What a bunch of baloney. Camels were domesticated twice thousands of long before they're mentioned in the Bible (in central Asia and in southern Arabia). It would have been amazing if no camels ever got to Palestine from southern Arabia ... they were after all domesticated precisely for use as long distance pack animals through deserts and arid country. But because we haven't found a skeleton of one there yet, they're pretending to know that no camel ever got to Palestine.
There were big kingdoms in the middle east from ancient times - Egypt, Hittite empire, Mittanni, Babylonia, Sumer, Akkad, and Mineans in southern Arabia. There was a trade in spices like frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia to all these kingdoms from very early times.
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There are two species of quadruped animal of the deserts of the world known as camel, both of which have implications for archaeology. [ That means camels were domesticated twice in two different places. ] The Bactrian (Camelus bactrianus) (two humps) resides in central Asia, while the dromedary (Camelus dromedarius) (one hump) is found in North Africa and the Near East. Camels were (and are) used for transportation, but also for their milk, dung, hair and blood, all of which were used for various purposes by nomadic pastoralists of the deserts.
Dromedaries were probably domesticated in coastal settlements along the southern Arabian peninsula somewhere between 3000 and 2500 BC. The earliest reference to camels in Arabia is the Sihi mandible, a camelid bone direct dated to ca 7100-7200 cal BC, or about 8200 RCYBP. Sihi is a Neolithic coastal site in Yemen, and the bone is probably a wild dromedary. The earliest camels in Africa are from Qasr Ibrim, Nubia, 9th century BC.
Evidence for the domestication of Bactrian camels has been found as early as 2600 BC at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.
archaeology.about.com
Seriously, suppose there were hundreds of camels in Palestine at the time of the patriarchs ... what are the odds of a skeleton being found? Pretty small. |
