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The flood in the time of Deucalion was caused by the anger of Zeus, ignited by the hubris of Lycaon and his sons, descendants of Pelasgus. According to this story, King Lycaon of Arcadia had sacrificed a boy to Zeus, who appalled by this offering, decided to put an end to the Bronze Age by unleashing a deluge. During this catastrophic flood, the rivers ran in torrents and the sea flooded the coastal plain, engulfing the foothills with spray, and washing everything clean.

Deucalion, with the aid of his father Prometheus, was saved from this deluge by building a chest.[17] Like the biblical Noah and the Mesopotamian counterpart Utnapishtim, he used this device to survive the great flood with his wife, Pyrrha.

The fullest accounts were provided in Ovid's Metamorphoses (late 1 BCE to early 1 CE) and in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus.[18] Deucalion, who reigned over the region of Phthia,[19] had been forewarned of the flood by his father Prometheus. Deucalion was to build a chest and provision it carefully (no animals are rescued in this version of the flood myth), so that when the waters receded after nine days, he and his wife Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, were the one surviving pair of humans. Their chest touched solid ground on Mount Parnassus,[20] or Mount Etna in Sicily,[21] or Mount Athos in Chalkidiki,[22] or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.[23]

Hyginus mentioned the opinion of a Hegesianax that Deucalion is to be identified with Aquarius, "because during his reign such quantities of water poured from the sky that the great Flood resulted."

Once the deluge was over and the couple had given thanks to Zeus, Deucalion (said in several of the sources to have been aged 82 at the time) consulted an oracle of Themis about how to repopulate the earth. He was told to "cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder". Deucalion and Pyrrha understood that "mother" was Gaia, the mother of all living things, and the "bones" to be rocks.

All hail Gaia.