Page 193 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

For example, early Jesuit scholars who were among the first Europeans
to visit China had the opportunity in the Imperial Library to study a vast
work, consisting of 4320 volumes, said to have been handed down from
ancient times and to contain ‘all knowledge’. This great book included a
number of traditions which told of the consequences that followed ‘when
mankind rebelled against the high gods and the system of the universe
fell into disorder’: ‘The planets altered their courses. The sky sank lower
towards the north. The sun, moon and stars changed their motions. The
earth fell to pieces and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with
violence and overflowed the earth.’
26
In the Malaysian tropical forest the Chewong people believe that every
so often their own world, which they call Earth Seven, turns upside down
so that everything is flooded and destroyed. However, through the
agency of the Creator God Tohan, the flat new surface of what had
previously been the underside of Earth Seven is moulded into mountains,
valleys and plains. New trees are planted, and new humans born.
27
A flood myth of Laos and northern Thailand has it that beings called the
Thens lived in the upper kingdom long ages ago, while the masters of the
lower world were three great men, Pu Leng Seung, Khun K’an and Khun
K’et. One day the Thens announced that before eating any meal people
should give them a part of their food as a sign of respect. The people
refused and in a rage the Thens created a flood which devastated the
whole earth. The three great men built a raft, on top of which they made
a small house, and embarked with a number of women and children. In
this way they and their descendants survived the deluge.
28
In similar fashion the Karens of Burma have traditions of a global
deluge from which two brothers were saved on a raft. Such a deluge is
29
also part of the mythology of Viet Nam, where a brother and a sister are
said to have survived in a great wooden chest which also contained two
of every kind of animal.
30
Several aboriginal Australian peoples, especially those whose traditional
homelands are along the tropical northern coast, ascribe their origins to a
great flood which swept away the previous landscape and society.
Meanwhile, in the origin myths of a number of other tribes, the cosmic
serpent Yurlunggur (associated with the rainbow) is held responsible for
the deluge.
31
There are Japanese traditions according to which the Pacific islands of
Oceania were formed after the waters of a great deluge had receded. In
32
Oceania itself a myth of the native inhabitants of Hawaii tells how the

26 Reported in Charles Berlitz, The Lost Ship of Noah, W. H. Allen, London, 1989, p. 126.
27 World Mythology, pp. 26-7.
28 Ibid., p. 305.
29 Folklore in the Old Testament, p. 81.
Ibid.
30
31 World Mythology, p. 280.
32 E. Sykes, Dictionary Of Non-Classical Mythology, London, 1961, p. 119.

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