The Ice Age and the Fertile Crescent.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by CharlesBHoff
They date the Great Sph in Egpty back to 13000 year ago as the Egptian never claim to built but to found it bury under sand.

Only if you believe the ludicrous pseudo-science of Hancock and Bauval, whose theories have been ripped to shreds by learned Egyptologists. While we don't know the exact date of the Sphynx, it was decidedly built by the Egyptians c. 2500 BC. You won't find any reputable dispute with that.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


reputable dispute

Well I guess that eliminates Charles right there.

[monkspider]

Actually, a significant number of Egyptologists now accept the 10,000 BC date because of new evidence that has come out just recently regarding various weathering effects that exist on the Sphinx. This has nothing to do with the pseudo-science of Hancock.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by monkspider
Actually, a significant number of Egyptologists now accept the 10,000 BC date because of new evidence that has come out just recently regarding various weathering effects that exist on the Sphinx. This has nothing to do with the pseudo-science of Hancock.

Bull**** they are. This would be a major shift in Egyptology and would have made an enormous impact on the world were this true.

Cite a scholarly source?

Hancock and Bauval cited the weathering effects, and it was shown by real scientists that they were egregiously spinning their case to suit their mystical claptrap theories.

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Bull**** they are. This would be a major shift in Egyptology and would have made an enormous impact on the world were this true.

Cite a scholarly source?

Hancock and Bauval cited the weathering effects, and it was shown by real scientists that they were egregiously spinning their case to suit their mystical claptrap theories.

I dunno, I read it on google news a while back. I don't have the link anymore. It was a pretty interesting read.

[Berzerker]

Boris - it wasn't Bauval and Hancock who "spun" the erosion of the Sphinx to fit an older date, it was a geologist named Schock from Boston U and he has alot of supporters within the geological community although there are other geologists who disagree with his/their conclusions. Seems to me the Sphinx symbolised something to do with the cosmos, like the change to a new world "age" as in precession - the age of the lion and Virgo the Virgin. One possible explanation as to why Moses was so angry to find his people making a golden calf was that the age of Taurus (Aries the Ram was the new age and symbol) had ended and they were still making symbols of a prior age. And that would put the Sphinx's age at around 10,500 BC... Precession of the Equinoxes and the movement of the starry sky were immensely important to ancient peoples (read Hamlet's Mill for examples). Furthermore, there is archaeological evidence for an older date than what "Egyptologists" offer, in the 1840's a stele was found between it's paws which was immediately dismissed as a forgery dating back to ~600 BC because it conflicted with the egyptologist's views of the day, but the stele claims the Sphinx was the guardian of the House of Isis, and the House of Isis is one of the names given to the Great Pyramid. The problem is that Egyptologists claim the Sphinx was built by Chefren, the alleged builder of the 2nd of the Great Pyramids and son of the Pharaoh they claim built the first. That makes no sense! The stele claims the Sphinx already existed in the time of the first pyramid.

snoopy -

1. God created everything, but the actual creation process is the same as the way scientists have discovered it to be.

Not according to Genesis, it says God created only the "firmament" called "Heaven" used to separate the waters and the "dry land" called "Earth". Nowhere does Genesis say God created the waters, and more importantly, it doesn't even say God created the "Earth" (dry land), it says God merely "revealed" the dry land by gathering together the waters under the Haeven into "Seas". The terminology in Genesis is very important, words like "made", "placed", and "appointed" cannot be taken to mean the same thing as "create" out of nothingness. Even the word "create" can mean to make something out of pre-existing materials as in how a painter "creates"...

2. The {Last} Ice Age comes, and the humans survive through it for 90,000? years. These 90,000 years include the slow graduation of the Earth cooling, then to mid Ice Age, where Ice covers most of the planet, freezing oceans and creating ice blankets 2 miles thick, etc.

There is a theory - "Snowball Earth" - claiming the Earth was nearly covered in ice with maybe a band of exposed land/sea around the equator, but this was around 2 billion years ago. The most recent ice age - the past ~150,000 years never covered most, not even the majority of the land. But it would have made places like the Fertile Crescent not only highly desireable but possibly more...ahem... fertile

3. As the humans (Homo-Sapiens?) walk around looking for better land and more importantly - food, eventually, after thousands of years some find the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent I am talking about is the area around the Gulf. Here is where the humans settle, here is where they first learn to grow their own food (agriculture).

They wouldn't have had to walk very far, there's evidence of both Neandertals and Sapien Sapiens living in Israel 120-60 thousand years, so unless Neanderthals were able to cross the Mediterranean at Gibralter when sea levels lowered enough during the ice age, both would have walked by or through the area on their way east and/or west into Europe and Asia. But there is evidence of agriculture being practiced in SE Asia going back 8-10,000 years so it's still not clear who "invented" it. But so far, the oldest "cities" are those found along the Tigris and Euphrates...

4. The ice starts to melt extremely and floods occur (The Great Flood?).

Yup, the Tlingit of Alaska claim the "Great Flood" occured 13,000 years ago.

When the water has returned to the ocean, the ocean has risen and much of the previous coast is now under water, including some of the Fertile Crescent (the mouth to the ocean of the Eurphrates and the Tigris rivers are said to be the major part of the Fertile Crescent (The Garden of Eden).

The Sumerians who lived in that region actually had a word "E.DEN" which meant something like "House of God". Coincidently, they also had a word, I believe "ti" which meant "life force" or "that which animates" but also meant "rib". So what did God use from the Adam to "create" Eve? His "rib" or his "life force"? This shows that not only did the biblical authors use Sumerian words and "myths" but that they were sometimes a bit ignorant about which meanings to apply. And what did Jethro (?) tell the Hebrew upon entering the promised land after Moses had died? That there was a time, an ancient time, when their fathers - Abraham, etc. - lived in the land of the 2 rivers (fertile crescent) and served other Gods. This is the Sumerian connection... Abraham and his fathers were Sumerians, albeit part of Sumer's semitic population...

[Urban Ranger]

You might have mistaken the findings of the existence of large amounts of water West of the Nile (now a desert) during and after the Ice Age with other things.

As for the start of civilisation, if by that you mean where the first walled city is, then yes there is one somewhere. However, if by that you mean the origin of all the civilisations on earth, I don't think there is one. It is far more likely that there are multiple origins.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Berzerker
One possible explanation as to why Moses was so angry to find his people making a golden calf was that the age of Taurus (Aries the Ram was the new age and symbol) had ended and they were still making symbols of a prior age.

Age of Aries? Age of Taurus? That's just New Age gibberish Berz.

Originally posted by Berzerker
And that would put the Sphinx's age at around 10,500 BC...

A major problem with this is the constallations were invented by the Babylonians, and they weren't around in 10,500 BCE

Originally posted by Berzerker
Precession of the Equinoxes and the movement of the starry sky were immensely important to ancient peoples (read Hamlet's Mill for examples).

They didn't have the precision and the records (remember you need paper to keep records) to have an idea about precession. Besides, until there was agriculture, ancient tribes didn't have the surplus to keep non-productive people around.

Originally posted by Berzerker
Furthermore, there is archaeological evidence for an older date than what "Egyptologists" offer, in the 1840's a stele was found between it's paws which was immediately dismissed as a forgery dating back to ~600 BC because it conflicted with the egyptologist's views of the day, but the stele claims the Sphinx was the guardian of the House of Isis, and the House of Isis is one of the names given to the Great Pyramid.

Again, the problem here is you need a huge agrarian society to support these sort of infrastructure. There does not seem to be any evidence of such a thing in 10,500 BCE

[Berzerker]

True, it's tough defining civilisation, but the earliest major cities combined with agriculture, writing, etc, were in Sumer. As the title of Samuel Noah Kramer's book puts it, "History Begins at Sumer"... There's an interesting paradox created by the Hebrew calendar - it began in 3,760 BC long before Abraham was born...

[Berzerker]

UR -

Age of Aries? Age of Taurus? That's just New Age gibberish Berz.

Hehe, those ages mattered much more to them than us. They kept building temples aligned to the cardinal points, stars, etc., and they had to keep re-aligning buildings because of precession...

A major problem with this is the constallations were invented by the Babylonians, and they weren't around in 10,500 BCE

The Sumerians preceded the Babylonians by more than 2,000 years, but we have no record of who invented the constellations. How long were oral traditions of the stars kept before writing was invented? In the Bible we're told of Samson cutting down the enemy by swinging the jawbone of an ass, but what do we find in Peru? An ancient hero who cut down the enemy with the jawbone of a tapir. A borrowed myth by Incans who heard the tale of Samson? Possibly, but are we really supposed to believe Samson used a jawbone in battle? Hamlet's Mill is an excellent book on how many of these ancient stories were related to the constantly churning cosmos and precession...

They didn't have the precision and the records (remember you need paper to keep records) to have an idea about precession. Besides, until there was agriculture, ancient tribes didn't have the surplus to keep non-productive people around.

Precession results in ~1 degree of movement, roughly twice the diameter of the moon, every 72 years. They not only knew about precession but had to keep re-aligning temples to keep up with the movement. I suggest you look at the accuracy of the Mayan's Venus calendar if you think ancient peoples were incapable of precise measurements. There's even evidence discovered by Alexander Marshack of Cro-Magnon man keeping records of the moon's phases on wood/bone ~30,000 years ago.

Again, the problem here is you need a huge agrarian society to support these sort of infrastructure. There does not seem to be any evidence of such a thing in 10,500 BCE

Why would you need such a large infrastructure to carve the Sphinx out of an outcrop of rock? The pyramids? Sure, but not the Sphinx... Furthermore, sand and water has a nasty habit of burying stuff, God only knows how much of our ancient past lies off of coastlines around the world, settlements and cities flooded by the rising sea levels or buried under sand dunes. We're still finding even more ancient Mayan cities covered by forests and the date for Mayan civilisation is being pushed back far enough now to link them with the Olmecs...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Berzerker
The Sumerians preceded the Babylonians by more than 2,000 years, but we have no record of who invented the constellations. How long were oral traditions of the stars kept before writing was invented?

Granted the oral traditions could go back way back (eh ), unless the ancient Egyptians used the same sort of mapping for the stars as we do, it wouldn't make any sense to refer to Age of Aries. etc. The Chinese had their own system, so did the anicent South American cultures.

Originally posted by Berzerker
In the Bible we're told of Samson cutting down the enemy by swinging the jawbone of an ass, but what do we find in Peru? An ancient hero who cut down the enemy with the jawbone of a tapir. A borrowed myth by Incans who heard the tale of Samson? Possibly, but are we really supposed to believe Samson used a jawbone in battle? Hamlet's Mill is an excellent book on how many of these ancient stories were related to the constantly churning cosmos and precession...

Possibly. It's also possible that oral traditions have a tendency to exaggerate things, esp. heroic deeds The Chinese have stories about heroes killing tigers with their bare hands. I think they can kick Samson's arse

Originally posted by Berzerker
Precession results in ~1 degree of movement, roughly twice the diameter of the moon, every 72 years. They not only knew about precession but had to keep re-aligning temples to keep up with the movement. I suggest you look at the accuracy of the Mayan's Venus calendar if you think ancient peoples were incapable of precise measurements.

Yeah, but those weren't that old

Originally posted by Berzerker
There's even evidence discovered by Alexander Marshack of Cro-Magnon man keeping records of the moon's phases on wood/bone ~30,000 years ago.

I think even apes could notice the phases of the moon.

Originally posted by Berzerker
Why would you need such a large infrastructure to carve the Sphinx out of an outcrop of rock? The pyramids? Sure, but not the Sphinx...

You're right, probably not huge, just big

Anyway, the point was you need a somewhat advanced society to have free people to do the work. Including dreaming up the idea of building the Sphinx.

Originally posted by Berzerker
Furthermore, sand and water has a nasty habit of burying stuff, God only knows how much of our ancient past lies off of coastlines around the world, settlements and cities flooded by the rising sea levels or buried under sand dunes.

Sand is easier to see through than forests. Geologists used sat images to find evidences a large system of water in Western Egypt, for example.

[Drake Tungsten]

Bull**** they are. This would be a major shift in Egyptology and would have made an enormous impact on the world were this true.

You think that anything having to do with Egyptology would have an enormous impact on the world? Talk about bull****...

[Gatekeeper]

This thread is quite fascinating. Say, Berz, do you have any Web sites (preferably somewhat reputable) where you go to keep up with the latest on these sorts of developments?

Gatekeeper

[Al B. Sure!]

Possibly. It's also possible that oral traditions have a tendency to exaggerate things, esp. heroic deeds The Chinese have stories about heroes killing tigers with their bare hands. I think they can kick Samson's arse

didn't Hercules or Jason kill something with a bone too?

Anyway, the point was you need a somewhat advanced society to have free people to do the work. Including dreaming up the idea of building the Sphinx.

you forget that the nile causes egypt to have very seasonal agriculture... entire months go by with the fields under water and people have nothing to do. it was during this time that the pharaohs had their construction projects.

[Hueij]

Furthermore, there is archaeological evidence for an older date than what "Egyptologists" offer, in the 1840's a stele was found between it's paws which was immediately dismissed as a forgery dating back to ~600 BC because it conflicted with the egyptologist's views of the day, but the stele claims the Sphinx was the guardian of the House of Isis, and the House of Isis is one of the names given to the Great Pyramid. The problem is that Egyptologists claim the Sphinx was built by Chefren, the alleged builder of the 2nd of the Great Pyramids and son of the Pharaoh they claim built the first. That makes no sense! The stele claims the Sphinx already existed in the time of the first pyramid.

The stele you mention was erected by Thutmosis IV who reigned between 1419 and 1386 BC, over a thousand years after the building of the Sphinx. And nowhere does it mention a House of Isis or Chufu's pyramid. BTW, since when was the great Pyramid called House of Isis?

In short, this is a lot of bull and it makes me wonder about the rest of your story...