In 1948, while serving in the Middle East, a British RAF pilot picked up a clay tablet covered in mysterious writing. He brought it home as an intriguing memento, and it sat collecting dust on his mantelpiece for decades. When he died , his son brought it to an expert at the British Museum. The tablet was 3700 years old, and was a detailed instruction manual for building a huge boat to survive a flood - a boat like that recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian tale that inspired the story of Noah's Ark during the Jewish exile in Babylon. This was no ordinary boat. Modeled on harbor freight shuttles used for nearly 4,000 years, it was circular in shape, made of reeds and bitumen, and designed to carry heavy freight, including large numbers of animals.
