Persian-Arabian Valley?

On Monday 8th February 2010, @tommcmullenjr said:

v001 – draft – we know tigris & euphrates now meet, but once it was 4 rivers that met?

– several interesting connections on tv …

– History Channel
– program: Decoding the Past
– episode: Mysteries of the Garden of Eden
– first aired: 5/24/2007

If you like learning about theories and data that may support famous myths and religious stories — like Paradise, Garden of Eden, Atlantis, and the Great Flood — and if you might be interested in how these stories might, at least conceivably, connect with some ideas about global warming, then you’ll like this program. It’s over just now, but the History Channel tends to repeat programs like this from time-to-time.

Here are some of the interesting points:

– during the ice age, the current persian gulf was once a verdant valley. when the glaciers melted, and sea levels rose, the sea broke through the barrier moutains and flooded the valley
– when the persian gulf was a valley, the current tigris and euphrates still came together, but the two of them also met two other rivers, one coming east from current saudi arabia and one coming west from current iran. when the current gulf was a valley, the four rivers probobly came together at that lower elevation.
– the ice ages were the extreme of cooling of the gases that spun out of the sun and became the earth and its atmosphere? then some warming (orbit contraction, heat from interior, initial atmospheric heat capture?) melted enough of the glaciers to raise the sea level enough to flood the persian valley so it became a persian gulf?  and the continued glacial melting we’re seeing in our time is just a continuation of a VERY long-term global warming trend?  maybe slightly (but “tipping point” “slightly” can be a lot) effected by man-made effects?

– cuneiform writings dating to times before the hebrew old testament have many stories that are like those of the bible. so while we always known the christian new testament borrowed stories from the old testament, and i assumed similar quran stories came from old testament, it appears the old testament may have gotten them from the cuneiform writings of ancient mesopotamia (i think they said the gilgamesh stories, that i’ve heard of but never really looked into, are the ones that have garden, fruit, snake, flood, babel-like tower and maybe more)
– archaeological evidence in saudi arabia apparently shows it wasn’t always so dry and that a river flowed across its northeast part into the tigris/euphrates area. arabian desert not always a desert being part of a VERY long-term global warming trend again?
– christopher columbus, apparently, was looking for garden of eden
– the brit in the 1800s that found a 3-language piece of rock in sumerian/mesopotamian ruins that, like the rosetta stone in another place and another time and for other languages, helped break the code of the oldest known written language, cuneiform. there had been lots of cuneiform around for a long time, but, until this indiana jones-like brit found the stone carvings and broke the code, no one could read them.