A long long time ago in the Middle East - as long ago as 4,000BC, a
method of record-keeping and writing in general was to inscribe onto
wet clay. Once the clay dried, the record was preserved and
transportable.

From around 3400BC, a style of writing developed in Sumeria employing

narrow wedge-like symbols now called cuneiform. Quite literally tens
of thousands of tablets have been uncovered by the hard work of
archaeologists.

Some tablets were kiln-baked, where permanence was needed. Others were
accidentally baked when a building burned, but a great many tablets
were not baked - they were merely "...dried in the sun leaving an
official witnessed record of this economic transaction...."
http://archaeology.huji.ac.il/ct/backgrou.htm

Sun-dried tablets could later be re-wetted, the symbols erased, and the
tablet reused. Yes, the Sumerians had recycling!

The problem for Noahic flood advocates is that unless these tablets
were hard-baked in a kiln, they were impermanent. Immersion in water
for any period of time would result in their complete disintegration.

Yet we have many of these tablets intact from before the time when,
according to Biblical chronology, the globe was entirely immersed under
water for the lion's share of a year.

These tablets alone demonstrate quite convincingly that the real truth
of the matter is that there was no global flood, nor even a flood of
any overly dramatic size in the Middle East.

Budikka