"Researchers have analyzed 18 ancient texts dating back to around 600 BCE from the Tel Arad military post [1] using state-of-the-art image processing, machine learning technologies, and the expertise of a senior handwriting examiner, and concluded that the texts were written by no fewer than 12 authors, suggesting that many of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah during that period were able to read and write." Source: Science Daily.
[1] The Tel Arad site (originally a Canaanite settlement which was deserted around 2650 BC) was turned into a citadel during the time of the Biblical (and probably legendary) King David and Solomon. "It is believed that several citadels were built one upon the other and existed in the Hellenistic and Roman periods." (Wikipedia)
According to Science Daily, "...the researchers examined the ostraca (fragments of pottery vessels containing ink inscriptions) writings discovered at the Tel Arad site in the 1960s. Tel Arad was a small military post on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah; its built-up area was about 20,000 square feet and it housed between 20 and 30 soldiers."
Note: The argument here is based on computerized and more traditional forensic handwriting analysis. This isn't the same thing as Graphology, which claims to be able to analyze personalities and detect a person's psychological state from their handwriting.
If the researchers in this study are correct when they say that the inscriptions on the Tel Arad fragments were written by at least 12 people, this would imply that literacy was fairly widespread at the time because it would be unusual otherwise to find so many writers in a place so small:
"'It should be remembered that this was a small outpost, one of a series of outposts on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah. Since we found at least 12 different authors out of 18 texts in total, we can conclude that there was a high level of literacy throughout the entire kingdom. The commanding ranks and liaison officers at the outpost, and even the quartermaster Eliashib and his deputy, Nahum, were literate. Someone had to teach them how to read and write, so we must assume the existence of an appropriate educational system in Judah at the end of the First Temple period.'"
The question, naturally, is whether handwriting analysis can detect different hands in inscriptions this old.
"There is no neat physical description of Jesus in the Gospels or in ancient Christian literature. But there are incidental details. From the Bible (for example, Mark 6:56) you can discover that he wore a mantle – a large shawl ('himation' in Greek) – which had tassels, described as 'edges'; a distinctively Jewish tallith in a form it was in antiquity. Usually made of wool, a mantle could be large or small, thick or fine, coloured or natural, but for men there was a preference for undyed types." Source: The Conversation.
"He walked in sandals, as implied in multiple Biblical passages (see Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:7, 6:9; John 1:27), and we now know what ancient Judaean sandals were like as they have been preserved in dry caves by the Dead Sea.
"He wore a tunic (chitōn), which for men normally finished slightly below the knees, not at the ankles. Among men, only the very rich wore long tunics. Indeed, Jesus specifically identifies men who dress in long tunics ('stolai', Mark 12:38) as wrongly receiving honour from people who are impressed by their fine attire, when in fact they unjustly devour widows’ houses."
"Jesus’s tunic was also made of one piece of cloth only (John 19:23-24). That’s strange, because mostly tunics were made of two pieces sewn at the shoulders and sides. One-piece tunics in first-century Judaea were normally thin undergarments or children’s wear. We shouldn’t think of contemporary underwear, but wearing a one-piece on its own was probably not good form. It was extremely basic."
Comment: All of this assumes, of course, that Jesus actually existed.
"They number in the hundreds, can be larger than an NFL football field and are found across Saudi Arabia, including on the slope of a volcano. Sprawling stone structures reported in 2017 now appear to be some of the oldest monuments in the world, dating back some 7,000 years, archaeologists now report." Source: Live Science.
"A new study of the mysterious stone structures — once called 'gates' but now referred to as 'mustatils,' the Arabic word for 'rectangle' —suggests they were used for rituals; and radiocarbon dating of charcoal found within one of the structures indicates people built it around 5000 B.C., a team of researchers report in an article recently published in the journal The Holocene."
The researchers believe that these were ritual sites of some kind:
According to the Archaeology News Network, "More than one hundred new mustatils have been identified around the southern margins of the Nefud Desert ... joining the hundreds previously identified from studies of Google Earth imagery, particularly in the Khaybar area. The team found that these structures typically consist of two large platforms, connected by parallel long walls, sometimes extending over 600 meters in length. The long walls are very low, had no obvious openings and are located in diverse landscape settings. It is also interesting that little in the way of other archaeology - such as stone tools - was found around the mustatils. Together these factors suggest that the structures were not simply utilitarian entities for something like water or animal storage."
Deserts of Saudi Arabia. Some of the strange stone structures are shown at 4:13.
Note: "Between 10 and six thousand years ago the Arabian Peninsula saw the most recent of the ‘Green Arabia’ periods, when increased rainfall transformed this generally arid region. The transition to the Neolithic in Arabia occurred during this period of climatic amelioration. Various forms of stone structures are abundant in northern Arabia, and it has been speculated that some of these dated to the Neolithic, but there has been little research on their character and chronology [until now]." Source: The Holocene.
"About 1,100 years ago, someone stashed a small fortune of pure gold coins in a clay jar and nailed that jar to a hole in the ground, likely with the hopes of retrieving it one day." Source: Live Science.
"Whoever it was, they never reclaimed the treasure. The hoard — a hefty pile of 425 gold coins — remained buried until a group of youths volunteering ahead of their mandatory army service in Israel unearthed it on Aug. 18, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which organized the excavation."
Note: The coins, which are apparently pure gold, date back to the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 AD) and were worth a small fortune back then:
"The 1.8-lbs. (845 grams) hoard was 'a significant amount of money in those days,' Robert Kool, a coin expert at the IAA said in the statement. 'For example, with such a sum, a person could buy a luxurious house in one of the best neighborhoods in Fustat, the enormous wealthy capital of Egypt in those days [the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule]." (Today, based on the current price of gold per gram, that pot of gold would be worth approximately $52,600.)"
This isn't the first time ancient gold coins have been found in Israel, of course. The next video (2015), shows a professor studying a gold coin minted by Ptolemy V which was discovered at the Tel Kedesh site near the Lebanese border.
"An archaeologist in Israel has located one of the Third Crusade's key battlefields — the spot where Richard I of England, also known as Richard the Lionheart, and his troops defeated Muslim forces." Source: Live Science.
"His victory was short-lived. Although King Richard's Christian forces won the fight, known as the Battle of Arsuf, they ultimately lost the Third Crusade to the Muslims, who held onto the Holy Land, said study researcher Rafael Lewis, an associate researcher at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa in Israel."
"The oldest known person to be intentionally cremated in the Near East took their last breath about 9,000 years ago, and their body went up in flames shortly thereafter, a new study finds." Source: Live Science.
"The body wasn't simply thrown in a fire, however; whoever arranged the funeral pyre did so with care, archaeologists found by sifting through the body's burnt remains. It appears that the deceased was placed in a seated position, with their knees bent to their chest in a kiln-like pit. Then, a fire was ignited next to or under the deceased."
Note: This find was made in northern Israel. According to New Scientist, "Stone Age people were cremating their dead in fire pits about 9000 years ago, in what is now Israel. The development of cremation may have been linked to a shift in their religious beliefs, away from worship of ancestors.
"For tens of thousands of years, people tended to bury their dead, says Fanny Bocquentin at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris. There is also evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead about 70,000 years ago. Cremation, in which the body is intentionally burned, is a relatively recent invention."
The oldest known cremation in the world was discovered when the remains of the app. 40,000-year-old Mungo Lady were discovered in Australia.
Khirbet Qeiyafa, the site where the head was discovered. Video from 2013.
"A clay head that dates back almost 3,000 years may be a rare depiction of Yahweh, — God — whose image the Israelites were forbidden from creating according to the Ten Commandments, an archaeologist reports." Source: Live Science.
"But two experts in the field have denounced the idea that this head figure represents God.
"...Archaeologists discovered the 2-inch-tall (5 centimeters) head in the ruins of a large building that may have been a palace at the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa in Israel [see video], wrote Yosef Garfinkel, head of the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University who co-directs excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, in a recent article published in the Biblical Archaeology Review."
Note: Garfinkel thinks that the figure may have originally shown Yahweh riding a horse. This remains to be seen but the argument is plausible because Yahweh was originally believed to be "a storm-and-warrior deity who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies." (Wikipedia) The proscription against depicting Yahweh may have come later.
There doesn't seem to be any doubt that the ancient Israelites were originally polytheistic. Back in the Iron and Early Bronze ages, Yahweh was a tribal weather/storm/warrior deity and the Israelites worshiped a multitude of gods:
"At that time the Israelites [originally Canaanites themselves] worshipped Yahweh alongside a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses, including El, Asherah and Baal, but in time El and Yahweh became conflated, El-linked epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone, and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion." (Wikipedia)
None of this is too surprising. The famous Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac shows that the Israelites once practiced human sacrifice, a distinctly pagan ritual. In the current version of the story, God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son as a test of faith, but when Abraham starts to carry out the order God stops him and Abraham sacrifices a ram instead. Some scholars believe that the original version of this tale may have ended differently:
"Francesca Stavrakopoulou has speculated that it is possible that the story 'contains traces of a tradition in which Abraham does sacrifice Isaac.' R.E. Friedman argued that in the original ... story, Abraham may have carried out the sacrifice of Isaac, but that later repugnance at the idea of a human sacrifice led the redactor of JE to add the lines in which a ram is substituted for Isaac. Likewise, Terence Fretheim wrote that the text bears no specific mark of being a polemic against child sacrifice." (Wikipedia)
One way or another, the story shows that the Israelites once carried out ritual child sacrifices.
It would have been nice if this clip had actually shown the results of the examination of the infant skeleton.
The ancient Israelites also conducted animal sacrifices, a practice which is still recreated on special occasions in Israel today.
Video from 2016. Rituals like this are clear evidence of ancient Israelite paganism.
Gobekli Tepe is a prehistoric site in southeastern Turkey, "a series of circular and oval-shaped structures set on top of a hill." (Gobeklitepe.info) "What makes Gobekli Tepe unique in its class is the date it was built, which is roughly twelve thousand years ago, circa 10,000 BC."
Note: The age of Gobekli Tepe varies from source to source, sometimes by as much as a thousand years or so, but everybody agrees that it is extremely ancient.
This animation is supposed to be based on site maps, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.
"There are a number of unsettling things about Göbekli Tepe. It’s estimated to be eleven thousand years old—six and a half thousand years older than the Great Pyramid, five and a half thousand years older than the earliest known cuneiform texts, and about a thousand years older than the walls of Jericho, formerly believed to be the world’s most ancient monumental structure." Source: The New Yorker (2011)
Whatever its exact age, Gobekli Tepe is one of the oldest megalithic sites in the world, if not the oldest. It was apparently built during "two phases of use, believed to be of a social or ritual nature by site discoverer and excavator Klaus Schmidt, dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected – the world's oldest known megaliths." (Wikipedia)
"More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and weighs up to 10 tons [1]. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock. In the second phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime. The site was abandoned after the PPNB. Younger structures date to classical times."
[1] Some sources describe stones weighing up to 60 tons. I have no idea how reliable any of these numbers are.
Stone tools, at least one cave inscription and the ruins of what is thought to have been a Roman watchtower have been found on the site.
The site covers an area of around 1000 feet, I think, but it could be much larger than that (?) According to Wikipedia, only about five percent of the complex has been excavated. I don't know how accurate that is now, but new structures are still being discovered. Note: I'm not sure if the Wikipedia article on Gobekli Tepe reflects the finds described in the next video.
Video from 2018.
The purpose of the site is still unclear. Schmidt, the German archaeologist who led the excavations at Gobekli Tepe (1996 - 2014), argued that the megalithic complex was a "Stone Age mountain sanctuary," possibly for some kind of prehistoric cult of the dead, a pilgrimage site that drew people from all over the region. "Butchered bones found in large numbers from local game such as deer, gazelle, pigs, and geese have been identified as refuse from food hunted and cooked or otherwise prepared for the congregants." (Wikipedia)
Most of the sources I've seen echo Schmidt's conclusions, describing Gobekli Tepe as a temple. I'm not sure if this has ever been proven conclusively, however. Wikipedia states that "[t]he details of the structure's function remain a mystery."
Almost everything about Gobekli Tepe is a mystery. For example, it's still unclear who built the complex. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he inhabitants are presumed to have been hunters and gatherers who nevertheless lived in villages for at least part of the year," but if that's accurate they obviously weren't ordinary hunter-gatherers who were just starting to shift into a more settled existence. It would have required a lot of engineering knowledge to quarry, shape, transport and position these massive stones.
"Construction techniques vary but in the most elaborate there is a ring of T-shaped monolithic columns with a pair of larger, carved T-columns at the centre up to five metres tall. These not only supported a roof (for at least some of their life) but also represented abstracted human figures that were part of a belief system that is not yet understood. They are sculptural as well as structural, with animal figures in relief. " Source: The Art Newspaper.
Ordinary hunter-gatherers wouldn't have had the skills required to construct Gobekli Tepe. Whoever they were, they obviously had previous experience building megaliths. According to Wikipedia, " [i]f indeed the site was built by hunter-gatherers as some researchers believe then it would mean that the ability to erect monumental complexes was within the capacities of these sorts of groups, which would overturn previous assumptions. Some researchers believe that the construction of Göbekli Tepe may have contributed to the later development of urban civilization, or, as excavator Klaus Schmidt put it, 'First came the temple, then the city.'"
The next video describes one researcher's theory that Australian aborigines (or a people descended from them) built the complex.
Video from 2017.
This is an interesting theory, though not exactly mainstream. If Australian aborigines or their descendants built Gobekli Tepe, why aren't similar megalithic structures found in Australia? As it turns out, this is an extremely murky question. There are a few stone circles and alignments in Australia (on a much smaller scale) -- see the Megalithic Portal for details -- and one site has been called "Australia's Stonehenge," but it was apparently "all but destroyed" around 1940 and "the exact location has never been disclosed for fear the little that remains could be trashed," according to news.com.au (2015). That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that the site actually exists, to say the least. Ancient Origins made a short documentary about "Australia's Stonehenge," mostly notable for the fact that the video doesn't actually show any standing stones. Their 2017 article about the alleged site seems to fall into the "lost ancient exotic high technology" category.
We may never know who built Gobekli Tepe or why. The site is so mysterious that it acts like a magnet, attracting all kinds of speculation. According to Wikipedia, this fantastic megalithic complex "appears to raise more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers," but if nothing else it proves that prehistoric humans were a lot more advanced than commonly believed.
"Urfa Man, known formally as the Balikligöl statue, is the oldest human-size statue of a man yet discovered in the world. He is currently housed in Şanliurfa’s Archeology Museum, Southeast Turkey. Urfa man was discovered in the Old Town section of Şanliurfa, but in antiquity belongs to the same thought world of Göbekli Tepe, a site half an hour away from the museum by car." Source: Ancient Origins (2015).
Notes: Gobekli Tepe, a very ancient complex of monumental stone shrines decorated with bizarre statues and animal relief carvings, is especially mysterious because it was built during the Neolithic, apparently by Stone Age hunter-gatherers.
According to Ancient Origins, the Urfa Man cultic (?) statue may be similar to the "Eye Idols"--figurines with huge staring eyes that have been discovered at Tell Brak, one of the oldest cities in the world which dates back to the 7th millenium BC:
"Urfa man’s voiceless image cast by a conspicuously absent mouth and gazing obsidian-filled eyes is hauntingly enigmatic, but offers a link with another class of ancient statuary known as the eye idol."
Urfa Man idol shown at 11:19.
According to Julian Jaynes, author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, the missing mouths of these eye idols were meant to "enhance more hypnotically the hallucination of the dead (kings, priests, ancestors, etc) continuing to speak to the living." Jaynes argued that early humans weren't conscious in the modern sense of the word, but heard auditory hallucinations that they considered to be the voices of the gods.
"Jaynes perceived eye idols not as ornamental, but as speaking statues containing voices of the dead - as figurines assisting as aids in the production of hallucinated voices. Some types of eye idol were placed near elements such as running water to increase their speaking power, while others were located in temple areas and feature markings that symbolise gods." (Ancient Origins)
The speculation here is that the Urfa Man statue may be one of Jayne's "bicameral idols." If true, then the Neolithic people of the time may have actually heard the statue speak to them.