When a Philippine flood submerged the entire world

EVERYBODY knows the Biblical flood. It has been taught to us in Church, in school, heck even on television.

But what if I told you that there are other flood myths, about how the world was submerged in water? One is popular but two, three, even more? There has to be some truth to it. And what if I told you that here in the Philippines, we also had a great flood that swamped the entire world.

No, not the usual floods that we get from storms, but on a massive scale, one that even mountains were submerged. Let swim deeper shall we?

Tales of the flood

Ok. First we will not talk about the Biblical flood myth. Otherwise this page might be flooded with religious comments. But we will only talk about what happened here in the Philippines.

Now a little context, flood myths common across a wide range of cultures and has a great history. These stories tells of a great flood, so massive that it reached a global scale, and was ushered in by a deity of deities that aimed to destroy the present civilization and create a new one.

There is the Egyptian mythology involves the god Ra and his daughter Sekhmet. In the story Ra sent Sekhmet to destroy part of humanity. This is because of disrespect and unfaithfulness. They overturned wine jugs to simulate a great flood of blood.

Mesopotamia takes from the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest known works of literature. Here, Gilgamesh, meets Utnapishtim, a man who survived a great flood after the god Ea warned him of the impending disaster and instructed him to build a boat to save himself, his family, and various animals. Sound familiar?

India had the Legend of Manu, a righteous man chosen by the god Vishnu to preserve life from a devastating flood. He was warned of an impending deluge and instructs him to build a giant boat.

We can go on with these so lets hook right to our target.

Philippine flood myths

There’s three actually. We will swim towards Ifugao, the Igorot and Bukidnon.

Ifugao Flood

According to the tale, the villagers lived in harmony and had toiled the land happily with abundance. But then came a year where not a single drop of rain fell.

The heat dried up the river making a huge problem for the aqua culture and plants. This left the Ifugaos starving. Hoping to find the sould of the river the people dug at at the dried river.

Rain then fell. But not because of their efforts but of an angered river gods. The rain continued and overflowed swamping the banks and resulting to a great flood which wiped out humanity.

Only two survivors remained. Wigan and Bugan, who repopulated the earth once the waters receded.

Igorot Flood

In this story, the Earth was conceived as flat.

A flat earth as some had pushed.

But here, it was just plain flat. No mountains. During that time there were two brothers, who were sons of Lumawig, the Great Spirit.

They were great siblings whio were fond of hunting. But since there were no mountains, it was hard to catch wild pig and deer.

This prompted the older brother to declare: “Let us cause water to flow over all the world and cover it, and then mountains will rise up.”

Pleased, they set a trap to catch the pigs. But they also caught people.

Lumawig saw what his sons had done, flooding the earth.

He also saw that all the people in the world drowned except one brother and sister who lived in Pokis.

He commanded his dog and deer to get fire for the freezing boy and girl. The dog and the deer swam quickly away. They were able to build a large fire and dired up the land.

Bukidnon Flood

Our last lap took us to Bukidnon, where the story tells of a large crab. It was so huge that it crowded the water. It then ran all over the earth and covered the land.

Then one wise man told the people that they must build a large raft. They followed and cut many large trees, and made a large raft.

Then water came and caused a great flood. Thos who survived where people and animals on the raft.

As the water subsided, the people let the animals out and repopulated the whole earth.

All sounds pretty familiar?

Well, don’t force you to believe, as I had been mentioning it is a story. But what fascinated me was the fact that aside from the Biblical flood story, there were many, many others. And for me, if there are other many close or similar stories, then the flood story from the Bible is indeed true. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Banner Photo Courtesy: Francis Danby – The Deluge (1840)