Very interesting. When there was evidently one tribe. Are these people proto-Hebrews? Religious ceremonies... Absolutely fascinating
I think Abraham didn’t get to the area until about 4000 years ago (so 5000 years after this village!!) I have no idea what the condition of this area was when Abraham found it - I suppose it is described in the Bible. But a lot can happen in 5000 years - especially back then!
An interesting article at the link. It looks like they even got the highway built! (Elevated above the dig.)
9000 ya (years ago) pre-dates Abraham by 5000 years.
these were most definitely not proto-Hebrews.
They were not even Semitic speaking as the Semitic hadn’t yet separated from the main Afro-Asiatic language tree (which includes the other branches of Berber/Amazigh and Egyptian and Ethiopic languages).
This is younger than the “city” at Gobekli Tepe in what is now Turkey.
But the entire Fertile crescent is the region where ancestral wheat, barley as well as the original sheep were to be found.
The peoples are - well, who knows besides not being proto-Hebraic (too early). Since these were city dwelling people they could have been part of the Ubaid culture (pre-Sumer) or some other
This is still 3,000 years younger than towns found in Turkey and Syria.
Human settlements go way, way back. Most of the were erased by the last ice age.
The Hebrews migrated from Egypt around 3,200 years ago. They’re still the oldest surviving inhabitants of the region, though.
Are these people proto-Hebrews?
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No the Hebrews didn’t arrive until roughly 5000 years later.
The more interesting question is—were the people there caananites—or a different people?
Not so much Hebrew as proto-. If the tradition reached back that far, the town would have been mentioned in the OT. It isn't. Eden may have been in what's now the Persian Gulf, IOW, during the period when the sealevels were much lower. The four rivers of Eden could only converge there, with two of them dried up now, so that requires the OT proto-Hebrews to have migrated up the Euphrates into Anatolia.
Alternatively, since the four rivers are said to have flowed *out* of Eden, and the only one still identifiable is the Euphrates, a location in Anatolia is also indicated. Either way, if proto-Hebrews could be archaeologically identified (that's a big if), that would be the place to look. The area of the mountains of the area of Ararat are probably a good central landmark.
Cramer pointed out that the place names (rivers and cities) used by the Sumerians were not Sumerian names, that they represent the survival of the pre-Sumerian names from some unknown language and people(s). Since the Sumerians had the earliest known (/translated) writing system, those pre-Sumerian language fragments got preserved, but leave the rest of the language(s) a complete blank.
I haven't read anything about their use of pottery at this site, and anything about 8000 or so years old is considered preceramic, so the stylistic clues as to cultural affiliation are basically missing (thus far). Their reliance on stone will of course show something. Before pots, the use of gourds and skins to hold liquids must have been ubiquitous, but those are just the kinds of things that won't generally survive in an archaeological context.
Wicker is known to be quite ancient, only because of at least one example of the pattern a woven item left on a wet clay surface which dried with the impression of it. The wicker item itself of course went to dust long ago, or perhaps was imprinted in the clay then taken along when the site involved was left for the last time thousands of years ago.