Did the Euphrates Originally Empty into the Mediterranean?
The changing currents of scientific discovery
The Euphrates River today. Credit: Bertramz, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The Euphrates River was one of the great arteries of the ancient Near East. Flowing from modern-day Turkey through Syria and Iraq before joining the Tigris and emptying into the Persian Gulf, it supported some of the world’s earliest cities and empires. Many of the cultures that emerged along its banks intersect with the historical and literary background of the Bible.
A recent study proposes that the Euphrates may have emerged only within the last few million years, through the merger of two river systems that once flowed in a completely different direction. According to a team of researchers led by Andrew S. Madof, these rivers originally flowed southwest across Anatolia and emptied into the eastern Mediterranean rather than southeast toward the Persian Gulf as the Euphrates does today.
The team’s conclusions are based on multiple lines of evidence. The researchers examined underground images of rock layers beneath the Mediterranean Sea, studied satellite maps of the landscape, and traced how movement along major fault lines in modern Turkey may have altered river courses over millions of years.
The most important evidence comes from two enormous sediment deposits buried beneath the eastern Mediterranean. The authors argue those deposits result from two ancient rivers that emptied there, which correspond roughly with the two headwater tributaries of the modern Euphrates: the Karasu and Murat rivers. The team argues that, during the Late Miocene (about 5–10 million years ago), these rivers flowed independently and southwestward into the Mediterranean basin.
River courses of the Tigris and Euphrates today. Credit: Kmusser, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5.
After mapping the deposits via underground imaging techniques, the researchers found they are thickest right where the rivers would have splashed into the Mediterranean. Also, one of the deposits (the Handere deposit) had been analyzed in a previous study, and the team found the same kinds of rock fragments present there as were present upstream at the headwaters. They argue the “Palaeo-Karasu” river carried that sedimentary material down into the Mediterranean.
The study places the two rivers during the Messinian Salinity Crisis, a dramatic geological event between about 5.97 and 5.33 million years ago when the Mediterranean became partially cut off from the Atlantic Ocean and water levels dropped. During this interval, the authors argue, the Palaeo-Karasu and Palaeo-Murat rivers delivered enormous quantities of sediment into the Mediterranean.
To estimate the size and power of these ancient rivers, the team calculated the volume of the deposits and estimated how quickly they accumulated. Surprisingly, the results suggest that although the ancient drainage basins were much smaller than those of the modern Euphrates or the Nile, the rivers may have carried enormous amounts of water and sediment. Such discharge rates imply wetter conditions, greater relief, and more intense precipitation than previous reconstructions of the region have suggested.
So why did the rivers shift course from southwest to southeast and come to run into each other? The authors argue that tectonic activity gradually diverted both river systems. Movements along major fault systems, including the East Anatolian and North Anatolian faults, altered regional topography and redirected river flow. Eventually the two systems merged and began flowing toward the Persian Gulf, forming the modern Euphrates River about 1.6 million years ago.
The authors argue that the processes that shaped the Euphrates also helped create the alluvial landscapes of the Fertile Crescent. For students of the Bible, the study does not alter the historical setting of ancient Israel, which emerged only within the last few thousand years. By the time the biblical kingdoms arose, the Euphrates had already assumed its modern course. Nevertheless, the study provides valuable insight into the deeper geological history of one of the world’s most important rivers.
Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.
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Interesting that what the journal article proposes (that the flow of the Euphrates originally emptied into the Mediterranean Sea) may partially confirm the previous theory of some involving reversal of river flow (and likely also magnetic poles) at the time of Noah’s flood – such that Eden was located in what is now the Persian Gulf.
I read your article related to the new location of the Euphrates River relocation from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf over the course of millions of years.
How is this possible when the earth is only close to seven thousand years old?
The days mentioned in Genesis One are regular 24 hour days. God created in 6 original, 24 hour days, not million of years.
If your going to associate with the Bible, you need to be careful and accurate.