"The 'Eridu Genesis'...described the creation of man by the four great gods [the Anunnaki]: An ['Sky', the source of rain and most powerful of the gods], Enlil ['Lord Wind', the power in 'Growing Weather', creator of the hoe], Ninhursaga ['Lady of the Stony Ground', mother of wildlife], and Enki [rival of Ninhursaga]. After Nintur [Ninhursaga] had decided to turn man from his primitive nomadic camping grounds toward city life the period began when animals flourished on earth and kingship came down from heaven. The earliest cities were built, were named, had the measuring cups, emblems of a redistributional economic system, allotted to them, and were divided between the gods. Irrigation agriculture was developed and man thrived and multiplied. However, the noise made by man in his teeming settlements began to vex Enlil sorely, and, driven beyond endurance, he persuaded the other gods to wipe out man in an great flood. Enki, thinking quickly, found a way to warn his favorite, one Ziusudra. He told him to build a boat in which to survive the flood with his family and representatives of the animals."
- Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness
"Tear down the house, build a ship!
Give up possessions, seek thou life!
Forswear belongings, keep soul alive!
Aboard ship take thou the seed of all living things.
That ship thou shalt build;
Her dimensions shall be to measure."
- Sumerian Text
"Ziusudra wisely followed Enki's instructions and after the flood had abated Enki was able to persuade the other gods not only to spare Ziusudra but to give him eternal life as a reward for having saved all living things from destruction."
Enki "persuades, tricks, or evades to gain his ends. He is the cleverest of the gods, the one who can plan and organize and think of ways out when no one else can. He is the counselor and adviser, the expert and the trouble-shooter, or manipulator, of the ruler; not the ruler himself. He organizes and runs the world, but at the behest of An and Enlil, not for himself; he save mankind and the animals from extinction in the flood, but does not challenge Anlil's continued rule. His aim is a workable compromise, avoiding extremes."
- Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness
"...Evidence of a major flood just over 6,000 years ago has been found around Ur, where a layer of water-laid clay two and a half meters deep covers an area of more than 100,000 square kilometers. This amounts to a spread across the entire width of the Tigris-Euphrates valley from north of modern Baghdad to the coast of the Persian Gulf in what now includes parts of Iraq, Iran and Kuwait."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
Geologists have also found rather conclusive evidence that the Black Sea was formed by severe flooding 7,540 years ago. Core samples reveal that the area was originally a dry lake bed, then showed a sudden transition to salt water. As the ice caps melted, the level of the Mediterranean rose until the water was able to spill over a narrow escarpment separating it from the Black Sea basin. At its peak, a flow of water one thousand times more powerful than Niagara falls roared into the basin drowning every thing in its path.
Archaeologists have also uncovered evidence of a population explosion along the shores of the Black Sea 400 to 500 years later. The original inhabitants appear to have fled the rising waters and settled around the perimeter when the flooding crested and the sea levels became stable.
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