Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 06:02:01 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Site provides evidence for ancient comet explosion
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nationworld/story/173177.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Was there a great founding culture and people that gave rise to civilizations?

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Was there a great founding culture and people that gave rise to civilizations?  (Read 1190 times)
0 Members and 15 Guests are viewing this topic.
Adam Hawthorne
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4250



« on: January 06, 2011, 12:37:48 am »

January 2011, Cover Stories, Discoveries
The Mediterraneans

By Linda Eneix   Sun, Nov 28, 2010

AddThis

Plato's writings about an ancient advanced civilization may not be altogether fantasy. New scientific research is raising some tantalizing new considerations. Was there indeed a great founding culture and people that gave rise to the well-known civilizations that ringed and navigated the Mediterranean and laid foundations for the emergence of European societies?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDaJLDfdd6Y&feature=player_embedded



ARCHAEOLOGIST DR. DAVID H. TRUMP HAS A RULE OF THUMB: "One stone is just a stone. Two stones side by side are a coincidence. But if you find three stones lined up together, you've got a wall."

So it is with excavating prehistory.  Scientific inquiry and scholarship has now uncovered a continuously evolving story of the development of human society.  About 10,000 - 6,000 years ago, the "Neolithic Revolution" was a profound turning point in human development, changing a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of farming and settlement.  For good or evil, progress was set in motion.  Being able to stay in one place meant people could start collecting things and stockpiling surplus. Bulky items like looms, furniture and pottery became practical. Knowing where their food was coming from freed people to think about other things... abstract things. They could start thinking about art and iconography, invention and philosophy. They could watch the skies from a single position, assembling the patterns of movements over time. Stability and accumulated materials created a platform on which each generation could build and expand, just as we are still doing today. You would not be reading this article if technology had to restart from scratch every few years.
Report Spam   Logged

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Adam Hawthorne
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4250



« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2011, 12:39:04 am »

Enter The Mediterraneans

An assembly of scientific reports, anchored by an archaeological bonanza, is now bringing  new perspective on how we came to be who we are.

This story begins with a pre-Semitic people of the Stone Age Levant (about 8000 B.C.E).  Thriving in the northwest region of the fertile crescent, they have learned to farm.  Life is good and their numbers increase.  The land can no longer sustain them all.  The ancient Greek historian Herodotus was the first to make this assertion, claiming that famine in lost early times drove the King of Anatolia to split the people: half to remain and half to go out and find new territory.  Coming as no great surprise, modern scientists have identified several waves of human migration that spread from the Near East into Europe after the last Ice Age, before written history began.

One extraordinary group carried their traditions and their chromosomes (DNA make-up) into what was then the Mediterranean frontier.   Were they the Atlantis superheroes of science fiction?  Most likely not; however, the archaeological evidence suggests that they were  more intellectually and artistically advanced than anyone around them during the same time period.  Where they settled, they made an impact.  Their descendants survived through the ages with aspects of their original ancient identity largely intact until time and assimilation finally absorbed them -- as Sea Peoples and Temple-Builders, later as Minoans and Etruscans, and still later in the great civilizations of Classical Greece and Rome.  These original ancestral families of settlers are the people we are identifying as The Mediterraneans.

While important evidence for this story comes from Mesopotamia, Cyprus, Crete, the Cycladic islands, Sardinia and elsewhere, two places are keys to uncovering the details.

The first is Anatolia.  It is in Southern Turkey that we find the archaeological remains of the first urban centers (such as CatalHoyuk), the oldest known built religious site (Gobekli Tepe), and the birthplace of a genetic mutation that appears, in its long passage over the sea and from generation to generation, to identify a single culture that changed the world.

The second key is Malta and her sister island Gozo, located 60 miles south of Sicily.  Here are located the planet's oldest freestanding buildings and an incomparable collection of remains created by a sophisticated prehistoric population.  A walk-through solar calendar in stone, complex megalithic engineering and the development of monumental architecture testifies to a comparatively high level of cultural and social advancement.  As you will see, Malta offers a unique time capsule of this Mediterranean Neolithic scenario, cementing many other pieces of this prehistoric puzzle.  (Still largely under the radar in North American scholarship, Malta's obscurity nevertheless probably played a salient role in the survival of these ancient treasures.)

__________________________________________________________________
Report Spam   Logged
Adam Hawthorne
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4250



« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2011, 12:40:12 am »



 The Ggantija Temple, Gozo, Malta, ca 3700 B.C.

The world's oldest freestanding building.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

The Genetic Trail

In the 1980's,  anthropologist Albert J. Ammerman and geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza established that human migration, as opposed to the transmission of new ideas, was responsible for the spread of agriculture as a way of life from the Middle East into Europe.  They identified genetic markers that still appear with varying frequency in the DNA of modern populations.   These markers can be dated using a calculation based on the rate at which DNA mutates, and are extremely useful for outlining the passage of people and time.  One variation in male (or Y) DNA, labled J2, is a genetic marker that identifies descendants of the ancient Levantines.   Since this Haplogroup is believed to have arisen from Anatolia, it is not surprising that its highest concentration in modern men is still there.  Its source is the same stock that produced the Jews, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, whose traditions developed along a different path.

Principal Investigator for National Geographic Society's Genographic Project, Dr. Pierre Zalloua has found J2 in high proportion among Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians. "The YDNA Haplogroup of the ancient Phoenicians is J2, also identified as the signature of human migration via the Mediterranean in the Neolithic or New Stone Age around 6,000 BC, from the Levant into Europe."[ii] 

This same marker is found in unusually high frequency along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, the concentration diminishing on its way into Europe, with the exception of a loud bang on Malta.  Zalloua reports: "The further south you go, the less likely you are to see this marker.  The further north and the further inland you go, the less you see this marker.  It is very Levantine... In Malta, the ancient DNA type was found in an extremely high 30 percent of samples."[iii]  A clear pattern of the migration emerges when the numbers are tracked on a map.

Stanford University's Dr. Roy King and Dr. Peter Underhill proposed a correlation between the presence of this same DNA haplotype with painted pottery and certain anthropomorphic figurines, found along the eastern and northern Mediterranean and Aegean coastlines and extending over time into Europe.[iv]  The convergence of these maps remains a marvelous tool for grasping the bigger picture.
Report Spam   Logged
Adam Hawthorne
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4250



« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2011, 12:41:15 am »



The presence of a genetic signature is strongly indicative, but it is like finding only one stone in the field.   Y-mutations in modern populations survive only through men who had sons.  A much fuller genetic study is certainly in order; hopefully one that includes more of the mitochondrial DNA that is passed from a mother to her children.  Even then, we can only see in living people the heritage of women whose daughters had daughters.   A man will have the mitochondrial DNA of his mother, but he cannot pass it on.  His children inherit theirs from their mother.

The picture is further complicated by movements and repopulations over an enormous expanse of time.  Definitive answers about human genetic relationships during the Neolithic time period will only come from comparisons of DNA from the people who lived it.  That may well be possible one day as there are surviving uncontaminated human remains of the period in both Anatolia and in Malta. 

In the meantime, work in Italy underscores the premise.  As reported in The New York Times on April 3, 2007, genetic findings support the view that the Etruscans originally migrated to Italy from the Near East.  A big link in a long chain, Etruscan culture permeated Roman art, architecture and religion. 

Reinforcing the scenario, analysis of DNA from cattle shows a Near Eastern Neolithic origin for domestic cattle in Europe.  Researchers calculate that the time at which the Tuscan and the Near Eastern cattle were part of the same population was 6,400 to 1,600 years ago, implying that the Etruscans, or the people who became them, set sail sometime in this period.  (Minotaurs and sacred bulls: here is another element to trace.)   As with cattle, DNA from European goats and pigs tells the same story of Levantine beginnings.  Megalithic temple remains of 4400-5800 years ago on Malta held carved representations of all these animals.  They seem to be part of the Neolithic "travel kit".  Tucked away in secret places were actual bones and horns that might still hold ancient DNA.   There are also living goats and cattle believed to be descended straight from the Neolithic species.
Report Spam   Logged
Adam Hawthorne
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4250



« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2011, 12:42:15 am »

More Archaeological Evidence

Along with their livestock and traditions, the early settlers brought their crop plants.  Pollens in sediment cores indicate that olives and nettles were introduced, at least in Malta, at the same time as people.  Carbon-dateable seeds of bread wheat and barley were lifted from the floors of an excavated temple site by Dr. Trump himself.  These grains are the very staples that started it all in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia.  They show up in the Aegean in the same Neolithic context. 

Then there are the spirals, the polished "axe-head" amulets and the "Fiddle Idols", certain commonalities in architecture and burial customs, the profuse use of red ochre and obsidian; and the Mother Goddess/Fertility imagery, (the identification of which is the most heated topic in Mediterranean archaeology.)

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________


The "Sleeping Lady", sculpture in terracotta, ca 3,000 B.C.

Recovered from the Hal-Safieni Hypogeum subterranean temple, Malta

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 
Report Spam   Logged
Adam Hawthorne
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4250



« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2011, 12:43:03 am »

The list goes on and the reports continue to accumulate -- with one more remarkable observation from Malta: 

We have indicators that the cultural identity (worship and belief system) that were part of the source culture did not radically change for a very long time.  The substratum was still recognized by descendants from the Motherland after 2000 years.

"Flash back to 900 BC.  Phoenician merchants are setting up a colony in Malta.  They are Levantine Canaanites: descended from the same original families that produced the Mediterraneans who left Anatolia thousands of years earlier.  The first thing these Phoenicians desire to do is set up a shrine to their deities, Lady Astarte being the head of a trinity at that time.  On a hill near the harbor where their ships rest is a megalithic temple, still largely intact, abandoned some 1500 years earlier. Do they re-quarry the stones and remake this site to their own tastes? No. They recognize it. They honor the existing shrine and incorporate it into an expansion in their typical design "... by assimilation to the local tradition of the Prehistoric."[v]

  It is suggested that the Phoenicians perceived the prehistoric temple in exactly the same way modern Christians see the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem or the 4th-century Christian catacombs.

Moreover, old reports and photos indicate the presence in Maltese temple sites of certain emblems that were typical to the Phoenician religion.  Described by scholars: "... the similarities are striking and the differences are much the same as those we should find between a village church and a great cathedral."[vi]   But these emblems that are being ascribed to the Phoenicians were possessed by the original settlers of ca.3,800 BC.  Cultic objects that are labeled typically Semitic (possibly even as early as Babylonian), show up again with the Minoans, at Delphi, and in Roman colonies as far as Africa.  They made their presence in Malta before any of those societies emerged.

Now a team of engineers at Exeter are claiming that stone ball bearings might have been used in the construction of Stonehenge.[vii] They develop this theory after examining mysterious stone balls found near a similar monument in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.  Stone balls are collected around most of the megalithic temples on Malta.  Some can still be seen in place under the huge slabs they once pivoted into position.

 
Report Spam   Logged
Adam Hawthorne
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4250



« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2011, 12:44:20 am »



Where From Here?

A more complete picture awaits continuing and careful data collection and analysis.  This can best be realized through multi-disciplinary research and a synthesis drawn from a diversity of sources and resources worldwide.  Therefore, archaeological and genetic research can only be part of the equation.  As such, we may be looking at the tip of the iceberg.  Collaborators and presenting partners are being sourced to help make the complex science of this story more accessible to the public.  We need resources and academic muscle.  More information is available from the Mediterranean Institute of Ancient Civilizations at www.AncientMed.org.   For more about ancient Malta, visit www.OTSF.org.

Images courtesy the OTSF Foundation

Images

No. 1, top: Phoenician godess, ca 500 B.C.

No. 2, bottom: Mnajdra Temple, Malta, from ca 3400 B.C. Corridor into the solar calendar.

Ammerman,Albert J. and L.L. Cavalli-Sforza. The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of Populations in Europe, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1984

 

[ii] Zalloua, Pierre, personal communication with the author, 2008.  See also "Who were the Phoenicians?" National Geographic Magazine, October 2004

 

[iii] Zalloua, Pierre, "In Lebanon, DNA may yet heal rifts", The Arab American News, Sep 19, 2007

 

[iv] King, Roy and Peter A. Underhill.  "Congruent distribution of Neolithic painted pottery and ceramic figurines with Y-chromosome lineages." Antiquity  78 (2002): 707-14

 

[v] Ciasca, Antonia. "Some considerations regarding the sacrificial precints at Tas-Silg", Malta, Journal of Mediterranean Studies, vol 3, number 2,1993: 225-245

 

[vi] Perrot, Georges and Charles Chipiez, "The Temples of Gozo and Malta", History of Art in Phoenicia, London, Chapman and Halll, Ltd., 1885

 

[vii] http://sify.com/news/neolithic-engineers-used-ball-bearings-in-stonehenge-construction-news-international-kltnurajbci.html

 

If you like this article, see Secrets of Stonehenge in this issue.

By Linda Eneix

Linda Eneix

A founding member of the Mediterranean Institute for Ancient Civilizations, Linda C. Eneix is America's foremost authority on the prehistoric Temple Culture of Malta.  As president of The OTS Foundation, (Old Temples Study), she oversees the prestigious Elderhostel and Road Scholar educational short-courses in Malta.  She is the author of numerous articles, and a classroom handbook for Maltese students.  Ms. Eneix has spoken for the Smithsonian Associates, has been consulted about the temples for film, television and print media in the USA and Europe, and has appeared on international television for the Discovery Network.

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/january-2011/article/the-mediterraneans
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: [1]   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