Down in the Bottomlands

The Mediterranean Basin thus remains dry to the present day in this time line, as a vast sunken desert called the Bottomlands, averaging nearly two kilometers below mean sea level, with summer temperatures reaching well above 40 °C (104 °F) and with little to no rainfall, and brine lakes.

He is a citizen of Tartesh, a Homo neanderthalensis nation which seems to take in much of the west part of the Bottomlands and what in the real world is France and Spain.

This had been apparently instigated by the Krepalga (a Homo sapiens nation occupying all or part of the Middle East, which would have benefited by having a real-world-type Mediterranean Sea at to its west border).

Radnal and other characters eventually find who killed the Morgaffo officer, and with the unwitting help of a koprit bird (similar to a shrike) native to the Park, track down the location of the bomb, where it is defused.

Through these descriptions, the reader comes to understand the unique geography and ecosystem contained within the Bottomlands and its Trench, and how animals and plants would have adapted to a desert environment two kilometers below average sea level.