[LostTribe]

After reading the article I believe Thor is right on target! Chalk Him up another pioneering breakthrough!

The single disconnect is the date he places on the Chinese mummies. It is about a thousand years earlier than the 620 BC date when the Celts (as we know them) first appeared in recorded history in northern Iraq, west of the Caspian Sea, and all around the Black sea. There are 2 obvious possible explanations for the disparity.

(1) The Chinese carbon dating is wrong. This always has to be considered. According to my Jewish Biblical Archeology professor at Oxford who managed digs in Palestine, a swing of a thousand years in carbon dating thereabouts is not at all unusual. From his extensive real-life dig experience he was always skeptical of carbon dates.

(2) If the dates are correct, these "blond haired Vikings" could be Israelites from the first bail-out of their Egyptian captivity. The Bible documents that following Josephs rein, when political conditions began to sour, one of Judahs sons plus members of the Tribes of Judah, Dan, and ASHER bailed out of Egypt by sea. Egyptian leaders from "upper" Egypt were coming down (northward) and taking over what Joseph had created, bringing about the bad times for the Israelites which are documented in such great detail in the OT.

These "early leaver" Israelites sailed first to the Eastern Med, then Westward to form settlements in Spain, then on to Ireland. Perhaps some of them stayed behind in the East and went northward into China? The dates and peoples do seem to match. If true, the "Vikings" in China would not be from the Lost Tribes of Israel as we think of them, but their much earlier cousins direct from Egypt.

In terms of the Norwegians, since Thor is dating them from Azerbaijan in early AD, just after the time of Christ, they could well be from either the earlier "Vikings" direct from Egypt, or from the Lost Tribes who appeared in that same region much later.

That's my first pass at it. What do you think?

[blam]

"If true, the "Vikings" in China would not be from the Lost Tribes of Israel as we think of them, but their much earlier cousins direct from Egypt."

They must be the earlier cousins. I've read a number of books on the Chinese mummies, ("The Mummies Of Urumchi" and "The Tarim Basin Mummies") to name two, I believe the dates.

[blam]

Go to this site and click on the links. You'll love the maps. This was a good book,The mummies of Urumchi.

http://www.oxy.edu/~barber/urumchi.htm

[Citizen of the Savage Nation]

It all seems plausible, one thing about the Chinese mummies, it looks from what I previously read that they predate the era of Abraham by quite a bit, in fact the oldest assumptions put them before Adam. Not too sure about that, but I believe the Tarim basin was the area where the flood of Noah occured based on the close proximity of a very likely Eden location that is now the Pamir plateau, this area was an inland sea from about 2300 bc to the time of Christ, IIRC, and so the discovery of these mummies lends support to this theory since they are obviously Adamic in lineage.

I believe they were the victims of that flood and their ancestors.