You have just added to my list of problems with the Mesopotamian view.
Your note triggered a new thought in me. The survivors of the flood, as
envisioned for Mesopotamia, would have obviously not known of the Chinese.
I used them to point out that the flood account could NOT have been
anthropologically universal if it occurred when most Christians want it to
take place.
That said, however, the flood account certainly portrays the flood as
wiping out all of humanity, leaving only 8 people. Yet the survivors of the
flood in Mesopotamia would not have HAD to know of the Chinese to KNOW that
they weren't the only survivors of a world wide calamity. By 100 thousand
years ago, the world population was 4-800 thousand. By 8000 B. C. this
number had increased to between 3 and 5 million souls, most of whom were
in the Near East because that is where farming was going on. So, when the
riders of the mesopotamian ark landed, they would have run into other
people who inhabited the surrounding lands, and they would have been able
to hear of other people further away. Some of these peoples would have
lived just at the flood water's edge (and thus they weren't far away from
the flooded zone) and they could have been there to greet the disembarking
ark-onauts. After they set up their new encampments, these survivors would
have run into other humans engaged in commerce, conquest and
hunter-gatherers who still occupied these regions. So they would have known
that humanity was not wiped out.
So, when they wrote their story as if it had wiped out everybody, they were
wrong and they would have known it. They lied. Who inspired that part of
the story? God?
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm