Together with his “twin” Tigers – we all know – the Euphrates river it was the cradle of Middle Eastern civilization, of that region formerly known as Mesopotamia (today mostly Iraq). But now, finally, scientists have discovered its real origin: the discovery is the result of research led byUniversity of Oxford (United Kingdom).
Scientists, in particular, have studied the role that these waterways had in providing fresh water to the Mediterranean during the “Messinian salinity crisis” and how tectonic activity has diverted its course towards the Persian Gulf, demonstrating that the river Euphrates had originates from two distinct river systems which flowed into the Mediterranean about 5.5 million years ago.
The Euphrates River and the “Messinian salinity crisis”
The river was a fundamental lifeblood for early civilizations, shaping the Mesopotamia and the ancient cities of Babylon, Mari and Nippur. And still the waterway, the longest in Western Asia, is aimportant regional waterway crossing Türkiye, Syria and Iraq.
It currently flows into the ocean in Persian Gulfbut some recent studies suggest that it originally flowed into the eastern Mediterranean, during a critical period in the region’s geological history.
5.5 million years ago, in particular, the Mediterranean was experiencing theMessinian salinity crisis“, a period in which enormous quantities of salt, often kilometers thick, were deposited on the sea floor. Producing such a quantity of salt requiredmassive evaporation of sea water, although there has long been debate as to whether this was caused by a large-scale drop in sea level or whether evaporation was balanced by periodic inflows of fresh water.
Actually one 2019 study confirmed the first hypothesis: the discovery of sediments (the deposits of Handere And Nahr Menashe) above the Messinian salt deposits indicated in fact theexistence of a river system in that periodsuggesting that sea levels dropped by about a kilometer, turning much of what is now the Mediterranean Sea into a salty, dried-up desert.
However, there remained one further mystery: There are no major rivers running through the area today, so which river was carrying these sediments across the dried-up Mediterranean?
The new research
This new research used previously collected data to link the origin of these sediments to rivers Paleo-Karasu And Paleo-Muratancient waterways that flowed from Anatolia to the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the salinity crisis of Messinianpouring huge volumes of water and sediment into the basin and forming the offshore geology we see today.
The findings offer new perspectives on how large river systems respond to combined changes in tectonics, base level and climate – explains Claudia Bertoni, co-author of the study – and on how these processes shaped the physical landscape that later supported early human civilizations
The team also found that about five million years ago the tectonic activity has reshaped the landscapecausing it displacement of the downstream sections of the two river systems away from the Mediterranean and their confluence into what we know today as the river Euphrateswhich flows into the Persian Gulf.
The ancestral Euphrates flowed a few tens of kilometers from the Nile and discharged larger volumes of sediment into the sea. The results provide therefore also valuable information on the geography of the eastern Mediterranean during a period of marked environmental change.
This study demonstrates the key role of tectonics in the development of the Fertile Crescent – reports Richard Walker, who collaborated on the research – The Fertile Crescent is the name given to the large band of territory in which agriculture and complex societies first developed, and its evolution depends on the great Euphrates and Tigris rivers that cross it. Without the reorganization of the course of the Euphrates and its diversion from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, the environment of the region, and therefore much of our history, could have been very different
The work was published on Nature Geosciences.
