Closing in on the Archaeological Garden of Eden

Scientists in Saudi Arabia disclosed this week the discovery of artifacts from a lost 9,000-year-old culture that has been dubbed the “Al-Maqar Civilization”. Al-Maqar is a region in central Saudi Arabia that, until now, had not attracted much scientific interest.

Evidence of modern human habitation of the Arabian peninsula dates back at least 100,000 years but recent analyses of Neolithic settlements along the coast of the Persian Gulf conclude that there was once a robust Neolithic culture which lived in the now-flooded lowlands around 9-11,000 years ago.

The Al Maqar culture would have been contemporary with the Persian Gulf culture and may even have enjoyed close ties with those communities. The Al-Maqar culture was sophisticated enough to have left behind “mummified skeletons, arrowheads, scrapers, grain grinders, tools for spinning and weaving, and other tools that are evidence of a civilization that is skilled in handicrafts.”

Another of the remarkable claims scientists have made about the Al Maqar culture is that they appear to have domesticated horses. If that is true, then horse domestication has been pushed back by at least a few thousand years. This discovery may support the conclusions of a recent study of the horse genome that suggests today’s domesticated horse breeds arose from an unknown common ancestral group that was domesticated many thousands of years ago.

Modern male domesticated horses all share almost the exact same genetic markers, meaning their ancestry was fixed thousands of years ago after a long process of domestication. If horses were being domesticated by Neolithic humans in Arabia 9,000 years ago then there must be a trail that leads to the Asian steppes where current archaeological theory holds that domesticated horses were first used to pull carts and provide milk for humans.

There are other traces of human migration from the Middle East. DNA studies on pigs show that the earliest domesticated pigs in Europe and the ancestors of east Asian domesticated pigs may have originated in central Asia or Asia Minor. Wild pig species were domesticated in both regions after the introduction of domesticated pigs; in Europe the native pigs replaced the Asian breed(s).

DNA studies also suggest that most European men are descended from Middle Eastern farmers who migrated into Europe starting around 10,000 years ago (specifically to the Aegean region at that time, spreading north and westward from that point over the next several thousand years). Recent research suggests that most British men are probably descended from the more ancient hunter-gatherer population of Europe that was displaced by the Middle Eastern farmers.

Other research supports the British isolation thesis insofar as it suggests that agriculture was adopted by hunter-gatherer groups in the British Isles and Scandinavia rather than brought in by invading farmers. That research suggests that Europe’s oldest fringe populations may be quite ancient, and indeed it is now believed that Neanderthals contributed to the modern human genome in Europe and Asia (but no traces of Neanderthal DNA have been detected in modern African populations).

The archaeological and biological trails mostly lead us back to the Middle East, which is believed to be the birthplace of modern agriculture. Two arguments have been put forth suggesting how agriculture may have arisen in the Levant (what is now Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank). One theory says that graneries may have been developed before grains were domesticated to hold wild plants that were harvested. Another theory suggests that figs may have been the first domesticated crop.

These hypotheses have been challenged but it seems that we still don’t have the whole picture. We know there were well organized communities living in permanent structures by 10,000 years ago and most likely 11,000 years ago. These peoples would have required reliable food sources. Were there enough wild grains, nuts, and fruit trees living within walking distance of their villages to support them?

Only 2,000 years separates the founding of Jericho and the approximate dating of the Al Maqar culture. But cultures don’t simply pop out of the Earth fully formed. They arise gradually through successive generations of experimentation and subtle change. Change may be forced upon human communities by environmental influences. Indeed, scientists have already documented the rise and fall of 2 cultures in the Green Sahara: the Kiffian, who lived 10-8,000 years ago and the Tenerian, who lived 6,5-4,500 years ago.

Permanent stone structures were already being constructed as far north of Al Maqar as Jericho in Palestine 11,000 years ago. It follows that the Al Maqar culture may have built similar structures. The fact that Jericho had a wall 11,000 years ago also implies there may have been armed conflict between communities (the researchers who analyzed the tower and wall suggest they may have been built for ritualistic purposes but fail to present compelling evidence to show that was the case).

We do not need to theorize that there was warfare among the far-flung Neolithic communities of 10-11,000 years ago but we do know that the Persian Gulf was a dry valley watered by rivers from about 14,000 years ago until about 9,000 years ago when the sea began to encroach upon the valley. It was completely submersed by 8,000 years ago (6,000 BCE) in what was probably an “outburst event”, a sudden flood.

Archaeologists and amateurs alike point to the flooding of the Persian Gulf as a possible source for Noachian legends (although a similar Black Sea transition from fresh water lake to salty sea in the same timeframe has also been proposed). If humans were living in the Persian Gulf valley until 8,000 years ago then an environmental disaster would have caused massive migrations and climactic changes.

Historical cultural migrations are usually accompanied by or causes of significant conflict between peoples. Let us suppose that the Persian Gulf Valley held a sophisticated culture that had mastered agriculture and animal husbandry. Let us suppose that this culture was destroyed by the inundation of the valley 8,000 years ago. Let us further suppose that survivors attempted to settle along the coasts of the newly formed gulf but found themselves competing for resources with neighbors deeper in the Arabian peninsula.

In 1993 Dr. Farouk El-Baz of Boston University suggested that satellite imagery of ancient rivers in Saudi Arabia indicated that the peninsula was well-watered from about 11,000 years ago until about 5,000 years ago. This period obviously coincides or overlaps with the Green Sahara and the dry Persian Gulf Valley.

We don’t know how radical the transition from green Arabia to dry Arabia might have been, but a displaced population moving into the peninsula from the flooded lowlands may have stressed the ecosystem. Is it feasible to suggest that these populations may have been driven north by the combination of competition for dwindling resources and changing climate? Furthermore, if they encountered indigenous, related cultures of similar capability, these migratory peoples would have faced three options:

1. Pass through the existing civilizations (if permitted)
2. Settle among and become absorbed into the existing civilizations
3. Attack the existing civilizations

Sumerian mythology does suggest that they may have come from the south. The problem with a northern migration for the Sumerians is that their civilization rose up along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now southern Iraq. The Persian Gulf lay on their border. They would have had to lived along the coast of the gulf. Of course, the Sumerians also preserved a story of a flood event and spoke of an ancient land they called Dilmun (not to be confused with a later Dilmun that is acknowledged in historical records).

A migration from the Persian Gulf region to the Aegean region around 6,000 years ago seems plausible. Whether tribes simply bumped each other north or an organized migration passed through existing communities cannot be discerned from the available evidence. We also have to consider the impact that the rising Black Sea would have had on communities in its vicinity. At the very least we can conclude that the search for new homes and the competition for resources would have provided reasons for conflict between peoples.

The migration of Middle Eastern farmers into Europe, who subsequently engaged in armed conflict with the hunter-gatherer societies in Europe, may have been spurred by environmental disasters that overwhelmed ancient cultures that may have flourished in lowlands. Although we know very little about the Black Sea culture there is ample evidence to suggest that the dry Persian Gulf Valley culture may have possessed agriculture. Perhaps pigs were domesticated near the Black Sea.

It is entirely possible that the lands where agriculture and pigs were domesticated now lie under the waves. We have to keep looking but our picture of the Neolithic period in the Middle East and Europe is constantly evolving and we now know that our ancestors were not nearly as primitive and unsophisticated as 19th and 20th century popular imagination had made them out to be.