The Old World is a reference to those parts of Earth known to Europeans before the voyages of Christopher Columbus; it includes Europe, Asia and Africa.
Two olive branches buried by a Minoan-era eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini) have enabled precise radiocarbon dating of the catastrophe to 1613 BC, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 years,
As I recall this matches earlier ice core and dendrochronology dating to the end of the 17th century BC.
Simcha Jacobovici will be very unhappy.
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.
The Thera eruption is known to have occurred exactly in 1628 BCE from tree ring studies. That the new radio-carbon date comes within a short time of that indicates that radio-carbon dating methods have improved.
Yes, E.P. And the Danes a few years back made a similar calculation based on ice core studies.
A three way match is about as good as it gets in archaeology.
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.
I still vote for 1628bc. E.P. is correct that dendrochronology has established the date. Simcha is simply selling stupidity to gullible people since he believes the eruption was part of the plagues of Egypt. However, the Pharaoh was not in the delta area at that time - but the Hyksos were - a combination of Amorites, Canaanites and other murderous thugs.
By the way, here is a map of the area at that time:
Much of Western Anatolia was depopulated by Thera's ash cloud since it was fatally toxic. Post-eruption, the Kingdom of Arzawa was incorporated into the Hittite empire. More thugs who successfully sacked Babylon in 1600bc, taking booty and temple gods back to Hattusa. What part the Hyksos played in this is unknown, but Ahmose drove them out of Egypt about 20 years later.
Since the Hyksos controlled the north of Egypt one has to suspect that they suffered far more damage from the blast effects than the southern part, under the control of Ahmose's family. Even if the effects were muted by wind direction, it would have been the Hyksos who lost their commercial partners all across the Med. Crete was smashed and the Canaanite, Syrian and Turkish coasts must have been hammered by the waves. There is simply no place else for the water to have gone.
Perhaps, it led to just enough weakness to break the relative power stalemate between the two and allow Ahmose to emerge victorious?
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.
There was a programme on UK TV some days ago that you people in the States may already have seen.
I believe it was titled 'Exodus decoded?'
It gave a reasonable sounding explanation for the plagues and their sequence, the Nile turning red being a plankton bloom, this killed the fish and drove the Frogs out and killed them, this resulted in masses of flies etc etc etc.
How would Moses have known about the sequence if this is correct and you remove a Supreme being from the equation I ask?
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.
