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Prior to the watery traces that Dr. John Osgood has identified in Iraq and the Middle East, Anatolia, Sinai and Egypt - all pointing to, for him, the great Genesis Flood {See Part One: http://www.academia.edu/15952464/Dr._John_Osgood_s_Traces_of_the_Genesis_Noachic_Flood} - these regions must have been, in my opinion, completely overwhelmed by a ‘Sea’ that had, as it eventually retreated, left this substantial wetness. In Part Two (i), but especially (ii), I shall endeavour to find this ‘Sea’ in the geologico-archaeological record.
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Introduction
Whereas conventionally-minded (often evolutionary-minded) geologists, palaeontologists, archaeologists and historians tend to adhere rigidly to an ‘Indian file’, or ‘chest-of-drawers’, kind of linear arrangement - with little or no overlap amidst their neatly filed compartments - revisionist scholars on the other hand, such as Dr. John Osgood, have found that such an arrangement does not always reflect the testimony of the received data, and hence can be quite artificial.
The sciences of physics, astronomy and cosmology could also be thrown in here.
I regard all of this as the result of a Kantian type approach to reality, whether consciously or subconsciously: a super-imposition upon nature, history, archaeology, metaphysics, and so on, of pre-conceived (a priori) mental constructs (laws, theories, mathematics and paradigms), rather than an objective study of reality as it is (Immanuel Kant’s Ding an sich).
For a proper explanation of this, I direct the serious reader to Dr. Gavin Ardley’s supreme book on the philosophy of science:
Aquinas and Kant: the foundations of the modern sciences
This excellent book can be read at, for instance:
The common person, being more sensible apparently than many a would-be philosopher, rightly believes that our senses enable us to perceive and experience reality. However, according to Kant’s pessimistic epistemology (or theory of knowledge), the noumena, or the basic realities behind all sensory experience, are not knowable, cannot be perceived.
If there are such judgments, then how are they possible? Kant's answer: the rationalists are right in saying that we can know about things in the world with certainty; and the empiricists are right in saying that such knowledge cannot be limited merely to truths by definition nor can it be provided by experience. Instead, we know about the world insofar as we experience it according to the unchanging and universally shared structure of mind. All rational beings think the world in terms of space, time, and categories such as cause and effect, substance, unity, plurality, necessity, possibility, and reality. That is, whenever we think about anything, we have to think about it in certain ways (for example, as having causes, as existing or not existing, as being one thing or many things, as being real or imaginary, as being something that has to exist or doesn't have to exist), not because that is the way the world is, but rather because that is the way that our minds order experience. There can be no knowledge without sensation, but sense data cannot alone provide knowledge either.
We can be said to know things about the world, then, not because we somehow step outside of our minds to compare what we experience with some reality outside of it, but rather because the world we know is always already organized according to a certain fixed (innate) pattern that is the mind. Knowledge is possible because it is about how things appear to us, not about how things are in themselves. Reason provides the structure or form of what we know, the senses provide the content.
[End of quote]
The common person would therefore be wrong according at least to Kantianism’s “fixed (innate) pattern that is in the mind” determines “the world we know” and how it is organised. Now, is not this very Kantian a priori super-imposition upon reality exactly how Kant’s compatriot, Eduard Meyer, went about mathematico-astronomically re-organising Egyptian chronology? And with such disastrous results for history, archaeology and Bible correlations.
Un-Dumbing Down the Ages
(i) The Archaeological Ages
Meyer’s chronological re-arrangement of ancient Egypt in ‘single file’ dynasties, stretching right back to 4240 BC, was no more realistic than was Kant’s epistemology. And, though current Egyptology now has Egyptian dynastic history commencing in c. 3100 BC, more than a millennium later than Meyer had it, the latter’s artificial structure, based on Sirius (Sothic), is still the Procrustean bed upon which the tortured system is laid out.
See e.g. my:
The Fall of the Sothic Theory: Egyptian Chronology Revisited
For a far more realistic starting point for dynastic Egypt, more than a millennium later than 3100 BC, and one which also accommodates the biblical data and archaeology, see:
Dr. W.F. Albright’s Game-Changing Chronological Shift
From this more sure standpoint, one can now proceed to engender a far more satisfactory alignment of Egyptian dynastic history with Syro-Mesopotamia and the Middle East (including biblical history), and also with the West.
Revisionists have already done a great deal of positive work in these various areas, a recent contribution of my own being the following five-part series:
Bible Bending Pharaonic Egypt. Part One: Abraham to Exodus.
This is an archaeologically-based historico-biblical span of more than a millennium.
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Brief Excursus on excessive dates, numbers, distances:
Historico-Archaeological Ages
Eduard Meyer had been entirely confident about his date of 4240 BC, calling it erste sichere Datum (or ‘first sure date’).
Sadly, though not surprisingly, it turned out to be more of a ‘blind date’.
Stone Ages
But, if we think that 4240 BC sounds like a long way back in time, just wait until the next section (ii), when we are hurtled back as far as, supposedly, 2 million BC.
Geological Ages
And it gets even worse than that. In Part Two (ii) I shall try to come to grips with (though only in a very general sort of fashion) the Geological (and corresponding Ice) Ages. We now find ourselves as far back as some 4 billion years.
Astronomical Ages
Still small change compared to the Big Banging it back for about 14 billion years. {For a far more realistic view of these matters, I would refer readers to: http://www.fixedearth.com/subject-areas.html though not necessarily all details}.
I personally find all of this quite ridiculous. No one can realistically deal in numbers (and presumed astronomical distances) so large as these. Conspiratorial? Deceptive? Some of it may well be (see ‘fixed earth’ site), whilst in other cases it may be simply that Kantian like inability to separate fantasy from reality.
Anyway, what is apparent is that new and more reasonable perspectives are needed along the lines of the above-mentioned rigorous historical revisionism.
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(ii) The Stone Ages
As we read in Part One, Dr. John Osgood has endeavoured to provide what he has called:
A Better Model for the Stone Age
and (Part Two):
In Part One, Osgood, firstly rejecting the following rigorous (set in stone as it is) standard Stone Ages sequence given as follows:
The evolutionary model
The stone age is here defined as that period of human history prior to the end of the Chalcolithic period in the Middle East.
The evolutionary chronology begins at approximately 2,000,000 years B.C., a date with which the majority would agree, although some dissent could be registered. This begins the Paleolithic period, which can be subdivided into Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic:-
Lower Paleolithic 2,000,000 - 80,000 B.C.
Middle Paleolithic 80,000 - 30,000 B.C.
Upper Paleolithic 30,000 - 10,000 B.C.
Next comes the Mesolithic for which varying terms are used, namely, Epipaleolithic, Mesolithic and Protoneolithic. The broad category of the Mesolithic occupies the time between 10,000 and 8,000 B.C. Approximately 8,000 B.C. is the date given for the Neolithic period which extends up to approximately 5,000 B.C. In the Levant, the Neolithic has been divided into four periods, labelled 1 to 4. At 5,000 B.C., and extending onwards until 3,000 B.C. we come to the Chalcolithic or the copper stone age, with its sub-divisions varying according to the regions [,]
then proceeds with his pursuit of a model that he thinks better fits the data. Thus:
Application to data.
1. Halaf-Neolithic 4.
In 1982, under the title 'A Four-Stage Sequence for the Levantine Neolithic', Andrew M.T. Moore presented evidence to show that the fourth stage of the Syrian Neolithic was in fact usurped by the Halaf Chalcolithic culture of Northern Mesopotamia, and that this particular Chalcolithic culture was contemporary with the Neolithic IV of Palestine and Lebanon.5:25
Figure 5. Diagram showing compatability of a sertial and parallel arrangement (mushroom effect) of Mesopotamian Chalcolithic cultures.
This was very significant, especially as the phase of Halaf culture so embodied was a late phase of the Halaf Chalcolithic culture of Mesopotamia, implying some degree of contemporaneity of the earlier part of Chalcolithic Mesopotamia with the early part of the Neolithic of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, as illustrated in Figure 6.
This finding was not a theory but a fact, slowly and very cautiously realized, but devastating in its effect upon the presently held developmental history of the ancient world. This being the case, and bearing in mind the impossibility of absolute dating by any scientific means despite the claims to the contrary, the door is opened very wide for the possible acceptance of the complete contemporaneity of the whole of the Chalcolithic of Mesopotamia with the whole of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Palestine. (The last period of the Chalcolithic of Palestine is seen to be contemporary with the last Chalcolithic period of Mesopotamia.)
Figure 6. Table illustrating contemporaneity of Palistine, Lebanon, Syria, Mesopotamia.
Cultures of Mesopotamia seem to come into life fully developed, at least in so far as southern Mesopotamia is concerned. Evidence for the Neolithic is very scanty in that part of the country between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, yet the further we go out from this centre, whether it be into Palestine or up into the Zagros Mountains, we come to apparently increasing 'primitiveness' of cultural type, a condition that at once may be seen to be pictured in the pond ripple effect previously discussed. What we need to determine, however, is the following:
a. whether hard evidence above and beyond the previously developed data can be brought to bear to show the contemporaneity of other periods not yet discussed,
b. whether the strata levels in which some of these supposed primitive cultures are found are consistent with short periods of time,
c. whether a mechanism is available for rapid build-up at times of rather deep strata layers, and
d. whether we stand on solid scientific ground to back such interpretation of short periods rather than the long periods of time presently proposed.
This problem is most acute when we come to the caves of Palestine and the Zagros Mountains, which show great evidence of deep burying of artifactual material within those cave sites. Here is a situation that has given the evolutionists some courage to assume long periods of time. This, however, need not be the case.
Let us then look for this evidence, examine it, and then attempt to re-write the history of the stone age period in terms of the known biblical chronology.
This author is not the only one who has suggested the possibility of contemporary cultures for some of the periods previously thought to be serial in Mesopotamia. Joan Oates raised this very possibility with regard to some of the early Chalcolithic cultures of Mesopotamia:
‘Although our present evidence is insufficient, it seems to suggest that Hassuna preceded Samarra (whether or not the latter is considered a separate assemblage) throughout Assyria and in the Samarra area, but we must not lose sight of the possibility that Hassuna, Samarra, and Halaf may all prove to be local and perhaps even contemporary adaptations.’6(emphasis ours)
2. Halaf Polychrome Ubaid II, Samarra.
There is yet more evidence to suggest many of these cultures were contemporary, particularly with regard to the Chalcolithic of Mesopotamia. For instance, Jasim7 presents evidence from the excavations at Tel Abada to show that this was in fact the case with regard to Ubaid II, Samarra and Halaf. The Halaf here, of course, is the Polychrome culture of late Halaf and is the same culture that is known to have penetrated Syria to replace the Neolithic IV there.5
So we can see a contemporaneity of Samarra, Ubaid II, Halaf (late) and Neolithic IV of Palestine. This is hard evidence from excavations that cannot be lightly dismissed and almost certainly speaks of contemporary cultures (Figure 7).
The biblical model of contemporary cultures differing in their material culture, and thus allowing Neolithic and Chalcolithic type cultures to co-exist, is also a significant model to explain the great difficulties surrounding the city of Jericho.
3. Jericho Neolithic - Ghassul Chalcolithic.
Robert North8 discusses an apparent 300-year gap at Jericho between the Proto-Urban and Early Bronze cultures. The Proto-Urban is described by different investigators in different terms, by some as Late Neolithic, by others as Chalcolithic of various stages. Certain features of Jericho culture during the Proto Urban or Level VIII (Garstang) reflects Chalcolithic, related to the Chalcolithic at Ghassul. However, the features are few enough to allow the majority of excavators to feel that the Jericho Proto Urban culture is still Neolithic in type, and so a gap of some 300 years, resulting from the old evolutionary scale used, has to be inserted between the end of Proto-Urban and Early Bronze I in Jericho, not so much on solid evidence of such a gap, but simply because of the rigid evolutionary terminology. The biblical model, however, not only shortens the time of the necessary gap, if such ever occurred, but also allows a still conservative Neolithic type of culture in Jericho to subsist beside a progressive Chalcolithic culture across the Jordan at Ghassul.
The possibility of contemporaneity was slightly broached by Robert North when he says:
‘From the very start, however, certain remote or rare similarities to Ghassul in the Pre-bronze Sultan materials have been noticed, always leaving open the chance that Ghassul could be a contemporaneous local variation due to immigrants.’8:66
He finishes with the statement:
‘In any case Ghassul-Jericho comparison confronts us with an enigma still unsolved despite persistent efforts: in face of which there is need of bold innovating scientific hypotheses.’8:66
The biblical model is, in fact, the only reasonable 'bold innovating scientific hypothesis' that will satisfy the demands of this region. I conclude that it is reasonable to suppose that there was no considerable gap between Proto-Urban at Jericho and Early Bronze I, but rather that a conservative Jericho culture did in fact subsist beside a progressing Chalcolithic Ghassul culture across the Jordan River, with a different people in a different place, but at the same time.
The problem with such data as this is that the rigid evolutionary terminology does not facilitate easy bending to allow its adherents freedom to see such cultures as Neolithic and Chalcolithic as contemporary.
We find then, sufficient evidence to hold in question the rigid evolutionary sequential framework of Neolithic to Chalcolithic that has been held for so long. Evidence has been presented to show that there is contemporaneity of previously claimed sequential Chalcolithic periods, and also contemporaneity between Chalcolithic periods on one hand and Neolithic on the other, certainly in Syria, and possibly also in Jericho and the Jordan Valley. If such is the case, then we have reason to call into question the long time periods and the sequential arrangement of other cultures from Paleolithic right through to the end of the Chalcolithic in the whole of the Middle East. It is much more reasonable to propose a model embracing the 'pond ripple' and 'mushroom effect' (referred to above) against the background of the biblical chronology, which even to this day remains the only written record of claimed history of this period.
[End of quotes]
One of my conclusions, based on Drs. Osgood and Albright (e.g. the “Dr. W. F. Albright’s” article referred to at the beginning), would have the Stone Age’s Late Chalcolithic period contemporaneous with a highly sophisticated Akkadian civilisation in Syro-Mesopotamia. And I believe that this radical (in conventional terms) contemporaneous alignment of eras formerly considered to have been far separated the one from the other according to the typical ‘Indian file’ sequence, will be necessary also for the Geological Ages, so that eventually it may also be said of these:
”This finding was not a theory but a fact, slowly and very cautiously realized, but devastating in its effect upon the presently held developmental history [and pre-history] of the ancient world”.
Dr. John Osgood.
