Ancient World Review

The Great Wall of Gorgan In Iran

Video from 2015.

"A team of archaeologists and cultural heritage experts led by Prof. Mohammad Mortezaei has commenced new surveys to examine sections of the wall which are located in Hyrcania ..." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"Built between 420s and 530s CE, the Great Wall of Gorgan served as a defense system stretched along southeastern parts of the Caspian Sea near modern Gorgan in Golestan Province."

Next video (posted in 2016) shows a team from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, performing a geophysical survey of part of the wall. It appears that the stones from this section are entirely missing.

The Great Wall of Gorgan is 121 miles long with over 30 fortresses, making it the longest defensive wall in existence other than the Great Wall of China. (Wikipedia) According to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, "The system is remarkable not only in terms of its physical scale, but even more so in terms of its technical sophistication. In order to enable construction works, canals had to be dug along the course of the defensive barrier, to provide the water needed for brick production. These canals received their water from supplier canals, which bridged the Gorgan River via qanats [underground channels]."

From Engineering an Empire: Persia. This clip was apparently reduced to a quality of one pixel per inch before posting.

"The Great Wall of Gorgan, Golestan Province, in northern Iran was built from 420s AD to 530s AD; it is then occupied until the 7^th century. This was the time when the Persian Empire, under the Sassanian dynasty, was involved in a series of wars at its northern frontier, first against the Hephthalites or White Huns and later against the Turks. The Great Wall of Gorgan stretches for almost 200 km and is lined by 38 forts. It is the longest fort-lined ancient barrier between Central Europe and China, it is longer than Hadrian’s Wall [73 miles] and the Antonine Wall [~39 miles] put together. It is also more than three times the length of the longest late Roman defensive wall built from scratch, the Anastasian Wall west of Constantinople." (UNESCO)

Prehistoric Human Teeth Reveal Real Paleo-Diet

"New archaeological research may have revealed that the original 'paleo diet' contained wheat and barley, and was not restricted to only meat and vegetables, as the diet typically is today." Source: Science Alert (2016).

Real Paleo Diet Was Based On Grains?

"Collectively, anthropologists have spent many a career attempting to hone in on the diets of our most recent ancestors. Typically, they focus on our stone age (AKA Paleolithic) human ancestors or our earlier pre-human, hominid ancestors. Even if we just consider our stone age ancestors — those folks whose stories span the time between the first stone tool and the first agriculture — the sides of the debate are polarized. If you listen to one camp, our ancestors got most of their nutrition from gathered fruits and nuts; successful kills of big mammals may have been more of a treat than an everyday reality. A paper out just this month suggests that even Neanderthals--our north country cousins and mates-- may have eaten much more plant material than previously suspected." Source: Scientific American (2012).

Ancient Observatory Found In Cusco

Vilcabamba, aka Espiritu Pampa, Peru

"Research works at Espiritu Pampa archaeological site in Southern Cusco region led to the discovery of an astronomical observatory, massive stone walls, as well as ceramics and other pieces of evidence of pre-Hispanic Wari and Inca cultures presence." Source: Archaeology News Network.

King Tut's Dagger Made From Meteoric Iron

"Daggers, axes and jewelry made from rare iron during the Bronze Age are literally out of this world, according to new research finding that ancient artisans crafted these metal artifacts with iron from outer space carried to Earth by meteorites." Source: Live Science.

"The finding upends the idea that a few artisans during the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East knew how to make iron by smelting it from Earth's crust."

Archaeology As Blood Sport: How An Ancient Mastodon Ignited Debate Over Humans' Arrival In North America

Report from April, 2017.

The general age of these mastodon bones apparently isn't in dispute, but it's a completely different matter to say that the bones were broken by human stone tools over 130,000 years ago. If true, this would completely upend the current model of how people first migrated into North America [the Clovis-first theory] and the archaeologists making the claims seem to have got a lot of heat as a result:

"To dispute Clovis-first by a few thousand years was controversial. Some archaeologists had won begrudging acceptance with a few scattered excavations." Source: Los Angeles Times (Dec. 2017).

"But to propose a site more than 100,000 years older was professional suicide. It would undermine the research and reputations of most archaeologists now studying the New World."

Comment: Scientists who question current orthodoxies don't get burned at the stake these days, but the pressure to conform to mainstream theories is almost as intense as the pressure to conform to official church doctrine was back in the Middle Ages. From what I can tell, this isn't just a matter of scientists facing a healthy scepticism. That kind of reaction moves science forward. Instead, they face a nasty backlash from the scientific establishment that seems like an institutional attempt to suppress inconvenient theories and evidence in order to maintain the status quo.

"'If you claim something is that old, you get blasted,' [one of the archaeologists involved with this dig said], “which is why some archaeologists stopped working on sites like this. They didn’t want to get blasted.'"

Maybe the interpretation of these broken mastodon bones is wrong. That could very well be the case. DNA testing apparently determined that "the average age of the tusk and the rind [a mineral crust that covered the bone] was 191,000 years," but that age seemed too old and the final report was a hedge, concluding that "the spiral fractures in the femurs could have been produced 'by human activity' or by simple 'torsion caused by twisting,' what a panicked animal might do if its foot were sunk in mud."

Whatever the case, it's going to take more than some ambiguous fractures in ancient mastodon bones to undermine the Clovis-first theory, but scientists who make finds like this should be able to announce their ideas and do their work without the fear of committing professional suicide. More accurately, they shouldn't have to worry about being professionally murdered by other scientists trying to protect their own careers and reputations.

Science Devolving Into "Something Shoddy & Unreliable"

"There's no shortage of warnings from the scientific community that science as we know it is being drastically affected by the commercial and institutional pressure to publish papers in high-profile journals – and now a new simulation shows that deterioration actually happening." Source: Science Alert.

"To draw attention to the way good scientists are pressured into publishing bad science (read: sensational and surprising results), researchers in the US developed a computer model to simulate what happens when scientists compete for academic prestige and jobs." (Emphasis added)

Comment: Archaeology hasn't been immune to the pressures to produce sensational results in order to attract funding. It's a relatively poor science, an academic field where professor/archaeologists are heavily reliant on volunteers and bright-eyed college kids to do their field work, and museums never seem to have the staff or resources to properly evaluate and catalog their finds.

I've been following archaeology news for years now and the most common type of story involves the "discovery" of fantastic artifacts that turn out to have been lying around collecting dust in museum basements for decades. (The same thing happens in paleontology). In many cases, new finds can't be thoroughly excavated because the money isn't there.  National Science Foundation grants for archaeology have apparently been increasing, but archaeologists seem to be constantly scrabbling around for funds.

Archaeology doesn't pay very well and the few academic positions available must be extremely difficult to get.  As a result, student demand for university archaeology courses has been dropping and it's possible that the whole field could vanish, at least as an academic discipline and professional occupation. So archaeologists are under a lot of pressure to attract grants and the only way to do that is to produce results, the more spectacular the better.

The news is full of stories about sensational finds -- the recent "discovery" of Alexander the Greece's tomb at Amphipolis is a good example -- that usually turn out to be less or at least very different than advertised. Somebody always seems to be digging something up that could "rewrite history," but when you read the small print, these claims usually turn out to be highly speculative at best. This reflects the general tendency in science these days to make headline-grabbing announcements before all the facts are known. Archaeologists are still producing a lot of steady, consistent, solid work, but I have to wonder how long it will be before every dig will have to produce sensational headlines to stay in operation. When scientists are forced to scrabble for money, it can only lead to trouble.

Related: Plan B Careers In Archaeology. This is an excellent first-person article (2012) about how difficult it is to find academic research positions as an archaeologist.

Kenneth Humphreys - The Origin Of Christmas

"Although the month and date of Jesus' birth are unknown, by the early-to-mid fourth century the Western Christian Church had placed Christmas on December 25, a date that was later adopted in the East. Today, most Christians celebrate on December 25 in the Gregorian calendar, which has been adopted almost universally in the civil calendars used in countries throughout the world. However, some Eastern Christian Churches celebrate Christmas on December 25 of the older Julian calendar, which currently corresponds to January 7 in the Gregorian calendar, the day after the Western Christian Church celebrates the Epiphany. This is not a disagreement over the date of Christmas as such, but rather a preference of which calendar should be used to determine the day that is December 25." Source: Wikipedia.

Comment: I'm an atheist, I don't believe that Jesus existed and I think that Christianity was a disaster for the Roman Empire and the West in general, but I'm not one of those rabid anti-Christians who protest manger displays and fly into shrieking tantrums every time someone says "Merry Christmas." And while it's obvious that the early church made Dec. 25 Jesus's birthday in order to hijack a pagan festival, I'm not especially bothered by that fact. I don't get all offended about it and start foaming at the mouth.

Christmas is a Western tradition so even though I'm a complete heretic I support the open celebration of the holiday because the West and all of its values and institutions and traditions are under attack by politically correct idiots. I'd rather see a return to our true pagan roots, but given the choice between Christianity and, say, Islam or Cultural Marxism or, God forbid, modern neopaganism, I'll take Christianity any day even though I don't believe a word of it.

Saying "Merry Christmas" is a subversive statement these days, so I'll say Merry Christmas and if you don't like that you can go to Hell, something else I don't believe in.

Kenneth Humphreys - Jesus Never Existed

Comment: The Jesus of the New Testament is so obviously a mythological character that I've never had any trouble believing that he never existed. But I wouldn't say that the question has been proven one way or another and I don't think it ever will be. After all, it's impossible to prove a negative (1).

Still, I'm less interested in whether Jesus actually existed than I am in the question of how Christianity got started if there was no historical Jesus.  If the books of the New Testament are fiction, then someone must have written them, knowing that they were mythological.

Christianity obviously evolved over the centuries, but if Jesus never existed, someone must have put his basic story together. Was there an ancient L. Ron Hubbard or a committee of some kind who set out to create a new religion? If so, they got the whole thing started and I'd really like to know who they were and what they were trying to accomplish.

(1) Technically, it is possible to prove a negative, at least some kinds of negatives. For example, if I say I don't have anything in my refrigerator, I can prove that by opening my refrigerator and showing you that it's empty. In the case of statements like "Jesus never existed," however, there is no obvious proof as far as I can tell.

Is Jesus A Composite Fictional Character?

"Jesus is a composite character, was created at the Council of Nicea in what is modern day Turkey. From 310 AD to 325 AD, the Council of Nicea created this composite character of Jesus, along with the Virgin Mary. The Biblical Jesus is a composite character, and as such is an allegorical myth. These composites were made for the purpose of uniting religions of the ancient Roman Empire, so that their resources were not being used to constantly stop religious wars between different factions." Source: Justin Taylor.

Note: "In a work of media adapted from a real or fictional narrative, a composite character is a character based on more than one individual from the preceding story. Two or more fictional characters are often combined into a single character in the course of an adaptation of a work for a different medium, as in adapting a novel in the course of authoring a screenplay for a film. A composite character may be modeled on historical or biographical figures." Source: Wikipedia.

According to the Christ Myth Theory, Jesus is a legendary, i.e. fictional, character who was later historicized by the early church. Some writers -- Joseph Atwill, for instance -- believe that the Jesus character was invented in much the same way that the characters in books and movies are invented, while other writers such as Kenneth Humphreys argue that the figure of Jesus evolved over time through a process of historical syncretism.  One way or another, Jesus and other New Testament characters such as the Virgin Mary do seem to be composites of other religious figures of the period -- Mithras, Osiris, Isis, etc.

I would disagree with Justin Taylor, however, when he says that the Council of Nicea created the Jesus character in order to  "stop religious wars between different factions." The council leaders were obviously trying to unify their new religion by developing a standard liturgy and doctrine, but the parallels (1) between the Jesus character, Mithras and Osiris must have been created at an earlier time when Christianity was still in competition with other pagan religions in the Mediterranean world.

(1) As expected, there's a lot of disagreement about how strong these parallels are.