The Ancients The Persian Gulf
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Apr 30, 2026 
Dr Lloyd Weeks, archaeology professor specializing in southeastern Arabian Bronze Age sites, and Dr Steffen Laursen, Bronze Age curator expert on Dilmun and Gulf trade, explore the Persian Gulf as a Bronze Age maritime superhighway. They trace sea-level changes, shipping and copper trade, Dilmun’s role as a transshipment hub, coastal economies and tomb cultures, and why the Gulf’s trade networks mattered across millennia.
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Gulf Landscape Changed From River Valley To Sea
- The Persian Gulf was a river valley and wetlands during the last glacial maximum and only flooded into a sea through the Holocene sea-level rise.
- Sea-level rise from ~20,000 years ago to ~6,000 years ago submerged earlier coastal archaeology now inaccessible underwater, Lloyd Weeks explains.
Dilmun As Mythic Market Hub
- Dilmun was simultaneously a mythic place and a real commercial hub centered on Bahrain and adjacent coasts.
- Mesopotamians called it the 'storeroom at the end of the sea' and sought luxury goods and copper transshipped there, Steffen Laursen explains.
Collapse Of Ur Shifted Gulf Trade To Dilmun
- The collapse of Ur's Third Dynasty (~2004 BC) ended a long-distance Babylonian fleet and created a power vacuum.
- After the fleet vanished, smaller ships traded shorter ranges and Dilmun rose to control Gulf middleman trade, per Steffen Laursen.