The Persian Gulf Oasis

A recent article in Current Anthropology provides some interesting evidence and speculations on the near prehistory of the ancient Middle East. Science Daily elaborates:

A once fertile landmass now submerged beneath the Persian Gulf may have been home to some of the earliest human populations outside Africa, according to an article published in Current Anthropology.

Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist and researcher with the University of Birmingham in the U.K., says that the area in and around this “Persian Gulf Oasis” may have been host to humans for over 100,000 years before it was swallowed up by the Indian Ocean around 8,000 years ago. Rose’s hypothesis introduces a “new and substantial cast of characters” to the human history of the Near East, and suggests that humans may have established permanent settlements in the region thousands of years before current migration models suppose.

In recent years, archaeologists have turned up evidence of a wave of human settlements along the shores of the Gulf dating to about 7,500 years ago. “Where before there had been but a handful of scattered hunting camps, suddenly, over 60 new archaeological sites appear virtually overnight,” Rose said. “These settlements boast well-built, permanent stone houses, long-distance trade networks, elaborately decorated pottery, domesticated animals, and even evidence for one of the oldest boats in the world.”

But how could such highly developed settlements pop up so quickly, with no precursor populations to be found in the archaeological record? Rose believes that evidence of those preceding populations is missing because it’s under the Gulf.

I find the possibility of a “Persian Gulf Oasis” interesting on a number of grounds. The origins of the Sumerican people have always been elusive. They appear to have been ethnically, linguistically, and culturally different from the neighboring peoples who derived so much from them. A settlement of long standing and established culture in the area now covered by the waters of the Persian Gulf would provide a tantalizing explanation for these origins. The timing is very good—the earliest known traces of Sumerian culture are separated by just a few hundred years from the timeframe of the “Persian Gulf oasis”.

There have been suggestions over the years that the Sumerian language, a language with no established linguistic relatives, might have been related to a Proto-Dravidian language. Settled land where the Persian Gulf is now might provide stronger evidence for such a connection.

There have been suggestions that the Flood Legend is based on a catastrophic orehistoric flooding of areas now covered by the Black Sea. It seems to me that a similar catastrophic flooding of areas now covered by the Persian Gulf would provide an even more compelling explanation.

Update

See also this post on the same article which includes a great map of the Middle East c. 75,000 BP.

Note, too, that mitochondrial DNA studies suggest migration patterns from East Africa to South Asia for which this “Persian Gulf Oasis” theory provides a little more texture if nothing else.