The Location of the Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden is a mythical place spoken of in the traditions of Abrahamic Religion — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — that is believed to be the original homeland of humanity. The Location of the Garden of Eden itself has been a subject of much speculation, perhaps from antiquity.

It was there, in the fabled Garden of Eden, that Adam, the first human being, was created. His wife Eve, a short while later, as a companion. It was also in the Garden of Eden that Eve was said to have been tricked by the serpent to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and convinced her husband, Adam, to do the same.

The consequences of this direct defiance of God’s will were severe. As the story goes, humanity lost the gift of immortality, the chances to be as one of the gods. (Yes, it is plural in the Bible.) In addition to living a shortened span of years, experiencing disease, pain during childbirth, and a hole host of tribulations that we now suffer.

While this myth is based on earlier Sumerian and Akkadian legends (which are different in important ways) I believe that there is a heart of historical truth to these recollections. That the garden was a real place, an ancestral homeland, and that the Location of the Garden of Eden can be found.

Tracing The Origins of the Story

While I do not put any historical emphasis on the Garden of Eden tale as a whole (because I known the Sumerian traditions the tale came from, which I will expand upon slightly below) I believe there to be solid reasons — and evidence of a kind — to consider the Garden of Eden as an historical place. Not the homeland of all humanity (which would take us back to before 300,000 BCE in Africa) but an ancient, prehistoric homeland of a people, tribe, and civilization.

I approach this tale as a myth — not as an historical fact — for a number of reasons. First, for all who have studied Sumerian and Akkadian Religion (as well as the younger Babylonian Religion whose tradition, culture, knowledge, and even ethnic roots trace direct descent from their Sumerian ancestors) the parallels between Sumerian Religion and the central pillars of Abrahamic Religion found in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are obvious.

The existence of a class of supernatural beings that are later called Elohim in ancient Hebrew — known as the Angels among English speakers today — is a clear continuation of the traditions of Sumerian Religion. Only the Sumerians called them the Anuna, and their Akkadian neighbours (the ancestors of the Jews since the Biblical patriarch Abraham himself was an Akkadian man) called them the Anunnaki in their Semitic tongue.

The Anuna were gods, plural, although we really don’t have any frame of reference for what that means. That itself is a historical mystery that is overlooked, because for some strange reason most human cultures have an instinctive, subconscious, cultural understanding of that word. When we refer to “gods” most people have their own mental image to fall back onto (even if today it might be heavily influenced by modern superhero, fantasy, and sci-fi genres more than ancient religions).

The Anuna was literally a Tribe of Gods. The patriarch of their clan was An — the chief Sumerian deity, who the Akkadians called Anu — whom they are collectively named after. There was a defined hierarchy among the Anuna, just like there was among the Elohim version of later times. Enlil and Enki were the sons of An, who together were part of an important group of seven in the Original Pantheon, along with Inanna, Utu, Nanna, and Ninhursag. With many other named deities (and potentially thousands of unnamed) below the seven.

The major difference between Sumerian Religion and Hebrew Religion when we are talking about the core theological framework, was that the Jews transitioned to monotheism. They elevated their chief god to the status of a single, omniscient, omnipresent, universal deity, and essentially demoted the Anuna from the status of “gods” to lesser divinities, “angels”. Divine, yet slightly less so. Yet even the names Anuna and Elohim to this day mean the same thing: “the princely sons of Anu” and the “Princely Sons of YHWH”.

The significance of this in connection with the Garden of Eden story, is that within Sumerian literature we have the archetype for not just angels, but what probably became the Adam and Evea couple thousand years later. There are a handful of Sumerian myths that contain details found in the Garden of Eden story. One such account is the Myth of Adapa. While Adapa was not the first human, he was the archetype of the ideal human, one who possessed the best qualities of our species. He was brought before the Most High, and in a tale involving the Food of Life and Water of Life, the Sumerian Adapa also lost humanity the gift of immortality, just as Adam and Eve did. While there are distinct differences, the similarities are even more glaring. It is easy to see how the memory of a tale can change after the Jews had preserved it in oral tradition for almost 2000 years, in their wayward wanderings and exiles from various homelands.

So while I do not personally see a reason to believe the literal rendition of the Adam and Eve story, in a number of different senses, this does not mean that there is not a core of historical truth in the tale. Just as there might be some type of historical truth in the myth of Adapa.

Placing The Garden of Eden In Time

Removing Adam, Eve, the serpent, and the alleged consequences from the story, all I want to focus on is the actual Garden of Eden. In my opinion, there is a very real possibility that this “garden” did exist in some form. However, I only care about it in the most general of senses: simply as an ancient, ancestral homeland of some kind.

The only problem is, which homeland is being referred to? And whose?

More importantly, where in time is the garden?

The problem with mythology in general is that we often have no idea whatsoever how old certain myths are. Literally zero clue, and usually no facts to stand upon with which to get a clue. It is very rare that we are given an opportunity in World Mythology to be able to definitely date certain parts of myth, because we need other details in conjunction with a tale that can be dated.

This is the case with the Great Flood Tradition found throughout World Mythology. We can date all genuine references to the global period of flooding to the End of the Last Ice Age — when the world flooded on a global scale, sea-levels rising about 130 meters. This is the reality of the Flood Tradition. Meaning that every memory of the Great Flood, which are found in traditions around the entire planet, date back to at least around the end of the Younger Dryas c.9,700 BCE.

This is also the case for the references in Norse Mythology to both the Great Flood and the Last Ice Age. Luckily, we have a similar frame of reference for the Garden of Eden story. We have details that can potentially help us to narrow down a timeline.

Clues In The Name

The first clue is in the name of the garden itself, Eden. This is not a Hebrew name. This, in point of fact, is the Romanized (and now English) word. In Hebrew the term is גַּן־עֵדֶן (gan-Eden), but is also known as גַּן־יְהֹוֶה‎ (gan-YHWH), and גַן־אֱלֹהִים (gan-Elohim). Respectively, the Garden of God and the Garden of Angels.

(Although my Hebrew is worse than that of a small child — to say nothing of Biblical Hebrew — just as we do not know for certain the correct pronunciation of יְהֹוֶה ‎(YHWH, read from right-to-left) which could be YeHoWaH / YeHoVaH or YaHWeH, I do not believe we can be certain of the pronunciation of either Elohim or Eden for the same reason. Note to future humans — if you create a script, make sure to write the vowels!)

Even for the Hebrew people in ancient times, when they were composing the Bible in the final centuries BCE from the stories they had preserved orally for more than a thousand years, the word was already an ancient relic from their ancestors. A further proof of the connection between Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hebrew religions.

Long before the Hebrew language had even come to be, Eden in the Semitic Akkadian language — the language spoken by Abraham — was edinnu. Which in turn was related to the possibly even older Sumerian word edin. This word referred to “plains, and steppeland” which, from what I understand in the case of Sumerian edin, was especially linked to alluvial plains. That is, plains in the flooding region of great rivers so they are covered with enriching silt, alluvium, yearly when the floodwaters rise.

That the name of the Garden of Eden itself comes from the Akkadian word edinnu, tells us that there is a strong likelihood that this concept of a sacred garden is ancient. How ancient is going to be challenging to figure out for sure. At the very least dating from the Jews composing the Bible c.200 BCE back to the Sumerians and Akkadians c.2500 BCE (potentially well before that date). Even by this metric alone the story of the garden — the memory of the “garden” in the sense of “alluvial plains” where the Jews were once from — is an ancient tradition.

We already know that major themes of the Garden of Eden story trace back to Sumerian myths and legends, but this linguistic connection further emphasizes the origin. That it is also related directly to the Sumerian word edin convinces me even further of the genuine antiquity of the recollection.

From this evidence, there is a very real possibility that the Garden of Eden was a legendary account of when the Jews lived in Sumer and Akkad. When they Jewish people were their ancestors and were called the Akkadians. (What a strange sentence!) Given the dates involved, the Garden of Eden could literally be Mesopotamia — either Sumer in southern Mesopotamia or Akkad in the north-northeast.

I am perfectly satisfied with this possibility. However, there is a chance that the story goes back even further. First there is the association between the myths of Adam and those of Sumerian Adapa. Second, there is the chronology between the Garden of Eden story and the Great Flood (the flood happening after). Lastly, and most importantly, there is the other names for the garden: the Garden of YHWH and the Garden of Elohim.

The First Humans, Their Tribe, and The Great Flood

The next detail that we have, is the relation with the Garden of Eden story to the Great Flood within Abrahamic mythology. Chronologically, the first humans were born and lived in the edinnu before they were cast out for defying the will of YHWH. In the Hebrew Bible this story is recounted in Genesis, and it occurred before the Great Flood. (Noach, the Hebrew Flood Hero, was a descendent of Adam as well, thus chronologically afterwards.) Furthermore, this is also the chronology within the Enuma Elish, which is the Sumero-Akkadian-Babylonian work that in large part became Bereshit (Genesis) thousands of years later. First, the creation of man, then the flood.

Biblical dating for the Great Flood is wrong. Period. The traditional date is 2350 BCE, but this is the time of Sargon of Akkad in Sumer — the formation of the Akkadian Empire — which we know a fair amount about. We know the world didn’t flood during this time. We do know that the world flooded cataclysmically when viewed in geological time (over centuries and millennia) at the End of the Last Ice Age.

We have a very accurate (though not precise) date for the Great Flood around 10,000 BCE — where large-scale flooding occurred for centuries after that date, and periodically in phases in the few millennia before. (The actual meltdown of the last ice age was complicated, and we still don’t understand it. So I am only going to point generally to the period here. There were massive floods around the world at different times, varying regionally be geography and climate. So to be general when talking about the world is actually the most accurate we can be.)

The main issue is whether we can trust the chronology of Genesis. Is the fact that the Hebrew Bible remembers the garden distinctly before the Great Flood a detail we can trust? That is anybody’s guess. For me, it is not enough to be certain, but I will casually abide by it. I will keep open the possibility that the time of the Garden of Elohim was around the time of flooding c.10,000 BCE. Especially because there are other details that seem to suggest this.

The general narrative is that this garden was the location of the first humans. That is the literal Biblical story. Adam and Eve were created and placed in the garden. Perhaps this tale is talking about the literal first homo sapiens, in which case the garden is Africa (specifically North Africa) where we evolved into being 300,000+ years ago.

This is chronologically before the Great Flood. Moreover, the Jews speak a Semitic tongue which is of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages, so they have a strong connection with Africa linguistically as well (not to mention their infamous alleged history with Egypt). Maybe this is the potential seed of historic truth at the heart of the Garden of Eden narrative.

However, because these traditions are Sumerian-Akkadian-Babylonian-Hebrew in lineage, they are very ethnocentric. After all, the Hebrew Bible is mostly ‘young’ accounts of Jewish history, with only the deepest traditions (Great Flood, YHWH, Elohim, Creation, etc.) being of the Sumerian and Akkadian tradition that actually predate both. For this reason I feel that a shift in focus from “the first human beings” to an “early tribe in the Near East” is more likely to be the historical narrative that we are unravelling at the heart of this tradition.

If we are talking about the first homo sapiens, we know roughly where and when: Africa, specifically North Africa, sometime before 300,000 years ago. Obviously we have much to learn about that story too. However, 300,000 years is a long time. I have trouble wrapping my mind around a story being preserved from 10,000 BCE to 3000 BCE, as is the case with the Flood Narrative of Sumerian-Abrahamic tradition. The Norse remembered the Ice Age and the Great Flood from 10,000 BCE to 1000 CE. (Incredible). But 300,000 years is a long time, so I believe it is safe to say that this is not the story that is being recollected.

The Garden of the Elohim, the Home of the Anuna

That the Hebrew people retained a word from their Akkadian ancestors is one thing. This is incredible, historically speaking. I have grown to expect nothing less from the long memory and acute mind of the Jews. But that the Akkadians shared the word with the Sumerians, and that the Sumerian word itself is probably even older, to me seems significant.

The name Eden is the Sumerian word edin almost exactly. I feel it safe to assume that the word can trace its roots at least to the Uruk Period between about 4500-3000 BCE. Not for any specific reason, aside from the fact that we can definitely trace the origin of writing and thus the Sumerian language to this period, so it seems a reasonable assumption that their words for “plains” and “alluvial plains” goes back at least this far. This is the time of the ancestors of the people that we called the Sumerians, the “black-headed people.”

But that is just the Sumerian word edin, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with an event of any kind. It is only a definite link between the Jews, and the lands of their ancestors in Sumer and Akkad. All that these linguistic connections tell us is that it is very ancient. That at the very least, the Jewish memory of the edin — alluvial plains, floodplains around rivers — remembered in the Sumerian language reaches back to the time of Sumer and Akkad. Back to their ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious ancestors.

As I stated above, there is a strong likelihood that the Garden of Eden story is a memory of their homeland in Mesopotamia proper — Sumer and Akkad. A time when the Jews were Akkadians living in the first cities with the Sumerians, developing the first urban culture with writing, schools, universities, doctors, temples, mudbrick houses, bakeries, beer, great art, architecture, and expansive trade networks. This was a golden age of their people, when they lived in their ancestral home. Literally between the Tigris and Euphrates in the edin (“alluvial plains”) among their gods who lived in the temples of their city-states. Indeed, they were expelled from this home — more than once.

This would mean that Biblical chronology placing the garden story before the flood is wrong. But, to be fair, details like that in mythology are likely to be wrong. We didn’t attribute any certainty to it to begin with for this reason. When a legend is being recounted from one generation to the next over a thousand (and more) years details are lost or altered. It seems likely that chronology becomes increasingly fluid based on what seems to work best within the narrative — which has become the truth itself — rather than the distant event in history which is only remembered through, and as, the story.

For these reasons, Mesopotamia is an excellent candidate for the Location of the Garden of Eden, at the time range between maybe 4500–2500 BCE. But again, this involves throwing out the tales chronological position with the Great Flood, in addition to other evidence.

What I will say, is that the other names for the Garden might be relevant here. In Hebrew it was also called, the Garden of YHWY and the Garden of the Elohim. Since we know that the Elohim in the older ancestor tradition were called the Anuna and Anunnaki by the Sumerians and Akkadians, respectively (and YHWH was also once a Sumerian deity, probably Anu, elevated to a singular, omnipotent, omnipresent universal deity beyond the plurality of deities) the Garden of Eden might equate with the homeland of the Anuna themselves.

This gives us a great deal more to go on, since the Sumerians (Akkadians and Babylonians) in the myths and legends of their religion, actually refer to physical locations as the homes of the Anuna. Unfortunately, the exact locations are not known for certain themselves. Yet I bring them up because the tribe of Anuna great gods were the original form that YHWH and the Elohim took. Thus to call the Garden of Eden by the names Garden of Elohim and Garden of YHWH because angels lived there too, as is stated in the Bible, makes the term synonymous with the Homeland of the Anuna.

In Sumerian myths, there are numerous references to the dwellings of the Anuna. They call them “Anuna gods of the Holy Mound” and “Great Princes of the Holy Mound”,^[2] in addition to referring to the Anuna in connection with “ruin mounds”. In the Epic of Gilgamesh the fearsome Humbaba in the Land of Cedars (which in the ancient world was almost certainly Lebanon far to the northwest of Sumer on the Levantine coast) was the monster whom Gilgamesh and Enkidu faced. Humbaba and the Land of Cedars is mentioned in relation to the dwellings of the Anuna gods. This association brings to mind the unexplained megalithic, cyclopean stonework such as that found at Baalbek, Lebanon.

In general, there is an implicit understanding in Sumerian myth and legend that the Anuna lived among them. In real, physical locations. On the one hand, this certainly is a reference to the fact that the Anuna gods were believed to literally live in their temples within the city. However, there are many references that clearly do not refer to their temples. This has led me to question who exactly the Anuna were (which is beyond the scope of our exploration here) but it gives the strong impression that they were a tribe of people. In particular, an earlier people, an earlier civilization, in light of their specific association between the Anuna and the “ruin mounds”. Perhaps even an ancestor civilization.

This impression is also found in the Bible, since the Anakim (the children of the Nefilim — offspring of angels and humans — whose name itself also seems to associate them with the Anunnakias the Elohim are) were a people who could be seen in the land. In Enki and the World Order, one passage recounts how in service to “the Anuna gods, Enki situated dwellings in cities and disposed agricultural land into fields…” ^[3] Nearly every reference to the Anuna is as a people in physical locations.

Of particular importance is their association with the ruin mounds, which to me says they were an ancient people to the Sumerians whose ruin mounds were visible during their time. We also have repeated references to the Anuna coming from the mountains which, for context, in Mesopotamia was either north towards the Anatolian Plateau (i.e. Lebanon, Akkad, and Gobekli Tepe) or east towards the Iranian Plateau (i.e. Akkad or Elam):

“Created like An, O son of Enlil, Ninurta, created like Enlil, born by Nintur, mightiest of the Anuna gods, who came forth from the mountain range, imbued with terrible awesomeness…” — the myth ofNinurta’s Return to Nibru^[4]

The Sumerian legends give the locations for the homes of the Anuna (even if we cannot locate them precisely) just like the Bible does with the location of the Garden of Eden. What exactly this means for our investigation here is not exactly clear. A Garden of the Gods is not specifically mentioned in Sumerian epics, although accounts of the abodes and homeland of the Anuna are frequent. Moreover, the Island of Dilmun that was Enki and Ninhursag is described as a paradise, a Sumerian cross between Eden and Atlantis almost.

All that it does do with certainty, is indicate that the myths of the Anuna / Elohim specifically are very old. Older than 3000 BCE, because the Anuna were referenced before then. What we do have, however, is a Sumerian precedent for the Garden of Eden story in general outlines, since in both Sumerian and Hebrew tradition, the first humans lived alongside the Elohim. This is stated explicitly in multiple ways in Sumerian accounts, and was preserved for more than 2000 years until it was recorded in the Biblical account.

The Location of the Garden of Eden

Based on the facts that we have explored, our timeline for when the Garden of Eden story refers to — an estimate of the age of the myth — is probably before 3000 BCE. Sumerian mythical and legendary accounts contain details found in the Garden of Eden story, making it probable that these elements were in existence around the beginning of Sumerian History c.3000 BCE (at least). If the Biblical chronology can be trusted, on the other hand — if the Garden of Eden story is historical at heart telling of a time chronologically before the historical global flooding at the end of the ice age — then this narrative takes place before the Great Flood. In other words, closer to the period around 10,000 BCE at minimum.

We can also logically limit how deep into antiquity we go with the limit being when the first anatomically modern humans (h. sapiens) left Africa in a final, permanent wave c.70,000 BCE. (Unless the tale refers to the literal first humans in North Africa more than 300,000 years ago, in which case we have both a general date and location for the garden.) However, I am going to lean towards a more recent timeline, and limit us between about 3000–12,000 BCE because I feel that a recent date is more likely.

(A story preserved for 12,000 years to me is nothing short of miraculous. This is hard enough for me to wrap my mind around. Even though we know with nearly absolute certainty that many ancient myths remember both the ice age and the global flooding that marred its end, this incredible 12,000 year period of memory is more than long enough for me. While the evidence forces us to consider civilizations in the millennia immediately preceding the end of the last ice age, I just don’t see any value in thinking beyond this in connection to any surviving myth. The only dates we are sure of are those of the Great Floods and Ice Age. Unless we find references with equally certain dates, any further theorizing is too speculative.)

While this is not a location, it is a location in time. It is important that we first establish a time, so we know when in the archaeological record in the prehistory of our species we should be looking. In order tohave some idea of what age, cultures, material artifacts, and ruins we should be looking at (or searching for).

So far I have described to you locations in Mesopotamia. The description in the Hebrew Bible gives a location “eastwards in Eden.” East from Jerusalem being the land that once was Sumer in southern Mesopotamia, Akkad being slightly north-of-east which, truth be told, is a city we have not located, and perhaps beyond either into Iran. In addition to this direction, Eden is mentioned in connection with the headwaters of four rivers — Pison, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates. (Genesis 2:10–14)

Since the Tigris and Euphrates rise to the north of Sumer in the mountain ranges of the Anatolian Plateau, and run south to the Persian Gulf, the Biblical location is relatively specific. The issue here is that the other two rivers, are not so easy to identify. Josephus in the Antiquities of the Jews writing in the 1st century identifies Pishon as the Ganges in India, and the Gihon as the Nile. Sure, they are rivers… and interestingly they are the four central rivers relevant to the worlds oldest advanced civilizations definitively on record (Ancient Egypt, Sumer, the Minoans, and the Indus Valley Civilization).

How accurate this designation is though is a matter of debate. That is a very, very large “garden.” (Then again, I noted Africa as a candidate, so who knows.) The main problem is that at the time the Hebrew Bible was being compiled and codified in the final centuries BCE (believed to have been during the Second Temple Period) the Jews did not know of the Ganges. While there is evidence of early trade between India and Mesopotamia, it wasn’t until the time of Alexander the Great c.300 BCE that real connections were made. Genesis (Bereshit) is almost certainly the oldest book of the Bible, tracing back to Sumero-Akkadian tradition direction at least 2000 years earlier. I don’t believe we will ever have any real evidence to know what the Pishon and Gihon actually were — if they were based in reality at all. Nonetheless, this region from the Nile in the west to the Ganges in the east, with the Tigris and Euphrates between, certainly is the cradle of advanced human civilization.

Nonetheless, the Fertile Crescent region remains the best guess for the location of the Garden of Eden. We have Mesopotamia proper encompassing the Tigris and Euphrates around 3000 BCE, which is the ancient homeland of the Jews when their Akkadian ancestors lived in their ancestral home of northern Mesopotamia, perhaps in the steppe nestled in the foothills where the Taurus Mountains to the north meet the Zagros Mountains to the east. This is the ancestral homeland of the Akkadians, at least in the final millennia of prehistory. Indeed, this general region of Anatolia is the home of all Indo-European people — everyone from Vedic Aryans of India, to Iranians, Caucasians, Nordic, Celtic, Germanic, Russian, and European people — at the End of the Last Ice Age.

If we take Biblical chronology more seriously, and place the garden period before the Great Flood, we need to be looking closer to 10,000 BCE anyways. There is one more detail from Genesis that might be important that I want to cover here. The Jews remember a time when “as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.” (Genesis 11:2) The land of Shinar is the land of Sumer — literally the only recollection in the entirety of human history that remembered Sumer, before the history, culture, and religion of those people was rescued from oblivion by archaeologists and historians of the last few centuries (which is true also for Egypt).

This is important, because again, the Jews remembered their heritage in Sumer. Everything leads back to Sumer. The Cain and Abel narrative of Genesis is a parable based on a Sumerian original (called Inanna Prefers The Farmer). The whole Flood narrative is based on the Sumerian original — and a Vedic original in Hinduism also — that are both nearly identical and predate the Bible by more than 2000 years. What I want to draw your attention to is the statement that “as they journeyed from the east…” meaning that they came from the east to reach Sumer. That is, from beyond the Zagros Mountains in the lands of Iran. It might also be a memory of the location of Akkad which, while it was towards the north, it was also probably northeast — and perhaps more east than scholars believe, since we have yet to find it. This could be a memory of Abraham’s ancestors journeying from Akkad, before settling in the Sumerian city of Ur.

However, this is not that telling regarding geography because we have the Ark landing on Mount Ararat after the flood, and between the Jews expulsion from Eden and settling in Shinar (which was not in the Sumerian original so it could be a fabrication). Nonetheless, it might still be accurate in the context of understanding the movements of the Akkadians (who the Jews were at this time) prior to the dawn of history c.3000 BCE.

If we factor in the Sumerian and Akkadian originals of what became Biblical mythology, our picture changes even more. The numerous references to the Abodes of the Anunnaki, their homes and perhaps more generally their homeland, are curious. In every reference that the Sumerians make there is a clear undertone of antiquity — even from their perspective c.3000 BCE! They repeatedly mention the great Anuna gods in connection to “ruin mounds” and “holy mounds”, which might be holy because they were the homes of the ancestors who came before.

The regions where the homes of the Anuna are located in general detail dovetail perfectly with the locations given for the Garden of Eden in the Bible. I don’t think this is coincidence. They are referenced in connection with the Land of Cedars, the Lebanon, which is roughly towards the Anatolian Plateau. They are also referenced in connection with the mountains, which can be north or east. In addition, their homes are mentioned alongside the Sumerians in Sumer itself (and presumably Akkad). However all these references to locations appear to be localized in Mesopotamia itself, the greater fertile crescent, and in the mountainous regions to the north and east. Precisely as is described for the Garden of Eden.

In the end, I am not going to specify an actual location of Eden here. We do not have enough information. My main intent was only to elucidate the many variables of the case here, and to narrow down the geographic and temporal landscape as much as can be done. Within this area we have defined in space and in time, there are numerous cultures and ruins that we can look at for evidence of an actual, physical location.

Looking to the north, there are many advanced civilizations towards (and within) Anatolia. We have famous Gobekli Tepe, as well as megalithic structures in Lebanon like Baalbek which have not been explained. We have Catalhoyuk and Asili Hoyuk in Anatolia as well, roughly contemporary with Gobekli Tepe and truly advanced for their time at the dawn of the Neolithic. Both were large, ancient civilizations towards the End of the Last Ice Age that are worth consideration as well.

The lastlocation of the Garden of Eden that I would like to mention is, in my opinion, an excellent candidate: the Persian Gulf. Literally, the Persian Gulf. The gulf as it was more than 10,000 years ago during the last ice age when it was empty of water. This is why it is so important to get our time right. The land looks different at different times, and different cultures may call it home in each.

During the last ice age, sea levels were about 130 meters lower than today, exposing a great deal of land. If the Biblical chronology of early humans being in the garden before the Great Flood is accurate, then this location is on the table. What is more, the ancient course of the Tigris and Euphrates ran through this primordial valley, and two more rivers could have as well. The headwaters then might have referred to where the gulf begins today, on the southern shores of Iraq.

What Exactly Was The Garden?

The general description of the garden tells that it was a paradise. A beautiful, bountiful land with rivers running through it, and trees of every kind, bearing fruit, and all kinds of animals. A land that had everything necessary for early Man to thrive.

A land that in the mind of the Hebrew people was remembered with the Sumerian word edin (Akkadian edinnu) which meant plains, alluvial plains, and perhaps steppe. In other words, even though the Jews had forgotten everything about Sumer and Akkad — their language even had become a new language from the Akkadian that it once was, transforming into Hebrew — they retained the Sumerian and Akkadian word that in both cases perfectly described the geography of their land.

The majority of the evidence we have covered so far points towardsMesopotamia and the greater Fertile Crescent as the location of the Garden of Eden. Even the word Mesopotamiaitself, which is an ancient Greek word that means literally “land between rivers”, has a similar meaning to the Sumerian word edin. Although we do not have a specific location of the Garden of Eden, we have some idea of its physical location.

What we are less certain of is its location in time. Is it a Jewish memory of the land of their forefathers — specifically Sumer and Akkad in southern and northern Mesopotamia respectively — during either the 4th millennium BCE or into the 3rd? Or is its chronological association with the Great Flood accurate, which means that it was in Mesopotamia literally before the deluge, closer to the era around 10,000 BCE?

This is an open question at this point.

What I am more concerned with is the nature of Eden in real history.That a people retained a legendary account of a distant homeland, and a golden age of their people, is very common for the great ancient civilizations of the world. Whether this was the Jewish memory of Sumer and Akkad, or a region in the same landscape before the End of the Last Ice Age is not known. What I find even more curious is the reference to the Elohim and Anuna.

In Sumerian and Biblical tradition there was an early phase in our history where we lived with the gods, and in both we were created by the gods. In the Sumerian tale we were created by Enki to care for the Anuna gods, farming and herding for them to provide them with food. Before humanity grew barley, the gods knew not the taste of bread. (Interestingly, the Sumerians also remember a time when their ancestors lived more like animals, which is an historical fact several thousand years old by their time.) In the Biblical version we were created in the garden by YHWH and among the Elohim. These traditions are very similar as it is (which isn’t surprising as they are both Mesopotamian religions, and the Hebrew came from Sumerian religion).

All I want to know is the actual meaning behind these statements. Who exactly were the Anuna? This is the important question, because the Elohim tradition (Angels) began as the Anuna. Were they an ancestor people? Where they the civilization who mastered agriculture and farming? Who first settled into villages in the millennia before the Sumerians and Akkadians built the first cities? Remembered as gods, for being those who pulled humanity from of our previous primitive, animalistic, lifestyle before we knew the taste of bread? Or were the Anuna slightly more recent? The mound builders during the Uruk Period of the Fourth Millennium BCE who laid the cultural foundations that became Sumer?

Or were they something else?

While God is a reality to me, I understand the ultimate divinity as an undifferentiated universal consciousness that is beyond form and description underlying reality. So the idea of “angels” of Abrahamic tradition means nothing to me. Either the Anuna were a human ancestor people of an advanced prehistoric civilization, or they were extraterrestrials — Ancient Aliens, multidimensional beings, however you want to describe an advanced life form.

For me there is no other possibility.

What is more, I am perfectly satisfied with either interpretation.

In either of these two possibilities the story essentially remains the same: the first advanced civilizations of humanity in the Near East have a memory of contact with another advanced civilization in antiquity. This is actually a common motif among the ancient civilizations the world over. Exactly what this contact was is a matter of debate. The real question here is if there is any significant evidence that this contact was of such a disparity of level, between two cultures at entirely different levels of science and technology, that the contact bordered on the supernatural and magical (as the ancient traditions literally recount).

In light of everything that we have covered here, the Garden of Eden tale is one of the many myths in proximity to the historical truth of the Lost Civilization.