I'm not actually certain every culture has a flood myth. Myths involving floods occur in multiple cultures but are hardly universal--just to name one off the top of my head, Japan has no flood myth. And there is an enormous amount of variance in the myths themselves--in China, for example, the flood story basically boils down to a problem of hydrology, in that the Yellow River was flooding its banks--as it does in reality--and needed the smart management of the future emperor Shun. Saying the Chinese story and the Biblical story are variants of a single story is sort of like saying Leda and the Swan and Poe's The Raven are the same story because they both involve birds.

The second point involves the question of "ancient cultures". My assumption is that you are defining this through the stories of Noah, Deucaileon, Utnapishtim, and Manu--four very similar stories. Given that the four cultures from which the stories sprang were in close contact, a more parsimonious explanation is that all four are variants of a single story that passed from culture to culture than that they all independently describe an actual event. Then we can broaden this parsimony to say that a reasonable explanation for any prevalence of floods in mythology is that floods are real concerns of people that live near water, which is most, and thus are natural subjects for storytelling. Much as there are many myths about wars around the world without there needing to be an ancient "universal war".

Which brings us to the actual evidence, because real floods do leave a lot of evidence. If you read about recent clean up efforts around floods you will see that you cannot cover an area with water without the much and mood and silt of the body of water that is flooding covering the formerly dry land. And there have been floods in human history, which can be documented by archaeological and geological investigation. The fact that there is no documentation for a "universal flood" in human history is a pretty strong indication that it did not happen.

A quick note on the Black Sea, which has been used by certain fraudulent parties to explain the prevalence of flood myths--during the end of the last Ice Age (or more accurately, during the end of the last glacial stage of the current Ice Age) melting ice caps caused sea levels to rise, and one particularly catastrophic example of that is the Black Sea, which connected with the Mediterranean and thus experienced very rapid expansion. This may have had an effect on the spread of agriculture into Europe but likely did not inspire the Mesopotamian flood myth that Noah's Arc is based on. Firstly because it was thousands of years before the writing of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and secondly because the Black Sea is not, in fact, in Mesopotamia. It is much more likely that the periodic flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers were the inspiration.

I think the best answer to these somewhat hazy questions of prehistory is actually learning about prehistory, and as such I strongly recommend Steven Mithen's After the Ice, which is a very readable global survey of human history at the end of the Ice Age. It is a bit out of date but still a very good popular source on this.

One issue with understanding myths of "ancient cultures" is that so many of them come to us second-hand. If we're lucky, we can trace the origin of stories back through the past using writing (if available) or artifacts. The Popol Wuj, the most well known Maya myth of creation and the first humans, was recorded in Quiche and Spanish during the 16th century by the Domincian priest Francisco Ximenez, yet elements of it appear in paintings on pottery and stone inscriptions from 1000 years earlier. At the same time, portions of it are clearly modeled after the Judeo-Christian tradition in Genesis.^1

The same is true for flood myths in South America. Colonial Spanish and Quechua writers recorded several myths involving a flood, each of which supposedly was an "authentic" native legend. The best known is that recorded in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala's 1615 Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno.. Guaman Poma was part of a local noble family that had successfully secured an elite position under both Inca and Spanish rule. Thus, his book both criticizes of Spanish abuses and blends Catholic and native histories.

Guaman Poma breaks down the history of the Inca into ages, beginning with a the mythical era of the Viracocha people and titling it:

VARI VIRA Cocha Runa, primer generación de yndios del multiplico de los dichos españoles que trajo Dios a este rreyno de las Yndias, los que salieron de la arca de Noé, deluuio. Después que multiplicó estos dichos por mandado de Dios, derramó en el mundo.

Wari Viracocha Runa, the first generation of Indians, descended from the same Spaniards which God brought to this kingdom of the Indies, those which left Noah's and the flood. After these people multiplied by God's command, they poured across the Earth.

Already in the header, we see that the following history, even if inspired by Quechua myths, is thoroughly mixed with Christian ideas: Dios will be a lead actor, the Inca are descendants of Noah, and any catastrophe mentioned is directly connected to Noah's flood. Each of the following "generations" begins with a similar reminder that they were descendants of Noah. Guaman Poma continues:

Esta generación primera duraron y multiplicaron pocos años, ochocientos y treinta años en este Mundo Nuebo llamado Yndias, a los quales que enbió Dios. Estos dichos yndios se llamaron Uari Uira Cocha Runa porque desendió de los dichos españoles y ací le llamaron Uira Cocha

This first generation lasted and multiplied for a few years, 830 years in this New World called the Indies, to which God sent them. These same Indians were called Wari Viracocha Runa because the descended from Spaniards, and so they called them [the Spanish] Viracocha.

Esta gente Uari Uira Cocha Runa perdieron la fe y esperansa de Dios y la letra y mandamiento, de todo perdieron1. Y ací ellos se perdieron tanbién, aunque tubieron y [sic], una sonbrilla de conocimiento del Criador de los honbres y del mundo y del cielo. Y ací adoraron y llamaron a Dios Runa Camac Uiracocha [...] no se acordaron que uinieron de la desendencia de Nué, del luuio, aunque tienen noticia del [di]luuio, porque ellos les llaman uno yaco pachacuti. Fue castigo de Dios.

These people, the Wari Viracocha Runa, lost faith, hope in God, writing, and law, they lost all of it. And thus they also got lost themselves, however they had the smallest bit of awareness of the Creator of men and earth and sky. And thus they worshipped him and called God Runa Camac Viracocha [powerful creator of man]. [...] They did not remember that they were united with the descendants of Noah, of the flood, however they were aware of the flood, because they called it Uno Yaco Pachacuti. It was a punishment from God.

Flood myths don't pop up elsewhere in the book- if you can even consider this an appearance. We do learn a lot, though, about Guaman Poma's intentions in this brief section. In repeatedly referencing the Inca's Noahic origins, Guaman Poma reminds the reader that the Inca are just as human as the Spanish- and just as deserving of fair governance. They're idolaters only because they, like the Spanish, experienced the Fall of Man and forgot God. They are not inherently savage. There's also two words here that are central to Andean myths and worth looking at: Pachacuti and Viracocha.

Pachacuti, literally "earth breaking", is annotated in multiple versions of Nueva Coronica as meaning "water cataclysm." Besides being the name of the Sapa Inca who essentially created the Inca empire, Pachacuti refers to a cosmos-shattering event, such as Noah's flood, that signals the end/beginning of an era. It is not limited in any other place to a water-based event (it could even be a political event), so it seems that Guaman Poma was associating the extant native concept of pachacuti with the closest Biblical example: the flood.

Viracocha is one of the most contested terms in Andean studies; here we see its three principal uses: to refer to the primordial"first" people, to the Spanish, and to a Judeo-Christian omnipotent creator deity. Going into the full complexities of the term is too far a digression; I'll summarize Peter Gose's thoughts on it.^3 During the Inca period, Viracocha had aspects of the first defintion: Viracochas were ancestral, mytho-historical, plural, and generative beings that traversed the ancient Andes and created societies. Spaniards rapidly latched onto the term as a translation of dios, "God," morphing viracochas into Viracocha, the Creator; eventually, natives began calling the Spanish Viracochas. This has been misconstrued as the Inca actually thinking the Spanish were gods- rather, regional groups may have equated Spanish actions against the Inca with the actions of viracochas, or they may have called the Spanish by the name of their God, who had been described to them as Viracocha. In any case, the presence of this kind of "God" is a clear Catholic influence.

Other writers did present more complete flood myths, but none are anything close to an "original" South American story. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa's 1572 The History of the Incas was compiled decade before Guaman Poma's masterwork, yet it is even more drenched in Catholic phrases and imagery. Viracocha creates man "in his own image" and order them to keep his commands. The people "fall" into the sin of pride, and so are punished by, among other things, a flood that lasts "60 days and 60 nights." This occurs in the chapter titled "The Fable of the Origin of the Barbrarous Indians of Peru, According to their Blind Opinion." Hardly a signal that you're accurately representing your informants. In 1608, the priest Francisco de Ávila published a book on the idolatries of Peru, including a story about a shepherd who had to climb up the mountainside to escape a sudden flood after his llama warned him what to do. Juan de Velazco described yet another flood myth in his History of Quito in the 1750s- in this one, the flood is again punishment for sins and escaped by a father, his three sons, and their wives by climbing high up a mountain. Could there have been some earlier flood myth? Perhaps these stories are drawn from some shared Andean source; /u/tiako has explained why that's insignificant. Once we take away the obvious Biblical inspirations, we're left with very little myth left. The myths are as much the creation of clergy and noblemen for their own agenda in direct relation to Noah's flood as they are of native South Americans.

---

^1 Henne, Nathan C. “Untranslation: The Popol Wuj and Comparative Methodology.” CR: The New Centennial Review 12, no. 2 (2012): 107–49. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2012.0042.

^2 Nagy-Zekmi, Silvia. “Mitos quechuas en las crónicas: un intento conciliatorio entre conquistador y conquistado.” Allpanchis 46 (1995): 221–51.

^3 Gose, Peter. Invaders as Ancestors: On the Intercultural Making and Unmaking of Spanish Colonialism in the Andes. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Most writings are interpreted into a world wide flood when in reality it can also be interpreted as a wide range flood. We have found evidence supporting humans were on earth throughout the years without interruption suggested by a flood. It is also noted that when a flood happens very severely, we are able to find evidence. We do have evidence of a flood in the middle East dating back before Christ, yet not a world wide flood during the time of mankind.

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