Abstract
At around 5000 years BP sea level peaked in the Persian Gulf region at a level of +0.3 m as now determined in Qatar. This coincides with the famous flooding of the ancient city of Ur, originally interpreted as due to local changes in the fluvial system. We can now propose that, in fact, it was the sea level rise that triggered the fluvial reorganization and rise in ground water level that ultimately led to “the flooding of Ur”.
Highlights
When Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s started to excavate the ancient city of Ur in the Chaldees and found evidence of an ancient flooding episode some 5000 years ago (Woolley, 1929), this came as a great surprise at the same time as it could be taken to confirm the old tale of a flooding in the Mesopotamian region at approximately 5000 years ago
This paper present the initial stage of modern sea level studies in Qatar restricted to the NE-section of the coast
If sea level rose to a maximum level at about 5000 cal∙yrs BP, this rise co-insides with the flooding of Ur
Summary
When Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s started to excavate the ancient city of Ur in the Chaldees and found evidence of an ancient flooding episode some 5000 years ago (Woolley, 1929), this came as a great surprise at the same time as it could be taken to confirm the old tale of a flooding in the Mesopotamian region at approximately 5000 years ago. Woolley was very clear in his interpretation, ; dismissing the concept of a general flooding episode in favour of a local event of fluvial reorganization (Woolley, 1929, 1954). Fairbridge, 1961; Mörner, 1971) Each of these rising sea level steps had the potential of being experienced by ancient people as a disastrous “flooding” episode. The flooding of the ancient city of Ur has not been able to be put into the context of sea level changes, . Thanks to the detailed Google images of the coast of Qatar and a short field expedition in April 2006, we believe that we are able to shed new light on the old flooding of the ancient city of Ur by a quite exact quantification of a rise in sea level and its sharp dating by radiocarbon
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