Archaeologica.org

Gratuitous commentary from the Peanut Gallery :

The advancement of science comes one funeral at a time. No matter how self-evident a new insight is (continental drift, for an example), it will be cried down by "the scientific community" when it is presented, because "the scientific community" is not doing science. It is operating as a belief system defending itself against change from without -- complete with dogmas, clergy/laity division, ordination (PhD), inquisitions, heresy trials and the rest of it.

In genuine Science, when new evidence makes a theory untenable, the theory is revised to account for it. In a belief system, the threatening evidence is "debunked" to get it out of the way and life continues as it was. In saecula saeculorum. Amen.

The matter of how Dr. Firestone currently bases and arranges his argument aside, the foundation of the entirety of it was the analysis of Bill Topping's chert samples from various paleo sites. This is (conveniently for someone ?) being ignored now, at least in discussions of it such as this one. Approached as Science (if not as a belief system), its foundation is that the chert being worked by paleo people at the time of the "thermonuclear event" is (otherwise inexplicably) riddled with pinprick impact holes that are unique to artifacts from this time horizon. I.e., artifacts made in these same places of these same materials, but later in time, are free from this damage. Further : the closer to the epicenter of the "event," the denser these tiny impact craters are. When this is correlated with their known cultural and (relative) time-horizon, everything else falls into place. Analysis of their specific radioactive profile, the black mat, the nanodiamonds and the rest of it derive their significance from the hard evidence in the hand. Which, however the rest of the picture may be elaborated around it, is unassailable.

Typically, as befits people whose orientation to approaching everything as a matter of belief seems habitual, it seems (and again, I do not follow this closely) that attention is typically fixated on the leaf-and-fruit periphery of the conceptual tree, furthest from the (empirical) root. Extinctions and their timing, geological craters, temperature fluxuations, the geographical distribution of the black mat, the culprit having been a comet (or ?) and the rest of it are all anywhere from conjectural to (in their significance) derivations from the hard data everyone is always clamoring for (and then overlooking or ignoring). Viewing it from the distance of the Peanut Gallery here, it seems almost like it could have been designed : it is reduced (in practice) to a topic of furious speculation and counter-speculation, which conveniently enables it to be dismissed as "speculative," while hoping that no one will flag this procedure as a straw man stratagem. Well, if no one else will, I will.

I carried on a lively correspondence with Bill Topping while the attention (consequently, reaction) its appearance in the Mammoth Trumpet created was reaching its crescendo. The obligatory hatchet-job "rebuttal" having been published (my own characterization of it, based on the impression it created in my own mind and some familiarity with the pathetic historical precedent set by such reactions-in-defense-of orthodoxy in the past), he was obliged, in order to answer the objections raised, to provide the results of further, extremely detailed analysis of additional chert samples -- samples which, being from established contexts, were hard to come by and too precious to waste -- in order to dot this "i" and cross that "t." Not many labs in the world had the technical sophistication to carry this out.

Whether there may have been a deal cut behind the scenes I don't know, but from that point on, the additional samples he procured (via friendship with retired archaeologists, I gather) and sent for analysis started being "lost." And when he persisted, he was finally told, bluntly, that no more analysis would be done. Period. With nowhere else to turn, and "the word" apparently already out to forestall him if he tried, finis.

With this, the next chapters of the saga began. The public one, as words in the press and on the internet. The private one with his own business being burgled and ransacked, with warnings by friends in "law enforcement" that he was in big trouble and should expect dire consequences, and with his personal geiger counter being seized (the man's a nuclear physicist) as evidence that he was in possession of radioactive material without the requisite license to own it (the radioactive material at issue being the smidgeon of radium in said GC, without which it couldn't function). How much (if any) of this had to do with the paper, and how much (if any) to do with his threatened exposure of the extent to which much of Michigan had been contaminated with radioactivity from mining, and by which concerns, I cannot say. I only know that I got so frustrated trying to call this to the attention of the few whistle-blower sites I knew of then that (a sad admission) I burnt out and quit.

I feel much better now. Thank You, and Resume Normal Programming.

Minimalist wrote: You're wrong, E.P. I really do not enjoy beating up a stroke victim.

Min, what drives you are your spiritual beliefs and your view on the OT, and these are core deep with you, and why you are here in the first place, and you will do whatever it takes to hold onto them.

Minimalist wrote: But I do not have access to the Cambridge Conference Archives which is a little like introducing hearsay evidence in court. I can't cross-examine the witness.

That is strange, as they are available via the internet.

Minimalist wrote: And rather than provide "hard scientific information" all you did was write a very polite bibliography of your sources. If you wanted to insert that evidence into the narrative I'm sure you could have found a way. My impression is that you were happiest recounting the fables.

When is archaeological field data not "hard scientific evidence"?

Once again, the peoples held their oral histories by specific mechanisms, and they are more than "fables". You also conveniently left out the Mayan written materials in your summary of Chapter 8. Your use of the word "fables" is diagnostic, as you view the OT as "fables".

Minimalist wrote: No, it was Doug Weller who was an occasional participant here some time back.

Thanks. Doug alerted me later on as to recent research questioning the authenticity of the Walam Olum. That research was not accepted nor well known at the time I researched that part of my book.
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As far the the term "Great Atlantic Impact Mega-tsunami", at the time I referred to what are now known as the "YD Impacts" as the "Holocene Start Impacts".

Minimalist wrote: Well....I looked that up too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_I ... king_Group

The group states that their hypothesis is likely to be controversial: "I wouldn't expect 99.9 per cent of (the scientific community) to agree with us"[1] Their work is controversial because it contradicts much of what is understood about impacts and tsunamis.

So far, they seem to be right about that.

Yes, but they're all field geologists, "the scientific community", in fact. It is interesting that in this case they are using my term for it.

Minimalist wrote: There is certainly nothing wrong with being the lone voice on something as long as you have evidence to back you up. I do not see that evidence for any impact (storm surges from hurricanes push water ashore, too) and there is certainly no firestorm of chatter about it on the web.

Your analysis of the "Storm Stela of Ahmose" again.

Minimalist wrote: All one needs to do is read it. Are you really asking to be equated with Simcha Jacobovici?"

I did my own work. You can equate it with whatever or whoever you like.
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Because of my stroke, I was unable to footnote the 20 feet of "marine sediments" found over the "Olmec" site of La Venta, mentioned inline in the text, nor to include a photograph showing them. For the sediment in North America, see the link here:
http://forum.palanth.com/index.php/topic,1276.0.html

Minimalist wrote: I followed that link. It's a post you wrote on another forum.

with a link to an excavation field report showing the deposit.

Minimalist wrote: On Page 157 you state that the Exodus can be dated to 1628 BC because of the eruption of Thera.

Improving the footnoting of Chapter 8 was when my stroke hit. I can't remember in the tree ring dates were in then, or if it was simply ice core dates.

Minimalist wrote: It is not the date of Thera which is the problem. It is the simple fact that two hundred years of archaeological work in Egypt has not shown a scintilla of evidence that there was an Exodus nor that there was ever a population of Hebrew "Slaves" to do the Exodizing...to coin a phrase. The closest anyone can get is the Hyksos who were Semitic RULERS of the 15th Dynasty and who were chased out of Egypt by the aforementioned Ahmose I c 1550. What followed was 4 centuries of Egyptian domination of Canaan and the tel Amarna library indicates that there were no Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews located in Canaan at that time.

That depends on your reading of "'apiru", and your Egyptian chronology, for which see the recent finds of Babylonian seals at Tel Daba, or my post in the Old World section.

The question is Egyptian chronology , which has to tie with Hittite and Babylonian. And "Minoan", for that matter. Which was my interest. A people dead and gone, with no history now.

In any case, you seem to pass by the questions of what happened to the Hyksos, and the possibility that their written records were incorporated into the OT later on.

Minimalist wrote: I agree that the triple methods of c14, dendrochronology, and ice cores all point to Thera's explosion c 1628 BC. It is the assumption that this event "must" have been involved in the fictional Exodus which frankly, burns my ass. No. It "must" not have been. It is unlikely that it even "might" have been. As you pointed out in another post, Archaeology is what we do here.

Min, as I stated up front, its your views on the OT that drive you, and drive you deeply.
What "burns your ass", as you put it. For you, Exodus has to be "fictional". For me, in its historical aspects, its simply a secondary document, written much later.
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The "plagues" of Exodus probably refer to the discharge of a caustic lake into the Nile due to seismic activity along that rift: the well documented earthquake that preceded the eruption of Thera in 1628 BCE.

Minimalist wrote: Well, Thera blew up but it had precious little to do with any “Exodus”.
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I am far from alone. Try reading Redford and/or Finkelstein who date the story to the 7th century BC or Phillip Davies who dates it to post-exilic times.

When you have contemporary documents to work with, secondary materials don't add much, except for a little color, perhaps.

Minimalist wrote: This is not the time for a recap of Egyptian history but we have been down this road before.

Yes, we have been down this OT chronology road before, and many others have as well.
Commented on on pages 156-157, and you fit right in those two pages.

Footnote 12 refers to contemporary Near Eastern written records in the Cambridge Conference. See: 1998-2002
On the Joshua impact event
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc032098.html
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc032598.html
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc033098.html
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc012102.html
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc021202.html

How that material got incorporated into the OT is now for others to work out. In other words, if was not the written history of the ancient Israelites, then its a question of whose history they adopted, where, when, and by who.

See above.

Minimalist wrote: But let’s not get too far from the subject of “footnotes.” The first footnote in Chapter 8 appears at the end of this sentence: When this world was almost lost in the waters, a frog predicted it. At your suggestion I consulted footnote #1 and found it to be a bibliographical reference to the 1929 publication which you had used to “adapt” it.

The 1929 citation was for Swanton's recording of an Alabama flood story, and yes, the Alabama appear to have used bufotonin from frogs as a hallucinogen for divination. This explains some excavated pipes and iconography.

Minimalist wrote: But is that the hard scientific evidence you previously mentioned?

If you have another explanation for the passage, and for the pipes and artwork, then do share it with us.

Minimalist wrote: That, and the other 12 bibliographical references are certainly proper etiquette. You should identify your sources and you did. But you did not make any attempt to extract any scientific data that they may have cited....if any.
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12 are bibliographical in that they relate to works that you presumably drew from, or at least consulted. One of these is to Ovid’s Metamorphosis...a book of Roman poetry.

Ovid refers to an appearance of Comet Encke in the same year as the eruption of Thera,
1628 BCE. Amazing how celestial mechanics and the ice core and tree ring data agree.

Minimalist wrote: P. Ovidius Naso was born in 43 BC and died in c 17 AD. He thus lived 1600 years after the event which is roughly the difference between us and Alaric the Goth. As for Encke?

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

Comet Encke is the shortest period comet known. It returns every three years. How many times can it hit us?

Finally a good question. Comets fragment, and have dust veils, and both can hit us and did, with catastrophic effects. Clube and Napier were correct that we had been hit multiple times bu fragments of Comet Encke. By the way, the interception times are not every three years, but when the Earth is in its path.

That was one point of the book. The other was to try and find other impactors.

Minimalist wrote: 2 refer to other chapters in the book

and information not generally or easily available elsewhere

Minimalist wrote: 1 deals with Greek measurement
1 is an alternate reading of a word.
1 states that hallucinogenic drugs were used in the Americas
and 1 offers a couple of definitions and should probably be included in the first 12.

You've left out the citations to the Mayan written accounts entirely, and that is not fair, min.

Minimalist wrote: Incorrect, E.P. You have a total of 19 footnotes and I accounted for all of them. But 12 are bibliographical references and do not impart "hard science" in and of themselves.

Again, if something did not hit we are left at a loss as to why the Maya made up the "stories".

Minimalist wrote: I also cannot help but point out that Charles Pellegrino allowed himself to be sucked into Simcha Jacobovici’s “The Exodus Decoded” when that charlatan tried to shoehorn the Exodus to 1500 BC...along with Thera’s eruption!

Nonetheless, there is not a lot of hard scientific evidence in the footnotes.

The broad archaeological sequences are given in line in the text.
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A chronology of the Ancient Near East, from contemporary written records, that I assembled prior to my stroke, is given over in the Old World section here, along with another post on OT parallels.

Minimalist wrote: And I quite agree that barring some ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence to support them we do not need to go down that road again.

The problem is your perception of archaeological evidence. In my opinion, if it conflicts with your views on the OT, you simply dismiss it.

Minimalist wrote: I am just curious about one thing. Firestone is trying to make his impact case on the basis of magnetic microspheres, magnetic grains, iridium, nickel, charcoal, polycyclic hydrocarbons, carbon spherules, ET helium, glass-like carbon, and nanodiamonds. Should not some of this sort of evidence be present for the impacts you assert? If there is such evidence why did you disregard it in favor of fables? If there is not how can you hope to impress the scientific community?

Firestone initially posited nearby supernova at the YD in 1999, and only added that as a cometary injection mechanism later on, after the Cambridge Conference had been shifted over to AGW scepticism, and I had none of Firestone's data or analysis when I assembled my book.

In other words, at that time, I had no idea Firestone and his team were working on impacts at all.

All 'Landmark Books' are, by their very nature, controversial, they need not be correct, what they need to be is controversial so that they get people thinking.
Some of the greatest astromical achievements of the last century came about as a result of trying to prove Fred Hoyle was wrong, he was, but I doubt that so much would have discovered if he hadn't been controversial.
Darwin was controversial, Einstein was controversial, keep the flag flying Ed!

Roy.

Digit wrote:All 'Landmark Books' are, by their very nature, controversial, they need not be correct, what they need to be is controversial so that they get people thinking.
Some of the greatest astronomical achievements of the last century came about as a result of trying to prove Fred Hoyle was wrong, he was, but I doubt that so much would have discovered if he hadn't been controversial.
Darwin was controversial, Einstein was controversial, keep the flag flying Ed!

Roy.

Thanks for the encouragement, Roy, but I needed to be as correct as possible, and I still do, despite my stroke. Anywhere from 60,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 people will die in the next medium size impact, and if the recent rate continues that works out to 1 per 1,000 years. Aside from that, this information will influence how billions of dollars are spent on space.