Lost Civilization May Have Existed Beneath the Persian Gulf

Yahoo! News / Live Science ^ | December 10, 2010 | Jeanna Bryner, Managing Editor

[2ndDivisionVet]

Veiled beneath the Persian Gulf, a once-fertile landmass may have supported some of the earliest humans outside Africa some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago, a new review of research suggests.

At its peak, the floodplain now below the Gulf would have been about the size of Great Britain, and then shrank as water began to flood the area. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean, the review scientist said.

The study, which is detailed in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology, has broad implications for aspects of human history. For instance, scientists have debated over when early modern humans exited Africa, with dates as early as 125,000 years ago and as recent as 60,000 years ago (the more recent date is the currently accepted paradigm), according to study researcher Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.

"I think Jeff's theory is bold and imaginative, and hopefully will shake things up," Robert Carter of Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. told LiveScience. "It would completely rewrite our understanding of the out-of-Africa migration. It is far from proven, but Jeff and others will be developing research programs to test the theory."

Viktor Cerny of the Archaeogenetics Laboratory, the Institute of Archaeology, in Prague, called Rose's finding an "excellent theory," in an e-mail to LiveScience, though he also points out the need for more research to confirm it.....

[edpc]

Damned prehistoric SUVs.

[blackdog]

It’s not science when it say’s “may have”.

[central_va]

Pretty cool they could live under water and all. Maybe early humans had lungs with gill properties

[Hoffer Rand]

Maybe their island tipped over...

It could happen. Look at Guam. No, wait...

[central_va]

[GraceG]

Therte are a LOT of ancient cities under the waves as the sea level was far lower during the last ice age. If we have another ice age we may re-discover and have to re-define the history of humanity.

[BubbaJunebug]

It still is....it’s called HELL

[dfwgator]

[UCANSEE2]

There are a LOT of ancient cities under the waves as the sea level was far lower during the last ice age.

I disagree with your concept that the seas have risen.

The land rises and falls, and very unevenly , I might add.

Water, being 'fluid', simply flows to the lowest spot (because of gravity), and maintains a very smooth/flat surface.

It is the land moving up or down that makes water appear to be rising or falling.

The 'tides' are one of the few examples of the ocean level actually rising or falling. Even in that example, the land also rises and falls with the tides.

[RJS1950]

Yes, land can rise and fall based on tectonics or compression/decompression by massive glaciation. The great lakes are an example where the crust was compressed by the massive mile high glacier that covered the area and since the retreat of the glacier the land has been rising (decompressing) albeit very slowly. Glaciers are still one of the primary reasons for lowered sea/water levels because the water increasingly becomes bound up as ice as the glacier grows.

[Hoosier-Daddy]

Ahem, ice age, glaciers covered a great deal of the land masses and were a mile deep. That’s a lot of melting water.

[JimSEA]

There are large land masses that are now under the oceans but which were dry land for long periods in the past. Humans spread to England, Australia, America and Southeast Asia using these areas. Underwater villages have been found near India and England among other places. Why not explore the Gulf?

[UCANSEE2]

Glaciers. Yep. They still do cover a great deal of land mass, and are miles deep. They are near the poles.

We used to have glaciers across The Northern part of the U.S. and the Midwest. But that was those parts of the land mass WERE the POLAR REGION.

What is now the POLAR REGIONS, used to be tropics.

Scientists would have you believe (or teachers anyway) that the whole planet was covered in ice. Simply isn’t true.

Neither is the concept that the continents float around the seas willy-nilly bumping into each other and causing the mountain ranges to form.

There was some ‘individual tectonic plate movement’ that occurred, but that was a long time ago. The planet was much bigger, and an asteroid (or several) hit the Earth and burst through it like a bullet penetrating a pumpkin. Little hole in, big hole going out the back.

If you look at Google Earth, you can see the incoming hole (the Gulf of Mexico) and the outgoing mess where the ‘crust’ healed on the opposite side of the planet, under the ocean. This is where the moon came from.

[UCANSEE2]

Glaciers are still one of the primary reasons for lowered sea/water levels because the water increasingly becomes bound up as ice as the glacier grows.

The change in sea level from the advance or retreat of glaciers is so minimal the change in sea level would be unmeasurable.

Now, if you could get ALL the ice/glaciers everywhere on the planet to melt all at the same time, then you could cause a measurable change. Since that would only happen if we moved the Earth a whole bunch closer to the Sun.....

Let me ask you this. Are sea levels currently RISING or FALLING ?

[Verginius Rufus]

There used to be glaciers in Glacier National Park, but they all melted when George W. Bush refused to approve the Kyoto Protocols. At least I think that’s what the mainsream media has told us.

[bravo whiskey]

lost “civilizations” now exist above the persian gulf.

[puppypusher]

Wouldn’t it be nice to see Iran beneath the Persion Gulf?

[aruanan]

I disagree with your concept that the seas have risen.

It's not a matter of being a "concept." The sea level has risen over 400 feet since the end of the last glaciation. Where was the water? Locked up in ice and snow, gradually lowering the seas over the ~100,000 years of the period of glaciation. This has happened at least 5 times over the past 600,000 years. During the previous (warmer) interglacial period, sea levels were ~13-20 feet higher than they are now. It was probably similar during the previous 3 interglacials to that, each of which was warmer than the preceding one (we're in the fifth, coolest, and longest of the current ice age).

[SunkenCiv]

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