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40 Days and 40 Nights of Rain: The Significance of the Biblical Flood Narrative and Other Universal Flood Accounts From Around the World

Khalid Elhassan May 19, 2025 17 min

Flood - Noah's Ark during the Genesis flood — Noah's Ark during the Genesis flood. Live Science

5. Mesoamerican Flood Myths

An Aztec ritual to please the gods during a flood. Wikimedia

The indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica have their own flood myths. The Aztecs, for example, believed the universe had gone through several destructions and creations. One such destruction came through water when the gods decided to destroy the world due to human failure, and sent a great deluge to drown the earth. Two people, Coxcox and his wife Xochiquetzal, survived by hiding in a hollow tree. Such cyclical views of time are central to Mesoamerican thought, where floods and other disasters mark transitions between ages, and are often seen as divine resets.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.