Sea level rose continuously from 20,000 until 8000 years ago, 120 m in all. Each of 600 generations experienced its own deluge as the shore moved inland, often hundreds of miles all told.
Local events were often more dramatic, maybe including the Black Sea filling in. Then there was the global Younger Dryas cataclysm 12,000 years ago.
Thing is, while all those global- or continental-scale flooding events did happen, there's only speculation that they are coupled to oral traditions. And stronger speculation that they are linked to more regional floods, eg, from flood-prone Mesopotamia.
We can look at the Great Flood of Gun to see how mythology incorporates more localized floods - sea level rise wouldn't cause flooding of the Yellow River and the Yangtze valleys some 4,000 years ago.
As the paper I cited says:
> While there are a few claims of considerably greater antiquity that are difficult to dismiss—the Klamath memory of the 7630-year-old eruption of Mt Mazama (Deur 2002) is one—most of these are inevitably based on sparse information from which credible arguments are difficult to construct. Most scientists hold a sceptical view of such ‘deep’ oral histories (Henige2009; Owsley and Jantz 2001), a position that is prudent, although there are some who regard it as unduly cautious (Echo-Hawk 2000)
then listing much more concrete examples of how local myths can be tied to global sea level rise, for example:
> Some of these stories recall that the Aboriginal name of Fitzroy Island is gabaɽor ‘lower arm’ of a former main-land promontory that became partly submerged. Another recalls the name of a place halfway between Fitzroy Island and King Beach that is now submerged; its name was Mudaga (the Indindji word for the pencil pine, Athrotaxis cupressoides) after the trees growing there
along with an explanation for why these stories might have persisted:
> the only plausible explanation for the Indindji people of coastal Queensland continuing to tell the story of Mudaga ... for thousands of years after it was no longer visible, is if that story were part of an explicitly taught package of stories inherited through land-owning Indindji patrilines. For the existence of Mudaga, even submerged, constitutes evidence of knowing one’s country, and thus establishing one’s relationship with that country. Without such ritualised framing, the transmission of such stories across perhaps over 100 generations would seem to be implausibly vulnerable to chance link-breaking
The connection between the Gilgamesh floods and global sea-level rise, or the Black Sea, etc., has no comparable evidence.
Of course there will never be definitive evidence connecting sea level rise to universal flood mythology.
It comes down, in the end, to plausibility: people everywhere have always been subject to existential catastrophe, including flood, conflagration, desertification, famine, pandemic, invasion, eviction, genocide, cyclone, earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, bolide strike -- need I go on? Yet, only one of these shows up as formative in all places and nearly all peoples.
There are other ways to interpret universality. One is that a progenitor people carried an origin story with them, over tens of millennia, as they spread out to cover the planet. The universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters (one now lost) can be explained no other way.
The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia.
The end of generation-on-generation flooding that immediately preceded the rise of sedentary agriculture and civilization must have been as profoundly affecting as the flood's previous relentless progress.
There must have been, after 12 millennia, a deeply ingrained expectation that the sea would continue rising indefinitely, the world perhaps ending with the sea finally submerging all land. Building with an expectation not to be soon evicted by water must have seemed audaciously sacrilegious, in many places, for many generations after.
Association of high ground with the gods' favor must have been cemented early.
Peoples accustomed to higher ground would have, instead, continual experience of invasion by people displaced, again finally trailing off.
So, is the null hypothesis that universal flood myths are local memories, with those citing universal older experience having something to prove? Or should the older origin be the baseline, with citations of scattered recent events seeding disconnected, coincidentally matching myths obliged to find support?
The choice is fatuous. Each may be true, in different places. A recent flood event can easily loom larger in memory than legend. Absent a recent flood or tsunami, the universal experience remains.
> The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia
The simpler explanation is that intelligent people saw sea shells on the tops of hills and mountains, and independently concluded that there used to be a great flood which covered the world.
] A flood once covered everything but the summit of Mount Wawom Pebato (seashells on the hills are evidence).
] Proof of their deeds may be seen in seashells embedded in high rocks
] An unusually high tide caused a global flood. Shellfish and such things in the mountains are evidence of it
] The shells and bones of many shellfish, fish, seals, and whales were also left high above sea level, where they may be found today.
] The sky fell and hit the water, causing high breakers that flooded all the land. That is why one can find shells and redwood logs on the highest ridges
] When the flood subsided, it left the lakes Titicaca and Poopo, and it left seashells on the Altiplano at elevations of 3660 m.
] The flood destroyed all animals left on earth, including the Prince of animals [some say it was a mammoth], whose bones can still be found.
And the Norse flood myth may be from Christian influence.
Any theory of a progenitor people must explain why some it persisted in some cultures but not others.
> The universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters (one now lost) can be explained no other way.
???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matariki - Matariki is the Māori name for the cluster of stars known to Western astronomers as the Pleiades in the constellation Taurus. Matariki is a shortened version of Ngā mata o te ariki o Tāwhirimātea, or "the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E1%B9%9Bttik%C4%81 - "The star cluster Kṛttikā ... corresponds to the open star cluster called Pleiades in western astronomy ... In Indian astronomy and Jyotiṣa (Hindu astrology) the name literally translates to "the cutters". ... The six Krittikas who raised the Hindu God Kartikeya are Śiva, Sambhūti, Prīti, Sannati, Anasūya and Kṣamā."
> The simpler explanation for prominence of flood myths over all others regardless of proximity to recent flooding events is universal experience, in place, continued over millennia.
There are gods in a lot of mythologies too.
> There must have been, after 12 millennia, a deeply ingrained expectation that the sea would continue rising indefinitely
Yet most of those flood stories have the waters rise then fall, and for a short period -- or before humans ever existed.
And in the Great Flood of Gun-Yu, humans end up controlling the flood - a far cry from a universal mythos of ever-rising waters.
> is the null hypothesis that universal flood myths are local memories
The null hypothesis is that there is no universal flood myth.
From the linked Wikipedia page: "African cultures preserving an oral tradition of a flood include the Kwaya, Mbuti, Maasai, Mandin, and Yoruba peoples."
So, false.
And, obviously there would be local myths of the Pleiades. But the Sisters show up on all continents. That is the fact that needs accounting for.
Dragonwriter is correct: neither universal nor regional flooding is the null hypothesis.
I said most cultures in Africa don't have a flood myth, not that no cultures in Africa have a flood myth. The Wikipedia entry you quoted starts "Although the continent has relatively few flood legends".
There are many more than five cultures in Africa. Any suggestion of a universal common source must explain why those other cultures don't have a flood myth. Including Japan.
We can compare different flood myths and see there's no universal similarity between them except "there was a flood."
And we can see all sorts of other similarities between different cultures, like the presence of gods and supernatural forces, and not draw the conclusion that gods and supernatural forces existed.
We can look at Australian Aboriginal flood myths, which have the strongest evidence for being the result of sea-level rise from 7,000 years ago, and see that your 'simpler explanation' doesn't fit the data.
And I can see that your statement about the "universal interpretation of the Pleiades as seven sisters" is not correct.
There's still no evidence for the universal progenitor culture experience, while there is counter-evidence, including from Australian oral traditions which may date to the same period.
Local events were often more dramatic, maybe including the Black Sea filling in. Then there was the global Younger Dryas cataclysm 12,000 years ago.