General introduction
There are six surviving versions of the Ancient Near East flood story including the Genesis version. One of these versions, written centuries before Genesis, is called the Epic of Atrahasis and clearly describes the flood as a river flood. Later story tellers changed "river" to "sea" and thus changed the local river flood into an ocean deluge. The ambiguous word for hills was mistranslated as mountains. There were several such mistakes or mistranslations during transmission of Noah's flood story.
Noah's father Lamech was king of the Sumerian city-state Shuruppak, a commercial center on the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq. Noah also became king of Shuruppak. The ark was a commercial river barge for hauling cargo on the Euphrates River. The river barge hauled wine, beer, stone, lumber, textiles, oil, and livestock which was less than 280 head of cattle, sheep, goats, and other domesticated animals. There were no kangaroos, giraffes, elephants, lions, etc. on Noah's cattle barge.
About 2900 BC a freak thunderstorm caused the Euphrates River to rise 15 cubits (22 feet) and it overflowed the levees. By the time Noah recognized that the levees were about to be breached, it was too late to evacuate his livestock to highground. He therefore boarded the nearby river barge to ride out the storm. He had to cut the mooring lines to prevent barge from heeling over in the rising river. The runaway barge floated down the Euphrates River into the Persian Gulf where it grounded in an estuary at the mouth of the river. This is discussed and described in detail in the Noah's Ark book. Maps in the book show the route taken by Noah's river barge.
Noah was a wealthy land owner and a merchant or trade official for the Shuruppak government before becoming king. The flood of 2900 BC did not destroy Shuruppak. There were thousands of survivors of the flood and Noah met some of them after the barge grounded. Some of the things they talked about are quoted in surviving versions of the flood story. Noah was no longer king and had to flee into exile. A dispute occurred between Noah and his sons. His family separated and he never saw his sons again. A map in the book shows where the sons went and the route they took to get there. Noah got angry with his sons after being seen naked. The reason why he got angry is explained in the book.
The Noah's Ark book gives the exact location (within a few yards) of Noah's altar where he offered a sacrifice after the barge grounded. It is an archaeological site and has already been excavated by archaeologists. The book describes in detail how the ark was probably constructed using the technology of 2900 BC. It was much smaller and shaped differently than it is usually described. The numbers in Genesis 5 are deciphered in the book and compared with the numbers in the Sumerian King List. The numbers were mistranslated. Methuselah did not live to be 969 and Noah did not live to 950. Noah lived to be 83. Methuselah was 85 when he died a few months after the barge grounded.
The barge did not ground on a mountain. The mountains of Ararat were mentioned in the original legend, but the ark did not ground there. How the mountains of Ararat got involved is discussed at length in the book. After the barge grounded, Noah, his wife, his daughter, and his boatman traveled to a island where they lived in exile. The island is a real island and is identified in chapter 5 of the Noah's Ark book. Noah was an interesting man and several new facts about him are discussed in the book.