Question

In which story did all the humans turn to clay?

In which story did a rainbow appear to tell humanity that no such flood would ever occur again?

In which story was the flood sent to put out a great fire?

Three Flood Stories

Answer 1

I can answer the rainbow one with confidence: that’s the biblical Noah/Genesis flood — God sets the rainbow as the sign that “never again” (Genesis 9).

For the other two I need a bit of context (where you saw the three-item list — a book, a class handout, a website?). Without that, the best-fitting matches are:

- “All the humans turned to clay” — this phrasing most often points to Mesopotamian/Sumerian creation and flood traditions (e.g., Atrahasis / the Eridu Genesis / the flood episode in the Epic of Gilgamesh). In those traditions humans are originally made from clay (often mixed with a god’s blood), and some summaries describe the dead/ruined humans as reverting to clay after the deluge.

- “The flood was sent to put out a great fire” — that motif is less common but appears in some Mesoamerican/Native American and Polynesian variants (and in a few mythic cycles where a watery destruction follows or quenches a prior world of fire). One place to look is certain Aztec/Mesoamerican “suns” myths where eras end with fire or water; other regional flood stories (various Pacific Islander myths) also pair fire and flood imagery.

If you can tell me the source of your “Three Flood Stories” list (textbook, website, quiz, lecture), I’ll give the exact story names and citations.