ARCHAEOLOGY: New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean

Science Magazine ^ | 4/28/2006 | Michael Balter

[tet68]

Ah Thera, I remember it like it was yesterday.
A memory seared, SEARED in my consciousness!

[gleeaikin]

I finally got around to checking my Usu reference. There was much interesting info at "Usu volcano, Japan", but I finally discovered the picture I remembered in one of the 8 volcano books I have read in the last few years. The source is "Volcanism" by Hans-Ulrich Schmincke, 2004, page 6. The photo shows an area of road and adjacent fence and plants which were elevated as much as 200 feet over a space about 2/5ths of a mile wide. The land is basically intact, except for a bunch of cracks across the road. This took place in 2000, at which time the volcano also erupted. I don't know if the bulge then deflated.

[SunkenCiv]

Actually, concerning the date proposed for the eruption as 1628 BC +-, and the life of Herodotus being 450 BC +-, this would mean that the eruption took place long BEFORE Herodotus wrote about the island. In fact almost 1,200 years before, which means Herodotus might not even have been aware of the event it was so much earlier than his time.

That would be a great argument, but there is no evidence for any such super-eruption, which was invented in the 1930s. There's a surviving ancient source (Strabo) that works out to about 200 BC, and the volcanologist estimate is 197 BC.

[SunkenCiv]

search for "santorini":

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[SunkenCiv]

Identification of Aniakchak (Alaska) tephra in Greenland ice core challenges the 1645 BC date for Minoan eruption of Santorini
Nicholas J. G. Pearce
John A. Westgate
Shari J. Preece
Warren J. Eastwood
William T. Perkins

Abstract: Minute shards of volcanic glass recovered from the 1645 ± 4 BC layer in the Greenland GRIP ice core have recently been claimed to originate from the Minoan eruption of Santorini [ Hammer et al., 2003 ]. This is a significant claim because a precise age for the Minoan eruption provides an important time constraint on the evolution of civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean. There are however significant differences between the concentrations of SiO2, TiO2, MgO, Ba, Sr, Nb and LREE between the ice core glass and the Minoan eruption, such that they cannot be correlatives. New chemical analyses of tephra from the Late Holocene eruption of the Aniakchak Volcano in Alaska, however, show a remarkable similarity to the ice core glass for all elements, and this eruption is proposed as the most likely source of the glass in the GRIP ice core. This provides a precise date of 1645 BC for the eruption of Aniakchak and is the first firm identification of Alaskan tephra in the Greenland ice cores. The age of the Minoan eruption of Santorini, however, remains unresolved.

[SunkenCiv]

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A Test of Time: The Volcano of Thera and the Chronology and History of the Aegean and East Mediterranean in the Mid Second Millennium BC by Sturt W. Manning

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[Coyoteman]

I wonder how accurate radiocarbon dating is in a situation involving a volcanic eruption. Perhaps the percentage of radioactive material spewed out impacts the readings in some way, although one would think more radioactive material would result in a younger date.

That shouldn't bother radiocarbon dating. The old limestone mentioned in a previous post would be a greater worry.

[SunkenCiv]

Here's the after and before of Sturt Manning's view, the first one being (literally) in the fine print (bold and italics in the original, retyped by yours truly) of the PDF file linked here:

The Thera (Santorini) Volcanic Eruption
and the Absolute Chronology
of the Aegean Bronze Age
by Sturt W. Manning
website

Work in the later 1980s through earlier 2003 appeared to offer grounds for perhaps linking the great Thera eruption with likely climate anomalies recorded in tree-ring archives and/or with evidence for a large volcanic eruption recorded in Greenland ice-cores. Where these dates were consistent within the date range indicated by the radiocarbon evidence, it seemed that these dates might indeed indicate a precise date for the Thera eruption. The most likely date adopted in Test of Time, c. 1628BC, came from the tree-ring evidence, and, at that time, this seemed potentially capable of association with indications of major eruptions in ice core records. But since the end of the 1990s this nexus of evidence has broken down. First, it became clear that the date of the best ice-core (Dye 3) was NOT compatible with the tree-ring growth anomaly in 1628BC — it instead dated c. 1644BC give or take only about 4 years by publications of AD2000. This removed most of the argument that the two evidence sources were compatible, and thus the case that both reflected the same major volcanic eruption. Later a date of c. 1645BC for Thera was suggested from ice-core evidence (Hammer et al. 2003). HOWEVER, it is important to note that critical analysis of the provenance data available from the GRIP ice-core indicates that the volcanic glass found there is in fact NOT from Thera — contrary to earlier suggestions and indications. Thus there is at present no evidence linking the Thera eruption with the volcanic acid signal c.1645BC. See the papers by Pearce et al. (2004) and Keenan (2003) for full details. This analysis means that suggestions of a Thera-Greenland ice-core date link mentioned on the basis of pers. comms from the ice-core team in a Test of time are now irrelevant. The tree-ring evidence was never claimed to be directly linked to Thera (or any volcano) — the argument advanced was of a plausible association with the tree-rings offering therefor a proxy record... there is at present no direct of causal linkage... This means that, as of late AD2003, we have only two data sources to resolve the date of the Thera eruption: (i) conventional archaeohistoric methods, and (ii) radiocarbon.

Manning's clinging to radiocarbon dates which due to the enriched "dead" carbon of the soil of Santorini are dubious, while hoping that someone eventually finds a link in ice-core data, since all the previous claims have blown away in the wind. Here's S.M.'s view from a few years ago, from his The Test of Time period, which isn't too different from his current view:

The Thera (Santorini) Volcanic Eruption and
the Absolute Chronology of the Aegean Bronze Age
by Sturt W. Manning

...It is argued that the key Late Minoan IA period, the high point of the Minoan civilisation, was not, as conventionally held, contemporary (even in part) with the New Kingdom (18th Dynasty) of Egypt, nor the Late Bronze 1 phase of the Levant. Instead, the Late Minoan IA period in the Aegean is linked with the late Middle Bronze Age of Syria-Palestine, the Second Intermediate (Hyksos) Period of Egypt, and the Late Cypriot IA period of Cyprus. This is an important realignment of cultural synchronisations. The high point of Crete should be considered in terms of the dominant Canaanite trading system of the late Middle Bronze Age, and not New Kingdom Egypt...

Appendix 2: Why the standard chronologies are approximately correct, and why radical re-datings are therefore incorrect.

Interestingly enough, Manning cites Lesson 17 which, while it toes the line regarding the current dating fictions, also notes that:

"More recently, the vulcanologists have claimed that the Santorini caldera formed quite gradually and that a tidal wave, if indeed there was one at all, would not have been on anything like the scale envisaged by Marinatos and other proponents of the link between the Theran volcano and the sudden decline of Neopalatial Crete."

More from the same page:

Akrotiri on Thera, the Santorini Volcano
and the Middle and Late Cycladic Periods
in the Central Aegean Islands
Bronze Age Aegean chap 17
Trustees of Dartmouth College
Revised: Friday, March 18, 2000

[T]he simple facts are that the great earthquake which badly damaged Akrotiri is to be dated quite early in LM IA (either ca. 1650 or ca. 1560 B.C.?), that the entire town was buried in meters of volcanic ash still within the LM IA period (ca. 1625 or ca. 1550/1540 B.C.?), and that the wave of destructions (most of them including fires) which defines the end of the Neopalatial period on Crete and to which the palaces at Mallia, Phaistos, and Zakro all fell victim cannot be dated earlier than LM IB (ca. 1480/1470 B.C.?). Hood [TAW I (1978) 681-690] claims that clear evidence of the earthquake which so severely damaged Akrotiri before the town was buried is to be found at several sites on Crete where it is clearly dated to LM IA. More importantly, tephra from the later eruption of the Theran volcano has been found within the past decade in LM IA contexts on Rhodes (at Trianda) and Melos (at Phylakopi) as well as on Crete itself, ample confirmation that the eruption preceded the LM IB destruction horizon on Crete by a significant amount of time. Thus no direct correlation can be established between the Santorini volcano and the collapse of Neopalatial Minoan civilization.

IOW, the eruption which covered Akrotiri was long before the Neopalatial period on Crete ended.

Debate erupts anew:
Did Thera's explosion
doom Minoan Crete?
William J. Broad NYT
Thursday, October 23, 2003

In 1939, Spyridon Marinatos, a Greek archaeologist, proposed that the eruption wrecked Minoan culture on Thera and Crete. He envisioned the damage as done by associated earthquakes and tsunamis. While geologists found tsunamis credible, they doubted the destructive power of Thera's earthquakes, saying volcanic ones tend to be relatively mild... Despite the power of Thera, the Danish scientists' evidence raised doubts about its links to the Minoan decline. Their date for Thera's explosion, 1645 B.C., based on frozen ash in Greenland, is some 150 years earlier than the usual date. Given that the Minoan fall was usually dated to 1450 B.C., the gap between cause and effect seemed too large. Another blow landed in 1989 when scholars on Crete found, above a Thera ash layer, a house that had been substantially rebuilt in the Minoan style. It suggested at least partial cultural survival. By 1996, experts like Jeremy Rutter, head of classics at Dartmouth, judged the chronological gap too extreme for any linkage. "No direct correlation can be established" between the volcano and the Minoan decline, he concluded.

Note that the thesis has been refuted on that basis as early as 1989. 1939 is in the 1930s — the decade when the super-eruption came to the forefront. As I think about it, there may be a much earlier origin (mentioned in Zangger's recent book) in the later 19th century, which doesn't exactly mitigate in favor of it.

The rush to find a super-eruption in records has been viewed skeptically by those working in the field, all the way along. Here's an example from nine years ago:

Bronze Age Myths?
Volcanic Activity and Human Response in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic Region
Paul C. Buckland
Andrew J. Dugmore
Kevin J. Edwards
Antiquity Vol. 71 (1997), pp. 581-593.

A first rule of statistics is that the existence of a correlation does not itself prove a causal connection... This paper examines some of the available evidence for these two Bronze Age 'catastrophes', the one real and in need of a calendar date, the other hypothesized on archaeological grounds and dated by a tenuous link through tree rings to an Icelandic volcano... Despite several cautionary comments from both archaeologists (Manning 1988; Warren 1988) and geologists (Pyle 1989; 1990), the 1628 BC date, or one close to it, continues to be accepted (e.g. Michael and Betancourt 1988), without questioning why the effects of the Santorini eruption should be especially recognizable in the ice-core and tree-ring sequences. Large-scale explosive volcanic activity is common on a global scale (Zielinski et al. 1996), and so before accepting the possibility that the Santorini eruption can be recognized by unusual perturbations in the regional records of ice-cores or tree-rings, the case for its distinctive character must be proved.

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, here's what you mentioned:

Akrotiri on Thera, the Santorini Volcano
and the Middle and Late Cycladic Periods
in the Central Aegean Islands
Bronze Age Aegean chap 17
Trustees of Dartmouth College
Revised: Friday, March 18, 2000

The process of rebuilding and restoration begun shortly after the earthquake was nevertheless still in progress when the volcano erupted, as the partially plastered and painted condition of the second-storey bedroom in the West House indicates.

[SunkenCiv]

New Ice-Core Evidence Challenges the 1620s age for the Santorini (Minoan) Eruption
Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 25, Issue 3, March 1998, Pages 279-289 | 13 July 1997 | Gregory A. Zielinski, Mark S. Germani
Posted on 07/29/2004 3:25:45 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1180724/posts

[Havoc]

At the historic point on the red sea where Solomon erected his markers of the place of the event, there happens to be a sort of underwater bridge. If the waters were parted at that point, you could walk right across on solid level ground all the way to the other side. And given that there are Egyptian Chariots strewn about that area under water, it's rather obvious.. it just doesn't sit well with a lot of folks who are bothered that they can't explain it away with some natural means. But they feel the attempt must be made no matter how absurd. Who cares how God did it. It is enough that he did and left evidence of it.

[Cheburashka]

» B.C.E.

Far as I'm concerned, the very use of this date designation casts suspicion on the source.
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AS far as I'm concerned it means "Before Christ's Era".
After all, Christ wasn't born in 1 A.D. anyway, so it's all arbitrary.

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1622847/posts?page=68#68

The following is ludicrous:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070402-egypt-volcano.html

“The scientists suggest that trade winds may have carried a blizzard of ash to Egypt from Santorini, located about 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Tharo. The archaeologists also theorize that the volcano created a giant tsunami that swept the lava all the way to Egypt.”

[Scythian]

I believe David Rohl's "New Chronology" is correct, he's book "Pharoahs and Kings" offers some very strong evidence (despite the naysayers).

David Rohl's "New Chronology"

[Scythian]

David Rohl's "New Chronology"

A New Chronology - It's About Time!
The interrelated chronologies of ancient Egypt, Israel, and Mesopotamia are based on a single "essential synchronism"⁽¹⁾ established over 165 years ago.⁽²⁾ In 1822, Jean Francois Champollion deciphered the Hieroglyphic Code using the Rosetta Stone, and inaugurated the field of Egyptology. Unfortunately, six years later, he dealt the new discipline a serious setback with his misinterpretation of a military campaign mural belonging to the Egyptian 22^nd Dynasty Pharaoh Sheshonq I.⁽³⁾

Champollion thought he had found "Judah the Kingdom" among the hieroglyphs of subdued cities listed in Sheshonq's inscription,⁽⁴⁾ and concluded that Sheshonq could be none other than the Biblical Pharaoh "Shishak."⁽⁵⁾ Shishak, according to 2 Chronicles 12, "captured the fortified cities of Judah" five years after the death of King Solomon. The Bible goes on to say that Jerusalem was spared only after Shishak "carried off ... everything." By 1888, Champollion's "Judah the Kingdom" had been correctly translated as "Monument of the King,"⁽⁶⁾ and associated geopgraphically with northern Israel by virtue of its position in the Karnak mural campaign itinerary.⁽⁷⁾ However, the mis-identification of Shishak with Sheshonq was not overturned, and has remained the cornerstone of ancient chronology.

In the New Chronology model, the Pharaoh who besieges the fortified cities of Judah and subdues Jerusalem five years after the death of Solomon is re-identified as the 19^th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramses II.⁽⁸⁾ The well documented campaign of Ramses II against Palestine in his Year 8 corresponds much more closely to that of the Biblical Shishak than that of Sheshonq. Examination of the account of Sheshonq's invasion reveals that it was directed primarily toward the northern kingdom of Israel, and that Judah was deliberately bypassed by the Egyptian army.⁽⁹⁾ Moreover, no mention is made in the Bible of the northern kingdom of Israel being humbled by Shishak. On the other hand, Ramses II's campaign did concentrate primarily on Judah and the Shasu nations of the Sinai and southern transjordan, and Ramses II specifically claims to have "plundered Shalom," i.e., Jerusalem.

Furthermore Rohl has determined that Shisha is an acceptable transliteration of the official Egyptian nickname (Sysw)⁽¹⁰⁾ of the Pharaoh Ramses II, and that the liguistic path to the Biblical name Shishak is more straightforward than that of Sheshonq, especially if it is recognized that the final "k" was added as a play on words (a recognized practice used in the Bible when translating foreign names) to render the connotation of "assaulter" in Hebrew.⁽¹¹⁾

The New Chronology determination that the Biblical King Rehoboam (besieged by Shishak) and the Pharaoh Ramses II were contempories is secured by several archaeological finds and a completely independent synchronism, that being the recording of a rare solar eclipse in the reign of the 18^th Dynasty Pharaoh, Akhenaten.⁽¹²⁾ Shortly after the death of his father Amenhotep III, Akhenaten received a letter from his vassal Abimilku⁽¹³⁾ of Tyre informing him of a fire that destroyed half of the palace of King Nikmaddu II at the city of Ugarit (north of Tyre on the Syrian coast of the Mediterranean Sea). In the charred remains of that palace, archaeologists found a tablet describing an eclipse of the sun that occurred at sunset in the month of "Hiyaru" (mid-April to mid-May). As the setting sun was considered a goddess in the Ugarit pantheon, the eclipse represented a particularly evil omen, and it was indicated as such on the opposite side of the tablet. Computer retro-calculation has confirmed that an eclipse did occur thirty minutes before sunset on May 9^th in the year 1012 B.C., and that this was the only total solar eclipse which occurred within one hour of sunset at this location during the entire 2^nd millennium B.C. Rohl therefore deduces that the palace fire and Abimilku's letter to Akhenaten occurred after (and likely no more than a year after) the tablet recording the solar eclipse of 1012 B.C. was inscribed.

Circa 1012 B.C. is the accepted time (in the conventional chronology) for the rise of King David in Israel, however it has until now been believed that the Pharoah Akhenaten ruled in Egypt over 300 years earlier! The letter to Akhenaten was one of 340 political correspondences written primarily in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the day, and dating to the reigns of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, and Tutankhamun. The group of letters are collectively known as the Amarna tablets after the site in Egypt where they were discovered in 1887.

Comparisons between the frequently mentioned "Habiru" of the Amarna tablets and the Biblical descriptions of David and his band of "mighty men" (2 Samuel 10:7) have been made by noted scholars. However, due to the 300 year offset in the conventional chronology, an association with the Biblical accounts had not been seriously considered. A new study of the Amarna tablets by Rohl has revealed that the ethnic and political makeup of Palestine, and the activities of the Habiru are even more similar in their correspondence with the Biblical record that was originally suspected.⁽¹⁴⁾

King Saul (a symbolic name meaning "Asked For" by virtue of Israel's request that God appoint a king to rule over them) of the Bible is revealed in the Amarna letters as Labayu (meaning "Great Lion"), and "the Habiru who was raised up against the lands." In Psalm 57, Saul's bodyguards are referred to as lebaim ("great lions"). Specific details relating to Labayu's activities, betrayal, and death as recorded in the Amarna letters precisely match the Bible account of Saul's rise and ultimate fall on Mount Gilboa in battle with the Philistines. After Labayu's death, the Amarna tablets record the pleas to Akhenaten from his Jebusite vassal at Jerusalem, and from his Canaanite vassal at Gezer to send either reinforcement troops or an escort to allow them to escape before their cities were to fall to the Habiru who were now based in "Tianna" (Akkadian Tianna -> Hebrew Tsiyon -> English Zion). This sequence of events in the Amarna tablets closely corresponds to the Biblical account of David's capture of Jerusalem and his victories over the Philistines after the death of King Saul.

Finally, a letter from Labayu's son and successor, Mutbaal (identified as the Biblical Ishbaal, the sole surviving son of King Saul) to Akhenaten is a response to his being questioned by Egyptian authorities about the whereabouts of one Ayab (Akkadian translation of the Biblical Joab). Mutbaal states, "he has been in the field for two months. Just ask Benenima. Just ask Dadua. Just ask Yishuya..." The letter implies an intimate knowledge of the major proponents of the Hebrew movement on the part of Akhenaten, including the Biblical David, named by the Akkadian version of his name, Dadua.⁽¹⁵⁾

If the other associations are correct, then it would make perfect sense for Ishbaal to refer Akhenaten to David as to the whereabouts of Joab, as Joab was David's nephew and the commander of his Army (1 Chronicles 2:16, 2 Samuel 8:16)!.

The recent discovery at Tel Dan (in northern Israel) of an inscription containing the word "bytdwd" (translated by some as "House of David") created an international sensation.⁽¹⁶⁾ However, a variant of this same name (i.e., Dadua), as well as numerous other Biblical name associations in the Amarna tablets have been overlooked for more than 100 years! This can only reflect the extent of the bias that the conventional chronology has imposed on historical scholarship.

David and Solomon are portrayed in the Bible as two of the greatest kings of the ancient world, yet within the conventional chronology, a suitable context for their reigns cannot be found. Quoting from the book, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, "The Bible is the only written source concerning the United Monarchy ,⁽¹⁷⁾ and it is therefore the basis of any historical presentation of the period."⁽¹⁸⁾ There is such a complete void of external sources that the archaeologist, author and leading authority on the era, Donald Redford writes in frustration that "such topics as the foreign policy of David and Solomon, Solomon's trade in horses or his marriage to Pharaoh's daughter must remain themes for midrash and fictional treatment."⁽¹⁹⁾ Other researchers have arrived at even more dramatic conclusions. Quoting Phillip Davies' book, In Search of Ancient Israel (1992, JSOT Press, Sheffield, England), "The evidence recently accumulated by Jamieson-Drake⁽²⁰⁾ at least shows the impossibility of a Davidic empire administered from Jerusalem ... The range of indices considered by Jamieson-Drake make it necessary for us to exclude the Davidic and Solomonic monarchies, let alone their 'empire' from a non-biblical history of Palestine."

Ironically, the zeal of the early archaeologists to find evidence of the Biblical world led to a chronological framework in which it could not possibly have existed. The New Chronology convincingly resolves the long standing and disturbing 300 year discrepancy between the Bible and archaeology, and provides a more accurate, albeit radically different context in which the historicity of the Bible accounts and characters can be fully reconsidered, i.e., an infrastructure in Palestine of fine cities endowed with new temples and palaces, and political correspondences from palestine rulers to Egyptian Pharaohs that contain a reference to David, as well as many other Biblical associations.

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Aniakchak caldera in the remote Aleutians [Earth Story]