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BOB HIRSHON (host):
Persian Gulf prehistory…I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
Fragments of a lost civilization may lie under the Persian Gulf. This according to archaeologist Jeffrey Rose, at the University of Birmingham in England. He explains that the gulf had plenty of exposed land until about eight thousand years ago. Recently, archaeologists found some early stone tools along the Gulf shore. They don’t look like tools made by nearby Stone Age cultures.
JEFFREY ROSE (University of Birmingham, England):
And my argument is: if there are stone tools there along the shoreline – which is really just the outskirts of what would have been a very fertile zone – chances are they were within the heart of it as well.
HIRSHON:
That may also explain more advanced human settlements, which suddenly appeared around the Gulf shore around the time of the flooding. They may have been set up by the toolmakers’ descendants, after they fled the Gulf basin for higher ground. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.