Researchers find 300,000-year-old hearth in Israel

Qesem Cave near the central Israel town of Rosh Ha'ayin, with an arrow pointing to a 300,000-year-old hearth recently uncovered. (The Weizmann Institute)

Foxnews.com - They weren’t cooking brontosaurus burgers -- but maybe mammoth meat?

A team of researchers has uncovered the oldest hearth in Israel, a 300,000-year-old fire pit where prehistoric humans roasted ancient meats. Scientists estimate that humans discovered fire over a million years ago, and this find helps determine when our ancestors learned to cultivate it and use it as a tool, said Ruth Shahack-Gross of the Kimmel Center for Archeological Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

“These findings help us to fix an important turning point in the development of human culture – that in which humans first began to regularly use fire both for cooking meat and as a focal point – a sort of campfire – for social gatherings,” Shahack-Gross said in a press release.

“They also tell us something about the impressive levels of social and cognitive development of humans living some 300,000 years ago.”

The hearth was discovered in the Qesem Cave near the central Israel town of Rosh Ha’ayin, a spot archaeologists have plumbed for nearly 15 years. During recent work there, Shahack-Gross spied a thick deposit of wood ash, hardened and compressed over the centuries into sediment and buried in the center of the cave.

By taking thin slices of it and studying it under a microscope -- using a technique called infrared spectroscopy -- she and her colleagues Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University determined that bits of bone and soil that had been heated to very high temperatures were mixed in with the ash.

There were also tiny but clear layers in the ash, which she called conclusive proof that the area had been the site of a large hearth that was used over and over again.

Around the hearth area they found flint tools that were clearly used for cutting meat -- early knives and forks, in a sense. Flint tools found just a few feet away had a different shape and were clearly designed for other activities.

Also in and around the area were burnt animal bones -- further evidence for use of the fire pit for cooking meat.

Biblical-Era Town Discovered Along Sea of Galilee

Scientificamerican.com - A town dating back more than 2,000 years has been discovered on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee, in Israel's Ginosar valley.

The ancient town may be Dalmanutha (also spelled Dalmanoutha), described in the Gospel of Mark as the place Jesus sailed to after miraculously feeding 4,000 people by multiplying a few fish and loaves of bread, said Ken Dark, of the University of Reading in the U.K., whose team discovered the town during a field survey.

The archaeologists also determined that a famous boat, dating to around 2,000 years ago, and uncovered in 1986, was found on the shoreline of the newly discovered town. The boat was reported on two decades ago but the discovery of the town provides new information on what lay close to it.

The evidence the team found suggests the town was prosperous in ancient times. "Vessel glass and amphora hint at wealth," Dark wrote in an article published in the most recent edition of the journal Palestine Exploration Quarterly, while "weights and stone anchors, along with the access to beaches suitable for landing boats — and, of course, the first-century boat … all imply an involvement with fishing." [Photos: 4,000-Year-Old Structure Hidden Under Sea of Galilee]

The architectural remains and pottery suggest that Jews and those following a polytheistic religion lived side by side in the community. In addition, the researchers found that the southern side of the newly discovered town lies only about 500 feet (150 meters) away from another ancient town known as Magdala.

Architecture and pottery

Fields between the modern-day town of Migdal and the sea coast contained hundreds of pottery pieces dating from as early as the second or first century B.C. to up to some point after the fifth century A.D., the time of the Byzantine Empire, the archaeologists found. The artifacts suggest the town survived for many centuries.

Also among their finds were cubes known as tesserae and limestone vessel fragments, which were "associated with Jewish purity practices in the early Roman period," indicating the presence of a Jewish community in the town, Dark told LiveScience in an email.

Some of the most impressive finds, however, were not made in the fields but rather in modern-day Migdal itself. The archaeologists found dozens of examples of ancient architectural remains, some of which the modern-day townspeople had turned into seats or garden ornaments, or simply left lying on the ground. In one instance, the researchers found more than 40 basalt ashlar blocks in a single garden.

After talking to the local people, and trying to identify the source and date of the findings, the researchers determined that many of the architectural remains came from the local area and likely were part of this newly discovered town. [Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World]

These remains included a number of ancient column fragments, including examples of capitals (the top of columns) carved in a Corinthian style. "This settlement may have contained masonry buildings, some with mosaic floors and architectural stonework," Dark wrote in his paper.

The finds also included a pagan altar, made of light-gray limestone and used in religious rituals by those of a polytheistic faith, Dark said.

Is it Dalmanutha?

In the New Testament, Dalmanutha is mentioned only briefly in the Gospel of Mark.

The gospel says that after feeding 4,000 people by miraculously multiplying a few fish and loaves of bread, Jesus "got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha. The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, 'Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.'Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side." (Mark 8:10-13, New International Version)

Dark isn't certain the newly discovered town is Dalmanutha, but there is evidence to support the idea. From the remains found, researchers can tell the newly discovered town would have been a sizable, thriving location in the first century A.D., and the name Dalmanutha has not been firmly linked to a known archaeological site.

It's likely that the newly found town's name is among the few place-names already identified by other researchers relating to the Ginosar valley shore, and one of those places is Dalmanutha, Dark said.

New clues to King Solomon's mines found

Foxnews.com - New evidence that links the vast copper mines in southern tip of Israel to the reign of King Solomon has been discovered, archaeologists report.

During the Iron Age, humans took advantage of the copper deposits lurking in Israel's Timna Valley, as evidenced by the thousands of ancient mines and dozens of smelting sites in the district. But archaeologists have debated who controlled the mines, and when.

After American archaeologist Nelson Glueck explored the region in the 1930s, he announced he had found the real-life "King Solomon's Mines" in the biblical kingdom of Edom. ("King Solomon's Mines" was a popular Victorian adventure novel, published by the English author H. Rider Haggard.)

Later research and the 1969 discovery of an Egyptian temple in the center of the valley cast doubt on Glueck's claims. Some archaeologists have since favored an interpretation suggesting the ancient Egyptians first built the mines in the 13th century B.C. [In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World]

But recent excavations at Timna Valley turned up artifacts that have been radiocarbon dated to the 10th century B.C., when the Bible says King Solomon ruled.

The mines, however, were likely operated by the Edomites, a semi-nomadic tribe that battled constantly with Israel, the researchers say.

"The mines are definitely from the period of King Solomon," archaeologist Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University, said in a statement this week. "They may help us understand the local society, which would have been invisible to us otherwise."

This past winter, Ben-Yosef and a team of researchers investigated an area known as Slaves' Hill, a previously untouched smelting camp that holds traces of hundreds of furnaces and layers of copper slag, the grit that's left over after the metal is extracted from its ore.

The site lacks significant architectural ruins, but the researchers found more ephemeral traces of ancient life: bits of clothing, woven ropes, dates, grapes, pistachios and ceramics.

Eleven samples of material from Slaves' Hill were submitted for testing at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford in England. The results showed that the ancient items dated to Solomon's reign, the researchers said.

"In Timna Valley, we unearthed a society with undoubtedly significant development, organization, and power," Ben-Yosef said in a statement. "And yet because the people were living in tents, they would have been transparent to us as archaeologists if they had been engaged in an industry other than mining and smelting, which is very visible archaeologically."

Despite debate about how much archaeologists can trust the Bible as a historical source, Ben-Yosef added that it's very possible David and Solomon existed and at times, may have even exerted some control over the Timna Valley mines.

Ben-Yosef told LiveScience in an email that the team plans to submit their findings to a peer-reviewed academic journal. The new radiocarbon dates are in line with the chronology Ben-Yosef and other researchers put forth last year in the journal American Schools of Oriental Research. That 2012 study was based on findings from a nearby mining site.

Message decoded: 3,000-year-old text sheds light on biblical history

Foxnews.com - A few characters on the side of a 3,000-year-old earthenware jug dating back to the time of King David have stumped archaeologists until now -- and a fresh translation may have profound ramifications for our understanding of the Bible.

Experts had suspected the fragmentary inscription was written in the language of the Canaanites, a biblical people who lived in the present-day Israel. Not so, says one expert who claims to have cracked the code: The mysterious language is actually the oldest form of written Hebrew, placing the ancient Israelites in Jerusalem earlier than previously believed.

"Hebrew speakers were controlling Jerusalem in the 10th century, which biblical chronology points to as the time of David and Solomon," ancient Near Eastern history and biblical studies expert Douglas Petrovich told FoxNews.com.

"Whoever they were, they were writing in Hebrew like they owned the place," he said.

First discovered near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem last year, the 10th century B.C. fragment has been labeled the Ophel Inscription. It likely bears the name of the jug's owners and its contents.

If Petrovich's analysis proves true, it would be evidence of the accuracy of Old Testament tales. If Hebrew as a written language existed in the 10th century, as he says, the ancient Israelites were recording their history in real time as opposed to writing it down several hundred years later. That would make the Old Testament an historical account of real-life events.

According to Petrovich, archaeologists are unwilling to call it Hebrew to avoid conflict.

"It's just the climate among scholars that they want to attribute as little as possible to the ancient Israelites," he said.

Needless to say, his claims are stirring up controversy among those who do not like to mix the hard facts of archaeology -- dirt, stone and bone -- with stories from the Bible.

Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein told FoxNews.com that the Ophel Inscription is critical to the early history of Israel. But romantic notions of the Bible shouldn't cloud scientific methods -- a message he pushed in 2008 when a similar inscription was found at a site many now call one of King David's palaces.

At the time, he warned the Associated Press against the "revival in the belief that what's written in the Bible is accurate like a newspaper."

Today, he told FoxNews.com that the Ophel Inscription speaks to "the expansion of Jerusalem from the Temple Mount, and shows us the growth of Jerusalem and the complexity of the city during that time." But the Bible? Maybe, maybe not.

Professor Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University agrees that some archaeologists are simply relying too heavily on the Bible itself as a source of evidence.

"[Can we] raise arguments about the kingdom of David and Solomon? That seems to me a grandiose upgrade," he told Haaretz recently.

In the past decade, there has been a renaissance in Israel of archaeologists looking for historical evidence of biblical stories. FoxNews.com has reported on several excavations this year claiming to prove a variety of stories from the Bible.

Most recently, a team lead by archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel wrapped up a ten-year excavation of the possible palace of King David, overlooking the valley where the Hebrew king victoriously smote the giant Goliath.

Garfinkel has another explanation as to the meaning behind the Ophel Inscription.

"I think it's like a [cellphone] text," Garfinkel told FoxNews.com. "If someone takes a text from us 3,000 years from now, he will not be able to understand it."

The writing on the fragmented jug is a type of shorthand farmers of the 10th century used, in his opinion, and not an official way of communication that was passed on.

"What's more important is that there is a revolution in this type of inscription being found," Garfinkel told FoxNews.com. There have been several from the same time period found across Israel in the past five years.

"When we find more and more of these inscriptions, maybe not until the next generation, we may have a breakthrough," he said.

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"Noah's Ark" Found in Turkey

THE remains of Noah's Ark have been discovered 13,000ft up a Turkish mountain, it has been claimed.

A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say they have found wooden remains on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.

They claim carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old — around the same time the ark was said to be afloat.

Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team, said: "It's not 100 per cent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it."

He said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.

The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000ft in the vicinity, Yeung said.

Local Turkish officials will ask the central government in Ankara to apply for UNESCO World Heritage status so the site can be protected while a major archaeological dig is conducted.

The biblical story says that God decided to flood the Earth after seeing how corrupt it was.

He then told Noah to build an ark and fill it with two of every animal species.

After the flood waters receded, the Bible says, the ark came to rest on a mountain.

Many believe that Mount Ararat, the highest point in the region, is where the ark and her inhabitants ran aground.

Is this Atlantis?

THIS is the amazing image which could show the fabled sunken city of Atlantis.

It shows a perfect rectangle the size of Wales lying on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean nearly 3½ miles down.

A host of criss-crossing lines, looking like a map of a vast metropolis, are enclosed by the boundary.

They seem too vast and organised to be caused naturally.

On February 19^th the possibility of an extraordinary discovery had oceanographers and geophysicists captivated.

The site lies 620 miles off the west coast of Africa near the Canary Islands — a location for Atlantis seemingly suggested by the ancient philosopher Plato.

He believed it was an island civilisation sunk by an earthquake and floods around 9,700BC — nearly 12,000 years ago.

The “grid” showed up on Google Ocean, a Google Earth extension that uses a combination of satellite images and marine surveys.

On February 19^th Dr Charles Orser, curator of historical archaeology at New York State University — and one of the world’s leading authorities on Atlantis — called it “fascinating”.

He said: “The site is one of the most prominent places for the proposed location of Atlantis, as described by Plato. Even if it turns out to be geographical, this definitely deserves a closer look.”

The legend of Atlantis has captured the imagination of scholars for centuries.

Situated in an area called the Madeira Abyssal Plane, the grid was spotted by aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford as he browsed through Google Ocean.