Sumer under water.

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Tue, 23 Jun 1998 19:06:44 -0500

Last night I mentioned that present rates of progradation of the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers would imply that in 4800 BC the
Persian Gulf would have been just shy of 300 miles inland of the
present shoreline. Below is the documentation for that claim. It
reports the discovery of the Hammar formation which is Recent and
thus deposited within the, a marine deposit is found at An Najaf,
which is 250 miles from the present shoreline. An Najaf is near
the ancient city of Nippur. Al Naqib wrote:

"The type section of the Hammar Formation is in BPC well
Zubair No. 31 (lat 30[deg] 31'00" N., Long 47[deg] 36' 34" E.; alt 20.3
ft, completed Oct 24, 1953) between 20 and 31 feet of drilled
depth. The formation is 21 feet thick. This Recent marine
formation occurs in the subsurface sections on the southern
limits of Hawr al Hammar in thenorthern sector of the Zubair oil
field, where the type seciton is located.
"Eastward across the Shaat al Arab, north of Bandar Shapur,
Thomas (in Lees and Falcon, 1952) reported a succession of marine
shelly silts overlain by fresh- or brackish-water silts
containing ostracodes. The brackish-water silts total at least
20 feet in thickness, and the lower marine silts are possibly 60
feet thick. On thenortheast side of Hawr Al Hammar, this
formation was found in the Nahr Umr wells, close to the Shatt al
Arab, where it consists of 32 feet of shell marl containing
lamellibranchs, gastropods, bryozoans, and other forms in a fauna
almost identical wwith that of the other forms in a fauna almost
identical with that of the Hammar Formation in the type section.
According to Hudson and others (1957), this formation extends as
far south as Al Faw (FA0), in the extreme south of Iraq, where a
number of water wells were drilled in soft silts to a depth of 30
feet. They stated that 'the general succession was one of a
lower marine silt with abundant shells and an upper silt with
ostracodes and occasional crab debris, probably estuarine. There
was a slight difference between the succession in the various
wells, the greatest thickness of the estuarine silt being 20 feet
(well No. 3) and that of the marine silts being 30 feet (well No.
2).' The fauna of the marine silts is that of the Hammar
Formation.
"The only evidence of the northward extension of this
formation, according to Hudson and others (1957), is that of W.
A. Macfadyen (in Lees and Falcon, 1952) who reported 35 feet of
alluvium with marine Foraminifera at Al Amarah, 95 miles north-
northwest of Al Basrah. Mitchell (1958) discovered a Recent
marine fauna near An Najaf at altitudes of 40.7 to 41.3 meters
above present sea level." ~ K. M. Al Naqib, Geology of the
Arabian Peninsula, Southwestern Iraq, (Washington: United States
Government Printing Office, 1967), p. G47

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm