[Steve_Seattle]

" . . . the roots of the great flowering of civilisation in the fertile crescent of the Ancient Near East lay in the sinking shorelines of Southeast Asia."

He lost me right there. Sounds like a naked attempt to link the rise and fall of civilizations to current "climate change" fashions. Wouldn't those "sinking shorelines" take millennia to occur, thereby having a virtually imperceptible, gradual, and negligible effect on human culture? Isn't it like saying that the end of the last ice age gave rise to the invention of the steam engine?

[blam]

The key was travel through the Straits of Malacca...there was a ‘magic moment’ when the water became deep enough to allow ship/boat traffic to flow in that direction opening up whole new worlds to sea travelers.

[reed13k]

Actually there are several known examples of rapid shoreline change. Here are 10:

http://listverse.com/2013/08/05/10-lesser-known-mysterious-underwater-cities/

and 5 more:

http://www.earthporm.com/5-mind-blowing-underwater-cities/

most are due to earthquakes, major storms, or tsunami (I guess that could be earthquake related). Though some like the one in the Denmark region took a number of happenings over time. God moves nature quick some times.

[blam]

Here's a map of the Straits Of Malacca, I've been through there a few times and it is highly infected with pirates, even today.

The area (Malaysia)above the Straits is the oldest rain-forest in the world at 130 million years. That rain forest was there when the Indian continent went trucking by 50 million years ago and crashed into the land mass and created the Himayalian mountains.

This area must have been a perfect place for humans to live, flourish even, during the Ice Age.
Some of the oldest human DNA ever discovered is in Malaysia with some small Negrito people.