Re: 7-Foot Robot Used in Black Sea Expedition

From: Franz Gnaedinger (frgn_at_bluemail.ch)
Date: 11/09/04 

Date: 8 Nov 2004 23:58:26 -0800

frgn@bluemail.ch (Franz Gnaedinger) wrote in message news:<2bf25455.0411080014.5cd0c5cb@posting.google.com>...

Revising my interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve:

Eden -- might have been the larger Taurus mountain range area in
southern Anatolia. In the Hellenistic period of time the Taurus
was the heavenly abode of Uranus, Greek god of heaven, while the
Hellenistic colony in the fertile Cukurova plain was called Adana,
also known as Antiocheia-Adana. The Hittite god of the Celestial
Weather, Teshub, stood on a pair of mountain tops, one of them
was Mount Cassius near Antakya or Antiocheia, so the other one
might well have been a Taurus peak, the more so as Teshub had a
pair of bulls - tauros = bull - by the names of Serri and Hurri,
which, as Hurritic names, mean day and night respectively. Day
and night come or descend from heaven.

The river of Eden -- might have been the clouds along the Taurus
mountain range.

Genesis II 5-6: "... the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon
the earth (...) But then went up a mist from the earth and watered
the whole face of the ground." -- I imagine a giant snake standing
with her tail on the earth while reaching the sky with her head,
drinking from the clouds, then lowering herself to the ground and
watering earth with a spray from her mouth. Marija Gimbutas on
snakes painted on Cucuteni and East Balkan ceramics: "Somes vases
flaunt with a gigantic snake winding or stretching over 'the whole
universe', over the sun or moon, stars and rain torrents ..."

A garden eastward in Eden -- the Haran plain, where agriculture
began, in the Bible Gozen, Haran and Rezeph; the garden of Eden
would then have been enlarged and would have comprised Old Europe
or at least the Danube basin, northeast Africa, and Mesopotamia.

The river of Eden was "parted and became into four heads" --
rivers Danube, Nile, Tigris and Euphrates.

River Pison, land of Havilah, gold, bdellum, onyx -- river Danube,
Old Europe, gold from Bulgaria, Onyx perhaps from Czechia, bdellum
= ?? The clay tablets from Tartaria, western Romania, 5300-5000 BC,
testify to a possible connection between Old Europe and Sumer,
while the clay temple model from Casciarele in the lower Danube
basin, late fifth millennium BC, has the closest analogy in the
incision of a temple on a clay tablet from Susa, Elam, neighbor
of Sumer, only that the Susa tablet is about thousand years younger
than the temple model from Casciarele.

Gihon, Ethiopia -- Nile, northeast Africa.

Hiddekel and Euphrates -- Tigris and Euphrates, Mesopotamia.

I based my first interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve on
a cylinder seal impression from the Anu Ziqqurat of Uruk. The Fall
seal impression shows a similar snake, standing on the ground and
reaching heaven with the head, while a stylized date palm is flanked
by a pair of sitting humans who stretch out their hands for a cluster
of dates each. The leaves of the palm tree are particular, as they
don't originate from the top of the stem but form a ladder to the
heavens. From this I infer that the original sin which led the the
Fall was a wish to climb the ladder to heaven and become like God.

Eve's "apple" was then a cluster of dates. Date palms are cultivated
trees, there are as much as fifty sorts, and they require copious
water, even irrigation.

Next time: the story of Adam and Eve as it might have been told in
Sumer (an allegory on early agriculture and its consequences)

Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch

  
> Day Brown: thank you for taking Anatolia seriously (most regulars
> in sci.archaeology ignore it), and allow me to reply here, since
> I wish to confine my posts to a few threads.
>
> Do you know Goebekli Tepe in the (Sanli-)Urfa region, upper Euphrates
> drainage, southeast Anatolia? The stone pillar temples were in use
> from 11500-9500 BP (9500-7500 BC). The T-shaped pillars reach a height
> of eight meters, and the largest pillar in a nearby quarry would weigh
> some fifty tons if freed from the rock. The pillars are decorated with
> reliefs: one pillar shows a bull, a fox and a stork; another one snakes;
> yet another one a net.
>
> Meanwhile a moonlike landscape, the region of Goebekli Tepe had once
> been a paradise. The hills and plains were covered with lush meadows.
> In May large herds of gazelles passed by, an easy prey for the local
> hunters and gatherers, who also run an important flint industry and
> even worked upon obsidian from a nearby volcano. In around 9500 BP
> or 7500 BC the temples were carefully filled up and abandoned.
>
> Pollen analysis and bone fragment examination revealed that the
> people living at and visiting Goebekli Tepe were hunters and gatherers.
> They did neither cultivate cereals nor domesticate animals.
>
> Agriculture started in around 9000 BP or 7000 BC in the Haran plain
> south of Goebekli Tepe. The first cultivated einkorn was found at
> Mureybet, and one of the first farmer villages was Tell Abu Hureira,
> both on the river Euphrates. A further important early farming site
> was Cayoenu near Dyarbakir north of Goebekli Tepe.
>
> I interpret the story of Adam and Eve as an allegory on early
> agriculture. Based on the Bible, II. Kings XIX 12, the Garden of
> Eden was located in Gozen, Haran and Rezeph. The sites of Mureybet
> and Tell Abu Hureira would have belonged to the land of Rezeph.
> The Bible is right, once again. All we have to do is read it
> properly.
>
> Now my question for you, Day Brown. You mention a 9,000 years old
> farm house in Bulgaria. Can you tell us more? beginning with the
> name and location of the site? was it a semi-permanent domicil?
> who lived there? I assume they have been mesolithic or perhaps
> early neolithic hunters and gatherers.
>
> Agriculture began some 9,000 years ago in the Haran plain. If you
> wish to challenge our current knowledge you have to provide more
> information, and from reliable sources.
>
>
> Next time: Eve's "apple" was a cluster of dates / more on Eden
>
> Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
>
>
>
> > Peter T. Daniels: you make me loose my former respect for you.
> > I got about a dozen replies from you, and twice you forgot what
> > you had written and were amazed at my reply. And now you pass on
> > to deliberate insincerity by snipping a sentence of mine in the
> > middle of it. I wrote: "Eve took a bite from an apple: apples
> > came from Persia, and if it was another fruit it may nevertheless
> > have grown on a cultivated tree." Snipping the crucial second part
> > of my sentence IS insincere, and know that it was them snipping
> > edus that made me post the way I do. I know well that the fruit
> > involved was not an apple, yet it is called an apple, and was
> > called an apple in almost all translations of the Bible, which
> > is a relevant fact for me when pondering the question about the
> > reliability of scriptural traditions: there is always a way to
> > convey the original meaning, even by wrong translations! They
> > are wrong on the surface, but keep a deeper level of truth.
> >
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > In my previous messages I linked the story of Adam and Eve to
> > early agriculture, and Noah's Ark to any enclosure built on
> > an eminence, and every tell in Mesopotamia whereon the dwellers
> > of a river plain found shelter from rising waters or attacking
> > enemies.
> >
> > Now for a hypothetical flood scenario.
> >
> > Jim Teller believes that an outflow of the huge sweet water
> > lake Agassiz 8,400 years ago caused a flooding of the shallow
> > Persian gulf, while Ryan (2003) dates the hypothetical Black
> > Sea infill to the same time, 8400 BP or 6400 BC. A week ago
> > I read in the scientific section of a newspaper that a heavy
> > flood can trigger an earthquake. Let me assume the rising
> > level of the Sea of Marmara caused an earthquake in the region
> > of the Bosporus, whereupon the hypothetical dam gave in, say,
> > to the left and the right side of a large central rock:
> >
> >
> > d d d d d r r r d d d d d
> > d d d d r r r r d d d d
> > d d d r r r r r d d d
> > d d r r r r d d
> >
> > d = land, left and right of the Bosporus, going over into
> > the hypothetical Bosporuas dam; r = central rock of the dam;
> > free spaces d r and r d = waterfalls
> >
> > The central rock would have been commemorated first in wooden
> > reliefs of the Goddess of the Water Tresses, then on vessels
> > from Old Europe showing the same Goddess of the Water Plaits,
> > and finally as Medusa whose hairs have been snakes that would
> > again symbolize water -- rushing water in freightening masses.
> >
> > Sonner or later the central rock would have given in, releasing
> > a first flood triggering a heavy earthquake somewhere on the
> > southern shore of the Black Sea that would have sent a floodwave
> > across the Pontos.
> >
> > Now if the outflow of lake Agassiz caused a flooding of the
> > shallow Persian Gulf, and then, indirectly, the infill of the
> > Black Sea 8,400 years ago -- could this have been Noah's Flood?
> >
> > No, since nobody lived on the shores of the Persian Gulf in
> > that period of time (as far as I know), and there were only
> > hunters and gatherers wandering along the shores of the Black
> > Sea - no settlements of early farmers and ainmal breeders.
> >
> > However, the hypothetical Black Sea infill could have been
> > commemorated otherwise. More next time.
> >
> > Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
> >
> >
> >
> > > The story of Adam and Eve (Genesis II+III) refers, I believe,
> > > to the origin of agriculture. Eve took a bite from an apple:
> > > apples came from Persia, and if it was another fruit it may
> > > nevertheless have grown on a cultivated tree. It was Eve who
> > > took the first bite from the apple: women played a major role
> > > in early agriculture, which is proved by vessels and figurines
> > > from Old Europe. Adam was made of clay: early agriculture goes
> > > along with clay figurines and vessels. Adam and Eve had been
> > > expelled from the paradise and were obliged to a hard working
> > > life: while the hunters and gatherers spent just a couple of
> > > hours a day for catching, collecting and preparing their food,
> > > agriculture is hard word. The apple had grown on the Tree of
> > > Wisdom: agriculture asked for the irrigation of the fields,
> > > which required cooperation, led to nation forming and gave rise
> > > to the sciences in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. Now for
> > > the Snake, which played an intriguing role. Snakes, I believe,
> > > had to do with water and were often used as symbols for rivers.
> > > The Snake in the Genesis lived in the Garden of Eden, which,
> > > as I take it, was distinct from Eden itself. There was a river
> > > in Eden, while no rain fell on earth, instead "a mist rose from
> > > the earth and watered the whole face of the ground." The Snake
> > > in the Bible has four heads, while the Snake on the 'Adam and
> > > Eve' cylinder seal impression from the Ziqqurat of Unug/Uruk
> > > stands on the ground and reaches heaven with her head. By
> > > combining all this I came to the following conclusions: Eden
> > > was Heaven; the river of Eden were the clouds; the Garden of
> > > Eden was the Earth, more specific northern Africa, Near East,
> > > India and China; the Snake drank water from the clouds and then
> > > sprinkled it gently over those regions with her four mouths ...
> > > Yet as the early farmers cut down so many trees, desertation
> > > set in and made the rivers rise and flood the wide open plains,
> > > while intensive irrigation, as practized in southern Mesopotamia,
> > > caused salification. In other words: early farming led to the
> > > expulsion from the paradise. The Snake was no longer allowed to
> > > drink from the heavenly water - from the clouds -, instead it was
> > > forced to eat dust - to flow through wide expanses of dry land ...
> > >
> > > This message may complete the one from yesterday. I don't yet
> > > succeed in reconstructing the 'Adam and Eve' story as it might
> > > have been told in Sumer, but perhaps a reader will?

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