Archaeologica.org

Oh, shit.


Arch will be worshipping it. He'll even find a new name for god.

Lego.

For some reason all the Western Hemisphere sites seem to be in SA.
Maybe the winds and currents were an influence?
Even today, in the Northern Hemisphere we seem to think of oceans as barriers, while in the Southern Hemisphere they think of the as highways.

I am not to concerned with a 500 year “give or take.”
Since there no written records that can be read, everyone calls it “pre-history.”

And I just don’t think the dating technology is good enough yet to get anything any closer than that, when we are talking that long ago.

I see no reason why there could not have been knowledge of the entire world at this time frame. I have a printed news release from 2001 about a Dr. Robert Carter of University College London, finding Bitumen with reeds and barnacles on opposite sides. Clearly a coating off a reed boat. They dated it to 5000 BC and carrying cargo from 1000 miles away.
I think I have posted it before, but I don’t know where I have it in postable form right now.

Looking at it from a modified Biblical perspective, the Flood may have been a big one that affected “the known world” of the average Mesopotamian shepard, but not the entire globe.

Again, this shows the problem with the Bible as a history book. With it’s narrow focus, it doesn’t even mention an identifiable location until Abram leaves Ur. That is one third of the way through the book of Genesis and probably around 1950 BC. Nothing is mentioned because it is beyond the scope of the story.

The knowledge that there is a big world out there may have given some of our “leavers” some known places to go to. Traders may have had small settlements, and used the fringes of the globe as sources of raw materials, much like the “third world” is used today. If so, when things went real bad at home, the boonies may looked kind of good.

It may have been the first time, but it wouldn’t be the only time a disaster started an exodus (?) to the countryside.

Just to get everyone thinking about the ultimate building project I'll offer the following for consideration.

It could be that the story of the Tower of Babel is based on historical (or more correctly, prehistorical) reality of an actual project which failed in the area of modern Babylon, Iraq. The following are quotations from non-christian writers prior to 100bc. (Even if a few are preserved by Eusebius).

From a Wiki article on Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta

E-ana was a ziggurat in Uruk built in honour of the goddess Inanna, the "lady of all the lands". Similarly, the lord of Aratta has himself crowned in Inanna's name, but she does not find this as pleasing as her brick temple in Uruk.

Enmerkar, thus "chosen by Inanna in her holy heart from the bright mountain", then asks Inanna to let him subject Aratta and make the people of Aratta deliver a tribute of precious metals and gemstones, for constructing the lofty Abzu ziggurat of Enki at Eridu, as well as for embellishing her own E-ana sanctuary at Uruk. Inanna accordingly advises Enmerkar to dispatch a herald across the mountains of Susin and Anshan to the lord of Aratta, to demand his submission and his tribute.

Enmerkar agrees and sends the envoy, along with his specific threats to destroy Aratta and disperse its people, if they do not send him the tribute -- "lest like the devastation which swept destructively, and in whose wake Inanna arose, shrieked and yelled aloud, I too wreak a sweeping devastation there." He is furthermore to recite the "Incantation of Nudimmud", a hymn imploring Enki to restore (or in some translations, to disrupt) the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions, named as Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (the region around Akkad), and the Martu land.

From Hestlaeus as preserved by Eusebius

THE priests who escaped took with them the implements of the worship of the Enyalian Jove, and came to Senaar in Babylonia. But they were again driven from thence by the introduction of a diversity of tongues: upon which they founded colonies in various parts, each settling in such situations as chance or the direction of God led them to occupy

From the Sibylline Oracles

BUT when the judgements of the Almighty God
Were ripe for execution; when the Tower
Rose to the skies upon Assyria's plain,
And all mankind one language only knew:
A dread commission from on high was given
To the fell whirlwinds, which with dire alarms
Beat on the Tower, and to its lowest base
Shook it convulsed. And now all intercourse,
By some occult and overruling power,
Ceased among men: by utterance they strove
Perplexed and anxious to disclose their mind;
But their lip failed them; and in lieu of words
Produced a painful babbling sound: the place
Was thence called Babel; by th' apostate crew
Named from the event. Then severed far away
They sped uncertain into the realms unknows:
Thus kingdoms rose; and the glad world was filled.

Nebuchadnezzar II

A former king built [the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth, but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. Since that time earthquakes and lightning had dispersed its sun-dried clay; the bricks of the casing had split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great lord, excited my mind to repair this building. I did not change the site, nor did I take away the foundation stone ? as it had been in former times. So I founded it, I made it; as it had been in ancient days, I so exalted the summit.

Later, tomorrow, I will post some archaeological information about the above.

Did it fail?

This is what is left of the Ziggurat of Uruk now.



Frankly the whole story sounds like an etiological myth to explain why there were so many languages in the world. The Ziggurat would have been nearly 2,000 years old by the time the Judahites were exiled in Babylon. Either it was yet another Sumerian/Babylonian tale that they appropriated or they invented one of their own based on the fact that there were peoples who spoke many languages and the ruined Ziggurat in their midst.

The tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, ruined cities in a dead zone by the Dead Sea, are also considered etiological by many scholars.

Depends which part of SA you mean KB. The currents in the North Atlantic flow CW and and in the south, CCW. Anything going into the sea along the western seaboard of Europe or Africa has a good chance of making a landfall in Central America. The eastern seaboard of America if colonised from the sea would most likely be colonised by Chinese because of the currents in the Pacific.

Minimalist wrote:Frankly the whole story sounds like an etiological myth to explain why there were so many languages in the world. The Ziggurat would have been nearly 2,000 years old by the time the Judahites were exiled in Babylon. Either it was yet another Sumerian/Babylonian tale that they appropriated or they invented one of their own based on the fact that there were peoples who spoke many languages and the ruined Ziggurat in their midst.

The tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, ruined cities in a dead zone by the Dead Sea, are also considered etiological by many scholars.

Thanks for the pic Min.
I intentionally left the Bible out of the mix because I was trying to establish the fact that the tale of this tower and the confusion of languages existed independently of the Hebrews. The idea of a common language is controverserial but not altogether improbable as the large variety we have today came from a few common root languages and extrapolating even farther....its possible.

It is the memory of this project or one like it, that was scattered across the globe. It appears to me you have two commonalities, world wide: a flood and ziggurat (or possibly a mountain).

The idea does seem to have existed in Sumerian mythology long before there were any Hebrews.

There is a Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower of Babel, called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, where Enmerkar of Uruk is building a massive ziggurat in Eridu and demands a tribute of precious materials from Aratta for its construction, at one point reciting an incantation imploring the god Enki to restore (or in Kramer's translation, to disrupt) the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions -- named as Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (the region around Akkad), and the Martu land.

Wikipedia

The Tower of Babel - Archaeology

Finding archaeological evidence for the Tower of Babel is fraught with two problems: 1. Finding non-christian references is not easy since the web is flooded with religious sites linking the archaeological finds to biblical veracity. 2. Its not easy to identify which of several structures actually could have been the tower referenced in literature. It s seems the most likely candidate is the Etemenanki tower in the ancient city of Babylon. It was described by Herodotus and was seen and described by Alexander's armies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etemenanki

The Etemenanki is described in a cuneiform tablet from Uruk from 229 BC, a copy of an older text (now in the Louvre in Paris). It gives the height of the tower as seven stocks (91 meters) with a square base of 91 meters on each side. This mud brick structure was confirmed by excavations conducted by Robert Koldewey after 1913. Large stairs were discovered at the south side of the building, where a triple gate connected it with the Esagila. A larger gate to the east connected the Etemenanki with the sacred procession road (now reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin).

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... ai_9285964
DOMINIQUE BEYER, of France, is professor of the archaeology and ancient history of the Near East at the University of Strasbourg II

Herodotus gives the following description: "In the middle [of the sanctuary] is a massive tower, one stadium square, on top of which is another tower which supports a third, and so on up to eight towers. An external ramp rises in a spiral to the last tower; about halfway up is a balcony and some seats so that one can sit down and rest on the way. The last tower contains a large sanctuary in which there is a richly decorated bed, and beside it is a golden table. But there is no statue, and only one person may sleep there: a native woman whom the god has chosen before all others, say the Chaldeans, who are priests of this divinity."

The gist of this account by Herodotus is borne out by cuneiform inscriptions on a Babylonian tablet dating from the Seleucid epoch (third century BC). The inscriptions are based on an older text which describes the great Temple of Marduk, patron god of Babylon, restored by the Chaldean kings Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadrezzar II towards the beginning of the sixth century BC. This temple bore the name of Esagila, "temple which uplifts the head". Its accompanying ziggurat, the biblical Tower of Babel, was called Etemenanki, "house of the foundation of the universe". With a base of 91 metres square and rising to a similar height, the tower consisted of seven stepped storeys with a temple at the top.

http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/ane/anecofaq.html

There are archaeological indications that this tower did exist. Babylon was certainly an important city and a ziggurat honouring the god Marduk was built, destroyed and rebuilt until it was most likely the tallest structure in the region. The tower's most splendid incarnation was probably under Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC), who rebuilt the tower to stand some 90 metres high. Archaeologists examining the remains of the city of Babylon have found what appears to be the foundation of the tower. Modern scholars, however, are divided as to whether the Old Testament account refers to a real tower or whether the story is purely theological.

ziggurat honouring the god Marduk was built,

Explains a lot.

http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/AUD_BAI/BABEL.html

A tradition similar to that of the tower of Babel is found in Central America . Xelhua, one of the seven giants rescued from the deluge, built the pyramid of Cholula in order storm heaven. The gods, however, destroyed it with fire and confounded the language of the builders . Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been met with among the Mongolian Tharus in northern India (REPORT of the Census of Bengal, 1872, p . 16o), and, according to Dr Livingstone, among the Africans of Lake Ngami . The Esthonian myth of " the Cooking of Languages " (Kohl, Reisen in die .Ostseeprovinzen, ii . 251-255) may also be compared, as well as the Australian legend of the origin of the diversity of speech (Gerstacker, Reisen, vol. iv. pp . 381 seq.)

I for one, find it interesting that the legend of the tower and and the confusion of languages is found in every continent in the world, just like the flood legend. Maybe when KB first brought up his points about flood, migrations and building campaigns he was correct, even if we can argue the dates. If find it odd that tower or pyramid lke structures suddenly became the fashion world-wide unless world-wide contact was much more common than we suspect or unless all these people came from a more or less common origin.

Forum Monk wrote:http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/AUD_BAI/BABEL.html

A tradition similar to that of the tower of Babel is found in Central America . Xelhua, one of the seven giants rescued from the deluge, built the pyramid of Cholula in order storm heaven. The gods, however, destroyed it with fire and confounded the language of the builders . Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been met with among the Mongolian Tharus in northern India (REPORT of the Census of Bengal, 1872, p . 16o), and, according to Dr Livingstone, among the Africans of Lake Ngami . The Esthonian myth of " the Cooking of Languages " (Kohl, Reisen in die .Ostseeprovinzen, ii . 251-255) may also be compared, as well as the Australian legend of the origin of the diversity of speech (Gerstacker, Reisen, vol. iv. pp . 381 seq.)

I for one, find it interesting that the legend of the tower and and the confusion of languages is found in every continent in the world, just like the flood legend. Maybe when KB first brought up his points about flood, migrations and building campaigns he was correct, even if we can argue the dates. If find it odd that tower or pyramid lke structures suddenly became the fashion world-wide unless world-wide contact was much more common than we suspect or unless all these people came from a more or less common origin.

Intriguing.

Forum Monk wrote:http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/AUD_BAI/BABEL.html

A tradition similar to that of the tower of Babel is found in Central America . Xelhua, one of the seven giants rescued from the deluge, built the pyramid of Cholula in order storm heaven. The gods, however, destroyed it with fire and confounded the language of the builders . Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been met with among the Mongolian Tharus in northern India (REPORT of the Census of Bengal, 1872, p . 16o), and, according to Dr Livingstone, among the Africans of Lake Ngami . The Esthonian myth of " the Cooking of Languages " (Kohl, Reisen in die .Ostseeprovinzen, ii . 251-255) may also be compared, as well as the Australian legend of the origin of the diversity of speech (Gerstacker, Reisen, vol. iv. pp . 381 seq.)

I for one, find it interesting that the legend of the tower and and the confusion of languages is found in every continent in the world, just like the flood legend. Maybe when KB first brought up his points about flood, migrations and building campaigns he was correct, even if we can argue the dates. If find it odd that tower or pyramid lke structures suddenly became the fashion world-wide unless world-wide contact was much more common than we suspect or unless all these people came from a more or less common origin.

That feeling is called hyperdiffusionism. Welcome to the club. Unlike most, I don't buy in to the Atlantis theory though.

The area around Poverty Point, LA appears to have been used off and on from 3300 BC up to 1500 AD.

3300 BC to 2800BC falls into my “give or take 500 years”

This is from the official Poverty Point web site.


Poverty Point Earthworks:
Evolutionary Milestones of the Americas
Program Transcript

For centuries, the Middle East has been considered the cradle of civilization. The acceptance of the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai…the great pyramids of Egypt…the laws of Hammurabi. These are the legacies of Middle Eastern societies that flourished 2000 years before the birth of Christ. Yet, scientists had little evidence that ancient American civilizations were capable of creating such grand works. The discovery of prehistoric earthworks in rural Louisiana has revolutionized historians’ view of the evolution of society in the New World.

Over the last 50 years, archeologists have explored and excavated numerous Louisiana earthwork sites. Located in northeastern Louisiana, the site at Poverty Point Plantation includes some of the largest American earthworks of the prehistoric period.

Jon Gibson, Ph.D., Archaeologist: "In the lower Ms. Valley there’s a long history of earthwork development that may last probably seven thousand years, maybe 6,500 years, and of all places in the United States this is the one area where the earthworks first came about.â€

I haven't checked, I thought I'd get the views on the forum, but what is the 'club' view of 'something' happening about this time, probably denial I imagine.
Dodging problems may be convenient but doesn't help much and the similarity of folk tales about floods etc deserves an explanation if only to kill the idea of a common origin.

unless world-wide contact was much more common than we suspect or unless all these people came from a more or less common origin.

The Club says "no," but......

A vastly oversimplified view of linear development, as espoused by orthodox history, is that modern man emerged around 100,000 years ago, gradually spread all over the planet, and basically did not develop at all until there was a sudden "intellectual burst" which led to agriculture and subsequent civilization as a result. This burst is anywhere from 5-8,000 bc depending on who you ask.