pgs. 256-247 here. While the story doesn’t explicitly say that everyone else in the world died, it does mention that the woman had seven children after the flood who spread out around the world.
For the story from the western Caroline islands of a female god making things grow by speaking, see pg. 248 here. Later in that section it notes another story from the Carolines where a male god sends plants from heaven and the Gilbert islands where a god and his daughter make haven and earth.
For the story from the western Caroline islands of a mother who said she’d come back to life on the seventh day after dying, but her children got distracted eating fruit and didn’t dig her back up in time, see pg. 253 here. It is interesting to me that that story has elements of fruit causing death and the memory of a seven day period which might be memories of the history from Genesis, though that is my speculation. The author makes the offhand comment that there may have been elements from missionaries in the story, though that appears to be speculation based on similarity and not necessarily evidence. On the same page it also discusses other stories from the Caroline islands including a head god asking if people should live again after dying and another being said they should stay dead and a reference to an evil being making it so people died forever rather than only for a short time each month before coming back to life.
For the story from the New Hebrides of a being making ten mud statues and bringing to life ten men by breathing on them before turning one into a woman, see pg. 107 here. Another story, on pg. 110 in that source, mentions another legend where the first woman came from a shell which turned into a woman.
In a story from the island of Ambrym, the gods once thought that people should live forever by shedding their skin like a snake when it got wrinkled but an evil god instead had them be buried according to pgs. 117-118 here.
For the story of the flood from the Loyalty islands, see pg. 568 here which mentions a man building a boat on dry ground, and saying the sea would come to it, and a flood in which everyone else drowns. The story doesn’t say what happened to the canoe or “Nol” who built it, though with everyone else drowning, I would assume the person or people on the raft survived. Regardless of name similarities between “Noah” and “Nol” no comment is made suggesting the story comes from missionaries. That author does refer to a similar story found on pgs. 240-241 here from the New Hebrides where the man also put a cover on the boat and brought his family and animals aboard. In that story, there’s a flood and the boat and its occupants leave the island and go out to sea and have never come back. In that case, the legend is odd in that it is the boat that disappears and the people left behind who are still around after the flood rather than only the people on the boat surviving the flood. Perhaps the story got reversed or confused at some point, but that is only my speculation.
According to a source from 100 years ago, the natives of New Zealand appear to be made up of earlier and later settlers (all of who arrived before Europeans) according to pgs. 9-10 here with the stories from the first people missing or hard to find compared to the stories of the later settlers. This makes the stories from New Zealand more open to the accusation that they were later developments rather than original memories, as supported by the comment at the end of the first paragraph on pg. 10 of the above source. For the suggestion that some of the settlers of New Zealand might’ve come from Taiwan, see here.
For the story from New Zealand of the world being created by a god looking in various directions, see pgs. 12-13 here. To me, if I understand the story correctly, it seems like a memory (missionary influence or not) of the Earth being created with “looking” in this legend replacing “speaking” from the history of creation in Genesis, though that is my speculation.
For the New Zealand story of the first people being made from soil or clay mixed with blood and noting the confusion of names in the sources for who is the god and who is the created being, see pgs. 23-24 here.
For the story from New Zealand of two prophets being mocked before they built a raft and survived a flood that lasted several months, see pg. 250-252 here.
For a bird laying eggs that are hatched by a snake and become the first man and woman, see pg. 109 here. The story doesn’t explicitly say that these people were the parents of mankind, but that is the context of the other stories in the paragraph which offer different versions of people coming from eggs.
For the story from Fiji where only eight people survive a flood on boats, see pgs. 239-240 here.
A story mentioning that the people of the island of Mangaia are all the descendants of three sons of the god Rongo can be found on pg. 26 here which references pg. 16 here. I wonder if the memory of the population being descended from three sons of one man is a memory of Noah and his sons repopulating the world. That might be unreasonable, and it could just be a separate memory of how the islands themselves were colonized, but it’s worth remembering that to a small group of people out middle of the ocean, they might see their little islands or the islands in their immediate vicinity as all the land in the world depending on how much seafaring they did or how people spread out over generations instead of in a single lifetime. If they did spread slower, or if most people stayed on an island and only a few traveled the open ocean, most people on these islands would spend their whole lives just in one location, but that is my speculation.
For the story from the Society islands of a woman made from the ground who became the mother of all people in the world, see pgs. 25-26 here.
For the story from Tahiti of only two people surviving a flood on a mountain and becoming the parents of mankind, see pgs. 242-243 here. It is interesting to me that the story mentions wind going away since Genesis 8:1 also includes wind in connection to the Flood. In addition, I wonder if the detail of rocks falling from the sky is either a recollection of volcanoes at the Flood, or simply elements of other memories of volcanoes and the debris they throw into the air mixed into the Flood story, but that is my speculation. On pg. 245 of the above source, the author points out that the flood story in Tahiti only mentions water rising, but doesn’t talk about rain coming down.
In another source, it says that people in Tahiti recall god forming man from red earth, making him fall asleep, and then using one of his bones to make a woman, with the man and woman becoming the parents of all humans and noting that the word for “bone” in Tahitian was “Ivi” (pronounced “Eve”). The recorder of that story, found on pg. 96 here, was of the opinion that natives were just repeating the story from Genesis that they had heard, though he notes that he heard the tale more than once and was told over and over that they already knew that story before any outsider came to their island.
One story (see pgs 241-242 here referencing comments starting on pg. 386 here) describes the end of a flood legend in “Eimeo” with a man arriving in a canoe and building an altar. The island “Eimeo” is probably “Moorea” near Tahiti (see here). I could not find reference to this story elsewhere, but in fairness, it was a first-hand account from around 1830 of someone who lived in that region, so there may not be many other documents attesting the same information.
In Samoa and Tahiti there are artificial mounds and stepped pyramid structures that may or may not be related to the stepped pyramids found elsewhere in the world. One, from the island of Samoa, is known as “Pulemelei.” An article here described LiDAR scans of Samoa that show much more development of the land in times past than it is now but not discussing the mound itself in detail. More detail on the size is given on pg. 105 here including that it was close to 200 feet long on a side, slightly rectangular, stood nearly 40 feet tall and was estimated to be 700-900 years old. On pg. 106 the author notes that the mound was thought to be used in the past for catching pigeons and as a chief’s home. A different mound, found in Tahiti, is mentioned on pg. 772 in Kearsley, G.R., Mayan Genesis (2001) Yelsraek publishing which appears to be the Marae of Mahaiatea discussed on pgs. 75-76 here. According to pg. 187 here a “marae” was a religious site with the larger ones being for more public ceremonies. According to pg. 13234 here it says the “largest coastal temples” were completed in the 1700s AD just before contact with Europeans which fits with the comment on pg. 75 here that the marae of Mahaiatea it was only completed a year earlier than Cook saw it with the size of 267 feet long, 87 feet wide, and 11 steps of 4 feet each to a top 44 feet above the ground given by Captain Cook on pgs. 168-169 here where he notes that the people there wanted to build the mounds as evidence of their power. For a drawing of the marae in Tahiti, see pg. 181 here. Altogether, from the above data, it is clear people on these islands built mounds, and that some even followed a step-sided pattern, but we don’t know whether such structures were memories of the step-sided mounds found in China or the pyramids of Egypt or ancient Ziggurats discussed in previous episodes and brought to the islands by settlers from those places or developed independently. I did not see a suggested link between these Pacific mounds and pyramid structures on the mainland or the tower of Babel. That is only my speculation.
For one version of creation from the Marquesas, see pg. 11 here that references pg. 63 here
For the story from the Marquesas of a god pulling land up out of the sea with a fish hook and then making a wife out of sand, see pg. 20 here for figuring whether it was one god and a worldwide sea with another floating on the water or just one god, and pgs. 25-26 in the same source where it references a god making a wife for himself out of sand.
Even with all these legends of floods, the author suggests on pgs. 38-39 here that stories of a flood in Polynesia weren’t very important, but were just little parts of larger stories. To me, whether the flood story is an episode of its own or a part of a larger drama isn’t particularly relevant. Even in Genesis, the Flood could be considered part of the larger story of what happened after people became evil or part of the origin of the world as we know it today. I’m not sure what distinguishes it as an important story or an episode in a larger story other than the amount of detail contained in the recollection of the flood.
Wherever oral traditions are collected, there is the danger that outside influence has crept in. With respect to the lands of the south Pacific, there could be a Christian bias due to missionaries or others with Christian background writing down the stories we have, or influence from other religions. In comments on pg. 153 here the author mentions trying to separate Hindu and Islamic elements from the legends being documented from Indonesia, but notes that it is hard to do so. On pg. 242 he doesn’t extend that influence further than the islands closer to southeast Asia, and suggests the tribes further from the coast might have been less affected by outside beliefs, but again says it is hard to tell which ideas come from natives and what parts might come from Islamic or Indian sources, but argues there are still many stories that come from local sources (though that is only that author’s opinion). Finally, in comments on pgs. 304-307, the author states beliefs from India or Islam traveled as far as the western parts of New Guinea, and notes that there isn’t clear evidence of contact with the Americas, though that book was published over 100 years ago and theories of contact between Asia and the Americas across the Pacific is suggested by at least one other author (see Kearsley, G. R., Mayan Genesis (2001) Yelsraek publishing).
I gave some of the background for sources I used in this episode in an earlier show note, specifically mentioning Sir James George Frazer and his disbelief concerning the stories in the Bible. In his collection of legends of floods, he concluded that they were either memories of regular river flooding or due to earthquakes and tsunamis (see pgs. 344-361 here). Furthermore, one of the ideas that comes up in Frazer’s book is the suggestion that stories found around the world that appear to parallel the history in Genesis are really examples of natives parroting back stories that they had heard from missionaries (see, for example, pgs. 238-239 in above reference). The later author who republished and expanded Frazer’s work has the same disbelief (see pgs. 21-22 here). The third oft-cited reference also mentions missionary influence on pg. 119 here. There is some validity to these comments and opinions about possible missionary contact changing local legends, and it is important to inspect the sources of stories from around the world to determine, as far as possible, whether they are truly local memories or legends influenced by outsiders (see, for instance, my attempt to avoid stories of Greek mythology that come from sources written after the time of Alexander the Great in the show notes for Episode 18). Beyond inspection of sources, though, the dismissal of stories that bear resemblance to the history in Genesis solely on that basis, rather than avoiding outside influence on history, might be introducing it. If the history in Genesis is true, getting rid of stories that sound like Genesis may be getting rid of the real history these oral traditions recall. For other reasons against the “missionary influence” argument, see show notes below.
As an example of the things done to protect material brought back from an asteroid from contamination when it was brought to Earth, see here.
In the course of researching this episode, the legends from Hawaii took some figuring because some of them are awfully close parallels to the history in Genesis. One Hawaiian legend mentioned on pg. 24 here says that three gods sculpted man out of saliva and red dirt and breathed life into him. (They also say the first woman came from one of the man’s ribs though the author claims that part must be due to contact with missionaries). In another story, two people survived the flood at the top of mount Mauna Kea according to pg. 245 here. That story comes from 1822 and the original legend included no mention of a ship, though the author goes on to tell a second version (pgs. 245-246 in the above source) that includes rain and people surviving in a canoe that the author suggests is due to influence from the Bible, an opinion also supported by pg. 40 here which thinks the details of the Hawaiian story show it is due missionary contact. In other books there are specific comments made about how close the parallels are between Hawaiian legends and the history in the Bible with pgs. 15-30 here specifically discussing the issue, including mentioning someone named “Nuu” who survived a flood by building a large ship with a house on it after his god told him to and then later offering a sacrifice to the moon thinking it was god only to have the true god come down on a rainbow and forgive him for the mistake (pgs. 20-21). That source also mentions characters in Hawaiian lore that parallel events in the life of Abraham (pgs. 21-22), others that sound like the history of Joseph from Genesis (pgs. 22-23), references to the sun standing still on pgs. 24-25 (though the rest of that legend doesn’t sound like the events in Joshua 10), and even things that sound like stories of Moses and Aaron (referenced on pg. 25) and Jonah (pg. 25). Various attempted explanations for these parallels are discussed on pgs. 26-30 including that nomadic Israelites had some contact with the Hawaiians or their ancestors or that the history in Genesis and the Hawaiian legends both come from some older source with the suggestion (on pg. 28) that perhaps the sun standing still and story of Jonah in the Bible were also invented from older stories (though that would dismiss the accuracy of the Bible). Another reference to the similarities between the history in the Bible and Hawaiian legends comes up in a book on pg. 34-35 here, written by a king of the Hawaiians in the 1800s, where he argues that the similarities are due to the Hawaiian stories being an independent memory of history and not from contact with Israelites. That book, when talking about the Hawaiian legends, though, makes clear comparisons between the history in Genesis and Hawaiian stories showing the author was familiar with the history in Genesis (see pgs 36-38). These similarities between the history in the Bible and Hebrew legends can be hard to explain. It’s possible that nomadic Israelites or other people had contact with ancestors of the Hawaiians at some point in their history either before they migrated out into the Pacific — the Hawaiian ancestors might’ve only migrated to Hawaii about 800 years ago according to this paper — or by later travel back and forth across the ocean. It’s also possible that these Hawaiian stories are independent memories of history (though if that’s the case, it’s not clear why they would include events from Israelite history that happened long after the tower of Babel unless their ancestors were somehow connected with the Israelites). With those possibilities admitted, though, there might be a simpler explanation. Hawaii was discovered by the English in 1778 when Captain Cook arrived at the island, though there are some legends that suggest that survivors of shipwrecks may have visited the islands before that point on pgs. 94-99 here and pgs. 13-16 here. Those sources as well as pg. 591 in the article here mention the possibility that Juan Gaetano, a Spanish captain, may have mapped the islands in 1555 but pg. 16 in this source (referenced above) refers to an author by the name of “Dahlgren” who concluded in 1916 that there is no proof and only speculation to support the idea that the Spanish found the Hawaiian islands (see a review of Dahlgren’s work on pgs. 151-153 here. Whether outside influences arrived in Hawaii with Captain Cook or sometime earlier, there’s some possibility that the Hawaiian legends that parallel the history in the Bible weren’t independent memories, but legends influenced by the Bible. Some records of these legends were made by a man named Abraham Fornander. Fornander was a native of Sweden who came to live in Hawaii in the 1800s and published Hawaiian oral traditions, with the first volume released in 1878, 100 years after Cook discovered Hawaii according to this article. Fornander developed the theory that the Pacific Islands were populated by people emigrating over time from the mainland of Asia according to pg. 244 here where the author also notes that people apparently accepted Fornander’s accounts of early Hawaiian oral traditions. Not everyone, however, agrees that Fornander’s sources were authentic and in 1969 a paper written by Dorothy Barrère undermined their validity. I couldn’t find Barrère’s article available online, but review articles of it are available and they give some insight into her argument, including that the sources Fornander used altered Hawaiian history so that it meshed with the history found in Genesis and that Fornander picked parts of the legends that paralleled the history in the Bible most closely as mentioned here (see also another review article here). If Barrère’s argument is true, it would explain not only why the records of Hawaiian legends match so closely with the history in Genesis, but also why the stories also show parallels to later events in the Bible that took place after people dispersed from the tower of Babel. Kearsley, G. R., Mayan Genesis (2001) Yelsraek publishing references Fornander on pgs. 118-121 and 817 and notes that some have argued that the legends of Hawaii were influenced by Christians, but Kearsley dismisses this idea on the basis of the similarity of Hawaiian legends to those found in other places in the world. Opinions differ, and it’s possible that the Hawaiians did recall the early history of the world and that the legends from Hawaii are authentic. Perhaps they remembered more of the history of the Israelites in their legends because of some past contact with the Israelites either before they migrated out into the ocean, by later trade back and forth across the ocean, or because they had Israelite heritage somewhere in their ancestry. Those are possibilities, but perhaps not the simplest solution. Instead, Hawaiian memories that sound like the history in the Bible may be just an example of local legends that were modified or invented after contact with outsiders, and, as with so many oral legends, we don’t know what parts are original and which parts were changed.
Among other Hawaiian legends, stories on pg. 26 here have humans being the descendants of “Bright Light” and “Pleasant Quiet.” Another reference refer to people descended from the daughter of chaos and “the King who Opens the Heavens” and some Hawaiian legends are suggested to have Hindu influence according to pgs. 20-21 and 98 here. For that author’s speculation on the pathway of migration between lands of the Pacific, see pg. 98 here.
The island of Nias, not very far from the mainland of Asia (see here has legends that on the one hand sound like parallels to the history in Genesis, but on the other hand might not be authentic. For example, see pg. 15 here and pgs. 37-38 here where the author of that source suggests the tale is told in a similar repetitive poetic structure to what is seen in Hebrew, which could suggest Hebrew influence. Similarly one could find elements of Genesis 3 in the story of death coming from eating a certain food and the idea of a snake that lives forever. There could also be parallels to the history in Genesis in references to snakes, trees, and death, but the paper here argues Nias’ legends have been misinterpreted over time, including on pg. 179 which notes that the people on Nias didn’t have any idea of creation but thought the world had always existed, suggesting some versions of the local stories may have been modified due to the biases of the people who originally copied and interpreted them according to a Christian background. Whether or not this is true, it illustrates the point that if only recent documents exist regarding a legend, it is open for the accusation of being a late invention rather than an ancient history.
In terms of whether the people living on the islands of the Pacific had contact with the mainland, on pg. 120 Kearsley, G. R., Mayan Genesis (2001) Yelsraek publishing notes that Christian missionaries found things like baptism and circumcision also occurring in Polynesia. These things are only recorded in the Bible as happening after the tower of Babel (see Genesis 17:9-10 for the first mention of circumcision in the Bible and John 1:19-28 for the first reference to baptism with the story of John the Baptist. John probably didn’t invent baptism. The Israelites were instructed to bathe on certain occasions as early as the time of Moses, see (Numbers 19 and pg. 2 here. While we can’t prove baptism was older than John the Baptist, some scholars suggest that to be the case along with the author of the above paper on pg. 8. In any case, if Polynesians were really performing baptisms and circumcisions and not because of some later Christian influence after European arrival, then it would suggest the local islanders either arrived on the islands after those practices were being performed on the mainland or that they continued to have contact with people who came from the mainland who told them about baptism and circumcision. In either case, the legends that sound like the history in Genesis might’ve been passed along as well making the local legends dependent on the mainland rather than independent memories of the early history of the world. I don’t know whether there really were baptisms and circumcisions or not. I didn’t delve into it. If there were, it adds more room for skepticism as we cannot tell what legends that sound like the history in Genesis are authentic memories of the islanders and what things might’ve been adopted later.
To his credit, though Frazer dismisses the Bible as history (see earlier show note) he does admit that some stories are too widely spread to be likely from missionary influence (see pgs. 9-10 here). For comparing the geographic extent of the legends from this episode with the area of Asia, I traced a boundary around the Pacific from Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Sumatra, Australia, New Zealand, French Polynesia, Hawaii and back across the ocean to Japan on Google maps and compared it to the value for the area of Asia given here.
Among the scattered islands and tribes of the Pacific Ocean, it’s possible that local legends of a Flood or creation or other events found in the history recorded in the first few chapters of Genesis only show up in there due to Christian, Islamic, or Hindu missionaries telling stories that locals later repeated to outsiders. If that is the case, though, why do those parallels between local legends and the history in Genesis stop after the events that happened at Babel? If everyone once lived together at Babel before scattering around the world (see Genesis 11:1-9](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+11%3A1-9&version=NKJV)), it’s plausible people handed the stories of what happened from creation to Babel down to their children so people all around the world would remember some version of it. Finding parallels to those early stories from the history in Genesis could be either signs of outside influence or evidence that people handed their family history down somewhat faithfully. Instead, the better measurement of the influence of outsiders on local legends would be looking to see if later stories from history show up, especially stories of Jesus and His sacrifice to save people from their sins, the stories I would expect Christian missionaries to emphasize. Those stories would be better evidence of locals having past contact with outsiders since the events all took place after people dispersed from Babel. On the other hand, if those later stories don’t show up, but there are only stories of the events in the first part of Genesis, I think it’s possible that the legends of creation and the Flood found among those native groups are genuine. In researching this episode, when I came across references to native stories that mention events from later in history than Babel, I assumed that was plausibly due to outside influence and left those stories out, though I can’t guarantee nothing slipped through. See earlier show notes for a discussion of the issues of legends in Hawaii. See also a show note with comments from Bill Cooper in Episode 17 that deals with this topic.
In addition to the above reason to question some claims of outside influence on local legends, I wonder if we also overestimate how easily an outside story might be adopted into local lore. Any story a native wanted to add to their local oral traditions would’ve had to fit somewhere within their existing stories of history. Since someone’s history is closely tied to their identity, I would think that it would be challenging force a foreign story into local history since it would be allowing a foreigner to change one’s identity, and that it would be even harder to make that change to the history of an entire culture. This argument, which I also mentioned in a show note for Episode 20 is my speculation, and I can come up with reasons for the opposite viewpoint. It could be that the outside influence happened a few generations before it was written down, and the change spread so gradually through people’s family stories that no one remembered it was a change. Perhaps the people most likely to adopt the history of a foreigner were also the mostly likely to talk to foreigners later and have the history they recalled written down. Finally, since the foreigners who came to the lands across the Pacific showed up with better weapons and technology, a native tribe might adopt their history in order to curry favor with the new rulers of the land. There are reasons for and against the theory that native peoples would adopt the history of an outsider, but to suggest it happened frequently, quickly, or easily also tends to suggest that those people either had no history or placed very little value on it, something that I doubt was the case given how closely existing beliefs about history would likely be tied to a tribe’s identity, but this is just my speculation.
For the argument that some of the flood legends found around the world might be due to tidal waves (, see pgs. 349-351 here (what we now call tsunamis used to be called tidal waves according to comment here. I would suggest that this idea gives little credit to island based natives who might well be able to tell the difference between a tsunami that comes and goes and a flood that takes time to rise and fall and I’d expect they were much better able to tell a tsunami was coming as they were likely attuned to the sea better than people today, but that is just my opinion.
For the distance from Hawaii to California, see map here.