Defkalyon: The Ancient Greek Version of Noa (and his ark)

Sacred texts show that the story of a flood wiping out all of corrupt humanity is essential in a civilization's history. Just as the Sumerians and the Jews/Christians have a flood story in their history (bordering on mythology), so did the ancient Greeks. The Sumerians had Atrahasi build a boat as instructed by the god Enki, the Jews had Noa build an ark as instructed by God and the Greeks had Defkalyon build a boat as instructed by his immortal Titan father, Prometheus. And all of this happened to destroy the majority of mankind. But first, lets see the story of its creation...

The 3 Ages of Man and Their Creation

When the titan god Kronos reigned, he created a race of mankind - this is the first and golden age - which was happy and good. No one worked and they all lived on the earth in harmony (does this remind anyone else of the Garden of Eden?). When they died, they roamed the earth as daimones or spirits. However, this age ended when Kronos died and Zeus took over.

The second age is known as the silver age, during which Prometheus was instructed by Zeus to create the next "batch" of men, who were uglier and inferior in intelligence. The four seasons were created and men had to seek shelter and grow food.

The third age is the bronze age and this is the time of naturally-born humans, descendants of the silver age humans and nymphs. The problem with the bronze age humans is that they started to get greedy, corrupt and impious, failing to honor the gods. This angered Zeus, who decided to destroy them with a flood that would cover the earth.

Read the rest of the article at allthegreeks.com.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atra-Hasis

http://www.theoi.com/Heros/Deukalion.html

http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Κατακλυσμός_του_Δευκαλίωνα

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/grecoromanmyth1/a/hesiodagesofman.htm