The building of the ark likely coincided with Noah’s service as “a preacher of righteousness,” keeping him and his family acted in faith.busy for the last 40 to 50 years before the Flood. (Genesis 5:32; 6:13-22) And Noah ,was warning the wicked for a period of decades before the Flood arrived and wiped out the corrupt system.
Likewise Jesus Christ made a comparison between the days of Noah and the last days, where we now find ourselves.
He said: “Just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. For as they were in those days before the flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and they took no note until the flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be.”(Matt 24:37)
Naomi-you will be asking how many trees next.
But a cataclysm as the Deluge, which washed the whole world of that time out of existence, would never be forgotten by the survivors. They would talk about it to their children and their children’s children. For 500 years after the Deluge, Shem lived on to relate the event to many generations. He died only ten years before the birth of Jacob. Moses preserved the true account in Genesis. Sometime after the Flood, when God-defying people built the Tower of Babel, Jehovah confused their language and scattered them “over all the surface of the earth.” (Ge 11:9) It was only natural that these people took with them stories of the Flood and passed them on from father to son.
The fact that there are not merely a few but perhaps hundreds of different stories about that great Deluge, and that such stories are found among the traditions of many primitive races the world over, is a strong proof that all these people had a common origin and that their early forefathers shared that Flood experience in common.