the real Eden

[War Arrow]

I'm still waiting on this Chicago Joe hypothesis. Any news?

[marduk]

link is to page of the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary considered the most up to date resource of its kind anyhwere on Earth, which proves that the word Eden is attested from as early as 3000bce

i would have liked to explored this source but i see that the links are very limited in nature and one cannot investigate it at their leisure.

could you post a general link that allows exploration please.

for about the 50th time
http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/nepsd-frame.html

[Barracuda]

Shoeless Joe Jackson! That proves my point!

What was my point?

Oh, yeah, it was ....

Bear with me folks, its late harvest season in NORCAL....

[Guest]

for about the 50th time

thank you though it only gives me partially what i want. is there no homepage, no explanations , list of contributers, editors etc.?? i would like sme background nthis book as well as the words.

i am not being ungrateful or demanding but it seems certain access is still restricted.

[marduk]

http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/index.html

[Guest]

thank you.

i do want to make one comment about the sumerian language:

Sumerian is a language isolate, meaning that it has no relatives living or dead (though there have been unsuccessful attempts to connect Sumerian to a number of languages).

even though the above is true, it cannot be determined that it was the original language on earth nor that it was the definitive benchmark for all other people.

just because a word like 'adam' may mean habitation in sumerian does it mean that that word is limited to that meaning especially since sumerian was not a language of the Bible nor used by all people of that time, that we know of.

we really do not know the original language of all the people prior to Babel and the rise of different nations thus the emaningof 'adam' can include the Biblical one.

plus as we know through history, words have been used for names whose meaning is far from its intended purpose. frank zappa named one of his kids, moon unit, so we can see that the process of naming a child is not uniform nor stable. [there are other examples which i am sure you can think of]

thus it is presumptuous to limit the meaning of a word to just one culture because it was the first to record its language. i still have to do some research on the word adam when i get time.

[marduk]

it cannot be determined that it was the original language on earth

ooh ooh I know this one
Amoebas communicate with chemical messengers and have been doing so for billions of years
so they have the first language
if you can't accept that then what about whales which have had their own language for millions of years
both cases pre date Babel which appears for the first time as a fictional story around 650BCE

[marduk]

http://www.mega.nu/ampp/eden/roots.html

[War Arrow]

Nice link there, Marduk! I'm going to have to start thinking about clearing out some room in my head for some of this stuff.

[Cognito]

Very nice link Marduk. Makes the most sense with regard to the location of the Garden of Eden that I have read so far.

[Beagle]

Hmm... seems to me that the talk about the Garden of Eden is sounding a bit like the search for Noahs' Ark.

Nothing wrong with that, but if one of us were to post a topic on the search for Noahs' Ark, I think it would draw a lot of ridicule.

[marduk]

you mean like the link to the thing only mentioned in a cranky middle eastern religious text dating from around 650bce which was based on older sources that are well attested unlike its later derivation
yeah I guess I agree

[Cognito]

Nothing wrong with that, but if one of us were to post a topic on the search for Noahs' Ark, I think it would draw a lot of ridicule.

Alright, but don't bag on the Tooth Fairy, the Tooth Fairy is real.

[Guest]

doesn't this:

In Sumerian the word “Eden” meant simply “fertile plain.” The word “Adam” also existed in cuneiform, meaning something like “settlement on the plain.” Although both words were set down first in Sumerian, along with place names like Ur and Uruk, they are not Sumerian in origin. They are older. A brilliant Assyriologist named Benno Landsberger advanced the theory in 1943 that these names were all linguistic remnants of a pre-Sumerian people who had already named rivers, cities—and even some specific trades like potter and coppersmith—before the Sumerians appeared.

support what i said? {bold print mine}

Long before Genesis was written, Zarins believes, the physical Eden had vanished under the waters of the Gulf. Man had lived happily there. But then, about 5000 to 4000 B.C. came a worldwide phenomenon called the Flandrian Transgression, which caused a sudden rise in sea level. The Gulf began to fill with water and actually reached its modern-day level about 4000 B.C., having swallowed Eden and all the settlements along the coastline of the Gulf. But it didn't stop there. It kept right on rising, moving upward into the southern legions of today's Iraq and Iran.

kind of convenient, don't you think, that waters would just suddenly rise for no real reason or from no real source.

The Sumerians always claimed that their ancestors came 'out of the sea,' and I believe they literally did,” says Zarins. “They retreated northward into Mesopotamia from the encroaching waters of the Gulf, where they had lived for thousands of years.”

this could also refer to Noah. {bold mine}

the problem with the following is that monotheism was not created by Josiah but thatking brought the people BACK to God. quite a difference

Monotheism was first consolidated in the nation of Judah by King Josiah (reigned ca. 641-609 BCE

It seems inescapable that, to arrive at the creation mythology articulated by the postexilic authors of Genesis, the Hebrews conflated their ancestral Sumerian cosmogony and cultural inheritance

here again the israelites are being accused of doing the opposite of what the scriptures teach and that is just a false accusation as they have no proof of such an event.

Thus there are three principal permutations of the myth. In the first, the Sumerian version, a mortal Adam is in an earthly Eden, and a life-giving fruit is not eaten, due to divine trickery. In the Judeo-Christian version, an immortal Adam is in an earthly Eden with two fruit trees, one giving the immortal life of a god, the other a forbidden one giving the vision of a god, eaten at the instigation of a diabolical serpent (divine trickery).

again, no evidence is offered to support this contention just hypothesis and wondering. it strays far from the facts as another person seeks to find an alternative because they can't accept the Biblical record.

a lot of that link just sounds like a rehash of the minimalist school of thought with a twist. it is interesting but that is about as far as it goes.

[Minimalist]

http://www.geomorph.org/sp/arch/br99/c14.html


Apparently, although the dates vary a bit depending on what source you consult, sea level does fluctuate.

During the Flandrian transgression (14.000 to 7.000 years BP) the sea had invaded the former small sedimentary basin from the east and south areas, favouring the gradual deposition of sands and interbedded sandy coquinas. At the end of the Flandrian transgression (7.000 years BP), regressive events would have produced the Cabo Frio plain, the beach ridges and the intern marine barriers, forming a number of smalls lagoons into the last two morphologicals units.

The lowering of the sea level, related to the regression, continuous till reaching the negative 25 meters level (in 6.500 years BP) and the sedimentary basin of the actual lagoon become exposed to a new erosion process. Mainly, as a consequence of an increase of humidity related to heavy rains, the fluvial system coming from the northwest was reactivated, producing a strong erosion of the lagoon sediments along an east-west oriented channel showing a canyon like morphology.

A new transgression of the sea, known as Dunkerquian, started at 6000 years BP, reaching its maximun altitude of 2 meters (in 4.500 years BP), was followed by a regressive event at 3.500 years BP. These transgressive and regressive action of the sea would have produced the deposition of sandy sediments as external barriers and the closure of the connection of the canyon with the sea. The barriers are those known as Restinga de Massambaba and Cabo Frio, that caused the formation of the Araruama lagoon with more than 15 meters depth and linkage with the sea throughout the Itarujú 2-4 m depth tide-channel. At the bottom of main channel of the remainder canyon, modern laggonal organic muds have been detected.