Close your eyes and return to the earliest moments of humanity’s origin—before civilization, before writing, before memory itself.

In this History For Sleep episode, we explore a disturbing possibility preserved in ancient Mesopotamian texts:
What if humans were created more than once—and the first version was erased?

Drawing from Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets housed in the British Museum, including creation accounts found in the Atrahasis Epic and Enki and Ninmah, this slow, immersive story examines something rarely discussed outside academic circles. These texts do not describe a single, poetic act of creation. They describe multiple attempts. Failed models. Experimental beings with specific defects. Prototypes that could not function as intended.

Some could not work.
Some could not reproduce.
Some could not survive at all.

And then, according to the same tradition, a catastrophe followed—a flood not as moral punishment, but as a reset. After the destruction, humanity appears again, altered. Limited. Redesigned.

This episode carefully explores:

Ancient descriptions of failed human creations
The idea of trial-and-error creation in Mesopotamian texts
The flood as a dividing line between two humanities
Population limits introduced after the flood
Parallels with global flood myths
Geological and genetic evidence suggesting a bottleneck
Why civilization appears suddenly after catastrophe

This is not presented as scientific fact, nor dismissed as simple myth. Instead, it is a quiet, reflective journey into how ancient people may have recorded real events using symbolic language—encoding memory where modern categories did not yet exist.

As always, this story is designed to relax the mind, not provoke fear. You don’t need to watch the screen. Let the words guide you through the shadows of deep time.

Before we begin, tell us where you’re listening from and what time it is there.
Now settle in… and let the oldest questions drift gently into sleep.