From a netfriend:

Genesis 1-11 is not history as the genre of history had not been invented when it was first consigned to parchment. I am no historian but as far as I know the first historian was a Roman and the concept of factual history only started with the Romans who wanted a record of their glorious achievements. Genesis was written by someone some hundreds of years before the Roman Empire from older oral sources. It could never have been recorded as it happened or within the liftetimes of those who experienced it or with independent verification of the facts. Hence, it is not history. End of argument.

The answers in Genesis all relate to theology and sociology, not history or science. They may contain clues to the latter, but they seem to be fairly unreliable clues. Much is now known about the effects of climate change in the Middle East in the millenia before the Roman Empire which could explain the flood myth as well as the story of Abraham’s journey.