Upheavals in the Third Millenium BCE

[Cognito]

Well, I don’t want to make it a deal breaker.
(Remember my “give or take 500 years” rule)

But he does have a little more going for him than Ussher.

And keeping the events in a Biblical time reference sequence, this would have been the date of the Flood. The Tower of Babel, and the resulting dispersion, would have been a few generations later. (But still within my somewhat sloppy tolerances.)

BTW, now I am going to have to start checking the dates for the West Coast of SA. There was some terracing, irrigation attempts, etc. going on there. They didn’t always work out as planed, if I remember, but they may be part of a pattern.

And does anybody know the date of the underground water tunnels in North Africa? They showed some pretty good social and pratical engineering.

KB, there is clear evidence of a climactic downturn at 2200bce from a variety of orthodox sources; however, there is nothing to substantiate a colossal comet or meteor strike in the oceans at 2807bce with a subsequent tidal wave that covers the earth. Your rule is +/- 500 years, but that just adds to the speculations. You seem to be looking for anything that would justify a Biblical flood during your timeframe and discarding any evidence to the contrary. Geological evidence does not support an atmospheric event or a tidal surge that affected Europe, the Middle East or Egypt at that time, nor does archaeogenetics back up your assertion that there was a massive dispersal/displacement of peoples and cultures throughout the world either, give or take 500 years from 2807bce.

Many founding genetic populations had already dispersed 10,000 years earlier or more, at the close of the Last Glacial Maximum -- that is science backed up by human genetics. The Bible, while I respect it, is not a scientific document. As Min pointed out earlier, the Old Testament is big on PR, lots of begatting, and all too much about an angry God who punishes people for spite.

I am not saying that massive dislocations cannot occur, but I am saying that you are in the wrong millenium. References to Bishop Ussher, the Tower of Babel and the Flood will always raise eyebrows on an archaeological forum.

[Minimalist]

Except there is no evidence for either a worldwide flood or the Tower of Babel.

There is evidence for agricultural communities at Catalhoyuk in Turkey and Jericho in Palestine by 7,500 BC.

As noted, in Egypt they are claiming farming implements from 13,000 bc or so, and there is evidence of a fertile grassland in what is now the Sahara desert.

All the pieces of the puzzle have to be evaluated. Not just the ones that fit the theory.

[kbs2244]

Points well taken.

Am I looking for something big that happened about 2800 BC? Yes. I said that at the start. Does that event have to be global? No. I said that at the start also.

My Biblical references are just so that we have consistent time frame that is easy for me to relate to. I admit to being raised in a Bible oriented household. So it is easy for me to keep track of things in that relationship. But I am not one who takes the Bible as literal at every verse. If you go back through the thread, you will see I take pains to state that I do not consider the Bible to be a history book.

Relative to the “Flood” I am willing to accept the concept that it was real big, but not necessarily global. In this sense it would be enough to cover “the known world.”

Now that is a real flexible term. “Known” by who? By the ones whose writing we are reading about it from is a good guess. From a Mid-Eastern or Euro-centric point of view, the Persian/Greek/Roman known world went from the Indus to Britain, and from the Sahara to the Elbe. Did they know there was a world beyond these places. Yes. But was it “known” to them? No.

The possible meteor hit in the Indian Ocean would have filled the requirements. It would have directly, in a physical way, wiped out not only a lot of the “known” world, but a lot of the “fringes” as well. It most likely would have started world wide climate, and therefore social, changes as well.

Given that context, if the start of civilization, as we know it, was in Mesopotamia, and the big event was there, or close by, then the spread would have been from there and in a relatively short time frame.

But I am not hanging my hat on a meteor hit. It could have been anything.

You speak of DNA. I am not saying that there was no local populations when the travelers arrived. I do not expect the world to have been empty at this time frame.

And I am not saying there were huge amounts of people involved in these dispersions. It could have been as few as one thousand, even less, at any one site. How many men did Pizarro have? And he changed the history of an entire continent with an existing population.

But is it not true that the best DNA tracking is via the female side. How many females would survive these long, hard trips? Even if they were well cared for priestesses, they would still be more fragile then the men. And, after a long hard trip, who would be some of the first targets for a hunting party of men to put their sights on?

I do not want to raise a PC argument, but life has not always been as polite as it is now. Women were bought, stolen, sold, used, and abused. Is it beyond the pale to suggest that a bunch of mostly male travelers might lose their DNA tracks at any given locality?

You say there is agreed upon evidence of a “climatic downturn” in 2200 BC “Downturn” seems to be a bit judgmental. There are usually winners and losers in this kind of thing.

But, putting that aside, would that not be a reason for some to pull out and go looking for a “better” (as in “like we were used to”) life? The dustbowl of Okalahoma forever changed the history of California.

You are pushing my time frame with this date. I would expect the dispersion to be caused by, and therefore after, the event. But, as I said, I don’t believe we can be all that precise at these distances.

So, in the end, am I looking for support of a Biblical Flood? No.
Am I looking for evidence that something, that may have been somwhat local, but that had human related world wide consequences, happened around 2800 BC? Yes.
Am I laying knee jerk landmines in my posts? Not intentionally.

I do not have an agenda here. As I said at the very start of this, my curiosity was piqued by the fact that this date kept popping up in all kinds of different contexts.

Catalhoyuk, and other sites, would not fit such an idealized pattern.
But again, in my mind, they don’t have to. I am not ruling out human settlements around the Earth before this dispersion. Just the sudden appearance of a lot of technical and religious sophistication.

Locally developed cropping is a long way from Stonehenge type constructions, New grange type tombs, terraced farming, miles long irrigation canals, etc.

[Minimalist]

You have to discount Egypt, then. The Old Kingdom continued from around 3,000 BC to 2200ish BC and then suffered a collapse due to an apparent drought which caused political instability....but not wholesale slaughter, apparently.


Sumeria, also, seems to have flourished during the 3'd Millenium right down to 2004 when it was conquered.


Similarly, the Harappan culture of India/Pakistan seemed to have flourished throughout the 2'd Millenium before beginning to fade around 2,000 BC.


Even the Early Bronze Age in Palestine/Turkey seems to have gone from 3,000 - 2,000 BC before fading to the Middle Bronze.

2,800 seems conspicuously quiet.

[Digit]

As I said earlier, something major seems to have occurred at about that time that marked whole generations and spawned stories that still echo down the ages to us now.
The problem with KB's scenario seems to me to be that it requires either something that was truly world wide, or a local civilisation that was destroyed then dispersered.
The last will always scream 'Atlantis', and even it Atlantis did exist, it will always invoke negative responces untill it is found.
The great attraction of the 'Atlantis' idea is that it does explain the sudden growth of megalithic structures etc etc.

[Forum Monk]

I, for the time being, support KB's general concept of big thing/things occuring in the third millenium which displaced populations. I further concur that something sparked a commonality of aesthetics and design on a global scale. (And yes, here I mean global as in multi-continental.) In scouring the web, however, there is evidence of a major comet impact in the Indian Ocean (iirc) millions of years ago, and this has been explored as one reason why periodically there are regular, massive extinction episodes. Apart from these researchers whose work was reported in the New York Times, however, there seems to be no one who corroborates their findings.

As Min has pointed out correctly, I think, there was a collapse of several cultures, Egyptian, Sumerian, Harappan, in the 2300-2100 time frame. It seems to correspond with a climatic change, but the question is still open.

[kbs2244]

I did a quick scan of my South America Archeology folder and came up with these headlines. I save these as if they were printed stories, so I don’t always have the web site address for linking. I can post them or e-mail them to those who care.

Most of the discoveries are in the high and dry West Cost highland. But with aerial and satellite help, they are starting to find things on the wetter and more overgrown East side of the mountains.

And in many cases, they are surprised at how it “quickly” it started. No slow buildup in complexity. Pyramids and star aligned temple complexes show up where there had been no inhabitants before.


Brazil Stonehenge 1600 BC to 3000BC

Peru Pyramids at Norte Chico 5000 years ago

5400 year old irrigation canals in Peru

Regional Farming in Ecuador Amazon Basin 4000 years ago

Start Aligned Temple in Andes in 2200 BC

Complex Society in Uruguay 4200 to 4800 years ago


In short, a lot started to happen in South America in this time period.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I'd sure be interested to see that "Complex Society in Uruguay 4200 to 4800 years ago" story. Could you post or send it, kb?

[Forum Monk]

Maybe my perspective is off a little, but I find it odd, that advances in technology that made certain things possible in the ancient world, seemed to explode around the globe in very short order. Someone develops irrigation, soon everyone is doing it. Someone figures out how to made a plow, soon furrows are everywhere. Someone figures out how to stack two ton rocks up into a 100 meter pile, soon everyone is doing it.

Maybe, there was a regular network of communication or trade activity on a global scale. But if so...why did it also seem to collapse and not re-emerge until europe began the age of exploration in the 15th century?

[Digit]

Irrigation, plowing, roads, etc I can fully understand that the needs for such would be appreciated by any society at a similar stage of development anywhere in the world, but meagalithic structures?
Who ever answers that is probably in for a Nobel prize.

[Minimalist]

In The Bible Unearthed, Israel Finkelstein makes a case for "monumental architecture" being a characteristic of "state-formation." Later today, I'll dig out the book and see if I can find it.

[Beagle]

http://www.geotimes.org/mar07/article.h ... 31307.html

Regarding the solar observatory in Peru and elsewhere, this article, just out, has a picture of the one in Peru that I think KB mentioned.

A line of 2,300-year-old stone towers north of Lima, Peru, form the oldest known solar observatory in the Americas, a team of archaeologists has found. The discovery that the line of stone markers tracks the sun's progress across the sky also suggests that sophisticated sun worship may have thrived in the region nearly two millennia prior to the famous sun cults of the Incas, the team says.

From the Daily Grail.

[kbs2244]

Turns out to be from the Smithsonian.


Public release date: 1-Dec-2004
Contact: José Iriarte
iriartej@si.edu
202-786-2094 x8350
Smithsonian Institution
A complex agricultural society in Uruguay's La Plata basin, 4,800-4,200 years ago
A complex farming society developed in Uruguay around 4,800 to 4,200 years ago, much earlier that previously thought, Iriarte and his colleagues report in this week's Nature (December 2). Researchers had assumed that the large rivers system called the La Plata Basin was inhabited by simple groups of hunters and gatherers for much of the pre-Hispanic era.
Iriarte and coauthors excavated an extensive mound complex, called Los Ajos, in the wetlands of southeastern Uruguay. They found evidence of a circular community of households arranged around a central public plaza. Paleobotanical analyses of preserved starch grains and phytoliths –tiny plant fossils- show that Los Ajos' farmers adopted the earliest cultivars known in southern South America, including maize, squash, beans and tubers.
Over time, around 3,000 years ago, the mound complex architectural plan of Los Ajos exhibited sophisticated levels of engineering, planning, and cooperation revealing an earlier, new, and independent architectural tradition previously unknown from this region of southern South America. The formal and compact layout of the central part of the site (Inner Precinct) consists of seven imposing platform mounds surrounding a central plaza area.
Iriarte extracted a sediment core from nearby wetlands to reconstruct what the environment was like when this farming society arose. Combined analyses of preserved pollen and phytoliths indicated that, as in other regions of the world, the mid-Holocene was characterized by significant climatic and ecological changes associated with important cultural transformations. During this period, around 4,500 years ago, the climate was much drier than it is today and "Wetlands became biotic magnets for human habitation providing an abundant, reliable, and a resource-rich supply of foods and water. Furthermore, wetland margins offered an ideal place for the experimentation, adoption, and intensification of agriculture encouraging the Los Ajos' community to engage into horticulture", explains Iriarte, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama.
At Los Ajos, cultural artifacts are spread out over 12 ha. suggesting the presence of a large resident population. Moreover, as Iriarte indicates "Los Ajos is far from a lonely isolated community in southeastern Uruguay. In the ten square kilometers surrounding Los Ajos alone there are ten other large and spatially complex mound sites. These were thriving societies that probably were integrated into regional networks of towns and villages". Iriarte believes that "this region was a locus of early population concentration in lowland South America."
###
Reference:
Iriarte, J., Holst, I, Marozzi, O., Listopad, C., Alonso, E., Rinderknecht, A., and Montana, J. 2004. Evidence for cultivar adoption and emerging complexity during the mid-Holocene in the La Plata basin. Nature, 2 December.


I am with you on the question of why did the global trade stop, Monk.
I, personally, have no doubt it once existed. That was the basis for my idea that ones running away from Mesopotamia had some idea where to go. And that would account for the sudden appearance of this knowledge base on a world wide scale in a short time.

The only thoughts I have for it going away are that the Euro centric view of the Romans when they became the Western power would kill it in the Atlantic, and that the Chinese may have gone through one of their cycles of withdrawal to kill it in the Pacific.

There is plenty of evidence of regional trade, thorough out the Indian Ocean and China Sea, up and down the West Coast of the Americas, even across the isthmus from Chile into the Caribbean and on. But the trans-oceanic travel seems to have died off.

The concept is that the knowledge would die off in a generation or two if not used.
That is the argument put forth In Guns, Germs and Steel, I believe, for the “savage” way of life of decedents of the people that built the huge works of the upper Amazon. Once most of the people died off from Small Pox, the ones left were so intent on pure survival, they didn’t have time for the more fancy things in life. Father to son teaching reverted to the best way to hunt a pig. In their case the meanings of star movements, ocean currents, etc. just went away from disuse.

It would seem people pass on what they think is important at that point in time.

[kbs2244]

Something occurred to me, while I was zoned out in traffic this PM, that may be a fatal flaw to my scenario.

Writing. Or better stated, the lack of it.

If members of my imagined elite class went with the various traveling groups to design the temples, pyramids, road systems, canal systems, etc. they would most likely know how to read and write in some way.

And they came from culture that encourged record keeping.

Yet, many of these sites show no known system of writing, other than stylized pictographs, or of such different forms that we cannot decipher them.

Wasn’t there a form of writing, beyond pictographs, in use in Mesopotamia in the 2800 BC time frame?

Shouldn't there be some commonality in the record keeping?

[Minimalist]

Try this.

The cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Created by the Sumerians from ca. 3000 BC (with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium Uruk IV period), cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. Over time, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract.

Wikipedia