Climate change has existed since the beginning of time

Many years ago, archaeologists found that Dilmun was located in modern-day Bahrain and survived the rise in sea level 11,000 years ago due to its elevation, according to recent findings and excavations.

Sumerian account discovered

The Sumerian account is the first historical chronicle of the flood.

The legend says that the god Enki warned King Ziusudra that the gods decided to send a flood to destroy the human race — probably because of their sins —and advised him to build a huge ship to save what could be saved.

The ship survived seven days of severe storms. When the sun god Utu appeared, Ziusudra opened the window of the ship, kneeled in worship to the gods, and went to dwell in Dilmun, "the place where the sun rises".

The remaining details of the story were lost due to the damage to the clay tablets on which it was written in cuneiform.

But other details appear in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, which recounts that Gilgamesh received an order from the gods to build a ship, leave all his belongings, and only carry seeds aboard the ship.

The ship survived the rain and settled on Mount Nisir. Here again, Dilmun was the final destination, where Gilgamesh fell asleep on the edge of the lake, leaving the herb of immortality for the snake to eat.

Arabian Gulf sea level

Over the past years, geological and archaeological excavations found remains of human settlements at the bottom of Arabian Gulf waters and that sea levels in the Gulf have frequently and sharply risen and fallen over the past 100,000 years.

Shorelines were drawn and erased many times, as evident even now to the naked eye in the marine sediments that make up the shore rocks and even further inland.

These dramatic fluctuations were primarily the result of the ebb and flow of glaciers during successive ice ages. The thick ice sheets trapped huge amounts of water, lowering the level of seas and oceans around the world.

There is evidence that between 36,000 and 10,000 years ago, seawater receded by 110 metres below its current level, leaving the sandy bottom of the Gulf exposed.

At the time, the Gulf was a vast plain irrigated by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flowed directly into the Gulf of Oman. At the bottom of the Gulf, freshwater lakes surrounded by plantings, fields, and forests of fruit trees were formed, according to the findings of a study by Professor Richard Cuttler.

Glacier in the Empty Quarter

Another study carried out a few decades earlier by Professor Hal McClure in the Empty Quarter in southeastern Saudi Arabia proved the existence of a vast glacier that stretched from the Empty Quarter to the Gulf through the mountains of Oman, between 30,000 and 17,000 years ago, across the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Gulf of Oman.

Some 11,000 years ago, the sea gradually began returning to the Gulf, at a rate of 2 to 4 meters yearly. McClure's study showed that coastal glacier remnants remained active between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago when sea levels were rising sharply due to the accelerated melting of ice.

As a result, the island of Bahrain became separated from the mainland 7,000 years ago, as if it had, indeed, become the land of flood survival.

The wet epochs

Studies indicate that the Gulf region witnessed a wet epoch in the Neolithic period (10,000 to 6,000 years ago), with active springs and lakes on the coasts and a slight increase in rainfall as a result.

Clear evidence emerged in eastern Arabia of the formation of small and perhaps seasonal settlements in this period. The settlers were the earliest communities to engage in pearl hunting, which would become the Gulf's most enduring industry, as evidenced by their tools.

The climatic period between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago was proven to have been particularly generous.

This was the era of the rise and development of the fundamental cultural and social phenomenon of trade in Dilmun (present-day Bahrain) and Majan (present-day Oman and the UAE), which were an extension of the Sumerian civilisation and called the land of the sea.

The Gulf wildfires disaster

A remarkable observation was made by some scientists, who noticed that the excessive extraction of copper from the mountains of Oman and the UAE during the Bronze Age came with a hefty cost for the climate.

Copper smelting and alloying required huge amounts of energy over long periods of time, so the country lost its forest cover, in one of the first known man-made environmental disasters in history.

This was one of the main reasons for desertification and rising temperatures in the Oman Peninsula during the following eras, according to researcher Michael Rice in his book "The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf, c. 5000-323 BC."

One of the observations that drew the attention of researchers and archaeological excavation teams is that the sites of the Iron and Hellenistic Ages are located on the eastern side of the Emirate of Sharjah when compared to prehistoric sites.

Climatic and morphological analysis came to confirm that the separation of the coastline led to the expansion of salt lakes before the spread of backfilling. Carbon-14 dating analyses showed that the sea level before the year 1470 was 80 cm higher than now.

As a result of the dry and hot climate, human access to water near the coast became difficult, except for a few places, such as the Ed-Dur Site near the city of Umm Al Quwain.

The harsh and changing climate, coupled with the limitedness of agricultural land and the lack of potable water, shaped the fate of this region, imposing a pattern of production that could not be changed, in terms of the size and type of its population, which lived either from pearling or from maritime and land trade.

Volcanoes in southern Syria

About 6,000 years ago, another environmental catastrophe led to the extinction of the Chalcolithic culture in the southern Levant, specifically in the area extending from southern Damascus in Syria to Irbid in Jordan.

The people of this region were most likely displaced during this period, and several of them possibly died as a result of this disaster.

Geological and archaeological studies observed that the last volcanic eruption in the region occurred in the region of Lajat nearly six millennia ago, which coincides with the extinction of Chalcolithic cultures.

Incredibly, archaeologists found that household necessities, such as labour equipment, heavy farming tools, and even statues, remained intact.

Tsunami of the Sea Peoples

Archaeologists, geologists, and climatologists have also been studying the impact of environmental disasters on the Minoan civilisation in the Aegean Sea in the second half of the Bronze Age, which ended in 1200 BC.

These disasters changed the course of history and led to the emergence of what is known as the Iron Age.

The disaster in the Aegean was attributed to the human depletion of forest cover in the islands of Cyprus, Crete, and elsewhere due to bronze smelting mines that needed huge quantities of timber.

As a result, drought struck the region and epidemics spread, causing famine and the collapse of trade and the economy.

The foods on which the Minoan Empire depended in the northern Black Sea region were suddenly lost as a result of the environmental disaster.

Added to this was the eruption of the famous Thera volcano on the island of Santorini, north of Crete, which triggered a change in the climate and major earthquakes at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

The resulting tsunamis contributed to the collapse of cities on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, especially the Syrian Canaanite city of Ugarit.

These collapses were accompanied by a flow of conquerors and plunderers from the Aegean Sea towards the coasts of the Levant and Egypt, as documented in the Egyptian records on "the invasions of the Sea Peoples".