Revisionist History

Several years ago I came across the book “Underworld”, by Graham Hancock.

For those of you not familiar with Hancock, he is a modern day “explorer” who has investigated and written about some very intriguing topics, from ancient astronomy to the Ark of the Covenant. What makes him interesting is that he takes a completely unbiased view of the things he researches and pushes no agenda in his conclusions, leaning neither toward science, religion, superstition, or conventional wisdom.

In the book “Underworld”, he explores some very interesting “ruins” in several parts of the globe that are located under approximately 100 feet of water. He posits that these may in fact not be “ruins” at all in the conventional sense, but that they may in fact be the remains of human architecture that was originally built above sea level, only to have since been covered with water.

(You can see a few of the startling photographs here; take a look and make your own determination)

What Graham suggests is that at one time, sea levels were around 100 feet lower than they are today, and that these human-made ruins were covered up as frozen water from the last ice age melted and joined the oceans around 20,000 years ago.

That’s kind of interesting. What was also very interesting to me is that, in the book, he had a map of the globe showing how the land masses of the earth would have looked if the oceans were 100 feet shallower than they are today.

One of the things that caught my eye was that in this scenario, the present day Persian Gulf would not have existed at all; the entire area currently covered by the waters of the Persian Gulf would have been dry land!

What was immediately intriguing to me about this is that both the Tigris & Euphrates rivers empty into the Persian Gulf. The Tigris & Euphrates are two of the four rivers that the Bible uses to mark the geographical location of the Garden of Eden. The locations of the other two rivers – the Pishon and Gihon – along with the Garden itself, are unknown.

I remember thinking at the time, “What if the Biblical Garden of Eden – along with the Pishon and Gihon rivers – are all actually located beneath the Persian Gulf?"

An exciting speculation? I thought so. True, the Biblical and scientific timelines don’t match up, but if you could account for that, it would certainly explain a lot.

Having that brief look into my “mental history”, you can understand why the following article caught my eye a couple of weeks ago:

Lost Civilization May Have Existed Beneath the Persian Gulf
The article is quoted:

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.

How interesting is that? In addition to the fact that we now have Hancock’s speculation merging with current scientific research, we now have a scientific timeline (8,000 years) much, much closer to the Biblical flood account in Genesis.

That certainly doesn’t prove anything, and it still leaves a thousand questions unanswered, but it is interesting. And, it also raises – inadvertently – another question: If the Persian Gulf did indeed “swallow up” that land, where did the water come from? The last Ice Age, remember, was 20,000 years ago, not 8,000. Or was it?

Ahhhhh! Don’t you just love a good mystery!

But while we’re at it, why don’t we throw a little more wood on the fire? Here’s a couple of paragraphs from an article that started working it’s way around just yesterday (emphasis mine on bolded items):

A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.

The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human's ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel.
Source: Researchers: Ancient human remains found in Israel

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know; the timelines aren’t even close. Still . . . very interesting to see “science” continuing to dovetail with myth, legend & religion despite it’s best efforts not to.