Given the history of the Mediterranean, the Minoans being the first advanced civilisation in Europe, before having their power weakened by the tsunamis generated by the collapse of the caldera at Thera, soon to be overtaken by the Mycenean Greeks, I can easily see how the myth of an arrogant advanced civilisation, humbled by the Gods and the Sea, would have made it's way into Greek thought.
Every myth seems to have some kernel of truth somewhere.
Like the Māori myths of New Zealand - Maui caught a giant fish with a hook made of his grandmother's jawbone, clubbed it to death, and boom that's where the North Island/Te Ika A Maui (The Fish of Maui) came from - possibly inspired by the fact that the North Island really looks like a stingray from above.
Or the myth of Kupe, who discovered Aotearoa/New Zealand and then led the Māori settlement of NZ - no doubt there was one or more initial explorers who returned home, and no doubt there was settlement, but archaeology describes a different timeline of migration waves compared to myth.
(My favourite undisprovable myth-from-fact theory is that the Nephilim, mentioned in Genesis, were a folk memory of the last of the Neanderthal. Totally undisprovable or provable, but I like ruminating on it. I'd pay for historical fiction with Neanderthal heroes, a dying race, leading Homo sapiens in their endless wars)