Reply #57: It was a Babylonian nobleman you're thinking of

[Nevernose]

And since much of the Old Testament was adapted from earlier Babylonian myths (since the Hebrews spent quite a few years as "guests" of the Babylonians) it makes good sense; the Babylonian story is almost identical, except there are written records from the time indicating it was TRUE, insofar as there was a man who put all of his possessions on a boat to survive a flood.

I either saw it on that National Geographic channel (the one that's on channel 359 or something like that) or the documentary "The God Who Wasn't There."

There's also the theory of the Black Sea flooding, but that was so far back there are no written records. INterestingly enough, though, it coincides with the Tower of Babel story. Archaeolinguists suspect that the inhabitants were the original speakers of Proto Indo European, and they spread in all directions away from the Black Sea. The language begins separating about the time of that particular flood, and there are some very interesting parallels that survive to this day, e.g. the words for "horse" and other very basic concepts are similar in both German and Farsi, but the words for things conceptualized AFTER the flood (e.g. "wagon") are entirely different.

It's been a few years since I had any linguistics classes. Sadly, the details are all rather hazy these days :).