The Tower of Babel is a biblical story from Genesis 11 where humanity, speaking one language, attempts to build a city with a tower reaching heaven to make a name for themselves and avoid scattering. God, seeing their pride and ambition, confuses their single language into many, making communication impossible, which causes them to stop building and scatter across the Earth, thus explaining the origin of diverse languages. The tale serves as an etiology for linguistic diversity, a parable against human arrogance, and is often linked to Mesopotamian ziggurats like those in Babylon.