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.....

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet. Just adding, not pinging.

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[RJS1950]

The effect of glaciers on the compression/decompression is measurable and is done by using fixed base receivers to collect GPS data that indicate changes in elevation. About 1/4th inch per year in some cases. The sea levels will lower with massive glaciation because of the cycle of water, evaporation, rain. When huge glaciers that covered half of the northern hemisphere formed ocean water evaporated and fell as snow on those glaciers thus locking up water that would otherwise fall back as rain into oceans and their feeder rivers. This also took many millenia but the last ice age from start to finish covered many millenia.

[UCANSEE2]

So... how much has the ‘mean’ sea level fallen or risen over the past few millenia?

[RJS1950]

Not much. They have been at or near their current levels since the end of the last Ice Age; you know, when the massive North American glaciers withdrew (melted) and released all of that water into the river and ocean systems. About 10 to 20 thousand years ago the earth ended a warming period in in which the ice sheet that covered about a third of the globe melted and receded. It’s only been less than a couple of hundred years since anyone has thought about or cared about the ocean levels so in that short amount of time there have been miniscule changes and no reglaciation.

[SunkenCiv]

Looking for Atlantis
Posted by Matthew Battles on December 29, 2010, 5:12 PM
http://www.gearfuse.com/looking-for-atlantis/