Ziusudra and the Conquering Refugee Nation, Part V

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part VI Part VII Part VIII

Robust Neanderthal bodies would have given these "giants" a physical advantage as well. We should consider that the word "giant" may have been as much relative and metaphorical as realistic. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting the Pharaoh in battle usually depict him or her as a mighty, all-conquering giant, which on a physical level they were not. Similarly, Gilgamesh was described as a giant. This may have been a regular usage for any hero of renown, whatever their actual stature. Furthermore, Neanderthals were shorter than modern humans, provided those modern humans have modern nutrition. But most modern humans of the early agricultural era did not, and these beefier Neanderthals would have towered over many of them. Neanderthal genes for robust physiques must have been real enough, and endured long enough for a story like David and Goliath to make sense. Goliath is treated by the Old Testament text as a real character; his giantness was considered otherwise unremarkable. He is explicitly linked with the Nephilim in Jewish tradition. There is even a place named after him by the Palestinians, Ain Jalut, where the plucky Mameluke underdogs would one day best the unconquered Mongols in another David and Goliath story. These are the sorts of details that beg us to treat Goliath like a real person, and thereby grant credence to the notion that the giants were the Nephilim were the Neanderthals, and they were physically larger than their modern human contemporaries.

Neanderthal communities long on the run, with merely a couple high-functioning leaders, "the mighty men of old, men of renown" as Genesis says, would have therefore been able to turn the tides and begin to retake the Black Sea coast.

And what of the modern human defenders? Not all of the women so abducted would have stayed abducted. Some, especially the daughters of the bourgeoisie, would have been pursued by armed troops and rescued. Some of the rescued may have already been impregnated, or even have given birth already. Some of these children would have grown up to become bourgeois themselves. Therefore the leadership of the Black Sea basin would have become more high-functioning autistic as well as its marauding opponents.

If all this is the case, it explains more readily why "wickedness" flourished in this world: the strongest people in it would have had, effectively, superpowers. The natural corrupting influences of power and wealth would have been wielded by people unchecked and uncheckable by average humans. Invading Neanderthals would have been led by cleverer killers, the merchants would have been cleverer at swindling and screwing their customers and getting rich, and Joe Dirt Farmer would have been caught between them both. Joe Dirt Farmer would have been able to piece together that a combination of Neanderthal and modern human lineage was responsible for both, and his descendant writing Genesis may have shared this perspective for why the Great Flood happened as a result.

In any case, whatever his neighbors thought about his silly ark, it saved Ziusudra's life when the Great Flood came. The crumbling natural dam holding back the Sea of Marmara buckled, maybe under an exceptionally large tide, maybe during a freakishly long rainstorm, and the waters rushed in. Conquering Neanderthals and the conniving merchants would have their wickedness drowned in the deluge.

The Great Flood would have been worthy of the name, as it would have done over an entire civilization like it was Atlantis, and no flood ever since has managed such a feat. But it would not have covered the whole Earth. It would not have literally submerged Mount Ararat as the Old Testament claims. The history of archaeology teaches us not to be overly skeptical of every last detail the ancients considered worth writing down; a weird detail like that was recorded for a reason. Likelier than that the ark landed at Ararat, however, is the possibility that those who claimed descent from Ziusudra were symbolically claiming Ararat as theirs. Especially since the earliest versions of the story were written in Sumerian, where "mountain" and "country" are the same word, this particular passage in Genesis almost certainly is a vestigial linguistic artifact of an ancient claim by Ziusudra's followers to the Ararat region, which today is still remarkably close to the border of the once-Zoroastrian Iranian nation.

It is doubtful that Ziusudra would have lived as long as the Old Testament claims he did, likelier that the lifespan was meant to place him after the fact as among a set of foundational heroes for a nation claiming descent from him. However, the remarkable longevity is even more remarkable in the Sumerian King List, where Ziusudra is said to have ruled Shuruppak for thirty-six thousand years. This is believed by modern scholars to be a copyist error (Best, Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic, 118-9). If so, it's a copyist error that probably begat Ziusudra's reputation for immortality in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which begat his reputation for a long life in the Old Testament. How different our entire culture might be right now if a single Sumerian scribe's hand hadn't slipped once.

If Ziusudra's given age is doubtful, it's equally doubtful that he and his kin were the only survivors of the Great Flood.

There would have been traders from the former Black Sea coast in foreign lands when the waters came. They may have hurried home upon the news, just to see the road they travelled disappearing into the waters ahead of them. Fishermen and sailors in boats when the waters rose would have been likelier to survive, if the first few waves didn't wreck them. They may have frantically looked for any surviving kin, and perhaps this Ziusudra led the bands of survivors. The survivors would have been predominantly bourgeois, with Neanderthal genetics surviving through them.

Continue to Part VI