Posted on 11/25/2013 9:42:46 AM PST by Red Badger
With range of dramatic finds in excavations ahead of highway expansion, archaeologists trace 10 millennia of human development
A remarkable archaeological find in the Judean lowlands southwest of Jerusalem includes a six-millennia-old cultic temple and a 10,000-year-old house.
The ancient sites were located in routine archaeological digs conducted ahead of a planned expansion of Route 38, the main access road to Beit Shemesh. The building is the oldest ever found in the area, and constitutes remarkable “evidence of man’s transition to permanent dwellings,” researchers said Monday.
Labeling it “a fascinating glimpse into thousands of years of human development,” the Israel Antiquities Authority, together with the Netivei Israel Company that is carrying out the highway expansion, invited the public to visit the excavation site in Eshtaol on Wednesday, November 27.
“Settlement remains were unearthed at the site, the earliest of which dates to the beginning of the eighth millennium BCE and latest to the end of the fourth millennium BCE,” the authority said in a statement Monday.
“We uncovered a multitude of unique finds during the excavation,” said Amir Golani, one of the excavators for the Antiquities Authority. “The large excavation affords us a broad picture of the progression and development of the society in the settlement throughout the ages. Thus we can clearly see that in the Early Bronze Age, 5,000 years ago, a rural society made the transition to an urban society. We can see distinctly a settlement that gradually became planned, which included [streets] and buildings that were extremely impressive from the standpoint of their size and the manner of their construction. We can clearly trace the urban planning and see the guiding hand of the settlement’s leadership that chose to regulate the construction in the crowded regions in the center of the settlement and allowed less planning along its periphery.”
The finds allow the researchers to “trace the development of a society which became increasingly hierarchical,” Golani said.
The oldest building found dates from the time of the earliest known domestication of plants and animals.
“Whoever built the house did something that was totally innovative because up until this period [local human groups] migrated from place to place in search of food. Here we have evidence of man’s transition to permanent dwellings, and that in fact is the beginning of the domestication of animals and plants; instead of searching out wild sheep, ancient man started raising them near the house,” researchers said in a statement.
The researchers included Golani, Ya‘akov Vardi, Benyamin Storchan and Ron Be’eri, who serve as excavation directors for the Antiquities Authority.
The house is the oldest structure ever found in the Judean lowlands, they said, dating back to the period known to archaeologists as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
“The building, almost all of which was found, underwent a number of construction and repair phases that allude to its importance,” they said.
Near the building, excavators found a collection of nine flint and limestone axes placed side by side.
“It is apparent that the axes, some of which were used as tools and some as cultic objects, were highly valued by their owners. Just as today we are unable to get along without a cellular telephone and a computer, they too attributed great importance to their tools. Based on how it was arranged at the time of its discovery it seems that the cluster of axes was abandoned by its owner for some unknown reason,” the researchers concluded.
But the building wasn’t the only find at the site. A handful of buildings from the end of the Chalcolithic period, some 6,000 years ago, was found nearby. At the site, excavators found a six-sided stone column standing some 1.3 meters (51 inches) high and weighing several hundred kilos.
“The standing stone was smoothed and worked on all six of its sides,” the archaeologists said, explaining that its broad face was oriented eastward and concluding that the find ”alludes to the presence of a cultic temple at the site.”
“In the past, numerous manifestations have been found of the cultic practice that existed in the Chalcolithic period. However, from the research, we know of only a few temples” located at Ein Gedi and Teleilat Ghassul in present-day Jordan.
The site will be open for public viewing for two hours on Wednesday between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Entrance is free, but visitors must register in advance by telephone at 02-99122366, 052-4284408 or by email at adulam@israntique.org.il.
Excavation at Eshtaol along Route 38. (photo credit: Yoli Shwarz, courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority)
A 10,000 year old house, the oldest dwelling to be unearthed to date in the Judean lowlands. (photo credit: Dr. Ya‘akov Vardi/Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.
The standing stone (mazzevā) which is worked on all of its sides, serving as evidence of cultic activity in the Chalcolithic period. (photo credit: Zinobi Moskowitz, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority)
Where are the fossilized remains of the people who rode the dinosaurs, and the fossilized remains of the saddles?
I am not the curator of the Creation Museum and do not know if they have actual remains of dinosaur saddles. However, the anti creationists who propagate an earth that is billions of years old and dinosaurs that are hundreds of millions of years old do create myths out of thin air.
What are their intentions?
Why are they out to destroy a Christian understanding of the creation?
Can you give me an example of one of these myths, and show me how it was created out of thin air?
How does theorizing the age of the Earth to be billions of years old and dinosaur bones to be hundreds of millions of years old "destroy a Christian undertanding of the creation"? I know many Christians who don't have any problem at all with the idea that the Earth may be billions of years old.
You are right. Earth is only 1000 years old and cannibis is about 6 years old, right?
***c-word***...civility?
Therefore, since dinosaurs had saddles,..Hell, I’m drunk, you must be addled. Not saddled, just PLAIN ADDLED.
Since we just completed the 6th millennium (day), There obviously is not any 10,000 year old house.
Just more pablum.
In his “The Science Of God: The Convergence Of Scientific And Biblical Wisdom”, Gerald Schroeder posits that 6 days and ~15 billion years can be considered equivalent in terms of General Relativity that constrained the passage of time in the universe’s earlier, denser periods.
Wow! That was hard to write. But if one does not believe in the General theory, a succinct presentation of the precession of perihelion in the planet Mercury’s orbit of the Sun would seem to be in order for that person.
Looks like an iron age Israeli 4 room house.
The “Jewish calendar” doesn’t attempt to date the Earth, it was set arbitrarily when they switched from the Biblical Aviv Barley calendar after Jerusalem was destroyed by the romans.
That was necessary because they couldn’t go to Jerusalem to determine when the barley was aviv. The interim Jewish calendar was calculated astronomically, and was useful for a long time, but it is now off several days for the feasts. It has Hanukka beginning on the 27th, but the aviv calendar has it actually beginning on the 30th.
We are at the beginning of the 7th millennium.
>> “Was not the young earth theory postulated by a man?” <<
Yes one named Yeshua that raised people from the dead, and other controversial things.
I haven’t seen any cave paintings made by ancient man depicting dinosaurs yet. Plenty of ancient mammals like mammoth, aurochs, ibex, and rhinoceros. But if the Bible specifically says 6,000 years, I think we should throw out the discoveries and knowledge the study of anthropology, archaeology, physics, biology, and chemistry for the last two hundred years have given humanity.
>> “ Does the Creation museum have fossilized dinosaurs with fossilized saddles strapped to them, mounted by fossilized toddlers?” <<
.
Hard to take someone that dense seriously.
Nuts like you are a laugh. You accept everything in recorded history but the dragons. Why is that?
>> “I haven’t seen any cave paintings made by ancient man depicting dinosaurs yet” <<
Thousands of rocks dated about 1400 years old in Peru and Ecuador with very accurate engravings of many different species of reptiles that you call dinosaurs. They have been dubbed “burial stones” because some of them were found on burial sites.
Now there is a company in Central America that is making and selling copies of them.
I thought those were proven to be fakes made by a couple of farmers in Peru.
You believe in unicorns?
Spurs are extra, and might piss it off, so gots to be careful.
There is nothing in history about unicorns, but there are more than 900 mentions of dragons doing harm to humans in recorded history.
Alexander the Great even drew maps showing where they were and how to evade them.
You show yourself to be a childish and dishonest poster.
>> “I thought those were proven to be fakes made by a couple of farmers in Peru” <<
.
No you didn’t. They have been shown to be covered in moss that is 1400 years old, and they could be older than that.
They demolished the absurd idea of early extinction of at least 10 distinct species.
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