Mediterranean Sea

• creation

58:4.3500,000,000 years ago prim­i­tive ma­rine veg­etable life was well es­tab­lished on Uran­tia. Green­land and the arc­tic land mass, to­gether with North and South Amer­ica, were be­gin­ning their long and slow west­ward drift. Africa moved slightly south, cre­at­ing an east and west trough, the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin, be­tween it­self and the mother body. Antarc­tica, Aus­tralia, and the land in­di­cated by the is­lands of the Pa­cific broke away on the south and east and have drifted far away since that day.

• marine life evolved in

59:6.9The grad­ual cool­ing of the ocean wa­ters con­tributed much to the de­struc­tion of oceanic life. The ma­rine an­i­mals of those ages took tem­po­rary refuge in three fa­vor­able re­treats: the pres­ent Gulf of Mex­ico re­gion, the Ganges Bay of In­dia, and the Si­cil­ian Bay of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin. And it was from these three re­gions that the new ma­rine species, born to ad­ver­sity, later went forth to re­plen­ish the seas.

• Black Sea once was an extension of

64:4.10550,000 years ago the ad­vanc­ing glacier again pushed man and the an­i­mals south. But this time man had plenty of room in the wide belt of land stretch­ing north­east into Asia and ly­ing be­tween the ice sheet and the then greatly ex­panded Black Sea ex­ten­sion of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

• creation

64:6.11The or­ange race was the first to fol­low the coast line south­ward to­ward Africa as the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea with­drew to the west. But they never se­cured a fa­vor­able foot­ing in Africa and were wiped out of ex­is­tence by the later ar­riv­ing green race.

• Eden lies submerged under eastern end

78:7.7The rem­nants of this, one of the old­est civ­i­liza­tions, are to be found in these re­gions of Mes­o­po­ta­mia and to the north­east and north­west. But still older ves­tiges of the days of Dala­ma­tia ex­ist un­der the wa­ters of the Per­sian Gulf, and the first Eden lies sub­merged un­der the east­ern end of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea.

• collapse of Gibraltar isthmus

80:2.4About the time of these cli­matic changes in Africa, Eng­land sep­a­rated from the con­ti­nent, and Den­mark arose from the sea, while the isth­mus of Gibral­tar, pro­tect­ing the west­ern basin of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, gave way as the re­sult of an earth­quake, quickly rais­ing this in­land lake to the level of the At­lantic Ocean. Pres­ently the Si­cil­ian land bridge sub­merged, cre­at­ing one sea of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean and con­nect­ing it with the At­lantic Ocean. This cat­a­clysm of na­ture flooded scores of hu­man set­tle­ments and oc­ca­sioned the great­est loss of life by flood in all the world’s his­tory.

80:2.5This en­gulf­ment of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean basin im­me­di­ately cur­tailed the west­ward move­ments of the Adamites, while the great in­flux of Sa­ha­rans led them to seek out­lets for their in­creas­ing num­bers to the north and east of Eden. As the de­scen­dants of Adam jour­neyed north­ward from the val­leys of the Tigris and Eu­phrates, they en­coun­tered moun­tain­ous bar­ri­ers and the then ex­panded Caspian Sea. And for many gen­er­a­tions the Adamites hunted, herded, and tilled the soil around their set­tle­ments scat­tered through­out Tur­kes­tan. Slowly this mag­nif­i­cent peo­ple ex­tended their ter­ri­tory into Eu­rope. But now the Adamites en­ter Eu­rope from the east and find the cul­ture of the blue man thou­sands of years be­hind that of Asia since this re­gion has been al­most en­tirely out of touch with Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

• greatly expanded in 15,000 B.C.

81:1.2It was the great cli­matic and ge­o­logic changes in north­ern Africa and west­ern Asia that ter­mi­nated the early mi­gra­tions of the Adamites, bar­ring them from Eu­rope by the ex­panded Med­i­ter­ra­nean and di­vert­ing the stream of mi­gra­tion north and east into Tur­kes­tan. By the time of the com­ple­tion of these land el­e­va­tions and as­so­ci­ated cli­matic changes, about 15,000 B.C., civ­i­liza­tion had set­tled down to a world-wide stale­mate ex­cept for the cul­tural fer­ments and bi­o­logic re­serves of the And­ites still con­fined by moun­tains to the east in Asia and by the ex­pand­ing forests in Eu­rope to the west.

• few good seaports in eastern

121:2.2Many of the great high­ways join­ing the na­tions of an­tiq­uity passed through Pales­tine, which thus be­came the meet­ing place, or cross­roads, of three con­ti­nents. The travel, trade, and armies of Baby­lo­nia, As­syria, Egypt, Syria, Greece, Parthia, and Rome suc­ces­sively swept over Pales­tine. From time im­memo­rial, many car­a­van routes from the Ori­ent passed through some part of this re­gion to the few good sea­ports of the east­ern end of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, whence ships car­ried their car­goes to all the mar­itime Oc­ci­dent. And more than half of this car­a­van traf­fic passed through or near the lit­tle town of Naz­a­reth in Gal­i­lee.