Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 04:32:39 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Did Humans Colonize the World by Boat?
Research suggests our ancestors traveled the oceans 70,000 years ago
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jun/20-did-humans-colonize-the-world-by-boat
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Examining the World at 10,000 to 9,000 bc

Pages: [1] 2   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Examining the World at 10,000 to 9,000 bc  (Read 3124 times)
0 Members and 88 Guests are viewing this topic.
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« on: February 03, 2007, 08:11:45 pm »

This is the era that Plato sets Atlantis, and, if it is to be believed, we should have artifacts of this super-civilization found at someplace around the globe that recall details in his narrative, shouldn't we?

Let's check it out.

Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2007, 08:12:37 pm »

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

The 10th millennium BC marks the beginning of the Mesolithic, or Epipaleolithic time period, which is the first part of the Holocene epoch. World population is likely below 5 million people, mostly hunting-gathering communities scattered over all continents, and with the proto-Lapita migration also reaching the islands of the Pacific. Pottery, and with pottery probably cooking, was developed independently in Japan and North Africa. Agriculture begins to develop in the Fertile Crescent, but will not be practiced widely or predominantly for another 2,000 years. The Würm glaciation ends, and the beginning interglacial, which endures to this day, allows the re-settlement of northern regions.

Events
• c. 10000 BC - People started to live in Jericho.
• c. 9000 BC - Neolithic culture began in Ancient Near East.
• c. 9000 BC: Near East: First stone structures are built at Jericho.
• Bubalus Period in the Sahara.
• Europe: Azilian (Painted Pebble Culture) people occupy Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Scotland.
• Europe: Magdalenian culture flourishes and creates cave paintings in France.
• Norway: First traces of population in Randaberg.
• Egypt: Early sickle blades & grinding disappear and are replaced by hunting, fishing and gathering peoples who use stone tools.
• Asia: Cave sites near the Caspian Sea are used for human habitation.
• Japan: The Jomon people use pottery, fish, hunt and gather acorns, nuts and edible seeds. There are 10,000 known sites.
• Mesopotamia: Three or more linguistic groups, including Sumerian and Semitic peoples share a common political and cultural way of life.
• Mesopotamia: People begin to collect wild wheat and barley probably to make malt then beer.
• Korea: First pottery appears, probably associated with the beginning of single location agrarian life.
• North America: Paleo-Indian hunter-gatherer societies live nomadically in the countryside.
• North America: Blackwater Draw forms in eastern New Mexico, evidencing human activity.
• North America: Folsom people flourish throughout the Southwestern United States.
• North America: Settlement at the Nanu site in the Haida Gwaii of modern day British Columbia begins, starting the longest continual occupation in territory now belonging to Canada.
• The dog is domesticated.
• Persia: The goat is domesticated.
• Colombia: First settlements near Bogotá at El Abra and Tibitó (Cundinamarca). First settlements at Remedios and Yondó (Antioquia).
Environmental changes
Circa 10,000 BC:
• North America: Dire Wolf, Smilodon, Giant beaver, Ground sloth, Mammoth, and American lion all become extinct.
• Bering Sea: Bering land bridge from Siberia to North America covered in water.
• North America: Long Island becomes an island when waters break through on the western end to the interior lake.
• Homo floresiensis, the human's last known surviving close relative, becomes extinct.
• World: Sea levels rise abruptly and massive inland flooding occurs due to glacier melt.
Circa 9700 BC: Lake Agassiz forms.
Circa 9600 BC: Younger Dryas cold period ends. Pleistocene ends and Holocene begins. Paleolithic ends and Mesolithic begins. Large amounts of previously glaciated land become habitable again.
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2007, 08:13:14 pm »

9th millennium BC

Events
• c. 9000 BC – Mediterranean - Settling on Mediterranean isles started.
• c. 9000 BC - Early Neolithic period in Ancient Near East (Jericho, Chatal Huyuk).
• c. 8700 BC – 8400 BC – Britain - Star Carr site in Yorkshire, Britain inhabited by Maglemosian peoples.
• c. 8500 BC – Great Britain - Mesolithic hunters camp at Cramond, Prehistoric Scotland.
• c. 8350 BC – Middle East - Neolithic settlement at Jericho.
• c. 8300 BC – Great Britain - Nomadic hunters arrive in England.
• c. 8000 BC – Norway - Øvre Eiker of Norway inhabited.
• c. 8000 BC – Africa - Earliest recorded African stone engravings, in the Apollo 1 cave.
• 8000 BC - 7000 BC; Jericho had about 2000 inhabitants living in mud-brick houses protected by a stone wall 5 feet thick and 12 to 17 feet high. The site covered 6 acres.
Environmental changes
• Circa 8000 BC– World - Rising Sea
• Circa 8000 BC– Antarctica - long-term melting of the Antarctic ice sheets is commencing
• Circa 8000 BC– Asia - rising sea levels caused by postglacial warming
• Circa 8000 BC– World - Obliteration of more than 40 million animals about this time
• Circa 8000 BC– North America - The glaciers were receding and by 8,000 B.C. the Wisconsin had withdrawn completely.
• Circa 8000 BC– World - Inland flooding due to catastrophic glacier melt takes place in several regions
Inventions and discoveries
• c. 8000 BC – Mesopotamia - Agriculture in Mesopotamia.
• c. 8000 BC – Asia - Domestication of the pig in China and Turkey.
• c. 8000 BC – Middle East - Domestication of sheep and goats.
• c. 8000 BC– Asia - Evidence of domestication of dogs from wolves.
• c. 8000 BC – World - Alleged transatlantic trade in tobacco between Africa and South America.
• c. 8000 BC – Middle East - Ancient flint tools from north and central Arabia belong to hunter-gatherer societies.
• c. 8000 BC – Middle East - Clay vessels and modeled human and animal terracotta figurines are produced at Ganj Dareh in western Iran.
• c. 8000 BC – Exchange of goods, a three-dimensional combination of an accounting/inventory system and medium of exchange.
• c. 8000 BC – Exchange of goods may represent the earliest pseudo-writing technology.
• People of Jericho started to mold bricks out of clay, then hardened them in the sun.
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2007, 08:14:14 pm »

8th millennium BC

In the 8th millennium BC, agriculture becomes widely practiced in the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia. Pottery becomes widespread (with independent development in Central America) and animal husbandry (pastoralism) spreads to Africa and Eurasia. World population is at a few million, maybe 5 million people.

• c. 8000 BC - Ice Age ended.
• c. 8000 BC - Upper Paleolithic period ended.
• c. 8000 BC - 7000 BC - Peleolithic-Neolithic overlap.
• c. 8000 BC – Settlements at Nevali Cori in present-day Turkey are established.
• c. 8000 BC – Settlements at Sagalassos in present-day southwest Turkey are established.
• c. 8000 BC – Settlements at Akure in present-day southwest Nigeria are established.
• c. 8000 BC – Settlements at Øvre Eiker and Nedre Eiker in present-day Buskerud, Norway are established.
• c. 8000 BC – Settlements at Ærø, Denmark are established.
• c. 8000 BC – Settlements at Deepcar near present-day Sheffield, England are established.
• c. 8000 BC – North American Arctic is inhabited by hunter-gatherers of the Paleo-Arctic Tradition.
• C. 8000 BC – Pre-Anasazi Paleo-Indians move into the Southwest United States.
• c. 8000 BC – Plano cultures inhabit the Great Plains area of North America (from 9th millennium)
• c. 7500 BC – Settlements at Sand, Applecross on the coast of Wester Ross, Scotland are constructed.
• c. 7500 BC – Çatalhöyük, a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, is founded.
• c. 7500 BC – Cattle Period begins in the Sahara.
• c. 7500 BC – Mesolithic hunter-gatherers are the first humans to reach Ireland.
• c. 7200 BC - 5000 BC: Ain Ghazal, Jordan is inhabited. 30 acres.
• 7000 BC – The earliest possible rise of the Punjab culture.
Environmental changes
• c. 8000 BC – Glaciers form the rock formation in present-day New Hampshire formerly known as the "Old Man of the Mountain."
• c. 7640 BC – Date theorized for impact of Tollmann's hypothetical bolide with Earth and associated global cataclysm.
• 7220 BC – Eruption of Mount Edgecumbe, Alaska.
• Large outflow of fresh water from Black Sea into Aegean Sea.
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
• Rise of agriculture.
• Potatoes and beans are cultivated in South America
• Beginning of rice cultivation in East Asia
• Domestication of the cat and Bos aegyptiacus ox in Ancient Egypt
• Domestication of sheep in Southwest Asia
• Huts, hearths, granaries, and nonportable stone tools for grinding grains Africa
• Catal Huyuk, men wear animals skins, evidently pink leopard skin, plus hats of the same material Asia
• Houses, kilns, pottery, turquoise carvings, tools made from stone and bone—and most remarkably—bone flutes China
• City located in Anatolia, or modern day Turkey where a number of artifacts appear to support evidence for the widespread practice of Goddess worship
• Clay and plaster are molded to form statues at Jericho and cAin Ghazal Mediterranean
• First evidence for this with incised "counting tokens" about 9,000 years ago in the neolithic fertile crescent. Asia
• Japanese potters begin around this time to decorate pottery cooking vessels Japan
• Simple pottery traditions sometimes with cord impressions or other decorative markings Korea
• Agriculture in New Guinea Australia
• Archaeologists have found the world's oldest playable flute in China
• Chinese in this village Jiahu already had established a village life. Parts of the city were devoted to different functions China
• Chinese were accomplished musicians and craftspeople the Jiahu site China
• Evidence of wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and pigs suggests that a food-producing economy is adopted in Aegean Greece
• Franchthi Cave in the Argolid, Greece, attests to the earliest deliberate burials in Greece
• North Sea: North Sea bottoms are largely dry land before this period. England
• Archaic Period; Native Americans move seasonally around Vermont to live, hunt, gather, and fish
• Pottery making, burial mound construction, and garden technology Mexico
• Off the main road connecting the capital to Cuernavaca, stands a circular step pyramid of great complexity Mexico City
• Glacial activity creates Champlain Sea; Paleo-Indians explore and hunt in Vermont
• World - Between 12,000 BC and 5,000 BC it appears that massive inland flooding was taking place in several regions of the world, making for subsequent sea level rises which could be relatively abrupt for many worldwide
• World : Rising Sea
• Northern Europe - Women supposedly developed blonde ("blond" for males) hair and blue eyes to allure or attract scarce population of males due to conditions in the north (The Sunday Times, 26 February 2006 )
Cultural landmarks
• Circa 7500 BC–Howick house in Northumberland, England is constructed.
• 7193 BC–According to Korean legend, an alliance of northern Altaic tribes under a "Huan" (Hun) ruler predates the establishment of China.
Fiction and myth
• 7227 BC is the supposed date of the fall of Atlantis according to Rudolf Steiner.
• The Ancients (Alterans) of the fictional Stargate universe submerge Atlantis following a losing war with the Wraith species, closely matching the supposed date of the mythical city.
• Circa 7600 BC is when The Changelings found The Dominion in the fictional Star Trek universe.
• 8,000 BC is the approximate birth date of The Emperor in the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe.
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2007, 08:15:20 pm »

Study: Atlantis Sinking Has Scientific Basis
By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News


Aug. 8, 2005 — Plato's account of how the fabled city of Atlantis sank below the surface of the ocean does have scientific grounding, according to a seafloor survey of an island west of the Straits of Gibraltar.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050808/atlantis.html
Marc-André Gutscher of the University of Western Brittany in Plouzané, France, performed a detailed mapping of the seafloor on Spartel Island, already proposed as a candidate for the origin of the Atlantis legend in 2001 by French geologist Jacques Collina-Girard.

Lying 60 meters beneath the surface in the Gulf of Cadiz, the island is right "in front of the Pillars of Hercules," or the Straits of Gibraltar, as stated by Plato.


Go Deeper
Find out what happened on that last day in Pompeii, when Mt. Vesuvius erupted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON TV: Go behind the real Da Vinci code.


Related Stories
Mysterious 'Swan Pits' Found in UK

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mexico Pyramid Holds Headless Bodies


Analysis of sedimentary deposits revealed a large earthquake and a tsunami hit the island about 12,000 years ago, roughly the time indicated in the Greek philosopher's writings for the destruction of the city, Gutscher reports in the current issue of Geology.

"Geological records revealed that in the geographic region chosen by Plato for his narrative, there are recurrent great earthquakes (magnitude 8.5-9) which create enormous tsunamis, with waves 5-15 meters in height. One such catastrophic event occurred around 10,000 B.C.," Gutscher told Discovery News.

Even though explorers have searched for the sunken island in no less than 40 different places, no evidence of Atlantis has ever been found. Every clue about the fabled island goes back to Plato's account, written in about 400 B.C.

The philosopher claimed that two centuries earlier, Egyptian priests had told the Greek statesman Solon of a flourishing civilization outside "the pillars of Hercules."

When the people of Atlantis became wicked and decadent, the gods punished them by sending "violent earthquakes and floods."

"The power came forth out the Atlantic Ocean ... In a single day and night of misfortune ... the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea," wrote Plato.

According to Gutscher, the type of destruction described by Plato is a very accurate description of a "sudden, catastrophic destruction associated with a great earthquake," like the famous Great Lisbon earthquake which ravaged the southern Iberian region in 1755, with associated tsunami heights reaching 10 meters (30 feet).

Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2007, 08:16:09 pm »

Study: Atlantis Sinking Has Scientific Basis
By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News


[ page 2 of 2 ]

Evidence of Earthquakes
Indeed, sedimentary records revealed that catastrophic events like the 1755 Lisbon earthquake occur every 1,500-2,000 years in the Gulf of Cadiz.

An unusually thick turbidite, a thick, coarse-grained deposit resulting from sand and mud shaken up by underwater avalanches, was dated to around 10,000 B.C., around the same time as Plato's account.

Layers of turbidite also revealed that eight earthquakes occurred in the area after Atlantis sunk.

Each earthquake would have resulted in a drop of the sea floor by several meters, making Spartel higher by 40 meters (120 feet) by 12,000 years ago. The island could have measured five by two kilometers (three by one miles).

"If inhabited, it would have probably been by simple fishermen, certainly not the advanced Bronze Age culture described by Plato," Gutscher.

"Atlantis is a myth," Christos Doumas, Director of Akrotiri Excavations in Santorini, summarized at the conference on Atlantis on Milos Island, Greece, last month.

The conference highlighted 24 criteria that a geographical area must satisfy in order to qualify as a site where Atlantis could have existed.

Among several other oddities, the island must have sheltered a literate population with metallurgical and navigational skills, hot springs, northerly winds, elephants, enough people for an army of 10,000 chariots and 1,200 ships, and a ritual of bull sacrifice.

"No single proposed location in the world satisfies all these 24 criteria. At least the Spartel hypothesis offers a geologically plausible scenario for the type of catastrophic destruction described by Plato in this region of the world," Gutscher said.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050808/atlantis_02.html

Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #6 on: February 03, 2007, 08:21:51 pm »

July 5, 2000

A cradle in the wrong place

We have all been taught that the cradle of civilization was in the Middle East, but a prehistoric village in the south of France suggests that Europe has a rival claim

Michael Bradley National Post


Henry Lincoln Stone huts, called capitelles, in the Narbonnais region. Their age is unknown, but their floor plans are very like the foundations at a perplexing Neolithic site in the same region.

In November, 1985, Julia Roussot-Larroque, director of Historical Research for France's Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), supervised what proved to be an unnerving discovery. At the excavation of a prehistoric site in Provence, some 50 kilometres northeast of Marseilles, there were uncovered the remains of small stone houses arranged as if on a street. At the doorways of the houses were massive slabs. Most remarkably, bones of domesticated sheep were found along with kernels of grain. French scientists concluded that the inhabitants had been a previously unknown people who had begun the tradition of "megalithic" structures. The kernels of grain and animal remains were carbon-14-dated to 7000-6000 BC.

Roussot-Larroque called this culture "Cardial" after a type of seashell that was the most common item in the kitchen garbage heaps of this Neolithic people.

Then, in early 1986, a CNRS team found that the Cardials had also reached and settled Corsica in significant numbers in about 7000 BC. They had brought their sheep with them, so they must have had boats capable of carrying people and livestock 200 kilometres across the sea between Corsica and the Côte d'Azur.

The Cardials had constructed megaliths on Corsica, too. Megalithic houses and supposed "temples" and "tombs" had long been known on Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Crete and Cyprus. These ruins were mysteries. Who built them? When? Roussot-Larroque's discoveries suggested that the Cardials of mainland France had started the megalithic tradition and carried it to the Mediterranean islands as well as to the Atlantic coasts of Brittany and Britain. In northwest Europe, after a few thousand years, it had culminated in Stonehenge and Carnac. But who were the Cardials?

Cardial C-14 datings from 7000 BC were unnerving because they were so close to the very earliest Neolithic radiocarbon dates from the Near East. Grains were cultivated at Jericho in about 6000-8000 BC. Domesticated cattle are known from the site of Çatal Hüyük in southern Turkey in about 7000-8000 BC. The early Cardial radiocarbon dates caused a stir in scientific journals. The new data were incorporated in the 1987 edition of the Larousse Histoire de la France. Cardial dating didn't cause a dramatic sensation only because they were still slightly later -- just barely -- than the established and accepted Near Eastern origin for the "Neolithic revolution."

Then, the Syrian site at Jerf el-Ahmar was discovered and excavated (1996-1998). Conventional-minded archeologists breathed a sigh of relief. Jerf el-Ahmar's C-14 dates were a comfortable 9000 BC, superseding Jericho and Çatal Hüyük, and putting a little more time between the Cardials and the Near Eastern Neolithic.

But there was a problem. Jerf el-Ahmar also revealed engraved pictograms containing "messages dating back to several millennia before the invention of writing," in the words of a January, 1999, CNRS information release. What was going on?


Archeologists were uneasy, but with the Syrian C-14 dates, the idea could still be maintained that Cardials had come from the Near East and then had spread to the Mediterranean islands, to the French Mediterranean coast and then on to the Atlantic coast of northwest Europe. A CNRS map (from January, 1999) of Cardial migration illustrates this supposed route and direction. The crucial innovations of agriculture and animal domestication, the foundation of civilization, could still be attributed to the Near East.

But not any longer. In August, 1999, in a discovery so recent it has not yet been published in scientific journals, let alone the popular press, a CNRS team excavated a prehistoric site at Viols-le-Fort some 60 airline kilometres north of Narbonne. They found the familiar Cardial stone houses, megalithic-style doorways and domesticated grains and sheep bones. The date? Two thousand years before any evidence of the Neolithic age in Asia Minor or Palestine: 10,000 BC. This news was leaked to the world by Gérard Bardon, editor of L'Almanach du Languedoc, who covered the Viols-le-Fort excavation and who had cordial relations with the CNRS team. Bardon received confirmation of the radiocarbon dates in time to include them in the 2000 edition of L'Almanach du Languedoc, which went to press in October, 1999.

Stone huts with the same kind of floor plans as those at Viols-le-Fort are still intact at Rennes-le-Château in the same region, and are known locally as capitelles. Their age is unknown.



A CNRS release on the dating of the Viols-le-Fort site was scheduled for June, 2000, but has been postponed. If the dating is officially confirmed, the conventional view of civilization's development will have to be dramatically altered. Instead of the usual "Light from the East" account of the beginnings and spreading of civilization, Viols-le-Fort suggests that much, or even most, of civilization's light may have come from the West.

CNRS archeologists have now discovered that the surprising Neolithic Cardial culture seems to have originally been concentrated within a radius of 100 kilometres of Narbonne. This region, known as the Narbonnais, is a fan-shaped lowland facing the Mediterranean. To the north and west are the Black Mountains and the Massif Central. To the south are the jagged and forbidding Pyrenees. They squeeze the Garonne-Aude river system at Carcassonne, from which the Narbonnais lowland fans out on to the Mediterranean coast.

The sites of Pech Maho and Ensérune are also in the Narbonnais. They were excavated between 1954 and 1979 and dated to about 600 BC because alphabetic writing was discovered at both places. True, both the script and the language at Pech Maho and Ensérune were previously unknown, but the "Light from the East" dogma was so strong that any early writing in Western Europe was automatically assigned a date around 600-800 BC . The closer to the Near East it was, the older it was allowed to be (back to 1600 BC at the earliest). Now, however, these inscriptions are being carefully "re-investigated." Possibly, these strange alphabetic inscriptions date from 9000-10,000 BC, in view of the nearby Cardial sites and that mysterious script at Jerf el-Ahmar dated at 9000 BC.

Did the Neolithic arts of agriculture, animal domestication and village living come from Western Europe? Could even alphabetic writing have come from the West? If so, a fundamental reappraisal of Western civilization will shake our ideas of history during the next few years.


Copyright © 2000 National Post Online

http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/Atlantis.html


http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/Atlantis.html

Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #7 on: February 03, 2007, 08:22:48 pm »

A competing civilization that existed in western Europe at the same time as Jericho?

I haven't finished checking this out yet, btu the ramifications for this would be enormous!!
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #8 on: February 03, 2007, 08:24:56 pm »

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE By R. Cedric Leonard

According to ancient Greek legends Cadmus was a Phoenician prince who founded Thebes in Boeotia, and among several other things invented the alphabet. In spite of the popularity of this tradition (supported by Herodotus, 450 B.C.), this was doubted even in ancient times. For instance, Tacitus says:

The Egyptians also claim to have invented the alphabet, which the Phoenicians . . . appropriated the glory, giving out that they had discovered what they had really been taught. (Annals 11.14)

We know now that as early as 3,000 B.C. the beginnings of a writing system existed on Crete, and by 2,000 B.C. the Minoans were in possession of a syllabic "alphabet"1 which we have named Linear A (Jackson, 1981). And this was hundreds of years before Cadmus' time. We have learned also that, far from being illiterate as once thought, the Achaean Greeks modified Linear A slightly in order to use it for their own language (Linear B). In other words, the Achaean Greeks were using an alphabet hundreds of years before the "Phoenician" version of the alphabet was introduced into Greece at the time of the Dorian invasion.

It is a given that the Roman letters we use today evolved from the actual characters used by the Phoenicians of the Near East. But did the Phoenicians invent the letters, or did they merely learn of them from earlier sources. Diodorus (1st Cent. B.C.) expresses caution in the acceptance of this Phoenician "invention":

Men tell us . . . that the Phoenicians were not the first to make the discovery of letters; but that they did no more than change the form of the letters; whereupon the majority of mankind made use of the way of writing them as the Phoenicians devised. (Lib. Hist., Book V).


There are ancient and venerable traditions which point to a western, rather than an eastern, origin of our alphabet. In the same work Diodorus mentions that the Phoenicians had discovered a marvelous Atlantic island during their excursions outside Gibraltar. Atlantis was long gone, of course, but the survivors of that catastrophe still existed on the Canary Islands (and possibly others) and it is known that the Guanches inhabiting those islands possessed a system of characters with which the Phoenicians could have been familiar.

Manetho (250 B.C.) also recorded that the Egyptians themselves derived the elements of their writing from an island in the west. Ancient Egyptian papyri also attribute the invention of writing to the god Thoth who ruled a "Western Domain" (Book of the Dead, Chap. LXXXV). These same papyri declare that Thoth came from an Island of Flame (Atlantis was very volcanic, and perished in flames). The Turin Papyrus (1300 B.C.) lists Thoth as one of the ten kings who reigned during the "reign of the gods," more than 12,000 years ago.

Strabo, the Greek historian, records a tradition that Tartessos (on the Atlantic coast of Spain) had written records that go back 7,000 years before their time (500 B.C.), which is equivalent to saying that writing was being utilized on the Atlantic coast of Spain 9,500 years ago. These are strong traditions suggesting the existence of an older, unnamed culture in the west that had long been familiar with the art of writing.
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #9 on: February 03, 2007, 08:25:46 pm »

One of the most important finds are the several hundreds of stones dating from the final stages of the Ice Age in a cave at Mas d'Azil in France. The 12,000-year-old Azilian rocks are painted with designs "which show astonishing similarity with later Greek and Latin letters" (Behn, 1948). Some experts have speculated that the cave might have been a writing school for Ice Age children.

Also, there are the bone calendars (date 20,000 B.C.), which until properly analyzed, could possibly represent a form of writing according to experts in anthropology and paleography (Marshack, 1972). Can a relationship be demonstrated between some of the better known western "alphabetic" (syllabic) writing systems and our Glozel prototype? The answer is, "Yes!"

First, there are the inscriptions on the Canary Islands (especially those on Hierro and Grand Canary): the script resembles Numidian and appears to be composed of some twenty four characters and a number of ideograms (Cline, 1953).
There is also a "kinship" recognized between some of these Canary Island scripts and the Iberian and Sinai "alphabets" (Wolfel, 1942).

The Numidian (Berber) writing is "alphabetic" (technically a syllabary; Gelb, 1974). The Tuaregs of North Africa speak Tamachek, but their written language, T'ifinagh, is also "alphabetic" (syllabic) and is closely related to the Basque language. T'ifinagh is being forgotten before it can be either properly classified or translated (Friedrich, 1957). The close similarity between all these "western" systems, and their difference from the "eastern" cuneiform (Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Hittite, Ugaritic) systems cannot be ignored.

Even the Aymara Indians living along the shores of Lake Titicaca in South America were in possession of an ideographic form of writing when the Spanish conquistadors appeared on the scene (in spite of a ban on writing put in effect by the 63rd Inca ruler, Topu Gaui Pachacuti). Some of these signs correspond exactly to the characters found on the Canary Island tablets and among the Tuaregs and Berbers in North Africa (Wilkins, 1946).

Does all this sound familiar somehow? Basques, Berbers, Tuaregs, Guanches, and even the Aymaras of South America? We are talking about the same areas, the same people, the same language, and the same culture called "Atlantic" by learned scholars. In other words, our Cro-Magnon-Atlanteans.

There must have been a "western" prototype (which I believe we have in the Glozel Tablets), completely independent of the eastern writing system which evolved later in Sumar, for all these "Atlantic" systems to be so much alike. Prof. W. Z. Ripley (1899) agrees: "A system of writing seems also to have been invented in western Europe as far back as the Stone Age." We will demonstrate the validity of this startling statement in the article entitled Ancient Alphabets Compared.

1It is demonstrated on this website that all the so-called "alphabets" before the Greek invention of the vowel signs are technically syllabaries, but the topic under discussion here is the characters which form the components of these early writing systems.

  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Vuara/EVOLUTION_OF_WRITING

THE EVOLUTION OF WRITING By R. Cedric Leonard

 http://www.atlantisquest.com/evolution.html 
 http://www.atlantisquest.com/classical.html 
 http://www.atlantisquest.com/tab6.gif 

The Greek Alphabet Written by Charlotte P.

 http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/OakViewES/harris/96-97/agespages/greece/alphabet.html 
 http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/OakViewES/harris/96-97/agespages/greece/images-general/alphabet.gif
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #10 on: February 03, 2007, 08:27:35 pm »

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Right Place, Right Circumstances, Wrong Time

The story of Atlantis was reported by Plato in the 4th century BC, who said he read it in the writings of Solon (6th century BC), who had originally gotten the story from the Egyptians. It’s a great story, and it has great resonance today, particularly after the destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Indonesia in December 2004. But, was Atlantis a reality, was it really destroyed, and if so, when, where and how? This is what the conference at Milos was to find out.

The pieces of the Atlantis puzzle that Drs. Collima-Girard and Gutscher took for their research were the physical location of the action as described by Plato (outside the Pillars of Hercules), the geological history (destroyed by earthquake and tsunami), and the timing (12,000 years ago). They pinpointed a sunken island called Spartel Bank, located in the western Straits of Gibraltar, that sank about 11,600 years ago. Since Spartel Bank is between 50 and 130 meters below the current water level, no one has looked for cultural remains, but… there it is, right place, right condition, right time.

7,500 Years Too Early

But is it the right time? If Plato’s timing was right, he was wrong about all of the societal description of the communities. Simply put, 12,000 years ago, there were no stratified societies (ranking is in evidence no earlier than 8,000 BC), there were no cities (the first was Catalhoyuk, 6300 BC), there was no monumental architecture (megalithic tombs, 5000 BC). There were no domesticated cattle (southwest Asia, 6000 BC), there was no bronze production (5000 BC), there were no domesticated horses (Ukraine 4000 BC) or wheels (Mesopotamia, 3000 BC). No roads (Sweet Track, 3000 BC), certainly no canals, aqueducts or bridges. No ships (Egypt, 2600 BC). In fact, according to all the archaeological evidence gathered to date, 12,000 years ago, every single person on the planet was a hunter-gatherer living in an egalitarian band.

The primary point of Plato’s story is not the destruction, but the activities that led up to the destruction. The societal conditions described for Atlantis and Athens by Plato cannot be any earlier than 2600 BC; 4000 BC, if you leave out the transportation network. But since the transportation network made the war with Athens possible, if you’re going to look for Atlantis, look in the Mediterranean or environs, and look for destruction on a pretty massive scale, but, especially, look no earlier than 2500 BC.

http://archaeology.about.com/od/controversies/a/atlantis05_2.htm
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #11 on: February 03, 2007, 08:29:04 pm »

Quote
Originally posted by Briwnys:
[qb] Brooke,

   
Quote
Simply put, 12,000 years ago,
there were no stratified societies (ranking is in evidence no earlier than 8,000 BC),
there were no cities (the first was Catalhoyuk, 6300 BC),
there was no monumental architecture (megalithic tombs, 5000 BC).
There were no domesticated cattle (southwest Asia, 6000 BC),
there was no bronze production (5000 BC),
there were no domesticated horses (Ukraine 4000 BC) or wheels (Mesopotamia, 3000 BC).
No roads (Sweet Track, 3000 BC), certainly no canals, aqueducts or bridges.
No ships (Egypt, 2600 BC). I
n fact, according to all the archaeological evidence gathered to date, 12,000 years ago, every single person on the planet was a hunter-gatherer living in an egalitarian band.
  • No stratified societies? Egyptian prehistory claims that an ethnic/class war took place between the Anu and the Mesnitu (10,000 BCE)
  • There were no cities? Archaeologists have found 10,000 year old cities beneath the North Sea
  • No monumental architecture? Stone alleys of menhirs dated to 9,000 BCE have been discovered on the Aksai, a tributory of the Don river, in SE Russia.
  • No domesticated cattle? According to your post on the Cardial Culture, bones of domesticated sheep and kernels of grain were carbon-14-dated to 7000-6000 BCE.(All domesticated quadrupeds,including cows, horses, swine and sheep are technically cattle).
  • No domesticated horses? Cave art going back 28,000 years depicts horses with headbands
  • No ships? Vessels made of skin on wooden frames, capable of navigating coastal waters along the Atlantic and Baltic, were in use by the Fosna-Hensbacka culture by 8500 BCE
Perhaps the conferees at Milos should re-examine the archaeological evidence.

Briwnys [/qb]
Nice post, Briwyns, however, you'll note that most archaeologists tend to go with the more conservative dates!  Also, they tend to need a lot of evidence in order to overturn their current theories.

Getting back to your points: stratified societies, I'm sure they date well back from 8000 bc, however I'm not sure that the Egyptian stuff is, in itself, proof! The Egyptian pre-history tends to be mythological until we can find actual proof of this "class war."

Cities beneath the North Sea I'd love to hear more about them and see some pix.  I did a check on google and only came up with a sunken plaine:

 
Quote
UNDERWATER CLUES TO ISLAND'S PREHISTORY
A DOUGLAS scientist who's helped reveal the prehistoric lost world beneath the North Sea could use the same techniques to discover how the Isle of Man first became inhabited.

Simon Fitch, 25, is in the second year of a PhD in the geoarchaeology of the Southern North Sea at Birmingham University.

He studied for a degree in geology at Durham University, before completing a master's degree in landscape archaeology at the University of Birmingham

As part of a small team of archaeologists, geologists and engineers he's exploring and visualising the hidden landscape which was a large plain where humans hunted animals and gathered plants more than 10,000 years ago.

Simon, who's based at the university's Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, has played a pivotal role in the project, exploring and analysing key data.

He hopes his expertise could help historians discover more about the Island.

'Using the technology we could firm up dates when the Isle of Man was first populated,' he explained.

Full story in today's Examiner.
23 February 2004
http://www.iomonline.co.im/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=870&ArticleID=744388

As for the menhirs dated to 9,000 BCE discovered on the Aksai, I can buy that:

 
Quote
Alexander Ludov, Don student of local lore has made a strange discovery not far from the burial mound "Stone" within the basin of the Aksai river (in SE European Russia, a tributory of the 1200 mile Don river). He spotted several gigantic stones in the middle of a steppe. The overall stone structure resembled that of the British Stonehenge (don't they all - AB).

Actually, unlike the famous Stonehenge, this local construction consists of vertically erected massive rocks or megaliths. (thank you - AB)

Long "Menhir alleys" made of stone stretch directly from East to West. According to results of a geological expedition, the site dates back to approximately 9 000 BC. Thus, these megaliths are much older than those megaliths located in Britain and other places.

-These rocks do not contain traces of limestone or any other kinds of rocks that are commonly found in our steppes. These rocks are made of quartz, - tells Alexander Ludov. - Today, we can only guess about the initial forms of the megaliths. For centuries, people have been looting the archaeological site. However, the damages had not been too drastic. This is the first discovery of megaliths in the European part of Russia. Back in the days, similar stone monuments have been discovered only in Caucasus and Siberia. And in all the cases, archaeologists claim, those megalithic constructions had been erected by some newcomers, not locals.

The fact that the Don megaliths represent the most ancient of archaeological sites, considers Alexander Ludov, allows us to presume that our civilization had in fact taken its roots from the Don region. Perhaps, ancient people erected such monuments to commemorate their deceased relatives. Though some present-day researchers consider that menhirs and cromlehs are not simply stone mounds but precisely engineered structures. It is also noteworthy to mention that such structures all over the world are made of quartz, a special kind of stone that is capable of radiating ultrasound waves.

"Scientists were able to determine that during spring and fall equilibrium radiation of the quartz stones tends to activate. As a result, the stones begin to "sing" within the ultrasound range of the changing frequency," tells Alexander Dmitrievich. "Perhaps, that is the reason why quartz is used for construction of such sacred shrines. However, what exact knowledge our ancestors possessed about power of stones and why they erected menhirs and cromlehs in the first place will remain a mystery forever.

Unfortunately, just like many ancient relics, which remain under open air, Ludov"s find cannot be protected against vandalism. Perhaps, in a few centuries there will be nothing left of the Don Stonehenge.

Source: Pravda
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146411929

Could be that a lot of these megaliths are dated wrongly! It would be nice if we could have evidence that they were of the same culture.

As for ships being created earlier, I'm pretty sure they were.  Australia and other isles have evidence of early habitation and people had to get there somehow.  Domesticated cattle, of course! I would put it at shortly after the Ice Age ended. I'd like to see more evidence that the horse was domesticated as early as you say, the cave paintings may depict bridles, but I've found that some of that early imagery tends to be open to interpretation - what we really need is a rider! 

Thanks,

Brooke
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #12 on: February 03, 2007, 08:40:59 pm »

The Azilian Pebbles

Although Bahn's article is primarily about how to spot fake Azilian pebbles, he also provides some fascinating facts about the real ones. Genuine Azilian pebbles seem to have been carefully selected for size and shape. Most are oval or oblong and may be up to 8 centimeters long, 3 centimeters wide, and one centimeter thick. Over a thousand have been found around Europe. They have been considered primitive art, markers for prehistoric games, and possibly early forms of notation. Claude Couraude has analyzed the markings and concluded that particular combinations of signs recur frequently; the same for certain numbers of dots. There are 16 simple types of signs (dots and lines) but only 41 of the many possible combinations have been found. Evidence supports the existence of some sort of 'syntax.' Couraud speculates that some sort of cyclic notation is involved, perhaps lunar in nature, like some of the markings found on bones from the same general period.

(Bahn, Paul G.; "How to Spot a Fake Azilian Pebble," Nature, 308:229, 1984.)

Reference. Additional information on the Azilian pebbles may be found in our Handbook Ancient Man. To order, visit: here.


 Typical Azialian pebbles (from Ancient Man) 
 http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf033/sf033p03.htm
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #13 on: February 03, 2007, 08:41:54 pm »

Ethiopic Writing System

Ethiopic is an African Writing System designed as a meaningful and graphic representation of knowledge. It is a component of the African Knowledge Systems and one of the signal contributions made by Africans to world history and cultures. It is created to holistically symbolize and locate the cultural and historical parameters of the Ethiopian people. The System, in its classic state, has a total of 182 syllographs, which are arranged in seven columns, each column containing 26 syllographs. Ethiopic is a knowledge system because it is brilliantly organized to represent philosophical features, such as ideography, mnemonics, syllography, astronomy, and grammatology. To view the Ethiopic numeric system visit the following site:  http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Geez.html

 http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd6-1.html
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Brooke
Administrator
Superhero Member
*****
Posts: 4269



« Reply #14 on: February 03, 2007, 08:43:03 pm »

Horsemen of the Steppes: Ancient Corrals Found in Kazakhstan 
   
At least 5,600 years ago the Botai people that inhabited what is modern day Kazakhstan used horses--both wild and apparently domestic--as the basis of their lifestyle. With no evidence for agriculture or other domesticated animals, these people of the ancient steppes seem to have raised, rode and ate horses to survive.
"It looks like the Botai people rode horses to hunt wild horses and either used horses to drag the carcasses back on sleds, or kept some domesticated horses for food," explains David Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. But proof of their ancient use has been hard to find. Because of the impermanence of leather, little survives of the implements that would be used to ride a horse, such as a bit or bridle, and domestication induced few morphological changes in the horse. But new research in the ancient Botai village of Krasnyi Yar seems to have turned up some ancient corrals--and pushed proof of horse domestication further back in time.
Archaeologist Sandra Olsen of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and her team surveyed the Krasnyi Yar site using magnetic meters to map soil irregularities and produce an image of the ancient surface of the site. After mapping 24,300 square meters of the settlement, the researchers identified 54 pit houses and dozens of moulds where vertical posts once stood. Many of these post moulds formed circles, what could have been corrals [see digital reconstruction below]. The scientists proceeded to test the soils within these potential corrals and found unusually high levels of phosphorus--as much as 10 times higher than in adjacent soil--according to a poster presentation of the result at the Geological Society of America meeting this week. Along with more evanescent nitrogen and potassium, horse manure is rich in this element, which can easily be trapped by minerals in the soil and persist for millennia.
 

 
The finding adds further evidence that the Botai had domesticated equines. Of the more than 300,000 animal bone fragments found at the site, more than 99 percent are from horses, including backbones and skulls, which Copper Age hunters would be unlikely to lug back to the village if the horses were hunted. And so-called thong smoothers made from bone--a tool used to straighten and stretch a strip of rawhide, perhaps to create bridles or lassos--abound at the site. In previous work, Anthony also discovered microscopic wear on seven horse premolars caused by a bit. Such data, coupled with "soil studies indicating corralling or stabling," evidence of horse carcass butchering over many hundreds of years, and "the appearance of changes in economy and settlement pattern consistent with the beginning of riding together, make a convincing case for horse domestication," he notes.
 
   
Image: COURTESY OF GSA   
BOTAI VILLAGE:  A digital rendering shows what a Botai village may have looked like, including corrals, as well as a modern Kazakh village following a similar plan. 
Nevertheless, the evidence is not definitive. "One should distinguish between keeping horses captive for an unknown length of time and domestication, and much depends on how you define domestication; herding might be a safer term," cautions anthropologist Nerissa Russell of Cornell University. Finding horse fats, however, could seal the case. "Lipids analysis of pottery sherds and soil could identify specifically that horses were there," says Rosemary Capo, a geochemist at the University of Pittsburgh who analyzed the Krasnyi Yar samples. Such an analysis "can distinguish horse mare's milk from [that of a] cow or sheep, for example." After all, one cannot milk a wild mare. But the Botai may not have been first; earlier peoples in what is now Ukraine sacrificed horses in graves and may have domesticated them, considering that they similarly sacrificed domestic sheep and cattle. "If we could find a large settlement of the Khvalynsk people with a large sample of bones," Anthony adds, "we might be able to push the beginnings of horse management back even earlier." --David Biello 

  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa027&articleID=8BC32BC7-E7F2-99DF-33BAB01C6B5B7E79
Report Spam   Logged

"The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended." - Albert Einstein
Pages: [1] 2   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy