Was the Garden of Eden located in Eastern Turkey in the Early Bronze Age?

The former Soviet Union block countries spent more on archaeological research in the twentieth century than any other nation.  Much of their work was considered suspect in the west, however, because of the Marxist-Leninist philosophical bias.  In recent years some of the most important research has been examined collaboratively by western researchers to yield exciting and important new insights.  Karen Rubinson and Adam Smith state in their introductory chapter of Archaeology in the Borderlands (p. 2) "For example, during the fourth and third millennia BC, the Kura-Araxes (or Early Transcaucasian) ceramic horizon, which centered in the "borderlands," extended southwest as far as the Euphrates headwaters (and arguably into the northern Levant where it manifested in the Khirbet-Kerak tradition), southeast to the central Zagros (Godin Tepe), and north to the intersection of the Caucus and Eurasian steppe.  The Kura-Araxes was by far the most geographically dispersed horizon style in Pre-Achaemenid southwest Asia.  Yet the region's perceived peripheral status to Mesopotamia continues to condition the production of general historical theory in the region"...  Could the true location of the biblical Garden of Eden be one of the benefits?  

Mitchell S. Rothman's chapter 4 article, "Ripples in the Stream: Transcaucasia-Anatolian Interaction in the Murat-Euphrates Basin at the beginning of the Third Millennium BC" (IN Archaeology in the Borderlands - Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond, Adam T. Smith and Karen S. Rubinson eds 2003) discusses different aspects of the Kura-Araks Horizon which shared the area with at least two other pottery types. 

Rothman has developed a map showing Early Bronze Age pottery without Dimple or Groove and Early Transcaucasia with Groove, Dimple or groove. Ruben S. Badalyan, Adam T. Smith and Pavel S. Avetisyan's Chapter 7 article of Archaeology in the Borderlands, "The Emergence of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Caucasia: An Interim Report on the Research of project ArAGATS" where they speak (pp. 150ff) of the Kura-Araxes collapse in the advent of the Middle Bronze age - when all settlement seems to have disappeared from the area.  Could this equate with the Biblical expulsion from the Garden of Eden?  They document (pp. 151f.) different explanations which have been advanced for the collapse including Kushnareva's (1997:207-208) synthesis where a transition to pastoralism-centred in mountain zones rather than on the highland margins exploited in the Early Bronze Age, perhaps driven by a newly arid climate, was exacerbated by new waves of migration."  Badalyan et al take exception to the "relatively poorly assayed climatic change" but I wondered about the possibility of major volcanic activity.  According to the Smithsonian Institute "Volcanoes of the World website for Mount Ararat: (http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0103-04-) "pyroclastic-flow deposits overlie Early Bronze Age artifacts and human remains"  This pyroclastic-flow from the 5165 metre high strato volcano known as Mount Ararat (which rises a magnificent 4165 metres above the surrounding plain) might explain the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning of Genesis 3:24 "He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life." Other volcanic activities to the east and west may also have contributed to this description.

I have thus been reading Archaeology in the Borderlands and have been finding it very informative. Karen Rubinson recommended to me that I consult A View from the Highlands: Archaeological Studies in Honour of Charles Burney, edited by Antonio Sagona, supplement 12 in the series Ancient Near Eastern Studies Peeters Press, 2004, 758 pp.  As David Brown say in their promotional bump: Interest in the mountainous regions of the Syro-Mesopotamian plain came relatively late in the development of Near Eastern archaeology. In the psyche of scholars, who were attracted initially to the civilizations of the lowlands, the edge of the rugged highland terrain formed a disciplinary boundary as much as a geographical one. While an initial spurt of interest in the ancient 'mountain cultures' of Anatolia was expressed in the early 1900s, it was short-lived. Subsequently, archaeological explorations in the highest altitudes in Anatolia languished until the 1950s and the arrival of Charles Burney, who through a series of pioneering projects rediscovered the Kingdom of Urartu and prepared solid foundations for the future study of earlier periods. Always probing and speculative, Charles Burney has been a source of inspiration for archaeologists working in the highlands of east Anatolia, Trans-Caucasus and north-west Iran. Despite the difficulties that modern political boundaries presented in this geographically broken terrain, he has managed to offer engaging accounts of its pre-classical past without ever loosing sight of its human element. The essays gathered in this volume are a reflection of an archaeological community that wishes to pay tribute to a scholar whose panoramic vision of antiquity is rivaled only by the wide extent of his generosity, expressed in so many ways, to fellow workers in the field. Although this is a substantial volume of essays, written by pupils, friends and colleagues, the contributors are merely representatives of a much larger number who join them in honoring him."  G.L. Kavtardze's "The Chronology of the Caucasus during the Early Metal Age" (pp. 539-556) provides much helpful background as do many of the other articles.  

Although referring specifically to the site of Godin in the Zagros mountains southest of modern Turkey in Iran, Mitchell Rothman makes an interesting statement that also applies to eastern Anatolia and the Garden of Eden ("Issues of the Uruk and Transcaucasian Cultures at Godin" IN T. Cuyler Young, Jr. Festschrift 2005 The Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies, Bulletin 40, September 2005, pp. 9-10):

"The roughly one and a half millenia from the fourth to the mid-third millenium B.C., ... certainly witnessed the greatest changes in social, economic, political and ideological structures since Neolithic times.  The fourth millenium was when true cities, states, writing, the idea of kingship, the ascension of chief gods, not to mention political subjugation, taxes, forced labour, slavery, and large-scale, technically intensive warfare evolved.  The third millenium saw the development of of the first territorial states and empires, new metal production technologies, and giant steps away from the social arrangements of the Chalcolithic world.  As part of these third millenium changes, Godin was incorporated into a new kind of expansion, one from the north, the Early Transcaucasian Culture"...

Rothman speaks of new theories which have been developed, encompassing both a large geography and an analytical frame to account for the new evidence of widespread systematic economic, political and social contacts.  He says further (p. 10): 

"What the last two decades of scholarship have also taught us is that these were periods when change had to be understood in a regional frame.  Certainly from the Upper Palaeolithic onward contact and movement of goods was common.  For example, Red Sea dentalium shells are found throughout Mesopotamia at that early date (Henry 1989:130).  During this early period, much of this movement of goods probably consisted of down-the-line exchange (Renfrew et al 1969).  In this type of exchange those closest to the source have the greatest amount of raw material, some of which they keep and the rest they exchange to nearby settlements - and so it goes down the line with each stage along the way having a smaller starting quantity.  By the fourth and third millenia B.C., however, formal long distance trading systems developed and large-scale population movements over a wide area began."

Trade goods and pottery types are typical of this new regional cultural, economic and political development:  Southern Mesopotamian Uruk culture appears in the north while Early Transcaucasian Culture (ETC) appears in eastern Anatolia and western Iran.  The Early Transcaucasians of the Kura Araxes basins are seen to have been seeking access to pasture and farm land, although contact may have started through trading in metals.  For southern Mesopotamia, the impetus was access to raw materials from metal ores to semi-precious stones.  Initially a 'world system' of an economically and politically dominant, resource-rich core verse a politically weak but resource-rich periphery was proposed by Algaze (1993) to explain the Uruk expansion.  During roughly the same time period, largely handmade, burnished red-black ETC wares appear across what Kelly Buccellati terms the Outer Fertile Crescent of the Zagros, Taurus and Transcaucasia.  This latter phenomenon was usually seen as a migration rather than economic or cultural domination (Sagona 1984, Rothman 2003, Batiuk 2005).  It should be noted, however, that Stephen Batiuk's 2005 University of Toronto doctoral thesis (Migration Theory and the Distribution of the Early Transcaucasian Culture) is being presented as related to the origins of viticulture and wine production (see for example his 2006 presentation at the British Museum Transanatolia Conference,  “Early Bronze Age in the Amuq: Inter-regional relationships of the Red Black Burnished Ware Culture”).  

Rothman argues that the initial 'world system' analysis for Uruk and ETC is faulty.  He uses excavation data from Godin and elsewhere to argue for the complexity of intercultural relations.  Rothman argues that the Uruk 'phenomenon' began in Late Chacholithic 3 and that this period was closest to Algaze's model.  Rothman states further (p.13-14):

"The ETC migration presents a different picture in some ways from the Uruk expansion, but the two phenomenon also share some similar elements (figure 2b).  Studies from other areas make a case for waves of migrants from the core of ETC culture (Rothman 2003b, Batiuk 2005).  The migration appears to have been led by pastoral nomads, who in part traded with centres like Arslantepe in the Kura Araks I period of the mid-late fourth millenium (Palumbi 2003).  Throughout the Kura Araks II (Early Bronze I-IIa) people were "pulled" to the west, but also began to fill in the areas where pastoralism, small farmers, and transhumant lifestyles fit the environment best.  In Kura-Araks III, the generations that had emigrated earlier moved into more optimal environments and assimilated to some extent into existing populations.  At this point trade brought ETC pottery styles into steppe area sites on the Euphrates and Tigris."...  

Batiuk argues that this very possibly fits the introduction of vitaculture and winemaking.  Perhaps this relates to the statement in Genesis 2:9ff. about not eating fruit from the tree of Life (hayim in Hebrew) which is close to the sound of the Hebrew word for wine with the article (hayin).

Rothman cites Henry Wright's (2001) statement about the Uruk period that a time span equivalent of the period from the Crusades to the First World War is indicated, and adds (p. 10, citing Sagona 2000, Kiguradze and Sagona 2003):

"New evidence from Pulur and Sos Höyük in Ezurum, in eastern Turkey indicates that what we are subsuming under the rubric of Early Transcaucasian Culture lasted even longer, certainly from 3500 B.C. to 1600 B.C."...

Thus perhaps, the biblical traditions of Genesis date from this later period when the ETC culture met with the culture of northern Mesopotamia.

The possibility of an eruption of Mount Arrarat precipitating this was stimulated by reading A. Karakhanian, R. Djrbashian, V. Trifonov, H. Philip, S. Arakelian, A. Avagian, "Holocene-historical volcanism and active faults as natural risk factors for Armenia and adjacent countries" (IN Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 113 (2002) p. 317-44) which speaks of a Koura Arax site buried by pyroclastic tuff deposits north of Mount Ararat.  In their article, they state that it was a Russian mining engineer, P.F. Petrov who in 1914 excavated a ridge formed by the pyroclastic tuff deposits of Ararat.   

According to their recent article, in the northern part of his two excavations, called "clayey town", under a thick stratum of organic cinder and ashes, underneath the pyroclastic rock layer, Petrov discovered a stratum containing the remains of dwellings, broken bricks, carbonized timber, human and animal bones, and numerous household articles - ceramics, obsidian tools, grain grinders, mortars, etc.  Petrov said the cinder stratum was so thick the local population was using it to fertilize fields and was actually destroying it quite rapidly.  These ceramics and other articles have been dated "with confidence" to the Early Bronze Age Koura-Arax settlement horizon.  At his second southern site, "Tomb mount", Petrov found numerous graves in the pyroclastic tuff deposits dating to the Urartian period.  However, the large number of household utensils, carbonized timber remains, human and animal bones in the northern excavated site are said to attest that the volcanic eruption occurred within the populated period of Koura-Arax  According to A. Karakhanian, et al (p. 337), "Thus, the volcanic catastrophe may date back to 2500-2400 B.C. settlement and ended with a catastrophe for the latter." 

There is apparently more in a Bulletin of the Georgian Academy of Sciences 1944 article by B.A. Kouftin to whom the above refer as the source of their information on Petrov and of whom they state (p. 334), "In the work of Kouftin (1944), we found the most accurate and best supported information related to the historical volcanism on Ararat.  That was the first publication describing archaeological artifacts belonging to the Koura-Arax culture of the early Bronze Age.  Later, numerous archaeological data proved that the culture spread across the entire Caucasus , Eastern Anatolia and northern Iran .  Recognized as a fundamental classic for the Koura-Arax culture archaeology, Kouftin's work (1944) is extremely important to support the fact of a historical eruption from the Ararat volcano."  I have not been able to find this work available here in English.  The CISTI reference here seems to indicate there may be an English version...  Ludmila Gverdtsiteli of the Georgian publishers has referred me to two Georgian scientists, George Fayvush and Kamilla Tamanyan.  Karakhanian et al include drawings from the original excavation (?) plus a SPOT satellite image which they claim shows the excavation sites of Petrov (Fig. 14 above).  

I was originally hoping to line this up with the palynological samples cores from the bottom of nearby Lake Van taken in the 1970s but according to the published data from van Zeist and Woldring the only really prominent event was c. 3600 BP measured by the varve counts.  This is dated as 1662 BCE in more extensive core sample results for Lake Van, published by  E.T. Degens, H.K. Wong and S. Kempe, Hamburg, F. Kurtman, Konya, in their "A Geological Study of Lake Van, Eastern Turkey". (Geologische Rundschau, 1984 73: 701-734) : Figure 8 .  Modern C14 calibration, however, has led to a much earlier projection of this date, based also on the assumption that earthquakes have jumbled and blurred the boundaries between layers.  Also, although Lake Van is a little more than 100 km west of Mount Ararat, another strato volcano located less than 10 kilometres to the north west of Lake Van, Nemrut Dagi, is a much more likely candidate for the volcanic ash layers in Lake Van.  Nemrut Dagi is

believed to have erupted 16 times between 8104 BCE and 1692 CE.  

A North American parallel to the Nemrut Dagi eruption is the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state.  During the 9 hours of vigorous eruptive activity, about 540 million tons of ash fell over an area of more than 22,000 square miles. The total volume of the ash before its compaction by rainfall was about 0.3 cubic mile, equivalent to an area the size of a football field piled about 150 miles high with fluffy ash. 

Prevailing winds perhaps make it unlikely that the ancient pyroclastic flow down Mount Ararat would have left a significant impact on Lake Van sediment layers, however, (cf. http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Maps/may18_ashmap.html).  Prospects for Lake Sevan are perhaps no more promising.  Ian Wilkinson of the British Geological Survey and S.Z. Gulakyan of the Seismogeochemical and Analytical Center of National Survey for Seismic Protection, Republic of Armenia note the magnitude of seismic disruptions in their 2002 paper, "Environmental instability and the Holocene ecosystem of Lake Sevan, Armenia" In: Leroy, S. & Stewart, I.S. (Eds) Environmental Catastrophes and Recovery in the Holocene. Abstracts Volume. Brunel University, west London (UK), 27 August – 2 Septermber 2002.

Nemrut Dagi is the westernmost of a group of volcanoes located near Lake Van in eastern Anatolia and the only one that is said to have erupted in historical time. Nemrut Dagi contains a 9 x 5 km caldera partially filled on its western side by a caldera lake. Post-caldera volcanism, of basaltic to rhyolitic composition, initially occurred along the caldera rim and floor. Pyroclastic flows and the emission of glassy obsidian lava flows accompanied construction of lava domes within the caldera; later activity formed a series of cinder cones and lava domes erupted along N-S-trending fissures on the northern flank. The most recent activity has been concentrated along a NNW-tending fissure cutting the eastern caldera floor and extending beyond the north caldera rim; nearly two dozen cinder cones and lava domes were constructed on the caldera floor. Ash layers in Lake Van document numerous Holocene eruptions, and an historical eruption in 1441 AD from a north-flank fissure involved compositionally bimodal lava flows.  According to the Smithsonian Institute Volcanoes of the World website (http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0103-02=&VErupt=Y&VSources=Y&VRep=N&VWeekly=N&volpage=erupt) these eruptions of Nemrut Dagi have been as follows (again based on the now disputed 1970's varve counting):