"Researchers have uncovered evidence of the storage and delayed consumption of animal bone marrow at Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv. The research provides direct evidence that early Paleolithic people saved animal bones for up to nine weeks before feasting on them inside the cave." Source: Science Daily (2019).
It's been known for a long time that prehistoric people ate bone marrow, but this particular find apparently provides the first evidence that they sometimes saved their bones for later, stockpiling them like canned food. That makes sense, but it's hard to tell how accurate this kind of research is because it involves the interpretation of chop marks on very ancient bones:
According to one of the researchers, "'The most common prey was fallow deer, and limbs and skulls were brought to the cave while the rest of the carcass was stripped of meat and fat at the hunting scene and left there. We found that the deer leg bones, specifically the metapodials, exhibited unique chopping marks on the shafts, which are not characteristic of the marks left from stripping fresh skin to fracture the bone and extract the marrow.'"
Bone marrow must've been a major part of the prehistoric diet:
"Many cultures have used bone marrow as food throughout history. Some anthropologists believe that early humans were scavengers rather than hunters in some regions of the world. Marrow would have been a useful food source (largely due to its fat content) for tool-using hominids, who were able to crack open the bones of carcasses left by apex predators such as lions." (Wikipedia)
Note: Catherine of Alexandria probably never existed:
"Donald Attwater (English Catholic author, 1892-1977) dismisses what he calls the 'legend' of Saint Catherine, arguing for a lack of any 'positive evidence that she ever existed outside the mind of some Greek writer who first composed what he intended to be simply an edifying romance.' Harold Davis writes that 'assiduous research has failed to identify Catherine with any historical personage' and has theorized that Catherine was an invention inspired to provide a counterpart to the story of the slightly later pagan philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 350–370 – 415 CE)." (Wikipedia)
According to the UNESCO World Heritage List, "The [Greek Orthodox] monastery of St Catherine stands at the foot of Mount Horeb where, the Old Testament records, Moses received the Tablets of the Law. The mountain is known and revered by Muslims as Jebel Musa. The entire area is sacred to three world religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism." The monastery is controlled by "the autonomous Church of Sinai."
Even though St. Catherine's was named after a (probably) fictitious saint, this is still a remarkable and very old institution:
"Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. The site contains the world's oldest continually operating library [next video], possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus."
The incredible library filmed on a potato.
Note: The manuscript shown in the video above is the Ashtiname of Muhammed, "also known as the Covenant or Testament (Testamentum) of Muhammad (the Islamic Prophet) ... a document which is a charter or writ ratified by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad granting protection and other privileges to the followers of Jesus the Nazarene, given to the Christian monks of Saint Catherine's Monastery. It is sealed with an imprint representing Muhammad's hand."
The manuscript may be inauthentic. According to Wikipedia, "Since the 19th century, several aspects of the Ashtiname, notably the list of witnesses, have been questioned by scholars. There are similarities to other documents granted to other religious communities in the Near East. One example is Muhammad's alleged letter to the Christians of Najran, which first came to light in 878 in a monastery in Iraq and whose text is preserved in the Chronicle of Seert." It doesn't really matter, though, because even if the Ashtiname is a forgery -- something I don't think anyone is claiming -- it's still a priceless artifact from the period.
Recently renovated, the library at St. Catherine's was re-opened in 2017.
The manuscripts and books in the monastery's library go way back:
"When Egeria visited the Sinai in 383-384, she wrote approvingly of the way the monks read to her the scriptural accounts concerning the various events that had taken place there. Thus we can speak of manuscripts at Sinai in the fourth century. It is written of Saint John Climacus that, while living as a hermit, he spent much time in prayer and in the copying of books. This is evidence of manuscript production at Sinai in the sixth century. The library at the Holy Monastery of Sinai is thus the inheritor of texts and of traditions that date to the earliest years of a monastic presence in the Sinai. In earlier times, manuscripts were kept in three different places: in the north wall of the monastery, in the vicinity of the church, and in a central location where the texts were accessible." Source: The Sinai Monastery website.
Research has also revealed that some of the manuscripts in the library contain "hidden manuscripts" which were erased in order to reuse the parchment they were written on.
"The Sinai manuscripts comprise the oldest and most important Christian monastic library collection. Of its 3,300 manuscripts, two-thirds are in Greek. The rest are principally in Arabic, Syriac, Georgian, and Slavonic, through there are other manuscripts in Polish, Hebrew, Ethiopian, Armenian, Latin, and Persian. The New Finds correspond to these languages, and are stored adjacent to the library. The library also contains an important archive, containing letters, account books, charters, and other documents." Source: The Sinai Monastery website.
"...The most famous manuscript is the fourth century Codex Sinaiticus, of which the monastery retains twelve pages and some twenty-four fragments."
Comment: I'm not a Christian, but St. Catherine's and its library are priceless historical treasures which must be protected at all costs. The monastery has already been the target of an attempted terrorist attack back in 2015 and as far as I can tell the Islamic State vermin are still waging a sporadic insurgency in the Sinai. I hate to say it, but if the situation deteriorates the Church of Sinai (which controls the monastery) should consider moving the library to a safer location, preferably somewhere out of the country.
"Archaeologists have found evidence of an earthquake that hit the City of David in Jerusalem about 2,800 years ago and that could be a major event described in the Hebrew Bible." Source: Live Science.
"During their excavations, the archaeological team, from the Israel Antiquities Authority, discovered a layer of destruction dating to that time in the City of David National Park. Inside the layer was 'a row of shattered vessels, including bowls, lamps, cooking utensils, storage and storage jars, which were smashed as [a] building's walls collapsed,' the archaeological team said in a statement from the IAA. Archaeologists also found no signs of a fire, and they are doubtful that the city was attacked by an invading force."
Note: The archaeologist's conclusion here is plausible, but still speculative as far as I can tell. According to Live Science, "Scholars not involved with the team's research were cautiously supportive of the team's conclusions. 'The interpretation of the archaeologists sounds possible,' said Israel Finkelstein, a professor emeritus of archaeology at Tel Aviv University in Israel."
More solid evidence is needed. I don't know if geologists could verify that an earthquake occurred in the area that long ago, but I have read that "scientists have developed a 'fossil seismograph,' which examines geological formations to find historical patterns of earthquakes reaching far back into the ancient past." (Science Daily, 2011).
"The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire [see comment] in the Greek-speaking, eastern part of the Mediterranean. Christian in nature, it was perennially at war with the Muslims, Flourishing during the reign of the Macedonian emperors, its demise was the consequence of attacks by Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Comment: The Byzantine Empire is usually referred to as the "Roman empire in the East," but I've never thought there was anything particularly Roman about the Byzantines. Romans weren't Greek-speaking Christians; they were pagans who spoke Latin. If you ask me, the real Roman empire had already ceased to exist as a distinct social organism by the time Constantinople was founded by Constantine in 324 - 337. After Italy and the western provinces of the old empire were overrun by Germanic tribes in the fifth century AD the Byzantines retained Roman institutions, but they were essentially an Oriental kingdom, a hybrid of western and eastern traditions.
According to this view the Roman Empire collapsed as a culture long before it was conquered militarily. When Rome fell in the West, that was the end of it. Parts of its territory still remained, however, most of it in the East, but it's hard to see these surviving territories as Roman.
The picture is very complicated, naturally. There were similarities and differences between the Roman and Byzantine empires. It would be surprising if nothing had carried over from the old world. As a general rule, civilizations aren't suddenly obliterated, leaving no trace behind. Collapse doesn't work that way. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall and evolve into new political systems, usually after a period of chaos and warfare. Zombie civilizations are common in history -- nations that still exist long after their cultures have died or changed out of all recognition. Christian Rome and the Roman Byzantine Empire are both good examples, I think, of zombie empires.
The Byzantine empire was a "continuation" of the Roman Empire in the sense that it was once part of the Roman empire with all of its legal and political institutions, but it was Roman in name only. The main difference, I think, was religious. Paganism had been outlawed and driven underground, replaced by Christianity, an essentially Oriental religion.
Here's a modern analogy. Let's say that the United States becomes an Islamic caliphate, but keeps all of its current institutions in place. There's a White House, a Congress, a Supreme Court, and so on. People still vote, but all the candidates are Muslims. The county courthouse still looks the same, but Christianity is illegal and the judges enforce Shariah Law. Then the western half of the country is invaded and overrun by savage barbarians who settle down and take over the existing legislative machinery. The eastern half of the country still survives as an independent nation, but is it American? The answer is obvious.
"Scientists have found an unexplained cache of fossilized shark teeth in an area where there should be none — in a 2900 year old site in the City of David in Jerusalem. This is at least 80 km from where these fossils would be expected to be found. There is no conclusive proof of why the cache was assembled, but it may be that the 80 million-year-old teeth were part of a collection, dating from just after the death of King Solomon [1]. The same team has now unearthed similar unexplained finds in other parts of ancient Judea." Source: Phys.org.
[1] "As with most biblical personages in the middle era of Israelite society, the historicity of Solomon is hotly debated. Current consensus states that regardless of whether or not a man named Solomon truly reigned as king over the Judean hills in the 10th century BCE, the Biblical descriptions of his apparent empire's lavishness is almost surely an anachronistic exaggeration." (Wikipedia)
"Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have identified a new type of early human at the Nesher Ramla site, dated to 140,000 to 120,000 years ago. According to the researchers, the morphology of the Nesher Ramla humans shares features with both Neanderthals (especially the teeth and jaws) and archaic Homo (specifically the skull)." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"...this type of Homo is very unlike modern humans - displaying a completely different skull structure, no chin, and very large teeth. Following the study's findings, researchers believe that the Nesher Ramla Homo type is the 'source' population from which most humans of the Middle Pleistocene developed. In addition, they suggest that this group is the so-called 'missing' population that mated with Homo sapiens who arrived in the region around 200,000 years ago - about whom we know from a recent study on fossils found in the Misliya cave."
Some researchers argue that the discovery of Nesher Ramla Homo shows that the ancestors of the Neanderthals originated in the Levant:
"'Before these new findings,' [one expert said], 'most researchers believed the Neanderthals to be a 'European story', in which small groups of Neanderthals were forced to migrate southwards to escape the spreading glaciers, with some arriving in the Land of Israel about 70,000 years ago. The Nesher Ramla fossils make us question this theory, suggesting that the ancestors of European Neanderthals lived in the Levant as early as 400,000 years ago, repeatedly migrating westward to Europe and eastward to Asia. In fact, our findings imply that the famous Neanderthals of Western Europe are only the remnants of a much larger population that lived here in the Levant -- and not the other way around.'"
Comment: This is a classic example of archaeologists and anthropologists making sweeping generalizations from a handful of bone fragments. In this case, the identification of Nesher Ramla Homo is based (as far as I can tell) on a single find consisting of five pieces of a brainpan and a nearly complete lower jawbone. That's not a lot of evidence. And the claim that Nesher Ramla Homo is a new species has been challenged by at least one expert who "did not agree with the findings, believing the skull to in fact be an early Neanderthal, and discussed the possibility of a Neanderthal population migrating from Europe." (Wikipedia) In other words, this find may not be as earth-shattering as the news stories would lead you to believe.
Call me a cynic, but I suspect that the researchers hyped up their discovery to generate headlines and improve their chances of getting funding for their work. Finding a new human ancestor is definitely sexier than digging up yet another collection of Neanderthal remains. If that's what the researchers did, I can't really blame them, however. Archaeologists have been dealing with a funding crisis over the past several years and have to get their money any way they can. As usual, we'll probably have to wait for a few millennia to get the truth, assuming, of course, that these bones don't just disappear into some museum basement, never to be seen again.
"In the Ancient Near East, temple women, of whom one class was called qadištu, probably served as sacred prostitutes. Sometimes dedicated by their fathers to the deity, they had special statutes, and provisions were made for them by law (Code of Hammurapi). Customs connected with them are likely to underlie Herodotus' lurid and misleading statement that in Babylon every woman was to serve once as a sacred prostitute before getting married, thus sacrificing her virginity to the goddess Mylitta (Ishtar) ... In Israel the sacred prostitutes were condemned for their connection with idolatry. Deuteronomy 23:18–19 forbids Israelites, men and women alike, to become sacred prostitutes, and states that their wages must not be used for paying vows." Source: Jewish Virtual Library.
Astarte is the Greek name of the very ancient Mesopotamian goddess, Ishtar. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), Ishtar was the "goddess of love and war, variously described as [the] daughter of Sin (moon god) or of Anu (sky god) with various attributes according to different city traditions." All of Ishtar's temples, according to the OCD, were probably "centers for cult prostitution of various kinds."
Some modern scholars believe that sacred prostitution, as an institution, never actually existed, but it seems like it must have occurred in one form or another or it wouldn't have been mentioned in all the various sources. If it did exist, however, it probably wasn't as widespread as previously believed. Herodotus' account, for instance, must be an exaggeration. It's hard to believe that every woman in Babylon had to serve once as a temple prostitute before getting married. If that was true, then the temples would have been swarming with them.
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), "sacred prostitution is a strictly modern, not ancient, term and misleading in that it transfers to the institution, or rather a variety of institutions, an adjective [sacred] which in ancient sources denotes only the status of the personnel involved (sometimes also their earnings, which likewise became sacred on dedication.)." I've read this two or three times now and I'm still not sure what it means. If a prostitute is considered sacred and her earnings are dedicated to a god, then isn't she a "sacred prostitute" by definition? The term may be modern, but how is it misleading?
Sacred prostitution is apparently still practiced in parts of India.
"An earthen mound in what is now Syria may be the oldest known war memorial in the world, constructed before 2300 BC. The remains of what could be foot soldiers and charioteers were buried in distinct clusters in a monument made of piled-up soil. However, it isn’t clear if they belonged to the winning or losing side, or what the conflict was about." Source: New Scientist (May 2021).
"The finding comes from a re-examination of remains from the White Monument, which was excavated in the 1980s and 1990s. The area was submerged in 1999 by the construction of the Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates river, and hasn’t been investigated since."
Comment: This is yet another example of an archaeological discovery which sat around forgotten for decades before anyone took another look and realized what it meant. Rediscoveries aren't unheard of in other fields, of course, but this kind of thing is so common in archaeology that I'm starting to think it must be standard operating procedure.
"A bronze amulet inscribed with the name of God and magical symbols for protection against demons and the curse of the 'evil eye' has been turned over to authorities after being unearthed in northern Israel 40 years ago." Source: Live Science.
"The amulet, which would have once been worn on a necklace, is thought to date to about 1,500 years ago during the Byzantine period, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) . At that time the region was ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire, which was also known as the Byzantine Empire after Byzantium, the former name of the city it was based in (by then Byzantium had been renamed Constantinople and it is now Istanbul.)"
"Archaeologists excavating ancient tunnels below the city of Jerusalem have discovered a curious good luck charm sitting amid the stones: a 2,000-year-old oil lamp made of bronze and shaped like half of a grotesque human face." Source: Live Science.
"The object was intentionally buried in the foundations of a building dating to the city's Roman period (approximately 63 B.C. to A.D. 300), following the destruction of the city and the Second Temple (a Jewish holy site) by Roman forces in A.D. 70. The lamp may have been cached in the building's foundation as a sort of ritual good luck charm, the researchers said."