flood

Roco are common in the Old and New Worlds. Among the regions in which the theme of P. was not presented or received a rather random reflection, often in a highly specialized form, include Japan (lack of evidence), Africa, and Australia.

The two most obvious and powerful epicenters of myths and legends about P. are southern Eurasia (primarily the Middle East and India) and America. The mythopoetic theme of P. is valuable not only in the actual mythological plan as an attempt to explain with the help of P. the beginning of the world, some new tradition, relief features, the covenant between God and people, etc., but partly from a historical point of view, since In many cases, it is mythological sources that preserve information about quite real P., only in recent decades confirmed by data from geology, paleontology, and other sciences about the prehistoric past of the earth and its inhabitants in the animal and plant world. Mythological versions of an event that once actually took place make it possible to reconstruct in general terms only the event itself, but (which is much more important) the reconstruction of the principles of mythologization (mythological processing) of some essentially non-mythological material. At the same time, according to the opinion of the vast majority of researchers, in general, the mythological motif of P. cannot be deduced in each case from the geological history of the given region. All the mythological versions of P. known to science cannot be reduced to any single source, or to those only traditions, the bearers of which once experienced P. as a local cataclysm.