Thread: Creationist Archaeology

Some off topic posts moved from the History subforum.
-Biologista

Stonehenge predates druids by a great deal. The theory is that it was (mostly) built somewhere between 3000 and 2000 BC. That means it was up and gathering moss before the Greeks ever marched on Troy. Long before Rome was a city. Long before there even Greek tribes

possible. i, for one, think it may date back to the pre-flood civilization (possibly like th esphynx) but i do not want to turn this into a religious discussion.

We can't simply dismiss all the legends associated with Stonehenge, there are too many coincidences. It’s a fact that there are exotic stones at Stonehenge (the bluestones) that came from the west; nobody in the middle ages could have known this. Also not enough is made of the fact that some of the bluestones re-used in the surviving arrays were once part of an earlier lintelled structure, and one that may have stood somewhere other than Stonehenge (the spacing of the early Q and R holes would not accommodate them as ‘trilithon structures’).

since we know of ancient trade, it is not impossible for the ancient world to learn of the blue stones on one of their voyages and traded for them.

As early as the 17th century Aylett Sammes suggested that the knowledge to build Stonehenge may have come from the east, for which we can say meant to some ‘Africa’.

i have yet to read anything that says 'the east' refers to africa. usually it meant mesopotamia, persia and that area of the globe.

In fact, it mostly predates writing and literacy

considering that we have not discovered all the books and writings of the ancient world, i would say this is an assumption that should not be made.

That would be consistent. Assuming you take a literal reading of the genesis story and extrapolate some dates from it. And ignore the last 100 years of geological science.

former-- i do
latter- consider the source.

The history of writing is pretty well known, all things considered. It seems to have appeared in its earliest form about 4000 BC ish

all i am saying that that is a possibility nothing more.

But most of the world was illiterate when Stonehenge was being built

i will disagree with that. it is a gross assumption.

I'd look to Egypt. Egypt had the science and mathematics necessary to construct Stonehenge. Really they were about the only major player at the time.

it is quite possible that the egyptians got their knowledge from the chaldeans or mesopotamians, they were around before the egyptians, along with the sumerians.

And originally Stonehenge was something of a ceremonial tomb, so there are enough similarities that it would be a good basis for an historical fiction type story.

i would disagree with that as well. it is pretty hard to say what it was since we have no writings about it and we do not know who really built the thing.

Stonehenge was (probably) built without literacy. Probably with no tools more sophisticated than a compass and straight edge

Nasa sent men to the moon on a slide ruler. are you going to call them illiterate?

without writing or literacy or pretty much any technology at all. We're literally talking stone age people.

again you rely on the assumption and you cannot state that they were stone aged people. we have stone age people alive today, are you going to claim that america is a stone age nation?

assumptions always lead a person in the wrong direction. it is better to say 'i don't know' than to make all sorts of leaps to conclusions without real evidence.

ideas that are mostly moot with modern technology, so we tend to overlook them.

really?? the greeks had an ancient 'computer' and if it weren't for a shipwreck we would not have known about it. how much ancient technology do we not know about?

the first excavator of Thera, Martinos sp...(forget how to spell his name) was walking along the ancient road he had uncovered and his foot kicked something in the dirt. it was a piece of glass that would have fit into a telescope yet NO telescope was ever used during the excavations and had to come from the buried town. he concluded that if santorini had not exploded, we may have been in the star wars age by now.

we have countless records of hot and cold running water, sewer systems, flush toilets and so on,we do not know all that they had back then.

There is writing all over the Apollo missions. It's lousy with words and symbols. Therefore I would conclude that NASA was literate. Meaning that they knew how to read and write.

let's wait 3-5,000 years and see if you can make the same comments.

It seems to me that you read "illiterate" as meaning "stupid". This is the modern usage of the term, so I guess it's a forgivable mistake. When I use "illiterate", I mean "not possessing the knowledge of writing". People of Stonehenge had to communicate mouth to ear. Or maybe using pictures.

i know what you meant, just because someone disagrees with you does it mean they do not know anything.

They had no metal tools. There are no tool marks consistent with anything but stone. In archeology, the science has to be: absence of evidence is evidence of absence. This allows us to make meaningful extrapolations.

sorry but we do not know this and you would be wrong in your perversion of Kitchen's adage.

i have to agree with Kojax on his post.

Well you likened it to NASA using slide rulers and so would I call them illiterate. If you know what I meant then that example is silly.

no, it is the right example as you are not thinking things through. the majority of work for the oon launch was done on material that is easily destroyed and if all you found was a slide ruler in the building then you would assume that the people were illiterate or just communicated in signs.

What do you mean we do not know this? You mean the interpretation of tool marks on the stones is incorrect? That's a pretty bold statement. It would put you at odds with the majority of modern archeological scholarship.

Is that a position you want to be in? I tend to side with the smart people who dedicate their lives to studying something.

interpretation is subjective, not something that is concrete enough to fall back on to support one's point of view.

i do not know if any of you have ever been in construction or not but there id a process that raw materials go through which cover up much of the evidence of the tools used in that process.

you are taking limited evidence and applying it generally without knowing the process used and that is misleading you.

Now I'm confused. Are you saying archaeologists believe they cut the stones without tools? Maybe they found them that way and didn't need to cut them?

if you are talking to me, the answer would be 'no'. what i am saying is that the archaologist does not have enough knowledge of everyday life to be making the determinations or interpretations that they are making.

one reason i can refute is. finkelstein is because he does NOT know the difference between new construction and renovation. his down dating is off just on that point alone.

It seems like a lot of what shades our view of history is the presence or absence of a desire to believe that human beings can do stuff without technology. Maybe it's how much we value technology. For me, the possibility is that the ancients were constantly discovering and then forgetting things.

For you, maybe it's the possibility that they were able to work around their technological limitations, or that sheer determination and strength in numbers was sufficient to overcome all obstacles

what i am saying, and remember i am agreeing with you so far, is that we have too limited information and assumptions should NOt play a role here.

Again, there seems to be some disconnect in what you're thinking and what's actually being said or what truly is. "Stone age" is a general term that refers to a period in human history in which lithic technology was dominant and metal was yet to be introduced. There are no cultures currently on the planet where metal has not been introduced. Lithics are still used in several cultures, but they are hardly referred to as "stone age." When he said "literally stone age," what he meant was one of the periods in human history, in the case of Stonehenge, it was the Mesolithic which just pre-dates it (a "stone age"). Right around the time of Stonehenge is the Bronze Age in Norther Europe, including Britain and the Salisbury Plain where the henge is.

it is best that you stop assuming and try to comprehend reality. societies do not advance at that same rate and there was no such thing as 'the stone age' but secularist just blindly adopted the norwegian museum's division and have never corrected their error.

metalwork was done from the beginning of time and did not wait till 'the next stage'.

but realistically there's little left to surprise archaeologists. There's no reason to expect iron devices in Mesolithic periods, for instance. And, while the Antikythera mechanism is unique and fascinating, it's hardly the type of "technology" that is inconsistent with the rest of Greek technology. We already knew they had a good grasp of astronomy at the time it was in use (200-100 BCE), and we knew they understood how to work metal in very precise ways by this time.

you would be surprised since they have very incomplete information from the past and you show a very closed mindset.

I call bullshit on that. The archaeologist you're speaking of is Spyridon Marinatos and I doubt the "glass that would have fit into a telescope" claim. I challenge you to cite the source of this.

call what you want but i do not lie. i did the story from memory asi have read a lot on thera and may have confused a couple details but the reference is found here:

Return To Sodom and Gomorrah by Charles Pellgrino, Avon Books, 1994 pgs. 204-6.

Now Pellegrino has lost a lot of credibility since writing that book especially from his association with simca Jacobovicia and the Jesus Tomb debacle so i doubt you will accept the reference. My words of 'the star wars era' came from the words 'and might interstellar voyages be something we were actually doing today,...pg. 205.

What, precisely, is this statement supposed to suggest? Of course we "do not know all that they had back then" or there wouldn't still be archaeologists (real ones like me, by the way).

insults get you no where.

It would seem that *my* comprehension and grasp of reality isn't in question if you think metalwork "was done from the beginning of time." If you continue with this sort of nonsense, I'm going to move your posts from this academic forum to the trash

really... so it is okay for you to assume and theorize without any evidence but i am not allowed to make statements about the past using the same method-- no evidence?

Of course, if you'd like to cite some evidence to back this very, very wild and irrational claim, feel free to do so. But I will not tolerate nonsense in a science forum. I already barely tolerate your trolling in the Religion subforum.

i am so tired of that false accusation. i am not trolling but participating in a discussion from my perspective. you seem to be the type of person who thinks freedom of speechonly applies to you and what you agree with.

feel free to join my website's discussion forum and discuss from your point of view.

you forget, you called me on one item and backed it up, so i would be careful about calling someone a troll.

That you're lying is a far more parsimonious and believable explanation than the claim that Marinatos found an ancient telescope lens where one ought not be. But I'll accept that the unknown author you cited was lying and you're just gullible enough to believe him

yup, that is what i figured you would do.

The whole "your mind is closed" fallacy is an argument typically used by significance-junkies and mystery-mongers who lack any real education in science or history or, at least, fail to apply it over their fantastic conclusions. If you want to post this sort of thing, please do so in the Pseudoscience subforum

yet i am not doing psuedo science, i am presenting what i know in a discussion. i have yet to see you refute anything and threats are not rebuttal. so if you know differenlty, why don't YOU cite sources so i can read for myself?

you prove me right about a closed mindset because you always go to the threat not the credible response.

Insult? I'm merely attempting to ascertain what, precisely, that statement of yours was supposed to suggest? You're clearly not an archaeologist nor do you have any education in archaeology so, as an actual archaeologist, I offer my expertise and knowledge to help you flesh it out.

that is an insult because you do not know me nor what education i have. (which God has provided) you say these things because i do not practice archaeology YOUR WAY or YOUR ACCEPTANCE of the secular way and you would be wrong.

why not discuss instead of pulling the superiority act?

(This time I'm just quoting so people know who I'm responding to)

sorry i was just confused by your post as i agree with what you are saying, so far.

don't know about the metal working from the "beginning of time", but my theory of history is that ancient societies had geniuses just like how we have geniuses. They probably even had Divinci's from time to time.

you all forget that i come from the Biblical perspective, it is not pseudo science but a position that has its source in the only person who saw it all. some people will dismiss it because the reference is found in the Bible but it is a legitmate argument as we find surprises inhistory all the time.

i reject the 3 age hypothesis because it was done subjectively and not objectively and we know that all societies advanced differently. this we see still today as stone age people live in irian jaya, the amazon and africa. so my point is further legitimized by modern evidence.

We don't need to assume that people of such caliber are always limited by the accomplishments of their peers. Nor should we assume that all technologies become widespread the moment they're invented (indeed we have strong evidence to suggest that they do not always do so).

right and i do not assume for my perspective allows me to be comfortable with saying 'we haven't found anything so we do not know'. i prefer honesty to conjecture as if the conjecture is found to be false i do not want to be the one embarrassed.

according to K.A.Kitchen in his book, The Bible In Its World, pgs. 10-15 approx. we dig up a very minute amount of the past and we do not have a supreme amount of evidence.

Skinwalker should know this and he should also know that there is no smoking gun out there as we all have access to the same evidence and we all know when something new is dicsovered. we cannot make assumptions because of the limited amount of information we have yet people do BECAUSE they want a nice neat little package and they like to design the past to fit what they want it to be NOT what it was.

i am sure skinwalker is very good at his work but he does take the close mindset route and probably would agree with 'the club' a lot. it is a safe position to take as developements and changes come slowly.

he may not like my perspective but thatis his choice, mineis no less legitimate than his.

didn't remember about any lack of tool marks on the stones. But now that I think about it: I'm pretty sure there aren't any tool marks. The theory I've heard is that they carved the stones by using other stones

i mentioned the tool marks idea simply because i have experience with construction and know a few things about fashioning raw materials. it is an idea that needs to be considered because it removes 'assumption' from the equation.

However: That means any evidence of the use of tools during the quarrying stage would be removed by the "stone on stone" finishing process, as you seem to be suggesting.

what i am suggesting is that one CANNOT go by just the finish work on a construction project. there is more to the process than that and one has to keep that in mind when they are examining the evidence.

Part of my theory is that perhaps the elite members of some societies might have been in possession of technologies the commoners wouldn't get for another 500 years. Finding an "Antikythera" device should then be exponentially harder than finding pottery, because few examples would ever have been made.

i will agre with you on that.

P.S. if i did not come from my perspective and believes, and it was discovered that i falsified my posts i would be discredited and banned for lying or whatever legitimate charge the owner could use there.

so understand MY position-- 1. i am either going to be kicked out because of the bias and prejudice of the owner and other members who reject the Bible eventhough i am being honest

or

2. i would be kicked out fo rlying andmisrepresenting myself.

so i will choose to be kicked out for option #1. but when you do that be honest about it. it is not that i am breaking the rules or doing something different from the rest but because you do not want a christian presence here.

i would rather go out being honest than make God out to be a liar.

Wonderful website. The discussions are essentially refusing to accept or believe that which has been clearly demonstrated and accept and believe that which has not.

your opinion but if you looked closely you would have seen a militant atheist participated and was not banned.

I'm sorry, but there is ample evidence on the emergence of metal working in the archaeological record. It is, after all metal and survives fairly well in the material record.

again i would oppose such conclsuions as oldest discovered may not be original work and it may have been done by anyone of any age from beginner to pro. too many mitigating factors involved to limit conclusions to a nice pretty compact picture.

On the flip side of this, you made a very extraordinary claim to which you completely refuse to source.

you would be wrong on both points. #1. my claim is not extrodinary as it fits well within th confines of the evidence and my beliefs. #2. i ave not refused to post the source, and am being cautious as the reference is from a book you reject and i do not want it to be used against me as in posting it i still would not have broken any rules.

#3. i reject the secular timeline and i am well within my rights to do so, regardless of their acceptance of such a preposterious idea. (i can use adjectives as well)

There is no guarantee of freedom of speech in this forum. This is a serious forum and non-scientific claims will be moved to the appropriate forum. To willfully post superstitious and pseudoscientific claims is to troll. Period.

I am well aware of this attitude and the supreme court's decision concerning free speech. to me it is interesting to guage a person's character on how they treat christian perspectives.

I'm not in the least interested. Feel free, however, to continue participating in non-scientific discussions at your own pseudoscience site.

this is where you undermine your own credibility and force me to disrespect you and other posters on this site (or any other site for that matter). your disrespect is only returned to you (remember 'do unto others...") something you allshould think about when dealing with those you dismiss.

There is, however, metal present at most levels of the site since some very intricate bronze and copper pieces are found in burials in the Avery holes or under stones.

i would challenge this conclusion based upon the fact that you do not know when that metal was deposited at the site.

This is probably due to the cost of making metal tools

this is a good example of how assumptions lead people astray and make them draw false conclusions. where is your credible references? (you asked me, so please set the example and your word of being an 'archaeologist' is not good enough)