(April 13, 2014 at 4:53 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Don't forget that both Israel Finkelstein and Egyptologist Donald Redford have arrived at a late 7th century BC date for the concoction of the exodus story using independent lines of evidence. I don't think you can get from Point "A" (Thera) to Point "B" (Yahweh the Bloody-Handed) with out a lot of intermediate steps along the way. It was a 1,000 years later.
It's unlikely that somebody sat down one day and invented the entire Exodus story in one go. History gradually got rewritten to suit political and religious development.
Plauges of Egypt - Natural Explanations
Quote:Historians have suggested that the plagues are passed-down accounts of several natural disasters, some disconnected, others playing part of a chain reaction.
Plauges 1 - 6 and 8 could have happened in Egypt but not because of the Santorini eruption. Travllers tales about the eruption eventually got added in to the tales about the Egyptian disaster.
Real events can be handed down through oral tradition but, over the generations, explanations for them can get invented.
Submerged Forests off the coast of Wales: a Climate Change Snapshot
Quote:Cantre'r Gwaelod (also known as Cantref Gwaelod or Cantref y Gwaelod) translates into English as the Lowland Hundred. It is the legendary sunken kingdom that is said to have long ago occupied a tract of fertile land in what is now Cardigan Bay. Cantre'r Gwaelod's capital was Caer Wyddno, seat of the ruler Gwyddno Garanhir. The land is usually described as being defended from the sea by a dyke, complete with sluice-gates, managed by one Seithennin, who, it was said, was fond of his drink. One dark and stormy night, the gates were neglected during drunken festivities and as the tide rose, so the sea swept in, ruining the land.
Mere folklore, yes, but it is often wondered locally whether the legend recalls stories handed down over many generations, via the oral tradition, of lands that produced good hunting and gathering, but which by the start of the Neolithic had largely been lost to the advancing sea. The generations of people who followed-on from those who left the footprints would certainly have witnessed the environmental changes that led to the loss of the forests described above: they would have walked through what had become salt-marsh beneath dead and dying oaks and pines. They would have seen environmental change as starkly as anyone.
Why would it go into folklore?
Quote:The basal peat, upon which the tree-stumps are situated, is around 6,500 years old. Above it, where erosion has not removed it, there lies a layer of bluish-grey clay and, at the south end of the beach, atop the clay is a second, thinner peat. The succession records the transition from forest to salt-marsh, between 6,500 and 3,000 years ago, which is late Mesolithic through to mid Bronze Age.
The Submerged Forest has recently been in the news. In February 2012, retired geology lecturer Dr Denis Bates, of Aberystwyth, noticed that a new area of ancient peat had become visible along the southernmost part of the beach. Taking a closer look, he discovered that the peat contained scatters of burnt stone - an archaeological feature typical of Bronze Age sites. Burnt stone consists of sharp, angular fragments of bleached-looking rock produced by heating large pebbles in fires and then immersing them in water: it was the instant cooling that shattered them. Why they did this is not clear: one theory is that it was a means of heating-up the water whilst some archaeologists have connected the practise with sweat-lodges, as in the Native American tradition.
Dr Martin Bates, Denis' son, is an archaeologist based at the University of Wales, Lampeter, and was therefore quickly on hand to undertake a detailed investigation of this find. Despite the peat and clay beds spanning an important period of human activity in the area, they have to date yielded few remains: an Aurochs skeleton was discovered many years ago and a small number of flint and bone implements have been recorded over the years. But when surveying commenced, the site proved to be of even greater interest, as upon the surface of the upper peat layer, and impacting into the clay below, the surveyors discovered footprints. There were the circular depressions made by the hooves of cattle, sheep and goats and, incredibly, human prints. It appears that the adults were foot-clad, but one print was found that belonged to a child aged approximately four years, which showed the impressions of bare toes. I visited the site over low tide a few days ago: standing next to such impressions, my heavy rigger-boots hardly left a mark: back when the prints were made this would have been squelchy marsh that you could go up to your knees in if unlucky.
Where are the snake and mushroom smilies?