Tower Of Babel
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Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
GEN11:1-9

Basic Information

According to the Bible ancient mankind united to build a tower that would reach heaven … which annoyed God, who confused our language and scattered us across the planet to prevent the tower from being built.

This has a certain amount in common with other cultures folk memories of a united humanity doing something to upset their deity or deities and being scattered all over the place, so like many ancient stories there may be something in it. What though? And where?

Sources

Game and Story Use

  • For your ancient astronauts campaign, perhaps this was a space elevator which collapsed, and the resulting devastation took the civilisation that was building it down with it.
  • Perhaps the Tower of Babel is still out there somewhere, partially constructed and being mistaken for a hill or mountain.
  • Maybe there are greater powers working against world peace than our own incompetence…
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