THE MYTH OF THE CASPIAN SEA.

 The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed inland body of water on Earth by area. It is a closed drainage basin that retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water. It is located between Europe and Asia, to the East of the Caucasus Mountains and the the West of the vast steppe of Central Asia. Its Northern part, the Caspian Depression, is one of the lowest points on Earth.
The Caucasus Mountains are a mountain system in Eurasia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region at the border of Europe and Asia. The region was inhabited since the Paleolithic Era. In 1991, early human fossils of 1.8 million years of age were found in the Southern Caucasus.
The Caspian Sea has a surface area of 371,000 km2 /143,200 sq mi, not included its detach lagoon of Garabo-Gazkol Aylagy, and a volume of 78,200 km3 /18,800 cu mi. It has a salinity of approximately 1.2% (12g/l) about a third of the salinity of most sea water.
The Caspian is divided into 3 distinct physical regions: the Northen, the Middle, and Southern Caspian.
Differences between the regions are dramatic. The Northern Caspian only includes the Caspian shelf, and is very shallow; it accounts for less than 1% of the total water volume with an average depth of only 5-6 m /16-20 ft. The Sea noticeably drops off towards the Middle Caspian, where the average depth is 190 m/620 ft. The Southern Caspian is the deepest, with oceanic depths of over 1,000 m/3,300 ft, greatly exceeding the depth of other regional seas, such as the Persian Gulf.
During warm and dry climatic periods, the landlock Sea almost dried up, depositing water-soluble mineral sediment like halite (common for homeowners in cold climates to melt the ice) that were covered by wind-blown deposits and were sealed off as an crystallized sediment when cool, and wet climates refilled the basin. Comparable crystallized beds underlie the Mediterranean Sea. Due to the current inflow of fresh water, the Caspian Sea is a freshwater lake in its Northern portions. It is more saline in its Iranian shore, where the catchment basin contributes little flow.
The Caspian Sea is bounded to the North East by Kazakh-Stan, to the North West by Russia, to the West by Azer-Baijan, to the South by Iran, and the South West by Turk-Meni-Stan.
The word Caspian is derived from the name of the Caspi, an ancient people who lived South West of the Sea in Trans-Caucasia. Strabo (64/63BC- 24 CE), a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian, wrote that "to the country of the Albanians belongs also the territory called Casp-Iane, which was named after the Caspian Tribe, as was also the Sea; but the tribe has now disappeared." The Caspians have been generally regarded as a pre-Indo-European people. Ernst Emill Herzfeld (23July1879-20January1948), a German archaeologist and Iranian-logist, identified them with the Kassites, who spoke a language without an identified relationship to any other known language and whose origins have long been the subject of debate. However onomastic evidence bearing on this point has been discovered in Aramaic papyri from Egypt in which several of the Caspian names that are mentioned and identified as 'Kaspai' are in part, etymologically Iranic. The Caspians of the Egyptian papyri must therefore be considered either an Iranian people or strongly under Iranic cultural influence.
The Caspian Gates, a region in Iran's Tehran province, indicates that they migrated to the South of the Sea.
The name Caspian Gates applied to the narrow region at the Southern corner of the Caspian Sea, through which, during the time of Alexander the Great, he actually marched in the pursuit of Artaxexes V, a prominent Persian Satrap of Bactria in Persia, and self-proclaimed King of Kings of Persia.
According to classical sources, he killed his predecessor and relative, Darius III, after the Persian army had been defeated by Alexander. He was executed by the hand of Alexander in 329 BC.
Under Ashur-Banipal (669-627BC) the boundaries of the Assyrian Empire reached as far as the Caucasus Mountains
The Gates were a legendary barrier built by Alexander in the Caucasus to keep Gog and Magog, uncivilized barbarians of the North from invading the land of the South.
Gog and Magog appear in the Hebrew Scriptures as individual persons or entities, or as peoples, or as lands. The Book of Ezekiel, Gog is the name of an individual and Magog the name of his land paints them as the enemies of God at the end of time. In Genesis 10 Magog is an entity and no Gog is mentioned, and in Revelation both Gog and Magog appear together as the hostile nations of the world.
The Caspian Sea, like the Aral Sea, Black Sea, and Lake Urmia, is a remnant of the ancient Para-Tethys Sea. It became landlocked about 5.5 million years ago due to tectonic uplift and a fall of sea level.