"Its mine! Give it back!"
Posted on 09/01/2003 3:00:05 AM PDT by jimtorr
AN EXCITING archaeological discovery has been made at Culmore in Derry by two men who stumbled across a large stone artefact, which pre-dates the Egyptian Pyramids by a few thousand years.
When Frank Gillespie began work on his garden wall in Culmore he had little idea that just below his feet lay a large stone axe estimated to be around 8-9,000 years-old.
Frank's father Hugh Gillespie, of Lone Moor Road, had been digging the foundation for the wall when he unearthed the ancient tool.
"My father found it and left it to one side, paying little notice, but when I spotted it I knew it was some kind of artefact as it was chipped from work," said Frank
"We were in the back garden digging a foundation for a small wall at the time - we weren't looking for anything," added the electronics engineer.
The Clonliffe Park resident said that the future of the axe will now be left in the hands of the local archaeologists, Ian Leitch and Tommy Gallagher, who investigated and verified the find.
"The axe probably dates from the early or late Mesolithic period in Ireland, around eight or nine thousand years ago," Mr. Leitch told the 'Journal'.
The discovery of stone axes has not been uncommon in recent times with a number of artefacts uncovered during field surveying in the Culmore and Ballyamagard areas over the last number of years.
However, the large axe unearthed by the Gillespies was "unique" to the area because of its size, according to the local archaeologists.
And the artefact dates back to when Ireland's earliest settlers were still arriving in Northern Ireland from Scotland.
Mr. Leitch and Mr. Gallagher have confirmed that the artefact is made of "mud stone", and it was probably used by early hunter-gatherers for felling trees. The sharp stone would have been "hafted" onto a piece of timber , most likely oak, using animal hide.
"This particular stone axe may have been brought into the area through local trading, as this stone axe has no similarity, on record, to other stone axes, which have been found in the locality," said Mr. Leitch.
Frank and Hugh Gillespie permitted the axe to be handed over to the Environment and Heritage Services of the Department of the Environment which will observe and record the find.
"The axe will in due course be returned to Mr. Gillespie who may at some stage facilitate the axe being viewed publicly at the Tower Museum in Derry," added Mr. Leitch, who paid tribute to the Gillespies for passing the artefact to the authorities .
In January a find of ancient tools dating from the same period during the building of the Toome bypass yielded one of the most important insights to date into the lifestyles of the first Irish settlers.
That site included a number of flint tools thought also to be around 9,000 years old and yielded over 8,000 pieces of flint including small blades called microliths and larger tools used for hunting, and fishing.
It is believed that the first humans to reach Ireland did so as the remnants of the last Ice Age disappeared. The first immigrants came to the Antrim coast from western Europe via Scotland, with which there may have been temporary dry land connections left behind by the Ice Age.
I wonder if these would have been the Firmanaugh of Irish legend. Surely not the Faerie.
I think my memory is faulty on that one. That's the name of a county.
They weren't there that early. Reread the article, it is full of weasel language and disclaimers. The 8-9,000 years was pulled out of thin air because the vanity of Ian Leitch wouldn't let him say "I don't know.", which would have been the appropriate and correct answer. Stone does not perform well under radioisotope dating. The axe head is described as "unique" making it ludicrous to date it according to other guesstimates of similar material. The guy is showing typical deceptiveness of the evolution crowd. I can build a stone axe that looks like something used a long time ago, will it be described as being 8-9,000 years old? The rock may be old, but there is absolutely no way they can date the age of the craftsmanship. Suppose I was stranded somewhere and built some crude hand tools according to the survival books. Because it wasn't fashioned out of modern high strength metal alloys would it be considered primitive and thus if found one hundred years later be dated as a Stone Age artifact?
Thanks, I needed the comic relief when reading this.
It got me thinking about this whole scam of archaeology and the charlatans that are unquestioned in their authority.
Consider this scenario:
I go before an evolutionist and secular archaeologist and produce before them a college student and this stone "axe-head". I ask them, how old is this rock? The rock itself is as old as the earth, but the tool was crafted 8-9000 years ago. I ask them how old is the college student. They guess around 20 years old. I ask them which is more complex, the college student or the stone axe head. After long deliberation they decide that the college student is a more complex entity. I then ask about the origins of the college student and the evolutionist talks for hours about biotic soup, fish, amphibians, apes and neanderthal man, that the complexity of the eye came about by random chance and unguided mutation. Then I ask about the origin of the primitive and crude axe head. The immediate reply "Oh, it was designed and built by an intelligent being." (Certainly not by naturalistic forces)
There are three ways that the age of stone artifacts are estimated.
1. The design and craftsmanship used in the artifact, along with the type of stone used and its source. This will often place it within a certain era when such techniques and sources were commonly used. Just because the size of the axe was "unique" doesn't mean that it does not show signs of workmanship and design that correspond to other tools.
2. The positon of the stone tool in sediments, the depth of burial, can give an indication of when the tool was dropped, lost, or abandoned. It is not clear in this case if this teqnique was used to determine the age.
3. Radio carbon dating of associated fire or plant materials can give an indecation of when the artifact was left at the site. This does not appear to have been done in this case.
It is misleading to say that Ian Leitch is being deceptive by using "weasel language and disclaimers". By saying "probably" and by using disclaimers, he is exactly admitting the difficulties in dating the stone axe. There is no reason to believe that the axe was of recent origin, and he is giving his opinion and the reasons for it. I don't see any deception there. In fact, he is doing exactly the opposite of deception. He is being as precise as possible.
I can list hundreds of incompatibilities, you are better believing either all of Evolution or all of Creation because the syncretism of the two defies reason, science and the evidence.
James 1:8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
2 Pet 3:5-6 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.
"Its mine! Give it back!"
Aye, Master Dwarf, 'tis yours.
Being that the post-flood age of the earth is five thousand years, then are we talking about precision that can be off by 100%? That's honesty?
I can list hundreds of incompatibilities, you are better believing either all of Evolution or all of Creation because the syncretism of the two defies reason, science and the evidence.
Why do you insist on putting limits on G_d? He is all powerful, not you.
The Bible was put to paper(papyrus, stone,etc) using the words of men, however precise(or imprecise) they were capable of at the time.
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