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Ante diluvium · “before the flood”

The Antediluvian Era

The world between Creation and Noah's Flood — its people, its legends, and the many ancient texts that remember it.

What “antediluvian” means

From the Latin ante (before) and diluvium (flood), the word names the age described in Genesis 1–9. Scripture pictures it as a time of very long lives, the first cities, music and metalwork — and of growing violence until “the earth was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11) and God sent the Flood.

Sites & landscapes

Göbekli Tepe

Şanlıurfa, Turkey · c. 9500 BC

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Göbekli Tepe, Enclosure F · Beytullah eles / World History Encyclopedia · Photo source · CC BY-SA 4.0

Modern photographs of the places in the map catalogue, not images of the biblical era. Inclusion follows the map’s approximate-date filter; it does not establish a site’s connection to Noah’s Flood.

The ten patriarchs

Genesis 5 lists ten generations from Adam to Noah. Bars show each lifespan; the line marks the Flood.

Adam אָדָם
Seth שֵׁת
Enosh אֱנוֹשׁ
Kenan קֵינָן
Mahalalel מַהֲלַלְאֵל
Jared יֶרֶד
Enoch חֲנוֹךְ
Methuselah מְתוּשֶׁלַח
Lamech לֶמֶךְ
Noah נֹחַ

Flood · AM 1656

Dating the Flood

The ancient versions of Genesis disagree on the pre-Flood ages, which yields different dates:

TextFlood (from Creation)Approx. date
Masoretic Text (Ussher, 1650)AM 16562348 BC
Samaritan PentateuchAM 1307c. 3044 BC
Septuagint (Greek)AM 2242c. 3300 BC
JubileesAM 1308—

This site's Antediluvian filter uses Ussher's 2348 BC. Mainstream archaeology dates sites such as Göbekli Tepe (c. 9500 BC) far earlier, so many “pre-Flood” pins rely on that conventional dating.

Sources

Hebrew Bible & New Testament

  • Genesis 4 — Cain's line: Enoch the city, Jabal (herdsmen), Jubal (music), Tubal-cain (bronze and iron).
  • Genesis 5 — The ten generations from Adam to Noah, with their ages.
  • Genesis 6:1–4 — The sons of God, the daughters of men, and the Nephilim.
  • Genesis 6:5–9:17 — The ark, the Flood, the landing on Ararat and the rainbow covenant.
  • Matthew 24:37–39; Luke 17:26–27 — Jesus: 'as it was in the days of Noah'.
  • 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:4–5; Jude 14–15 — Noah, the imprisoned angels, and a direct quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9.

Dead Sea Scrolls & Second Temple writings

  • 1 Enoch 1–36 (Book of the Watchers; 4Q201–212) — Two hundred Watchers descend on Mount Hermon, father the giants and teach forbidden arts.
  • Book of Giants (4Q203, 4Q530–533) — The giants Ohyah and Hahyah dream of the destruction to come.
  • Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen) — Lamech fears Noah was fathered by a Watcher; Noah's own first-person account of the Flood.
  • Jubilees 4–10 (4Q216–228) — A dated chronology of the patriarchs and the division of the earth among Noah's sons.
  • 4Q252 (Commentary on Genesis A) — Recalculates the Flood calendar to a 364-day solar year.
  • Josephus, Antiquities 1.67–108 — Seth's two pillars, the long lives of the patriarchs, and pagan historians who confirm a flood.

Mesopotamia

  • Sumerian King List — Eight kings reign in five cities 'before the flood swept over'.
  • Eridu Genesis — Ziusudra, warned by Enki, survives in a great boat.
  • Atrahasis Epic — The gods send plague, famine and finally a flood to silence humanity.
  • Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet XI — Utnapishtim releases a dove, a swallow and a raven; his boat lands on Mount Nimush.
  • Berossus, Babyloniaca — The ten antediluvian kings and Xisuthros, who buried the sacred writings at Sippar.
  • The Apkallu — Seven fish-cloaked sages who brought civilisation before the flood — often compared with the Watchers.

Flood memories worldwide

  • Greece — Ovid, Apollodorus, Plato — Deucalion and Pyrrha; Plato's Egyptian priests on repeated floods.
  • India — Shatapatha Brahmana, Matsya Purana — Manu, the fish and the boat on the northern mountain.
  • China — Shujing, Shanhaijing — Yu the Great tames the world flood.
  • Maya — Popol Vuh, Dresden Codex — The wooden people swept away by the deluge.
  • Andes — Molina, Betanzos — Viracocha's unu pachakuti, the world-overturning water.
  • Islam — Qur'an 11 & 71 — Nūḥ preaches 950 years; the ark rests on al-Jūdī.
  • Australia — Aboriginal oral tradition — Stories of the sea drowning the coast, linked to post-glacial sea-level rise.

Explore it on the map

Every site whose era begins before the Flood is plotted on the dedicated map, and each dossier lists the texts that connect it to this age.

Open the Antediluvian map