Pearly Button will cry this article is off topic and Wharfy will huff and puff like Al Gore but this article proves there is no status quo when it comes to climate and the only constant is change.
7,000-YEAR OLD CITY FOUND IN EGYPT
A Report by Andrew Collins
London, Thursday, 31 January 2008: Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) have announced the discovery of a 7,000-year-old city in the Faiyum Oasis in northern Egypt.
The discovery, made public on Tuesday, comes from a team of US archaeologists working close to the Birket Qarun lake, the Lake Moeris of antiquity. This was the site of the magnificent Labyrinth, which rivalled that of Crete, according to the fifth-century BC Greek writer Herodotus.
The prehistoric 'city', thought to be located at Kom Aushim, close to the ruins of another ancient city dating from Graeco-Roman times, is believed to have been constructed by Egypt's 'first farmers', who thrived in the region between 5200 and 4500 BC.
According to Zahi Hawass, director of the SCA: 'An electromagnetic survey revealed the existence in the Karanis region of a network of walls and roads similar to those constructed during the Greco-Roman period.'
Hawass goes on to say that the remains of the city consist mainly of 'walls and houses in terracotta or dressed limestone as well as a large quantity of pottery and the foundations of ovens and grain stores.'
The site of the 7,000-year-old city is just seven kilometres (four miles) from the Faiyum lake, says local director of antiquities Ahmed Abdel Alim, and thus would probably have been close to its shores in prehistoric times.
Much of the Neolithic city, which throws new light on the origins of Egyptian civilization, remains buried beneath the sands of Egypt. Excavations are under way, with further announcements expected in due course.
For the original report from the Egyptian news agency AFP/MENA click here
According to a blog posted on the Egyptology News site on Wednesday, 27 January 2008:
"The discovery [of the city] was made by a University of California (UCLA) team in the area of Kom Aushim. In the area there were the remains of settlement structures made of mudbrick and decorated blocks of granite. They also found various types of vessel and stone tools. The remains were covered with a layer of calcium carbonate, which indicates that they had at some stage been covered by the waters of Lake Qarun."
Click here to read the full story. Thanks to Chris Ogilvie Herald for first beinging this story to my attention, and suggesting its implications.
Egypt's 7,000-year-old city - the Greater Implications
Andrew Collins Investigates
Map of the Faiyum Oasis, showing the Birket Qarun lake
and the site of Karanis beyond its east to east-north-eastern shoreline.
Egypt's prehistoric city is arguably one of the most extraordinary and far-reaching discoveries in the country for decades. That Egypt possessed elements of a high culture going back to Neolithic times has long been surmised. The advanced microblade technologies and rock art of the Nilotic peoples in southern Egypt, along with the 6,800-year-old astronomically aligned stone calendar circle of Nabta Playa in the western desert, all demonstrate that something special was going on here long before the rise of the first pharaoh in around 3100 BC. However, the implications of the Neolithic city of Karanis are far reaching, and might prove difficult for Egyptologists to take on board.
The SCA announcement this week states that among the 'artefacts' of the city are 'walls' and 'houses' of 'dressed limestone'.
Houses of dressed limestone! This is one hell of a statement …
The Egyptology News website goes further claiming that there are 'settlement structures made of mudbrick and decorated blocks of granite.'
One of the reasons why Egyptologists are unable to accept that any monuments on the plateau at Giza are older than Egypt's Old Kingdom period, c. 2600 BC, is that the use of stone masonry in building construction evolved from humble beginnings just a few hundred years earlier.
Now, however, with the discovery of the Neolithic city of Karanis, Egyptologists will have to come to terms with the fact that 'dressed limestone', and seemingly even 'decorated blocks of granite', was being used in Egypt to build walls as much as 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. This realisation also makes it likely that more substantial stone structures, such as temples with boundary walls, were being constructed long before the advent of the first stone-lined tombs and mastabas of the Early Dynastic period. c. 3100-2700 BC.
The use of 'decorated blocks of granite' within the Neolithic city is something that becomes virtually impossible to believe, until confirmation of exactly what has been found is announced by the SCA. However, if the reports are correct, then their presence immediately brings to mind the decorated walls of some of the earliest cities of Mesopotamia, such as Eridu in Lower Iraq, dating to c. 5500 BC, or even the high relief birds, animals and insects carved on the stone pillars and T-shaped standing stones found amid the Pre-pottery Neolithic cult complexes of Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori in southeast Turkey, which date back to c. 9500-8000 BC.
In addition to these facts, we have also to conclude that by the commencement of the Pyramid age Egyptian stone masons were able to draw upon a tradition of building construction in dressed stone that might have been thousands of years old. Thus a gradual evolution in style and size from more simple stone walls and houses beginning in 5200 BC might easily have led to the creation of pyramids some 2,500 years later.
Most amazing of all about the Faiyum Oasis's Neolithic city is that its settlement structures were, according to the Egyptology News website, found to have been covered by a layer of calcium carbonate, indicating that the city has spent some time beneath the waters of the Birket Qarun lake, which today is much smaller than the inland sea found here in antiquity.
Currently, its waters cover an area of about 78 miles2 (200 kms2), and are about 140 feet (43 m) below sea level. However, they were much higher in the past, and as the SCA announcement states, the Neolithic city was probably built close to its shores. Yet at some stage during its history, those waters rose to cover it, before receding back to their present level, 4 miles (7 kms) away.
When exactly the waters of the lake might have swollen enough to drown the city, apparently for some considerable amount of time, is something that only the local geology can tell us. Yet it is possible that the flooding occurred when in the Middle Kingdom, c. 2200 BC, the original waterway linking the lake to the Nile was widened and deepened to create a canal. This was done to regulate the flow of the Nile, especially during the annual inundation, and also to provideirrigation. Eventually, sometime around 230 BC, the branch of the Nile feeding the canal silted up, leaving Lake Moeris a virtual landlocked lake.
Map showing the location of the Faiyum basin.
No one knows the full extent, or true age, of the Neolithic city in the Faiyum, which might prove to be larger and even older than the estimates so far, but it is now right to start asking whether the prehistoric city builders of the Faiyum Oasis were active a little further north in the area of Giza pyramid field, some 40 miles (65 kms) away.
Neolithic chert and flint tools have been found on the slopes of the Maadi rock formation immediately south of the Pyramids, hinting at the possibility of very early settlements in this area. On top of this, several examples of funerary pots belonging to the prehistoric Maadi-Buto culture, that thrived c. 3500-3200 BC, have been uncovered at sites in and around Giza, including one close to the Sphinx. Thus there is every reason to begin looking again at the evolution of the Giza plateau to see whether its more familiar monuments emerged as a result of much earlier activity stemming from the age of Egypt's oldest city.
THE DISCOVERY OF EGYPT'S NEOLITHIC CITY COULD CHANGE ALL WE KNOW ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION - BUT HOW DOES IT AFFECT WHAT WE KNOW ALREADY?
Does the Neolithic city of Karanis help us better understand mysteries that have so far eluded the spade of the archaeologist? What about the age of the Sphinx, the hunt for the Hall of Records, the search for Atlantis, or the Watchers and Nephilim? What can the discovery of the city tell us about these and other enigmas of the past? Andrew Collins answers those questions that are going to be asked.
Q: Does the Neolithic city confirm that Giza's Sphinx monument is older than previously thought?
A: No, not at all. Sound geological clues demonstrate that the weathering of its body, as well as that of the surrounding enclosure walls, were caused primarily by sand erosion and water run off, following heavy rain storms over a very long period of time. Such rain storms have been occurring on and off in Egypt for the last 10,000 years, so this knowledge cannot in itself provide an true age for the construction of the Sphinx.
The Great Sphinx at Giza
Theories put forward by Egyptological writer John Anthony West, working with Boston geologist Dr Robert Schoch, proposing that the water erosion on the body of the Sphinx proves that it is thousands of years older than its conventional dating of 2550 BC remain unsubstantiated. The existence of the Neolithic city at Karanis only provides for a high culture in northern Egypt as early as 5200 BC, with the ability to cut and dress limestone and granite. Nothing here yet suggests that these 'first farmers' were in the habit of carving leonine monuments 240 feet long! That said, see below for more on this topic.
Q: Does the city help us find the Egyptian Hall of Records of Edgar Cayce?
A: The American psychic Edgar Cayce predicted in the 1930s that beneath the sands of the Giza plateau existed a 'Hall of Records', an underground complex used as a repository of knowledge for an antediluvian civilisation. He spoke of the Sphinx marking its entrance, and of its discovery in some future generation.
An underworld complex of this nature is certainly alluded in ancient Egyptian records, such as the Edfu Building Texts and Coffin Texts, and within the writings of Roman and Arab travellers. Further stories of underground cities at Giza have been preserved among the inhabitants of nearby villages. However, confirmation of the existence of this labyrinthine structure still eludes us, as does any specifics regarding its possible nature or age. If it does exist, and does predate the Pyramid age, then the discovery of the Neolithic city at Karanis might provide a realistic framework for the construction of hewn chambers beyond natural fissures and tunnels cut into the limestone bedrock at Giza.
Q:Does the existence of the city help prove that Atlantis existed, and that its survivors ended up in Egypt?
A: No, this is far removed from what little evidence has been released so far on the Neolithic city. Plato's Atlantis is likely to have been a memory of an island landmass devastated by earthquakes and floods caused by the fragmentation of a comet over North America at the end of the last Ice Age. Its survivors most probably reached the Central American mainland, where they lived to tell the tale. However, until evidence emerges to suggest otherwise, there is no reason to conclude that any survivors reached the African continent, or might have been responsible for the Faiyum's Neolithic city.
Q: Who might have built and inhabited the Neolithic city of Karanis?
A: Egyptologists suggest that those who constructed the Neolithic city were among Egypt's 'first farmers'. This refers to the first accepted agriculturists who began entering Africa and settling on the Lower Nile and in the Nile Delta around 5500 BC. They came from Palestine and the Sinai and were descended from a people known as the Natufians, a semi-nomadic population who thrived in the Levant (Palestine, Lebanon and Syria), where they emerged on to the scene around 14,500 year ago, and stayed around until around 10,000 years ago. Interestingly, the so-called Helwan point, a particular type of stone tool found at Neolithic sites in Egypt (including Helwan, near Cairo, where it was first identified), has been discovered at much earlier Natufian settlements stretching as far north as Syria. Moreover, only in the past 15 years examples of the Helwan point have been found at the Pre-pottery Neolithic (PPN) settlement of Nevali Cori, near Urfa in southeast Turkey, which dates to c. 8400 BC. This shows a possible line of transmission of stone blade technology that might have begun in southeast Turkey at the end of the Last Ice Age and spread eventually to the Nile Valley.
Early Natufian peoples were accomplished stone masons, responsible for the construction of the Neolithic city of Jericho, with its famous stone defensive tower built sometime between 8350 BC to 7370 BC. Agriculture in this region goes back to 12,000 BP (before present), although the key nerve centre for the spread of advanced technology in the Near East was unquestionably southeast Turkey, where Pre-pottery Neolithic sites such as Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori catalysed an unprecedented epoch of art, architecture and technological advancement on a level not seen before.
The tower at Jericho
Thus the most likely builders of the Karanis Neolithic city were descendents of the Natufians, who entered what is today Egypt sometime between 5500 and 5000 BC. Extensive evidence of their presence was first uncovered in the Faiyum Oasis during the 1900s by the grand daddy of Egyptology William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942). His work there was followed in the 1920s by that of the British Egyptologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson (1889-1985).
This said, the Neolithic settlements of the Faiyum Oasis have never before included roads, walls and houses of terracotta and dressed limestone, as well as 'dressed blocks of granite', and so some form of priestly ruling elite might well have been responsible for the creation of an organised society unique to Egypt. They are likely to have been seen as Egypt's first rulers, or 'kings', a tantalising possibility since ancient Egyptian records speak of an age when gods ruled Egypt, prior to an age of demigods, known as the Shemsu-hor ('Followers of Horus'). Only after this time rose the first pharaoh around 3100 BC. Were the ruling elite of Karanis the god-kings or demi-gods of ancient Egyptian legend? This now becomes a tantalising possibility.
Yet if the Neolithic city of Karanis is of post-Natufian construction, then it is as well to remember that it was these people who were responsible for the building of the city of Jericho 3,000 years beforehand. Writer Michael Baigent in his book ANCIENT TRACES (1998) speculated that it was descendents of Natufian peoples from Palestine that were responsible for the construction of the Sphinx, a theory that might now be explored again.
Q: Could anyone else have constructed the Neolithic city at Karanis?
A: The best bet so far is that it was founded by a ruling elite descended from the Natufian peoples of the Levant. However, there might well have been an influence from Lower Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), long thought to have had a hand in the establishment of dynastic Egypt. Among the earliest cities there were those of Eridu, c. 5500 BC, and Uruk, c. 4400 BC. Their builders used stone and mudbrick walls, and so there might have been some influence on the construction of the Karanis city during roughly the same period, perhaps through the exchange of ideas during trade and commerce between the two countries.
There might also have been an influence from the south, via the peoples of the Sahara, which even then was experiencing an equatorial climate much like that of Kenya today; the onset of the desert only coming sometime around 4,500-5,000 years ago. Here was situated the land of Yam, which is known to have traded with Egypt through until Old Kingdom times. Along this trade route might have come peoples from as far away as Mali, where today thrives the Dogon peoples, who unquestionably preserve ancient cosmological knowledge that is unique and difficult to interpret in modern terms.
In addition to this, those peoples responsible for the construction around 4800 BC of the astronomically aligned stone calendar circle and stone rows at Nabta Playa in the Western Desert of southern Egypt might also have come into contact with the builders of the Neolithic city of Karanis. If so, then we might expect to find here further evidence of astronomical alignments consistent with those at Nabta Playa.
It is also possible that there are links with the Nilotic peoples of southern Egypt, who in Palaeolithic times left behind beautiful cave art at places such as Qurta, near Kom Ombo. As early as 13,000 BC they are suspected of having a primitive form of agriculture (although this is hotly contested), and so they might have spread their influence through to Karanis in northern Egypt. This, however, seems less likely at this time, with the descendents of the Natufians of the Levant being the best candidates by far for the building of the city.
Q: Might the city have been ruled by descendents of the Watchers and Nephilim of the book of Genesis and the book of Enoch?
A: Egypt's Neolithic city would have possessed a ruling elite, a dynasty of individuals, who were most probably among the country's earliest rulers, or kings. If they were of post-Natufian stock, then it is possible that this elite were descendents of those who constructed the Pre-pottery Neolithic cult complexes of Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori in southeast Turkey, which was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. The Watchers, and their ledendary offspring the Nephilim, are said to have lived in 'Eden', and there is overwhelming evidence that they were in fact a shamanic or ruling elite attached to southeast Turkey's earliest cult centres, where the Neolithic revolution began at the end of the Last Ice Age. The descendents of these earliest Neolithic peoples of the Near East were also responsible for Catal Huyuk, the ancient world's oldest city near Konya, in southern-central Turkey. It dates to c. 7000-5500 BC, and here we find depictions of its priestly or ruling elite as shamans in coats made from the feathers of the vulture, a bird associated with the transmigration of the soul into the afterlife.
It is possible that similar influences might have permeated through the Natufian peoples into Egypt, c. 5500 BC, meaning that, yes, the descendents of the Watchers and Nephilim might well have constituted the ruling elite of Karanis's Neolithic city. Once again, it is important to recall the origins of the Helwan point, which might have first been used by those who built the Pre-pottery Neolithic site of Nevali Cori, c. 8400-8000 BC, but ended up in the tool kit of the Neolithic peoples of Egypt some 3000-4000 years later. This suports the idea of a line of transmission from southeast Turkey, via the Levant, to Egypt during an age when the Karanis Neolithic city thrived.
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