50 Ancient Tombs Uncovered (1400BC, Crete)

The Australian ^ | 7-18-2004

[blam]

50 ancient tombs uncovered

From correspondents in Athens
July 18, 2004

ARCHEOLOGISTS have discovered 50 tombs dating back to the late Minoan period, around 1400 BC, and containing a number of artifacts on the Greek island of Crete, ANA news agency reported today.

The tombs were part of the once powerful ancient city of Kydonia, which was destroyed at the time but later rebuilt.

The oldest among them contained bronze weapons, jewellery and vases and are similar to the tombs of fallen soldiers of the Mycenaean type from mainland Greece, said the head of the excavations, Maria Vlazaki.

The more recent family tombs are of a more traditional Kydonia type.

Earlier excavations in the area in northwest Crete near the town of Chania had already yielded some 100 burial sites

[SunkenCiv]

Baillie works with tree rings, including (perhaps not directly) old ring samples from Anatolia and the Aegean. There's literally no proxy traces of any such eruption in tree-ring data (granted, it would be unlikely to be there).

Zielinski (et al)'s paper, actually papers, on the Thera question (which I don't have, but I think the abstract is online), show that there is no connection with the ice cores. Baillie used 1987 data, however the Zielinski work is not so new that he shouldn't have been aware of it when he wrote.

On Thera itself, and analogous to what my previous post quoted about limestone lakes, currently living small plants growing in the volcanic soil -- which is loaded with "old" carbon (C12), have radiocarbon dates centuries old.

[SunkenCiv]

Of course -- and when they backed up, it flooded the whole schmeer. ;') There are reports, as Blam notes, of an apparent submerged city in an old river estuary in NW India.

[Shanda]

The only thing I know about bathrooms in India is that George Costanza managed to avoid them completely during his trip to India.

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, he sweat it off. Made the shoe polish run though...

[SunkenCiv]

Don't laugh. I'll lay you 10-to-1 that a bunch of these corpses vote in the 2004 election.

I agree. No bet. ;')

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Civ's favorites incl Books, Magazines, Movies, Music

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[blam]

My money is on Baillie...besides, he looks like me, lol.

[Shanda]

It seems obvious to me that Atlantis was North and South America.

[Barset]

Thank you, blam, for these very interesting posts.

[Fifth Business]

...isn't that the same time of the Exodus?

The date of the Exodus hasn't been settled. Most scholars date it to the 13th century BC, but many have proposed dates in the 14th or 15th century BC. Most scholars with a high view of the Bible have advocated the 15th century based on textual evidence.

[blam]

"The date of the Exodus hasn't been settled."

Yup. My money is on 1620-50BC.

[blam]

"It seems obvious to me that Atlantis was North and South America."

These have been at the top of my list for quite a while...until recently. I'm leaning to Sundaland in SE Asia now.

[Fifth Business]

Yup. My money is on 1620-50BC.

Why? Because of the "Column of fire" reference and Red Sea parting? I recollect an Egyptologist whose name escapes me suggesting the Thera explosion as explanatory for the Exodus events, but I believe he proposed 1477 BC or thereabouts.

[Fifth Business]

Hans Goedike of Johns Hopkins U. was the scholar who dated the Exodus to 1477 BC. And he based his theory on D. Stanley's dating of the Thera eruption to around 1500 BC. If you google Thera and Stanley you'll get more info on his theory.

[blam]

"Why? Because of the "Column of fire" reference and Red Sea parting? "

That's part of it. I read a lot of things and the most recent thing I've read is a report of charred grain found above the Thera ash layer but underneath the collapsed walls of Jerico that dated to the 1620-50BC period. A number of little things like that.

[blam]

"And he based his theory on D. Stanley's dating of the Thera eruption to around 1500 BC."

His Thera date is wrong.

[blam]

"And he based his theory on D. Stanley's dating of the Thera eruption to around 1500 BC."

His Thera date is wrong, IMO.

[what's up]

Most scholars with a high view of the Bible have advocated the 15th century based on textual evidence

This is what I was referring to.

[SunkenCiv]

The only (surviving, known) ancient source for the Atlantis story is Plato, and one of the details that suggests inside info of some sort is the remark that, west of Atlantis, one would have found islands, and following those, one would come to the land that could most truly be called a continent -- the Americas.

[Cronos]

Such a mysterious island and with such interesting people. I always wondered if it was the true cradle of civiliazation instead of Iraq

not plausible. Civilisations normally have developed near large river systems -- the Nile in Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates Shal-Al-Arab in Iraq and the Indus Valley in India.

[Cronos]

Well, they did have a pretty good city organisation and separate baths etc. The Mesopotamians were among the first city dwellers