Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: larens on 07/04/2020 04:52:50
-
The Book of Genesis contains several morality stories going from Adam to Noah. Do these fictional stories really refer to historical events before writing was invented? The founding of Sumer with the construction of the temple city of Eridu 7400 years ago is pertinent to this question. We can readily compare the Sumerian literature relating to their oral tradition with archaeology. They say their founders came from Aratta, which was east of Susa and accessible by water. This would place it on the Indus River. This is consistent with the biblical story of Cain, who was exiled to the land of Nod "east of Eden" and built the first city, The biblical location of the garden of Eden is in the Euphrates delta, though this paradise probably refers to Natufia in the Levant. Abraham, the founder of the biblical tradition, came from the cities of moon worship in Mesopotamia, where scholars described history taking place there that had really occurred in other countries.
Greek legend refers to an initial Golden Age of hunter-gatherers that ended with the institution of private property. This is consistent with the story of the fall of Adam and Eve. Natufia was an advanced hunter-gatherer culture that developed after the Bolling climate warming 14,800 years ago, which allowed a higher population density. The beautiful megalithic ritual center of Gobekli Tepe was built at the north end of Natufia, probably to unify the people of the Fertlle Crescent. It was intentionally buried at the time of the construction of the Tower of Jericho at the south end of Natufia, which was along the trade route to the Red Sea. This was likely a ritual center for traders who had become rich through the institution of private property.
The first successful commercial city was probably the port city of Aratta. It probably was near the modern city of Jacobabad, Pakistan. A limestone ridge across the Indus Valley there offered a convenient site above flood level with a trade route that leads past Mehrgarh to the Bolan pass unto the Iranian plateau. The site of Mohenjo-Daro, the southern hub of the Harappan civilization in the 3rd millennium BCE is somewhat east of Jacobabad, since the river had changed course. The western railroad of South Asia was also built along this route. Mehrgarh was continuously occupied from 7000 BCE into the Harappan period. It has supplied most of the pre-Harappan archaeological evidence in the area.
Until 4000 BCE sea level was rising from the melting of ice age glaciers. This flooded major portions of the continental shelf around the world. Sedimentation in the lower Indus Valley caused the water level to rise even faster. Any port in this area built on an isolated low hill would have found itself in the predicament of not being able to move easily. It could though continually raise its mound higher. This would make it a better port, but would set itself up for disaster. As the climate shifted around 7400 years ago there was an unprecedented heavy monsoon season that created a great flood on the Indus River.
Genesis 6: 1-3 (NIV) says, "When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, 'My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.'" A male genetic bottleneck started about the time of Aratta in which only one man mated for every 17 women. This is possible when some men have acquired great wealth. The trade route here had luxury items, e.g. lapis lazuli from northeastern Afghanistan, turquoise, and seashells from the southern Iranian coast. The trade routes on the western and northern sides of the Iranian plateau, however, were mainly utilitarian. Anatolian obsidian was their main long distance trade item.
The genealogy from Adam to Noah in Genesis 5 has a literary trick by which a period of hundreds of generations can be expressed as ten generations. There is an incredibly long average time between generations and each generation lives an incredibly long time. If you add together the times between generations, add one, and multiply by seven, the Jewish holy number, you get one less than 7400 years. The age for military service in ancient Jewish tradition was 20 years. If you add a holy period of 7 years plus one prenatal year you get 28 years. If you subtract this from the above given lifetime of 120 years, you get 92 years for the nominal overlap in generations. If you subtract this nominal overlap from the incredibly long lifetime of each generation in the genealogy, add these times together, and add 600 years for the age of Noah at the time of the flood, you also get about 7400 years. Three periods of history also last 7400 years according to the cryptic message of the Muses in Plato's Republic. Everything above supports the idea that Aratta was the world's first highly successful commercial city and was destroyed in a great flood midway between the beginning of Natufia and the present. The Sumerian story is that after the flood the survivors were washed into the Persian Gulf. More likely is that the survivors were already trading with Mesopotamia and fled there to start Sumer. Uruk is slightly older than Eridu and was likely an Arattan trading post.
-
People clearly traveled traded around the red sea and parts of the Indian ocean. It is possible stories of floods from India, from a bad monsoon season lasting 40 days and 40 nights were incorporated in Jewish mythology.
The Talmud I understand, possibly wrongly, not wanting to argue the point, has been modified numerous times, the chronology of events is not reliable, and the geographical location of events may have been moved to suit the religious groups of the day. (Edit Stories clearly appear to have been shared between cultures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah#Comparative_mythology )
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochin_Jews might have taken the flood story back to Palestine from India (land of the monsoons).
I don't know where you are getting your dates from, the earliest written records come from Sumeria, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_history although these might be dated on earlier events. reliable sources from 14800 years ago sounds more like wishful thinking. Do you have a source for this info?
Edit trying to make sense of religion is likely to drive you mad! ;)
-
I don't know where you are getting your dates from, the earliest written records come from Sumeria, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_history although these might be dated on earlier events. reliable sources from 14800 years ago sounds more like wishful thinking. Do you have a source for this info?
All my dates before recorded history come from archaeologists' C-14 dating, except for the inferences from ancient literature. The date given in Plato's story of Atlantis is also consistent with my timeline. A site in Jordan where people were baking bread before moving elsewhere is probably a few centuries younger than the 14,800 year age of the Bolling warming. It can be considered the oldest known Natufian site.
-
The genealogy from Adam to Noah in Genesis 5 has a literary trick by which a period of hundreds of generations can be expressed as ten generations. There is an incredibly long average time between generations and each generation lives an incredibly long time. If you add together the times between generations, add one, and multiply by seven, the Jewish holy number, you get one less than 7400 years. The age for military service in ancient Jewish tradition was 20 years. If you add a holy period of 7 years plus one prenatal year you get 28 years. If you subtract this from the above given lifetime of 120 years, you get 92 years for the nominal overlap in generations. If you subtract this nominal overlap from the incredibly long lifetime of each generation in the genealogy, add these times together, and add 600 years for the age of Noah at the time of the flood, you also get about 7400 years. Three periods of history also last 7400 years according to the cryptic message of the Muses in Plato's Republic. Everything above supports the idea that Aratta was the world's first highly successful commercial city and was destroyed in a great flood midway between the beginning of Natufia and the present. The Sumerian story is that after the flood the survivors were washed into the Persian Gulf. More likely is that the survivors were already trading with Mesopotamia and fled there to start Sumer. Uruk is slightly older than Eridu and was likely an Arattan trading post.
You will go mad if you try to make sense out of religion. If the numbers dont add up it is a stupid story for children, which grown ups are not expected to believe
-
You will go mad if you try to make sense out of religion. If the numbers dont add up it is a stupid story for children, which grown ups are not expected to believe
I showed that the numbers in the story of Noah do add up, but only if you understand that the religious author was veiling important information that he not think his audience would understand. This a standard trick of priests by which they maintain their social position. It is not simply a stupid story for children. The genealogy is boring - for adults as well as children. If it did not contain important information, why would it have been canonized over many other possible stories? Remember that it has been canonized for thousands of years in the largest branch of religion in the world.