Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Dating History (with Some Help from AronRa)

1) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Dating History (with Some Help from AronRa), 2) Creation vs. Evolution : Well, how about Mark Isaak? Too lazy to do his homework?, 3) Challenge for Fellow Young Earth Creationists, 4) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... on AronRa's very poetic An Archaeological Moment in Time (plus something on "credentialism")

That Caesar died 44 B Chr, Ides of March, is not hard to figure out.

Ides of March was noted, which year ab Urbe Condita was noted.

Some Christians have quarrelled over the year in which Christ was born, but if 753 ab Urbe Condita is not totally unanimously accepted, it is within a decade spanning that year that Christ was born.

Now, AronRa has tried to get to another date. And on this particular day, Sunday, October 23rd, 4004 BC ...

An Archaeological Moment in Time
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/OneDayinArchaeology.html


If his Atheistic community had had its roots among Orthodox or Catholics as opposed to Protestants, he might have taken instead Sunday 20th of March, 5199 BC. That being a fairly traditional Catholic date of Creation of Light on Earth. You see: he has a particular agenda for doing so: ... no one alive would have believed that this was the first day, or that the Earth had just been created that morning.

Which he would obviously have said even with 5199 BC, though he would have taken other examples.

But even the examples he did take, the date given would be pre-Flood and his examples usually post-Flood. This means that even with the examples given, he would be misdating things. Which brings us to how his examples are dated.

I

On this particular day, the Kurgan were already an ancient people. They were a Proto-Indo European culture, a link between the Dravidians, the Aryans, and the Barbarians of Europe. ... On this day, they live in several fortified towns in the steppes of what would later become Russia. ...

Or Ukraine. Whichever. Either way, it is very well to note they were not an EARLY Indoeuropean culture, but a or the PROTO-Indo-European one. Why is this important? Because, in Indo-European studies, PROTO-Indo-European is the language which has not been attested. Nobody has heard it spoken by native speakers, unlike French or English. Nobody has read texts written by native speakers who wrote, as Caesar wrote Latin or Alfred wrote West Saxon. It is reconstructed.

Its relation to the Kurgan culture is also reconstructed. As there are no writings in PROTO-Indo-European, the fact that Kurgan culture is supposed to be PROTO-Indo-European means they did not write. Or we have found no writings identified as written by them.

This means that the Kurgan culture cannot be historically dated the normal way.

A Christian could of course say as I do: it is likely to be post-Flood, it is certain to be pre-Russian, so it was somewhere between probably 2957 BC and certainly the times of Rurik who died 879 Anno Domini. It could be narrowed down especially on the latter end. But perhaps not much by the purely historical method. When we say Kurgans were not inhabited by Huns or Alans a few centuries before Rurik, we are presuming thereby also it was earlier than them. But we have too few historical informations about them to be able to make either assertion on historical grounds.

So, we are left with radiometric dating. But there may be a limit to such.

A Creationist, as I am, will hold that the Flood was 2957 BC. He will also hold that both Mammoths, probably, and most Fossils, therefore also most Dinosaur Fossils, are from the Flood. This would mean that if radiometric dating were correct, for an age so close to Creation (this is precisely, as I will try to show, where a doubt is reasonable for the main method), most Fossils were 5000 Before Present. No. With Mammoths it is often 20.000 or 40.000, sometimes only 10.000 BP. And Dinosaur bones are usually not carbon dated, BUT when they are carbon dated against this prejudice against carbon dating them, they are often 20.000 to 50.000 years old.

"Carbon age" 20.000 - 50.000 years thus equals real age 5000 years ago. What is wrong?

The main Creationist theory on why carbon dates are off is that the relevant isotope of carbon was scarcer in the very early atmosphere, 7200 years ago, or even not yet present at all. There is not one factor which keeps the Carbon 14 content in the atmosphere stable, unlike for non-radioactive gasses like Nitrogen. There are two different factors, opposed. Cosmic radiation augments carbon 14. Radioactive decay of Carbon 14 diminishes Carbon 14. Those processes are often thought to be equal by now (or roughly so) and to have been so for millions and billions of years before the origin of organic remains datable by carbon 14. But this is an assumption. We Christians, due to inerrancy of the Bible, cannot go along with it. If we are right, there may well have been a time when the radio-carbon content was building up, and was thus RADICALLY less than in present atmosphere, but the scientific calculations of ages still depart from assumption it was basically equal to now, which gives RADICALLY way too old ages.

And this is then how Kurgan culture ends up as being in place in 4004 BC.

If any remains - say a skin or a woven fabric - are from there dated to 6000 years ago, seeing that even 5000 years ago date as "20.000 - 50.000 years ago", we must expect the samples dated as "6000 years ago" to be very much younger. Before this essay in refutation of AronRa's essay ends, he will have given us, and I will have unlocked for Christians, a valuable clue as to how much.

II

On this same day, people already in Ireland were building great, megalithic tombs which now populate the Irish countryside. They also constructed cliffside fortresses, and they had brewers serving beer. Even in the "new stone age", beer and wine were already commercially available in most of the known world.

BUT they did not write. So, once again, the dating of their society is as much, for the modern scholars, a question of the Carbon 14 fallacy as the Kurgans.

Obviously I have no beef with beer and wine being there in the new stone age, since it was post-Flood (some centuries of technological loss after Tower of Babel) and hence after Noah's discovery of wine. By then, the idea of doing something similar with grain or porridge or bread would have been tempting. As my grandfather was a distiller, I have no moral beef with this either.

This was also the time when those who would become Druids began to devise plans for even bigger, more impressive structures.

  • Problem one: AronRa does not know if the Callanish and Stone Henge structures were by the religion later known as Druids.

  • Problem two, merely about clarity: does he mean these megaliths were built then (and what carbon dating procedure would indicate that, seeing that stones have no carbon in them), or that "proto-Druids" as he imagines them to be were making as yet not realised plans for later (same problem) megaliths?

  • Problem three: indeed, in absense of proven dating for the megaliths - but that is a point I could take correction on - how do we know they were not pre-Flood?


III

Obviously, Ireland and Russia/Ukraine are both speaking Indo-European languages now. There is a real linguistic unity between them, which can be attested from the at present available texts (including talk) when analysing word by word and meaning by meaning how many correspondences there are.

According to AronRa's theory (which is not his but pretty standard) or Gimbutas' theory (which is where it coes from), Kurgans were the Urheimat or part of it, of the Indo-European languages, and Ireland only got its Indo-European language much later.

This is not attested by texts from the date we are talking about.

One could imagine:

  • either Ireland or Russia or some place in between or even India or Scandinavia or the Baltic was the Urheimat, from which the language spread, as much as English around the globe has spread from England,

  • or Ireland and Russia and places in between etc. were speaking different languages which later became parts of Indo-European language unity by mutual smoothing out,

  • or Ireland and Russia both spoke each their own language and a common tongue devised to accommodate for translaters, from which situation various Indo-European language families may have emerged EITHER as common tongue strongly influenced by local ones, OR as a local one or a set of local ones (I might be especially suspecting of Germanic and Celtic here) heavily influenced by the common one.


Unlike the language history of British Isles after Latin alphabet and Ogham were available to document (and Runes too), which makes this type of guesses fairly educated about English and Welsh sharing the word "tad/dad" because of neighbourhood, or English and Irish sharing the word "aithir/father" due to Indo-European unity before recorded writing, we have no such documentation about the linguistic situation in the years leading up to this situation, including the archaeological age here discussed, though given a false date.

By the way, one favourite of mine to cast in the role of common tongue is Nesili. It is also known as Hittite. Not to be confused with Hattic, which was spoken in Hattusha before it was destroyed and later rebuilt by speakers of Nesili, and which in Nesili is called Hattili. As the Cuneiform spelling was phonetically imprecise (Alexandros given as A-lak-san-du, Apollyonos - genitive - as A-pu-li-a-na-ash), it could even in Empire have covered a variety of pronunciations, and these may later have augmented. And as it was an Imperial language, it may have sucked up lots of vocabulary from provincial languages. On the other hand, CMI or some there would rather follow the usual path, accept Kurgans as Urheimat and identify them, like the later Medes and Persians, also horsetamers, with the posterity of Madan. But the pre-Greek language of presumably Iavan - Greece - seems to have been related to Vedic and Avestic. Which is also Indo-European, like Greek itself.

Dravidian is not an Indo-European language. But AronRa does not really say it either, and the Aryans who - presumedly so - invaded their land in the North were speaking or have by now come to speak Indo-European languages.

IV

By this time, modern men had already been living in Europe for tens of thousands of years,

Misdating both post-Babel spread of humanity and creation very grossly, thanks to the carbon 14 fallacy.

ever since those known as Cro-Magnon replaced the Neandertals.

We do not know if a group really replaced another one. We know that pureblooded Neanderthals are hard to come by, if the statistical analyses of their genome is correct, which has however been disputed, so really we do not know that one either. We do know that on the theory just given there is still 4% of genome in certain Europeans which can only be traced to Neanderthals.

Now they themselves have themselves have also been replaced, divided and absorbed into the new cultures of the area.

Ah, what if part of this process was simply mixing with the people identified as Neanderthals?

But they left their ancient wooden huts behind for archaeologists to find, as well as all their monuments, and their wonderful cave paintings rendered so very long before.

If we Christians are right it was NOT so very long before. Wooden huts would of course in principle be datable by carbon 14 dating, but due to old age of samples, we may well be talking of the carbon 14 fallacy alluded to more than once as previously explained.

But that the - clearly post-Creation and probably post-Flood - paintings are wonderful, this I will not dispute.

If AronRa is totally off on theory of knowledge in questions like these, this does not mean he lacks taste.


V

The great bears and other terrible beasts have all been driven off or killed in the dozens of centuries since. Times have changed dramatically in the last few thousand years.

Ha, I knew he would have offered something different if he had talked about what he supposes Sunday 20th of March 5199 BC was like!

Life in Europe is very different now. Its more secure, and centered around farming where the height of technology at the moment are hand plows crafted in hard wood.

Unlike the geological ages Jurassic and Permian which were simply simultaneous during the Flood in different habitats later getting these different labels, for carbon datable chronologies we resort to squeezing of the time frame.

VI

And on this day, there are people everywhere, some still living in caves in Italy and in Greece, but not living like "cave-men" Hercules and the witch since they're already farming, and making beautiful ceramics, and already developing unique, colorful societies.

I suppose the colourful societies may well have been contemporaneous. If this is so even according to carbon 14 fallacious dating, how much more so will this have been the case once we squeeze the time frame?

By this time, there were also long-houses and lodges erected from Poland through Scandinavia, and the British Isles.

Thoroughly likeable architecture. Wish I had one. With a not too far off library to blog from.

There are even religious temples like this mysterious and already ancient underground necropolis on the island of Malta.

A necropolis is not necessarily a temple. And since Ninus erected paganism to the norm, I will not dispute the claim that there were temples, on the other hand.

VII

Far to the west, in the Americas, most of the native tribesmen still live exactly as their ancestors had for hundreds of generations,

I very much doubt even AronRa would claim direct evidence for hundreds of generations. He is obviously comparing according to the carbon 14 fallacy - but what exactly is he comparing?

American archaeology atrributed to this period is not my forte, and I am not sure it is anyone's, though I might be mistaken.

But having been cut off from the rest of the world for the last 4,000 years or so, their technological development will consequently be a bit behind that of many other nations.

I am glad AronRa is not calling them another humanity, but agrees they were once united to the rest of mankind before thir isolation, as they are now after Coumbus ended it (if not even some before). Now, one part of the idea of getting to the new place might even have been some Amish like misgivings about living in more technointensive and perhaps also more slavery intensive areas.

In Mexico for example, already accomplished farmers have bred a new species of Maize, corn, which will still be a staple thousands of years into the future.

Have grains been dated, or are we speaking of extrapolation from that future much of which is now past?

To the south [of an island still holding mammoths], Japanese craftsmen have already been making their beautiful Jomon pottery for 6,000 years, inspired by the original Chinese craftsmen who've been doing it even longer. These cultures are closely related to the ancestors of the American tribesmen.

We have the pottery, but the 6000 years of Jomon pottery should of course be squeezed radically.

But the ways of the old world have exceeded those of the new, largely because of the early adoption of agriculture and of course international trade.

Sure, unless it was early Americans who wanted to "lag behind". As Amish compared to Modernity.

VIII

The Pithecanthropus people of southern Asia were completely forgotten ages ago, either driven to extinction, or absorbed into a new, and rapidly growing family of men.

How many non-copy full skulls do you even have of Pithecanthropus?

Other races, like the island "hobbits" of Indonesia may be gone by now too, and are perhaps only barely remembered in a dwindling few legends.

Now, here I hear an echo of Robert E. Howard. Legends dwindling? Does not sound like very medieval language, but very much the concept world of late 19th and early 20th Victorian age academia, and academia conscious pop culture. I am not sure that even the great Tolkien may not have used such a phrase. He was not a full scholastic of Paris 1277.

India's legends however will stand the tests of time. ... now they are also composing and rehearsing the first drafts of the legendary oral traditions that will be forever known as the Rig Veda, the foundation of Hinduism, the world’s oldest extant religion.

Rig Veda legendary? C'mon, it is more like ritual and hymns. And "first drafts"? How many such were there? If they were discarded "first drafts" how do you know they existed? And how do you propose to date them?

If Mahabharata had been mentioned, I think the material might already have been transmitted - mostly from pre-Flood memories of wars between Nephelim destroying Nod. And Nod may even geographically be India, or part of it.

IX

[Africa:] Some of whom are already using multi-oared barges to ship their goods to market in the town of Naqada where there is an official form of government. There men are ruled not by tribal chieftans, but by kings.

Egypt.

This brings us to the early calibration of the carbon 14 method. Here I am quoting CMI:

Carbon dating began in the late 1940s and some of the first things to be carbon dated were Egyptian artefacts, including the coffin of Pharaoh Djoser. The date of this pharaoh’s death was already considered to be accurately established, at 2750 BC. We know this date is incorrect because Egypt is a post-Flood civilization and this date precedes the Flood by several hundred years.


CMI : Carbon dating into the future
Letter from Franky P, answer by Andrew Lamb
Published: 24 March 2007 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/carbon-dating-into-the-future


Now, as a Catholic I disagree that 2750 would predate the Flood, on the contrary, it would be about 200 years after the Flood (207 years).

But the theoretical problem stays the same, if he was misdated independently of and previous to carbon dates:

  • a) the dating was that of a near halflife, and it is not likely that a correct decay rate can be established without getting at least half the time of a half life by artefact or skeleton having lived at a known date
  • b) in Djoser's time carbon 14 may still have been lower than in ours, so that the resulting content in Djoser's coffin was both from decay and from lower carbon 14 content
  • c) resulting in a false calibration and false early datings for Egypt and for the whole time period.


X

In Syria, they operate the first large-scale commercial bakeries. And far out in Arabian pastures, the Ubaidis, a Semitic people are establishing a settlement that will become the city of Ur. Here there are complex political systems and city-states forming along the banks of the Tigris / Euphrates. And these people have already set about building the most amazing cities of the ancient world, complete with enormous towers in honor of the elder gods, like Marduk and Inanna.

If so, we are talking about a time after Ninus, and therefore after Abraham lived or close to when he lived. He was born 2015 BC. That is clear from the Bible based Roman Martyrology. Then "Peter the Eater" (Petrus Comestor) adds some dates too about all of this:

In the eleventh year of Abraham, Ninus died, the wife of which Semiramis, in order to rule after him, wedded her own son, whom she had received from Ninus, and bore of him a son, who also amplified Babylonia. In the seventyfifth year of Abraham, he received the promise. In his eightysixth year, Hismael [Ishmael] was born to him. In his hundredth year Isaac was born to him. In his hundred thirtieth year, Sarah died.


[this blog:] What is a Nation? part I [with my selected translations of passages from the Genesis part of Biblia Scholastica.] http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/07/what-is-nation-part-i.html

So, gratulations, AronRa has given us a few clues as to extent of modern misdating!

If a bird or a tree or a man lived in the times of Abraham, according to St Jerome's chronology, or even a bit later, perhaps, he or it is likely to be misdated by modern scholars as having been alive at the Creation of Adam, Ussher's chronology. Nice to know. Thank you for the effort, it was partly mistaken but not totally wasted!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Day of St Zenon of Rome,
Martyr along with 10.203 others
9-VII-2014

No comments: