Where are we now with 'Noah's Ark'???

[Minimalist]

You have to put it in a historical context.  We have evidence of this particular myth going back to the Early Bronze Age and such heroes as Ziusudra, Atrahasis and Gilgamesh far preceding any "noah" in the record.  There are written records of the first two going back to the 17th and 18th centuries BCE which puts them solidly in the Middle Bronze Age and one can only guess how long the tales circulated prior to that.  Therefore one must assume that these tales were fully incorporated into the folklore of the entire region and, bullshit aside, the jews were nothing special.  Just a rather insignificant tribe of goat herders at a time when other nations formed great empires.  So when something resembling judaism began to coalesce, in the Persian period, they gathered up local legends and wrote them into their origin stories.