The time before the cataclysm

The world that existed originally does not exist now, so we have no direct evidence of what it was like. Our main source of information is the first book of the Bible, Genesis, which records an ancient tradition about that lost world. In many ways that world was different from the one we know today, in other ways quite similar. Based on the biblical information and on what we know from changes in fauna, flora and geography over time, we can say:

• The land was watered, not by rain, but from moisture which oozed through the soil from a great body of water beneath the land, called the deep. Springs and rivers also got their water from this underground reservoir.

• A land map would have looked nothing like any modern map. The only remnants from the original geography are names (e.g. "Tigris", "Euphrates").

• Plants and animals would have looked very different. This is because the original kinds were at the base of family trees that subsequently branched out into many species. The ultimate ancestor of the lion, for example, would also have been the ancestor of the tiger, the leopard and every other cat species.

• Human beings were not savages. They built cities and knew how to tend cattle, make iron and play music.

Noah as prophet

Noah is described in the New Testament as a preacher of righteousness, but his call to return to God and be like God in purity and goodness must have fallen on deaf ears. Nobody cared, nobody repented.

Surely the most powerful part of his message was the strange box-like ship that he had been building over so many years. If anyone had believed this sign that God was in earnest and really did intend to wash away everything polluting his creation, there would have been room for them too to be saved. But in the end, apart from the animals, only Noah and his family believed. One day people were eating and drinking and carrying on with their everyday lives. The next day, the springs of the great deep burst and the unleashed waters swept them away.