LANCER wrote on 10/03/13 at 02:43:45:I had no idea we had so many SPECIAL people on this site.
Hello Lancer, I hope you mean "special" as in "learned", not as in "duh...", much less as in
Common academic arechaeology MUST ans WILL go by the 150-year old adage that "stone age man was up until 3000 years ago".
Many people will tell you "2000 years ago there was Stone Age Man, then Jesus came and brought the Bible".
If you want a definition of DUMB, you have just been given one.
The Bible started with Adam... and was (supposedly) dictated to scribes by Moses (as in, all the previous Patriarchs were illiterate bedouins? I find
that hard to believe...)
But then archaeology will tell you that the Egyptians were a highly civilized culture 3500 years BC (that's close to 6000 years ago)
The same archaeologists will tell you the Sumerians are even older...
Sumerians, allegedly the descendants of Shem, 2nd-born of Noah.
Assyrians came later, and Babylonians later still.
The Chinese and Indian civilizations can be traced just as well back in time...
BUT
What was there before 3000 BC ? Cave Man ? I don't think so.
Archaeologists will tell you "we went through a Stone Age, then a Copper Age, then a Bronze Age, finally an Iron Age".
That is wrong, or at least flawed.
Stone Age refers to when implements and weapons were essentially made with stone. This means grinding stones and tomahawks, period.
They forget the
Wooden Age: Bow&Arrow, the thrusting spear, the javelin...
But if you correct this statement and call it the
Pottery Age, you then allow for the 2nd greatest discovery after fire, with is the cooking pot!
Hence, pottery means the creation of soups, the spoon, the possibility to cook foods and store them for later.
You also allow for the cration of the bow&arrow, canoes and oars, the art of sailing and quite possibly the development of agriculture. Ovens & baking.
The
Copper Age develops in different times in different places, because copper was obtained by hammering ore and obtaining
coarse (rough) copper.
The
art of smelting copper required better pottery to create smelting ovens (furnaces) and containers hardy enough to smelt the ore in.
The
Bronze Age was already well developed in areas where tin was available (at very high prices, it was very rare) whereas other parts of the world were still in High Copper Age.
See the Egyptians against the Hittites, the former had excellent copper weaponry, the latter had bronze; guess who won the war ?
Bronze, incidentally, requires more than just mixing tin and copper, it requires such high temperatures smelting becomes an art per se.
Not only weapons, but sacred implements for religious rituals were made in bronze, the only alternative to silver and gold. See the Instructions for the Temple of Solomon...
The
Iron Age was actually
a step backwards from bronze
Yup, really !
Whereas smelting bronze was a true art, in the early Iron Age iron was obtained, again, by hammering iron ore.
Hmmm... smelting in a special furnace... hammering rough ore... smelting... hammering... guess which of the two is more sophisticated ?
Add to this that iron will rust and is brittle, whereas bronze will not decay and builds a protective patina, and there you have it, bronze is actually a superior metal to iron.
Until you develop steel, that is. Allegedly the Roman furnaces were sophisticated to the point they had developed steel.
Juslius Caesar (whose true first name was "Caius") had, as Governor of Republican Rome, a sword forged for himself with the engraving "CAI • IVL • CAES • ENSIS CALIBVRNVS,"
from which the name "EXCALIBUR" is said to derive. (Incidentally, the one and only "sword in the stone" is in Italy, you're welcome to come and visit)
The Romans called Iron "Ferrum" but steel was called "Khalybs" from greek "Χάλυψ"... hence "CALIBURNUS"
What age are we in today ? Forget "The Space Age", we must look at tools.
Quite possibly, the Middle Ages might be called "The
Glass Age", because that is when glassware became common.
Ever since the beginning of the 20th Century, we could say we are in the "
Electric Age" - nothing, nothing at all will work without electricity.
Now THAT's special... Mike !