A Look at Eden:
5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. The Holy Bible: King James Version . (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Ge 2:5–7). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems
Commentators say this:
“The whole passage refers only to Eden and it informs us that it was not a rain country; it was rather a territory watered by river overflow and irrigation.” R Laird Harris, " THE MIST, THE CANOPY, AND THE RIVERS OF EDEN", BULLETIN OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY , Volume 11, No. 4 — Fall 1968 p. 178
Right off, this rules out Mesopotamia about which it could never be said that they didn’t have any rain. Since I place Eden in the deep basin of the desiccated Mediterranean, and since we know, such deep basins get far far less rain than other places on earth because they are in the rain shadow anyway the wind blows, and since the Mediterranean basin was the deepest basin the world has ever seen, it is quite likely that that land never had rain but was only watered by the rivers which poured over the lip.
" The scene opens not with the garden, but with the world outside, termed the adamah This is pictured as an uncultivated, parched region without rainfall, but watered by ground-swells or floods from the earth . (For the discussion of Hebrew ed, “mist,” see articles by Albright and Speiser.) Since there was neither a gardener to care for the soil, nor proper irrigation, the adamah did not produce the “plants of the field.” This implies only the absence of field-crops, not the state of the earth before the third day’s work when all forms of vegetation were created. Von Rad sees the adamah as a “Desert in contrast with the Sown.” Adam was formed not only of the adamah but upon the adamah, before he was placed in the garden. " Arthur H. Lewis, The Localization of the Garden of Eden," Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society, 11:4(1968), p. 170
Let’s look at the word Eden. Commentators say:
" There is general agreement on the derivation of Eden from the Akkadian edinu with the connotation of “plain,” “steppe,” “wilderness.” The homonymous eden of Hebrew for “delight,” or “voluptuousness,” is a tempting, but less likely etymology . Arthur H. Lewis, The Localization of the Garden of Eden," Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society, 11:4(1968), p. 170-171
" The name Eden comes from either an Akkadian word meaning “steppe” or “desert,” edinu, or a West Semitic word that describes “luxury,” “delight,” and abundance, adan ." Mangum, D., Custis, M., & Widder, W. (2012). Genesis 1–11 (Ge 2:4–25). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
it is interesting that when artists draw what the desiccated Mediterranean looked like they draw it like this, as a grass covered plaim. a ste[[e or dry grassland.
This is based upon real paleontological knowledge because hippos and elephants were living on this steppe or plain and they require lots of grass to eat.
Elephants also crossed to Cyprus during this time when the Med was dry. Again, they needed much foliage. After the flood, they like the hippos shrank in size, a common island phenomenon known as Island dwarfism.
Some authors have tried to say that the elephants swam to Cyprus from Turkey at the time of the last glacial maximum, when sea levels were about 100 m lower than today. The problem is that lowering the sealevel by 100 meters doesn’t change the 84 kim distance from Turkey to Cyprus by more than a kilometer or two. Both Turkey and Cyprus’s bathymetry drops deep rapidly offshore. Below is a bathymetry map in meters.
84 km is how long in elephant swim times to an island they don’t know exists?
The longest swim time I have found for elephants is 24 hours and it required 2 to help each other rest on the way.
Also, here is a nice anecdote!:
Amazingly, in the late 1970s, two bulls swam from Zimbabwe’s Spurwing Island across Lake Kariba to Kariba town, a distance of at least 25km. These 20-year-olds took turns to rest, one placing his forelegs on the haunches of his companion in front. Apparently their 24-hour-long trip followed an old elephant migration trail that had been covered by the lake for 25 years!
Both facts are from the website: http://www.africaguide.com/features/trvafmag/005.htm if you wanna check out any more information.
The above is from Swimming elephants (Page 1) - Mammals - Ask a Biologist Q&A
One answer give the max speed, but over 24 hours, no animal can swim at max rate. 1 km per hour for the first 24 hours and probably slower after that. This would mean 3.5 days of swimming for these intrepid elephants to swim there during the glacial low stand.
But let’s say they are correct that the elephants swam there during glaical low stands. The hippos couldn’t have swum there. They don’t swim!
“ For all intents and purposes the hippo does not swim,” said Douglas McCauley, an assistant professor in the department of ecology, evolution, and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It almost always maintains some contact with the bottom and walks or bounces off the bottom using these bottom contact points as a source of propulsion. ” Adrienne LaFrance, “Hippos Can’t Swim–So How Do they Move Through Water?” The Atlantic, April 26, 2017, Hippos Can’t Swim—So How Do They Move Through Water? - The Atlantic
So, was Cyprus above sea level in the late Miocene–the Messinian time? Yes and it formed the refugia for the elephants and hippos during the flood.
The water depths would totally isolate Cyprus from hippos. Besides, Cyprus was biologically isolated.
" The isolation of Cyprus is also indicated by the fact that before the arrival of humans there were only 5 species of endemic terrestrial mammals present on the island, four of which are presently extinct (Hadjisterkotis and Masala, 1995). On the contrary, on the nearby mainland there are large numbers of terrestrial mammalian species (Harrison and Bates, 1991) ." E. Hadjisterkotis "The arrival of elephants on the island of Cyprus and their subsequent accumulation in fossil sites in Elephants in Maya Aranovich and Olivier Dufresne, Editors, Ecology, Behavior and Conservation, Chapter: 2, Publisher: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. January 2012
So if the hippos came down the Nile and found refuge on Cypress after the flood, there is little reason to doubt that the elephants did as well, since elephants are found in basinal sediments from Italy and Sicily, which have been uplifted since the Messinian and are now accessible. One can see many of the animals that lived on that dry ocean bottom here.
Now we know from biogeography that the water drawdown of the Med had to be at least 1200 m. but we know from the Canyon excavated by the Nile in solid granite that the water level had to be 4000 m below sea level for a long while. Why? Rivers don’t cut canyons in granite below sea level.
I am going to take a break. I have something and have spent most of the day in bed. My youngest son, who had been house isolated came to visit last week (and I was not going to deny him that visit). The next day he had a 101+fever, got a covid test (negative but only 63% chance of being correct. He had at the very least pneumonia but is feeling better afer IV antibiotics. Well, This morning, this morning,8 days later, I woke up feeling awful, with a 99.5 and now it is 100.5. If it gets to 101, Im calling the doctor. So, If you see me in a day or two this is nothing. Otherwise until I get back here. I won’t see any replies for a while, I am going back to bed, but I had done the above work, and didn’t want it lost. God’s blessings on yall.