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Past Horizons -
Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist and researcher with the University of Birmingham, now believes that the area in and around what he calls the “Persian Gulf Oasis” may have been home to humans for over 100,000 years before it was inundated by rising sea level of the Indian Ocean around 8,000 years ago.
It is and exciting hypothesis that 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 suggest.In an an article published in the latest issue of Current Anthropology he suggests that this once fertile landmass is now submerged beneath the Persian Gulf and may have been home to some of the earliest human populations outside Africa.Recently, 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.“Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago,” Rose said. “These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean.
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