#1. Ancient temple could reveal secrets of a lost society that predates the Inca Empire
Archaeologists say they have discovered the ruins of what they believe are the boundaries of an ancient temple belonging to the mysterious Andean society of Tiwanaku that disappeared around AD 1000.
The research team unearthed the immense temple complex in the highlands of what is now Bolivia’s municipality of Caracollo. The site is southeast of Lake Titicaca, a different region than where researchers had previously focused their search for clues that might help unravel the secrets of this lost society.
The extraordinary find is roughly 130 miles (about 210 kilometers) south of the established archaeological site of Tiwanaku, the capital of the powerful empire that preceded the Incas. The latest findings were described in a study published on June 24 in the journal Antiquity.
Called Palaspata after the native name for the region, the temple lies outside the borders of where Tiwanaku was previously known to have expanded, said Dr. José Capriles, a Bolivian archaeologist and associate professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University.
Capriles, who was the lead author of the study, noted that the building’s architectural elements, including a terraced platform and sunken courtyard, have a striking resemblance to the Tiwanaku style found in other parts of the Lake Titicaca region. “We don’t expect it in this particular place and the fact that it exists there is remarkable,” he said.
First, It’s probably not a temple. There is no contemporary ancient documentation stating the building’s purpose. Why would archaeologists assume a religious purpose when they know absolutely nothing about the people who built the bldg.? They do not even know if the people were religious or not.
Second, The crediting of an unknown or little-known civilization fails for the same reason. No ancient contemporary documentation provides the details of the people and whether they were able to build such a grand structure.
Third, Design does not always indicate purpose or function. Location does nothing but tell archaeologists that someone built at that site. Anything else, is read into the discovery.
#2. Luxurious 1,700-year-old Roman bathhouse unearthed by archaeologists after surprise discovery
Archaeologists recently unearthed an ancient Roman bathhouse in Turkey – a relic as luxurious as it is old.
The discovery was covered by Turkey’s Anadolu Agency (AA). A landowner in the area was planting sour cherry saplings in 2023 when he stumbled across a Roman-era floor mosaic.
Thanks to underground imaging radar, archaeologists found the bathhouse about 230 feet south of the mosaic.
The 1,700-year-old structure, which measures 75 square meters, dates back to the Late Roman era.
It had an underfloor heating system and distinct cold, warm and hot zones – the ancient equivalent of a modern spa, AA noted.
The bathhouse also featured sweat rooms, pools and separate channels for clean water and wastewater.
Turkish officials plan to open up the site for tourism in the future.
Ahmet Demirdağ, provincial director of culture and tourism, told AA the bathhouse and mosaic are just a few of many “significant remains” in the area.
“Looking at it overall, we believe this area was an urban settlement,” Demirdağ observed.
“We will continue our excavations.”
It is possible that the villa is 1700 years old, but that places construction very close to the demise of the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Empire, or the Byzantine Empire, lasted till almost 1500 AD, so that dating is possible.
Turkey would fall into the Eastern, not Western, empires. The question to answer would be, can we call it the Roman Empire even though it had nothing to do with Rome?
#3. Archaeologists Found a 5,000-Year-Old Fortress That Nature Had Hidden for Centuries
Sometimes ancient ruins are hard to reach. Luckily for us, LiDAR technology can make researching some of those inconvenient places possible. LiDAR stands for “light detection and ranging,” and it works by rapidly emitting laser pulses toward the ground. The system then measures how long it takes light to travel to the ground and back again, using that time to calculate elevation. This data can then be used to create high resolution models.
In the past, LiDAR has helped image everything from tree growth to lost cities in the Amazon, and it just revealed something else incredible. This time, researchers were able to record an ancient fortified settlement deep in the forests of Neamț County, Romania.
“Thanks to current technology and using LiDAR scans I was able to obtain a faithful image of an almost 5000-year-old fortification.” Vasile Diaconu—an archaeologist on the study—said in a translated post. “On this occasion, we observed details that we could not observe in the field precisely because of the vegetation.”
The settlement roughly dates back to the transition from the Neolithic period to the Bronze Age. Researchers used noninvasive methods to image the sites, launching drones equipped with LiDAR to generate an aerial view of the fortifications. Diaconu argues that using these new technologies are essential parts of archaeological research.
“Only by using modern technologies will we be able to better understand the complexities of archaeological sites,” he said.
While LIDAR helps locate ancient sites, it and most technology cannot provide the important information everyone needs. Nothing replaces physical excavations and human analysis of those material remains.
Technology can never replace this archaeological work. Is it a legitimate fortification, or was the structure used for some other purpose? Archaeologists may never know.
A researcher may have uncovered the oldest written references to Moses, dating back 3,800 years and hidden in an Egyptian desert.
The two etchings were found at Serabit el-Khadim, an ancient turquoise mining site in the Sinai Desert where Semitic laborers once worked during the Middle Bronze Age.
The Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions date back between 1800 and 1600 B.C.
They were etched centuries before the earliest parts of the Bible were written between the 10th and 7th centuries B.C.
The two inscriptions, among many at the site, were first discovered in the early 1900s – but they’re now being reanalyzed by an American-Israeli epigraphist named Michael S. Bar-Ron. The expert, who’s also a graduate student at Ariel University, spoke with Fox News Digital about the discovery.
Bar-Ron posits that the inscriptions read “Zot M’Moshe” and “Ne’um Moshe.”
The phrases may mean “This is from Moses” and “Declaration of Moses,” respectively.
If verified, the inscriptions are the earliest written mention of Moses outside the Bible.
The inscriptions also reference El, a deity associated with the Abrahamic God, while censuring the ancient pagan goddess Ba`alat.
The bold is ours, and it highlights a scholarly error that many people accept and believe. The earliest parts of the Bible were written long before the 7th to 10th centuries BC.
Moses wrote in the 15th or 13th centuries BC, as Jesus said in John 5. Jesus affirms Moses’ writing but not the date. We know that the Exodus took place in either the 1400s or 1200s BC, giving us the early date.
No one knows when the book of Job was written, but it has been said for decades, if not longer, that it is the oldest biblical book:
The Book of Job is estimated to have been written in the time of the Patriarchs, between 1900 and 1700 B.C.(source)
and
Portions of Job are preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from roughly the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD. While these manuscripts are not as early as Job’s original composition, they reflect an established textual tradition. The consistency of the Book of Job’s transmission from these fragments onward affirms its recognized place in the Hebrew Scriptures during a period when many texts were being standardized.(source)
Scholars have long sought to make the Old Testament part of some sort of conspiracy theory. They claim it was written by the elites and religious leaders as an attempt to control the people.
However, if the Old Testament contained false information, it would have been found out by now and excised from the texts. Writing was known and used long before scholars say it took place.
The dates listed in the first quote in this section are not always agreed with:
The Bible’s origins were not a specific moment in time but rather a long process that spanned more than a millennium from around 1200 B.C.E. to 100 C.E. In short, there’s no simple answer to the question of when the Bible was written. (source)
The scholars cannot even agree on how many writers there were when the Bible was written:
According to Professor Elizabeth Polczer, a Biblical Scholar in the Department of Religion at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, the latest research suggests that dozens of people wrote the various parts of the Bible, with 40 authors likely representing the minimum number. (source)
The scholars are wrong, of course, but that is a topic for another day. As is the date of the writing of the Old Testament. What is important is that the OT is part of the Bible and contains information we need to know, as God reveals a lot about himself in the OT.
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