Marine Archaeology
Moderators: MichelleH, Minimalist, JPeters
As for artesian wells, Genesis chap 8: "the fountains also of the deep..."
So- at the same time that water flowed over the surface of a flat plain, the aquifers, which had become artesian, flushed out ever more debris, opening up even more, and gushing up *above the flooded surface*. I dunno if there is, or ever has been, any other place on Earth where this is possible.
People have Bibles, but they dont actually *read* the damn things.
I can see where maybe the fundies are all the descendants of Noah; and after 6000 years, are all inbred morons.
So- at the same time that water flowed over the surface of a flat plain, the aquifers, which had become artesian, flushed out ever more debris, opening up even more, and gushing up *above the flooded surface*. I dunno if there is, or ever has been, any other place on Earth where this is possible.
People have Bibles, but they dont actually *read* the damn things.
I can see where maybe the fundies are all the descendants of Noah; and after 6000 years, are all inbred morons.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.
I've read it - all of it, a long time ago. Fountains of the deep always meant that the water come from a source other than rain. A tsunami might provoke that image, or the entire sea bursting through a dam and flooding the "earth".
Spewing upward out of the ground was not something I ever envisioned from that passage. But that's the nature of the Bible I guess.
Spewing upward out of the ground was not something I ever envisioned from that passage. But that's the nature of the Bible I guess.

ask a rabbi. I think the ancient Hebrew word would preclude tsunami or anything other than an artesian spring. Remember there's the tale of somebody hitting a rock to make water gush forth. For a buncha hicks from the desert, gushing water was a real big deal.
Then there's a similar ref in Gilgamesh."Six days and six nights Blows the flood wind, as the south-storm sweeps the land." Which is the direction the Great flood came from, flowing north out of the Bosporus.
"Anu fashioned". We have the PIE word "canoe" and the Danube (Dan-oob) river from this place and time.
Then there's a similar ref in Gilgamesh."Six days and six nights Blows the flood wind, as the south-storm sweeps the land." Which is the direction the Great flood came from, flowing north out of the Bosporus.
"Anu fashioned". We have the PIE word "canoe" and the Danube (Dan-oob) river from this place and time.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.
Interesting stuff -
A mystery in the Green Mountains
Published: Friday, August 17, 2007
By Susan Green
Special to the Free Press
Deep within the Green Mountain National Forest, an enormous pile of rocks has people puzzled. In "Hidden Landscapes," a documentary screening twice this weekend during the Lake Champlain Maritime Festival on the Burlington waterfront, a group of scientists are seen observing this 20-by-30-foot cairn.
Among them is Stephen Loring, an anthropologist who conducts archaeological, ethno-historical and paleo-environmental research for the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. "I think we all agree that we don't know what's going on here," he says to the other men scrutinizing the mysterious structure. "It's so perplexing."
The film, a work-in-progress by Ted Timreck, is full of details about the original inhabitants of this region. With the suspense of a great detective novel, his cinematic saga challenges long-held assumptions about Champlain Valley civilization through the examination of stone.
Timreck, a New York City-based filmmaker and Smithsonian research associate, traces Loring's three-decade quest: In the late 1970s he came across a translucent Native American fluted point near the Missisquoi River, but did not identify its genesis for another 25 years.
Previously, Smithsonian scientists thought native people from these shores had reached northern Labrador 4,000 years ago. In 2004 Loring experienced a breakthrough leading to a different hypothesis. He determined that the Vermont point was at least 10,000 years old and fashioned from "Ramah chert," a volcanic rock found only on the coast of Labrador.
"That's 1,600 nautical miles," Timreck notes. "The theory is that Paleolithic people brought the Ramah chert here by boat when Lake Champlain was still a sea."
The frozen configurations of the last Ice Age mean these ancestors "had to adapt to hunting Arctic animals," he adds, "so developing full Arctic maritime capability was essential. A culture that could do that is, by implication, a gee-whiz phenomenon."
Artifacts such as the Mississquoi point are generally considered "Clovis," a name derived from the first prehistoric spear tips found anywhere in the United States; they were excavated during the 1930s in Clovis, N.M.
The term Clovis designates an era when the first human beings supposedly migrated to North America from Siberia, no earlier than 13,000 years ago. Thanks to recent eureka moments, that geography and timeframe are both in dispute.
"The Siberians are thought to have evolved into Clovis people," Timreck explains. "The question of pre-Clovis in the New World is the big issue now, however. Who they might have been is up in the air."
While an identity remains elusive, he acknowledges, "We're finding artifacts that carbon-date at 16,000 to 17,000 years old."
Consequently, experts have begun to revisit the former notion that North Americans didn't build boats until about 7,000 years ago. "Seafaring was supposed to be the skill only of smart Europeans," Timreck says. "But all kinds of little discover ies begin to shatter the overarching idea that the Clovis were the first people to arrive. History now opens up in a different way and it's all about the Champlain Basin."
Loring surmises that the Ramah chert point may have been the business end of a harpoon for hunting walruses, seals and whales in the salty Champlain Sea, according to Timreck. (If this sounds absurd, check out the skeleton of a 12,000-year-old beluga whale -- dubbed Charlotte for the Chittenden County town where it was unearthed in 1849 --that's exhibited at the University of Vermont's Perkins Geology Museum in Delehanty Hall.)
Timreck's narration compares "the maritime revolution of the last Ice Age" to the space race of the 1960s, with peripatetic paleo-indians akin to 20th-century astronauts and cosmonauts.
The film includes two prominent Vermonters. The late Jim Peterson, an associate professor of anthropology at UVM, was pivotal in persuading the scientific community to take notice. Abenaki tribal historian Fred Wiseman, an archaeologist and chair of the humanities department at Johnson State College, continues to collaborate with Timreck.
Many researchers are intrigued by the 10,800-year-old bone sewing needle, found somewhere out West, that Smithsonian paleo-indian/paleo-ecology program field director Pegi Jodry displays in the film. "It indicates the use of fine thread and very thin materials," Timreck says.
Wiseman senses a profound implication. "These folks were a heck of a lot more advanced than anyone assumed," he suggests. "The legacy from Jim Petersen is the idea of natives in cloth, not just in buckskin and beads. It's a new image. "
"The needle tells it all," Timreck muses. "Everything else is just stones in the ground."
Perhaps, but what magnificent stones they seem to be.
Another focus of "Hidden Landscapes" is the long-simmering controversy about who was responsible for the stone chambers that dot the southeast Vermont countryside. State archaeological officials contend they are colonial root cellars, while others have insisted these megaliths were the work of Bronze Age Celtic mariners. Initially, nobody suspected an even older and more homegrown source: indigenous Pleolithic people.
"There is evidence of native stonework," Petersen says on camera. "We have underappreciated native capabilities."
Timreck has a similar assessment: "Nobody had dreamed of Eastern native peoples as being that sophisticated."
For Wiseman, the issue is affirmation. "Native people in the Northeast were always believed to be exceedingly primitive," he points out. "Yet we've got some of the earliest mounds in this area. But do you see that mentioned in anthropology textbooks? Hell, no!"
In the film, a Narragansett medicine woman named Ella Sekatau underscores that opinion: "They don't want to give the Indians credit for anything!" Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, two men aerospace engineer Byron Dix and oceanographer Jim Mavor, both now deceased methodically investigated a Windsor County megalith. They called it Calendar One, because of the site's probable purpose for unknown builders at an undetermined time, and took precise measurements during solstices and equinoxes to discern astronomical alignments.
Similar stone structures have been identified across the country and some people envision them as ceremonial sacred spaces. "These sites are inhabited by spirits," theorizes Rosita Worl, an anthropologist from the Tlingit tribe in Alaska interviewed by Timreck. "Shamans would come here to commune with the spirit world." "There are secrets here, perhaps," speculates Evan T. Pritchard, a history professor in upstate New York with an Algonquin Micmac heritage.
Timreck's footage of the Dix-Mavor collaboration dates back to 1976. "Even if the stone ruins weren't constructed by Native Americans, it's utterly insane to think this was done without their knowledge, unless we foolishly believe the United States was a totally uninhabited wilderness," he says.
"Hidden Landscapes" -- on tap at 7 p.m. today and Saturday at the Lake & College Waterfront Performing Arts Center -- is two hours long. It's the first segment of what Timreck plans as a six-part documentary that he'll finish by July 2009, which marks the 400th anniversary of French explorer Samuel de Champlain's "discovery" of the lake that bears his name.
For that quadricentennial, the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center intends to "tell as much of the Abenaki story as we can," says executive director Phelan Fretz. "It's a rich moment when there's a shift in how academics think about history. How wonderful that we can help facilitate that conversation." He's also pleased that the Timreck film "has opened doors for us at the Smithsonian."
While creating programs for the PBS shows "Nova" and "American Masters," Timreck began his association with the Smithsonian in the 1970s. The prestigious institution has since sent him sent all over the planet Iceland, Russia, Scandinavia, Alaska, the Baffin Islands to document what its scientists are doing. In 1979, that work took him to Labrador, where he met Stephen Loring.
Timreck marvels that Loring's revelations about Vermont are so new that "science has to go back to the drawing board to figure out what happened. There's no synthesis yet, except in a movie like this. People were in these hills, even though nobody so far understands how they got here or why. This place couldn't have been empty."
The Club is dead, even if they are not presently aware of the fact.
john
A mystery in the Green Mountains
Published: Friday, August 17, 2007
By Susan Green
Special to the Free Press
Deep within the Green Mountain National Forest, an enormous pile of rocks has people puzzled. In "Hidden Landscapes," a documentary screening twice this weekend during the Lake Champlain Maritime Festival on the Burlington waterfront, a group of scientists are seen observing this 20-by-30-foot cairn.
Among them is Stephen Loring, an anthropologist who conducts archaeological, ethno-historical and paleo-environmental research for the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. "I think we all agree that we don't know what's going on here," he says to the other men scrutinizing the mysterious structure. "It's so perplexing."
The film, a work-in-progress by Ted Timreck, is full of details about the original inhabitants of this region. With the suspense of a great detective novel, his cinematic saga challenges long-held assumptions about Champlain Valley civilization through the examination of stone.
Timreck, a New York City-based filmmaker and Smithsonian research associate, traces Loring's three-decade quest: In the late 1970s he came across a translucent Native American fluted point near the Missisquoi River, but did not identify its genesis for another 25 years.
Previously, Smithsonian scientists thought native people from these shores had reached northern Labrador 4,000 years ago. In 2004 Loring experienced a breakthrough leading to a different hypothesis. He determined that the Vermont point was at least 10,000 years old and fashioned from "Ramah chert," a volcanic rock found only on the coast of Labrador.
"That's 1,600 nautical miles," Timreck notes. "The theory is that Paleolithic people brought the Ramah chert here by boat when Lake Champlain was still a sea."
The frozen configurations of the last Ice Age mean these ancestors "had to adapt to hunting Arctic animals," he adds, "so developing full Arctic maritime capability was essential. A culture that could do that is, by implication, a gee-whiz phenomenon."
Artifacts such as the Mississquoi point are generally considered "Clovis," a name derived from the first prehistoric spear tips found anywhere in the United States; they were excavated during the 1930s in Clovis, N.M.
The term Clovis designates an era when the first human beings supposedly migrated to North America from Siberia, no earlier than 13,000 years ago. Thanks to recent eureka moments, that geography and timeframe are both in dispute.
"The Siberians are thought to have evolved into Clovis people," Timreck explains. "The question of pre-Clovis in the New World is the big issue now, however. Who they might have been is up in the air."
While an identity remains elusive, he acknowledges, "We're finding artifacts that carbon-date at 16,000 to 17,000 years old."
Consequently, experts have begun to revisit the former notion that North Americans didn't build boats until about 7,000 years ago. "Seafaring was supposed to be the skill only of smart Europeans," Timreck says. "But all kinds of little discover ies begin to shatter the overarching idea that the Clovis were the first people to arrive. History now opens up in a different way and it's all about the Champlain Basin."
Loring surmises that the Ramah chert point may have been the business end of a harpoon for hunting walruses, seals and whales in the salty Champlain Sea, according to Timreck. (If this sounds absurd, check out the skeleton of a 12,000-year-old beluga whale -- dubbed Charlotte for the Chittenden County town where it was unearthed in 1849 --that's exhibited at the University of Vermont's Perkins Geology Museum in Delehanty Hall.)
Timreck's narration compares "the maritime revolution of the last Ice Age" to the space race of the 1960s, with peripatetic paleo-indians akin to 20th-century astronauts and cosmonauts.
The film includes two prominent Vermonters. The late Jim Peterson, an associate professor of anthropology at UVM, was pivotal in persuading the scientific community to take notice. Abenaki tribal historian Fred Wiseman, an archaeologist and chair of the humanities department at Johnson State College, continues to collaborate with Timreck.
Many researchers are intrigued by the 10,800-year-old bone sewing needle, found somewhere out West, that Smithsonian paleo-indian/paleo-ecology program field director Pegi Jodry displays in the film. "It indicates the use of fine thread and very thin materials," Timreck says.
Wiseman senses a profound implication. "These folks were a heck of a lot more advanced than anyone assumed," he suggests. "The legacy from Jim Petersen is the idea of natives in cloth, not just in buckskin and beads. It's a new image. "
"The needle tells it all," Timreck muses. "Everything else is just stones in the ground."
Perhaps, but what magnificent stones they seem to be.
Another focus of "Hidden Landscapes" is the long-simmering controversy about who was responsible for the stone chambers that dot the southeast Vermont countryside. State archaeological officials contend they are colonial root cellars, while others have insisted these megaliths were the work of Bronze Age Celtic mariners. Initially, nobody suspected an even older and more homegrown source: indigenous Pleolithic people.
"There is evidence of native stonework," Petersen says on camera. "We have underappreciated native capabilities."
Timreck has a similar assessment: "Nobody had dreamed of Eastern native peoples as being that sophisticated."
For Wiseman, the issue is affirmation. "Native people in the Northeast were always believed to be exceedingly primitive," he points out. "Yet we've got some of the earliest mounds in this area. But do you see that mentioned in anthropology textbooks? Hell, no!"
In the film, a Narragansett medicine woman named Ella Sekatau underscores that opinion: "They don't want to give the Indians credit for anything!" Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, two men aerospace engineer Byron Dix and oceanographer Jim Mavor, both now deceased methodically investigated a Windsor County megalith. They called it Calendar One, because of the site's probable purpose for unknown builders at an undetermined time, and took precise measurements during solstices and equinoxes to discern astronomical alignments.
Similar stone structures have been identified across the country and some people envision them as ceremonial sacred spaces. "These sites are inhabited by spirits," theorizes Rosita Worl, an anthropologist from the Tlingit tribe in Alaska interviewed by Timreck. "Shamans would come here to commune with the spirit world." "There are secrets here, perhaps," speculates Evan T. Pritchard, a history professor in upstate New York with an Algonquin Micmac heritage.
Timreck's footage of the Dix-Mavor collaboration dates back to 1976. "Even if the stone ruins weren't constructed by Native Americans, it's utterly insane to think this was done without their knowledge, unless we foolishly believe the United States was a totally uninhabited wilderness," he says.
"Hidden Landscapes" -- on tap at 7 p.m. today and Saturday at the Lake & College Waterfront Performing Arts Center -- is two hours long. It's the first segment of what Timreck plans as a six-part documentary that he'll finish by July 2009, which marks the 400th anniversary of French explorer Samuel de Champlain's "discovery" of the lake that bears his name.
For that quadricentennial, the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center intends to "tell as much of the Abenaki story as we can," says executive director Phelan Fretz. "It's a rich moment when there's a shift in how academics think about history. How wonderful that we can help facilitate that conversation." He's also pleased that the Timreck film "has opened doors for us at the Smithsonian."
While creating programs for the PBS shows "Nova" and "American Masters," Timreck began his association with the Smithsonian in the 1970s. The prestigious institution has since sent him sent all over the planet Iceland, Russia, Scandinavia, Alaska, the Baffin Islands to document what its scientists are doing. In 1979, that work took him to Labrador, where he met Stephen Loring.
Timreck marvels that Loring's revelations about Vermont are so new that "science has to go back to the drawing board to figure out what happened. There's no synthesis yet, except in a movie like this. People were in these hills, even though nobody so far understands how they got here or why. This place couldn't have been empty."
The Club is dead, even if they are not presently aware of the fact.
john
"Man is a marvellous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is sort of a low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
-
- Forum Moderator
- Posts: 16033
- Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2005 1:09 pm
- Location: Arizona
Very interesting, John. A quick check of Google, though, showed a stunning lack of interest.
What The Club can't kill with facts they try to ignore to death.
What The Club can't kill with facts they try to ignore to death.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
-- George Carlin
More than likely, that's a tale about Moses having some men digging a bit lower into an artesian well that had a seasonal low water table. No miracle there.Remember there's the tale of somebody hitting a rock to make water gush forth. For a buncha hicks from the desert, gushing water was a real big deal.
God sure was pissed though.

DB is correct on Artesian wells. They are very suceptible to ground water changes, for example, a large dam , natural or man made can play havok with them
I made up a schedule for a pump for use in New Zealand years ago and the damn thing required 400ft of steel pipe for it to reach the water in the bore hole. Some months later the water rose to near ground level and crushed the motor casing!
I made up a schedule for a pump for use in New Zealand years ago and the damn thing required 400ft of steel pipe for it to reach the water in the bore hole. Some months later the water rose to near ground level and crushed the motor casing!
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
The Green Mountain post is a bit off the subject of Marine Archaeology, but it is interesting.
I am just wondering what we have learned about the comet causing “pockets” of C14 dating irregularities would have on the stated dates?
This area would be right in the hot spot of those kind of irregularities..
I am just wondering what we have learned about the comet causing “pockets” of C14 dating irregularities would have on the stated dates?
This area would be right in the hot spot of those kind of irregularities..
-
- Forum Moderator
- Posts: 16033
- Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2005 1:09 pm
- Location: Arizona
http://www.newkerala.com/july.php?actio ... s&id=54460
Back to the Indian Ocean.
Back to the Indian Ocean.
New Delhi, Aug 17 : A group of archaeological experts and Indian Navy divers have conducted the first scientific survey off the Gujarat coast to establish whether or not the ruins on the seabed are of the mythological city of Dwarka, the capital of Hindu god Krishna.
"The area off the Samudranaraya temple at (present day) Dwarka is known to contain structures which have been widely reported and interpreted by renowned scholars.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
-- George Carlin
This is good news. Here's hoping that they will announce the results of the C14 testing they did on the piece of wood from the well. Hopefully something will be on the internet by next Fri. or Sat.A 21-member team conducted the survey in January-February. It comprised 10 specialists from the ASI and 11 divers of the Indian Navy. A report on the survey will be presented at a seminar on the Maritime Heritage of the Indian Ocean here Aug 23-24.
Regarding the C14 date on wood. The Austrians found a timber frame well casing near the Danube. Riven timbers. The photo showed ends of the timbers, reconstructed in a museum, that looked like they were sawn off.
Dendochronology says that the trees were cut in 5078 BC.
Seems like you could compare the C14 on this to see what they have in India.
Dendochronology says that the trees were cut in 5078 BC.
Seems like you could compare the C14 on this to see what they have in India.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.
daybrown:
Check this out
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/nuclear.pdf
And then read pages 2 and 3 of the "cosmic catastrophes" thread.
C14 has lost it's reputation, among those in the know, as the last and final word in dating technique.
It isn’t a global constant.
And if a comet was involved in India, all bets are off.
And with climates as far apart at Europe and India, I doubt tree rings will help.
I am afraid it is going to take something dateable. Pottery, a coin, an inscription, etc. to put this one to bed.
Check this out
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/nuclear.pdf
And then read pages 2 and 3 of the "cosmic catastrophes" thread.
C14 has lost it's reputation, among those in the know, as the last and final word in dating technique.
It isn’t a global constant.
And if a comet was involved in India, all bets are off.
And with climates as far apart at Europe and India, I doubt tree rings will help.
I am afraid it is going to take something dateable. Pottery, a coin, an inscription, etc. to put this one to bed.
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/nuclear.pdf
No thanx, I hate waiting on .pdf; to me its a sign of someone who does not know how to properly present something for the net.
I'll take your word for it. i thot about a DNA analysis of the crops grown in India, but I aint so sure that mutation rate is as stable as advertised either.
Hodder has some problem with C14 in Anatolia, but it is clear that while a few cities were founded, a dozen were abandoned, and the pottery in use fits pretty well with a C14 date late in the 7th mil.
The ox, which had already been in long use, made a huge diff, and lacking it hindered Americans. Malllory for one, says organized warfare didnt get going til the late bronze age, so before that, if a caravan was large enuf, all it had to deal with were small nomadic bandit gangs.
So long as the terrain was open enuf, they could go down into India, East to China, SW into the Levant, West into Ukraine, and north til they got into the scrub of southern siberia. Bush, jungle, & forest makes ambush and escape with loot easy.
So- I await some artifact found in India, or found from India to open this line of research all up. The Kara Kum prolly still has tons of artifacts. I'd go there immediately if I could get the grant money with a buncha kids who know how to run joysticks to fly a pattern of TV drones over the desert. There'll be tons of shit just left out there.
It India was in business at the time, their artifacts will be there too.
No thanx, I hate waiting on .pdf; to me its a sign of someone who does not know how to properly present something for the net.
I'll take your word for it. i thot about a DNA analysis of the crops grown in India, but I aint so sure that mutation rate is as stable as advertised either.
Hodder has some problem with C14 in Anatolia, but it is clear that while a few cities were founded, a dozen were abandoned, and the pottery in use fits pretty well with a C14 date late in the 7th mil.
The ox, which had already been in long use, made a huge diff, and lacking it hindered Americans. Malllory for one, says organized warfare didnt get going til the late bronze age, so before that, if a caravan was large enuf, all it had to deal with were small nomadic bandit gangs.
So long as the terrain was open enuf, they could go down into India, East to China, SW into the Levant, West into Ukraine, and north til they got into the scrub of southern siberia. Bush, jungle, & forest makes ambush and escape with loot easy.
So- I await some artifact found in India, or found from India to open this line of research all up. The Kara Kum prolly still has tons of artifacts. I'd go there immediately if I could get the grant money with a buncha kids who know how to run joysticks to fly a pattern of TV drones over the desert. There'll be tons of shit just left out there.
It India was in business at the time, their artifacts will be there too.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.