Archaeology at Nazareth

marduk · Post by **marduk** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:49 pm

Okay, I should have added inherited brain. You know, there were people that thought Neil Armstrong was filmed walking on the moon in a studio. I'm not one of them.
Donna

I saw that movie spin off
it has that murdering glove not fitting Negro guy in it named after a citrus drink and that Jewish guy that married Barbara Streisand
now if only the Bible were that complicated we'd all believe it

stan · Post by **stan** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 5:41 pm

Here's a link to SMU (Southern Methodist University)'s archaeological
projects including the "nazareth" site.
The article is several years old, but it has some photos and drawings of the site.http://faculty.smu.edu/jowillia/kfar_ha ... horesh.htm

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 6:42 pm

If those ruins of rock buildings and ritual buriel practices are from 8000 B.C., and the Canaanites supposedly didn't come along until 5,000 years or so after that, what was going on there for all those supposed years, nothing?

oldarchystudent · Post by **oldarchystudent** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 6:51 pm

Genesis Veracity wrote:If those ruins of rock buildings and ritual buriel practices are from 8000 B.C., and the Canaanites supposedly didn't come along until 5,000 years or so after that, what was going on there for all those supposed years, nothing?

Since this is a press release and not a full site report it's a pretty good bet that they are just reporting on the most interesting finds. I would expect there were later peroid artifacts higher in the stratigraphy that were not considered to be as interesting to the general public. I'd love to see a full site report on this dig.

oldarchystudent · Post by **oldarchystudent** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:03 pm

I'm curious about the plaster over the graves. Not a common material to have around in 8000 BCE(?) Could this represent a destruction layer of a later structure?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:12 pm

The date of 8000 B.C. is such an untenable stretch because of the sophistication of the artifacts and ruins there, and because the first people in written history in that region were the Canaanites, they called themselves the Kena'anu, and they had ruins and rituals like those at the site under excavation, 2000 B.C. vintage stuff, not 8000 B.C.

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:30 pm

Chemi Shanidar in Iran dates to 9,000 BC. So does Jericho. Catal Huyuk pops up a bit later. Are they all wrong, too?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:36 pm

Not if you actually choose to believe that the kingdoms of the Elamites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites, existed for 6,000 years, that's a long time, min, twice as long as the time back to King Solomon, wow.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:42 pm

Notice that Elam (Elamites) was a son of Shem, and Heth (Hittites) was a son of Canaan (Canaanites), who was a son of Ham (Cham), so were they really from 8000 B.C.? Genesis says they were eight or nine generations before Abraham, which puts them at circa 2300 B.C.

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:28 pm

I imagine that all those cultures managed to come up with their own creation myths that had nothing whatsoever to do with silly bible stories.

oldarchystudent · Post by **oldarchystudent** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:31 pm

I found this which seems to be an abstract for a report on a higher stratigraphic level of the site, dating to 8750 BP - 1,250 years later than the finds we have been talking about. The page is cached as the original has been apparently moved. I'm not sure this link will work as it's a Google redirect.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:cAU ... clnk&cd=11

20) ABSTRACTS of papers presented at the 9th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Bioarcheology & Forensic Anthropology Association, University of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana, October 19 & 20, 2002

(snipped some entries not related to our thread)

SIMMONS, Tal. "'What Ceremony Else?': Ritual Treatment of the Dead in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Mortuary Complex of Kfar HaHoresh, Israel."

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Kfar HaHoresh (8750 B.P.) in the lower Galilee of Israel has yielded numerous burials and unique mortuary contexts. Burials of single, articulated individuals are relatively rare at KHH, in contrast to most known PPNB Levantine sites where they are the norm. At most sites, individuals are buried under plaster floors of dwellings. KHH has no apparent house architecture and, although human remains are routinely found under plaster surfaces, these function more as caps to burial installations rather than floor structures per se. Burials at KHH may take many forms including individual burials with or without skull removal, multiple burials of both a primary and secondary nature, bundle burials, skull caches, and depictions ? two dimensional representations of animals constructed of human bones. Many burials are intimately associated with animal remains. A headless gazelle was buried with a plastered human skull, two foxes were each buried with a piece of human cranium, and an articulated but headless human male was placed atop a pit containing the remains of at least 9 butchered Bos.

This paper examines the human burial taphonomy (postmortem modification by human, animal or natural actions) at Kfar HaHoresh with regard to several variables. For the purposes of this study, human modification of a skeletal element was defined as indications of peri-mortem (sensu latu) cutmarks (for dismemberment, defleshing, or disarticulation), burning, saw marks, and/or drill holes. Animal modifications of bones were defined as being caused by carnivores (punctures, scratches/striae, shallow pits, ragged edge chewing, perforations, and crenulated edges) and rodents (gnawing). In addition, percussion damage, fracture type and shape, shaft circumference, and weathering were also considered. Two loci are compared: Locus 1003, which is argued to represent a multiple use secondary burial pit containing a MNI of 12 individuals (based on the mandible), and the complex of Loci 1155, 1352, 1353, and 1373 (MNI of 12 individuals, based on the left femur), which is argued to represent a depiction with a skull cache. There are significant differences in the treatment of the human remains in each area. For example, in Locus 1003 only .02% of the 1028 bones and bone fragments examined exhibit postmortem human modification; in the 1155 Locus complex, a full 6.10% of the 722 bones exhibit human modification. Likewise, in Locus 1003 only .02% of bones show modification by rodents and/or carnivores; in 1155 over 7% of the bones are modified by animals. These differences are statistically significant and reflect the contrasting use of these burial areas and the actions and intents of the people who created the site. Other factors, including the age distribution of the individuals, the marking of the graves, and (in at least one case) the cause of death, also speak to these distinctions.

Anyway - this would indicate the site wasn't abandoned after 8,000 BCE and occupation continued for at least another 1,250 years.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 5:00 am

Min, one of your problems is that southern Iran was known as Elam circa 2000 B.C., and the northern Levant was Hittite country, and the Holy Land was known as Canaan circa 2000 B.C., so how'd the Bible get all that right?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 5:08 am

Oas, you're still faced with a gap of 4,000 years, the equivalent of the timespan from today back to the time of Abraham.

So we have human civilization in the region from circa 2300 B.C. to the present, but according to your scenario, before that time there was no settlement there for at least 4,000 years, back to circa 7000 B.C. when there was settlement there which looks like what would follow "4,000 years" later. Rather cumbersome, wouldn't you say?

oldarchystudent · Post by **oldarchystudent** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 5:48 am

That's only one discussion of the site from one season, 2002. The discussion started with the latest season which was 1,250 years older. Excavation has been ongoing here since at least 1991 so logically we could think that they had already excavated out deposits from later time periods but they haven't hit the press the way this latest dig has, because they would not be as "spectacular" to the average reader. Most of the work archaeologists do gets published (hopefully, but sadly not always) in a professional journal and debated there, never seen by non-archaeologist folks. I haven't seen those reports so I can't answer for you what periods have been examined in the last 14 years at this site, I have done some searches on a couple of on-line libraries and seen some titles, but nothing electronic that I could read without ordering it through my school's library.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 5:59 am

Oas, if there is 4,000 years of unreported archaeology there, not reported through ten years of work on it, doesn't that seem odd, considering you'd think that those mainstream archaeologists would surely shout it from the roof-tops, to announce to the world that the "foolish book from sheep-herders, the Bible, has been disproven for good?"

Since they plainly would have shouted such from the roof-tops, if the evidence is there, the obvious deduction is that it's not there, I'm afraid you're in for a long wait, oas, right john?