Persian Gulf

79:3.7The Dra­vid­i­ans were among the ear­li­est peo­ples to build cities and to en­gage in an ex­ten­sive ex­port and im­port busi­ness, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were mak­ing reg­u­lar trips to dis­tant Mes­o­po­ta­mia; Dra­vid­ian ship­ping was push­ing coast­wise across the Ara­bian Sea to the Sume­rian cities of the Per­sian Gulf and was ven­tur­ing on the wa­ters of the Bay of Ben­gal as far as the East In­dies. An al­pha­bet, to­gether with the art of writ­ing, was im­ported from Sume­ria by these sea­far­ers and mer­chants.

73:3.1The com­mit­tee on lo­ca­tion was ab­sent for al­most three years. It re­ported fa­vor­ably con­cern­ing three pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions: The first was an is­land in the Per­sian Gulf; the sec­ond, the river lo­ca­tion sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied as the sec­ond gar­den; the third, a long nar­row penin­sula—al­most an is­land—pro­ject­ing west­ward from the east­ern shores of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea.

78:8.2It was dur­ing the flood­times that Susa so greatly pros­pered. The first and lower city was in­un­dated so that the sec­ond or higher town suc­ceeded the lower as the head­quar­ters for the pe­cu­liar artcrafts of that day. With the later diminu­tion of these floods, Ur be­came the cen­ter of the pot­tery in­dus­try. About seven thou­sand years ago Ur was on the Per­sian Gulf, the river de­posits hav­ing since built up the land to its pres­ent lim­its. These set­tle­ments suf­fered less from the floods be­cause of bet­ter con­trol­ling works and the widen­ing mouths of the rivers.

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.