[ I know that the message below was heade with this request, but
I am going to include large parts of it, for reference purposes;
I do hope that this will not offend Gordon:
"Note: The author of this message requested that it not be archived.
This message will be removed from Groups in 4 days (Sep 9, 5:11 pm). "
<SNIP>
Gordon wrote:
<snip>
The situation seems to have changed when
the polar ice melt and associated rise in sea level
Gordon:
Melting of polar ice was a relatively minor component in
the last deglacial rise in global sea level.
The major component was the melting of ice sheets in
the temperate zones,
i.e. the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets in North America,
and the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet in Europe.
caused the ocean to breach the "dam" at the Strait of Gibraltar,
No, the last "breaching" of the "dam" near Gibraltar was
more than 5 millions of years ago, well before any consideration
of the agricultural potential of the Fertile Crescent.
flooding what is now the Mediterranean Basin, and finally the
Black Sea.
No, there was water in the Black Sea basin continuously from
well before that "breaching, and water in the Black Sea basin at
the time of that "breaching", and continouously from then until now.
Up until this time, the ice melt streams flowing into what is
now the Black Sea Basin were the most abundant source of water
and the life systems that are associated with fresh water.
As above, that is not true, as the last "breaching" of the "dam"
near Gibraltar was well before there was any appreciable amount
of glacial ice near the Black Sea.
The last time that significant amounts of glacial meltwater might
have entered the Black Sea was more than 10,000 years ago,
when the Caspian Sea ovefrflowed into the Black Sea,
which might have been caused by an influx of glacial meltwater
down the Volga River, but the Caspian overflow was brackish,
not fresh.
The last time that significant amounts of glacial meltwater
would have entered the Black Sea directly was more than
50,000 years ago; since then, glacial ice has tended to stay
north of the Baltic Sea / Black Sea drainage divide, and that
Fennoscandian Ice Sheet meltwater flowed westward into
the Atlantic Ocean or northward into the Arctic Ocean.
Although some Alpine meltwater ran down the Danube to
the Black Sea every time the ice cap in Switzerland melted,
this meltwater influx was completely insufficient to change the
Black Sea water from brackish to fresh water.
Rice and wheat both were domesticated in the approximate same
regions, but wheat cultivation did pre-date rice cultivation. Did
wheat cultivation begin in the fertile crescent area or in what
is now the Black Sea basin?
If by "what is now the Black Sea basin" you mean
the Ukrainian continental shelf, on which William Ryan and
Walter Pitman claimed that irrigated agriculture originated
before it was catastrophically flooded about 7500 years ago,
that idea has been disproven: there was no such flood.
Hoping that this helps clarify the situation for you,
Daryl Krupa
P.S.: From what source did you get that history of Gibraltar,
the Mediterranean Sea, and the Black Sea, and polar ice",
please?