Episode 23: Grandfathers of History, part 7
Among legends scattered across a continent, some stories keep showing up.
All the quotes from the Bible for the main story were were taken from the English Standard Version 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 story of Semyon Deshnev who went through the strait later named after Vitus Bering in 1648, see pgs. 50-52 here which notes that Deshnev’s own account was not found until 1736 in archives in Yakutsk which puts it 8 years after Bering’s expedition. For 1728 as Vitus’ Bering’s first expedition to the strait now named for him, see here. For the details on the Kolyma river, see here.
For the travel between Asia and the Americas at various points across the Pacific, I measured the distances on the map here. For the 4000 mile trip across the open ocean, I assumed no island stops. Clearly the trip could be shorter if island hopping. For more on the people who lived on islands in the Pacific, see Episode 22. For the distance from Japan to the end of the Aleutian islands, I used the northern island of Japan and the island of Attu. The distance across the Bering strait is given as about 53 miles here.
Despite the Americas being so close to the easternmost point of Asia, the official discovery of land on the other side of the Bering strait didn’t come until 1732 when a Russian expedition led by Mikhail Gvozdev crossed the strait based on rumors of land on the other side heard from local peoples in the area according to pg. 50 here.
I mentioned land bridges in the last episode, but as I was only talking about southeast Asia, Australia, and the islands in the Pacific, I didn’t discuss the sea floor under the Bering strait that, with perhaps a higher sea floor and lower sea levels, could have linked Asia and Alaska together. Much of the creationist perspective on this land bridge is offered by Michael J. Oard in a few different articles. The article here notes that this land bridge across the Bering Strait has gained support from non-religious sources and suggests animals used the land bridge to migrate to the Americas. That author also theorizes here that the sea floor was higher in the past so that land was exposed early in the Ice Age and not only when sea level was at its lowest, an idea he also notes here including the suggestion that people might’ve also used boats along the coast. He doesn’t give a mechanism for why the sea floor would be higher. I wonder if it might just be an effect of the tectonic plates still settling into their new positions after the Flood. In addition, the sea floor is still changing. According to the article here in the 60 years between 1950 and 2010, the floor of the ocean got about 3 feet deeper in the Bering Strait probably due to water flowing through it. Given our limited data, we don’t know how long that erosion has been going on, or at what rate, though whether the strait was shallower in the past simply due to erosion is just my speculation. A map of the sea floor showing what the land bridge might’ve looked like is also available here which shows a low area of water between Asia and the Americas. I wonder if that low area is simply due to the effects of the erosion mentioned above, but again, that is my speculation. The idea that there was a land link between Asia and the Americas isn’t something new. As far back as the 1600s, Matthew Poole, in a note on Genesis 8:17 in his commentary (see here) mentions that people in his day thought that the Americas were connected or nearly connected to the European continent (presumably through Asia), though it is unclear what maps that idea was based on as the Bering Strait itself wasn’t officially explored until the 1700s according to the article here. For a further discussion of migration to the Americas from where the Ark landed after the Flood by a different creation promoting author, see here. See also here for a brief discussion of how the red fox might’ve migrated across the Bering land bridge. For a secular source that also promotes the idea of the land bridge at what is today the Bering Strait, see here.
For the location of the la Brea tar pits relative to the Pacific Ocean and Los Angeles, I measured the distance using Google maps. For a description of how oil wells up to the surface and evaporates, leaving tar behind, see pg. 9 here with pg. 10 adding that oil still comes up there in the modern day. That source also notes, on pg. 2, the Native American use of the tar for waterproofing purposes and pgs. 12-13 describe how the bones came to be preserved in the tar. The name “La Brea Tar Pits,” if all in English, would simply be “The Tar Tar pits” as “la brea” is means “tar” according to “brea, f.” Langenscheidt Pocket Spanish Dictionary, Langenscheidt, 1985, p. 60.
For an understanding of the La Brea Tar Pits as a post-Flood formation see here. This conclusion supports the idea that the animals found in the tar are a window into animals that lived after the Flood, not before it.
For details on the size and appearance of woolly mammoths, see here. As far as what a Woolly Mammoth is, genetic studies outlined here suggest that what was thought to be multiple species of mammoth is just one species, something that fits well, in my opinion, with a group of individuals crossing the Bering land bridge and then growing and adapting to different environments in North America. For mammoth fossils found at La Brea, see here.
For a description of giant ground sloths, see here, here, and here which note that the larger sloths were over 2000 lbs. For a comparison to the size of a bison, see here which gives the upper limit as 2,000 pounds and notes that they are the largest mammal in North America. For ground sloth fossils found at La Brea, see here.
For details about short-faced bears, see here that notes they are found in the La Brea Tar Pits, and here that gives their estimated height at shoulder and when standing on hind legs. That source also notes that the name “short-faced bear” isn’t a good description as its face wasn’t unusual for such a large bear. The list of mammals found a La Brea (see here) also includes black bears and grizzly bears.
For details about saber-toothed cats, see here that notes they are found in the La Brea Tar Pits. The source here notes that the canine teeth were “about 7 inches” while the reference here gives “nearly 18cm (7 inches).” The site here mentions evidence of over 2,000 different saber-toothed cats have been found at La Brea.
For a description of dire wolves compared to modern wolves, including how many had been found at La Brea at the time of its writing, see pg. 55 here which notes that they had the strongest teeth of any canis. That source claims they had “sturdier” legs though here it says their legs were “relatively light.” As for bite force, the paper here analyzed a number of living an extinct skulls and estimated the dire wolf bite force at 163 compared to a living wolf’s 136 as outlined on pg. 621 in that article. For the number of different individual dire wolves found at the La Brea Tar Pits as well as the fact that they are the most common fossil, see here.
For a description of giant beavers, see here.
If you’re concerned that, in just the thousands of years since the Flood, the animal population couldn’t have grown to the numbers we find on Earth today, see population modeling article here with some useful analysis.
We’re not sure why the large animals that once lived in the Americas died out. There are a couple of theories mentioned here including that the animals were unable to adapt to the changing climate at the end of the Ice Age or that humans hunted them to extinction.
For the definition and location of the Arctic circle at over 66 degrees north latitude, see here. Wales, Alaska (see map here) is only at 65 degrees north latitude, making it just south of the Arctic circle. For the date of the summer solstice, I used this page which gives June 20 as the date and this source which gives the sunrise and sunset times in Nome, Alaska. That city is south of Wales but if anything it underestimates how long a day might be in the middle of summer for people crossing the Bering land bridge. For all these calculations, I assume the Earth was at its current angle to the sun in space and not wobbling as it settled after the Flood.
As for the people who settled in the Americas, that’s an open question, though to extend what I’ve said in the last couple of episodes, I’d guess that they were more descendants of Japheth for a few reasons. First, as mentioned in Episode 21, Noah blessed Japheth and said his family would be “enlarged” which could refer to the territory his family would settle. Second, Japheth’s kids are known to have gone to India and probably Iran (see Episode 20) and I’ve previously guessed that they went to China and the islands of the Pacific (see Episode 21 and Episode 22). This suggested connection between the Americas and Japheth is not new. In a commentary written in the 1800s (see note on Albert Barnes on pg. 412 here it is mentioned in the note on Genesis 9:26 here, and the connection between Noah’s blessing and Japheth’s expanded family comes up in the notes on Genesis 10:1-2, 4 here with verse 20 in that chapter mentioning the Americas (“New World”) again. Again, whether the first people in the Americas after Babel were descendants of Japheth or not is an open question as is the question of what other people arrived when to add to that population. See discussion later in this episode about possible contact between Asia and the Americas before Columbus’ voyages. Also note that the DNA tracing theory discussed later takes a different viewpoint, though one that I have my doubts about.
We don’t know if the first people came to the Americas on foot or by boat, but either way, at some point they had to explore the land either along the route of their migration or after disembarking from their boats. For parallel theories of settlers arriving in the Americas either by land bridge or boat, see the article here.
We don’t know how long it took for people to reach the Americas after the Flood but it’s not too hard to make a rough estimate. Measuring a dot-to-dot distance from Babel (I’ll use the site of Babylon in modern Iraq, see Episode 16) to near the southern tip of South America gives about 17,000 miles (see here). That’s perhaps close to a minimum value. Assume the trip was less focused and only trended in that direction with other wanderings, I’ll assume people really traveled about 30,000 miles. If that’s the case, and a nomadic family moved about 1 mile every day during the summer months and camped for the winter giving a total migration of about 180 miles a year, they would still be able to travel 30,000 miles in less than 170 years. This is a very rough estimate. People could have stayed in place for decades at a time and reached South America much more slowly, or they might have purposely set out to explore new regions and cut some of the distance and effort by taking boats and gotten to South America faster. For other discussions of the time it took people to travel to the Americas from the region where Noah’s ark landed, see the articles here which estimates 100-400 years and here which offers a minimum of 60 years.
While the dates suggested in the articles here, here, and here don’t fit with the time line of history found in Genesis, they do suggest humans were present in America during what they call the “Last Glacial Maximum” (what I would call the Ice Age after the Flood). This fits well with the model I’ve referred to in earlier episodes that suggests people were able to migrate around or past the ice sheets due to the warm oceans keeping shorelines and ocean surfaces open for navigation rather than having to wait until after the ice melted, but research does little to tell us when exactly that migration took place as the estimates for dates of the artifacts they have found are much older than what fits with the history in the Bible.
In researching the history of the world, sometimes the question of petroglyphs and other man-made artifacts comes up, such as the carvings found in Nevada or the arranged stones in Wyoming that are claimed to be older than the time since the creation of the world, let alone the time since the Flood or when people left Babel. Making sense of that comes down to any of a number of assumptions. Properly understood, I think these artifacts, and others like them, were made, probably at the oldest, by people who spread out after Babel, but depending assumptions, it might have been much more recently.
I’ve said it in earlier episodes, but just to reiterate, I’m cherry picking the legends I talk about. People in the past could make things up just as people can today so there are many stories that don’t sound like the history in Genesis. I’m not going over all of legends I find, but only the ones that sound oddly like the history found in Genesis and doing what I can to filter out those legends that appear to be influenced by someone with a Christian background in an attempt to figure out what the people in the Americas believed before those beliefs were affected by the arrival of Europeans. This, of course, is a subjective process, and nothing guarantees that local stories hadn’t been influenced by outsiders prior to the arrival of European explorers and settlers as mentioned later in this episode.
I use a variety of sources for the stories in this episode, but among them, as in previous episodes, I’ve used many legends collected by James George Frazer from the early 1900s. Frazer was not a proponent of the reliability of the Bible, but he did helpfully collect many legends that can be reviewed to see where people around the world might have stories that sound like memories of the history in Genesis. For examples of Frazer disbelieving the accuracy of the Bible, see show note on Episode 22. As in previous episodes, I’ve also used material from the “Mythology of all Races” series, specifically volume 10 on North America also published toward the beginning of the 1900s.
For the story of people living in Norton Sound in Alaska, see pg. 327 here which tells of the water covering all but one mountain where the animals survived while some people survived in a boat.
In Episode 22, I noted that some people think stories of a flood are just memories of a tsunami. That could be the case in some instances, especially examples such as the story from Alaska found on pgs. 326-327 here where a sudden flood from the sea comes after an earthquake. On the other hand, in my opinion, stories near the coast that don’t mention an earthquake or other features that sound like a tsunami, or stories that come from people who don’t live near the coast, don’t line up with what one would expect of a memory of a tsunami.
For the story from northwest Canada of a wise man who built a raft to survive a flood that covered the world, see pgs. 310-312 here. The story continues from where I left off with other details that don’t parallel the history in Genesis. For the location of the Hare people of Canada (called the “Hareskin Indians” by the source of the story) see entry here.
The Kaska people of North America say that people all once lived together and had one language, then they were separated in different boats by a flood and settled in different places around the world and now have different languages according to pgs. 442-443 here. For the location of the Kaska, see pg. 427 in that source.
This story also found on pg. 119 here in Gaster, Theodor H. Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament, Harper & Row, New York, 1969.
For the story from the Squamish tribe of British Columbia, see pgs. 42-43 here.
For the story from the Bella Coola tribe of British Columbia, see pg. 320 here.
For the story of the Twanas tribe of Washington state, see pgs. 323-324 here. It is interesting to me that the name of the mountain means “fastener” in their language, and might lend support to the theory that the Twanas flood story is older than European influence if the name of that particular peak predates European arrival, unless a different explanation can be derived for why they refer to the peak as “fastener,” but that is just my speculation. See later discussion in this episode about possible alternative outside influences that predated European arrival making it even harder to tell what the original local legends were.
For the flood legend around Mt. Ranier, see pgs. 31-32 here. To me, while the details are different, the story combines elements of both a flood and a tower to heaven which could be memories of the history in Genesis, though that is just my speculation.
For the Pullayop story see pg. 324 here.
For the Yakima story of the flood, see pg. 45 here. In that story, it also notes that before the flood the good people “remembered what they had been told by the old people who were gone” which sounds to me like a memory of Adam, Enoch, and perhaps others who had lived and died before the the flood came, though that is just my speculation.
According to pg. 221 here, creation stories from the west coast of North America sound more like Earth being restored or made again after some catastrophe rather than tales of how it was created in the first place. In the same book pg. 234 also notes that while the stories in North America often describe death coming to the world as a result of chance, on the west coast there are examples where death comes as a result of morals and reason.
For the story of the Yurok people, see pg. 68 here which also notes that they take logs and sea shells on the mountains as proof of the flood.
Besides the Yurok people mentioned above, there are other places in the world where stories point to the existence of sea shells or whale bones up on mountains as evidence that water used to cover that land (see, for instance, stories from the far north on pgs. 327-328 here). A response for this among people today is that the land used to be part of the sea floor that has now been pushed up out of the water (see here). For a creationist perspective on the question, see here.
For the Maidu flood story, see on pgs. 290-291 here. This story has parallels to the history of the Flood from Genesis, though not perfect ones, because while it is described as a flood that only covers the central valley of California, the two survivors repopulate the world (assuming that isn’t just a generic term for the central valley).
For mention of deserts in the western part of North America in the past see here. That source gives a timeline much longer than the history in the Bible, but assuming the facts are correct and the dating is simply too long, it gives an idea of how the climate used to be different. For a creationist perspective on the subject, see here.
For the theory that the central valley of California was once filled with a lake called alternatively “Lake Clyde” or “Lake Corcoran” see pg. 43 here as well as the abstract for the book chapter here both of which give dates of over 600,000 years ago for the draining of the lake into the ocean. In another source, it notes that the water eroded parts of the Diablo and Mayacamas ranges to form the Carquinez strait and notes that the lake was drained by 500,000 years ago on pg. 25 here which also gives a map showing the estimated size and location of the lake which took up a considerable portion of the middle of California. As for the claim that the lake drained around 600,000 years ago, I assume that date suffers from the same methods used elsewhere in geology to estimate the ages of sediments as outlined here, here, and here. You can perhaps see some assumptions on pg. 8 here where the suggestion that the lake was close to sea level is based on the fact that it supposedly lasted a long time and would’ve eroded its way to the sea if it was much above sea level meaning the assumption of a long existence (presumably based on sediments or other reasoning) dictates other conclusions. Instead, if properly understood, I would expect the true date of the draining of the lake to be sometime during the first few hundred years after the Flood.
For the story of the confusion of languages among the Maidu people of California, see pg. 386-387 here. The author speculates in footnote 2 on pgs. 386-387 that the “burning” mentioned in the story was a religious event put on by shamans.
For the story of the Kato people from southern California, see pgs. 79-82 here. After the flood and the forming of land again, people just “appeared” before turning into animals when the Native Americans showed up without explanation as to where the people-animals came from or where the Native Americans came from (either migration or re-creation).
For a creationist perspective on the formation of the Rocky Mountains, see here.
For the Pawnee story see pgs. 354-356 here. For the Pawnee living in what is now Nebraska, see here. As an added detail, the story says the Pawnee point to the bones found in the ground (presumably things like dinosaur and mammoth bones) as evidence that these giants once lived and sank into the mud in the flood of their legend.
There is a Cheyenne legend that sounds like the history in Genesis. Most of the parallels in the Cheyenne story happen toward the beginning where they recall that the world and skies and a beautiful land were once created by a being called the “Great Medicine.” In the beautiful land, there was lots of food, no winter, and people went around without clothes and were friends with the animals as described on pgs. 124-127 here. The story talks of three groups of people — the Cheyenne (or possibly Native Americans in general), white people, and hairy people — and focuses on their travel away from that once perfect land. It doesn’t say why they left the land, but there is reference to the “Great Medicine” blessing them and giving them intelligence which they hadn’t had before and teaching them to wear clothes and to make tools and weapons. It isn’t hard to see the gift of knowledge as some recollection of the first sin (eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) and God giving them clothes and sending them out of the Garden of Eden, but that is just my speculation. From there the Cheyenne tell of traveling south, then leaving after being warned of a flood and going back north, where they could no longer speak to the animals. They went south again after the flood, then another flood came and dispersed them and they went north. Then there was an earthquake, fire and smoke from hills, and winter and more floods, elements that could, again, be foggy memories of the history in Genesis or perhaps various travels after leaving Babel, but again, that is only my speculation. In that section the author goes on to tell of another Cheyenne story that includes their escape from slavery and crossing a divided body of water on dry land and suggests, quite plausibly, the legend is just a Cheyenne adaptation of the story of the Exodus from the Bible, though noting that after entering the new land on the far side of the water, the legend appears to turn back into an actual Cheyenne story and includes stories of large animals which the author speculatively connects to possible recollections of mammoths. Altogether, it is hard to know how original the Cheyenne story is and which elements are from outside influence. To me, the parts that sound like the Exodus history from the Bible, which happened after people left Babel are probably from outside sources that got mixed into Cheyenne legends. Earlier elements of a paradise in the north and the later stories of large animals might be genuine legends, though that’s only a guess.
For the legend from the Huron tribe, see pg. 36 here where it is claimed that the Huron think that all maladies come from snakes. This is interesting to me in that Huron lands were in the north around the Great Lakes (see map here) where you wouldn’t expect lots of fear of snakes to exist compared to places further south that have more venomous snakes and a more justifiable fear of snakes.
I spoke about the “horned serpent” and “tie snake” previously in Episode 5 and Episode 7. Reiterating some of what was said in show notes there, Joel Martin (see biography here) describes the tie snake and calls it “beautiful” on pgs. 25-26 here. It is noted on pgs. 24-26 here that Martin treats the “tie snake” and the “horned serpent” as the same thing, but his description might fit the horned serpent better. The same page in that source also describes the origin of the horned serpent noting that there are different versions of the story but it involved a man or woman eating forbidden food before turning into the snake, with the story sometimes including a tree. While that isn’t the history found in Genesis, the elements of a tree, two people, forbidden food, and a serpent are all present in the story. The above sources refer to “Muskogee” and “Creek” in places though “Creek” appears to be an English name rather than a native name. For the historic homes of the Muskogee people and the reason for using that name instead of “Creek” see description and maps on pgs. 6-11 here
In Episode 5, describing legends people around the world have about fantastic snakes that might be memories of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, I mentioned the Cherokee story of the “Uktena” and gave a quote describing it. While it is a fantastical snake, and aligns well with the “tie snake” and “horned serpent” idea from the Muskogee, the rest of the legend of the Uktena doesn’t show similarities with the history in Genesis. In general, according to pgs. 252-253 here the Uktena was one of four snakes (the others being a type of adder, the copperhead, and the rattlesnake) who were originally men but were changed into snakes by the “little men” (see their origin story on pgs. 242-248 in the above source) to attack the sun which was killing people with its heat. Ultimately the Uktena did nothing but was jealous of the rattlesnake that succeeded and went to heaven, leaving smaller versions of itself behind as noted on pg. 297 in that source. It is there that a description of the Uktena is given. Whether this is simply a fantastic description of a made-up serpent or some recollection of the serpent from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is open for speculation. To me, it is interesting that the other three snakes are all known species except for the Uktena which is described in a much more mythological way. The rest of the story of the Uktena doesn’t parallel the history in Genesis, though the Muskogee legend (mentioned above) links a similar fantastic snake to eating forbidden food, which does sound to me more like it might be a recollection of the history in Genesis. For the background of James Mooney, who wrote the story of the Uktena, see here).
For the Cherokee flood story, see pgs. 294-295 here. For their location, see here.
For the Chitimacha story, see pg. 19 here. For the Chitimacha hailing from Louisiana, see here.
For the Natchez story of the flood, see pg. 291-292 here which references in its footnote a source dating to 1758. That story is ambiguous about where the Natchez were from noting a historian of Louisiana and a reference to the southern part of the Mississippi river, but for reference to the Natchez being from Mississippi see here.
For the story from the Zuni from New Mexico pgs. 287-288 here.
For a creationist perspective on the formation of the Grand Canyon during the Flood, see here.
For the Havasupai story, see pg. 180 here which mentions a feud between brothers leading to a flood. For the Havasupai living around the Grand Canyon, see here.
The stories I mention from people in North America are only a selection of legends found there. There are stories from the Montagnais on pgs. 295-297 here and pgs. 42-43 here. Various stories of the Ojibwe or Chippewa can be found on pgs. 297-308 here. There’s a story from Alberta, Canada found on pgs. 314-315 here that tells of a man and woman who collected animals on a raft and survived a flood. In the Great Plains the Arikara have a story on pgs. 107-108 here of “Mother Corn." Later, pgs. 204-205 in the same source have stories from the Hopi. Finally, you can find stories from the Pima people on pgs. 177-179 here and 286-287 here. As with any story from North America, these are open to the accusation of outside influence which may or may not be true.
For the Plymouth colonists arrival in 1620, see here. For other explorers visiting North America prior to the Plymouth colonists, see World Encyclopedia reference to Jacques Cartier here who explored in the 1500s.
For mention of Bjarni’s initial voyage where he sighted land on his way to Greenland, see here and pgs. 12-15 here that mentions him later telling the story. On pgs. 5-9 of that source, it gives a very helpful summary including the suggestion that the lands the Vikings found were places that are today part of Canada. It also notes discrepancies between versions of the saga and mentions the belief that they were written around the early 1200s. The lengths of the last two voyages are detailed on pgs. 28-38 in that source. For other comments, see pg. 47 here which suggests they were written down in the second half of the 1100s AD and mentions that the word “saga” refers to what was originally oral versions of history. That source also notes that the sagas come from a time when Norse religion and Christianity were functioning side-by-side. For general reference to the Scandinavian adventures along the eastern shores of North America and the suggestion they occurred around 1000 AD, see comment here. and pg. 1 here which also notes that a German mapmaker linked the Scandinavian coastline discovery with the a continent named “America” as early as 1507.
For the site of a Viking settlement on Newfoundland, see here, though I don’t know that they can prove whether it is the same site as the one told about in the sagas or some other settlement that didn’t make it into the history books.
For the Vikings only becoming Christian around the same time as the expeditions to what’s called “Vinland,” see a list of dates on pg. 47 here which place the conversions of the Danes, Norwegians, and Icelanders in the 900s-1000 AD, though there would have been Christian influence on those people prior to formal conversion. As for the date of Leif’s commission to preach Christianity in Greenland, see pg. 14 here which footnote 1 gives as occurring in the year AD 1000.
For the theory that uses DNA samples to construct a family tree and suggest that the Native Americans present when Europeans arrived in the Americas migrated from Asia around the 300-600s or 1000s AD and replaced whoever was already living in the Americas, see here. That theory, detailed in Jeanson, N. T. (2022). Traced: Human DNA’s big surprise. Master Books. uses a y-chromosome family tree which claims to extend back to Noah, with the top three main branches of the tree suggested to be Shem, Ham, and Japheth (see pg. 174 in Traced). I am not a biologist, have no expertise in genetics, and I hesitate to disagree with people far more educated and studied on this topic than I. That said, while at least some parts of the idea appear plausible, the theory also makes assumptions of uncertain support and draws conclusions that don’t appear to be likely. All that said, it is an interesting idea and the theory appears to be in active development, so perhaps as more research comes in and conclusions are refined it will become more convincing.
For an example of Christianity’s presence in Asia by the 600s AD, see pgs. 8-10 here for a discussion of the Nestorian Monument found in China and pg. 184 here for another reference to the year 635 AD.
The argument that the stories found among Native Americans in the Americas that sound like the history in Genesis are only due to outside influence from Christian sources doesn’t explain why these stories don’t tell of events that happened later in the Bible. I think a Christian missionary or castaway who tells people about creation, the fall, the Flood, and the Tower if Babel such that those legends become part of Native American lore would also talk about Jesus and the hope of His return. If these stories are missing, it means either the Native Americans didn’t preserve that story, the hypothetical outside source didn’t share it with them, or there was no outside source, and the stories are missing because the people today split off from other people at the Tower of Babel and didn’t know about later events. Of these, the third option explains why the legends parallel Genesis only through the Tower of Babel with no reference to Jesus. As I mentioned in the audio, I’ve talked about this idea before in Episode 17 and in Episode 22. See there for show notes and reference to Bill Cooper who initially made the suggestion in one of his books. The Cheyenne story I mentioned in an earlier show note does have a portion that sounds like the story of the Exodus (though nothing I found referring to Jesus), and therefore may be evidence of outside influence on that tribe’s legends. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that there are legends I didn’t come across from other tribes that do reference later events in the Bible, such as stories of Jesus, in which case I would agree that such legends make a strong case for Christian influence from outsiders on that tribe’s legends. Even if one tribe was influenced by Christianity at some point, it doesn’t mean all the stories from all other tribes were as well, though it does increase the possibility depending on how long ago stories were recorded by Europeans with those that were copied down earlier less likely to show the effect of outside influence on native legends that would’ve occurred over time as more and more settlers had contact with native people.
Besides the example of Poverty Point, Louisiana, there are other places in North America where it appears humans lived long ago. Among them are locations with artifacts scientists believe date back thousands of years, which would make them even older than the dates given for Flood and Creation according to the timeline from the Bible such as the Meadowcroft Rockshelter (see also petroglyphs discussed in earlier part of this episode). There are also examples such as the Hopewell culture (https://web.archive.org/web/20250315230645/https://www.nps.gov/hocu/index.htm) with its mounds that are suggested to be around 2000 years old. Accepting that the dates given aren’t certain and all of them, properly understood, come from after the Flood about 4000 years ago (see earlier show note on petroglyphs for explanation), it at least suggests that humans were present in North America long before the 600 AD or 900 AD dates suggested by the recent DNA tracing theory described earlier. As such, it appears to me that those later arrivals may have become the ancestors of the Native Americans present when European explorers and settlers arrived, but they were not the “first” people to explore and live in the Americas after the Flood.
For the location of Poverty Point in Louisiana near the Mississippi river, see the map here. For details on its background, see the description given here that mentions both the believed age, that the largest ring is 1.14km in diameter (around 0.7 miles), when it became a world heritage site, and some other details and includes some pictures of the area that shows both grass and trees growing out of some mounds.
For the cover art for this episode, the text on the map of a portion of North America with is text quoted from pg. 290 here that was referenced on pgs. 290-291 here.