?The Persian Gulf is just one of a variety of areas identified as having been mainly exposed land prior to the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age(a). Archaeologist Dr. Jeffery Rose(b) recounts how this land which contained a large oasis used by humans from at least 74,000 years was finally inundated by the Indian Ocean around 6000 BC(c). Rose believes that “there is compelling evidence to suggest that both the Flood and Eden myths may be rooted in these events around the Gulf basin.” His views are more fully outlined in the December 2010 issue of the distinguished journal Current Anthropology(d).

It has also been speculated that the Gulf may have been home to Plato’s Atlantis. This theory places the Pillars of Heracles at the Strait of Hormuz. However, the Gulf is just one of a number of sites such as Doggerland in the North Sea and Sundaland in the South China Sea that have been proposed as the location of submerged Atlantis. At this point we are only dealing with speculation as no coherent argument has been adduced to identify any of those locations with the possible exception of Sundaland, where at least a credible case has been put forward by researchers such as dos Santos and Lauritzen, but not without weaknesses in their contention.

(a) http://ghiasi.org/2010/12/pre-historic-civilization-beneath-the-persian-gulf/
(b) http://bham.academia.edu/JeffreyRose
(c) http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/12/2010/a-lost-prehistoric-oasis-in-the-persian-gulf
(d) http://news.discovery.com/earth/ancient-desert-oasis-echoes-of-eden.html