[xtypo_dropcap]S[/xtypo_dropcap]ubmerged under the waters of the Persian Gulf may have been where humans once lived about 8,000 years ago, when it was still above sea level, a study found.
Archaeologists have been finding evidence of human settlements along the shores of the Persian Gulf that dates back 7,500 years.
“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,” said Jeffrey Rose, researcher from the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and author of the study, in a press release.
But there is no trace of where they came from. “Where before there had been but a handful of scattered hunting camps, suddenly, over 60 new archaeological sites appear virtually overnight,” Rose said.
Because the Persian Gulf was above sea level from 75,000 years ago to 8,000 years ago, Rose suggests that the settlements on the shores of the Persian Gulf came from the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis.
“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.”
Rose also said in his paper that, from stone tools that are distinct from the East African style found in Yemen and Oman’s archaeological sites, “it is germane to consider the possibility that humans have continuously occupied parts of Arabia for the past 100,000 years, if not longer.”
It is previously believed that humans didn’t settle in Arabia until 70,000 years ago.
The fertile Gulf Oasis, watered by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by underground springs, would have provided a sanctuary for people in the region during periods in the Ice Age when the climate was very dry, said Rose.
The dryer the climate, the lower the sea level, the greater the area of land exposed in the Gulf, Rose explained.
The study was published in Current Anthropology, Dec. 8.
