Resources for ancient coastlines, forestation, vegetation, rivers and so on?

[Koramei]

I've been working on a mod for EU4 set 3000 years ago, and this is an area I've had very little success in finding out about for myself, so I was hoping I could get some help here. I know rivers changed course, coastlines receded and grew, areas that were once lush have become desert and vice versa, marshes were drained, forests cut and so on; all over the world, landscapes have changed enormously over the millennia. But I've had very little luck with finding details about it outside of some particular famous examples (the marshes in the Netherlands and Britain, vegetation in North Africa and Mesopotamia), so any help would be very appreciated. Specific examples, larger overviews, or where I might be able to look for myself (or what terms to search for, even; stuff like "ancient geography" seems to only bring up old maps, and "ancient coastlines" will generally be about much older changes due to the Ice Age), anything would be helpful. Thanks!


For instance, here's a map I found about changes in the Yellow River and coastline in north China. But it's pretty much the only thing of its kind I've been able to find.

 

[Grosshaus]

3000 years would have already meant quite a bit around the Baltic Sea. You could roughly estimate something in the middle of current coastline and what it was 7000 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littorina_Sea

 

[Henry IX]

The Persian Gulf has retreated by around 100km since Babalonian times. Ur was near the sea.

The level of precipitation throughout both the Middle East and the Persian plateu were somewhat higher, although both were still largely arid when not irrigated. In particular the population of the Persian plateu would have been perhapse twice the population supported during the middle ages.

Interstingly, history books from the turn of the 20th century are often better for this sort of material (and can be obtained for free or for a few dollars on Kindle). It was much more standard practice to give a survey of the geology land in the first few chapters, due to (I assume) a combination of poorer access to geographic knowlege by the reading public and the historical theories of the time which tend to a much stronger version of geographic and racial determinism than is fasionable today.

The History of Persia by P.M. Sykes is a book of this type and has some useful information about the changes to geography of the area over the last few thousand years.