The trouble with skeletons is being able to date them correctly. Archaeological dating has become one of our pet peeves as there are too many assumptions involved. For example, this article’s content:
Ancient skeletons unearthed in France reveal Mafia-style killings
More than 5,500 years ago, two women were tied up and probably buried alive in a ritual sacrifice, using a form of torture associated today with the Italian Mafia, according to an analysis of skeletons discovered at an archaeological site in southwest France.
Researchers investigated the unusual position of three female skeletons found in 1985 at the site in the town of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, and concluded that two of the women probably died from a form of torture known as “incaprettamento,” which involves tying a person’s throat and ankles so that they eventually strangle themselves due to the position of their legs.
The researchers also reviewed skeletons found at other archaeological sites across Europe and identified 20 other probable instances of similar sacrificial killings. The practice may have been relatively widespread in Neolithic, or late Stone Age, Europe, according to the study, published in the journal Science Advances last week.
The third woman found at the site was in a normal burial position and “we don’t know how she died,” Éric Crubézy, one of the paper’s lead authors and a biological anthropologist at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, told CNN on Tuesday. “But we can say that they put the three women in the grave at the same time.”
First, this discovery does not resemble mafia-style executions. Rather it is the other way around. second, who knows when those women were killed and buried. For all we know, they were buried more recently than archaeologists think.
While it is an interesting discovery we can rule out neolithic and other eras as that is an assumption as well. Those eras are based on assumptions and missing evidence. Another example:
Suspected ancient human remains found at beach
Suspected centuries-old human remains have been found after an ancient wall collapsed along the south Wales coast.
Bones were discovered near Dunraven Bay in Southerndown, Vale of Glamorgan, on 9 April, and have now been sent for analysis, South Wales Police said.
Experts believe they are the remains of shipwreck victims from the 16th, 17th and possibly 18th centuries.
Numerous archaeological discoveries have been made along the Vale of Glamorgan coast, including prehistoric and Iron Age structures, as well as the remains of shipwrecks.
That is a very wide time frame which only validates our complaint about dating items from the past. They do not know and they should not broadcast their lack of knowledge to the whole world.
One final comment we will make has nothing to do with skeletons. It has to do with what we have said in the past and in our books about the beliefs or lack of beliefs held by archaeologists.
The following quote comes from Dr. Charles Pellegrino’s book Return To Sodom and Gomorrah:
This may come as a surprise to you, said Zimansky, but the one thing that had absolutely nothing to do with our interest in Mesopotamia was the Bible.
Absolutely nothing, Stone said.
Nobody I know, Zimansky continued, nobody working as an archaeologist in Mesopotamia has any interest in the Bible whatsoever. If anything, it’s a kind of antagonism. We sort of feel stigmatized having to deal with it because a lot of the popular interest in this region comes from people who are interested in the Bible….
…On the Nile, I Blurted, I even knew one Egyptologist who, when asked to indicate her religion for the national census, wrote, ancient Egyptian. A lot of them seem to be into New Age cultism…
…And Israel I trailed off. I never met an atheist Egyptologist or a particularly devout one, but the Israeli archaeologists I knew ranged the entire spectrum from atheism to devout… (pgs. 181-182)
This is the perspectives that influences what the public hears once archaeologists make statements, and write papers and books. or draws conclusions for their lectures. You are not getting the best picture of the past as people are not using all the data needed to see the past as it really was.
These are people who let their lack of beliefs interpret the information and other discoveries they uncover. They may say they are looking for the truth but when you leave the Bible out of the work, they are not getting to the truth.
They are constructing their own ideas and extrapolating them back in time to the ancient people. It is a wonder that we learn anything about the past when so much of the truth is still hidden.
theoarch 