My answer was Lake Oremiyeh. And the second river, Gihon, would not be the Blue Nile, but the variously named Uizhun or Serid Rud, just south of Lake Oremiyeh. As far as I was concerned, this is quite a neat solution for a biblical puzzle: Lake Oremiyeh is in fact a self-contained Lake, and has no outlets to the sea. Consequently, like the Dead Sea, it is a salt lake. It is nevertheless fertile, but clearly such a self-contained system cannot be over-exploited. This led to a very plausible about the Fall being the result of over-exploitation of the apple: THE BIG APPLE?
but almost immediately I became sceptical: why? Well, in the midst of such details about the four rivers, why no mention of the lake itself?
Now in this article I shall not attempt to solve this problem, but I shall turn to another legend, that of Noah's Ark. When linguists start studying new languages, they come across an abundances of fables and folk-lore. And often one can verify that certain events actually happened... not just the Flood legend in Asia, but in times past Tasmania was linked to mainland Australia. But sometimes there is a mystery, and often there are stories that are clearly 'wrong', perhaps supernatural and/or perhaps inconsistent. How can a garden span both the Tigris and the Blue Nile? Here we have either inconsistency or the supernatural or both.
This is where single-peg reasoning comes in. You are trying to erect a tent on difficult terrain. All you can do is start with the least problematic place to hammer in, and then wriggle the other ones around.
I am going to start with a very sensible and pragmatic 'peg': the waters did not rise above the level of the mountain-tops, but instead water came down the mountains after a mini-ice-age, or ground-water burst out from mountains with earth-quakes in NE Turkey and Armenia. This has to be relevant when for example we ask about the Ark's shape or 'itinerary'. There are two theories for each: onr the rectangular gopher ark favoured in the Bible, the other a basket-ware circular vehicle - from Mesopotamian fables.
So where did it land? If water rushed down the mountains, then my preferred theory would be favoured: the Ark was placed near Erzurum on the watershed between the Euphrates and the Araxes, which runs into the Caspian Sea, partly bordering Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran. The ark, I believe of reasonably robust basketware, would have sailed down the Araxes and landed at Nahchevan, actually meaning Noah's landing-place, where floods would have receded. I think weather conditions were appropriate for around 3900BC, the end of the Ubaid Culture. And I think there were immigrations similar to those described post-Noah.
But the alternative has Noah landing the Ark on Mount Cudi (pron. Judy) near where the Tigris flows out of SE Turkey. This would accord with the 'rising-up' account. And there appears to be a more-or-less rectangular edifice up this mountain, dated ca. 2900BC, perhaps closer to another min-ice-age event.
My belief is that both arks were used, ca. 1000 years apart, separated by the Uruk Culture when the Sumerians appeared. The basket-ware boats were I believe built for river-trade, and subsequent to the 3900 flood the commercial value of the larger boats would have been realised and led to their use up many major rivers from the Danube to the Oxus (Amu Darya).
A thousand years later the gopher-type rectangular boats would have evolved, and so too would the 'rising-up' legend. So when climate took a turn for the worse, they put craft up the mountains, and the waters did not rise but fell, immersing boats before they could float away. This I believe is the fate of the Mount Cudi craft.
Thus my example of single-peg reasoning: it might home in very quickly on a solution, or it may lead to an interesting range of alternative hypotheses. In other words wriggling the other pegs round.
