Iranian city 'inhabitable' claim Shanghai scientists

by ZI staff reporters

Shanghai, April 15 2050: Scientists who have finished analysing the findings of their controversial expedition into the middle of the Iranian hot zone have shocked the world by announcing not only that they have discovered the ancient city of Aratta containing a perfectly preserved Noah's Ark style wooden boat - but also that parts of the underground city are 'suitable for recolonisation'.

(See the first ZI story on the expedition here: http://news2050.blogspot.com/2006/04/secret-hidden-in-sands-will-at-last-be.html )

Rumours had emerged from the University that the Ark-like boat had been found, but Chinese authorities locked down the news flow when several members of the exploring party became sick, and two were rumoured to have died from radiation poisoning.

Far from being a small "Parthian trading town", the archeologists statement claimed that:

* The city unearthed in a nuclear blast was Aratta, an ancient Sumerian capital, which appears to have been built on the banks of an ancient river, possibly the former course of the modern day Halil river.

* The ruins show evidence of a catastrophic flood destroying most of the city around 2200 BC, which puts it in the range of dates scholars estimate as likely for the flood described in the Old Testament.

* The city was rebuilt post flood, with the most modern artifacts found dating to the year 1100 BC when scholars have postulated the city-state established its capital in modern day Iran and Aratta declined and was abandoned.

* The city temple, clearly visible in Yahoogle Earth images of the site, contained a partially intact boat of immense proportions: 1.5m cubic feet, or the capacity of 570 maglev freight cars. These dimensions approximate those of the biblical Ark.

* Most of the stone and marble buildings of the city are still intact under the sands, and connected by an intricate system of tunnels, many collapsed but some still open, which may have been built as part of city defenses. An underground aquifer estimated to hold about 5m gigalitres of water was at about 30% capacity.

* Radiation levels in these underground buildings were 'not inimical to human life'

The terse and factual statements above were released without further comment by the University of Shanghai Archeology department, and a publication on their findings is awaiting peer review.

However the statements have created furor among the Iranian diaspora, with leaders of the New York Iranian Cultural Preservation Society among the most vocal.

"Aratta was the birthplace of Persian civilisation, we must return to Aratta, and make it once more the birthplace for a new Iran," ICPS Executive Mirza Abdolvahhab said to the NY and Times of India Post. "We are already raising funds to establish a new capital in Aratta for the whole diaspora."

"Any attempt to recolonise this irradiated wasteland would just lead to a senseless loss of life - it will be 500 years before people will walk the soil of Iran again," said Doctor Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, Health Minister for the Iranian Diaspora Government in Geneva.

"We cannot stop people determined to die, from going to their deaths," he said, "But if they take their wives and children with them, may Allah have mercy on their souls."