"I am Hugh"
Posted on 09/01/2003 3:00:05 AM PDT by jimtorr
AN EXCITING archaeological discovery has been made at Culmore in Derry by two men who stumbled across a large stone artefact, which pre-dates the Egyptian Pyramids by a few thousand years.
When Frank Gillespie began work on his garden wall in Culmore he had little idea that just below his feet lay a large stone axe estimated to be around 8-9,000 years-old.
Frank's father Hugh Gillespie, of Lone Moor Road, had been digging the foundation for the wall when he unearthed the ancient tool.
"My father found it and left it to one side, paying little notice, but when I spotted it I knew it was some kind of artefact as it was chipped from work," said Frank
"We were in the back garden digging a foundation for a small wall at the time - we weren't looking for anything," added the electronics engineer.
The Clonliffe Park resident said that the future of the axe will now be left in the hands of the local archaeologists, Ian Leitch and Tommy Gallagher, who investigated and verified the find.
"The axe probably dates from the early or late Mesolithic period in Ireland, around eight or nine thousand years ago," Mr. Leitch told the 'Journal'.
The discovery of stone axes has not been uncommon in recent times with a number of artefacts uncovered during field surveying in the Culmore and Ballyamagard areas over the last number of years.
However, the large axe unearthed by the Gillespies was "unique" to the area because of its size, according to the local archaeologists.
And the artefact dates back to when Ireland's earliest settlers were still arriving in Northern Ireland from Scotland.
Mr. Leitch and Mr. Gallagher have confirmed that the artefact is made of "mud stone", and it was probably used by early hunter-gatherers for felling trees. The sharp stone would have been "hafted" onto a piece of timber , most likely oak, using animal hide.
"This particular stone axe may have been brought into the area through local trading, as this stone axe has no similarity, on record, to other stone axes, which have been found in the locality," said Mr. Leitch.
Frank and Hugh Gillespie permitted the axe to be handed over to the Environment and Heritage Services of the Department of the Environment which will observe and record the find.
"The axe will in due course be returned to Mr. Gillespie who may at some stage facilitate the axe being viewed publicly at the Tower Museum in Derry," added Mr. Leitch, who paid tribute to the Gillespies for passing the artefact to the authorities .
In January a find of ancient tools dating from the same period during the building of the Toome bypass yielded one of the most important insights to date into the lifestyles of the first Irish settlers.
That site included a number of flint tools thought also to be around 9,000 years old and yielded over 8,000 pieces of flint including small blades called microliths and larger tools used for hunting, and fishing.
It is believed that the first humans to reach Ireland did so as the remnants of the last Ice Age disappeared. The first immigrants came to the Antrim coast from western Europe via Scotland, with which there may have been temporary dry land connections left behind by the Ice Age.
I have not been in a college science class for quite awhile, but do they teach "weasel-wording" and "supposition-ing" in those classes now? Discovery Channel has become the science fiction channel. Everything is based on presuppostions which have no basis in fact. All of their stories are the work of fiction writers with great imaginations!
A friend of mine was born and raised Jewish. He studied at what he says was the top Yeshiva (rabbinical school) in New York, and graduated at the top of his class. He says that his studies led him to conclude that Jesus is indeed Messiah. I worshiped God with him for 14 years, and trust his knowledge of scripture and the history of the Jewish people.
As it turns out, it is not reasonable to assume that the lineages are consecutive. I'm told that that is not how the Hebrews did things. The official histories of Israel only include the annals of the kings and the accurate lineage of the Kings family to Abraham. No other lineage really mattered. In their long histories before Abraham, which were otherwise recorded faithfully, they tended to only mention men of note and important events. For instance, there seems to be a long gap between Noah's sons and Abraham.
Actually, I don't know what to think of Noah's story. I don't think that the evidence bears out a world-wide flood 4 or 5 or 6,000 years ago. Egyptian, Minoan, Chinese, Scythian and Indian cultures appear to be older than that.
My conclusion is that the writers and compilers of Hebrew scripture probably never intended to give an exact time-line of the world.
I don't intend to belittle your position in any way, but only to demonstrate that I too base my world-view on scripture history and the history of scripture. I only have a different opinion, based on scripture, known history and geology, on how God may have done things.
Given the OT has an economy of words, why do you suppose that the ages the patriarchs "begat" the next in line and why the age the patriarch died? If it was not for studius back tracking of time, then could you conceive of any other legitimate purpose for chronicling such otherwise useless detail?
So why are you so certain that when G_d created the world, he didn't create it with all the geologic and fossil evidence in it? I have always wondered why creationists have been willing to go to great leaps of conspiracy theories to explain the existing evidence rather than accept this one simple notion.
If G_d created the world, he could have created it as we find it, or the fossils and geologic evidence could simply be remnants of his creation process in 6 days. Why are you unwilling to accept that as a possibility? I see no contradiction between it and the Bible accounts. No where does the Bible say that it is telling us everything.
It appears to me that you are limiting G_d by limiting his actions to those specificly mentioned in the Bible, that is how you are limiting him!
The Earth is slightly over 6000 years old. Noah left the unicorns and dinosaurs behind by accident.
Now tell me why Leviticus refers to homosexuality and eating shrimp by the same term?
Because G_d's Word talks about a global flood that destroyed everything. What do you think became of the remains of things killed in a global flood? They died. Their bones were quickly buried in strata of mud (think the effects of liquifaction on the animals and how the sorting would take place). Now I am not sure how evolutionists deal with how fossils were made in their models since it would seem to me to take hundreds if not thousands of years to bury something like a T-rex and I am sure it would rot or be consumed away well before it was buried - but that is their problem, not mine.
I have always wondered why creationists have been willing to go to great leaps of conspiracy theories to explain the existing evidence rather than accept this one simple notion.
What conspiracy theory are you imagining? I would be curious to know. Better yet, given that Adam's sin was supposed to usher death into the world, perhaps you can explain how all of this death and carnage took place before Adam's sin. Or do you simply reject the gospel message as well? It's OK that you do, I just want you to be consistant in your evolutionary views.
If G_d created the world, he could have created it as we find it, or the fossils and geologic evidence could simply be remnants of his creation process in 6 days.
Again, I am not going to ignore the Flood. You may, and you may do so at your own discretion, but if you do, please drop this "G_d" stuff because in wishing away the flood, you are blaspheming G_d, and skipping the vowel would seem trivial compared to rejecting His entire revelation unto man.
G_d is revealed as to having purpose. Since Athiests have clung to evolutionary ideology, it would seem that for G_d to plant evidence that only says billions of years when in reality it happened only in six days, that G_d would be operating a massive fraud, the greatest lie, and would seem to be undermining His own desire to Glorify Himself to man so that He could glorify the Atheist. But perhaps this kind of fraud and deception are attributes that you attribute to a Righteous G_d.
It appears to me that you are limiting G_d by limiting his actions to those specificly mentioned in the Bible, that is how you are limiting him
So you are an advocate of gnosticism? Private revelation? Secret knowledge? No, to say that fossils are a result of Creation is to say that death preceded Adam's sin. That is a total contradiction to the gospel. To say that these fossils remained despite the flood is to say that G_d does not judge wickedness - thus judgment is not in his character. Again, this blasphemes G_d. Rather than trying to appease the G_d haters by kissing up to their atheistic speculations, it would be better to attempt to preserve the truth presented in G_d's word. If you don't understand it, it is not license to modify it to syncretize pagan influences (if you need further evidence of the peril of doing so, you have the entire relationship of the nation of Israel to G_d presented in the OT to show what happens when you mix worship of G_d with the idolatry of man.)
Thanks for clearing things up for me.
LOL! It is right there with the concise prooftext that perfectly describes the Trinity.
I know that you want everything packaged up into easy pre-chewed morsels. I thank God daily that, like hypertrophied muscles, it takes persistance, patience, discipline and dedication to understand the things of God. In the end the results are worth it. This is how we can tell the real believers from the fake.
You will need to break out the calculator and retrace the lineage, count the years between kings and fathers and sons. Bishop Usher did it, and many have followed in his footsteps.
I guess you're correct, given those two choices I'll have to follow the logic of science and understand that the bible is a collection of writings by humans trying their best to understand and describe the world around them. I don't fault the writers for being incorrect, they just didn't yet have the knowledge necessary to understand science. Due to their lack of knowledge they used tribal myths and fantasys to fill in the gaps. This is a very familar pattern common to most ancient human tribes.
What makes you think that you are superior to the ancients? How did your DNA improve over the years? Does the waters of the river become clearer at the delta rather than at its source?
See you are duped by evolutionary thinking to be blinded to the obivous that genetic material loses information, not gains it. Ever hear of George Mendel? Are you so easily fooled by evolutionary thinking that you believe that a poodle has more genetic information in it than the poodle's ancestors several generations prior? Do you know why there are laws against incest? Because it is extremely easy to lose genetic information and impossible to create it.
Look back at the time of the flood. People lived nearly a thousand years. Even afterwards, Abraham lived twice as long as you could ever hope to live. The antediluvians were so superior that they invented writing, civilization, animal husbandry, agricultural techniques, formed full orchestras, made and employed metal alloys, within a couple generations. They built the pyramids, constructed huge Babylonian terraces and palaces using engineering techniques that we can't even grasp today.
What is man's greatest acheivements now? The MTV music awards, and the Super Bowl.
The global flood explains the existance of the Grand Canyon. Can your pet theories explain how water ran up hill to form the Grand Canyon?
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