Greek Myth

Hey everyone! I mentioned before that I had to do a report on a Greek Myth. I got to choose the character and I am pretty sure most of you have never heard the story of Deucalion. At least my teacher hadn't. When you are reading this it will probably remind you of a similar story but I promise that it is an original myth. I thought that this myth was very exciting and was kind of fun to write about. I would also like knowing what you think about the myth. The report reads as follows:

My report will be on the Greek character Deucalion. Deucalion’s father was Prometheus, a titan, and Pronoia, his mother. Deucalion has no real symbol but he is commonly paired with the symbol for flood. I am pretty sure Deucalion has never had or used a weapon, but he has thrown rocks. As far as I know Deucalion has no Roman name nor is he even mentioned in Roman mythology. However, there IS a surprising resemblance to a biblical story (Parada).
The biblical story I referred to is the story of Noah and the Ark, where God floods the earth because the people were wicked. He tells Noah to build an ark and stick a bunch of animals in it. It then rains for a long time and the world is flooded, drowning the wicked.
There are actually several versions of Deucalion, not all of them with the same story; the story that follows is not actually one specific story. Rather it is several different versions of the story condensed into one. In this report I would side with whatever version had the majority of sources supporting it. There is an Assyrian version of Deucalion’s adventure that have nothing to do with a flood or a boat, but it is uncommon and I will not use it (Wikipedia).
The story of Deucalion starts with his father, Prometheus helping humans gain fire. Then Prometheus tricks the Gods into choosing the worst part of the humans sacrificed to them. Zeus retaliates with a girl named Pandora, who Zeus gave a box, later called Pandoras Box, which he told her never to open. But curiosity got the best of her, as Zeus knew it would, and she opened the box releasing the many sins of the world. Zeus had hoped that this would scare mankind into obeying “properly”. But with the sins now released in the world, this idea seemed to have had the opposite effect. Now, instead of getting even the worst part of every sacrifice, some men started not giving any sacrifice at all. This angered the Gods on Mount Olympus and Zeus and Poseidon came up with a plan to destroy this wickedness(D’Aulaire 76).
Meanwhile, Prometheus had been punished by Zeus for helping the humans. Zeus then decreed that Prometheus should wear unbreakable iron chains tied to a pole. Furthermore, Zeus decreed that an eagle would come and eat his liver every night, which is continuous punishment because since he is immortal, his liver would continually regrow. Before Prometheus was chained, he had a good son named Deucalion. When he was old enough, he journeyed to the mountain where his father was chained and attempted to break the bonds that held him. However, they proved to be too difficult, so all he could do was fight off the eagle that came to eat Prometheus’s liver (D’Aulaire 76). His father was grateful for the son’s assistance though, so when Zeus and Poseidon came up with their plan, which was to flood the earth, Prometheus, who could see into the future, warned his son and told him to build a boat to escape the flood (D’Aulaire 77).
Deucalion built the “ark” according to the instructions which his father had given him. On board his boat he packed food, clothing and other necessities. The passenger list of the ship was Deucalion, his wife Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, who is Prometheus’s brother (Wikipedia). After they built the boat, the Gods made it rain for nine days and nine nights after which they floated on the water for many days before finally landing on Mount Parnassus or Mount Etna in Sicily (Papageorgiou). Once there, the first thing they did was thank Zeus for letting them live. Then, as soon as their offering was done, Deucalion sought out the Oracle of Thessaly(who was immortal and therefore could not drown) and asked him how to restore the Earth to its former state. The Oracle replied saying,“Cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder.”(Ovid's Metamorphoses as quoted in Wikipedia). Deucalion and Pyrrha were smart enough to understand the oracles cryptic message and knew that Mother meant Gaia, mother of all creation, and bones meant, rocks of the earth(Wikipedia). So Deucalion and his wife threw rocks behind them, and as they did so, they formed into humans. The rocks of Pyrrha formed females while the rocks that Deucalion threw formed males (Parada).
After the incident with the flood, Deucalion returned home and had two known children. A third child is debated by scholars today(Wikipedia). Deucalion would still occasionally visit his Father but since he recreated the world after the flood he was busier than before. Prometheus would later be freed by Hercules, who would shoot the eagle and break his bonds. But by that time, Deucalion was dead, being a human mortal unlike his father, a Titan (Wikipedia).
There are some differences between Deucalion’s story and the story of Noah’s Ark, which is found in The Bible. In Deucalion’s version of the flood, there is no mention of saving the beasts of the earth as there was with Noah’s Ark. That does not mean that they weren’t on board, merely that the Greeks didn’t view it as important and it got lost in the retelling of the story. There is of course the obvious name differences between Noah and Deucalion and their wives. Also, in Deucalion’s story, it is only Deucalion and his wife, but in Noah’s story they have their children on board as well.
But even with all the differences, there are definite similarities. For instance, Noah and Deucalion both received insight from a wiser source(deity). They both built giant boats to save themselves while the wicked people of the world drowned. The flood was caused by God(s) because the people of the earth were wicked. Afterwards, they both landed on mountains and gave thanks to God(s) as their first act on dry ground.
I think that since this theme appears in two works of literature trying to convey the same general idea, that we can safely assume that the actual flood happened. Whether a person chooses to believe it was caused by the Gods/God, global warming, or some other weird freak of nature, it most probably was a major historical event. Researchers that have studied this event have concluded that the receding of glaciers at about 10,000 B.C. caused the flood mentioned in Deucalion’s story (Papageorgiou). It is an interesting anomaly in the history of the world. It is awesome that these two stories with such a striking resemblance to each other are both still around in literature today.