Posted on 12/12/2021 11:15:22 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Rising as high as 20 feet, ancient stone monoliths in southern Ethiopia are 1,000 years older than scientists previously thought, according to a new study in the Journal of African Archaeology.
A Washington State University research team used advanced radiocarbon dating to determine the often phallic-shaped monoliths, or stelae, at the Sakaro Sodo archeological site in Ethiopia’s Gedeo zone were likely created sometime during the first century A.D.
The only other attempt to determine the age of the more than 10,000 stele monoliths located at various sites in the Gedeo zone was conducted by French scientists in the 1990s. It provided a far more modest construction date of around 1100 A.D. for the monuments of Tuto Fela in the northern part of Gedeo...
While many of the monoliths have fallen and/or are undecorated, a few have intricately wrought faces and other anthropomorphic designs carved into the stone that can be seen today.
Despite the impressive nature of the archeological site, little is known about why or how the monoliths were built...
In addition to pushing back the date of the earliest monoliths’ construction by a millennium, the researchers also determined where the ancient builders of the site likely quarried raw stone for the project. They also identified, for the first time, the earliest known sources of obsidian artifacts that were recovered from the Gedeo stele sites.
Surprisingly, most of the obsidian the researchers identified at Sakaro Sodo originated some 300 km away in northern Kenya, illustrating that the people at Sakaro Sodo obtained most of their obsidian raw materials through some form of exchange or trade.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
That makes me suspect there had to be a contemporary Dolores Hayden who complained about "architects using the language of 'base, shaft and tip' while drawing upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating light into the night sky."
'Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky' – do cities have to be so sexist?
Roman Warm Period. Temperatures warmer than today’s Modern Warming Period, higher they were in the long peak of the Medieval Warming Period.
Warm weather, better crops, you can afford to build big sculptures and edifices. Stonehenge 2000 years earlier, Minoean Warming Period was 1000 years, earlier, Egyptian earlier than that..
Those don’t look particularly inspiring.
I’m going to start following science now that I know that science can be 10 centuries off for 30 years with not so much as a shrug.
Science is a method, not a body of knowledge. Scientifically derived knowledge is based on evidence gathered by the scientific method. These monuments are still of unknown use and origin, and lack any cultural context, but it's nice to finally see some scientific dating of them.
Sorry for getting unscientific when I meant to be ironic. It irritates me that a liberal point is always about follow the science. A massive winter cold spell shuts down multiple states as far south as Texas and we’re not allowed to say global cooling because “science” declares that it merely a weather event and not climate change. Then a spate of tornadoes hits the heart of the country and it’s not a weather event but global warming. And on. I agree that we should see accuracy, but who’s to say that 30 years from now we’ll find that science was wrong again.
> ...who’s to say that 30 years from now we’ll find that science was wrong again.
That’s not science, that’s politics. And this is radiocarbon dating, not the global warming BS.
Bless your heart.
This research takes care of Ethiopia, now on to Fthiopia.
Goodun!
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