Wasn’t sure where to put this, in General Discussion or religion. Or to post at all. It seems that to some people anything old is religious. I like learning about our past. Archaeology and antiquity is quite interesting to me. Now there seems to be enough people working in the fields that new discoveries are made just about weekly. I study from datum lines or points. And boy to they keep changing on a monthly bases now.
In the radar the last several months has been the inter breeding of Neanderthals and modern humans brought about by a DNA report several months back. Now the reports coming from top scientist only covers what direct evidence finds. No room for speculation or personal opinions. Which is probably good, do the fact that a lot of old science included a lot of that, and most turned out to be wrong.
In the news today http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/01/28/ancient-partial-skull-from-israeli-cave-linked-to-migration-humans-from-africa/ is a skull from Israel that claims to be from a modern human 55,000 years ago. The thinking is the interbreeding took place 50,000 to 60,000 years ago in that area.
The part that they don’t cover is why. DNA put man on the extinction list 71,000 years ago. It is agreed that modern humans were from 500 to 5,000 left on earth. This was because of Mt. Toba, the super volcano that erupted and sent the earth into a little ice age. Many animal spices became extinct at the time. So, yes the interbreeding seems reasonable to me at that time.
There are two points that I would like to bring up. First is that the more they dig the more they find. Just look at Israel over the last forty years. They just keep going further back in time. I remember when finds in Israel of 7,000 years were not believable. Now as soon as something is found in Europe or Africa, Israel goes out and digs up something older. Just look at the January issue of National Geographic. Israel has human and animal figures going back 265,000 years.
Where are we going to be at in the next forty years, or the next ten years even, at the rate we are moving now?
The second part is where the white skinned, blond hair and blue eyed people come from? The graves do not show Northern Europe as we have been told. How far back in time do they go? So far, not far enough to have evolved.
But the modern humans are not alone. The same with dog, horses, cows, and all the vegetables, fruit, grains and nuts. Along with just about everything else we use today that isn’t wild. They seem to have been breed and selective grown for mankind in what could be called the Age of Domestication.
Was the Age of Domestication mostly before Mt. Toba? And do to mankind’s almost extinction, was most of that knowledge lost and mankind set backwards in technology by thousands of years? Did the original mankind go extinct in 71K BC and only some of the domesticated humans survived?
All these questions should be answered over the next decade. Boy, this should be fun to watch as it unravels the true history of our past is dug up.
I currently subscribe to Archaeology; World Archaeology; Biblical Archaeology Review; American Archaeology as well as National Geographic. You point is right. Remember we have only been investigating the world "scientifically for the last 300 years or so, we still have an amazing amount to learn. We are kind of like Noah when he first got off the ark. :lol: :roll:
I an no serious student of this stuff but I find it very interesting. I saw something about a recent find of cave paintings, found in Asia, dating way back before the more famous one in Europe.