Posted on 10/16/2006 6:02:09 PM PDT by blam
Ancient stamp dating to 5,000 BC unearthed in Harran
Monday, October 16, 2006
ANKARA - Turkish Daily News
Excavations in the Harran district of Þanlýurfa have uncovered a stamp dating back to 4,000-5,000 B.C., said the excavation leader on Saturday, reported the Anatolia news agency.
Harran excavation team leader Nurettin Yardýmcý said the excavations have been ongoing since 1983 and that recent work in the area has focused on the Harran tumulus and Ulu Cami as well as the Neolithic settlement of Tellidris.
“Our work has indicated that the first inhabitants of Harran lived in Tellidris, dating back to around 8,000 B.C. We found some stamps with different shapes and motifs as well as a bull figure dating back to 6,000 B.C. in last year's excavations. The findings showed that the people of Harran and Tellidris lived together around 9,000-10,000 years ago and that the people in Tellidris abandoned it and moved to the Harran tumulus area in later years,” he said.
“The Tellidris excavations conducted this year, on the other hand, uncovered a stamp dating back to an earlier period, around 4,000 or 5,000 B.C., and we believe that the excavations in Tellidris will unearth further findings of the Neolithic era in the coming years,” Yardýmcý said.
He also said they had come across unique Islamic ruins around the Harran tumulus, adding: “These ruins give an idea of the social life and well-developed urban planning in Harran. We also discovered a sewage system similar to ones used in our modern age and the ruins of living rooms and a mill.”
Amazing that nobody had licked the glue on the back. That stuff is delicious.
"He also said they had come across unique Islamic ruins around the Harran tumulus, adding: “These ruins give an idea of the social life and well-developed urban planning in Harran. We also discovered a sewage system similar to ones used in our modern age and the ruins of living rooms and a mill."
Probably a Byzantine system.
Their stamps not only wouldn't lick, they wouldn't stick either. That's why they carried them around all the time.
Oh, yeah, and there were no letters or direct mail advertising in those days either, all of which raises the question of why they bothered with stamps anyway.
Actually, it was one left over in the drawer after the post office raised rates.
It looks like a ripoff, anyway. When the stamp you're supposed to lick weighs 50 times what the letter weighs, the Post Office is just engaged in total gouging.
I discovered a stamp in my silverware drawer. It was a stamp commemorating prostitution. It was twenty-five cents, fifty cents if you wanted to lick it.
Stamps, like our own postal service created an inept
bureauacy, just like ours, silly.
You had better Freepmail me 50 cents or I'll turn your post over to the mods for further investigation. ;-)
If you want to turn it over, that's seventy-five cents.
Crap!
Ah bureaucracy... the virus of civilization.
"Do not spindle, fold, or mutilate."
For a buck you can send it around the world.
For two dollars, they'd put your package in the slot for you.
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I don't think so, Fluffy.
Postal Geek Alert!
I read a story in the Daily Mail (UK) online yesterday about the Royal Mail wanting to close thousands of rural Post Offices, a good portion of which get only an average of 15 customers a week. Talk about inefficiency of operations!
I have the same stamp.
I was gonna throw it away because the airplane was printed upside down...
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