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Juris Zarins (b. Germany 1945) is an American archaeologist and professor at Missouri State University
Missouri State University

Missouri State University is a state university located in Springfield, Missouri, Missouri. It is the state's second largest university with over 21,000 students, second only to the University of Missouri....
, who specializes in the Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
.

Dr. Zarins is ethnically Latvian, but was born in Germany at the end of the Second World War. His parents emigrated to the United States soon after he was born. He graduated from high school in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1963 and earned a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Nebraska in 1967.






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Juris Zarins (b. Germany 1945) is an American archaeologist and professor at Missouri State University
Missouri State University

Missouri State University is a state university located in Springfield, Missouri, Missouri. It is the state's second largest university with over 21,000 students, second only to the University of Missouri....
, who specializes in the Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
.

Dr. Zarins is ethnically Latvian, but was born in Germany at the end of the Second World War. His parents emigrated to the United States soon after he was born. He graduated from high school in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1963 and earned a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Nebraska in 1967. He served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam before completing his Ph.D. in Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Archaeology at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park, Chicago neighborhood of Chicago. Although an older university by the same name existed prior to its founding, the modern University of Chicago credits its founding to the oil magnate John D....
 in 1974. He then served as archaeological adviser to the Department of Antiquities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA , is an Arab country and the largest country of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Jordan on the northwest, Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south....
 before coming to Missouri State in 1978.

Dr. Zarins has extensive experience in archaeological fieldwork in Saudi Arabia, Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
, and Oman
Oman

Oman , officially the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab country in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It borders the United Arab Emirates on the northwest, Saudi Arabia on the west and Yemen on the southwest....
, and is now involved in a new project in Yemen
Yemen

Yemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is an Arab country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. Yemen has an estimated population of more than 23 million people and is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the North, the Red Sea to the West, the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden to the South, and Oman to the east....
. He was chief archaeologist for the Transarabia Expedition which made the famous discovery of the ancient city of Ubar in 1992. This made the headline of the New York Times, and it was also named one of the ten most important discoveries of the year by Discover, Time, and Newsweek magazines. The expedition was featured in a NOVA program called "In Search of the Lost City," which was first broadcast in 1996.

Dr. 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.

Dr. Zarins claims that the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden is a location described in the Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam , and his wife, Eve , lived after they were created by God....
 was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf, 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
Gihon

Gihon is the name of a river first mentioned in the second chapter of the Bible book of Genesis. The Gihon is mentioned as one of four rivers issuing out of the Garden of Eden that branched from a single river within the garden....
 would correspond with the Karun River in Iran, and the Pishon River
Pishon

The Pishon is one of four rivers mentioned in the Bible Book of Genesis . In that passage, these rivers are described as arising within the Garden of Eden....
 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 theory is strongly supported by C. A. Salabach .

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