}}--> OLDEST KNOWN <--{{ shit thread

The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabets:

the Proto-Sinaitic script, discovered in Palestine and Sinai in the winter of 1904-1905 by William Matthew Flinders Petrie, and dated to 1500 BCE, and
the Wadi el-Hol script, discovered in Middle Egypt in 1999 by John and Deborah Darnell and dated to 1800 BCE.

[link to en.wikipedia.org]



Archaeologists believe they have uncovered the world's oldest known city , Hamoukar, located in a remote part of Syria located between the Tigris and ...

[link to www.essortment.com]

Archaeologists Discover Oldest-Known Fiber Materials Used By Early Humans
ScienceDaily (Sep. 11, 2009) — A team of archaeologists and paleobiologists has discovered flax fibers that are more than 34,000 years old, making them the oldest fibers known to have been used by humans. The fibers, discovered during systematic excavations in a cave in the Republic of Georgia, are described in the journal Science

[link to www.sciencedaily.com]

[link to scienceblogs.com]

Prehistoric carving is oldest known figurative art

The figurine is very similar to the so-called Venuses of Europe's tool-making Gravettian culture. These prehistoric works of art also had crazily proportioned breasts, buttocks and genitals, as well as curiously downplayed heads, arms and legs. They were created between 22,000 and 27,000 years ago, but this new find is much older than that.


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[link to en.wikipedia.org] Oracle bone script

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Oldest Writing System vs. Oldest Language
This morning NPR reported on an exciting find in Veracruz, Mexico: the discovery of fragments with apparent writing dating back to the Olmec civilization, nearly 3000 years ago. This would, the NPR introducer of the segment said, be "the oldest writing found in the Americas". She then handed over to a reporter who gave some details, including brief interviews with archaeologists (not linguists -- presumably the expert decipherers of Epi-Olmec haven't yet gotten into the act). This reporter closed with the dramatic statement that further finds could yield the key to "the oldest known language in the Americas".

Too bad: up to that point it was a great piece. But then the reporter fell into the common trap of equating the oldest known writing system with the oldest language. It reminded me of a story from my undergraduate days, the oldest academic horror story in my repertoire (well, except for the one about the geography teacher who took roll every day and then read a chapter of the textbook, which he had written): The Oldest Romance Language.

The professor was teaching the second linguistics course I ever took, at Stanford, long before the university had a linguistics department. The course was worthless in every way, partly because he chose the textbook -- by Mario Pei -- as a prime example of an academic fooling the system into thinking he was doing good academic work, and partly because he never actually talked about linguistics, instead devoting class periods to complaining about parking problems, his dog, and other ultimately uninteresting things. (Some dogs are interesting. Mine, for instance: just take a look at my home page. His wasn't.)

One day he told us how he had thwarted an evil colleague who was trying to gain an advantage over him. My professor, whose academic home was the Romance Languages Department, was a specialist in Italian. His hated colleague specialized in Portuguese. At an upcoming doctoral defense (on a completely unrelated topic), my prof said, he knew that his colleague would ask the student what the oldest Romance language was. And if the student didn't answer that Portuguese is the oldest Romance language, the colleague would fail him in the defense. BUT, my prof said proudly, I am not going to let him get away with that! If the student does say Portuguese, I will fail her in the defense!

This story impressed me deeply, even more deeply than his story about almost slapping a postal clerk who, noticing that the prof was sending a letter to Italy, tried out some broken Italian on him and...used the familiar form of address! Heinous. The experience in this class did not sour me on linguistics (since I never heard anything about it in the class anyway, I couldn't blame the field for this course), but it did make me suspect -- no doubt unfairly -- that I would not find a happy home in a Romance Languages department. To this day I still don't know for sure whether the argument about Portuguese was based solely on the purported or actual relative ages of the earliest writings in Romance languages. But I bet it was.

Posted by Sally Thomason at September 15, 2006 09:18 AM

No, Really, Oldest Writing Isn't Oldest Known Language
I've been hearing from Language Log readers who make good points and make me realize that I neglected to dot a few crucial i's and cross a couple of vital t's in my recent post Oldest Writing System vs. Oldest Language.

Here's Rob Perez:

While we can presume that there are Mesoamerican languages older than the oldest known written language, is there actual evidence of such a language such that it could be said to be known? The reporter didn't make the claim that it was the oldest language (according to your quote) but that it was the oldest known language. Seems to me that those could be different.
And then Robin Shannon:

The reporter only claimed that it could yield the key to "the oldest known language in the Americas". Known language rather than actual language. Surely this is a fair enough call since we can not know of any languages without any physical evidence from the language. Of course there were languages before this but they are not known languages.
Fair enough, indeed. But I'd still disagree. That argument goes through only if it's reasonable to link "age of language" with "age of earliest attestation [written record] of language". But that's the whole problem: it isn't. There are lots of known languages in the Americas that have to be older than 3000 years -- admittedly, by the roughest of estimates, but still, these are not wild guesses. The Salishan language family of the Pacific Northwest provides one example: the estimated time depth for the whole 24-language family is about 4000 years, which means that the parent language of the family was last spoken ca. 4000 years ago. The parent language (a.k.a. proto-language) is not attested; few parent languages are. Latin, the parent of the Romance languages, is an exception; Ancient Greek, the parent of Modern Greek, is another. So, probably, is whatever language the newly-discovered Olmec inscriptions are written in -- if it has one or more descendants, it's the parent of the family. It's certain that any language recorded 3000 years ago is not still spoken; languages change much too fast for that to be possible. Another example: the time depth of the Algonquian language family of North America (28 languages) is ca. 2500-3000 years; and it has two distant relatives in California, which pushes the date back at least another 2000 years. So the total time depth is at least 5000 years, which means that the parent language of that family is both known (though not attested) and considerably older than 3000 years. Those are just two of numerous examples.

I guess I should say why I claim that these proto-languages are known: historical linguists have a powerful comparative method that permits, with impressive reliability, the reconstruction of sizable chunks of a proto-language's vocabulary, sound system, and word structure. The method involves systematic comparison of the structures of the daughter languages, which are attested and in most cases still spoken, and it's one of the major success stories in the historical sciences. The point is that the existence of the proto-language of a well-established language family is not a matter of guesswork: it is the only viable hypothesis that can account for the systematic correspondences found throughout the vocabulary and structure of all of the proto-language's daughter languages. [Please note: I am not responsible for the sexist terminology of historical linguistics. Languages have sisters, proto-languages have daughters, and there's also the popular term Mother Tongue; no brothers, no sons, no fathers. Makes sense, I guess, since sister languages have just one parent.]

[link to 158.130.17.5]

OLDEST KNOWN SONG in the world as well as links to hear it

[link to www.amaranthpublishing.com]

The oldest known History of ADHD from 1798 by Alexander Crichton

[link to www.scribd.com]

SOIL FORMATION BENEATH THE EARTH'S OLDEST KNOWN (3.46 GA)

ALTINOK, Efem, Astrobiology Research Center & The Department of Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University, Deike Bldg #407, Univeristy Park, PA 16802, [email protected] and OHMOTO, Hiroshi, Astrobiology Research Center & Dept. of Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University, 435 Deike Building, University Park, PA 16802
The Earth's oldest known unconformity (~3.5 Ga) was intersected 174 m below the modern surface in Australia's Pilbara craton, during diamond core drilling (Astrobiology Drilling Project leg 8). The target was drilled to determine whether a paleosol related to this unconformity is preserved at depth in the absence of modern weathering, between undeformed, low-grade metamorphic rocks of the Coonterunah Group (>3.5 Ga) and overlying Strelly Pool Chert (~3.46 Ga). Our investigation shows that Coonterunah Group volcanic rocks are progressively altered toward the unconformity. Approximately twenty meters below the unconformity, the parental rock color gradually changes from green to gray/white. Optical microscopy reveals that the altered rock underwent isovolumetric mineral transformation, whereby original plagioclase and biotite were completely replaced by quartz and sericite. Alteration patterns approaching the unconformity include 1) an increase in the degree of sericitization and silicification, 2) a change from chloritization to sericitization, 3) a decrease in the volume of carbonate-replaced minerals. Organic matter was identified with Raman spectroscopy and found only within the alteration zone. In the altered interval, TiO2 normalized ratios of Al2O3, MgO, CaO, FeO, Fe2O3, K2O, Na2O, C, Zr, Nb, Th, and U show distribution patterns similar to those of well-characterized Archean paleosols. However, elevated concentration of S is also recognized within the alteration interval at three separate zones (175.55, 181.6, and 183.7 m), suggesting a hydrothermal input. TiO2 normalized SiO2, P2O5, Zn, and Cu ratios are elevated at 174.9 m and 182.1 m, coincident with elevated chondrite normalized light-REE's. The anomalous behavior of L-REE's together with SiO2 and P2O5 might have resulted from silcrete formation during multiple soil formation events, or through ground water fluctuation. Alternately, elevated S related to a hydrothermal event in the alteration profile may have resulted in the enrichment of L-REE's. Our preliminary work suggests: 1) the existence of world's probable oldest paleosol, 2) the evidence of world's oldest terrestrial organic matter, 3) an alteration profile resulted from the weathering of terrestrial organic matter, and 4) an Achaean ground water regime similar to the present.

[link to gsa.confex.com]

Nice links, too bad they are all part of the conspiracy by science to make up believe the earth is more than 6000 years old.


JK lol

[link to www.newsback.com]

Oldest Known Ritual: Python Worship, Archaeologist Says

An archaeologist claims to have found evidence of what may have been mankind’s earliest rituals: worship of the python, 70,000 years ago in Africa.

Until now, scholars have largely held that the first rituals occurred over 40,000 years ago in Europe, according to Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo in Norway.

Coulson said she turned up evidence of the python ceremonies while studying the origin of the San people of Ngamiland, a sparsely inhabited part of northwestern Botswana.

“Our find means that humans were more organised and had the capacity for abstract thinking” much earlier than previously assumed, she said.

I easily see where a compilation here might contain something that was REBURIED everywhere else)

[link to wikimapia.org]

The oldest known rocks on our planet found in this area.

The rocks are 4.28 billion years old, making them 250 million years more ancient than any previously discovered rocks.

Known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt. Close to Porpoise Cove, geologists found in 2001, an expanse of bedrock.

www.livescience.com/environment/080925-oldest-rocks.htm...

[link to newslite.tv]

OLDest Known Submerged Town.

The world's oldest known submerged town has been revealed after aquatic archaeologists were given special permission to dive there.

Located off the southern Laconia coast of Greece the underwater city of Pavlopetri was discovered in 1967 -- but until now archaeologists have not been allowed to dive there.

But after seeking special permission from the Greek government, a team from the University of Nottingham have led an expedition to find out more about the sunken city.

They have already discovered examples of late Neolithic pottery proving that 6,000 years ago Pavlopetri was a thriving port city - that's 1,200 years earlier than previously known.

O heres a GEM


Fragment of the oldest known biography of the prophet Muhammad

[link to portal.unesco.org]

oldest shit in America?

... archaeologists digging in a dusty cave in Oregon have unearthed fossilized feces that appear to be oldest biological evidence of humans in North America.

The ancient poop dates back 14,300 years. If the results hold up, that means the continent was populated more than 1,000 years before the so-called Clovis culture, long believed to be the first Americans.

"This adds to a growing body of evidence that the human presence in the Americas predates Clovis," said Michael Waters, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the project.

DNA analysis of the dried excrement shows the people who lived in the caves were closely related to modern Native Americans. ..........


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[link to seattletimes.nwsource.com]

thanxs ) thats some amazing shit for sure )

Oldest Human Hair Found in Hyena Poop Fossil?

[link to news.nationalgeographic.com]

The oldest known human hairs could be the strands discovered in fossil hyena poop found in a South African cave, a new study hints.

Researchers discovered the rock-hard hyena dung near the Sterkfontein caves, where many early human ancestor fossils have been found.


Each white, round fossil turd, or coprolite, is roughly 0.8 inch (2 centimeters) across. They were found embedded in sediments 195,000 to 257,000 years old.

Until now, the oldest known human hair was from a 9,000-year-old Chilean mummy.


The sizes and shapes of the coprolites and their location suggest they came from brown hyenas, which still live in the region's caves today.

It's not clear which species the newfound human hairs are from, since the human fossil record for this time span is exceedingly limited, the researchers say.

But the hairs' age "covers just before when we think modern humans emerged, and overlaps with the existence and end of Homo heidelbergensis," said study co-author Lucinda Backwell, a paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

"The hairs could belong to either of them, or of course to [a species] not yet recognized," added Backwell, whose findings appeared online January 31 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Not King of the Hill

Backwell and her colleagues used tweezers to extract 40 fossilized hairs resembling glass needles from one of the hyena coprolites.

Scanning-electron-microscope images revealed wavy bands of scales on the hairs—a pattern typical of modern primates, with human hair being the closest match.

(Related photos: "Best Microscopic Images of 2008 Announced" [October 15, 2008].)

Thread: Scientists Find Skeleton Of Nature's First Sexual Predator

oldest know trex with a hardon.

LOL
the Christians won't buy that one..

perhaps not

Thread: world’s oldest stash of marijuana

world’s oldest stash of marijuana
Quote

Researchers say they have located the world’s oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly “cultivated for psychoactive purposes,” rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

big_bud_marijuana

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour.

Taken From and read more: [link to www.theglobeandmail.com]

Yup, if it's not in the bible, it never happened.