In Search of Eden: David Rohl's Theory on the Garden's Location — Documentary

[00:00:07]what are the origins of human civilization and where did it all [Music] begin the Bible tells of the creation of man in God's image from the dust of the earth of a fabulous Garden in which Adam and Eve lived and their banishment from the Earthly Paradise their Exile from the Garden of Eden heralded the birth of civilization archaeology tells a different creation story in which man is the product of evolution and civilization was born in the Neolithic age when men and women first began to control the natural world around them and so with the Advent of Science and logic many scholars have consigned the story of the Garden of Eden to the Realms of Mythology but is it really just a piece of fiction or is there more to it than that if you look closely at the Genesis story there are Clues to show that the Garden of Eden was a real physical place on this Earth I'm going to take you on a journey a journey in search of paradise [Music] [Applause] I'm David role as a historian who studies the ancient world I've spent the last 25 years trying to unravel the hidden history behind many of the world's greatest ancient legends and now I'm here in Oxford University investigating what claims to be the oldest Legend of all the biblical story of the Garden of Eden the Book of Genesis claims that God created a garden in the East of Eden where he settled Adam and Eve there they prospered raising Sons Cain the farmer and Abel the shepherd but Adam and Eve were tempted by the serpent to disobey God's command and were expelled out of [Music] Eden the modern secular version of man's Beginnings does tell of a great creative moment in human history also 7,000 years ago when Stone AG hunter gatherers gave up their wandering existence to settle in farming communities anthropologists call this crucial Turning Point the Neolithic Revolution with the Neolithic Revolution things changed drastically people started to domesticate animals put them in fields around the their homesteads and they were actually growing crops so this was a major breakthrough it's basically the foundation stone upon which the historical civilizations are built it seems that Arch ology and the Bible agree that something spectacular happened around 7,000 years ago so are the stories of Adam and Eve and Canan able just myths or could they simply be the Bible's version of this Neolithic Revolution and if so did the Garden of Eden really exist one of the most important pieces of evidence to show that Eden did exist and where it might be located has been staring Us in the face for Generations it's just that in recent years we haven't really bothered to take it seriously The crucial passage which pinpoints the location of Eden is found in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis and it's a fairly straightforward matter of fact geographical description no Miracles here God planted a garden in the East of Eden and there he put the man he had fashioned from the soil God caused to grow every kind of tree enticing to look at and good to eat with a tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil a river flowed from Eden to water the garden and there it divided to make four heads the first is named pishon winding all through the land of havila rich in Gold the gold of this country is pure bellium and shoham stone are found there the second river is named guon and this winds all through the land of kush the Third River is named hidel and this flows to the east of Asher the fourth river is the [Music] Perth this is a very information Rich piece of text perhaps most important of all it tells us that we should be looking for two places not just one first there's an area called Eden and we have a number of geographical Clues as to where that is and second we're looking for a garden which is in the eastern part of Eden the Bible informs us that Eden's whereabouts is tied up with the location of Four Rivers we've always known the identities of the para and hitel these are the famous rivers the Greeks called Euphrates and Tigris flowing through ancient Mesopotamia now modern Iraq the problem has always been identifying the other two rivers the gon and the pishon [Music] early church Scholars read in Genesis that the river gon flowed through the land of kush but where was kush the only Kush they knew was in Africa south of the land of the Pharaohs in what we now call Sudan and Ethiopia they therefore assumed that the gon had to be the [Music] Nile of course if the gon was as far away from the tigress and Euphrates as the Nile it made sense to look much further a field for the pishon and so they decided on either the Indus or Ganges rivers in the Indian subcontinent as a result early Scholars concluded that Eden encompassed the whole of the ancient world stretching all the way from Africa to India but this surely isn't what the Genesis text is telling us we read that mankind was banished from Eden exiled to eek out a sorry existence beyond the boundaries of the Earthly Paradise so the bound of Eden can't possibly Encompass the whole of the ancient world if we're to find Eden and its Fable Garden we need to be thinking on a very different scale something much smaller and more specific and this is the modern view Scholars today believe that Eden was located where the Tigers and Euphrates once joined two other local Rivers flowing out into the Persian Gulf and where conveniently the first signs of human civilization appear in the archaeological record but however convenient this might be I'm not convinced they're [Music] right there's a crucial clue here in the original Hebrew text of Genesis 2 a river flowed from Eden to water the garden and from there it divided to make four heads the Hebrew word for head is Ros as in Ros hashana the Jewish New Year which actually means the head of the year in other words the beginning not the end of the year [Music] so in Genesis 2 where the plural rashim is used I think it has to refer to the beginnings the sources or headwaters of the four rivers of Eden we should be looking for Eden where the sources of four major rivers diverge from the Highland Watershed not where they emerge into the sea [Music] the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates are located in a mountainous region between Eastern Turkey and Western Iran if I'm right Eden must be somewhere around here and so must the headwaters of the other two [Music] rivers ancient Mesopotamia was located in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates [Music] rivers and a river went out of E Eden to water the garden and from then it was parted and became into four heads Genesis 2:10 the Bible names the Tigris and Euphrates as the rivers of Eden and the Bible names two non-existent rivers that also meet at the same point the pison and guihan the question becomes did these Rivers once exist springing from the same source as the tigress and euphrat in ancient [Music] times the answer may come from a higher source space satellite imagery was the key to the location of Eden that when I began to work on it it was the beginning of space Imaging now the technology is allowing me to see something from space maybe I can get better pictures the satellites revealed not just two rivers but all four rivers of the Bible and they meet in Samaria the site of the Epic of Gilgamesh the other two rivers that are mentioned in the story are rivers that no longer exist but did it one time rivers that can be called fossil [Music] Rivers the only way to find out is to go there and see what we can discover time then to leave England and head for Iran where 7,000 years ago man set out on the road to [Music] civilization our search for Paradise has brought us 3,000 Mi East from the dreaming spes of Oxford to one of the most powerful Islamic countries of the 21st century Iran we've come in search of the Garden of Eden the existence of which is accepted by three of the world's great religions Judaism Christianity and [Music] Islam Today the Republic of Iran is an Islamic State following the overthrow of the last Persian Monarch in 1979 but this part of the world has a long and illustrious history the Middle East is a land of Legends and epic Legends unlike myths were based on real historical events but historians have nevertheless identified much more ancient legends which show clear parallels to the stories in the Book of Genesis the stories themselves were well known known in the ancient world it's interesting that when you come to the creation of man in the ancient stories this was a sort of afterthought whereas Genesis sees the creation of man as the climax of God's activity and it's not just ancient written Legends which find echoes in the biblical story this extraordinary cylinder seal found in Mesopotamia and now in the British museum is over 4,000 years old when its hidden image is rolled out it reveals a male figure sitting on a throne opposite him is a female figure and between them a tree heavily Laden with fruit and behind the female there's a serpent could this be the oldest representation of the temptation of Adam and [Music] Eve it's when you're in a place like this that you can suddenly be reminded of something which is of course blindingly obvious but often easy to forget the Bible wasn't originally written in English and those words that were so used to when analyzed in their original language can sometimes give us a rather different understanding of the [Music] text for instance the original Hebrew for Garden of Eden is [Music] ganeden and the word Gan is a specific type of garden a walled or enclosed Garden the Persians also had a word to describe an enclosed Parkland or Royal Garden they called it parida and it's from this we get our word Paradise the legacy of the Walled Garden and the four rivers of paradise is all around us we're standing on the balcony of the king's Palace in magical Isfahan and right down there is the Royal Garden it's exactly the sort of thing we've been talking about you can see how we have the great enclosure wall encircling the garden and a fountain and a pool now that's like the spring waters of the original Garden of Eden with the four channels dividing up this Garden into four quarters they call it the fourfold Garden or Persian Garden and it's this basic architectural style which is reflected in another very special building the Taj Mahal but how did the Persian Paradise Garden end up in India in 1218 ad the legendary Mongol Emperor genis Khan swept through Persia sacking and looting but as is often the way the Conqueror was seduced by the riches and culture of the conquered when genas Khan's descendants went on to found the mighty Mogul Empire in India they brought with them the Persian concept of paradise this culminated in sha jahan's celebrated Masterpiece of local architecture written above the entrance Arch to the Taj Mahal other words you are entering Paradise The Paradise Garden is divided into four quarters with the pool at its heart and the four channels representing the rivers of Eden flowing out from the center Beyond is the gleaming white Dome of the Taj itself representing the Throne of Glory the biblical snowcapped Mountain of God Shan's magnificent Recreation of paradise was built by a Persian architect but where did Persia get its concept of the garden of paradise could it have come from a much older tradition already well and truly established in the region time to head south sou to the Mesopotamian plane where human civilization first took Route n hi because we're going to be confronted by a number of local dialects on our journey nisam is going to be our interpreter right Salam Salam good to see you thank you we go we're head heading for the ancient land of Suma the samans were the first great civilization in the world even predating the Pharaohs of Egypt their Origins are shrouded in mystery but towards the end of the neic revolution in 5000 BC we find them settled in the Mesopotamian Plaine along the banks of two of the Genesis Rivers the Tigris and Euphrates and it's there that they begin to build the earliest cities on Earth the samans then construct huge platform temples called ziggurats which Ascend in Giant Steps to the house of the city God at the summit did these people build artificial mountains on the plain in order to replace the Mountain Homes of their gods and if so does this imply that the Sumerians themselves originally came to Mesopotamia from the mountains [Music] certainly these people seem to have been closely connected to the lands of the North High up in the Zagros Mountains so much so that they've even left as a 4,000 year old guide book actually it's an ancient samirian epic poem entitled en mer car and the Lord of Arata it tells of the samirian king enar car who sent an Envoy to deliver a message to the ruler of a mysterious land far off to the north his destination was the the kingdom of Arata overflowing with gold and precious stones and of course Genesis also describes part of Eden as being rich in gold and precious [Music] stones nobody is quite sure where the kingdom of Arata was but even if we don't know where the journey ended we do know where it began to the mountain passes of loristan we make it up at the Village nearby uhhuh yeah according to the story on the tablet the Eno Journey began in Souza an ancient city on the broad plain of the river kka in Southwestern Iran and it's here too 5,000 years later that we'll begin our journey to Arata following in the envoy [Music] footsteps the am gave heed to the word of his King by the starry night he journeyed by day he traveled with the suard utu of [Music] Heaven from Souza to the anhan Mountain Land the teeming multitudes groveled in the [Music] dust five gates GES six Gates seven Gates he traversed he lifted up his eyes as he approached [Music] Arata the Emissary journeying to Arata covered his feet with the dust of the road and stirred up the Pebbles of the mountains like a huge serpent prowling about the plain he was unopposed on his long journey to Arata the Envoy passed through seven Gates now gates in the ancient world were mountain passes or Gorges through the mountain ranges there might be a connection here with the ancient Jewish tradition of seven levels of Heaven culminating in the Throne of Glory here in this medieval Ivory carving we see the seven levels of paradise with Adam and Eve standing beside the Tree of Life in the seventh heaven even today we still say we're in seventh heaven meaning we're in [Applause] [Music] Paradise it may seem a bit odd using a piece of samirian literature to locate the biblical Eden but there is an important clue in here quite a long way into the story we find the envoy nearing his final destination the kingdom of Arata he descends from the mountains onto a broad rolling plane the plane of Arata it's this word plane that's interesting here the samian word is Ed and it's from edin and that most scholars believe the biblical Eden derives Dr Irving finle is the Sumerian expert at the British museum it seems to be fairly clear that the Hebrew word Aiden from which the English Eden obviously derives the Biblical word itself comes from a samirian word which is usually written or usually spelled e d n or e d i n edin which was the word used in K form um seiran inscriptions for the the step land um outside a settlement outside a town which is over the border of the cultivated area that was what they considered the edin so Eden simply means plain or uncultivated [Music] land now that we've entered the Kurdish mountains we find a way of life hardly changed in thousands of years here you can begin to get a real sense of what the Ancient World of Genesis was [Music] like so far we've completed a day's drive through the first four Gates on the envoy's journey to Arata it would probably have taken him the best part of one month to cover the same ground on foot the problem is that we're not sure which direction you went in next just a short distance from here is a remarkable place if it wasn't for what happened there a little less than 200 years ago we wouldn't be on this journey at all [Music] [Music] if the Garden of Eden ever existed I'm convinced that it could only have been high up in the Zagros Mountains and that's where we're heading we're following in the footsteps of a royal Envoy who journeyed to the mountain Kingdom of Arata having traversed seven mountain ranges he arrived at a place called The Adin which I believe to be a samiran reference to the biblical Eden but the envoy's Epic tale would have remained lost to us had it not been for the extraordinary Endeavors of an English army Captain Henry rollinson in 1844 rollinson was exploring the ancient monuments of Persia high up on the rock face at beis stun he could just make out the spectacular inscription of the Persian king Darius I the scene depicts Darius defeating his political enemies and taking his rightful place on the throne of Persia what's really important about this is that the king had the carving framed by a Royal Decree recorded in three different languages Babylonian elamite and old Persian Scholars had been unable to decipher ancient Babylonian but they already knew how to read Persian rollinson realized that if he could find a way to record all three copies of the same decree it might be possible to decipher the Babylonian and elamite scripts so he scaled the 200t rock face to record every detail as a result of rollinson efforts it was possible to unlock thousands of documents already excavated from the ruined cities of Mesopotamia Henry rolinson appreci ated that the only way to make the inscription accessible to people so they could work on it um later was to make a copy well he couldn't draw it and he course he couldn't photograph it in those days with a telephoto lens so what he had to do was to go up there and make um paper squeezes and um he describes how this was done to shinny up the ropes and press papier masch into the surface of the rock to make these squeezies and then those were brought back and they form the basis of the materials that they deed as worked on he was a courageous man because as you know it's very inaccessible it's high up um so it was a rather dramatic thing you can imagine the wind howling and swaying and all that kind of thing and Rus and saying no you have to do every sign and in fact without that inscription we never would have deciphered can form and without his Daredevil deed the Bible would have remained our only historical source for the Primeval World of Genesis here in the British museum is a case full of ancient caneron tablets one of which happens to be the most famous ancient document after the Bible discovered in the 1850s in the ruins of ancient Nineveh in Northern Iraq at first glance this broken tablet doesn't look at all important but when the translation was first published in 1872 it caused an absolute sensation this was the first time that a biblical story had been discovered in the records of another ancient culture it was the story of the great flood the 3,000-year-old tablet turned out to be part of the Epic tale of the legendary Gilgamesh it told the story of a great Deluge and of a hero who built an ark and so survived the devastating flood and just as with a Noah story we read of birds being sent out from the Ark in search of dry land it had a big effect because right from the outset people were seeking for connections between the Bible and um what Archaeology could tell us they were anxious to show um that the biblical text could be supported from the ground as it were and so there was a fevered interest in anything which centered on the Bible and this was a particularly spectacular thing and the text if you read a translation of the Gilgamesh story and you reread your Bible they are disconcertingly similar but for all rollinson hard work we still have a problem here at the source of the river kirka the Trail of the envoy's route to Arata has gone cold it's not at all clear from our ancient guide book which way to go next three gates to Traverse but in which direction I'm afraid we're going to have to call upon yet another ancient document to sort this one out and the document in question is a clay tablet this time in the Lou Museum in Paris it describes a military campaign against the kingdom of aatu by the powerful 8th Century BC Assyrian King Saron II like enmen car's Envoy sargon's Army also crossed seven mountain ranges but in this case unlike the envoy we know exactly where he went I Saga King over Syria departed from Calum and crossed the greater Zar at its flood I marched between high mountains covered with all kinds of trees the paths of which never see the light of day Seven Mountains I traversed with great difficulty I then crossed the rppa and Arata Rivers as though they were irrigation ditches against sukash a district of the Manan country I descended sagon was heading for ancient suash which lies under the Kurdish town of sakz on the Manan plain he traveled North through seven mountain passes across a river Arata and arrived on the plane or idin of uru the biblical Ararat enar car's Envoy also traveled North through seven mountain passes and ended his journey on the Plaine or Adin of Arata it's surely reasonable to assume that they were going to the same place and so that's where we need to head next over the three remaining and highest mountain passes and on down into Arata Ararat and the land of Eden [Music] [Music] with the help of Saron we found the location of Arata and the final destination of enmar car's messenger beyond the seventh mountain [Music] range when the envoy reached the seventh gate he knew his journey was nearly over Beyond lay the plain the edin the biblical Eden and the Magical Kingdom of ATA Paradise beckoned and he was in seventh heaven our destination the land of Eden lies before us but what will we find when we finally Return To Paradise we followed the root of an ancient Envoy through the seven Gates which lead to Seventh Heaven and the brink of paradise [Music] as we approach the Great Salt Lake of orur umia we're finally entering the land of Eden hardly changed in 5,000 years since the time of enare car and even 2,000 years earlier the days of Adam and Eve Beyond those Peaks due east of here should be the Garden of Eden but before we step through into Paradise I think we should take another look at those original clues in the Book of Genesis just to be sure we're actually here if this is Eden then we should be able to find the two missing Rivers the gon and the fishon we should be able to find the lands of kush and havar and of course the river of the garden let's take a satellite view of this world of Eden and the regions which surround it to the east of the Great Lake known as uruma in the East of Eden as the Bible says is a long fertile Valley protected by high mountain walls on its northern and southern sides a walled Paradise Garden on a massive scale the Western end of the garden is bordered by the marshes of the lake at its eastern end a pass or Eastern Gate leads to the outside world and through the valley runs a river the river of the garden which flows into the Great Lake to the north of the garden is a fertile region through which run several tributaries of the river Aras but this River has a much older name at the time of the Islamic invasion of Persia in the 7th Century Arabic geographers refer to it as the gyun if you remember the Bible tells us that the ghon flowed through the land of kush that early Christian Scholars concluded that this was the land of kush in Africa but believe it or not the ancient name of this region through which the guy hun flows is also Kush and that mountain up there even today is still called kushad D the mountain of kush there be little doubt that the gyun and the biblical gon are one and the same and that this is the real Kush of Genesis and so we've identified the third of the four rivers in Genesis which pinpoint Eden the location of the Fourth River also slots into place just where you'd expect it in the Southeastern quarter of our map it's the river kzel uon which if we're right the biblical author called the pishon winding all through the land of havilar rich in gold gold is still found in the kzle oism today indeed the word kzle means golden the Golden uon but how can uon be the same as pishon the answer as language experts have suggested lies in the transcribing of an ancient Iranian name into Biblical Hebrew which is a Semitic language for example the ancient Manan city of of uish deri is today known by the Arabic name of pishi the Iranian letter U has become a Semitic p in the same way the old Iranian River name uon has been converted into Semitic pishon by the biblical author now the last piece of the geographical jigsaw puzzle remember the biblical story of Adam's two sons Cain the farmer and Abel the shepherd Cain and Abel were instructed by their father to make an offering to God Cain brought the produce of the fields whereas Abel sacrificed the lamb and won God's favor bitterness and resentment grew in the heart of Cain and in a fit of jealousy he committed the most Grievous sin of [Music] all as a result of this first recorded murder in history Cain was exiled from the Garden of Eden be cursed and banished from the ground which has opened its mouth to receive receive your brother's blood at your hands when you till the ground it will no longer give up its strength to you a fugitive wander you will be on this Earth and so Cain left yahweh's presence and settled in the Land of Nod to the East of Eden and that's the crucial bit of the text in the land of no to the East of [Music] Eden amazingly the east region of our map Bears the names Upper and Lower nocti and nocti means belonging to noct could this be the nod of Genesis it was common practice for the biblical writer to change foreign names into Hebrew words nod simply means Wanderer and Cain was indeed a fugitive Wanderer we found the rivers gon and pishon and even perhaps the Land of Nod it's now time to make the final step into Paradise westwards into the Garden of Eden the valley of T bris beckons and we're ready to return to Paradise [Music] Lost so Yahweh expelled man from the Garden of Eden he banished [Music] him we're returning back along the road of banishment which brought Cain and later Adam out of the garden into the harsh World [Music] Beyond in front of the Garden of Eden he placed a fiery flashing sword and to guard the way to the tree of life he posted the [Music] cherubim we think of cherubim as sort of pgy little angels with wings but uh we now know that they are the kuriu of ancient Babylon and Mesopotamia which were the Guardians of sacred places and temples so if you go to the British museum you can see a lot of cherubim and they are great wied creatures to frighten you and that's the function of the cherubim in the Garden of Eden is to keep Adam and Eve from entering um because this is their punishment for disobeying God we're finally entering the Garden of Eden through the Eastern Gate the road of banishment it's an extraordinary feeling actually thinking that we're going back to the place that Adam and Eve left 7,000 years years ago once we get down into the valley of tiris we see that the Garden of Eden has disappeared forever desecrated by modern industrial man in a sense the biblical prophecy that man would never return to Paradise has come true the garden Now lies buried beneath this vast urban sprawl but there's one place that humankind has not yet destroyed in the Bible the The Book of Ezekiel tells of the fall of Man from the Mountain of God in Eden there is a large mountain overlooking the valley of T bris the volcanic Dome of Mount sand and on the slopes of this mountain you can get some idea of what the Primeval world of Adam was like if you believe in the literal truth of every word in the Bible then you don't really need me to prove that the garden of Eden was a real place if however you see the Eden story as a poetic metaphor the question is what could it be a metaphor of why should this location rather than any other be identified as the place from which man originated the Bible places Adam in Eden about a thousand years before the first cities were built in ancient Suma towards the end of the Stone Age so from that point of view who was living here at that time archaeology has revealed The Valleys of the Zagros Mountains in Western Iran to have been crucial locations during the Neolithic Revolution but why do anthropologists see this as such a momentous era in human history the Neolithic Revolution was probably the most important breakthrough that Humanity's ever made in terms of change of life because uh is basically the foundation stone upon which the historical civilizations are built we basically talking about the beginning of farming the beginning of the domestication of animals growing crops in the fields around a permanent village now it wasn't long before these Villages became towns and eventually these towns became cities because without farming there would never have been a city on the face of the Earth we are the inheritors of that Neolithic Revolution so this really is our point of origin not surprising then that this is the location for the creation story and here near the summit of Mount Sahand in the trite Village of kivan you can almost touch the Primeval world of Neolithic Adam we learn from the creation mythology of ancient Mesopotamia that man was created in the likeness of the Gods by combining the clay of the Earth with the blood of a slain God and the Neolithic people here used the red Earth or clay in their rituals taking it from the Red Mountain overlooking the garden our main knowledge about the use of red ochre is in burial rituals uh the bodies were covered with red ochre um and sometimes just the bones and I think what this shows is is the symbolism used by uh early human beings as we're born into this world covered in blood so when we leave this world and go to the next World we are also to be covered in blood which the red ochre symbolizes according to the Bible Adam too was made of clay in fact the name Adam means red Earth but what of Adam the man perhaps fewer of us today are prepared to believe that he was the first human created by God from the clay of Eden but did an historical Adam ever exist he certainly did in the mind of the Genesis author he is simply the 10th Generation before Noah and that's as far back as anyone could go Adam existed because he was remembered by his descendants and he was the first spiritual man the first to communicate with his God we may not be able to truly return to to the Earthly Paradise but at least by means of modern television magic we can restore the Valley of the garden back to its primeval Beauty just for a glimpse of what Adam's World was [Music] like climatologists tell us that Westerly winds brought warm air from the Mediterranean creating a micro climate in the long narrow Valley the extra moisture encouraged dense vegetation growth and an amazing variety of fruit bearing trees enticing to look at and good to eat in the deep red soil covering the fut Hills Orchards of Apple apricot pistachio and almond grew in abundance wild vines entwined the sloping Terraces heavily Laden with Bunches of sweet green grapes one of the Mesopotamian words for Vine is the word used in Genesis for the tree of life and through the valley flowed the river of the Garden on its way to the marshes of uruma This truly was a paradise on Earth my journey ends here at the Mountain of God the place from which Adam whoever he was and the rest of his tribe were cast down exiled from the Garden of Eden to wander this Earth but this was just the beginning the Epic tale of the people of Genesis continued for thousands of years but that as they say is another story