to desiccation of the area (desert ground-water levels continued to fall and the oases dried up), while sea transport became a more reliable way of carrying goods. Also, it became difficult to find local labour to collect the resin. Zarins has published many articles on a number of topics concerning the archaeology of the Near East, which include the domestication of the horse, early pastoral nomadism, and the obsidian, indigo, and frankincense trades. He received an Excellence in Research Award from Missouri State in 1988. He has proposed that the Semitic languages arose as a result of a circum-Arabian nomadic pastoral complex, which developed in the period of the desiccation of climates at the end of the pre-pottery phase in the Ancient Near East. Zarins argued that the Garden of Eden was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf (present-day Kuwait), where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run into the sea, from his research on this area using information from many different sources, including LANDSAT images from space. In this theory, the Bible's Gihon River would correspond with the Karun River in Iran, and the Pishon River would correspond to the Wadi Batin river system that once drained the now dry, but once quite fertile central part of the Arabian Peninsula. His suggestion about the Pishon River is supported by James A. Sauer (1945–1999) formerly of the American Center of Oriental Research although strongly criticized by the archaeological community. References External links 1945 births Living people 20th-century American archaeologists 21st-century American archaeologists American people of Latvian descent German emigrants to the United States Missouri State University faculty University of Chicago alumni University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War United States Army soldiers Remote sensing archaeologists Iram of the Pillars