Atlantis may be a favorite among pseudo-archaeological advocates, but it's completely fiction – it's not even mythology. However, there is evidence of ancient cities and settlements that once flourished but now submerged underwater, from Atrityam, Israel to Tonis Herathion, Egypt.
Jerome Dobson, a professor of geography at the University of Kansas, has the terminology of a region that once was a human settlement, but now has been underwater thanks to the “Aqua Terra,” thanks to rising sea levels. He believes these could be archaeological gold mines that provide outstanding insight into early history and some of our early ancestors' African in and out of Africa.
Sea levels have undergone dramatic fluctuations over the past 120,000 years. At the last Glacier Max (LGM), about 20,000 years ago, sea level was 125 meters lower than it is now. As a result, global land is much larger than today, 11.6% larger.
This study aims to improve current understanding of ancient coastlines in the Midwest using a historic sea level glacial equivalency adjustment (GIA) model and to investigate alternative migratory bird routes from Africa over the past 30,000 years. The results suggest that some routes were exposed longer than previously thought.
“We wanted to produce physically and geologically correct coastlines,” Dobson said in a statement. “Researchers need to use GIA modeling, because simply subtracting the height of the sea from the topography is not enough. The Earth's crust is literally distorted by the weight of the ice sheet.”
Combining data from the GIA model with ancient DNA and archaeological evidence, the authors of this study investigated several different routes, such as Suez, which traverses between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Other “hypothetical” routes included intersections from the Gulf of Aqaba (eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula), Bab-ermandub (the strait between Eritrea and Djibouti and Yemen), and the straits of Sicily and Messina (Italy).
The team reports possible evidence of human settlements in Foul Bay in the form of unusually large patches of coral, as well as signs that humans have moved south-north and east-west in the Nile Valley, despite traditional wisdom.
“The exciting meaning is that many underwater landscapes have archaeological relevance, and this mapping is to give scientists a better shot to find them,” Dobson said in a statement.
“We hope this will allow people to see and explore the exposed landscapes during the last ice age.
This study was published in the Journal Comptes Rendus Géoscience.
