Reply #37: Not by any historian I ever read

[starroute]

To the extent anyone thinks the Garden of Eden may refer to an actual location, it's associated with the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates.

The second chapter of Genesis says, "There was a river flowing from Eden to water the garden, and when it left the garden it branched into four streams. The name of the first is Pishon . . . The name of the second river is Gihon . . . The name of the third is Tigris . . . The fourth river is the Euphrates."

Not only is this clearly describing the source of the rivers, not their end-points, but there are many lesser rivers in eastern Turkey, where the Tigris and Euphrates begin, which are candidates for identification as the Pishon or Gihon. There are no others down at the Gulf.

Besides, the area of the marshes was underwater all through the late prehistoric and early historical periods.

However, the Persian Gulf may have been a kind of Eden in a different sense. During the Ice Age, when sea levels were lower, it was a fertile, well-watered refuge in a generally frigid and hostile world. It seems likely that the "N" mitochondrial group, which accounts for the female ancestors of all Middle Easterners and Europeans, as well as many Asians and Native Americans, arose in that area as much as 70,000 years ago.