Did you know that Australian aboriginals have stories that relate the cataclysmic formation of lakes back to 23,000 years ago ? It fits neatly what science tells us about the formation of the lakes.
Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology - Wikipedia
They also have stories that relate fertile plains around Lake Eyre where there has been only desert since the last ice age at least 10,000 years ago. And there are 21 stories about islands and other features that are now found off the Australian coast that have been submerged under hundreds of feet of water since the last ice age.
According to science, human beings migrated to Australia about 50,000 years ago when the sea levels were much lower and the travel across the sea was much shorter. Until the 1700s when Europeans found the continent there was next to no communication with the rest of the world. They can also trace Native Americans back to populations in Siberia by way of genes and linguistics and they think that they migrated across the Bering Strait about 15,000 years ago when sea levels were lower and there was a land bridge across.
One of the few things that these peoples have in common in terms of the history they have kept is stories of a deity who got angry with humankind and nearly destroyed all of them in a worldwide flood. Several Australian tribes have this kind of flood story and also several Native American tribes. So do peoples from literally all over the world, see this long list :
Flood Stories from Around the World
This commonality suggests that they shared a common flood story from before they migrated apart, which would be more than 50,000 years ago. Is it possible that such a flood story would be preserved orally for that long and by a host of peoples all over the world ? Yes, the 23,000 year old story about Lake Euramo demonstrates that it is and that story has been preserved with more detail than most flood stories have been, and by a very small community of people who lived in that specific area.
According to science, modern humans started migrating from somewhere in Eastern Africa about 200,000 years ago. This coincides with the calculation they come up with based on genetic evidence, that all human beings descend from a common foremother that lived 200,000 years ago.
This suggests that the original flood story is very old, probably somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years old when they were still all on the African continent.
How does all of this line up with the Biblical accounts concerning the creation of man ? It is common to believe that man was created only 5-10,000 years ago even among people who believe that the Earth itself is billions of years old. I think it does, for the simple reason that the genealogies in the Bible are demonstrably incomplete. I think the time span from Genesis 1 to Genesis 6 and the flood is much longer than it seems and also the time span from Genesis 6 to 11 where we read about Abraham for the first time. Abraham is where the Bible more likely enters the phase of more recent history along with recollections of various empires in the area and around the world.
What does it mean that the genealogies are incomplete ? Doesn't it say that A became the father of B and that is that ? Well the ancient Jews used the term father about grandfathers and forefathers so it isn't so sure. What about the numbers given for their ages when they became fathers and when they died ? I don't know. But it doesn't add up. Not only are there a differing number of entries in different genealogies, there are also discrepancies like 3 entries that cover 400 years and there are no other superold people mentioned as living at that time.
So the genealogies could be incomplete in places and largely representative in other places, recording for instance prominent characters and not much more than that. Which allows for the time spans mentioned above.
What about the human beings that science claims lived before modern humans or "homo sapiens" ? I'm not sure but maybe there isn't much of a connection since we all descend from that one single foremother who lived 200,000 years ago and started "homo sapiens". What about the human subspecies that science claims were still around after that time, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans ? They even interbred with modern humans and science claims that modern humans have varying degrees of genetic material that stems from that interbreeding, meaning that most of us are to some small degree semi-Neanderthal and/or semi-Denisovan ? Again, I don't know.