From the Garden of Eden to the Flood
This chapter has a unique standing in the study. The aim of the book is to establish a historical proof to the best known mythological story, that of the Patriarchs in the Book of Genesis. This chapter is part of that task, with a slight difference. The proof about the existence and the acts of the patriarchs is to find some parallel evidence that can establish a pattern of actions and conditions that were common in their assumed period. In the case of the patriarchs there is a basic assumption that their period was already in historical times, sometimes in the last quarter of the 3rd millenium BC. In the conditions of the Middle East, that was already a literate period; numerous state archives were found and there is quite a comprehensive picture about the relations, and the way of life of that era.
The period in which the mythical tales of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis were played out was before the historical era. The mythical tales are involving a story of a single family. According the Bible, they were the first humans, but it does not detract from the fact that the first humans were a single family. As with other chapters of the study, the Book of Genesis has two types of narratives; that of a theological nature and that of a historical nature. It is the same with the tales of this part of the study. There are the theological parts, about the creation of the world and the first man and woman, the original sin and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the murder of a brother by another, the sin of the people which caused the deluge and the end of the deluge.
The treatment of this chapter is different from the others. Here, there is a purely mythological tale, with a slight difference. It leaves a veritable trail of clues, which can be examined and followed. In this respect, these stories are different from the usual myths. The major clues of the stories point to the:
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geographical location of the Garden of Eden |
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the place where Cain went into exile after killing his brother
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The mountain where the ark landed after the deluge |
In addition, a reliable picture can be formulated about the conditions in the Garden of Eden, before the expulsion from there, and about the conditions after the expulsion. Conditions do not mean here the theological, but a real, historical, circumstance.
If we wish to state the questions set by the first 9 chapters of the Book of Genesis, then they should be stated and answered in the following, chronological, order:
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Where was the Garden of Eden?
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What were the conditions before and after the expulsion from the Garden?
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Where was Cain's place of exile?
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Where and when was the Deluge?
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Where was the dispersion of the survivors from the Deluge?
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Here are the answers to the questions. They are not scientific proofs, but they are the best what can be done according the present state of knowledge. As it will be seen at the end of this chapter, the questions received realistic, and feasible, answers.
Where was the Garden of Eden?
The Old Testament provides the following clues (Gen. 2. 10-14):
"And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became with four heads. The name of the first is Pison; that which compasseth the whole land of Havilah; where there is gold and the gold of the land is good; there is bdellium and onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon; the same that encompasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is it, which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates".
In these few lines there are a number of real clues and a number of mistranslations or misunderstandings. One of the mistranslations is that of Ethiopia. In the original Hebrew it is written "the land of Cush" which can be the land of the Negroes, but not necessarily so. The real clues are the names of the two of the four rivers which are mentioned, that of the Hiddekel, which is the Tigris, and the Euphrates.
These two rivers emerge in Armenia and flow in the general direction of the Persian Gulf. The other two, Pison and Gihon, raise many questions, especially the Gihon which circles Ethiopia, which recalls the Nile, and the Pison which is around the land of Havilah and the gold mines. According the Book of Genesis 25.16 Havilah was in the direction of Egypt. So the mention of these rivers, and their associations, confused the scholars who attempted to locate the Garden of Eden. The association with Egypt and Ethiopia even induced one scholar to locate it at the southern extremity of the two rivers, where they unite into the Shatt-el-Arab. The Shatt-el-Arab has two more rivers flowing into it; one is the Karun, which originates in Iran and flows directly into the Persian Gulf, but in prehistoric times it joined the Shatt-el-Arab, because the Persian Gulf was much smaller in those days. The fourth river does not exist today, but in prehistoric times it was a river that flowed through northern Arabia and now it is a dry bed. It is called Wadi Rimah in Saudia and Wadi Batin in Kuwait1
However, the decision to place the Garden of Eden in southern Mesopotamia, directly contradicts the main clues of the Old Testament, which even describes the Tigris as turning to the east, toward Assyria.
When one looks on Map 4, one immediately sees that there is one location where there are more than 4 rivers to choose from. The main question is which two rivers correspond to the Gihon and Pison. There are two rivers that flow to the south, the Tigris and Euphrates, one to the west, the Halys and three to the east, the Kura, the Aras, and the Uizon. But which are the Pison and the Gihon, the gold mines of Havilah and the land of Cush (Ethiopia).
It is assumed that whoever wrote that part of the Old Testament, had no intention to write a fairy tale, but something that was recognizable to everyone familiar with that area. There is no doubt that anybody in ancient times could have pointed out without difficulty the exact location of the Garden of Eden, which was in the north, somewhere in the vicinity of the watershed, which is the complex of the Ararat, which had later an important role to play. We lack the knowledge of the ancients and we need to search for the missing details.
The first answer to the riddle concerns the river Aras, which in Greek times was named Araxis. It flows east from the watershed to the Caspian Sea. However, when the area was occupied by the Muslim expansion, Arab historians named that river as the Gaihun, which is the Gihon in Arabic transliteration.2
As for the fourth river, there are two possibilities. The first is that of the Kura which also flows to the Caspian Sea, somewhat north of the Aras/Gaihun. The second is a smaller stream, originating somewhat east of Lake Urmia and flowing into the southern end of the Caspian. That river is called today the Unzon or Uizon, which can be a transliteration of the Pison.
If the Uizon is indeed the Pison, then it flows east of Eden to water the Garden of Eden. Superimposing these definitions on to a modern map, then east of the Lake of Urmia there is the valley of Tabriz, with the Uizon flowing though it. East of Tabriz there is a place, called today Meydan-e Shah or the Garden of the Shah. If one travels north of Tabriz, from the original Eden toward the river Gihon/Aras, one passes a high mountain with a very high peak. That mountain is called today the Cushedag, or the Mountain of Cush.3 And the valley of the river Uizon/Pison has excellent ancient evidence for gold deposits in that region.4
According the above, the location of the original Garden of Eden can be found by using the clues of the Old Testament. It is east of the Valley of Tabriz, near the headwaters of the Tigris, Euphrates and the Aras/Gihon. North of Tabriz, there is a mountain pass called Cushedag, Mountain of Cush, and east of Tabriz there is the Meydan-e Shah, the Garden of the King, watered by the Uizon/Pison, which is the land of Havilah with the ancient gold mines.
The valley of Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaidjan, is a heavily industrialized area now. However, even now it has its orchards, especially on the higher terraces of the valley. As one goes up on the mountains, surrounding the valley, one finds the bigger trees, the cedars and the oaks. In ancient times, without the blight of industrial grime, it must have been a paradise, the Garden of Eden or Meydan-e Shah.
Conditions before and after the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
The Old Testament commented on the conditions of the stay in the Garden of Eden, before the expulsion:
"Of every tree in the garden, thou mayest freely eat." (Gen. 2.16)
and after the Fall:
"…cursed is the land for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return" (Gen.3.17-20).
Without commenting on the theological implications of the few lines quoted above, the first quotation describes the life before the Fall and the second after it. The first quote is probably a good description of the life hunter-gatherer groups had before the end of the last Ice Age, and the second describes the life after the onset of the Neolithic Revolution
Conditions in the Middle East and North Africa were generally favorable during the years of the last Ice Age. The deserts of today, the Sahara, the Lybian, Arabian, Syrian and the Thar in western India, had large territories which were grasslands, suitable for hunter-gatherer peoples. The mountains of the Sahara were forested, large lakes filled the depressions and great rivers were flowing. Among them the dry riverbeds of Arabia, what some scholars thought to be one of the rivers of the Garden of Eden.5
The real Garden of Eden was in the mountains of Armenia, which is today the valley of Tabriz. The Persians called it in historical times, the Meydan-e Shah – the garden of the Shah. If in historical times it was deemed to be suitable for the Shah, in prehistoric times, before the Neolithic Revolution, it must have been extremely beautiful and fruitful. Apart of the beauty, there were other advantages too. There were wide areas full of wild grasses, of which the later wheat and barley was developed. Among the grasses were the varieties of the emmer and the einkorn. Agricultural experts think that a hunter-gatherer band could collect in 10 –15 days sufficient quantities of grain to last a whole year. If Paradise is measured by the effort one has to work for his living, then it was Paradise indeed.
The life of those who lived in Europe was more difficult. The glaciers reached the Alps. People scratched a precarious existence out of the frozen environment with great difficulty. They had berries from the forests and they could hunt the great animals of the north.
With the retreat of the glaciers the conditions of life was reversed on both sides of the Mediterranean. The life of those living in the north became much more comfortable. Weather became milder and game more numerous, because the milder weather improved their pastures. New herds from the south joined those animals already roaming the northern pastures, as they could not find sufficient food in the desiccating south.6
Contrary to Europe, life in the Middle East and North Africa became grim indeed. Those were the areas that suffered most from the climatic catastrophe; they had very few choices, none of them very good.
There were some that followed the herds of animals, south or north. Others descended to the wet jungle swamps in the river valleys, or they could remain where they were. All the choices, apart of remaining, had to cause heavy conflicts with those who already were living there. Even prehistoric men did not look kindly upon those who intruded on their livelihood. They might not have known the word 'immigrant' but the sentiment was already there.
It must have been a terrible time for those who lived in the previously bountiful south and who became gradually impoverished. It was a terrible punishment from an unknown deity for some crime which nobody could remember committing. It is probably no coincidence that two masterpieces of innocent sufferings originated in that part of the world. One of them was the Book of Job, and the second, its fit companion, the tale of the lost paradise.
Modern science has proven the truth in the words of the Old Testament, saying that the land will bring forth thistles and thorns, but not food. Archaeological excavations found that in the period, when roving hunter-gatherer bands have shifted from eating large mammals, which escaped either north or south, to eating smaller animals and more vegetables and grains, the size of the human skeleton has shrunk. Male skeletons were shorter by 4 centimeters in the average, and female skeletons by 5 centimeters. Life expectancy was considerably reduced and skeletons, which were excavated from that period, exhibited many instances of nutritionally based, and infectious, diseases.7
If conditions of life were really so good before the Neolithic Revolution, especially in such special places, like the Garden of Eden, the Meydan-e Shah, probably was, the contract between the good life before and its bitter continuation, after, must have been especially acute. However, a warning should be sounded here. The climatic change must have been a very long and drawn-out process. When we look back, from a distance of ten millennia, we can see the contrast. If the length of the transition was in centuries or in millennia, the question could arise whether people could remember and compare from such a distance.
It is clear that in modern times such an extended memory would be unthinkable, but then in modern world we are overwhelmed by information, that nothing could remain even for much shorter period. But even for ancient times the distance must have been too large to contrast the good life before the Fall with a bleak present. The event that is recorded in the Old Testament, as the Fall or Expulsion, must have been some very strong and extreme natural event in order to remember it after a long time.
It is assumed that the Garden of Eden was somewhere between the Lake Urmia and the Caspian Sea, along the river Pison. It is not only the territory of the Garden of Eden, it is also the territory of Aratta, the mythical hometown of the Sumerians. It is an area with complex geological structure. Lake Urmia is a dead and salty lake, with a volcanic island in the center of the lake. The whole area is prone for earthquakes, then and in the present. The lifeless water of Lake Urmia reminds one of another lifeless lake, the Dead Sea in Canaan, which is also the center of earthquakes. It must have been some earthquake related catastrophe which connected the memory of before and after in the memory of people.
In ancient times, the tempo of life was much slower, and there were fewer pressures of data than today. In addition, they had methods of preserving memories, a knack that has been lost for us. But, there must have been some extreme condition in the transit to catch the imagination and anchor the memory. Judging from the nature of the territory, it must have been some earthquake with extraordinary consequences, probably relating to Lake Urmia.
One of the methods of conserving memories was the storyteller, who told mythological tales through many generations, without losing anything from the stories. Probably all the major epic tales of the ancient world, the epic poems of Homer, the Rig-Veda, the Avesta and the Old Testament too, were transmitted orally before written down. It is a form of expertise that could not survive modern life.
The second method of saving ancient memories is to incorporate them into religious holidays. So Christians saved their religious memories in the holidays of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. So did the Jews who went much further in saving their national heritage through holidays and rituals. The memory of the Pessach feast goes back more than 3000 years, and they have many holidays, which go back over two millennia.
It is entirely possible that the memory of the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden was kept alive by some ways. There were minstrel tales like the Gilgamesh Epos, or religious festival, but when the contents of the Old Testament were finalized, it was such an old story that they were mentioned only together with the mythological tale of Creation.
Where was Cain exiled?
The story of Cain and Abel is a direct continuation of the transition from a prosperous hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture and husbandry. The truth is that there is no agriculture and husbandry; the proper expression is agriculture or husbandry, and the choice between the two is not voluntary.
When husbandry is mentioned here, the meaning is husbandry in the original sense of the word, that is large herds of animals, cattle, sheep, goats, etc. driven by cattlemen or shepherds between summer and winter pastures. The people who work with the animals are constantly on the move, like their animals. If a farmer has a few cattle and a number of sheep, it is not husbandry in the proper sense. Husbandry is a way of life, just as agriculture is.
The environment makes the historical choice between agriculture and husbandry. Areas where the environment is suitable for agriculture have no large herds. Territories, like the wide belt of steppe land between the line of the Danube in Hungary and Beijin in China, or the southern deserts, from the Sahara to the Thar desert in India, did not have agriculture because the environment was not suitable.
The biblical story of Cain and Abel is a stylized version of the age-old conflict between people of the sown and the nomads. There is always a fringe area between the two and there is always an undeclared war between the farmers and the bedouin. This is especially true for the Middle East, but it is also true for the Chinese and the Mongols in China, and between the Slavic farmers and Turkish nomads in the steppe land north of the Black Sea. That there is a permanent conflict between the two, disregarding their identity, shows that the conflict is part of their existence and does not depend on their race or culture.
Cain was a farmer, while Abel, the murdered brother, was a husbandman. The judgment of the murderer by God was reasonable and even lenient.
"And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken upon him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." (Gen. 4. 13-15)
So Cain was pardoned in fact. He did not become a fugitive and a vagabond, but settled down in the land of Nod; had children and built a city that he named after his son, Enoch. Among his descendants was Tubal-Cain, probably the only person in the Old Testament who had a hyphenated name. The Old Testament wrote:
"And Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." (Gen.4.22)
It is an interesting sentence. Zillah had another son, called Yuval, who was the father of all who handled the harp and the organ. Yuval did not have the suffix –Cain in his name. The fact that Tubal-Cain had a hyphenated name can be probably explained by the fact that he was a smith. It seems that in prehistoric, or even in historic, times smiths did not belong to any specific tribe or settled village, but to some sort of inter-tribal trade union. Probably, each of them bore the 'mark of Cain' to announce that the stranger is not an enemy to be slain on sight, but the bearer of things useful and necessary to everyone.
In primitive societies, the security of any person was safeguarded by the possibility of a blood feud between the clans of the killer and the killed. It must have been a necessity to mark all those who were outside the clans, to keep them alive.8
The story of the exile of Cain to the land of Nod, has an interesting byproduct which strengthens the choice of the valley of Tabriz and the Meydan-e Shah as the location of the Garden of Eden.
Cain was exiled to the land of Nod, to the east of Eden. Nod means in Hebrew wanderer and probably from that name came the story that Cain became a wanderer and could not remain at one place, because of his sin. However, according the Bible, Cain remained settled, as is normal for a farmer, he even built a city, which he named after his son, Enoch.
David Rohl9 who made a survey of the valley of Tabriz and found the Garden of the Shah, the rivers Gihon and Pison, the Mountain of Cush and the gold mines of Havilah, went according the instructions of the Bible. He went from Tabriz to the east until he reached the town of Ardabil, known from the earthquakes around it. He found that all around Ardabil, there are villages, all called with a different version of Nod-I (Belonging to Nod), like Lower-Nod-i and Upper-Nod-i. According to him, he found the Land of Nod, as it was described in of the Bible.
In order to be absolute sure of his findings, he went to the mapping center of the Iranian Government to look up the official maps. He found on the map the same names.
So, the names of the villages confirm the biblical story. We should, however, be very careful in deciding what it confirms. It does not confirm the biblical story of creation, the expulsion and the strife between Cain and Abel. What it found was that the geographical clues of the story of an extended family were indeed correct, as they were affirmed by facts on the ground from a distance of many millennia. The correctness of the geographical clues does not mean that the whole story is correct.
The Deluge
According the Old Testament, the deluge was a punishment for the sins of the people. Noah and his family were saved because of their righteousness. The decision was made by these words:
"And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." (Gen. 6. 7-8)
But not only Noah and family were saved. So were Ziu-Sudra from Chaldea, Utnapishtim of the Assyrians, Atrahasis of the Sumerians, Manu of the Indians, Deucalion, Perseus, Megaros, Alakos, and others of the Greeks10 and many others whose name was lost in the millennia since then.
The world has about 500 legends of floods that nearly destroyed humanity, having left only a few individuals to restart humanity. Most of those legends have a common pattern.11
1. Man is guilty of transgression against God (or gods)
2. God (or one of many gods) sends a flood to punish man.
3. Before the flood, instructions are sent to a selected individual to build an ark.
4. The instructions cater for the survival of all species, and the family of the individual.
5. The flood destroys the old race.
6. After the flood, a new God-fearing race emerges to populate the earth.
There must be a reason for the multitude of the similar stories. From the common elements, God's wrath as the primary cause can be disregarded. In early times, everything was connected to God, especially unexpected natural catastrophes. Some of the reasons are listed below:
Floods are natural disasters, happening in every part of the world. However, not every flood has biblical proportions, most of them are locals. The great majority of tales to one of those local deluges.
The end of the last Ice Age caused melting of the glaciers, which raised the level of the seas by hundreds of feet. It must have caused a near universal destruction, which must have impinged on the collective memory of mankind. The many similar tales are collective memories of that disaster. There was no universal destruction, but there were a few regional catastrophes. Copying of tales from one people to another explains why there are so many similar tales. According to this theory, the story of Noah was copied from Utnapishtim, that from Ziusudra, and so on.13 . After the deluge, the same blood type appears for people in predynastic Egypt and the Ubaid culture people in Mesopotamia. They could have received the genes controlling the blood types only by exogamous marriages.
The basic cause of the Black Sea deluge was that the level of the seas rose because of the melting of the glaciers. The level of the seas became much higher than the level of the Euxine Lake, as it was a landlocked lake. Eventually, either the pressure of the water from the Mediterranean, or an earthquake, removed the natural dam of the Bosporus. The area of northwestern Anatolia is prone for earthquakes, so it is possible that it was an earthquake that cleared the plug out of the Bosporus. Because of the drought, there were many people around the lake, and along the rivers leading to it, and undoubtedly many of them perished there. The survivors spread out to all directions of the compass, to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Sumer and the steppe lands north of the Black Sea, and from there to Europe, Central Asia, India and probably to Chinese Turkestan too.
The tales that originated from all those people, who escaped the flood, were similar. The similarities were caused not because they copied from one to another, but because they came from people who had identical experiences. There is, however, one discrepancy between the biblical tale and the facts. The Old Testament tells a tale about a rain of forty days and nights, but the actual deluge was a waterfall, which poured water into the Euxine Lake during two years, until the level of the lake was raised to the level of the Mediterranean. Still, there is no discrepancy here.
Map 5 shows the map of the present Black Sea. According the map, the sea has a low shore in the Balkans and Russia, and mountains in Anatolia and the Caucasus. The map shows the depths of the sea. The lowest part of the sea, up to 500 meters in depth is in the north and the west. Part of this area is the one, which was inundated by the deluge. According to the map, if somebody lived on the north shore of the lake, he had a long distance to travel before reaching safety. If someone lived near the present south shore, he had only a short distance to travel. So, if Noah and family lived near the southeastern corner of the lake, which was nearest to their former home in the valley of Tabriz, then he certainly could reach the Ararat, which was a safe area. However, he might have experienced a continuous heavy rain. The rain was caused by the way the basin of the sea was filled. According to a current newspaper article14 writing about an expedition which intends to explore the old shores of the Euxine Lake, the water rushed into the basin with the force and quantity of about 1000 times that of the Niagara Falls.
According to the article, the noise of the waterfall was heard in a 100-mile radius. The spray that rose from the waterfall into the air must have been tremendous, and there is no doubt that there was a heavy rainfall during the period the Black Sea was filling up. There is a waterfall in Africa, much bigger than the Niagara Falls; the Victoria Falls; it is between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The name of the waterfall in the local African language, is Mosi-o-Tunya – the smoke that roars. The spray of water, which is the smoke, can be seen from miles away, and the roar of the waterfall can be heard from about 15 miles. There is no doubt that it must have been an extremely frightening experience, which definitely has left its sign in the tales of the deluge. Can anyone doubt that such a frightening experience was taken as a sign of heavenly wrath? Would it be taken differently even today?
Tests which were recently made on the sediments of the Dead Sea confirmed that the years of the deluge were especially wet years, probably the wettest in the whole prehistoric era. This means that the rains caused by the deluge were spread in a very wide radius,
There are a few comments about the transformation of the Euxine Lake into the Black Sea as described by the stories of the Bible and others about the Deluge.
All the stories tell of very few survivors; usually no more than one person or one family. It is a reasonable assumption if one looks at the map of the Black Sea. (See Map 5). It has a low shoreline in the north and west of the sea, and a mountainous shore in the east and south. It means that the water covered a larger territory each day on the north and west, and less in the south and east. However, the southern shore of the Black Sea has a seamount, which can be clearly seen as a finger pointing from the southeast to the northwest. That seamount was a long string of hills, forming a peninsula in the lake. That seamount must have been a death trap. People, who lived there, 100 meters above the lake or succeeded to escape there, must have thought themselves secure, were trapped when the water reached the top and they found that instead of being on a secure hill, they were on a shrinking island, cut off from the mainland.
The second comment is about the use of the ark and the saving of animals. First about the animals. It seems to be certain that animals could save themselves. They did not have the considerations of humans, about family, property, farming implements, etc. Animals have instincts, and they flee. How many succeeded is a different question. Escaping by boat could have been an option for those who lived on the seamount, were occupied in fishing, had boats and used that boat to reach the mainland and safety. In the north, where the sea advanced very fast, boats were probably not a feasible option. What they needed was fast decisions and strong legs. But then it must have been such an extraordinary experience that even in modern circumstances it would be difficult to predict how people would react. The people in Pompeii had the opportunity to escape, if only they would have recognized the danger in time. And they lived next to an active volcano; they must have known the possible dangers.
It seems that the story of the Bible and the other ancient stories about the Deluge were essentially correct. If the Deluge had the speed and intensity, as Ryan and Pitman, and others, described, then not many people could survive the event, neither in the shallow water in the north, nor in the deeper water near the south shore. It must have been a long period of recuperation until the remaining people could organize their lives again.
Dispersal of the Survivors
After the flood, the world was desolate, no people remained, apart of Noah, his wife, their three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, with their wives. According to Gen.9.18-19, this what remained of humanity:
"These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread."
This is how the deluge ended. A new covenant was made with God, it was sealed with the rainbow, symbolizing that the rains have ended at last and a new beginning was made.
After this story of ending the deluge, there were added two additional chapters. They were needed to connect the biblical story to the reality which each listener, or reader, knew very well, that there were many peoples on earth, they spoke different languages, and there was indeed a need to explain how of they all descended from one family. The first chapter, Gen. 10, gave an explanation about the existence of different people, and the second, Chap. 11, showed why were so many different languages.
The list of people, as given in Chap.10, probably gave a full picture of the ethnic composition of the known world as it was then. It was the Middle East, the Levant, Anatolia and the Greek islands. It seems that Europe, and even Greece, was still unknown. Chap. 10.5 writes about the sons of Javan (Ionian in Hebrew) that:
"…by these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations."
So, the Gentiles were living on their isles; no mainland was known or considered worth mentioning. So far about the solution of the Bible. There was a deluge, everybody, except members of a righteous family perished, a new beginning was made, which naturally came from the family. Because of unforeseen circumstances, the Tower of Babel, the descendants of that single family were split into nations, each with its language.
According to historical and archaeological sources there was a catastrophe before historical times. That catastrophe occurred in the north of the then known world. One of the results of the catastrophe was an extensive migration, which spread all over the Middle East, Anatolia and parts of Europe, and had a major part in shaping the present world.
There was a classical writer, Diodorus Siculus, who wrote, among others, about the history of the island of Samothrace, one of the Greek islands at the western entrance of the Dardanelles. According to Diodorus Siculus, there was so much water in the Euxine Lake, that the water burst out through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The flood inundated the west coast of Asia Minor and low-laying parts of the island of Samothrace.
It seems that Samothrace was one of the places where the refugees of the flood have settled. That is the reason why Diodorus mentioned the catastrophe. As far as the inundation of the Asian coast and the island of Samothrace itself is concerned, it is probably connected with the heavy rains which accompanied the deluge, rather than the flow of water out of the Euxine into the Mediterranean.15
The report of Diodorus Siculus is not alone in suggesting bad weather and heavy rains accompanying the deluge. It has been mentioned that the rainfall at the Dead Sea was the heaviest ever in the years of the deluge. In addition, it should be taken also into account that continuous cloud and rain cover the sun, which could have caused a permanent winter for a number of years. So, starvation joined the deluge as part of the catastrophe.
The Iranians have a myth that their ancestors escaped a long winter of snow and ice by building a 'var', an underground city. A complex of underground cities was found near the area of Lake Van, in historic Cappadocia, in the vicinity of the modern city of Derinkuyu. The underground complex contains at least 30 underground cities, connected by underground tunnels. The size of the cities and that of the whole compound is enormous. The only underground city, which was excavated so far, reaches 8 floors under ground in an area of four square kilometers. There is a vast network of airshafts, water wells, and water tanks at the bottom and various access tunnels. There are also a large number of living rooms, kitchens, and storerooms. Neither the depth nor the size has been finally established; the excavations are still continuing. The other, possible 30, underground cities were not touched so far.16
If the deluge of the Euxine Lake is taken into account, then there are a number of legends, which become more realistic, than without it. The Mandaeans, an Arab tribe living in the marsh area of southern Iraq, claim they originated in ancient Egypt, wandered from there to a mythical location, the Mountain of Madai, in Iranian Kurdistan, not far from Lake Urmia, and the cave cities of Cappadocia, and from there to their present home. They really have some ancient Egyptian words in their language.
If the extended drought and dry weather, which preceded the deluge, is taken into consideration, then the ancestors of the Mandaeans could have been among those who sought refuge in the oasis of the Euxine Lake. Later they escaped the deluge into Iranian Kurdistan, near Lake Urmia and from there to Mesopotamia.
These two examples are not exceptional cases. Most of the peoples in the Middle East point to the north as their place of origin some even to specific direction, to the mountains of Anatolia and Armenia.
The people who settled southern Mesopotamia, those who created first the Ubaid culture and later the Sumerian cities, the world's first urban civilizations, have certainly originated from the north, and moreover they seemed to have lost contact with their former homeland. Their language was akin to the languages from the Ural-Altai family, like Finnish and Hungarian.17 They had a mythical connection with a northern city, called Aratta, which seemed to be in the area of the Lake Urmia – Garden of Eden region
The Sumerians had a certain curiosity in their language. Most of their root words were monosyllabic. Those words, however, which were connected with agriculture and crafts were polysyllabic. They were probably acquired in the mixing pot of the Euxine Lake. The words of husbandry were monosyllabic though, showing that in their homeland, somewhere in Central Asia they had a pastoral existence. They brought that language to Mesopotamia as the Ubaids, and were known later as the Sumerians.
Predynastic Egypt was also somehow connected with the dispersion of the survivors. Egypt experienced a rapid cultural and economic change during that period. A new flint industry was introduced, which produced two-sided flaked tools, similar to those produced in Anatolia and Canaan. The art of pottery appeared then for the first time in the valley of the Nile. Domesticated cereals and animals with direct genetic affinity to Asia were suddenly adopted, together with the first systematic practice of planting and harvesting.18
The similarities between the changes of predynastic Egypt and the el-Ubaid culture were so striking that they brought scholars to wonder, whether both civilizations had a common origin. That the first Egyptian rulers called themselves the Followers of Horus both in Lower and Upper Egypt, and the fact that the coastal road between Egypt and Canaan was called the Road of Horus, even in historical times, only added to the conviction.
Probably it was Sir Arthur Keith, who went farthest in this respect. He commented on the expedition report of C. L. Wooley:19
"The southern Mesopotamians…. had big, long and narrow heads…Their affinities were with the peoples of Caucasian or European type.We may regard southwestern Asia as their cradleland until new evidence leading to a different conclusion comes to light. They were akin to the predynastic people of Egypt."
The deluge probably affected most of the areas immediately bordering on the now expanded Black Sea. There are signs that agricultural villages, like Catal Huyuk and Hacilar, were taken over by people, who probably came from the north, refugees from the deluge. Both communities were deserted during the period of the cold and dry climate of the late seventh millennium BC, with the previous population probably moving to the oasis of the Euxine Lake. They were reoccupied after the deluge with people who introduced advanced painted pottery. That the deluge caused considerable stress in the area is proven by the fact that at Hacilar a defensive wall surrounded the level of the reoccupation above the level of desertion. The walls were destroyed shortly after their completion. The invaders built a new fortress on top of the destroyed walls. The new population had different pottery, showing different techniques and traditions. The mixing pot of the Euxine Lake has exploded in all directions.
The Ubaids, who later became the Sumerians, went to the south; so did those who reached Egypt. Others reached the Levant, and the people who spoke languages from the Kartvalian family of languages, reached the Caucasus.
There was one group of people who spoke a proto-Indo-European language, who were separated into two parts, without further contact between them, at least not in the following few millennia. The expanded Black Sea became a barrier. In the west, there was the cataract of the Bosporus, probably without the waterfall, but it still must have been a formidable and frightening barrier. In the east there were the mountains of the Caucasus which were not less forbidding.
The linguists who were searching for the homeland of the Indo-Europeans have built a method to do so. They developed a dictionary of words, which were common to all Indo-European languages. So, according to the contents of that dictionary, they could look for the homeland. If the dictionary contained a common word for beech tree and salmon, then the cradle of the people, who used the proto-Indo-European language was somewhere where both the beech and the salmon were natives.
This method had a useful byproduct. They found that languages change by a certain factor each century. Checking a specific dictionary against the common dictionary of the proto-Indo-European language can give a fair estimate when a particular language has parted from the common stock.
Applying these rules to the known Indo-European languages, it was found that the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family of languages was the first language that parted from the rest. The Hittite language belonged to the Anatolian branch. It meant that after the Black Sea deluge, the southern part of the Indo-Europeans were separated from their kinsmen, and had no contact with them. That separation was in the mid-sixth millenium BC. The later intrusion of northerners to the Middle East through the Caucasus and the Bosporus was far in the future. Checking the Hittite dictionary against the common one, it was found it contained no more than 20% of the proto-dictionary. Still, because the grammar of the language remained consistent with the rules of the common grammar, Hittite is still accepted as an Indo-European language.
The northern branch of the Indo-Europeans branched out in all directions. Some went west, and later became Celts, Italians and Greeks,20 some to the north to become Germans, Balts and Slavs, still others returned south as Armenians, Iranians, Afghans, Indians and various tribes of Parthians. There were those who remained in the same place, north of the Black Sea and the Caspian, as Scythians, Sarmatians and Cimmerians. There was even one member of the family who turned up in Chinese Turkestan. They were the Tocharians. As Chinese Turkestan has a dry climate, the remains of some Tocharians were found as dried out mummies. Judging from their clothes and the weapons found next the mummies, their technical level was not inferior to that of their brothers in Europe. Despite their living in the desert of Chinese Turkestan, they were in contact with their kin in Europe. Their language was akin to the Celtic members of the Indo-European family of languages. Their clothing, with many colored tartans was also similar to the Celtic dresses. As an interesting byproduct of the Black Sea deluge, the Tocharians were instrumental in introducing Buddhism unto China, through the age-old trade path, the Silk Route. There are also signs that they were involved in introducing the first civilization into China.21
The end of the Black Sea deluge went indeed according the path of Gen. 10 – 11, except that the spread of the peoples and languages was much wider than what was said in the Bible. There is one more comment should be added to the relation between the Bible and archaeological data. This is the question of the Semites.22
One of the sons of Noah, according the Bible, was Shem, the eponymous father of the Semites, and Ham, the eponymous father of the Hamites. Among the descendants of Ham were the Ethiopians, the Egyptians and the Canaanites too. It is interesting to note that the Bible makes a difference between the Semites, meaning the Hebrews, and the Canaanites.
As far as archaeological evidences are concerned, there is no proof that the Semites were among those finding refuge in the oasis of the Euxine Lake, so they had no part in the dispersion too. The accepted theory about the existence of the Semites in the Middle East is, that they infiltrated from the Arabian Peninsula, as workers and soldiers, and eventually as conquerors. As conquerors they assimilated the native people, as it was done in many other parts of the world. According to Map 2, the Semites reached their northern border approximately on the line of the border between Syria and Turkey, and their eastern border on the line between Iraq and Iran. These were the borders, established about 5000 years ago, and these are the borders today. As far as the Semites being in the north and participating in the dispersal of peoples, after the deluge, we have only the evidence of Gen. 10. 21.
Notes
| 1. |
1. Dora Jane Hamblin, Has the Garden of Eden been located at last?, Smithsonian Magazine,
Vol. 28, No. 2, May 1987, she was not alone in looking in the south for the Garden of Eden Merrill F. Unger, op.cit., p.40 ; quotes Friedrich Delitzsch who located it just north to the city of Babylon, and A. H. Sayce who located it at Eridu.
Thomas Mann, op.cit., p.43 "The site of Paradise would still be in Babylonian sphere of interest, but not in Babylon itself, rather in the Armenian Alpine country north of Mesopotamia Itself."
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| 2. |
David Rohl, Genesis and the Followers of Horus, Transcript of lecture given on 3 September 1997, at the Millstadt Forum: "What is Truth?: Man between Phantasy and Reality".p.5/24
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| 3. |
Idem, p.6/24
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| 4. |
Idem, p.8/24
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| 5. |
Colbourn Rushton, The Origin of Civilized Societies, Princeton University Press, Princeton, p.35
Emilio Spedicato, op.cit., p.14/27
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| 6. |
N. Stearns, Michael Adar, Stuart B. Schwartz, Tha Agrarian Revolution and the Birth of
Civilization, World Civilization, The Global Experience, Vol.I. pp. 2 – 19, Reprint p.2/6
Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Dell Books, New York, 1965, Vol.I. p.91
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| 7. |
Thomas Gale Moore, Global Warming, A Boon to Humanity and Other Animals,
Hoover Institute Working Paper, 1995, p.13/17
Marvin Harris, op.cit., p.18
Maria T. Phelps, How Important is the Role of Intelligence in the Rise of Civilizations?
Mankind Quarterly, Vol. 34, 6.1.94, p.297
Colbourn Rushton, op.cit.,p.31, Gordon Childe , What happened…,op.cit. p.61
Jacquette Hawkes, Prehistory, Mentor Books, New York, 1965, p. 75
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| 8. |
Gordon Childe Prehistory of European Societies, Pelican Books, Harmondsworth, 1958, p.169
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, op.cit. pp. 86 – 88
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| 9. |
David Rohl, op.cit., p.9/24
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| 10. |
Gunnar Heinsohn, op.cit., p.7/23
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| 11. |
Idem, ibid
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| 12. |
W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, Doubleday Anchor Book, New York, 1957,p.9
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| 13. |
Ryan & Pitman, op.cit., pp. 212 – 213
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| 14. |
Barry Wigmore, The Hunt for Noah's Ark, The Times (London), 15.2.þ2000
The increased moisture in the air due to evaporation from both the cataract as well as sheet flooding of the dry basin could have resulted at some point in truly torrential rains in a region that had not experienced the likes for millions of years
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| 15. |
Ryan & Pitman, op.cit., p.250
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| 16. |
13. Turkish Tourist Bureau, Cavetowns and Gorges Of Cappadocia, 1997
Andrew Collins, op.cit., Cha[. III.,p3/13
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| 17. |
Emilio Spedicato, , op.cit., p. 19/27, Noah S. Kramer, The Sumerians, University of Chicago,
Chicago, pp. 41 – 43
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| 18. |
M.A. Hoffman, Egypt before the Pharaohs, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1979, pp. 102, 181
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| 19. |
C.L. Wooley, The Sumerians W.W. Norton, New York, 1965, pp. 6 –7, footnote of Sir Arthur Keith
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| 20. | Ryan & Pitman, op.cit. pp. 194 – 195
Arther Ferrill, Neolithic Warfare, Quarterly Journal of Military History, 1995, p. 5/7
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| 21. |
Colin Renfrew, op.cit.,p.66, Arthur Waldron, The Great Wall of China, Canto Books, Cambridge,
1992, p.38. Michael W. Masters, The Origin of Races, AR July-August 1995, p.8/10
Thomas Mann, op.cit.p.34
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| 22. |
Riane Eisler, op.cit. p. 21/24
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