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TelMiles
In: London
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| Duncan wrote: | | unless of course you're questioning the integrity of the radio-carbon dates? |
Carbon Dating is far from infallible. I was watching a programme about it the other week and they were saying basically that different environmental factors could greatly alter the results. As a case in point they showed that these two gay lovers had murdered one of their wives and dumped her body in a peat-bog. The body was then dug up years later and dated to be "ancient" by carbon dating. However, an expert on human anatomy said that that skeleton found was definitely that of the missing wife.
There was also another case of an ancient body in a peat bog that was carbon dated to around the year 0. then an examination of it found a bus ticket in his pocket.
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Against all Gods.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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| Carbon Dating is far from infallible. |
Seems fair enough but surely these are bizarre flukes. You wouldn't question the entire methodology of modern Archaeology because of this would you?
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TelMiles
In: London
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No, I don't think I would, as you say, they could just be "flukes". I just think it's not infallible. There was also the recent case of the find of a "caucasian" skeleton in the US that predated Native American settlements. As they were waiting to get the skeleton carbon dated, some tribesmen were allowed to conduct a "ritual" around the skeleton and therefore ruined the carbon evidence. (The site where the skeleton was found was concreted over by the US government).
What is carbon dating based upon?
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Against all Gods.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Sorry, I can't accept this Mick. Before Korfmann Archaeologists dismissed the site of Hissarlik as a contender for Troy. This was because Schliemann's excavations only revealed a small city, way too small to be Homer's Troy. Korfmann revealed a much larger lower city. Schliemann's city was then shown to be the citadel. |
Yes, I am sure...but you haven't said what they discovered that demonstrated that it was Troy. Doesn't matter how many layers of archaeologists there are it's still just one single bleating noise.
| The Hittites were the same people who fought the Egyptians at Kadesh in 1274 BC. |
Would I be right in assuming that the Battle of Kadesh is dated 1274 BC on the same basis that Troy is dated c 1250? Don't bother to answer, I know it was...the Battle of Kadesh is a standard benchmark for all orthodox Near Eastern dating. It actually took place in the eighth/seventh century BC.
| They were extremely powerful. Their sources talk of a people from across the Aegean invading the land around Wilusa (Greek Ilios). Their sources also talk of very distinctive underground water cisterns which have only been recently discovered at the site of Troy. That was the link between Troy and Wilusa although it was previously accepted that Hittite Wilusa had been somewhere in north-western Turkey. |
Well....yes and no. There are some people of this sort in the eighth.seventh century that some call the Hatti.
What carbon dates? Please list anything between 1250 and 550. It's not called a Dark Age for nothing.
You misunderstand. The radio carbon dates are for Troy. There are plenty of them for artefacts throughout the Dark Ages. The phrase refers to the break in written history over the period. |
I misunderstand nothing. Sure, there are carbon dates for the thirteenth century for a place that historians have dubbed the Troy of Homer. Now we need some carbon dates for the intervening period....you kow the bit where there is a mysterious lack of a written record....or perhaps carbon ceased to be produced in this period too.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Hatty wrote:
'Old High German' is supposed to have been spoken from c. 500 to c. 1000 AD but written texts can only be dated from around 750. By the mid eleventh century a radical simplification of German grammar had taken place.
Modern German is almost the same as Middle High German, says wiki blandly. |
Modern German is about as close to Old High German as Anglo-Saxon is to English. Old High German is Gothic, which dates from prior to the 4th Century AD (Oldest Gothic text dates to the 4th Cent)
Gothic is either another form of Latin or the precursor to Latin.
To illustrate here is an example of the verb 'to be'
WE HAD
Gothic = habai-ded-umes
Old High German = habia-d-dum -- 7th Cent
_________________= haba-dum -- 12th Cent
Latin = hab-eba-mus
Literally HAVE-DID-WE in both languages
They share the same ROOT = hab (have) - and the same SUFFIX = mus/mes (we)
Now compare that to Modern German -- wir hatten -- we had.
The only radical simplification I can see is that Gothic and High became MORE LIKE LATIN.
Modern German is an entirely different language altogether.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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Manfred Korfmann's Project Troia has a website:
http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/troia/eng/index.html
You will find what you want to know here I suggest.
| Would I be right in assuming that the Battle of Kadesh is dated 1274 BC on the same basis that Troy is dated c 1250? Don't bother to answer, I know it was...the Battle of Kadesh is a standard benchmark for all orthodox Near Eastern dating. It actually took place in the eighth/seventh century BC. |
This is barking. The Egyptian Pharoah at the Battle was Ramesses II, 1279-1213 BC. For your theory to be correct the ruler would have to be Shabaka, Shebitku or Taharqa. In this period Egypt was under the control of the Nubians from the south.
Enough said on this I think.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Not nearly enough said, Dunc. This assumes that the chronology of the Pharaohs is fixed and certain... but this is precisely what is at issue.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Right on, Komorikid.
Or should that be: write on, Komorikid.
---
I've read something about the resemblance between Gothic and Greek, or at least their alphabets/runes.
And it probably has something to do with the odd sequence between Finland and Greece of
Finnish(~Hungarian),
Slavic,
Gothic(~Greek),
Hungarian(~Finnish),
Slavic,
Greek(~Gothic).
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| There was also another case of an ancient body in a peat bog that was carbon dated to around the year 0. then an examination of it found a bus ticket in his pocket. |
Of course, the assumption is that carbon is continually cycled into and out of our bodies while we're alive and ceases when we die. At that moment, we are supposed to have the same radio-isotopes as the ambient environment; and after that, the only way for them to change is radioactive decay.
If our bodies continue to be permeated by the environment, obviously the radiocarbon will keep getting topped up, which would make our remains appear younger -- but under those circumstances, our remains would rot and be dispersed.
Peat bogs, on the other hand, prevent decay because their living processes are rather repressed, which means the remains are there to be found, but they are permeated with 'old' water -- which would skew the date towards the apparent age of the bog.
That should mean they appear older than they are, unless we can think of a way for a peat bog to form and engulf existing remains and make them appear younger than they are.
If the bones can be dissolved away in a few years, I don't suppose there's much prospect for special methods for bog bodies, such as measuring the amount of bone left or the difference in C14 age between skin and core.
| surely these are bizarre flukes. You wouldn't question the entire methodology of modern Archaeology because of this would you? |
Well, yes, that is precisely what we should do. "Bizarre fluke" means we have no explanation. If we have no explanation then we do not know the extent to which the results we "like" are compromised.
Any measurement technique can be statistically evaluated to quantify uncertainty and confidence, but that requires independent evidence of age. If that has been done: fair enough. But unfortunately, in history/archaeology the C14 and the other evidence get juggled about to suit (if they don't match, one is declared a false result) and it is not clear that the results amassed and the consensus reached is any substitute for independence.
| I just think it's not infallible. |
Indeed, since the C14 calibration curve spikes up and down so much, you can easily get two (three?) ranges of dates for a single sample. It isn't laboratory testing that decides which one is accepted.
| As they were waiting to get the skeleton carbon dated, some tribesmen were allowed to conduct a "ritual" around the skeleton and therefore ruined the carbon evidence. |
That's easy to say, but sprinkling some sage ash or something is not going to affect... well... anything much. If they wanted to carbon date the soil samples, they should have done so. Bone samples should surely have been taken from below the contaminated surface anyway.
That was probably just part of the endless bleating about Kennewick Man because both sides believed they had the moral right to do what they liked.
I don't know the final outcome, but 9000 years rings a bell: certainly not predating the natives, but very early for a Caucasian. Allegedly. But if they hadn't done the carbon dating, where'd they get any date from? (While they had the time to take the measurements and correct for distortion to determine that it was Caucasian...?)
| The site where the skeleton was found was concreted over by the US government. |
Sounds like a conspiracy if you want one... but if memory serves, they were shoring up an eroding riverbank (which is probably why the skeleton came to light in the first place).
| What is carbon dating based upon? |
Very largely on tree-ring dating, which is another minefield!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Would I be right in thinking, Dunc, that your dating of Rameses II comes from the same source as for the Battle of Kadesh and the date of the Trojan War? As I say, no matter how many levels of pre-historians, it's still just the one bleat.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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See what's happening here?
Duncan says "the fabric of established history is so massive I can't draw out all the supporting threads and show how it all fits properly. We have no reason to mistrust it."
While Mick says "the fabric of established history is so massive I can't unpick every stitch and show how large areas unravel because they hold each other together. We have reasons to mistrust some of it, so we can not depend on any of it."
Historiology is like an egg shell: immensely strong or terribly weak, depending.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Actually it's more like the curate's egg, good and bad in parts. Whenever the sources are good, the history is good; when the sources are bad, the history is bad. So far, so obvious. Historians go wrong at two points:
1. they never tell us (do they tell themselves?) that the history at such and such a point is 'bad'
2. even when they know the history is 'bad' they stick to their story and regard all counter-arguments as, by definition, crazy.
The Battle of Kadesh is an excellent example. The sources for the actual battle are extremely good, by the standards of ancient history, and even arguments about 'who won' are thoroughly modern. It's just the date that is wrong. But if the Battle of Kadesh is wrong then so are a thousand other events that are placed on the same timeline.
But that does not mean we have a thousand pointers to the correct date because the entire timeline is based on just one thing: our interpretation of Manetho's Pharoah list. Which happens to be wrong.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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| But that does not mean we have a thousand pointers to the correct date because the entire timeline is based on just one thing: our interpretation of Manetho's Pharoah list. Which happens to be wrong. |
There are Hittite sources for the Battle too. They claim their forces were victorious on the day and continued Hittite occupation of Kadesh would suggest they are correct.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Dan wrote:
| Any measurement technique can be statistically evaluated to quantify uncertainty and confidence, but that requires independent evidence of age. If that has been done, fair enough. But unfortunately, in history/archaeology the C14 and the other evidence get juggled about to suit (if they don't match, one is declared a false result) and it is not clear that the results amassed and the consensus reached is any substitute for independence. |
To show how much it can be juggled just look at the Historical view of the Kelts. Supposedly a NORTH European tribe who spawned the Hallstadt and Le Tene cultures and dominated Central and Northern Europe prior and during the Roman Empire. They 'invaded' Britain and Ireland but were eventually totally expunged except for tiny pockets in Brittany, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. This 'fact' is based on misleading information provided by Herodotus (Book 2:33:3) where he describes the Keltoi thus:
| For the Ister flows from the land of the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene through the very middle of Europe; now the Keltoi live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, being neighbours of the Kunetoi, who are the westernmost of all the peoples inhabiting Europe. |
Historian have taken the reference to the Ister (Danube) as placing the Keltoi in Central Europe despite the fact the Herodotus had no idea WHERE the Danube had its source. He ASSUMED it rose in the Pyrenees Mountains and flowed North then East dividing Europe. And if we look at his other reference in the same text it is clear that the Ister reference is misguided.
The Keltoi lived near the Pyrenees = Atlantic Europe
They lived BEYOND the Pillars of Heracles = Atlantic Europe
Their neighbours (Kunetoi -- Cynesians) the westernmost people in Europe = Atlantic Europe.
Herodotus' knowledge of peoples and places was fairly accurate but his knowledge of the sources of inland rivers was based on hearsay and sketchy evidence, as the chapter immediately preceding this one makes quite clear. With reference to the source of the Nile:
| I heard this from some Cyreneians 'who heard from an oracle, who heard from King Etearchus of the Ammonians' who was told by some Nasamonians about men who travelled across the Libyan Desert to the WEST where they found a great river flowing to the East. Her. 2:32 |
From this source Herodotus assumed the Nile flowed from the West then turned North; a totally wrong assumption. One only has to look at Herodotus' view of the world to see how wrong he was about inland rivers.
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ancientimages/109A.GIF
Historians needed 'a culture' to explain Hallstadt and La Tene so the Celts were reborn in Central Europe despite the fact that there is no historical, linguistic, archaeological or genetic evidence to prove it. The fact that classical writers such as Livy, Pliny, Plutarch, Polybius, Pausanius, Diodorus, Aristotle and Strabo place the Kelts in south-western Europe has been totally ignored by historians.
The sack of Rome was from the West across the French Alps and not from the North across the Austrian Alps as History tells us. Hallstadt and La Tene were north of the Alps and Modern Historians were tied to their false premise. They couldn't possibly let the evidence speak for itself as it would destroy not only their credibility but destroy a well-conceived but politically motivated myth cherished by the Irish, Welsh, Scots and Bretons. Some of whom were historians.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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Something very interesting has come from my research in this area. The Kynesians (Cynesians) is rendered Kunetoi in Ancient Greek and can also be rendered Kenetoi, which is just another form of Kenet.
The Kennet is a river in Wiltshire closely associated with Stonehenge. There is also a River Kennett in Suffolk and a town called Kennett in nearby Cambridgeshire.
It also shares it root with Kent, Thanet, Canterbury and especially the people said to give Kent its name the Kantiaci which I suspect could also be rendered Kenetii.
Kantiaci / Cantiaci
This is the name of the tribe or people who lived in north and east Kent. Like other peoples in southeast Britain at the time of the Roman Conquest, this group was very open to influences from France and the Mediterranean World and they eventually became part of the large kingdom of Cunobelinus, which is a Romanised rendering with the same common root.
Have we finally found the REAL Cynesians -- EXACTLY where Herodotus said they were.
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