There are Japanese traditions according to which the Pacific islands of Oceania were formed after the waters of a great deluge had receded.32 In Oceania itself a myth of the native inhabitants of Hawaii tells how the world was destroyed by a flood and later recreated by a god named Tangaloa. The Samoans believe that there was once an inundation that wiped out almost all mankind. It was survived only by two human beings who put to sea in a boat which eventually came to rest in the Samoan archipelago.33
