20,000 Year Old (?) Pottery From China

“Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery in the world, archaeologists say.

The findings, which will appear in the journal Science on Friday, add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in East Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, refuting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to farmers.”

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“Scientists took samples, such as bones and charcoal, from above and below the ancient fragments in the dating process, Wu said.

“This way, we can determine with precision the age of the fragments, and our results can be recognized by peers,” Wu said.

Shelach said he found the process done by Wu’s team to be meticulous and that the cave had been well protected throughout the research.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/pottery-20000-years-old_n_1635079.html

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God and the Sumerians

There is no foundation for making the moral and supernatural claims that the Christian religion makes.  That is not to say that the evidence is inadequate…it is to say that there is NO evidence for almost all of their claims.  All religions have human fingerprints all over them and the Christian religion has never even come close to proving that there is anything true about their claims that a god created the world about 6,000 years ago in a fit of creation that lasted 6 literal days.

If that were true the Sumerians and other people living in the Fertile Crescent at the time would have sure been surprised…they had already built a large city or two and were in the middle of perfecting agriculture and culture building. They and their brethren in Jericho had been advancing civilization for a few thousand years already.

It must have pretty disconcerting for the Chinese, Indus Valley, East Indian, European, Asian, Australian, North and South American peoples that had thriving cities, culture, and advanced civilizations already going by 6,000 years ago.  In the Fertile Crescent I wonder what the existing people did when Adam and Eve were plopped down in their midst?  I mean they were intellectual infants…didn’t know how to farm, hitch up a water buffalo to a plow, make cheese or beer or anything useful, and they kept running around naked for god’s sake.  And where were their bellybuttons??

God must have phoned in the creation of Adam and Eve, because he created them with absolutely no skills or inbreed knowledge of the world and its ways.  The Sumerians however already knew mathematics and about the seasons and animal husbandry, maybe some astronomy, and a myriad of other things necessary to survive in a cold and cruel world.  They had known these things for thousands of years before God “Created the Earth” in 6,000 BC.

“If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we’re going?” -Justin Brown

Original Sin, Angels, Christians, and Human Suffering

If God is perfect and he created Angels, then all Angels must be perfect…Right? For what earthly reason would a perfect God want his mistakes to run around and torment men/women. Surely he is not following the awful melodrama/ script that humans have made up…Is He?

We are special; we are the people chosen by God/Jesus to live forever, if only we worship Him enough. Christian believers tell me that Satan is jealous and wants earthlings to worship him, instead of God. What is it about Christians and worshiping? Does anybody really believe that God and His creation-Satan, are competing for numbers of worshipers?

Do you really believe that God/Jesus revealed this unreal melodrama to Paul so he (GOD) could be the subject of ever widening human worship? Or is there a possibility that a frail human invented the story and wrote the script. Why would a GOD want or need this kind of adulation, down on the knees worship?

Imagine a human trying to do this to family and friends; what would you think of him/her? Would you want your children to kneel down in prayer and worship to you? No, all you want is a little respect; right? 🙂

In our egotistical, self-centered view of ourselves I don’t think we can ever understand the suffering that people down through the ages have under gone. There is no possibility that a live human can truly understand the terror and bowel loosening fear that people undergo when they are looking unnatural death in the face.

Would you believe the God who created man can feel this; or do you think a God would not care, or does not notice?

If God does notice and can feel this human total terror and fear at facing extinction and still, not only let it happen, but at times cause it, then He is worthy of rejection. If God does not notice what is going on with his worthy creations, when faced with unnatural death, then He is worthy of rejection.

Think of Adam and Eve, kicked out of the Garden with no resources, in prehistoric times. Is that a worthy response from a God for a first time mistake? Not one I would want to recognize.

Think of this mythical story that has been unveiled to humanity by priests, rabbis and ministers….Does it REALLY make any kind of logical sense….would we humans even be privy to it?

A lot of people follow and worship this magical spirit. Well, you know the old saying: “twenty million Frenchmen couldn’t be wrong” (I know, I know, it’s two billion 🙂 I sure would like to see some magic to verify things.
Some think that Demons and the Devil, or Satan, are fallen angels…Imperfect creatures that were created By God. If God created Satan and Satan is evil and allowed by God to run around and torment humanity then what does that say about God? Yea, I know. It’s part of the script.

Does the son really inherit the sins of the father? If a father killed someone and afterwards couldn’t be found; is it OK to kill his son? “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.” Since when have WASP’s believed that?

I have a new granddaughter. I look at that beautiful little sweetheart, hold her in my arms and I say: No way is she full of sin; that’s just bullshit. Excuse the profanity please. I didn’t say that out loud, but it was fully formed in my brain.

 

Science, Religion definitely don’t mix

Random ramblings and thoughts on history and Christianity.

Why would God allow the Jewish people to be enslaved by the Egyptians?

Why wouldn’t God just change the heart of the Pharaoh, instead of killing all those humans and animals in the time of Moses?

Why did the Jews have to fight to take the ‘promised land?’

Didn’t Jesus know he would be resurrected to sit at the side of God; that he was the son of God, or maybe God himself, if you believe in a triune God.

Radiocarbon dates of less than 10,000 years are very accurate. lots of times can be checked and calibrated against historical records.

30,000?? BC The last Neanderthals die.

25,000 to 20,000BC Someone..is painting murals on cavewalls in France, and making beautiful spear points (Solutrean) that resemble points in later North American (Clovis) points.

10,000 to 5000 BC Humans arrive in Patagonia, South America.

9000 to 6000 BC Paleoindians in Utah using atlatl.

8000 BC Maybe earlier…farming in Asia.

8000 BC Rock carving in Murujuga, Australia.

8000 BC Mammoth kill in Naco, Arizona. Found in 1953, It had 8 Clovis points embedded. Slightly North of Naco, 9 more Mammoths and 13 associated Clovis points..dated to 9000 BC.

7000? BC Milk River Valley, Alberta, Canada. Blackfeet and Shoshone natives carving petroglyph’s.

7000 to 3200 BC Residents of the city of Mehrgarrh, near Indus valley, were farming, smelting metal, herding domesticated animals, flint knapping, tanning and making pottery.

6000 to 5500 BC Farming spread around the ‘fertile crescent.’ of the Middle East.

5000 BC the first farming culture of Central, and parts of, Northern Europe.

4100 to 4000 BC The Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve. No humans elsewhere on earth. Europe, North, Central, or South America, Asia, India, China, Mongolia, Australia, South Pacific Islands… …Empty… according to the Bible

2750 BC The Epic of Gilgamesh. Babylon alone had probably ten thousand people.

2550 to 2500? BC Pyramid of Khufu/Cheops, Other pyramids were soon being built in Egypt. Large population there. Egypt had a different language than Babylon.

2500? BC The Sphinx built.

2500 to 2000 BC Stonehenge being built in England: Population of England probably in the tens of thousands. Large prehistoric city, probably associated to the henge, found in modern times, a mile from Stonehenge.

2250 BC The Flood…8 humans left on the whole planet earth.

2250 to ??? the answersingenesis people think there was another ice age after the flood and the Neanderthals were spawned after that???

2250 BC Egyptian history continues unbroken, as does most of the world. No mention in hieroglyphs of all life destroying flood. Bronze age happening..no signs of interruption.

2125 BC Tower of Babel…probably tens of thousands of people in Babylon alone.

1750 BC Peak of Minoan civilization in Crete.

1515 BC Moses out of Egypt. Approximate population of Egypt probably 2-2½ million. Moses took about 1 million Jews with him…There goes the tax base.

1500 BC And earlier, Mexico was growing maize/corn and messing with corn genetics..and making Tacos? Yum!..Well not making tacos I guess.