Lee Dunn's List: PROTOHISTORY/ANTEDILUVIANS

• Nephilim
• In the Torah and several non-canonical Jewish and early Christian writings, nephilim (in Hebrew הנּפלים means those causing others to fall) are a people created by the crossbreeding of the "sons of God" (benei elohim, בני האלהים) and the "daughters of men". (See Genesis 6:1.)
• The word nephilim is loosely translated as giants or titans in some translations of the Bible, and is left as nephilim in others.
• When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4, English Standard Version)
• Overview
• Shemhazai, an angel of high rank, led a rebel sect of angels in a descent to earth
• The origination of the Nephilim begins with a story of the fallen angels.
• the fallen angels instructed the women in magic and conjuring, mated with them, and produced hybrid offspring: the Nephilim.
• Upon devouring all of humankind's resources, they began to consume humans themselves. The Nephilim attacked and oppressed humans and were the cause of massive destruction on the earth.
• The Nephilim were gigantic in stature. Their strength was prodigious and their appetites immense.
• The traditional Jewish view, deriving from the Book of Enoch, is that the fathers of the nephilim, the "sons of God", were the Grigori (also called the Watchers);
• however, there is some controversy on this point (Targum Yonathan) [1]
• Some commentators have suggested that the nephilim were believed to have been fathered by members of a Hebrew pantheon and are a brief glimpse of early Hebrew religion, most of the details of which was later edited out from the Torah, and that this passage may have offered monotheistic Hebrews a way to fit semi-divine pagan heroes into their cosmogony.
• However, the idea that the Torah was somehow changed is not in keeping with traditional Hebrews|Hebrew practice, in which if even a single character is out of place in a parchment translation of the original Hebrew Torah, the entire parchment must be destroyed and replaced anew.
• Others, especially some |Christians, suggest the "sons of God" were fully human. It is sometimes suggested that ridding the Earth of these nephilim was one of God's purposes for flooding the Earth in Noah's time.
• Despite the literal text of the Bible and its traditional interpretation, the idea that heavenly beings mated with humans is controversial, particularly among many Christians, who cite an interpretation of the teaching of Jesus in the Book of Matthew that Angels do not marry;
• however, they may take the verse in question out of context, because Jesus said that the resurrected do not marry in heaven, but are "as the angels".
• Others who find the idea of angels mating with humans as distasteful have suggested more figurative interpretations of the nephilim, such as the idea that they were the offspring of men possessed by demons.
• In the more modern light of an alien abduction scenario, some have speculated a form of artificial insemination being implemented.
• Still others, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Latter-day Saints, take the view of Genesis 6:1 that the allusion refers to some men, from the godly lineage of Seth, called sons of God (an expression denoting those in covenant relationship with Yahweh - cf. Deuteronomy 14:1; 32:5), began to pursue fleshly interests, and so took wives of the daughters of men, i.e., those who were descended of Cain
• Not only is this unequivocally stated in most Orthodox versions of ' Enoch and Jubilees, but this is also the view presented in a few extra-biblical, yet ancient works, particularly the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan.
• According to several ancient works, including Enoch and Jubilees, as well as 2 Peter 2:4 and Epistle of Jude 1:6 in the New Testament, the fallen angels who produced the Nephilim were cast into Tartarus (Gehenna), a place of 'total darkness'.
• Other Hebrew words sometimes interpreted as "Giants"
• In the Hebrew Old Testament, there are a number of other words that, like "Nephilim", are sometimes translated as "giants":
• Emim (Heb: 'the fearful ones'),
• and Anakim (Heb: 'the long-necked ones').
• This has led to a great deal of confusion, even to the point of medieval legends recounted in the Talmud of a giant stowing away on Noah's Ark.
• Rephaim (Heb: 'the dead ones'),
• However, it is possible that these names in the Torah were not meant to signify any antediluvian race that survived the Great Flood, but may have denoted groups of Canaanites.
• Rephaim
• The Rephaim may have been the same Canaanite group known to the Moabites as Emim, i.e., "fearful", (Deuteronomy 2:11), and to the Ammon (nation)|Ammonites as Zamzummim.
• The Book of Joshua refers to "Og king of Bashan", who "had survived as one of the last of the Rephaim."
• The second of the Books of Samuel states that some of them found refuge among the Philistines, and were still existing in the days of David.

• Nothing is known of their origin, nor anything specifically connecting them with Nephilim. 

  See also : Valley of Rephaim 
• Anakim
• In the days of Abraham, they inhabited the region afterwards known as Edom and Moab, east of the Jordan river.
• In the Torah, the Anakim are the descendants of Anak, and dwelt in the south of Palestine, in the neighbourhood of Hebron.
• They are mentioned during the report of the spies about the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. The book of Joshua states that Joshua finally expelled them from the land, excepting a remnant that found a refuge in the cities of Gaza, Gath_(city)|Gath, and Ashdod.
• The Philistine giant Goliath, whom David later encountered, was supposedly a descendant of the Anakim.
• "The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." (Numbers 13:32-33, English Standard Version)
• Abraham, being the son of an idol maker in the Chaldean city of Ur, would have known of these gods. (Midrash [2]
• It is interesting to note that the Sumerians called their gods the Annunaki.
• Thus, the words Anak and Anakim (plural) could be bastardized versions of Annunaki. This would equate the Nephilim with the Sumerian "demigods" such as Gilgamesh.
• Note that it is more commonly suggested by traditional Jewish sources (such as the Midrash) that the spies saw large and powerful inhabitants in Canaan and because of their own fears, cowardice, and inadequate faith in YHVH, saw themselves as grasshoppers in the eyes of the Canaanites, whether they were actual 'giants' or not.
• Nephilim in other works

• The story of the Nephilim is chronicled more fully in the Book of Enoch (part of Ethiopian biblical canon). 

  There are also allusions to these descendants in the dedeuterocanonical books: Book of Judith, Sirach, Book of Baruch, 3 Maccabees, and Book of Wisdom. 
• Nephilim in parahistory
• many have theorized that mythology can and does contain grains of truth in the form of a highly distorted "folk memory".
• There have been many interesting attempts to reconcile mythology with science;
• The most prevalent theory among those that accept the correlation between science and the Bible is that the Nephilim were actually surviving Neanderthals, or a Homo sapiens-Neanderthal hybrid.
• In this context, the Nephilim have been associated with inhabitants of Atlantis that allegedly descended from extraterrestrials.
• It is believed by some people that modern man shared several thousand years of history with Neanderthals, and also that the Middle-Eastern region was home to some of the last surviving pockets of Homo sapiens neandertalensis or H. neandertalensis.
• Therefore, it is conceivable that a folk memory of these creatures survived by way of mythology.
• In addition, it appears that the very last Neanderthals adopted some of the technological and cultural innovations of their H. sapiens contemporaries.
• The theory is that surviving Neanderthals or hybrids might have been large, powerful men possessing the intellect and societal characteristics of our own species, which would explain their identification as "mightiest ones" and "men of renown."
• One flaw in this theory is that H. neanderthalensis were slightly shorter than H. sapiens. On the other hand, they were giants compared to their even shorter predecessors, Australopithecus and Homo habilis.
• In Sitchin's voluminous works he uses Semitic language etymology and translations of Sumerian cuneiform tablets to equate the ancient mesopotamian gods with the fallen angels (the "sons of Elohim" in Genesis).
• Zecharia Sitchin and Erich Von Daniken both claim that the Nephilim are our ancestors and that we were created by an alien race.

  • I can believe Sitchin and Von Daniken's ancestors might be Nephilim..Yep..sure can.
  Add Sticky Note
• Seeing that all angels were created before the Earth, they can not be from the Earth... and thus, they could all be considered "extra-terrestrial" semantically. (see:Ancient astronaut theory)
• David Icke has a similar theory, in which interdimensional reptilian beings somehow created offspring through genetic engineering, whose traits are large stature, light skin, and susceptibility to any form of hypnotic suggestion (which, he states, is when the demons possess their offspring and demand allegiance),
• and that this bloodline has been in control of the world from the days of Sumer to today.
• Cultural references to Nephilim
• The book series The Fallen (novels) by Thomas E. Sniegoski revolves around a modern-day teenage boy who discovers he is nephilim. The four books have been made into a six-part TV series for ABC Family called Fallen (ABC Family film) , which is set to debut in August 2006. [3] [4]
• The book Heaven Sent by Montre Bible tells a story of a half human, half nephilim teenage boy trying to find his purpose in life and deal with strange things in his life all connected to his status.[5]
• Hex is a UK television series (2004-2005) about a remote country school that becomes the battleground between a the leader of the Nephilim, Azazeal, and the witches that oppose it.
• The Greek Melodic Death Metal band Septic Flesh have a song entitled "Nephilim Sons" on their 5th album, Revolution DNA.
• John Wyndham’s 1957 book The Midwich Cuckoos, and its film adaptation in 1960's Village of the Damned (1960 film)| , the 1963 sequel Children of the Damned, and John Carpenter's Village of the Damned (1995 ) remake all have obvious analogies to this subject concerning (variably) blond, blue-eyed, super-intelligent ESP children who are the product of interbreeding.
• The X-Files episode "The X-Files (season 5) All Souls" features four dying, mentally retarded, polydactyl girls that Dana Scully believes are Nephilim.
• In the motion pictures The Prophecy II and The Prophecy 3: The Ascent, the creation of Nephilim was a major source of conflict between opposing camps among the angels. Gabriel (played by Christopher Walken) at first opposes the union between man and angel, but then relents after being made human for a period of time.
• Nephilim is a role-playing game by Chaosium, in which the players take on the roles of ancient spirits that can move from one human incarnation to another.
• Fields of the Nephilim is the name of a gothic rock group.
• In Mick Farren's Victor Renquist, the Nephilim are a race ruled by a king named Marduk Ra. They conquered Earth in prehistory, and are the basis of all religions. They conducted experiments on primitive humans, creating a warrior race. The Nephilim then left Earth to pursue a war. The abandoned warriors became the basis of vampire legends.
• The race of giants in Doris Lessing's Shikasta is an allusion to the Nephilim.
• In the computer role-playing game series "Exile" and its remake series "Avernum", the Nephilim (abbreviated as "Nephils") are a race of feline humanoids. Jeff Vogel, designer and programmer of the games, has said that he invented the name for this race independently.
• The second verse of the Frank Black song "All My Ghosts" is all about the Nephilim:
  Have you heard about the heavenly angels
  How they came to earth and met some ladies
  With whom they mated
  And their young became giants every one
• The Polish heavy metal band Behemoth wrote a song called "The Nephilim Rising" for their album Demigod.
• The nephilim have been written about by David Icke in such books as "Children of the Matrix" where he takes the point of view that they are Hyperspace (science fiction)|extra dimensional reptilian humanoids that have genetically manipulated human beings so as to make them more susceptible to possession (apparently this is done by a gene that makes one go into a trance-like state whenever there is any ritualistic patterns) so that they control us incognito.

  • Tom Hornof the website "Raiders News Network" and an author, seems to have adopted this view or he co-originated this theory, as he makes many references to this theory that the "mating" was actually genetic manipulation.
  Add Sticky Note
• Lynn A. Marzulli wrote a novel entitled "Nephilim", in which abductions turn out to be the return of the Nephilim (as per the Book of Enoch). This book spawned the "Nephilim Trilogy" in which he interwove many popular occultic phenomena in an eschatological scenario; Azazel is the Antichrist of his trilogy.[6]
• In the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game set Guildpact, there is a rare cycle of five creature cards, called Dune-Brood Nephilim, Witch-Maw Nephilim, Ink-Treader Nephilim, Glint-Eye Nephilim and Yore-Tiller Nephilim. They are depicted as dark, powerful, god-like monsters whose coming is a sign of a great catastrophe.
• In the online video game Guild Wars, one of the unique hammer-type weapons is called "Gavel of the Nephilim".
• Derek Sherinian's album "Black Utopia" released in 2003 has a three part song entitled "The Sons of Anu". The third part is called "Return of the Nephilim".
• In the online video game Lineage 2, different types of high level Nephilim mobs can be found in catacombs.

80 more annotations...

• Nephilim
• They were reportedly the children born to the "Sons of God" by the "daughters of men".
• The Nephilim (Hebrew: הנּפלים) were a race that came to dominate the antediluvian (pre-flood) world, and are referred to in the Bible as the heroes of old, men of renown.
• It is also most important to note that they are mentioned almost simultaneous to God's statement that He would destroy the earth by flood, and it seems from this association that their effect upon mankind was one of the primary justifications that brought the destruction.
• "Nephilim" is rendered fallen, or possibly feller: a tyrant or bully.
• The "giants" translation may have come from the Greek old testament where "nephilim" was "gegantes" which looks like "giant" but in modern Greek would be "titans".
• Several English translations rendered the word "giants", but of late translators seem to prefer leave it untranslated.
• In Greek mythos, the titans were the supernaturally powerful offspring of gods and humans.
• In Genesis 6 , where the global flood is described, it states that the Nephilim were also on the Earth afterward. Many therefore, assume that descriptions of giants in the Bible are references to Nephilim bloodlines.
• However, the only specific mention of Nephilim on the earth after the flood is part of the bad report from the spies in Numbers 13, a report that is called "bad" (or "evil") as in an unreliable source.
• When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them,  

  The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.  

  Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

   The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.

   

  They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
   

  The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air — for I am grieved that I have made them." NIV Genesis 6:1-7
• The Sons of God
• The most obvious interpretation is that the Nephilim were a hybrid race between two distinct beings.
• It is unclear what the Sons of God were, but they are distinguished from the daughters of men.
• There are at least three schools of thought regarding the Sons of God.
• The older view, held nearly unanimously by ancient writers prior to Augustine of Hippo, is that the Nephilim were a hybrid race between certain fallen angels, called B'nai Elohim (Son's of God) or The Watchers in extra-Biblical traditions, and human women.
• While there has always been a minority of churchmen who followed this view, it has been promoted recently by popular writers such as Stephen Quayle ^[1].
• Others would argue that angels are not biological organisms, and therefore, not likely to be reproductively compatible with humans.
• The more recent view which has been the majority position in the church since St. Augustine in the fourth century is that the Sons of God refers to the god-fearing line of Seth; and the daughters of men refers to the daughters of the unbelieving line of Cain.
• Variations on this theme include the idea, proposed by Meredith Kline, that the Sons of God were kings or priests who took any woman they chose to be their wife.
• Still others hold that the Sons of God were other created men.
• It is argued that the Bible does not describe every person that was created, but only key individuals or situations are included within the text. Those holding to this position call into question the origin of Cain's wife or those whom he feared would kill him Genesis 4:14-17 .
• However, this view falls into conflict with Genesis, which states that Eve is the mother of all the living.
• Biblical references
• They are described as having become several tribes occupying the lands around the Valley of Siddim (Dead Sea) and evidently intermixed with the Canaanites.
• Several tribes are encountered in the campaign of the Five Kings in Abraham's day that some argue might be Nephilim or hybrids of Nephilim.
• Genesis 14 and Deuteronomy 2 name these tribes as the Rephaim ("titans", children of "Rapha"), Zuzim or Zamzummim ("terrible ones"), Emim, Horites, and Anakim ("crushing tyrants").
• The tribe of the Anakim are directly connected with the Nephilim in the false report of the spies described in (Numbers 13:33 ).
• The context of the passages suggest that the other tribes of giants were relatives of the Anakim or other lines of Nephilim, particularly the Rephaim whose giant descendant is described as living in Gath along with the Anakim Goliath and Lahmi (see below).
• The Rephaim are giants (in fact these peoples are generally described as being tall or large) and seem to have been thus matched with the Nephilim based on the English rendering of "giants" in Genesis 6.
• The tribe of the Anakim were descended from a giant named Anak, who was a son or grandson of a giant named "Arba", from which the ancient city of Hebron was originally called "Kiriath Arba" or "The City of Arba" because "Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim"^[2].
• This tribe was so tall, that the weak-kneed spies reported, "we are like grasshoppers to them."
• Moses killed Og, king of the Rehpaim who lived on the Golan heights near Mt. Hermon.
• Scripture describes how the tribes of giants were fought and destroyed by the tribes of normal men who replaced them, including the Israelites.
• Og had a bed nine cubits long (13.5 to 15.5 feet, depending on which cubit was used) and was called "last of the remnant of the giants"^[3].
• Og may be the source of the word "ogre" in the English language.
• Joshua drove the three remaining sons of Anak out of Hebron in his first campaignm.
• They evidently reoccupied the city of Hebron while Joshua was waging his campaign against Canaanite cities in the North. Caleb later retook Hebron and killed the three giants^[4].
• Later David and Saul fought a remnant of smaller giants who had taken refuge in the Philistine city of Gath. They included Goliath, who was about nine feet tall, and his brother Lahmi "whose spear had a shaft like a weaver's rod".
• The last of the Gittite giants was slain, "In still another battle, which took place at Gath, there was a huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot—twenty-four in all. He also was descended from Rapha"^[5].
• The last Scriptural reference to the giants may be Isaiah 45:14 , which prophecies that Sabean "men of stature" will become slaves in chains of the redeemed Israelites.

• The characteristics of these tribes described in Scripture: 

   
  • Their height was two or three times the height of normal men. 
  • They were associated with some kind of unholy intermixing before the Flood. 
  • They were closely associated with the wicked Canaanites after the Flood. 
  • In one case they are described as having polydactyly (extra fingers and toes). 
  • Unlike the Canaanites, there are no examples of Nephilim who became followers of God. 
• Apocryphal references
• The Nephilim are described in great detail in the Book of Jubilees and Book of Enoch. Both of these books have been traditionally rejected as apocryphal by the European Church.
• However, they were both considered canonical by the Ethiopic Church from the time of Christ until today, and the Book of Enoch was quoted in the Biblical book of Jude.
• Jubilees has the following to say about the sons of God and the Nephilim:
• And in the second week of the tenth jubilee [449-55 A.M.] Mahalalel took unto him to wife Dinah, the daughter of Barakiel the daughter of his father's brother, and she bare him a son in the third week in the sixth year, [461 A.M.]
• and he called his name Jared, for in his days the angels of the Lord descended on the earth, those who are named the Watchers, that they should instruct the children of men, and that they should do judgment and uprightness on the earth." Jubilees 4:16-18 .
• "And it came to pass when the children of men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born unto them, that the angels of God saw them on a certain year of this jubilee, that they were beautiful to look upon; and they took themselves wives of all whom they chose, and they bare unto them sons and they were giants.
• And lawlessness increased on the earth and all flesh corrupted its way, alike men and cattle and beasts and birds and everything that walks on the earth -all of them corrupted their ways and their orders, and they began to devour each other, and lawlessness increased on the earth and every imagination of the thoughts of all men (was) thus evil continually.
• And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, and all flesh had corrupted its orders, and all that were upon the earth had wrought all manner of evil before His eyes.
• And He said that He would destroy man and all flesh upon the face of the earth which He had created. But Noah found grace before the eyes of the Lord.
• And against the angels whom He had sent upon the earth, He was exceedingly wroth, and He gave commandment to root them out of all their dominion, and He bade us to bind them in the depths of the earth, and behold they are bound in the midst of them, and are (kept) separate.
• And against their sons went forth a command from before His face that they should be smitten with the sword, and be removed from under heaven. And He said 'My spirit shall not always abide on man; for they also are flesh and their days shall be one hundred and twenty years'.
• And He sent His sword into their midst that each should slay his neighbour, and they began to slay each other till they all fell by the sword and were destroyed from the earth." Jubilees 5:1-10
• The Book of Enoch has the following to say about them:
• "It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that daughters were born to them, elegant and beautiful. And when the angels, the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamoured of them, saying to each other, Come, let us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and let us beget children.
• Then their leader Samyaza said to them; I fear that you may perhaps be indisposed to the performance of this enterprise; And that I alone shall suffer for so grievous a crime.

• But they answered him and said; We all swear; 

   

  And bind ourselves by mutual execrations, that we will not change our intention, but execute our projected undertaking. Then they swore all together, and all bound themselves by mutual execrations.
• Their whole number was two hundred, who descended upon Ardis, which is the top of mount Armon.
• Mt. Armon, or Mt. Hermon, derives its name from the Hebrew word herem, a curse.
• That mountain therefore was called Armon, because they had sworn upon it, and bound themselves by mutual execrations.
• These are the names of their chiefs: Samyaza, who was their leader, Urakabarameel, Akibeel, Tamiel, Ramuel, Danel, Azkeel, Saraknyal, Asael, Armers, Batraal, Anane, Zavebe, Samsaveel, Ertael, Turel, Yomyael, Arazyal. These were the prefects of the two hundred angels, and the remainder were all with them. (6)
• Then they took wives, each choosing for himself; whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them sorcery, incantations, and the dividing of roots and trees.

• And the women conceiving brought forth giants, 

   

  Whose stature was each three hundred cubits.
• These devoured all which the labor of men produced; until it became impossible to feed them; When they turned themselves against men, in order to devour them; And began to injure birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishes, to eat their flesh one after another, and to drink their blood.
• Their flesh one after another. Or, "one another’s flesh." R.H. Charles notes that this phrase may refer to the destruction of one class of giants by another.
• Then the earth reproved the unrighteous.
• Moreover Azazyel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, breastplates, the fabrication of mirrors, and the workmanship of bracelets and ornaments, the use of paint, the beautifying of the eyebrows, the use of stones of every valuable and select kind, and all sorts of dyes, so that the world became altered.
• Impiety increased; fornication multiplied; and they transgressed and corrupted all their ways.
• Amazarak taught all the sorcerers, and dividers of roots:
• Armers taught the solution of sorcery;
• Barkayal taught the observers of the stars,
• Akibeel taught signs;
• Tamiel taught astronomy;
• And Asaradel taught the motion of the moon,
• And men, being destroyed, cried out; and their voice reached to heaven." Enoch 6-7.
• Controversies

• Some argue that the Sons of God could not be angels because: 

   
  • A major theme of the Old Testament is the negative outcome of believers intermarrying with unbelievers. 
  • Angels are spiritual beings, and therefore not reproductively compatible with human women. 

• Advocates of the Angel-hybrid position hold that: 

   
  • Angels are recorded on two occasions in Scripture as eating food, therefore they have some ability to interact with the material world. 
  • Angels can at times be indistinguishable from human beings, and "some have entertained angels unawares," (Hebrews 13:2) 
  • The sexual immorality of Sodom and Gommorah is described as "likewise" in comparison to the actions of the angels that "left their proper dwelling" and that Jesus has chained in darkness until Judgment(Jude 6 & 7). 
  • We really don't know what angels can and cannot do, as we lack the ability to capture and study them, and Scripture says little about them. 
  • The question should be decided by the context and evidence rather than a preconceived idea about the nature of angels. 
• The Augustinian position fails to explain the production of gigantic offspring from the union of believers and unbelievers.
• The unanimous position of Jewish and heathen authors prior to Philo of Alexandria is that the angels came down and sired children with women.

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• Joggins, Nova Scotia
• At Joggins, Nova Scotia are found many thousands of upright fossilized stumps -- most of which either possess no roots at all, roots that are missing their rootlets, or roots that have been truncated.
• Only about 1 out of 50 trees is preserved with both its roots and rootlets intact -- thus indicating that very likely none of these fossil stumps are "in situ" (i.e. in their original growth positions).
• Further evidence of this is the fact that many sections of this strata possess rootlets that were at one time attached to a tree, but were buried individually.
• The implications of this are that the whole 14,000 foot section of strata at Joggins was (likely) deposited very rapidly, and that the eras of the geological time chart may not represent different eras separated by millions of years, but rather simply different phases of a single worldwide event.
• This is further substantiated by the fact that the same types of deposits, with the same types of (now extinct) fossil trees and other plants, and coal seams, are found in various locations in the United States, England, France, and Germany.
• Interestingly, the polystrate plants here are giant hollow reeds, not trees.
• The Lycopods and the Calamites are the polystrate plants.
• There are trees here, from the class called Cordaitales. While also numerous, essentially none are polystrate.
• In four years of personal studies, Ian Juby has only documented one polystrate cordaitales stump, which was exceptionally small and cut through approximately 15 inches of sediments.
• At the bottom of Coal Mine Point (a large point off to the right from the entrance stairs) is an undercut which exposes two layers of prostrate, Cordaitales logs. Yet cutting through both these layers (separated by over two vertical feet) are polystrate Calamites, the giant, hollow horsetail reeds.
• It is the weaker, hollow reeds which have remained standing.
• It is highly unlikely that these Calamites plants were buried "in situ" while a raging flood leveled solid wood trees! Instead, consider that the logs and the calamites were drifting in a mud-flow together, with the calamites becoming upright for reasons unknown.
• If these are buried "in situ", then why do they have no roots? These are just as common and just as important as the much larger Lycopods.
• Juby has documented dozens of polystrate calamites plants at Joggins, yet never found one with intact roots.
• Clearly they are not buried in situ, yet why would they remain upright during burial, whilst the trees themselves remained prostrate?
• The polystrate position of the giant reeds is a mystery to both uniformitarians and catastrophists.
• Simultaneously, this also rules out the "Spirit Lake" scenario that some Creationists have mistakenly pointed to as an analog to the Joggins deposits. The Mt. St. Helens Catastrophe and the subsequent log mat in Spirit Lake undoubtedly has profound implications for the polystrate forests we find around the world, like Specimen Ridge, Axel Heiberg Island, etc...
• 

  An upright tree preserved in the cliffs at Joggins, Nova Scotia.
• However, this scenario applies to trees, not giant, hollow reeds. The trees at Joggins are prostrate, the giant reeds are polystrate, and sometimes in the same layer!
• The Evidence from the roots
• While some stumps do not have intact roots, the ones that do only add to the allochthonous (transported) emplacement.
• The photo on the right is a smaller lycopod, but clearly visible. If you look closely, you can follow the roots from the bottom of the stump and note that they've been crushed. This crushing would have happened before the sediments lithified (turned to rock), before the plant coalified, and before the sediments within the plant lithified.
• These roots would have required enormous amounts of overburden to be crushed like this.
• This all speaks of rapid burial with enormous amounts of overburden, and all roots that are present are crushed in to failure in some way.
• Furthermore, many roots that are present show negative geotropism, that is they were apparently not influenced by gravity - they were floating.
• The rootlets radiate in all directions, including up, instead of primarily down as they went towards the water table. Many of the roots actually bend up above what would be assumed to be "ground level". This implies transport and emplacement by flood sediments, not in-situ growth and burial.
• Evidence from plant distortions:
• In the second photo, Ian Juby is standing at the base of what could be a record-holding polystrate lycopod from Joggins.
• He is pointing to the cavity (highlighted in yellow) left behind by the top of the plant, and one branch (highlighted in red) is still in place.
• All total this plant cut through almost 30 feet of sedimentary layers.
• Clearly the top of the plant did not stick around for even tens of years, let alone hundreds, thousands, or millions as would be presumed to be required for such large amounts of sedimentary deposits. It was buried quick enough to preserve even the branches at the top!
• The entire trunk exhibits a common characteristic seen in the polystrate plants at Joggins: They all bend and/or tilt toward the bedding plane. This is to the North (to the left in this photo),
• yet all paleocurrent indicators show past currents as going south, and all prostrate tree trunks are oriented in a North/South direction, adding to the paleocurrent indication.
• The simplest explanation for all of the polystrate plants bending (stratigraphically thousands of meters apart and geographically kilometers apart) in the same direction, is that they were still soft plants when the entire formation was tilted to the South.
• Evidence Relating to the Genesis of Coal:
• The coal seams here are of special interest, both in their number and thickness.
• This was the second largest coal mine in Nova Scotia during its heyday.
• The conventional interpretation of peat bogs' being compressed into coal seams is clealy refuted as there a number of coal seams here less than 1 inch thick. We simply do not have 1 inch deep swamps and peat bogs today,
• Furthermore, the numerous Cordaitales tree trunks found throughout the formation usually exhibit both coalification (of the outside bark) and petrification of the wood core.
• so obviously the present cannot be the key to the past in this regard.
• Sometimes, as can be also be seen in the polystrate fossil trees in coal mines in Alaska, the tree rings alternate between coalified and petrified. It appears that coal requires soft wood and bark, not peat.

• In addition, in the paper cited below on the Underclays of Joggins, the author provides the data for the underclays, understones, and shales of Coal Groups 1-12 of the Joggins strata. His conclusion is quoted below: 

  "Therefore, out of 44 possible soils, only 3 contain both roots and rootlets that are also situated beneath a coal. When we take into account Dawson's eagerness to prove that the coals were formed in place, it is fairly safe to say that if any of these "soils" contained roots with attached rootlets, he would have eagerly said so. However, since he didn't, then to say that such beds represent in situ growth of multiple "forests" is highly questionable."

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• DNA and Babel
• The Genographic Project [1] was set forth to investigate the migration patterns of early humans starting in Africa and radiating to the rest of the world.
• Unfortunately their conclusions are based largely on an evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record, which places the origin of humans in Namibia, Africa.
• The project continues to this date, but National Geographic describes their preliminary results in some detail.
• This interpretation influences the migration atlas and genetic relation graphs
• Despite this bias the data as presented by National Geographic still shows indications of the post Babel dispersion as mentioned in the Bible.
• The Study and its Data
• 

  DNA Helix
• From this data it is possible to show which lines are more closely related to which, but to project back to an origin requires making assumptions about where that origin was.
• The raw data in this study is a series of Mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA samples from various parts of the world.
• Those who did this study made the assumption that the origin was in Namibia,
• however, one can also make the Biblical assumption that it started from Mount Ararat followed by the dispersion from Babel in Iraq.
• Both are arbitrary assumptions and they produce different directions in some of the the migrational trends.
• Unfortunately, the article does not present the raw data, which would include the precise locations were the genetic markers were found.
• The lines on the map probably suffer at least some what from their evolutionary mindset.
• A raw data map would just have the points where they got specific markers without their connect-the-dots. There is nothing innate about the genetic markers that show the direction of migration, unless you accept their dates and starting point which are based on evolutionary theory.
• Interpreting the Map
• So the map clearly shows evidence of the post-Babel dispersion.
• One thing the map shows are clear focal points in Iraq in for both Mitochondria and Y-chromosome lines. Right about the area where Babel was.
• One goes right into Africa, with a secondary migration from there to Asia.
• Several Mitochondria lines go from Iraq into Europe and Northern Asia.
• While the map shows the Y-chromosome focal points to the south of the Mitochondria focal point, it is still about the area where Babel was and it shows some similar migration patterns.
• This is particularly evident in the Y-chromosome line where M89 (the one in Iraq) has about twice as many off shoots as the other lines combined.
• This interpretation is supported by their own family trees of both Mitochondria and Y-chromosome lines.
• In both cases if you place the ancestor marker in Iraq, the distribution of descendants is more even than if you place it in Africa.
• A similar pattern can be seen in the Mitochondria.
• One other thing about this data that supports the Bible is the clear 3-way split in both the Mitochondria and the Y-chromosome lines when one starts in Iraq.
• Noah had 3 sons and 3 daughters-in-law. Since the Bible does not indicate that Noah and his wife had any children after the Flood, we would expect a 3-way spit, and that is what we have.

•  

   
  • This Mitochondria family tree is derived from the one at National Geographic but this one is based on the Biblical starting point in Iraq, while theirs is based on the evolutionary starting point in Namibia.
• The above chart takes National Geographic 's relationships and migration routes at face value.
• It is likely that they are distorted somewhat by the evolutionary assumptions in National Geographic 's chart and map.
• It is also possible based on both map and family tree data to show with a fair degree of probability which line came from a particular daughter in-law.
• However, despite this influence the 3 way split from Noah's 3 daughter in-laws is clearly seen when one starts in Iraq.
• It also indicates that Mrs. Shem and Mrs. Japheth were more closely related to each other than they were to Mrs. Ham.

•  

   
  • This Y-chromosome family tree is derived from the one at National Geographic but this one is based on the Biblical starting point in Iraq, while theirs is based on the evolutionary starting point in Namibia.
• It is also possible based on both map and family tree data to show with a fair degree of probability which line came from which son.
• The identification of these lineages can be made because the Bible gives clues in the genealogies of Genesis 10 as to where the descendants of each of Noah’s sons settled after Babel.
• Japheth’s family settled mainly in Asia and the Americas, Ham’s settled mainly in Africa and Australia, and Shem’s family settled mainly in Europe and the Middle East.
• The result is the even though this data as presented by National Geographic is loaded with evolutionary assumptions, it still shows patterns consistent with the Biblical account. Most likely if all of the evolutionary assumptions in this map could be stripped away, it would probably show patterns even more consistent with the Bible.

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• Antediluvian civilization
• Assuming the Biblical account is accurate, then humans lived on Earth for close to 1500 years before God sent the flood.
• Antediluvian civilizations are civilizations believed to have existed before the Great flood of Noah.
• If the fossil record is indeed the result of this event, then one might reasonably expect evidence of antediluvian civilizations to be found deep in the strata,
• although some creationists argue that when God said that He would "wipe mankind ... from the face of the earth" (Genesis 6:7, NIV), He meant that He would leave no trace.
• It is believed by many creationists that humans originated at a high and noble state, and later declined.
• Many believe advanced stages of technological development were reached before the great flood.
• Such presuppositions are usually based on the Biblical genealogy, which states that ancient people lived to approximately 10 times our current life span.
• Also it is frequently mentioned that Adam and Eve would likely possess higher than normal intelligence since they were created as adults, with knowledge that subsequent humans obtain from their parents.
• Another theory states that the antediluvian race called the Nephilim was superior to other humans in this respect.
• However, as a result of the destruction during the flood and the passage of time, the remaining evidence is scanty.
• All accounts of the Great flood from civilizations around the world indicate that there were civilizations before the flood.
• As a result of the flood, the surface of the Earth ripped up and redeposited as hundreds of feet of sediment, and very little of the antediluvian horizon has been exposed.
• It is also problematic that much of the scientific community is quick to dismiss any artifacts that dispute their presupposed interpretation of the fossil record.
• Relatively insightful accounts can be drawn from the Bible, apocrypha, and ancient Babylonian and Greek accounts of antediluvian civilizations.
• Nevertheless, any truly advanced civilization would have left durable traces or constructions that would likely surface during excavations or by erosion.
• Historical accounts
• Hebrew
• Genesis provides only a skeletal description of antediluvian civilization.
• It reports that people routinely lived what is by today's standards extraordinary lengths of time, from 800-900 years each.
• It reports that people at that time became extremely corrupt and violent, and ultimately were destroyed by God for their wickedness and violence.
• It reports the founding of cities such as the founding of Enoch by Cain.
• Plato

• He described antediluvian Athens as follows: 

   

  "Now the city in those days was arranged on this wise.
• Plato recounts the account of an Egyptian priest and historian, in which he describes antediluvian Athens and Atlantis.
• In the first place the Acropolis was not as now. For the fact is that a single night of excessive rain washed away the earth and laid bare the rock; at the same time there were earthquakes,
• But in primitive times the hill of the Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx,
• and then occurred the extraordinary inundation, which was the third before the great destruction of Deucalion.
• Outside the Acropolis and under the sides of the hill there dwelt artisans, and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground near;
• and was all well covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places.
• the warrior class dwelt by themselves around the temples of Athene and Hephaestus at the summit, which moreover they had enclosed with a single fence like the garden of a single house.
• On the north side they had dwellings in common and had erected halls for dining in winter, and had all the buildings which they needed for their common life, besides temples,
• but there was no adorning of them with gold and silver, for they made no use of these for any purpose;
• they took a middle course between meanness and ostentation, and built modest houses in which they and their children's children grew old, and they handed them down to others who were like themselves, always the same.
• But in summer-time they left their gardens and gymnasia and dining halls, and then the southern side of the hill was made use of by them for the same purpose.
• but in those days the fountain gave an abundant supply of water for all and of suitable temperature in summer and in winter.
• Where the Acropolis now is there was a fountain, which was choked by the earthquake, and has left only the few small streams which still exist in the vicinity,
• This is how they dwelt, being the guardians of their own citizens and the leaders of the Hellenes, who were their willing followers.
• And they took care to preserve the same number of men and women through all time, being so many as were required for warlike purposes, then as now-that is to say, about twenty thousand.
• Such were the ancient Athenians, and after this manner they righteously administered their own land and the rest of Hellas;
• they were renowned all over Europe and Asia for the beauty of their persons and for the many virtues of their souls, and of all men who lived in those days they were the most illustrious."
• Gilgamesh

• In the Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet one, we are told that there were cities before the Flood, which were restored by Utanapishtim: 

   

  "It was he [Gilgamesh] who reached by his own sheer strength Utanapishtim, the Faraway, who restored the sanctuaries (or: cities) that the Flood had destroyed!
• Archaeology
• Are Preflood Civilizations Expected?
• Longevity and the Written Word
• Our technological development has occurred largely as a result of an ability to store and access large quantities of preexisting data.
• Is it really logical to expect monuments such as the pyramids or better from the civilizations that lived before the flood?
• The knowledge possessed by any one person or even a hundred is insignificant in comparison to the libraries of previous learning that have now been obtained, and without which advancement to our level would not have happened.
• These libraries of knowledge did not begin to develop until the written word was invented, and no archaeological evidence of even the most primitive forms of writing have been discovered earlier than ancient Babylon which followed the tower of Babel.
• Even several hundred years later, during the time of the Egyptians, only hieroglyphics were in use. [2]
• The development of symbolic language seemingly coincides with the decline in human longevity.
• Perhaps it was the shortened human lifespan that caused people to feel the need to write down their experiences or what had been learned.
• There had become a sense of urgency to preserve ones essence in some permanent form.
• It may have been this reduction in life expectancy more than anything else that induced the formation of the written word and ultimately the technological achievements we have made.
• When people lived to be 1000 years of age there was little need to archive knowledge externally.
• Implications of the Tower of Babel
• We can not dispute the existence of atypical knowledge possessed by Adam and Eve, however, we should also consider the tower of Babel curse as it relates to human accomplishments to that date.
• Monumental constructions are a great source of pride for humans. It was most likely this type of technological development that God attempted to retard by creating the language barriers at the tower of Babel.
• It was the first construction that had no purpose but to be a monument to human achievement.
• The Babel event suggests that the tower was the first major monument that mankind had ever built.
• In comparison to our modern building it was hardly more than a mud mound. Many better monuments would be built afterwards,
• The tower was not a particularly important technological development. It was built out of bricks, and was therefore incomparable to even the limestone pyramids.
• but given God's reaction, it is logical to propose that nothing like it had been built prior to the flood.
• Why do Men Construct Buildings?

• After all the construction of cities is clearly referred to in the Bible. 

   

  Genesis 4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.
• Most people are puzzled why antediluvian buildings have not been found.
• The construction of dwelling space is driven almost exclusively by our need to shelter ourselves from the weather. Prior to the flood, the atmosphere is thought to have been much more stable than it is today, providing an almost globally uniform temperature.
• It is believed that there were no dramatic seasonal temperature fluctuations, or even significant differences in temperature between the polar and equatorial regions. This is evident by the discovery of fossilized ferns and amphibians on Antarctica.
• It is also believed that it had not rained prior to the flood, but the earth was instead watered by free-flowing springs and mist.
• Given that this type of perfect environment likely existed before the flood, it might be better to ask why people would build houses if they needed no shelter from the elements? One answer would be: to protect ourselves from wild animals and other humans.
• The earth was a violent place before the flood.
• Genesis 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
• Nevertheless, any constructions during this period were likely made of wood or dried mud. These materials are simply not expected to stand up well under catastrophic flood conditions. Even baked clay will dissolve if saturated for prolonged periods.
• If they did not need to build shelters from the weather, and had never built a monument before the tower of Babel, what would we expect to find?
• This type of material has historically only been used to extremely arid regions for this reason.
• Perhaps some protective fencing or walls might still remain if they could have survived a raging onslaught greater than the dam breech that hollowed-out the Grand Canyon. There may also be some clothing made of animal skins or stone tools, but no reason to expect anything more significant.
• Given the presuppositions of evolutionists and the certainty of their belief, any trace evidence of a antediluvian civilizations would likely be dismissed outright and we would never hear about it.
• Characteristics of antediluvian civilizations

• An Antediluvial civilization can be recognized: 

   
  1. If the flood layer is found above a human settlement 
  2. If the civilisation did not use bricks. Genesis 11 records that man baked bricks only after the flood. 
• Discoveries of preflood civilizations
• The Koonalda Cave beneath the Nullarbor plain:
• The Aboriginal name for the Nullarbor Plain was 'Oondiri' meaning 'the waterless', for the average rainfall of the area is about 8 inches per annum. Ironically, this 'waterless' plain has 50 - 200 feet of marine sediments.
• The Koonalda Cave lies 180 feet under this plain. Cave art consisting of engravings and finger flutings have been found here.

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• Rapid Sea Level Rise In The Arctic Ocean May Alter Views Of Human Migration
• ScienceDaily (Oct. 12, 2006) —
• Scientists have found new evidence that the Bering Strait near Alaska flooded into the Arctic Ocean about 11,000 years ago, about 1,000 years earlier than widely believed,
• closing off the land bridge thought to be the major route for human migration from Asia to the Americas.
• Knowledge of climate change and sea level rise in the Arctic Ocean has been limited because sediment cores collected from the floor of the Arctic Ocean have been taken from locations where sediment has accumulated only about one centimeter (less than one-half inch) every 1,000 years.
• Such slow rates make it impossible for scientists to distinguish between one millennium and the next. 
• In a paper in the October issue of Geology magazine, lead author Lloyd Keigwin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues from WHOI, Neal Driscoll from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and Julie Brigham-Grette of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• report results from three new core sites north and west of Alaska in the Chukchi Sea.
• At these locations, accumulation of sediment is more than 100 times greater than at previous sites, allowing identification of climate changes that were previously unseen.
• During the expeditions, the researchers extracted the longest piston core ever obtained from the Arctic region.
• The Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Ocean covers part of the continental shelf exposed when sea level fell during the last glacial maximum, about 20,000 years ago.
• When sea level was low the climate in the area was more continental across a large area of the Arctic,
• and when sea level was high the flow of water from the North Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, where the sill depth is 50 meters (165 feet), affected the freshwater and nutrient balance of the Arctic and the North Atlantic.
• The traditional view that humans and fauna migrated across the exposed shelf before flooding has been challenged by recent studies suggesting a maritime route for migration.
• “Although we have only a few cores, this is the first evidence of flooding of the Chukchi Sea by 11,000 years ago, at least 1,000 years before previously thought,” Keigwin said.
• “The new data are also consistent with data from other recent studies, and show potential for developing ocean and climate histories of this region.”
• Keigwin, a senior scientist in the WHOI Geology and Geophysics Department, and colleagues surveyed and collected cores from many locations in the Bering and Chukchi Seas in 2002 to study climate and sea level.
• Cores from these sites reveal that rising sea level flooded the Bering Strait about 12,000 years before present.
• Since 7,000 years ago, very little sediment has eroded from Alaska compared to before that time,
• and beginning about 4,000 years ago there has been a decline in biological productivity that may have resulted from increased sea ice or decreased nutrient supply from the Bering Strait.
• “Our research suggests there was more ice present in the region during the last glacial period than previously thought,” said co-author Neal Driscoll,
• a professor in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps Oceanography.
• “Evidence of an increased sedimentation rate, along with deep valleys cut into the continental shelf when sea level was rising rapidly during the deglaciation, helped guide us to that result.
• Additional ice in this region of the Arctic is an important discovery,  and is significant in helping our understanding of climate models, circulation and precipitation during glacial periods.”
• Cores from Hope Valley on the Chukchi shelf and Barrow Canyon off Point Barrow, Alaska contain high resolution records of climate, sea-level change and the history of the sediment source.
• The researchers sampled the cores to identify skeletons of animals, known as foraminifera, that can be traced to specific water and atmospheric temperatures.
• The samples were also radiocarbon dated at the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility at WHOI.
• The cores were collected during a cruise in 2002 on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Oak Foundation.

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• Gene Study Supports Single Main Migration Across Bering Strait
• ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2007) —
• Did a relatively small number of people from Siberia who trekked across a Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago give rise to the native peoples of North and South America?
• Or did the ancestors of today's native peoples come from other parts of Asia or Polynesia,
• arriving multiple times at several places on the two continents, by sea as well as by land, in successive migrations that began as early as 30,000 years ago?
• The questions -- featured on magazine covers and TV specials -- have agitated anthropologists, archaeologists and others for decades.
• 
   

  The U-M study, which analyzed genetic data from 29 Native American populations, suggests a Siberian origin is much more likely than a South Asian or Polynesian origin. (Credit: University of Michigan)
• University of Michigan scientists, working with an international team of geneticists and anthropologists, have produced new genetic evidence that's likely to hearten proponents of the land bridge theory.
• The study, published online in PLoS Genetics, is one of the most comprehensive analyses so far among efforts to use genetic data to shed light on the topic.
• The researchers examined genetic variation at 678 key locations or markers in the DNA of present-day members of 29 Native American populations across North, Central and South America.
• They also analyzed data from two Siberian groups.

• The analysis shows:

   

  o genetic diversity, as well as genetic similarity to the Siberian groups, decreases the farther a native population is from the Bering Strait --
• adding to existing archaeological and genetic evidence that the ancestors of native North and South Americans came by the northwest route.
• o a unique genetic variant is widespread in Native Americans across both American continents --
• suggesting that the first humans in the Americas came in a single migration or multiple waves from a single source, not in waves of migrations from different sources.
• The variant, which is not part of a gene and has no biological function, has not been found in genetic studies of people elsewhere in the world except eastern Siberia.
• The researchers say the variant likely occurred shortly prior to migration to the Americas, or immediately afterwards.
• "We have reasonably clear genetic evidence that the most likely candidate for the source of Native American populations is somewhere in east Asia," says Noah A. Rosenberg, Ph.D.,
• assistant professor of human genetics and assistant research professor of bioinformatics at the Center for Computational Medicine and Biology at the U-M Medical School and assistant research professor at the U-M Life Sciences Institute.
• "If there were a large number of migrations, and most of the source groups didn't have the variant, then we would not see the widespread presence of the mutation in the Americas," he says.
• Rosenberg has previously studied the same set of 678 genetic markers used in the new study in 50 populations around the world, to learn which populations are genetically similar and what migration patterns might explain the similarities.
• For North and South America, the current research breaks new ground by looking at a large number of native populations using a large number of markers.
• The pattern the research uncovered -- that as the founding populations moved south from the Bering Strait, genetic diversity declined -- is what one would expect when migration is relatively recent, says Mattias Jakobsson, Ph.D.,
• co-first author of the paper and a post-doctoral fellow in human genetics at the U-M Medical School and the U-M Center for Computational Medicine and Biology.
• There has not been time yet for mutations that typically occur over longer periods to diversify the gene pool.
• In addition, the study's findings hint at supporting evidence for scholars who believe early inhabitants followed the coasts to spread south into South America, rather than moving in waves across the interior.
• "Assuming a migration route along the coast provides a slightly better fit with the pattern we see in genetic diversity," Rosenberg says.

• The study also found that:

   
   
  • Populations in the Andes and Central America showed genetic similarities.
   
  • Populations from western South America showed more genetic variation than populations from eastern South America.
   
  • Among closely related populations, the ones more similar linguistically were also more similar genetically.
• Citation: PLoS Genet 3(11): e185. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030185
• In addition to Rosenberg and Jakobsson, study authors include Cecil M. Lewis, Jr., former post-doctoral fellow in the U-M Department of Human Genetics, and 24 researchers at U.S., Canadian, British, Central and South American universities.

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• Thousands Of Humans Inhabited New World's Doorstep For 20,000 Years
• ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2008) —
• The human journey from Asia to the New World was interrupted by a 20,000 -year layover in Beringia, a once-habitable region that today lies submerged under the icy waters of the Bering Strait.
• Furthermore, the New World was colonized by approximately 1,000 to 5,000 people - a substantially higher number than the 100 or fewer individuals of previous estimates.
• The developments, to be reported by University of Florida Genetics Institute scientists in PloS One, help shape understanding of how the Americas came to be populated -
• not through a single expansion event that is put forth in most theories, but in three distinct stages separated by thousands of generations.
• "Our model makes for a more interesting, complex scenario than the idea that humans diverged from Asians and expanded into the New World in a single event," said Connie Mulligan, Ph.D.,
• an associate professor of anthropology at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and assistant director of the UF Genetics Institute.
• "If you think about it, these people didn't know they were going to a new world. They were moving out of Asia and finally reached a landmass that was exposed because of lower sea levels during the last glacial maximum,
• 
   

  Maps depicting each phase of our three-step colonization model for the peopling of the Americas. (Credit: Kitchen A, Miyamoto MM, Mulligan CJ (2008) A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas. PLoS ONE 3(2): e1596. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001596)
• but two major glaciers blocked their progress into the New World.
• So they basically stayed put for about 20,000 years.
• It wasn't paradise, but they survived. When the North American ice sheets started to melt and a passage into the New World opened, we think they left Beringia to go to a better place."
• UF scientists analyzed DNA sequences from Native American, New World and Asian populations with the understanding that modern DNA is forged by an accumulation of events in the distant past,
• and merged their findings with data from existing archaeological, geological and paleoecological studies.
• The result is a unified, interdisciplinary theory of the "peopling" of the New World, which shows a gradual migration and expansion of people from Asia through Siberia and into Beringia starting about 40,000 years ago;
• a long waiting period in Beringia where the population size remained relatively stable; and finally a rapid expansion into North America through Alaska or Canada about 15,000 years ago.
• "This was the raw material, the original genetic source for all of the Americas," said Michael Miyamoto, Ph.D., a professor and associate chairman of zoology in UF's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
• "You can think of the people as a distinct group blocked by glaciers to the east. They had already been west, and had no reason to go back.
• They had entered this waiting stage and for 20,000 years, generations were passing and genetic differences were accumulating.
• By looking at the kinds and frequencies of these mutations in modern populations, we can get an idea of when the mutations arose and how many people were around to carry them."
• Working with mitochondrial DNA - passed exclusively from mothers to their children - and nuclear DNA, which contains genes from both parents, UF scientists essentially added genetic information to what had been known about the archaeology, changes in climate and sea level, and geology of Beringia.
• The result is a detailed scenario for the timing and scale of the initial migration to the Americas, more comparable to an exhaustive video picture rather than a single snapshot in time.
• "Their technique of reading population history by using coalescence rates to analyze genetic data is very impressive - innovative anthropology and edge-of-the-seat population study," said Henry C. Harpending, Ph.D.,
• a distinguished professor and endowed chairman of anthropology at the University of Utah and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who was not involved with the research.
• "The idea that people were stuck in Beringia for a long time is obvious in retrospect, but it has never been promulgated.
• But people were in that neighborhood before the last glacial maximum and didn't get into North America until after it.
• It's very plausible that a bunch of them were stuck there for thousands of years."
• As for Beringia, sea levels rose about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago, submerging the land and creating the Bering Strait, which now separates North America from Siberia with more than 50 miles of open, frigid water.
• "Our theory predicts much of the archeological evidence is underwater," said Andrew Kitchen,
• a Ph.D. candidate in the anthropology department at UF who participated in the research.
• "That may explain why scientists hadn't really considered a long-term occupation of Beringia."
• UF researchers believe that their synthesis of a large number of different approaches into a unified theory will create a platform for scientists to further analyze genomic and non-genetic data as they become available.
• Citation: Kitchen A, Miyamoto MM, Mulligan CJ (2008) A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas. PLoS One 3(2): e1596. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001596

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• First Humans To Settle Americas Came From Europe, Not From Asia Over Bering Strait Land-Ice Bridge, New Research Suggests
• ScienceDaily (July 17, 2008) —
• Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his students on the creation of Kankakee Sand Islands of Northwest Indiana
• is lending support to evidence that the first humans to settle the Americas came from Europe,
• a discovery that overturns decades of classroom lessons that nomadic tribes from Asia crossed a Bering Strait land-ice bridge.
• Valparaiso is a member of the Council on Undergraduate Research.
• Dr. Ron Janke began studying the origins of the Kankakee Sand Islands – a series of hundreds of small, moon-shaped dunes that stretch from the southern tips of Lake and Porter counties in Northwest Indiana into northeastern Illinois – about 12 years ago.
• Over the past few years, approximately a dozen Valparaiso undergraduates have worked with Dr. Janke to create the first detailed maps of the Kankakee Sand Islands, study their composition and survey wildlife and plants inhabiting the islands.
• Based upon the long-held belief that most of the upper Midwest was covered by a vast ice sheet up until about 10,000 years ago, Dr. Janke said he and other scientists surmised the Kankakee Sand Islands were created by sand in meltwater from the receding glacier.
• That belief was challenged, however, when he and his students discovered a year and a half ago that the islands were composed of sand that had come from Lake Michigan –
• something that should have been impossible with the Valparaiso Moraine standing between the lake and the Kankakee Sand Islands.
• “That created a lot of problems with what we had previously believed about ice covering this entire area,” Dr. Janke said.
• “How could it get over the Valparaiso Moraine and be deposited there?”
• Figuring out that puzzle required taking core samples from some of the remaining islands and the development of a new test by one of Dr. Janke’s colleagues to determine when sunlight last shone on the sand.
• The answer that came back – the Kankakee Sand Islands were born between 14,500 and 15,000 years ago from Lake Michigan sand – was startling.
• “We thought the area was completely covered by ice at that time,” Dr. Janke said. “That was a really earth-shattering result for us.”
• Yet it also supports research showing that North American Clovis points – a particular type of arrowhead that represents the oldest manmade object on the continent –identically match arrowheads found in Europe and made by humans at approximately the same time.
• And just within the last year, new research has provided strong evidence that a large meteorite struck the ice sheet covering North American and melted much of the ice shortly before the formation of the Kankakee Sand Islands.
• “Our research at Valparaiso supports this other recent research because it indicates there wasn’t a massive ice sheet covering North America that would have allowed tribes to cross over from Asia via a Bering Strait land-ice bridge,” Dr. Janke said.
• Dr. Janke’s research on the formation of the Kankakee Sand Islands is continuing this summer, with a focus on determining whether the islands closest to Lake Michigan are younger than the southernmost islands.
• At one time, approximately 1,200 of the islands stretched out in a series of curved bands north and and south of the Kankakee River that are separated by a few miles and mirror the southern tip of Lake Michigan.
• Though many were destroyed by human settlement, about 700 still exist today.
• Landowners have donated a handful of islands to the trust for preservation, and Dr. Janke is hopeful that others will follow their lead and perhaps eventually build enough support for some of the islands to be incorporated into Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore or their own state park.
• “The Kankakee Sand Islands are archaeologically significant, with numerous Native American artifacts and burial grounds still present in the surviving islands,
• Dr. Janke said. “I’m hopefully the sand islands can be protected so we can continue to learn about and appreciate them.”

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• Underwater Expedition Delivers Key Findings In Search For Evidence Of Early Americans
• ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2009) —
• In one of the more dramatic moments of an underwater archaeological survey co-led by Mercyhurst College archaeologist James Adovasio along Florida’s Gulf Coast this summer,
• Andy Hemmings stood on an inundated river’s edge where man hasn't set foot in more than 13,000 years.
• Donning full scuba gear, Hemmings stood in 130 feet of water on a peninsula at the intersection of two ancient rivers nearly 100 miles offshore from Tampa.
• The last time humans could have stood in that spot, mammoth and mastodon roamed the terrain.
• “The successful tracking of the St. Marks-Aucilla River and the Suwannee River, between 50 and 150 kilometers respectively, represents what we believe to be the most extensive delineation of submerged prehistoric river systems ever done anywhere in the world,” Adovasio said.
• Another pivotal find is the identification of chert at three dive sites along the river systems;
• chert is a superior quality fine-grained stone used by prehistoric peoples to make tools.
• “There is no doubt,” Adovasio said, “that we have found the haystacks and are one step closer to uncovering the archaeological needles;”
• in effect, narrowing the search for evidence of early Americans in the now submerged Inner Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast.
• Hemmings, one of the leading Paleoindian underwater archaeologists in North America, agreed. “My feeling is, given a little time to probe the sediments with a dredge, we will quickly find human artifacts.”
• The signature expedition of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Ocean Exploration and Research began in the summer of 2008 when a distinguished group of scientists led by Mercyhurst’s Adovasio and Hemmings
• identified and mapped buried river channels that could potentially help document the late Pleistocene landscape.
• This year’s mission, undertaken July 23 to Aug. 5, further traced the river systems along whose beaches prehistoric people may have populated and identified raw materials that they may have used in tool making.
• The mission also has advanced underwater understanding and research methodology exponentially, Adovasio said.
• “We have developed protocols for exploring deep water, which is both time and labor intensive, as well as expensive, unlike anything done before,” he said.
• From the Weatherbird II, flagship of the Florida Institute of Oceanography in St. Petersburg, researchers electronically mapped the modern sea floor with a side scan sonar device and created images of the layered sediments below the seafloor surface with a sub-bottom profiler.
• Using GPS technology, the team selected dive locations based on an understanding of what the surface should look like, and what was hidden below that surface adjacent to the old river channels.
• On the peninsula where the relict Suwannee River intersects another ancient system, divers were able to collect a 1m sediment core but were unable to complete a lengthier search for human artifacts because the water neared 130 feet, the maximum depth level for this year’s dive.
• The team plans to return to this spot next year, increasing the divers’ depth level certification to 165 feet and using a dredge to lift the silt away and see if there is an archaeological site at this confluence.
• “Proof of past human habitation here would reinforce the disintegration of the once prevalent hypothesis about who the first Americans were, how they got here and when they arrived,” said Adovasio, who rose to fame 30 years ago while excavating the Meadowcroft Rockshelter near Pittsburgh, Pa.
• Besides primary funding from NOAA, this summer’s work was supported by the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute, Gault School of Archaeological Research, Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, Florida Institute of Oceanography, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, among others. Students from Mercyhurst, Harvard, the University of Michigan and Texas A & M were also part of the research group.

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• Riddle Of The Jade Jewels Reveals Vast Trade Arena
• ScienceDaily (Jan. 2, 2008) —
• Analysing the origins of jade used in ancient jewellery has revealed a trading arena that was active for more than 3,000 years and sprawled over 3,000km in Southeast Asia – possibly the largest such network discovered in the region to date.
• An international research team led by archaeologists from The Australian National University used electron probe microanalysis to examine jade earrings excavated from sites all over Southeast Asia,
• and were able to pinpoint the origin of the precious stone to a source in Taiwan.
• 
   

  Analysing the origins of jade used in ancient jewelery has revealed a trading arena that was active for more than 3,000 years and sprawled over 3,000km in Southeast Asia – possibly the largest such network discovered in the region to date. (Credit: Image courtesy of Australian National University)
• “People have noted the widespread use of jade in Southeast Asia since the early 20th century,
• so one of the big questions has been about where the stone was sourced and how it was distributed,” explained research leader Hsiao-Chun Hung, a PhD student in archaeology at ANU.
• Archaeologists have long thought that the earrings were made from local jade by Austronesian peoples as they migrated and traded across Southeast Asia –
• but the researchers have now shown that much of the stone was sourced from Taiwan and then transported in raw form to places like the Philippines, Borneo, central Vietnam and southern Thailand – up to thousands of kilometres by sea from its source.
• Team member Dr Yoshiyuki Iizuka from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan used electron probe microanalysis to study the variable chemical composition of raw jade samples from all over Southeast Asia, building up a geographic database of the precious stone.
• By applying the same technique to the 144 jade artefacts, they found that 116 specimens could be traced back to Eastern Taiwan.
• “We know that ancient people elsewhere in the world traded over great distances,” team member Professor Peter Bellwood said. “But this is the first time that such a large trading network has been established in Southeast Asia.”
• Ms Hung is studying the migration of Austronesian people throughout the region to Australia’s north between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago.
• The researchers say their work suggests that Austronesian people, who shared a common language and resembled contemporary Southeast Asians, had a vast, complex system of trade and transportation.
• The work was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council, and also by the National Geographic Society, and is written up in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

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• Beyond Mesopotamia: A New View Of The Dawn Of Civilization
• ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2007) —
• For decades, school children have learned that human civilization emerged about 5000 years ago along the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia, along the Nile, and along the Indus River.
• But archaeologists working in a broad arc from the Russian steppes through Iran and onto the Arabian Peninsula are finding evidence that a complex network of cities may have thrived across the region in roughly the same era,
• suggesting a dramatic new view of the emergence of human civilization.
• In a feature in the 3 August issue of Science, news writer Andrew Lawler details the discoveries by teams of researchers and the emerging multinational effort to piece together the array of new evidence into a unified understanding.
• 
   

  Archaeologists working in a broad arc from the Russian steppes through Iran and onto the Arabian Peninsula are finding evidence that a complex network of cities may have thrived across the region in roughly the same era as Mesopotamia. (Credit: Map by Science)
• Though their efforts are at an early stage, Lawler writes, many of the archaeologists say the finds are rewriting historical understanding of human civilization by offering "a far more complex picture in which dozens of urban centers thrived between Mesopotamia and the Indus, trading commodities and, possibly, adopting each other's technologies, architectures, and ideas.
• "While Mesopotamia is still the cradle of civilization in the sense that urban evolution began there," Lawler added in an interview, "we now know that the area between Mesopotamia and India spawned a host of cities and cultures between 3000 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E."
• Evidence to support the new view was discussed and explored last month by scientists from more than a dozen countries—including Russia, Iran, Italy, France, and the United States—at a meeting of the International Association for the Study of Early Civilizations in the Middle Asian Intercultural Space in Ravenna, Italy. Lawler was the only journalist present
• Archaeologists shared findings from dozens of urban centers of approximately the same age that existed between Mesopotamia and the Indus River valley in modern day India and Pakistan.
• The "most dramatic evidence," Lawler reports, comes from area in southeastern Iran, near the Halil River and south of the modern city of Jiroft, where a team led by Yousef Madjidzadeh has uncovered the remains of a large and wealthy city.
• "The ancient city in the mid- to late 3rd millennium B.C.E. covered more than 2 square kilometers, dominated by a large citadel flanked by a massive stepped platform to the north," the story says.
• "A room excavated last year in the citadel includes a 2-meter-high brick human torso, ochre paint still clinging to the surface. The sculpture, says Madjidzadeh, is the largest of its kind from that era."
• Cemeteries in the area have been looted, but still, Lawler said, they demonstrate the affluence of the ancient residents.
• "Madjidzadeh found one large tomb cut into limestone that appeared untouched since it was robbed in antiquity," he wrote.
• "A stairway leads down to a chamber containing eight burial areas; scattered throughout were 600 carnelian beads and other precious materials."
• At a nearby dump left by looters, researchers "found 1200 small lapis and turquoise beads, pieces of 40 or more chlorite vessels, and 40 to 50 copper vessels—at least one with ornate embossing."
• In addition, the robbers' holes at the site unearthed the remains of other pottery dating to 4000 B.C.E.
• At a second site, northeast of Jiroft, researchers have found the remains of "a bustling metropolis between 2550 and 2400 B.C.E., as large as 150 hectares and with at least 380 smaller sites in the surrounding region."
• Evidence suggests the as far back as 3000 B.C.E., the city benefited from long-distance trade.
• "Artifacts from that era include lapis from Afghanistan, shells from the Pakistan coast, vessels imported from the Indus, and game boards in the style of those found in Ur," Lawler said.
• The researchers see evidence of far-flung trade networks for merchandise and ideas:
• Copper from Oman has been found in Mesopotamia and perhaps in the Indus region; Omani pots have been found in Central Asia.
• At Gonur in Turkmenistan, the researchers have found seals from Mesopotamia and the Indus region, along with some Iranian goods.
• And some evidence suggests that carts drawn by bullocks and camels may have been used to facilitate trade as early as the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE.
• And from Mesopotamia east to the Indus, archaeologists have found massive ceremonial platforms with some common characteristics.
• Article: "Middle Asia Takes Center Stage," Science

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• New Details Of First Major Urban Battle Emerge Along With Clues About Civilization's Origins
• ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2007) —
• New details in the tragic end of one of the world's earliest cities as well as clues about how urban life may have begun there were revealed in a recent excavation in northeastern Syria that was conducted by the University of Chicago and the Syrian Department of Antiquities.
• "The attack must have been swift and intense. Buildings collapsed, burning out of control, burying everything in them under vast pile of rubble," said Clemens Reichel,
• the American co-director of the Syrian-American Archaeological Expedition to Hamoukar.
• Reichel, a Research Associate at the University's Oriental Institute, added that the assault probably left the residents destitute as they buried their dead in the ruins of the city.
• Reichel made that assessment of the battle that destroyed Hamoukar about 3500 B.C. after an excavation was conducted in September and October at the site near the Iraqi border.
• The team uncovered further evidence of the accomplishments of the inhabitants among the remains of the walled city dating to the fourth millennium B.C.
• 
   

  Seal, bone, in shape of reclining animal, probably sheep; seal design shows tweo stylized horned goats; from Area B, date: ca. 3,500 B.C. (Image courtesy of University of Chicago
• In addition to the wall, the team has uncovered quasi-industrial installations and two large administrative buildings that had been destroyed by an intense fire.
• It was at the site that, mixed in with the debris from the collapsed wall, that over 1,000 egg-shaped sling bullets were found in 2005, leading the excavators to conclude that an early act of warfare had caused the end of the settlement.
• Work in this past season may explain how powerful the early weapons were.
• "We literally have them at all stages of use, from manufacture to impact," Reichel said,
• pointing out that the team found a sling bullet that had pierced the plaster of a mud brick wall.
• The team also found 12 graves in the debris, very likely of people killed in the battle.
• The team discovered several rooms with walls up to six feet high in which more than 1,100 sling bullets were found mixed in with collapsed walls and roofs.
• They also found a shallow pit into which a water jar had been buried to its rim in the floor of one of the rooms.
• This pit, ordinarily used to soak discarded clay sealings to recycle them into fresh sealing clay, was used to make sling bullets during the city's final hours. This was indicated by two dozen sling bullets than were lined up neatly along its edge.
• "It looks as if they were--quite literally--throwing everything they could find against the aggressors," Reichel said.

  • Some ancient writings speak of a war between the Hamites and Japhtheites..or the people of Noah's sons Ham and Japheth; during or shortly after the reign of the Biblical Nimrod.
  Add Sticky Note
• Hamoukar was on a key trade route that led from Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) across Northern Syria and the river Tigris into Southern Mesopotamia.
• Some evidence of this long-lasting trade was found in an area to the south of Hamoukar's main site-- a large mound.
• The team found obsidian fragments in an area of over 700 acres (280 hectares), which they dated to 4,500 -- 4,000 B.C. using pottery fragments found with the obsidian.
• In addition to tools and blades, the team found large amounts of production debris such as cores, a discovery that is even more significant than finding actual tools.
• "Finding cores and other production debris tells us that they are not just using these tools here, they are making them here," Salam al-Kuntar, the Syrian co-director of the expedition, explained.
• Obsidian does not occur around Hamoukar but had to be brought in from Turkey with the nearest sources being over 70 miles away.
• The discovery of an obsidian processing center is significant, Reichel added, for it could explain the emergence of a city in this location at such an early time.
• A large-scale export of tools to Southern Mesopotamia would have resulted in significant revenue and accumulation of wealth.
• "This could have been the incentive that pulled people off their fields. People specialized instead of ploughing their own fields they bought their food supplies from surrounding villages.
• And once people accumulated a fortune they want a walled enclosure to protect it--your first city."
• Unlike in southern Mesopotamia, therefore, the prime mover towards urbanism appears to have been economic incentive, not coercion.
• The obsidian workshops were located off the main mound and predate the destroyed city by several hundred years, but numerous older levels have already been noted below the destroyed buildings in small test trenches.
• "We have no clear idea how far the first city at Hamoukar goes back in time," Reichel said. "It could be much earlier than 3,500 B.C."
• By the time the city was destroyed, he added, copper had started to replace obsidian as key raw material for tools.
• The discovery of numerous copper tools in the ruins of Hamoukar might indicate that Hamoukar had followed developed from an obsidian into a copper processing center, possibly also exporting copper tools to the south.
• The discovery could lead the way to providing an additional explanation for how civilization developed in the Fertile Crescent.
• In the south, urban society emerged in the Uruk culture in response to the needs of providing organization to an economy supported by an irrigation-based agriculture.
• The latest findings from Hamoukar suggest that the specialized mass-production of goods for trade could have been a similar driving force in the North.

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• Earliest Evidence For Large Scale Organized Warfare In The Mesopotamian World
• ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2005) —
• A huge battle destroyed one of the world's earliest cities at around 3500 B.C.
• and left behind, preserved in their places, artifacts from daily life in an urban settlement in upper Mesopotamia, according to a joint announcement from the University of Chicago and the Department of Antiquities in Syria.
• "The whole area of our most recent excavation was a war zone," said Clemens Reichel,
• Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
• Reichel, the American co-director of the Syrian-American Archaeological Expedition to Hamoukar, lead a team that spent October and November at the site.
• Salam al-Quntar of the Syrian Department of Antiquities and Cambridge University was Syrian co-director.
• Hamoukar is an ancient site in extreme northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border.
• The discovery provides the earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world, the team said.
• The team found extensive destruction with collapsed walls, which had undergone heavy bombardment by sling bullets and eventually collapsed in an ensuing fire.
• Work during an earlier season showed the settlement was protected by a 10-foot high mud-brick wall.
• The excavators retrieved more than 1,200 smaller, oval-shaped bullets (about an inch long and an inch and a half in diameter) and some 120 larger round clay balls (two and half to four inches in diameter).
• "This clearly was no minor skirmish. This was 'Shock and Awe' in the Fourth Millennium B.C.," Reichel said.
• Excavations at Hamoukar have played an important role in redefining scholar's understanding of the development of civilization.
• Earlier work had contended that cities first developed in the lower reaches of the Euphrates valley, the area often referred to as Southern Mesopotamia.
• Those early urban centers, part of the Uruk culture, established colonies that led to the civilization of the north, as the people sought raw materials such as wood, stone, and metals which are absent in southern Mesopotamia.
• Work at Hamoukar, first undertaken by McGuire Gibson, Professor at the Oriental Institute, between 1999 and 2001 showed that some of the elements associated with civilization developed there independently of influences in the south.

  • The Bible..(Book of Genesis) states the beginning of Nimrod's (Emerkar) kingdom was in southern Mesopotamia; from whence he moved north and took "Ashur" (northern Mesopotamia) and built cities there. This does not preclude cities and settlements scattered about the geographical areas of the ancient Middle East..such as Hamoukar. If anything the incentive to conquest may have been greater as Nimrod, who is described as the first Post-Flood imperial ruler, sought to bring more people and wealth under his rule. Other sources also speak of a very early war between the people descended from Ham (Nimrod) and the people of Japheth.
  Add Sticky Note
• The latest work suggests that the two forces may have had a violent confrontation at Hamoukar.
• "It is likely that the southerners played a role in the destruction of this city," Reichel said.
• "Dug into the destruction debris that covered the buildings excavated this season were numerous large pits that contained vast amount of southern Uruk pottery from the south.
• The picture is compelling. If the Uruk people weren't the ones firing the sling bullets they certainly benefited from it. They took over this place right after its destruction."

  • Nimrod?
  Add Sticky Note
• Ironically, for archaeological work, ancient warfare has its advantages, especially when the besieged people may have been surprised.
• "Whatever was in these buildings was buried in them, literally waiting to be retrieved by us."
• In addition to many objects of value that are left behind, buried under massive amounts of debris, such "frozen contexts" are vital for functional analyses, helping to identify architectural units as domestic units, cooking facilities, production sites or buildings of administrative or religious use.
• The mid-fourth millennium B.C. settlement at Hamoukar has many distinctively urban features.
• The area excavated so far contains two large building complexes built around square courtyards.
• Though both buildings follow closely a house plan known from other sites in Syria and Iraq, their function seems to have been non-domestic.
• One of the structures contained a large kitchen with a series of large grinding stones embedded in clay benches and a baking oven large enough to fill a whole room, suggesting that food production occurred here beyond the needs of a single household.
• Each complex also contained a tripartite building (a unit consisting of a long central room surrounded by smaller rooms).
• Objects retrieved from one of them, excavated in 2001, included stamp seals and clay sealings (lumps of clay used to close containers, usually impressed with a seal), suggesting that it was used as a storage and redistribution center for commodities.
• More stamp seals and over 100 clay sealings were found in 2005, including some sealings with incised drawings instead of seal impressions indicating that similar activities occurred in the second complex.
• The new data lends further proof to the theory, suggested first after the 1999-2001 excavations, that a city existed at Hamoukar during mid-fourth millennium B.C.
• Work this season reinforced that certain elements of technological specialization were already present at Hamoukar several hundred years earlier than the time of the settlement's destruction.
• This season three trenches were excavated in the southern area of the site where previous survey work had shown the presence of countless pieces of obsidian, both blades and production debris dating to the mid-to-late fifth millennium B.C., spread over an area of 700 - 800 acres.
• "Finding production debris is actually as important, if not more important, than finding actual stone tools," explained Salam al-Quntar, pointing out a well-preserved obsidian core from which long, narrow blades had been flaked off in a radial pattern.
• "A settlement of 700 or more acres cannot have existed in the fifth millennium B.C.," al-Quntar says, "so we are assuming that this is a smaller 'shifting' settlement, which over centuries 'moved' across the area of the site.
• Little architecture has been found so far, but the remains of a storage room, which contained numerous large storage vessels, were identified, and numerous clay 'eye idols' assumed to be connected with cultic activities."
• The nature of the contact that Hamoukar entertained with the south at that time remains to be investigated more fully.
• Reichel points out certain similarities that the architecture of Hamoukar shows with buildings in southern Mesopotamia, notably in the layout of the tripartite buildings.
• Some seal designs also show scenes resembling motives found in southern Mesopotamia and southwestern Iran.
• The pottery and almost all the other artifacts from the excavated area, however, were entirely of local character, betraying no southern influence.
• "We assume that some trade relations existed with the Uruk culture, but there is no evidence of Uruk control or domination over Hamoukar before the destruction," he said.
• But the southern Uruk clearly dominates the layers just above the destruction.
• The 2005 season was the fourth season of archaeological work at Hamoukar.
• Between 1999 and 2001 three seasons were conducted under the co-directorship of McGuire Gibson. Following a four year hiatus and the 2003 Iraq War, in a political climate now overshadowed by misgivings between the U.S. and Syria, the resumption of a joint Syrian-American archaeological venture at this time on a site located so close to the border with Iraq may seem surprising.
• Little if any problems could be reported, however, said Reichel, who praised the cooperation of Syrian government officials who issued excavation permit swiftly and offered logistical support. "They welcomed us like old friends."
• Abdal-Razzaq Moaz, Deputy Minister of Cuture, in charge of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Syria, said,
• "Excavations at Hamoukar have played an important role in redefining scholar's understanding of the rise and development of civilization in the world.
• The resumption of a joint Syrian-American archaeological venture at this time shows the Syrians are interested to have such collaboration in the field of archaeology which allowed to have cultural exchange and mutual understanding between the two people, and to share a world heritage which belong to all the humanity."
• Besides the University of Chicago, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania and other universities have teams doing archaeological work in Syria, he said.

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• New Evidence: Urbanization Did Not Originate With Centralized Political Power
• ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2007) —
• Ancient cities arose not by decree from a centralized political power, as was previously widely believed, but as the outgrowth of decisions made by smaller groups or individuals, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Edinburgh.
• Published in Science August 31, the research was led by Jason Ur, assistant professor of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, with Philip Karsgaard of the University of Edinburgh, and Joan Oates of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research of the University of Cambridge.
• "The results of our work show that the existing models for the origins of ancient cities may in fact be flawed," says Ur.

  • Gee..! Ya' think?
  Add Sticky Note
• "Urbanism does not appear to have originated with a single, powerful ruler or political entity. Instead, it was the organic outgrowth of many groups coming together."
• To understand patterns of population growth in the earliest urban areas, archaeologists surveyed the spatial distribution of artifacts at Tell Brak, located in northern Mesopotamia, in what is today northern Iraq and northeastern Syria.
• The researchers' work was based on observation of surface objects at the site, along with satellite imagery and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) spatial analysis.
• Surface artifacts included bits of broken pottery and other ancient garbage, which indicated to the archaeologists where the inhabitants of the city lived. In this survey, the patterns of distribution of these objects were examined over an 800 year period.
• Excavation of Tell Brak has been conducted by researchers from the University of Cambridge since 1976.
• While archaeologists had been aware of the large scale of Tell Brak, they had previously concentrated on excavating and observing the more densely populated "central mound."
• This field survey has demonstrated that the city was much larger geographically than realized, and had also been populated by settlement clusters surrounding the "central mound."
• According to the survey of distribution of artifacts, around 4200 BCE the "central mound" was suddenly surrounded by these clusters, suggesting immigration to the city.
• These clusters were separated from one another, indicating social distance among the groups, possibly because the social mechanisms that allow strangers to live together in an urban environment had not yet evolved.
• The patterns of settlement and distance from the "central mound" also signified autonomy from the political center of the city.
• The theory of a singular leader as the catalyst for urbanization has been widely supported in part because it is reinforced by the story of Gilgamesh, who "built" the city of Uruk.
• Uruk, located in what is today southern Iraq, had been considered the world's oldest city.
• The field survey, along with recent related excavation by the University of Cambridge has shown that the urban development of Tell Brak was concurrent, or may have been earlier, than the development of Uruk.
• "Ours is a largely urban society, and the nascent urbanization of Tell Brak tells us about the formation of the very first cities in the world," says Ur.
• The research was funded by the British Academy, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, the Society of Antiquaries, the Charlotte Bonham-Carter Charitable Trust, the University of Michigan and Harvard University.

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• Friday, August 14, 2009

   

    

   PART NINETEEN: Read It Before It Is Banned By The US Government
• APOLLYON RISING 2012
• THE LUCIFERIAN SCIENCE OF DEITY RESURRECTION
• “Osiris will rise in splendor from the dead and rule the world through those sages and philosophers in whom wisdom has become incarnate.”—Manly P. Hall, 33rd Degree Freemason
• “The World will soon come to us for its Sovereigns and Pontiffs. We shall constitute the equilibrium of the Universe, and be rulers over the Masters of the World.” Albert Pike, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry
• “I am Yesterday and I am Today; and I have the power to be born a second time.” Statement of Osiris from the Egyptian Book of the Dead
• To understand how the pagan god of death and destruction so cleverly hidden in the Great Seal of the United States could fulfill the Sibyl’s conjure and return with “the life of gods” with “Heroes and gods commingling,” we gaze into the distant past, when the forbidden science was initially used, and to the powerful beings that first developed it and that may be planning to use it again.
• As far back as the beginning of time and within every major culture of the ancient world, the astonishingly consistent story is told of ‘gods’ that descended from heaven and materialized in bodies of flesh.
• From Rome, to Greece, and before that to Egypt, Persia, Assyria, Babylonia and Sumer, the earliest records of civilization tell of the era when powerful beings known to the Hebrews as Watchers and in the Book of Genesis as the Benei Ha-Elohim (Sons of God), mingled themselves with humans, giving birth to part-celestial, part-terrestrial hybrids known as Nephilim.
• The Bible says this happened when men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them.
• When the Sons of God saw the women’s beauty, they took wives from among them to sire their unusual offspring.
• In Genesis 6:4 we read the following account:
• “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
• When this scripture is compared with other ancient texts including Enoch, Jubilees, Baruch, Genesis Apocryphon, Philo, Josephus, Jasher and so on, it unfolds to some that the giants of the Old Testament, such as Goliath, were the part-human part-animal part-angelic offspring of a supernatural interruption into the divine order and natural evolution of the species.
• The Apocryphal Book of Enoch gives a name to the angels involved in this cosmic conspiracy, calling them Watchers.
• We read:
  

  And I Enoch was blessing the Lord of majesty and the King of the ages, and lo! the Watchers called me—Enoch the scribe—and said to me: ‘Enoch, thou scribe of righteousness, go, declare to the Watchers of the heaven who have left the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women, and have done as the children of earth do, and have taken unto themselves wives:
• “Ye have wrought great destruction on the earth: And ye shall have no peace nor forgiveness of sin: and inasmuch as they delight themselves in their children [the Nephilim], The murder of their beloved ones shall they see, and over the destruction of their children shall they lament, and shall make supplication unto eternity, but mercy and peace shall ye not attain” (1 Enoch 10:3-8).
• According to Enoch, two hundred of these powerful angels departed ‘high heaven’ and used women (among other things) to extend their progeny into mankind’s plane of existence.
• The Interlinear Hebrew Bible has an interesting interpretation of Genesis 6:2 in this regard.
• Where the King James Bible says, “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair,” the IHN interprets this as, “The benei Elohim saw the daughters of Adam, that they were fit extensions.”
• The term “fit extensions” seems applicable when the whole of the ancient record is understood to mean that the Watchers wanted to leave their proper sphere of existence in order to enter earth’s three-dimensional reality.
• They viewed women—or at least their genetic material—as part of the formula for accomplishing this task.
• Departing the proper habitation that God had assigned them was grievous to the Lord and led to divine penalization.
• The “angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6).
• Jude described it this way:
• Besides Apocryphal, Pseudepigraphic, and Jewish traditions related to the legend of the Watchers and the “Mighty Men” born of their union with humans, mythologized accounts tell the stories of ‘gods’ using humans to produce heroes or demigods (half-gods).
• When the ancient Greek version of the Hebrew Old Testament (the LXX or Septuagint) was made, the word “Nephilim”—referring to the part-human offspring of the Watchers—was translated “gegenes,” a word implying “earth born.”
• This same terminology was used to describe the Greek Titans and other legendary heroes of partly celestial and partly terrestrial origin, such as Hercules, born of Zeus and the mortal Alcmena, Achilles, the Trojan hero son of Thetis and Peleus, and Gilgamesh, the two-thirds god and one-third human child of Lugalbanda and Ninsun.
• These demigods were likewise accompanied in texts and idol representation by half-animal and half-human creatures like Centaurs (the part-human part-horse offspring of Apollo’s son, Centaurus), Chimera’s, Furies, Satyrs, Gorgons, Nymphs, Minotaurs and other genetic aberrations.
• Historian Andrew Tomas believes these mythological records are “thought-fossils depicting the story of vanished cultures in symbols and allegories,”
• or, as Stephen Quayle in his book Genesis 6 Giants explains:
• “The collective memories in the form of myths, fables and fairy tales from various cultures and ages of mankind are overwhelming evidence that the Nephilim existed.”
• All of this indicates that the Watchers not only modified human DNA during the construction of Nephilim, but animals as well, a point the Book of Enoch supports, saying in the 7th chapter that the fallen angels “sinned” against animals as well as humans.
• Other books such as Jubilees add that this interspecies mingling eventually resulted in mutations among normal humans and animals whose “flesh” (genetic makeup) was “corrupted” by the activity, presumably through crossbreeding (see 5:1-5; 7:21-25).
• Even the Old Testament contains reference to the genetic mutations that developed among humans following this time frame, including ‘men’ of unusual size, physical strength, six fingers, six toes, animal appetite for blood and even lion-like features (2 Sam 21:20; 23:20).
• J. R. Church makes an interesting point that since this activity was satanic in nature, it refers to the ‘seed of the serpent’ that was at enmity with Christ.
• “The concept of a reptilian race continues throughout the Bible as a metaphoric symbol of the devil,” he wrote in his Prophecy in the News Magazine, February 2009.
• “Later Scriptures add the term ‘dragon,’ with the implication that these other-worldly creatures were designed with the DNA code of a reptilian race.”
• J.R. goes on to state how some of these satanic creatures were depicted as “bat-like gargoyles, or winged dragons” in ancient art
• and that we should not be surprised that “a humanoid-type reptilian race could cohabit with human women and produce a race of giants.”
• But of all the ancient records, the most telling extra-biblical script is from the book of Jasher, a mostly forgotten text referred to in the Bible in Joshua 10:13 and Second Samuel 1:18.
• Jasher records the familiar story of the fall of the Watchers then adds an exceptional detail that none of the other texts are as unequivocal about, something that can only be understood in modern language to mean advanced biotechnology, genetic engineering or ‘transgenic modification’ of species.
• After the Watchers had instructed humans “in the secrets of heaven,” note what Jasher says occurred:
  

  “[Then] the sons of men [began teaching] the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord” (Jasher 4:18).
• The phrase “the mixture of animals of one species with the other” does not mean Watchers had taught men hybridization, as this would not have “provoked the Lord.”
• God made like-animals of different breeds capable of reproducing. For example horses can propagate with other mammals of the Equidae classification (the taxonomic ‘horse family’) including donkeys and zebras.
• It would not have “provoked the Lord” for this type animal breeding to have taken place, as God himself made the animals able to do this.
• If, on the other hand, the Watchers were crossing species boundaries by mixing incompatible animals “of one species with the other” such as a horse with a human (a Centaur), this would have been a different matter and may cast light on the numerous ancient stories of mythical beings of variant-species manufacturing that fits perfectly within the records of what the Watchers were accomplishing.
• Understandably, this kind of chimera-making would have “provoked the Lord” and raises the serious question of why the Watchers would have risked eternal damnation by ‘tinkering’ with God’s creation in this way.
• Yahweh placed boundaries between the species and strictly ordered that “each kind” reproduce only after its “own kind.”
• Was the motive of the Watchers to break these rules simply the desire to rebel, to assault God’s creative genius through biologically altering what He had made? Or was something of deeper significance behind the activity?
• Some believe the corruption of antediluvian DNA by Watchers was an effort to cut off the birth line of the Messiah.
• This theory posits that Satan understood the protoevangelium—the promise in Genesis ३:15 that a savior would be born, the seed of the woman, and that He would destroy the fallen angel’s power.
• Satan’s followers therefore intermingled with the human race in a conspiracy to stop the birth of Christ according to this line of thought.
• If human DNA could be universally corrupted or ‘demonized’ they reasoned, no savior would be born and mankind would be lost forever.
• Those who support this theory believe this is why God Ordered a pure human bloodline to be maintained and for His followers not to intermarry with the other nations.
• When men breached this command and the mutated DNA began rapidly spreading among humans and animals, God instructed Noah to build an ark and to prepare for a flood that would destroy every living thing.
• That God had to send such a universal fiat like the flood illustrates how widespread the altered DNA eventually became.
• In fact, the Bible says in Genesis 6:9 that only Noah, and therefore by extension his children, were found ‘perfect’ in their generation.
• The Hebrew word for ‘perfect’ in this case is Tamiym and means ‘without blemish’ or ‘healthy,’ the same word used in Leviticus to describe an unblemished sacrificial lamb.
• The meaning was not that Noah was morally perfect, but that his physical makeup—his DNA—had not been contaminated with Nephilim descent, as apparently the rest of the world had become.
• In order to preserve mankind as He had made them, God destroyed all but Noah’s family in the flood.
• The ancient records including those of the Bible appear to agree with this theology, consistently describing the cause of the Flood as happening in response to “all flesh” having become “corrupted, both man and beast.”
• While I believe this theory has merit, I want to propose an alternative or additional reasoning for this activity in the next entry.

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• Updated December 31, 2009
• Ancient Earth Carvings Found in Amazon Jungle
• FOXNews.com
• Environmentalists bemoan the clearcutting of the Amazon rainforests. But an unexpected bonus has turned up:
• Beneath cleared jungle archaeologists are uncovering mysterious geometric designs carved into the earth. 
• With the help of satellite imagery from Google Earth, Brazilian archaeologists are finding more and more of the earth carvings, called geoglyphs, in the Amazon rainforest. 
•  

  Flickr/Diego Gurgel

   

  Difficult to see from the ground, geoglyphs like this one often go unnnoticed. Now, thanks to the ready availability of satellite imaging, many are being uncovered.
• According to a story on environmental blog TreeHugger,
• The geoglyphs are believed to have been sculpted by ancient people from the Amazon region around 700 years ago, though their purpose is still unknown.
• So far, nearly 300 geoglyphs have been identified, but with advances in satellite imaging — and increased clearing of the jungle coverage — scientists are hoping to discover many more of these strange, geometric designs.
• His latest discovery consists of five sets of geometric shapes, with circles, squares and lines that measures more than a mile from one extreme to another.

  • A continuation of the Nazca Lines on the continent of South America?
  Add Sticky Note
• The Web site cites leading geoglyph scientist Alceu Ranzi.
• Ranzi explained that the geoglyphs are hard to locate from the ground; the advent of Google Earth and ready access to satellite data has greatly facilitated his task. 
• "You do not see them in the field. There is a difference in the color of grass, but it is very thin. If there were no satellite images, there would be no possibility [of making these new discoveries]."
• For more on this discovery, read the full story on TreeHugger.com.

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• Friday, 1 January 2010
• DNA analysed from early European
• By Paul Rincon       
      Science reporter, BBC News 
• Scientists have analysed DNA extracted from the remains of a 30,000-year-old European hunter-gatherer.
• Studying the DNA of long-dead humans can open up a window into the evolution of our species (Homo sapiens).
• But previous studies of this kind have been hampered by scientists' inability to distinguish between the ancient human DNA and modern contamination.
• In Current Biology journal, a German-Russian team details how it was possible to overcome this hurdle.
•  

  The DNA comes from the skeleton of a male in his twenties
• Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues used the latest DNA sequencing techniques to study genetic information from human remains unearthed in 1954 at Kostenki, Russia.
• Excavations at Kostenki, on the banks of the river Don in southern Russia, have yielded large concentrations of archaeological finds from the Palaeolithic (roughly 40,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago). Some of the finds date back as far as 45,000 years.
• The DNA analysed in this study comes from a male aged 20-25 who was deliberately buried in an oval pit some 30,000 years ago.
• Known as the Markina Gora skeleton, it was found lying in a crouched position with fists reaching upwards and a face orientated down towards the dirt.
• The bones were covered in a pigment called red ochre, thought to have been used in prehistoric funeral rites.
• The type of DNA extracted and analysed is that stored in mitochondria - the "powerhouses" of cells.
• This mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring, providing a unique record of maternal inheritance.
• Using technology pioneered in the study of DNA from Neanderthal bones, they were able to distinguish between ancient genetic material from the Kostenki male and contamination from modern people who handled the bones, or whose DNA reached the remains by some other means.
• The new approach, developed by Professor Paabo and his colleagues,
• exploits three features which tend to distinguish ancient DNA from modern contamination.
• One of these is size; fragments of ancient DNA are often shorter than those from modern sources.
• Previous ancient DNA studies used the widespread polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology. PCR amplifies a few pieces of genetic material, generating thousands to millions of copies of a sequence.
• A second characteristic of ancient DNA was its tendency to show particular changes, or mutations, in the genetic sequence at the ends of DNA molecules.
•  

  The ancient skeleton was unearthed in 1954 at Kostenki in Russia (Courtesy of Vladimir Gorodnyanskiy)
• A third feature was a characteristic breakage of molecules at particular positions in the DNA strand.
• Trust issues

• The apparent ease with which modern DNA can infiltrate ancient remains has led many researchers to doubt even those studies employing the most rigorous methods to weed out contamination by modern genetic material.

  "The ironic thing is that our group has been one of those that raised this issue," Professor Paabo told BBC News.
• "To take animal studies on cave bears, for example, if we use PCR primers specific for human DNA on cave bear bones, we can retrieve modern human DNA on almost every one. That has made me think: 'how can I trust anything on this'."
• Using the new techniques, the researchers were able to sequence the entire mitochondrial genome of the Markina Gora individual.
• Future studies like the one in Current Biology could help shed light on whether the humans living in Europe 30,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of modern populations or whether they were replaced by immigrants who introduced farming to the continent several thousand years ago.

•  <!-- S IIMA -->   

  Large concentrations of Palaeolithic finds have come from Kostenki
• The modern gene pool contains a wide variety of mtDNA lineages.
• Studying these maternal lineages provides scientists with clues to the origins and histories of human populations.
• Scientists look for known genetic signatures in order to classify an individual's mtDNA into different types, or "haplogroups".
• These haplogroups represent major branches on the family tree of Homo sapiens.
• Early arrival
• The researchers were able to assign the Kostenki individual to haplogroup "U2", which is relatively uncommon among modern populations.
• U2 appears to be scattered at low frequencies in populations from South and Western Asia, Europe and North Africa.
• Despite its rarity, the very presence of this haplogroup in today's Europeans suggests some continuity between Palaeolithic hunters and the continent's present-day inhabitants, argue the authors of the latest study.
• U2, along with closely related haplogroups such as U5, are among those which could plausibly have arrived in Europe during the Palaeolithic.
• Geneticists use well-established techniques to "date" particular genetic events, such as when a haplogroup first diversified.
• The "U" branch (comprising haplogroups U1, U2, U3 and so on) appears to be more ancient than many other genetic lineages found in Europe.
• A recent study found a very high percentage of U types in the skeletal remains of ancient hunter-gatherers from Central Europe compared with later farming immigrants and modern people from the region.
• Meanwhile, an analysis last year of mtDNA from 28,000-year-old remains unearthed at Paglicci Cave in Italy showed this individual belonged to haplogroup "H" - the most common type found in modern Europeans.

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• Subterranean secrets of our lost giants
• December 29, 2009
• AS you drive from Perth down to your favourite Margaret River winery, you'll pass close to the place where palaeontologist Gavin Prideaux and his team from Adelaide's Flinders University are brushing and scraping their way towards scientific discovery.
• You won't notice them, though. They're deep below the surface in a network of secret caves known to only a handful of people.
• Small openings lead into vast limestone caverns filled with dazzling stalagmites and stalactites.

• But it's not these stunning formations the scientists have come to see.

  They're here to look at very old bones, the bones of Australia's large beasts that disappeared thousands of years ago.
• These creatures were big. Wombats as big your fridge lying on its side, kangaroos standing more than 2m tall, a goanna called Megalania that could eat you for lunch, and a very nasty piece of work called Thylacoleo carnifex or the marsupial lion.
• Built like a leopard on steroids, Thylacoleo was the apex carnivore in the group. He could easily make a meal of most others by dropping from trees and stabbing them in the neck with his huge front teeth, then slicing them open with his razor-sharp thumb claw.
• This group of beasts is known as Australia's megafauna and they walked this land for at least a million years.
• Scientists have been picking up their bones for more than a century.
• Perhaps the most exciting find was a complete Thylacoleo skeleton discovered deep in a remote cave on the Nullarbor in 2002.
• At the time, this set of bones created quite a stir within the world scientific community.
• About 400,000 years earlier the unfortunate creature fell into the cavern through a small hole. Unable to climb out, it wandered aimlessly until it died.
• As time passed the animal's flesh melted away leaving a complete set of bones. For palaeontologists, who normally measure their finds in fragments of bone, this was the holy grail of Thylacoleo skeletons.
• For years a debate has raged over how and when our megafauna became extinct.
• Was a climatic event responsible? Did something happen to their food source or did disease sweep across the country and wipe them out? Perhaps they were hunted to extinction.
• In the northern hemisphere, mammoth remains have been found with the scars of hunting, but no Australian megafauna bones have shown evidence of being killed by humans.

• In the Margaret River cave, Prideaux is slowly removing fragments of bone from layers

  of sediment.
• My first challenge is climbing down to where the team is working. Tight Entrance Cave, as one of these holes is known, is aptly named. You can walk within touching distance of its mouth and be unaware of it.
• Picture a roundish rock chimney with an assortment of jagged protrusions around its sides disappearing into the ground in front of you. It's about 7m deep and just a little wider than the average human body.
• "Just hang on to the rope and jam your body against the wall as you go down, and always make sure you've got at least one foot and one hand well anchored before you make your next move; we don't want any accidents," the scientists tell me. That is just the first part of the climb, and I am well bruised and scratched by the time I drop into the small ante-room at the bottom.
• From there we crawl into a tunnel that is just big enough to squeeze through if you suck in your stomach and hold your breath. With my face centimetres from the dirt, I am starting to realise why the other guys are wearing dust masks.
• It is pitch black by this time, too, of course.

• After a while it gets wider and we can even stand.

  Almost down and there is just one last tricky manoeuvre: the human bridge.
• This is where we straddle a crevasse by jamming our back against one wall, then stretching our legs across to the wall on the other side.
• Below us is a drop of several metres into a tight wedge of rock. The trick is to shuffle horizontally across to a small ledge, then drop on to flat ground.

• It's not the easiest thing to do, but the palaeontologists have a clever trick to make it even more challenging. We are carrying a bunch of equipment into the cave and the only way to get it across this section is to form a chain of bridges, then pass it from person to person.

  And that is it. We are down. A quick stroll around a big rock and the cavern opens up in front of us.
• All this exercise is about trying to determine why Australia's megafauna became extinct. Prideaux thinks he's getting close to the answer.
• Thousands of years ago it was possible for agile animals looking for somewhere to shelter to climb into this cavern through surface openings. Larger creatures no doubt also became trapped here after falling through holes in the roof that have long since closed.
• Through theaeons the actions of water and gravity changed the cave structure many times and the activity of creatures using the cave spread the dirt that washed and blew in through the openings.
• As layers of silt built up, the bones scattered on the floor were covered by dirt and fresh layers of bone were deposited on top of them. It's from these layers of silt and bone that a story is beginning to emerge.
• At the centre is a pit about 3m by 4m and the layers of silt can be seen clearly on its walls.

• Prideaux is slowly brushing away dirt from a jaw bone that's revealing itself at the bottom of the pit. "Its a short-faced kangaroo, Procoptodon browneorum; we've had a few of them so far,"

  he says.
• At the moment they're excavating layers of silt dating back about 80,000 years.
• There are more bone fragments here than in layers closer to the top of the sediment pile, which of course makes sense because megafauna had become extinct by the time the upper layers accumulated.
• The scientists can tell the age of each fragment of bone by dating the sand and pieces of charcoal that surround it.
• What is unique about Tight Entrance Cave is the long period of history that can be examined here and, in particular, the clarity of information available in the more recent layers.
• Those layers were produced in the past 60,000 years, the period during which megafauna remains disappeared from the silt layers.
• Much of the jigsaw the palaeontologists are trying to tease apart involves the effect of climate on the landscape and how animals living there were affected by it.
• The remains of small animals are in abundance in this cave and that's good news because these creatures have more specific habitat requirements, making them more sensitive to changes in the environment and more accurate indicators of events that took place.

• What Prideaux and his team are particularly excited about are the fragments of charcoal that begin to appear in the more recent layers.

  It's these remnants of ancient forest fires washed into the cave that may be the key to proving exactly how and when Australia's megafauna became extinct in southwest Western Australia.
• The mystery Prideaux is trying to unravel is whether these forest fires were the result of increased aridity or associated with the arrival of humans.
• One theory on the extinction of megafauna put forward by scientists as long ago as 1968 suggests repetitive firestick farming by early Aborigines - the practice of regularly burning the landscape to promote a grassy understorey - may have played a large role in the disappearance of these creatures.
• You'd think bone would be easy to identify but, trust me, when it's 100,000 years old it's not that simple and I regularly need to ask for help.
• Prideaux believes the story being revealed in the silt layers of Tight Entrance Cave may be the missing link in the explanation of why the megafauna disappeared.
• He's particularly interested in climatic changes that occurred before and at about the time humans arrived on the Australian continent.
• He believes there may be enough evidence in Tight Entrance Cave to gauge the extent to which early Australians disturbed the megafauna's habitat.
• For his conclusions to gain the acceptance of the scientific community, the work must first face the scrutiny of his peers.
• During the next few months the significant samples will be dated using the most advanced technology.

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