The ancient Sumerians that lived in present day Iraq (about 4,500 years ago) came up with a story about a hero by the name of Gilgamesh (thus the Epic of Gilgamesh). In that story, Gilgamesh attained eternal life after being instructed by a higher being to save all the animals from an impending great flood.
Now that story is very similar to the one about Noah's Ark (the latter probably a plagiarised version of the former). Similar stories of great floods were also found in old Egypt.
What do you expect ancient people to do but to talk about great floods? They have to live near great rivers to survive (remember, man need water every day and there were no steel pipes & taps then, hor) and great rivers come with great floods! Or is that suppose to be surprising?
So I also believe in great floods. But the part about flooding the whole world and saving all animals in a boat was less believable. How could those fellas catch and accommodate so many animals onto a boat I wondered. Firstly their stories said nothing of the number of animals involved - did those ancient ignorants that thought that the world was flat really know how many types of animals there were? (if they knew they probably would not have dared to write those stories, so don't underestimate the power of ignorance). Then how did they managed to get the animals to trust them with their lives? How did those boats sail round the world so quickly if it was such a big flood? Or did God talk to the animals and gave them superpowers to get to a pick up point (like the size of Australia?) for the convenience of our heroes? Blah, blah, blah....
But that was until I saw the report below. Now, I strongly believe that in the future, with man's help, some great soul in future should be able to fit all the surviving animals on this planet into one boat and ride out that coming great flood. And all he has to do is go to a local zoo....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3237726.stm
(this BBC reports on the dwindling numbers of monkeys, chimps and orang utans due to encroachment by man)
