Bishop Ussher reviewed the Genealogy of the Bible and concluded that the six days of creation occurred about 4,000 BC. On this basis the Flood and a subsequent Ice Age was only about 4- 4,500 years ago. If this is true, wouldn't we expect to find references to the ice age and flood within the records of ancient civilisations?

When the records are reviewed, many different aspects of the Biblical account are found within a large and widespread number of Flood Legends.

Another interesting observation is the Chinese symbol for a large boat (see right), which is made up of the characters for vessel, eight and people, corresponding exactly to the size of Noah’s family on the Ark (Noah, his three sons, and their wives).

The fact that there are hundreds of references to the Flood across many civilisations and tribes provides a lot of evidence to support the Flood as an historical event. The actual timing then becomes more of a secondary issue. Most “ancient civilisations” are dated to circa 3,000 BC and a “literal creationist” viewpoint would place the Flood at circa 2,500 – 2,300 BC. Clearly these dates are inconsistent, so at least one of the dates must be wrong. The following articles and discussions consider some of these issues – in particular the article on Moses (Egyptian chronology) which shows how research on Egypt by non-Christians from the last couple of decades has indicated that the “traditional” Egyptian timeline may be 700 years or more too long …

Part of the reason for the apparent discrepancies in time may be due to the flaws with carbon dating. In addition, some chronologies give the impression that they are sequential, when some of the list actually runs parallel. For example, four Egyptian kings ruling different areas of Egypt at the same time, rather than one after the other.