Guide to the Hunter-Gatherers of the Levant

The Jericho chronology is most interesting.

Natufian Period

http://archaeology.about.com/od/nterms/qt/natufian.htm

Guide to the Hunter-Gatherers of the Levant

By K. Kris Hirst, About.com Guide


"Reconstructed Natufian Burial, El-Wad Terrace"

Reconstructed Natufian Burial, El-Wad Terrace"in the Nahal Me'arot Nature Reserve of Israel
האיל הניאולית

The Natufian culture is the name given to the sedentary hunter-gatherers living in the Levant region of the near east between about 12,500 and 10,200 years ago. They were hunter-gatherers, foraging for food such as emmer wheat, barley and almonds, and hunting gazelle, deer, cattle, horse, and wild boar.

Natufian Communities

For at least part of the year, Natufian people lived in communities, some quite large, of semi-subterranean houses. These semi-circular one room structures were excavated partly into the soil and built of stone, wood and perhaps brush roofs.

The largest Natufian communities (called 'base camps') found to date include Jericho, Ain Mallaha, and Wadi Hammeh 27. Smaller, short-range dry season foraging camps may have been part of the settlement pattern, although evidence for them is scarce.

The Natufians were hunter-gatherers, and they located their settlements at the boundaries between coastal plains and hill country, to maximize their access to a wide variety of food. They buried their dead in cemeteries, with grave goods including stone bowls and dentalium shell.

Natufian Artifacts

Artifacts found at Natufian sites include grinding stones, used to process seeds, dried meats and fish for planned meals, and ochre for likely ritual practices. Flint and bone tools, and dentalium shell ornaments are also part of the Natufian assemblage.

Specific tools created for harvesting various crops are a hallmark of Natufian assemblages, such as stone sickles. Large middens are known at Natufian sites, located where they were created (rather than secondary refuse pits). Dealing with refuse is one defining characteristics of the descendants of the Natufians, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.

Some scarce evidence indicates that the Natufian people may have cultivated barley and wheat. The line between horticulture (tending wild stands of crops) and agriculture (planting specific stands) is a fuzzy one.

Most scholars believe that it was not a one-time decision, but rather a series of experiments that may well have taken place during the Natufian or other hunter-gatherer subsistence regimes.

The direct descendants of the Natufian (known as the pre-pottery Neolithic or PPN) were among the earliest farmers on the planet.

Natufian Archaeological Sites

Important Natufian sites include Mt. Carmel, Ain Mallaha (Eynan), Hayonim Cave, Wadi Hammeh, Nahal Oren, Rosh Zin, Rosh Horesha, Wadi Judayid, Beidha, Jericho, and Skhul Cave, Abu Hureyra

 

Jericho Chronology

* Natufian (10,800-8,500 BC), sedentary hunter-gatherers in large semi-subterranean oval stone structures

* Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (8,500-7300 BC), roofed, oval semi-subterranean dwellings in a village, engaging in long distance trade and growing domesticated crops, construction of the first tower (4 meters tall), and a defensive perimeter wall

* Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (7300-6000 BC), rectangular houses with red- and white-painted floors, with caches of plastered human skulls

* Early Neolithic (6000-5000 BC) Jericho was mostly abandoned during this time

* Middle/Late Neolithic (5000-3100 BC), very minimal occupation

* Early / Middle Bronze Age (3100-1800 BC) (extensive defensive walls constructed, rectangular towers 15-20 meters long and 6-8 meters tall and extensive cemeteries

* Late Bronze Age (1800-1400 BC), Jericho destroyed

* After the Late Bronze Age, Jericho was no longer much of a center, but continued to be occupied on a small scale, and ruled by Babylonians, Persian Empire, Roman Empire, Byzantine and Ottoman Empire, on and on until the present day

http://archaeology.about.com/od/jterms/qt/jericho.htm

 

What specifically does any of this thread have to do with Religion? It sounds as if you have intentionally misplaced a thread dealing with Archaeology by placing it in a sub forum on Religion.

 

10,000 years ago these people in the Levant buried their dead.. and one of their earliest sites was Jericho.. five thousand years before Genesis.

They have also excavated a site in Galilee... called HaYonim Cave which is 12,000 years old with no signs of ever being flooded.

 

Once again, how was that date acquired?

 

Carbon dating....

They used the same method to date the 11,000 year old granaries near the Dead Sea.

 

This thread doesn't meet forum guidelines because the OP has not provided her own point of view so that we might have a discussion.

 

Of course it does.. It fits right into the Jericho Chronology..

 

Defective dating method, defective dates, defective thread.

 

I fear you simply don't understand carbon dating..

Do you have any idea what you are talking about??

 

You can retain all the fears that you desire, makes no difference to me. On the other side of that coin, is the alleged fact that c-14 has a half life of 5700+ years. Carbon dating is a relatively new concept and no-one has been around for 5700+ years since carbon dating started, so the theory of carbon dating cannot be validated. In other words... take your sample of c-14, retrieve your measurements, put that sample on the shelf for a period of 5700 years, then recheck your measurements. If the numbers are true, which is unlikely, then the theory can be validated. Until then all you have is a mathematical curiosity which MIGHT give you an approximation.... but approximations are not FACT.

 

LOLOL


http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/cardat.html

 

No flood damage here either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Çatalhöyük




7500 BC to 5700 BC .. and they used their rooftops as streets and Plazas..

Interior construction looks like construction in Arabia.

 

You can retain all the fears that you desire, makes no difference to me. On the other side of that coin, is the alleged fact that c-14 has a half life of 5700+ years. Carbon dating is a relatively new concept and no-one has been around for 5700+ years since carbon dating started, so the theory of carbon dating cannot be validated. In other words... take your sample of c-14, retrieve your measurements, put that sample on the shelf for a period of 5700 years, then recheck your measurements. If the numbers are true, which is unlikely, then the theory can be validated. Until then all you have is a mathematical curiosity which MIGHT give you an approximation.... but approximations are not FACT.

I do know that the process requires 'deductive reasoning' in reaching a conclusion on the approximated date. That said, it can also be just as easily deduced (or inferred) to be any other date or length of time. What does it mean to 'deduce'? It simply means "to infer by logical reasoning; reason out or conclude from known facts or general principles"; and what does 'infer' mean: Infer means to conclude from evidence or 'assumptions'; and what is an assumption: An assumption is an idea that is formed without evidence.

Well, in the case of carbon dating, the evidence you have is the math. The assumption you have is that the math is correct with relation to reality. What did Einstein say about math in relation to reality: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." I would place the words of Einstein well above your arguments in favor of something as silly as carbon dating, based on what Einstein had to say.

 

einstein was a physicist. His work in the area of quantum phsyics (photoelectric effect) and his work on relativity clearly indicated that he firmly believed in the physics of matter--that is--he would firmly have believed that the nuclear decay rates of any radioistope follow a first order decay curve--so yes--there is no doubt whatsoever the man would have believed in carbon dating methods.

If decay rates of radioactives were not constant (6000 year old earth would require uranium decay rates to be orders of magnitude higher 6000 years ago) there would be no earth--for uranium and plutonium to have much higher decay rates 6000 years ago--physics dictates that naturally occuring uranium would have gone critical (higher decay rate means more neutrons per unit volume =chain reaction) and the earth vaporized in a nuclear blast within seconds of it being created.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090120070712AAlhCX

 

I am still waiting for the OP to explain the point of this thread.

 

Its about archeology and the Jericho Chronology.

 

That is not a religious topic. Why did you put this in the Religion Forum?

 

Did you ask him his opinion on the matter of carbon dating? No? Then it would seem that your claim is a little bit presumptuous. Another way of my saying that which I just stated is to request "Prove your claim".

There is that uncertainty factor. That uncertainty factor shows that even you cannot make an absolute claim regarding the carbon dating method nor the numbers that have been generated by such process.

 

Jericho is a subject of religious interest.

 

Don't hold your breath while waiting. I also don't think that explanation is forthcoming.

 

Other than the fact that Jericho is mentioned in the Bible, I do not see the religious significance of this topic.

 

There is none. It is clearly about carbon dating and archaeological findings.. an off topic discussion for this forum.

 

Jericho was originally a hunter gatherer settlement 11,000 years ago.. So it predates Genesis UNLESS the Garden of Eden story is a late morality tale about the transition between hunter-gatherers and settled agricultural people who stopped depending on God's providence.

 

The Garden of Eve tale was told around campfires and then one day someone wrote it down. Who knows where it came from.

Unlike similar tales in other mythologies, the Garden of Eve tale teaches important lessons about God, man, woman, marriage, sin, etc.

Was there really a man named Adam and a woman named Eve? There is no way to know. However, what is important is that at one point our human ancestors sinned against God, making it necessary for Christ to die on the cross to redeem us.