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What if the Pillars of Hercules had never reopened?

From wikipedia: "
The Zanclean flood (also known as "Zanclean Deluge") is a catastrophic flood that refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago,[1] at the beginning of the Zanclean age, which ended the Messinian salinity crisis. The term was coined by Maria Bianca Cita in 1972 during the DSDP Cruise which investigated specifically on the Messinian in the Mediterranean (Cita, 1972).
The flood occurred when Atlantic waters found their way into the cut-off and desiccated Mediterranean basin. A 200 km channel across the Gibraltar strait was carved out by the flood waters, which filled the Mediterranean in a few months to two years[2] with peak rates of sea level rise in the Mediterranean possibly reaching more than 10 metres per day.[3]"


I did a little map showing a Mediterranean divided into two large lakes based on the topography of the ocean floor. But it seems from the articles I read that no amount of river runoff or precipitation would be enough to permanently fill the basin.


So I guess we can take it either way....a fanciful shallow, divided lake (possibly freshwater); or an empty, salty basin.


No great seafaring civilizations... Would Italy, Africa, Aegean, Levant, etc. all be considered highlands? Uninhabited? Sparsely inhabited?


If most civilizations exist in the bottom of the basin, do all civilizations fear the well-known "Gate of Hercules", which holds back an Ocean that could wipe them out??
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