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Researchers have pinpointed the date of what could be the oldest solar eclipse yet recorded. The event, which occurred on 30 October 1207 BC, is mentioned in the Bible, and could have consequences for the chronology of the ancient world.
Using a combination of the biblical text and an ancient Egyptian text, the researchers were then able to refine the dates of the Egyptian pharaohs, in particular the dates of the reign of Ramesses the Great. The results are published in the Royal Astronomical Society journal Astronomy & Geophysics.
The biblical text in question comes from the Old Testament book of Joshua and has puzzled biblical scholars for centuries. It records that after Joshua led the people of Israel into Canaan -- a region of the ancient Near East that covered modern-day Israel and Palestine -- he prayed: "Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon. And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies."
"If these words are describing a real observation, then a major astronomical event was taking place -- the question for us to figure out is what the text actually means," said paper co-author Professor Sir Colin Humphreys from the University of Cambridge's Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, who is also interested in relating scientific knowledge to the Bible.
Colin Humphreys and Graeme Waddington. 'Solar eclipse of 1207 BC helps to date pharaohs.' Astronomy & Geophysics (2017). DOI: 10.1093/astrogeo/atx178.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @08:31PM (8 children)
How does the sun and moon standing still in different places sound like an eclipse? It sounds explicitly not like an eclipse. What could be more reasonable is an asteroid impact or earthquake that affected the earths spin/tilt so the day was longer than usual.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Monday October 30 2017, @08:42PM (5 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami [wikipedia.org]
https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/jan/HQ_05011_earthquake.html [nasa.gov]
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=1000&distanceUnits=1&diam=10&diameterUnits=2&pdens=&pdens_select=8000&vel=55&velocityUnits=1&theta=45&wdepth=&wdepthUnits=1&tdens=2500 [ic.ac.uk]
A noticeable effect would require an extinction-level event.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @09:49PM (3 children)
Still better than the eclipse though since it is at least consistent with the description.
1) Nothing appears to be "standing still" during a eclipse.
2) It says the sun was "at Gibeon" and the moon was "in the Valley of Aijalon".
I checked, these are not the same place: http://bibleatlas.org/valley_of_aijalon.htm [bibleatlas.org]
The most basic and noticeable thing about a solar eclipse is that the sun and moon appear to be in the same place.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:48AM (1 child)
I'm probably not helping, but it occurred to me that Gibeon is close to gibbous. Perhaps a translation/language issue over the years? The sun might be considered gibbous if the moon partially eclipsed it (e.g. by 10-20%). Not enough to make it look like a crescent.
I don't have an answer to the "Valley of Aijalon", however that may have been the direction of the moon at the time, or some sort of metaphor?
TL:DR - I wouldn't take the wording in that passage literally.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:27AM
I checked the Wikipedia entry on Joshua, and this bit stood out to me:
So, not terribly accurate there then, also this from the Old Testament entry:
So, if Joshua is the oldest book of the old testament, it is still at least 800 years removed from its subject.
Lets just stop trying to tie the bible to historical events shall we? There are so many better ways to do history.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spamalope on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:14AM
The English is a translated translation, possibly of oral tradition.
From the article “But going back to the original Hebrew text, we determined that an alternative meaning could be that the sun and moon just stopped doing what they normally do: they stopped shining. In this context, the Hebrew words could be referring to a solar eclipse, when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, and the sun appears to stop shining. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the Hebrew word translated ‘stand still’ has the same root as a Babylonian word used in ancient astronomical texts to describe eclipses.”
From that map Aijalon appears to be in a valley, Gibeon to the east in a mountainous/hilly area. The hill/peak the sun rose over may be used as a rough calendar marker, so the city (or peak it may be named for) are used as a direction name.
So, in the valley of Aijalon the sun and moon stopped over Gibeon - and the nation attacked/revolted based on that portents. (and lived to tell about it)
Ancient histories are full of portents/auguries being used to determine the timing of actions, so that's reasonable too.
You can see an example of sleuthing to untangle translation errors in a New Testament gospel to get some idea how this could happen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmAY-vJGPhc [youtube.com]
I'm not religious, but do find it interesting that at least some of the stupid things are misunderstandings.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Tuesday October 31 2017, @10:28PM
According to my d6-based estimations, the downward thrust of the Great Pyramid's interstellar engines when firing as part of a liftoff or touchdown sequence could also have contributed to the delay.
If the Black African Pharoahs were leaving the planet just before the meteor's impact to avoid its adverse effects, then the impact occurred, and the pyramid touched back down within the 24 hour period, that would account for the delay.
This would have taken place in Egypt however, too far away for the biblical scholar to have seen it all the way in Canaan, so of course that's why it wouldn't be recorded.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @09:47PM (1 child)
Or what could be more reasonable, it it was just some fancy literary allegory, the true meaning of which has been lost to time, leaving all the idiots mindlessly babbling about what it might really mean.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @09:53PM
Sure, but that is boring. I actually don't mind speculating about it, it's just that would be an awful description of an eclipse. Also, there are always translation issues regarding these things...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @08:31PM (17 children)
The ancient Egyptians themselves say that the heritage of the Pharaohs stretches back tens of thousands of years [grahamhancock.com]:
Strangely, historians poo poo this primary knowledge as fantasy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday October 30 2017, @08:39PM (16 children)
Strangely, historians poo poo this primary knowledge as fantasy.
Perhaps because there's no archaeological evidence to support it?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday October 30 2017, @08:51PM
That could be why.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @08:52PM (14 children)
Take a deep dive into the marvelous world of megalithic architecture, and you'll see for yourself.
The fossil record indicates that "modern" humans have existed for at least 300 thousand years (this is not really disputed); there's a huge swath of history that has been totally lost, or at least improperly dated—as an example, look into the dating of the Spinx, and of Göbekli Tepe, and of ancient maps, and of the inexplicable similarities of ancient civilizations across the planet.
Nothing makes sense unless you allow for a lost civilization the pre-dated what is considered the "beginning" of history.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @09:23PM (12 children)
What's inexplicable about the similarities? They're all human civilizations after all and not particularly similar.
The huge flaw with this theory is the absence of genetic crossover between these ancient civilizations. But we also have a complete absence of dated megalithic architecture to associate with a global civilization. For example, you list just two structures neither which are of a level of sophistication to be part of a global civilization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @09:38PM (11 children)
The similarities are symbolic, which are not a matter of innate human thinking.
The main idea is that the global similarities are not due to a global civilization, but rather due to the legacy of a lost civilization that was trying to re-boot its achievements after a global catastrophe.
Even today, there are hunter–gather societies that exist alongside the "high", "modern", "western" civilization. Well, the idea is that the same was the case in the remote past: A global catastrophe sent emissaries of a lost civilization out to the survivalist cultures of hunter–gather communities, thereby introducing to them agriculture, megalithic knowledge, and the roots of civilization.
In other words, that which "mainstream" historians consider the development of civilization was actually a legacy of civilization; this helps to explain why the oldest work of Göbekli Tepe is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the later work.
Consider the Trilithon of Baalbek. The Romans a temple atop a foundation of megalithic stones, and thus the megalithic stonework is attributed to the Romans, but why should it be? Perhaps that is the work of a much older civilization, which the Romans simply appropriated for their own much later work. The same goes for a great deal of the megalithic architecture of South America (read about the Inca's stonework); the same also goes for the astronomical layout of Cambodian temples, etc.
It's endless. There's so much evidence that it hurts.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @10:03PM (9 children)
Well, that's a better story. But any civilization with the ability to travel globally leave nothing behind either physically or genetically? The problem with your evidence is that we would have people speculating about distant past civilizations whether or not those civilizations ever existed. Similarities in symbology would be seen anyway. Thus, it's not evidence. There needs to be actual physical remnants that couldn't be explained in other ways - such as people in widely disparate regions with the same genes, for example. Or evidence of some successor civilization that showed familiarity with the technologies that this ancient civilization would have used to travel around the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @10:14PM (8 children)
Go read the excellent literature that has been written on the topic of a lost civilization.
You're not bringing any new questions to the topic.
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @11:22PM (4 children)
And I can't help but notice that you aren't bringing any answers, old or new.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @11:24PM (3 children)
There are lots of books at your disposal. Now, fuck off, you ignorant fool
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @11:27PM
Me likey the holey bibble
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:05AM (1 child)
Here, it's vague talk of some ancient globe-spanning culture with absolutely no evidence to back it up - not a location, not a people, not a necessary technology, and not a time. Then there's vague talk of global flooding because there are these myths. While there are supposed to be some modest excitement along these lines (like the emptying of huge glacial lakes that might cause at most a 10 foot rise in sea level over a number of days), it's simply more likely that everyone has over the top flood stories because everyone experiences floods and likes to tell over the top stories.
Reading "books" isn't going to help when the evidence just isn't there to start with.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:05AM
Just sayin'.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:35AM (2 children)
Alright - but which literature do you suggest? Let's take "The Chariots of the Gods" for example. Do you consider that book to be credible? I guess it's over forty years since I've read that - long before the internet was a thing. I read it with an open mind, but some of the author's stuff gets pretty far out there. For me, that particular book did little more than offer food for thought.
One of my favorite gimmicks in those kind of books, is to show an heiroglyph that kinda resembles an astronaut, then declare that the ancients either had space travel, or that they were guided by aliens. Except - the heiroglyphs also resembled a man in armor.
A lot of the stuff they offer has to be taken with a grain of salt, or even on faith. If you've got that much faith, then maybe you can become a Scientologist.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:46AM (1 child)
Future archaeologists will look at our civilization and determine we worshiped poop: 💩✞. [wikipedia.org]
The ancient alien theories are interesting because aside from the prospect of finding a Stargate, past (or any, really) alien visitation would mean that aliens probably have faster-than-light travel and could be waiting for us to join the galactic club with open arms (since they haven't wiped us out).
If ancient aliens are bunk and all UFO sightings can be explained by terrestrial phenomena, then it makes it even more unlikely that we will break the speed of light barrier. Which means that interstellar travel and moving up the Kardashev scale is always going to be a slow and arduous process. Although at least we have a number of fine rocks within 1,000 AU/0.0158125 ly.
Conversely, if we manage to make something like the Alcubierre drive work, then we can wonder why we haven't been visited by at least unmanned alien probes. Or if we are and we just didn't notice.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 31 2017, @10:35AM
I had my patented answer, and went to my Kindle online to check Cixin Liu's name for spelling. Hmmmm - I don't see his 'Three Body Problem' in my reading list. Something fishy that I need to check out . . .
Anyway, Liu says that the dark forest theory applies. Everyone grew up alone, everyone had to kill of be killed while they evolved, so no one knows any better than to attack when they face the unknown. There are the quick, and the dead out there. If there have been aliens here, in our far distant past, they were probably shipwrecked and dying. Like a bunch of idiots, we thought they were gods, and wanted to worship them. But - they died, so that was that.
That's ONE possible explanation, anyway.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spamalope on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:45AM
why the oldest work of Göbekli Tepe is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the later work.
The answer is that they lost a war, the conquerors didn't have the same skills and the artisans killed or otherwise unable to pass on their skills. Trade skills were secrets, and are lost if you interrupt just one generation. Simple, common throughout history... Hell, just changes in fashion/prestige make changes that large today. 1960s space race as an international prestige contest - gone as soon as that contest moved on.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday October 30 2017, @11:22PM
George [wikipedia.org], is that you?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @09:00PM (14 children)
Oh, look, someone took some of the gibberish from the magic book of ball gargling and claims to have nailed it down and linked it to some historical fact. Like that is the first time that has ever happened. These retarded monkeys really, really, really, want the rest of the magic book to be real so they can continue justifying molesting their children.
So is it really real, or just bollix? Who the fuck knows. That quote could mean fucking anything. Look at it funny form the side, while high on something and it can mean whatever you freaking want. Same goes for anything else from that gibberish book.
The whole article is just bullshit speculation, and does not belong on a tech news site.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @09:06PM (13 children)
Sure, there's a lot of trash in that ancient collection of books.
However, it's unwise to dismiss it entirely.
For example, many cultures across the planet speak of an ancient flood, and the devastation of an old civilization. Is it any wonder, then, that the geological record speaks of massive flooding, the loss of whole continents' worth of land to the ocean, and a comet/asteroid strike almost 13 thousand years ago?
There's a reason people handed down particular stories.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @10:09PM (4 children)
Which might not have actually happened. Evidence for that is very weak.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @10:23PM (1 child)
It's not weak in the slightest. Sure, there is a lot of naysaying, but when has that not been the case in any field of inquiry?
Fine, the evidence for a massive catastrophe is weak. You know what's also weak? The evidence that these recognized ancient civilizations had anything to do with the megalithic architecture that they appropriated; indeed, Göbekli Tepe showed us that the "mainstream" view of the development of civilization is entirely wrong, a fact which is not disputed.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:06AM
I'll dispute it. You keep posting the same thing, pushing your "ancient global civilization" agenda with your only evidence being "go read a book that repeats my assertions". That's not evidence, it's conning people into wasting time reading your talking points.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:02AM (1 child)
That might have actually happened. Evidence against it is very weak. Your move, khallow!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:45PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Monday October 30 2017, @10:27PM (7 children)
I've always interpreted the "flood" stories to Homo Sapiens climbing mountains, and finding fish fossils. This discovery would repeat itself in many cultures on (nearly) every continent, allowing the flood myth to appear universal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @10:42PM (4 children)
People didn't care about that stuff in the past, so that explanation seems unlikely.
Besides, the geological evidence is quite strong for a very in-your-face experience with flooding.
You really think the people of the world are going to hand down stories brought back by a few mountain climbers? Forget it! Something catastrophic happened!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:07AM (3 children)
And you have evidence for this, right?
What's the height of this flooding?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:07AM
Your style of argumentation is known as "willful ignorance".
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:30AM (1 child)
Well there are these: Even historical fiction has basis in fact occasionally.
Circa 5600 BC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis [wikipedia.org]
Sea levels rising after last ice age. rise of ~100 m from ~20000 BC years ago to ~5000 BC years ago.
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/ [nasa.gov]
Pleistocene Epoch floods in central Asia. between 12000 BC and 9000 BC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_flood [wikipedia.org]
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-tale-told-accurately-for-10-000-years/ [scientificamerican.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:16PM
But that doesn't mean that everyone is equally successful at doing so. For example, the Bible was a repository of oral tales and writing is generally considered to be more reliable than speech. But they experienced considerable drift with the tale of Noah and the Flood, which among other things, inherited a weird shift of aging. Peoples' ages as recorded in the Bible prior to the global Flood are an order of magnitude greater than after, with the fig leaf of God deciding for no apparent reason that people are living too long. The easier explanation is that they were measuring ages in lunar months for these ancient stories, and years for later.
A more notable drift likely happened to stories that took place before the Babylonian captivity (for example, the books of Joshua through Kings, which describes the period of time from the initial conquest of Canaan through to end of the reign of King Solomon, who was the last ruler of a united Hebrew kingdom) since these stories would be valuable for propaganda purposes.
And one thing about flooding is that it's a common human experience. Even the driest parts of the world experience flooding on occasion. How to determine that stories of flooding are about distant prehistoric causes rather than more recent ones?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @11:36PM
It was more that humans used to live along rivers in flood plains. Massive floods are part of nature. They happened then and they happen now. Just long enough apart to usually be a once in a lifetime event for most. Story repeated over and over all over the world. The difference is that back then they didn't know it was just their small corner of the world that was 6 feet underwater and assumed it was the entire earth. Of course, every now and then some wise guy would have a big boat. After all, they lived along a river. But over time the stories were warped to support the alleged existence of a non existent magic sky daddy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:59AM
i always took it as the end of the ice age and crater lakes flooding over their banks, earthen walls that had been frozen in place giving way in giant mudslides, and entire communitites of ancient peoples being swept away in a furious anger of rushing water.
and that it happened the world over, for global warming doesn't only affect those that believe in it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:31AM (1 child)
"Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon. And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies."
This is ACTUALLY talking about dark matter making solar/planetary bodies stand still, you know, because thas wat dey do! How do I know? Bible!**
**This is current scientific thinking at its best!!
Einstein would be soooo proud.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Touché) by Geotti on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:51AM
Well, at least it looks like he wouldn't have been surprised [stackexchange.com].
(Score: 5, Funny) by jcross on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:44AM
I have no interest in dating the Egyptian Pharaohs. Maybe this eclipse technique is for someone with more mummy issues?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday October 31 2017, @08:46AM (1 child)
Rather than the Sun and Moon literally standing still, perhaps we should be giving bronze age astronomers more credit.
We talk about the Winter and Summer solstices. If you have a knowledge of Latin, you would know that solstice means 'sun-standing-still'. But we all know the sun doesn't stand still. However, the reason it is called a solstice is that if you are recording the point on the horizon where the sun rises (or sets) each day, or the point reached by the shadow of a gnomon at mid-day you'll see that as the days progress, that point moves and the path traced by those points reverses direction at the solstice date. That is, the derivative 'stands still'. See also the Wikipedia article: Solstice [wikipedia.org]
So, the date at which the sun 'stands still' is well known as the solstice.
Many archaeological sites are aligned with the solstices, so it is not unreasonable for the biblical writer to know of such things, or know someone who knows of such things.
If you want a rare event, how about a lunar eclipse at the solstice?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/dec/20/lunar-eclipse-winter-solstice [theguardian.com]
But there is also a lunar equivalent of a solstice - a 'lunar standstill' [wikipedia.org], which, as the Wikipedia article points out, was also known to bronze age astronomers.
So rather than thinking that our ancestors were stupid to think of celestial bodies halting in their motions, perhaps the scribe misunderstood what professional astronomer/priests were saying (they may have been being deliberately obscure) in talking about solstices and lunar standstills.
There is also another possible explanation. If it were believed that the light-emitting property of the sun and moon were an intrinsic property of their motions, then the 'obvious' thought is that if they cease emitting light (at an eclipse), then they 'must' have stopped, and only start emitting light again when they restart.
Shrug. Sometimes the Bible is just fantastical stories, even if some of them have a grain of truth in them. We can just as profitably talk about the engineering properties of gingerbread in relation to building forest cottages.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:18PM