Here is an email I found on the net with some thoughts about the Persian Gulf
There where quite a few points that I agree with. I glad some other researcher are catching on and beginning to realize the wealth of truth in the Persian Gulf.
http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/library/ane/digest/2001/v2001.n203
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 22:17:04 -0400 From: nyokabi@kingcon.com Subject: ane location of Eden & Dilmun On July 7th Walter Mattfeld wrote: >As regards Eden's location. It is my understanding that several locations >are possible for Eden. The original prototype I understand to be the >Sumerian Dilmun, an island in the marshes south of Eridu in Lower >Mesopotamia. Edinu, "the steppe", may be a conflation with this place by >later Hebrew authors. Sorry to be so late in responding. This description of Dilmun as "an island in the marshes south of Eridu" sounds as if it is a throwback to Theresa Howard-Carter's Qurna theory which she espoused in her 1981 JCS article, "The Earliest Tangible Evidence for Dilmun" - modern Qurna in the marshes near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. The author tried to shore it up in her 1987 JCS article "Dilmun: at Sea or Not at Sea?" but by Harriet Crawford's 1998 book, Dilmun and its Gulf Neighbors there is nary a whimper of this theory, and the 1981 Howard-Carter article is not even mentioned in the Bibliography. But this Dilmun in the next-door swamps was never really the primeval Dilmun which could have inspired the Eden story. It was a specific site intended to account for Jemdet Nasr references to a tax collector for Dilmun and to people of Dilmun who appeared on rations lists, etc. At this time there was no archaeological evidence from Bahrain to suggest that Dilmun was located there in the late 4th-early 3rd millenium. Now by the time of Crawford's 1998 book it is clear that the copper trade with Dilmun which is attested in Msp. from the late Uruk period was being carried on from ports on the Musandam peninsula of Oman. Oman, the source of the copper, was later called Magan, but for 8 or 9 centuries we have written attestations of Dilmun copper and not a word about Magan until Sargon of Akkad. So perhaps toponyms migrate, or else a newly founded kingdom of Makan, perhaps an extension of an older one on the Iranian shores, simply absorbed the Musandan ports which had formerly been considered to be Dilmun. But the Garden of Eden or the Dilmun of Enki and Ninhursag, that is from the Mesopotamian Dreamtime! This other stuff is history! By the time these legends were being committed to writing, Dilmun was an actual place far off in the Gulf, from whence copper axes were imported as early as c. 3200 BC... Perhaps Howard-Carter's outline of the pre-Sumerian history of the Arabian ( why not say the Dilmun?) Gulf is also one of the reason's her 1981 article was omitted from Crawford's 1998 Bibliography. This scenario puts the "original" Mouths of the rivers, which should be the site of the primeval Dilmun, at or beyond the Straits of Hormuz! (1981, p 212 ff.): " Sarnthein, Purser, Siebold, Kassler, and Nutzel, who have in the last decade evaluated the scientific reports of the exploration ship METEOR in the Arabian Gulf, have pointed to the extraordinary fact that the Gulf was an entirely dry basin about 15,000 BC. The Tigris and Euphrates carved their course - separately and together - to the Straits of Hormuz, where they debouched directly into the Gulf of Oman." [snip] [In footnote 18, p 213, the author adds, quoting Kassler, and Purser & Siebold : "The main Gulf axis is northwest-southeast, and lies close to the steeper Iranian side. This deep channel apparently marks the course of the ancient extended Shatt al-Arab. A continuous shallow shelf across the top (north) of the Gulf and down the west side (at 20 m.) suggests that this section was the last to be inundated. At the Straits of Hormuz the bathymetric profile indicates a division into two main channels which continue across the Bieban Shelf before dropping to a depth of c 400 m. in the Gulf of Oman."] "It is more likely that the original Gulf inhabitants lived along the banks of the lower or extended Shatt al-Arab, ranging some 800 km. across the dry Gulf bed. We can thus postulate that the pre-Sumerian cultures had more than ample time to be born and flourish in a riverine setting, encouraged by the agricultural potential and the blessings of a temperate climate. The fact that the body of proof for the existence of these societies must now lie at the bottom of the Gulf furnishes at least a temporary excuse for the archaeologist's failure to produce evidence for their material culture. "For the next six thousand years, between 14,000 and 8,000 BC the Gulf gradually filled from the Indian Ocean in the south, in carefully-measured stages...[snip]...due to the persistent geological (orogenic and tectonic) instability of the Iranian side the eastern littoral was a far less inviting habitat. The populations retreating from the flooded lower Shatt al-Arab were therefore forced to higher ground in the western and northern part of the Gulf. "Based on accepted studies of the rate of cultural development, this period of six milennia is more than adequate ecologically to nurture the continuing technological growth of the end of the Upper Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, and part of the early Neolithic cultures.
"By 5500 BC the seas of the Indian Ocean had fully encroached into the Gulf basin...The warm wet humid climate encouraged the growth of date palms and associated subtropical vegetation. This is the period of the Ubaid culture. "The Ubaid culture is marked by a distinctive type of pottery with designs that often depict nets, reed matting, and aquatic subjects, suggesting origins in a marsh-lake-riverine setting...it seems quite likely that this population of southern Mesopotamia was derived from the earlier inhabitants of the Shatt-al-Arab valley in the Gulf... Another group of valley folk must have settled in the Susiana plain...very possible that other bands from the 'lower Shatt al-Arab' community spread simultaneously to the western littoral of the Gulf, and the distribution of the later three phases of Ubaid pottery suggests that the 'Shatt Valley folk' continued to maintain contacts in their new settlements around the head of the Gulf." This submerged valley/plain/edinu would be the lost world of the Mesopotamian Dream-Time, the source of their later legends about the beginning of things. For those espousing Mesopotamian roots for Genesis fantasies, it could also be the land of Eden, in an eastern part of which the Garden was planted. Dilmun at the place where the sun rises, said to be located on a river bank at the Place of Crossing - - kur hal, would fit Mattfeld's Encircling-Okeanos-as-River-of-Eden theory much better than a swamp in the Sealand! Thus the later proposed Dilmun locations -- in Bahrain, Eastern Arabia, or Failaka, may just represent cultural successors of the submerged Edinu/Dilmun culture. The part about the Ubaidian Fish-eaters from the submerged Shatt has run into some resistance. The problem, as expressed by Crawford some 17 years later, is that no Ubaid 0 or Ubaid 1 pottery has been found in the far reaches of the Gulf (op. cit. p.26 ): " It has in the past been suggested that the earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia may have entered the country from the Gulf region This is now looking increasingly unlikely as there is no trace of the Ubaid 0 wares used by the first settlers in southern Mesopotamia in the Gulf; the earliest pottery from the Gulf dates to the Ubaid 2/3 phase. It is of course possible that some component of the early population of southern Mesopotamia did originate further south and was then amalgamated with other groups, some of which had a pre-existing pottery tradition, possibly derived from Iran or Palestine. At present, however, the first archaeological evidence for contacts between Mesopotamia and the Gulf is in the Ubaid 2/3 phase when the technology of pot-making was introduced to Arabia." This seems to be an argument from absence of evidence, with no suggested proto-Ubaid comparanda being offered from either Iran or Palestine. (Didn't they used to suggest connections of the early Susa ware with the "Aquatic" culture of pre-dynastic Egypt, i.e. the Naqqada I painted ware with its net patterns, fish and hippos?) The evidence, as Howard-Carter suggested, possibly lies on the bottom of the Gulf. If Ubaid 0, or Ubaid pre-0 ( Ubaid 00?) lies under the Gulf, its users fled the rising waters and settled at Oueili, where we find Ubaid 0. After the waters had abated for enough centuries that people dared to venture back in that direction, some returned toward the ancestral lands to explore and perhaps even to recolonize the new coastlines. Thus the earliest Ubaid 2/3 sites are found at Bender Bushir on the Iranian coast and on the Eastern Arabian coast at Dosariyah and in the al Hasa oasis. By Ubaid 4 there are many sites including Bahrain, the island of Dalma, and several sites on the west coast of Musandam peninsula. Crawford points out (p 24) "The distribution of this pottery predominantly along the coast strongly suggests that contact with Mesopotamia was by sea with boats 'coast-hopping' from one water-source or local settlement to another." The fact that later 4th milennium evidence is so scarce in Bahrain and Eastern Arabia in particular may be partially a result of lower sea levels - -- when the seas rose again in the 3rd milennium, the tides washed away the coastal settlements.(Crawford, p 8). In the late 4th milennium the concept of Dilmun was probably applied to Umm an-Nar island or other sites on the W. coast of the Musandan peninsula, U.A.E., which served as outlets for the trade in copper, tin, timber etc. from the Hajar mountains of inland Oman. Crawford doesn't say this as bluntly as I do, but she does admit (p 7): "Contact with Mesopotamia predates the first written records, and when the term Dilmun first appeared it was probably being used to describe anything lying south of the Shall al Arab, including the Eastern province of Arabia and perhaps even copper-producing Oman." (And then we have the land of Guban, mentioned by Gudea along with Magan and Meluhha: perhaps this is the SE coast of Oman , the Batina, or even the Eastern Arabian coast of the Gulf near Bahrain! Guban still means "coastal plain" in Somali!) [W Mattfeld] > Ezekiel mentions Eden's trees and compares them to the >cedars of Lebanon, which suggests some thought Eden was on a mountain top to >the north of Israel/Judaea. El of the Ugaritic myths has his dwelling in a >mountain, from whose depths arise the mythical double deep or tehom- perhaps >primitive man's observation of springs as sources of rivers arising out of >mountains like the Jordan at Panias ? Baal-Hadad's palace is atop mt. Zaphon >in the north, perhaps a cedar mountain. The spine of the Hajar mountains of Oman continues out to the tip of the peninsula at the Straits of Hormuz, where it is called Mt. Asabon on Ptolemy's map (Nigel Groom, "Eastern Arabia in Ptolemy's map" in PSAS 16, 1986). Asabon! Saphon! the north! the northernmost mountain of the chain, which comes to an abrubt halt at the Straits, the crossing place / kur hal, another name for Dilmun. If there was orogenic activity on the north side of this ancient Edenic river in the Shatt valley, people would naturally have associated this with gods manifesting themselves in volcanoes and earthquakes. El/Adad sounds like a stand in for Enlil/Khumban in his mountain whose anger at mankind brought on the Inundation. Thus God was in his mountain in the North/Saphon... Since later Jewish tradition placed Enoch in the mountainous Garden of Eden which had survived the Flood, it's possible that the headlands of the Oman Peninsula at Mt. Asabon were close enough to the river mouths to both be the site of the Garden and to survive the Flood! So the Garden's moving up into the mountains from the plain/edinu may have been a reflection of the earlier retreat to higher ground - from the Bieban Shelf back into the highlands of Sabon? Perhaps the waters pouring through the Straits seemed to be emerging from the nearby fountain/mountain of Eden. (Ditto for a location in the mountains of Aden when the Okean invaded the Red Sea fault valley, probably also originally a river, with a later Paradise Island half-way up the coast -- Dahlak, off of Adulis, a good parallel with Bahrain. One had a serpent cult, the other a serpent king!) As for the tall trees of Eden-- Dilmun and Magan were famous for certain desired hardwoods, and the Gilgamesh-Huwawa stories for a long period suggested to commentators a conflict in a Pine Forest in Elam, rather than in the Cedar Forest in Lebanon as it is now sometimes taken to mean. Note that a so-called "Negrito" race, the Shihuh of Khasab, survive right up into modern times at the tip of the Musandan peninsula. Huwawa/Humbaba guardian of the Cedar Forest for Enlil, with his exaggerated Africoid features and complex facial scarifications, may have symbolized the former authochthonous "Fish-Eater"/Icthyophagoi race, those who avoided mixing with whomever the "Shatt valley folk" encountered in their new homelands to the north and west. (I'm aware that the latest opinion is that the facial lines represent his face as intestines, as in extispicy! This seems not to always be the case, if for no other reason than that almost any pronounced Africoid-featured face is called a Humbaba figure!) E. Adams PS One last point concerns the tradition preserved in Mirkhond (10th c Persian writer) that the Sethite ancestors originally lived on Mt. Hermon, while the Cainites rollicked in their decadence (metal-working, music,and sex!) in the land of Teman. Six generations before the Flood, Mahalaleel (great grandson of Seth, grandfather of Enoch, who was the great grandfather of Noah!), emigrated from the Levant to the East and founded Susa .(If this derives from an ancient myth it may explain Elam's being listed under Shem in the Table of Nations, a classification which was always wont to trouble early Bible commentators, as it failed to explain the alleged Susian "Negritos" and the non-Semitic language of Hal-Tamti/"Elam"). Thus the arrival of the Shatt valley folk in Susa in the late antediluvian stage of encroaching waters created a situation of "ethnic duality" when they encountered the Sethites. Howard Carter (1981, p 220-2) places the Sumerian Great Flood of literary and Biblical fame at c 3,500 BC, "a flooding sea from the south, accompanied by torrential wind and rains", long after the Gulf had finished filling up by 5500 BC! It is after this Flood that Ubaid ware disappears, to be replaced by Uruk ware. It's tempting to see the "very old Elamite god" Yabrum, whom Shurpu calls "the Anum of Elam", as the god of Mahalaleel and perhaps a prototype of Yahwe; while his son who replaced him, Humban, (whom Shurpu equates with Enlil, son and replacement of Anu in Sumer), would be the god of the Shatt Valley folks, the Fish-eaters of the Gulf. (See H. Koch in CANE II, p 1961 for the Shurpu entries.) As with Enlil, Humban would have been seen by the later Elamites as the god responsible for the aborted attempt to destroy mankind by means of the Inundation (Note that Humbaba's voice is the abubu weapon, or flood-weapon. Dalley, Myths from Msp, Glossary). Perhaps Yabru, whom Koch suggests may hide behind the later epithet/DN Tempti/Lord, was the God to whom mankind owed its salvation when he clued in Noah/Utnapishtim about the ark, whereby we also see the link with Enki. Thus to me it seems more likely Khumban who hides behind Tempti/Lord/Bel (just as Enlil was called Bel), and Yabru who hides behind Napirisha, whom Shurpu equates with Enki/Ea. (There may be an obvious contradiction to this last "reversal", I haven't had a chance to check it out. Just thought I'd throw it in!) PPS I almost forgot the best thing I learned tonight (Crawford, p 27, p 30): One of the items now listed as possibly being traded by the international coast-hoppers of the 5th milennium BC (Ubaid 2/3/4) is obsidian! They found a piece in the Eastern Arabian Ubaid area which was scientifically proven to have come from near lake Van in Armenia! So now there's a whole international trade in obsidian, when any fool could see that it's a souvenir that Noah/Utnapishtim picked up when he emerged from the ark on Mt Ararat! Later when he was rewarded and sent to Dilmun to live forever, he brought it with him, but dropped it on the way, or got tired of it during all these milennia of eternal life. He's laughing at us now!