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Archaeologist
Dr. David H. Trump has a rule of thumb: "One stone is just a stone.
Two stones side by side are a coincidence. But if you find three
stones lined up together, you've got a wall."
So it is with excavating prehistory. An
assembly of scientific reports, anchored by an archaeological
bonanza, is bringing new perspective on how we came to be who we
are.
The story begins after the last Ice
Age with a pre-Semitic people of the Levant. Thriving
in the northwest region of the fertile crescent, they have learned
to farm. Life is good
and their numbers increase. The
land can no longer sustain them all. The
ancient Greek historian Herodotus was the first to make this
assertion, claiming that
famine in lost early times drove the King of Anatolia to split the
people: half to remain and half to go out and find new territory. Coming
as no great surprise, modern
scientists have identified several waves of population diffusion and
full-scale migration that spread from the Near East into Europe
before history began.
One extraordinary group carried their traditions and their
chromosomes into the Mediterranean frontier. Were
they the Atlantis superheroes of science fiction? No. They
do appear to have been more intellectually and artistically advanced
than anyone around them in the same time period. Where
they settled, they made an impact. Their
descendants survived through the ages with aspects of their original
ancient identity largely intact until time and assimilation finally
absorbed them -- as Sea Peoples and Temple-Builders, later as
Minoans and Etruscans, and still later in the great civilizations of
Classical Greece and Rome. Original
ancestral families of settlers who make up a bridge into
civilization are the people we are identifying as The Mediterraneans.
While important evidence for this story comes from Mesopotamia,
Cyprus, Crete, the Cycladic islands, Sardinia and elsewhere, two
places are keys to uncovering the details.
The
first is Anatolia. It is in Southern Turkey that we find the
archaeological remains of the first urban centers (CatalHoyuk), the
oldest known built religious site (Gobekli Tepe), and the birthplace
of a genetic mutation that appears, in its long passage over the sea
and from generation to generation, to identify a single culture that
changed the world.
The
second key is Malta and her sister island Gozo, located 60 miles
south of Sicily. Here are located the planet's oldest freestanding
buildings and an incomparable collection of remains created by a
gifted prehistoric population. A
walk-through solar calendar in stone, complex megalithic engineering
and the development of monumental architecture testify to a high
level of sophistication in this society. As
you will see, Malta offers a unique time capsule of the
Mediterranean Neolithic scenario that cements many other pieces. (Still
largely under the radar in North American scholarship, Malta's
obscurity probably played a role in the survival of so much ancient
treasure.)
10,000 - 6,000 years ago, the "Neolithic Revolution" was a profound
turning point in human development, changing a lifestyle of hunting
and gathering to one of farming and settlement. For
good or evil, progress was set in motion. Being
able to stay in one place meant people could start collecting things
and stockpiling surplus. Bulky items like looms, furniture and
pottery became practical. Knowing where their food was coming from
freed folks up to think about other things... abstract things. They
could start thinking about art and iconography, invention and
philosophy. They could
watch the skies from a single position, assembling the patterns of
movements over time.
Stability and accumulated materials created a platform on which each
generation could build and expand, just as we are still doing today.
You would not be reading this article if technology had to restart
from scratch every few years.
In
the 1980's, anthropologist
Albert J. Ammerman and geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza established
that human migration, as opposed to the transmission of new ideas,
was responsible for the spread of agriculture as a way of life from
the Middle East into Europe. They
identified genetic markers that still appear with varying frequency
in the DNA of modern populations.[i] These
markers can be dated using a calculation based on the rate at which
DNA mutates, and are extremely useful for outlining the passage of
people and time. One
variation in male (or Y) DNA, labled J2, is a genetic marker that
identifies descendants of the ancient Levantines. Since
this Haplogroup is believed to have arisen from Anatolia, it is not
surprising that its highest concentration in modern men is still
there. Its source is the
same stock that produced the Jews, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi,
whose traditions developed along a different path.
Principal Investigator for National Geographic Society's Genographic
Project, Dr. Pierre Zalloua has found J2 in high proportion among
Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians. "The
YDNA Haplogroup of the ancient Phoenicians is J2, also identified as
the signature of human migration via the Mediterranean in the
Neolithic or New Stone Age around 6,000 BC, from the Levant into
Europe."[ii]
This
same marker is found in unusually high frequency along the Aegean
and Mediterranean coasts, the concentration diminishing on its way
into Europe, with the exception of a loud bang on Malta. Zalloua
reports: "The further south you go, the less likely you are to see
this marker. The further
north and the further inland you go, the less you see this marker. It
is very Levantine... In Malta, the ancient DNA type was found in an
extremely high 30 percent of samples."[iii] A
clear pattern of the migration emerges when the numbers are tracked
on a map.
Stanford University's Dr. Roy King and Dr. Peter Underhill proposed
a correlation between the presence of this same DNA haplotype with
painted pottery and certain anthropomorphic figurines, found along
the eastern and northern Mediterranean and Aegean coastlines and
extending over time into Europe.[iv] The
convergence of these maps remains a marvelous tool for grasping the
bigger picture.
The
presence of a genetic signature is strongly indicative, but it is
like finding only one stone in the field. Y-mutations
in modern populations survive only through men who had sons. A
much fuller genetic study is certainly in order; hopefully one that
includes more of the mitochondrial DNA that is passed from a mother
to her children. Even then, we can only see in living people the
heritage of women whose daughters had daughters. A
man will have the mitochondrial DNA of his mother, but he cannot
pass it on. His children
inherit theirs from their mother.
The
picture is further complicated by movements and repopulations over
an enormous expanse of time. Definitive
answers about human genetic relationships during the Neolithic time
period will only come from comparisons of DNA from the people who
lived it. That may well
be possible one day since there are surviving uncontaminated human
remains of the period in both Anatolia and in Malta.
In the meantime, work in Italy underscores the premise. As
reported in The New
York Times on April
3, 2007, genetic findings support the view that the Etruscans
originally migrated to Italy from the Near East. A big link in a
long chain, Etruscan culture permeated Roman art, architecture and
religion.
Reinforcing the scenario, analysis of DNA from cattle shows a Near
Eastern Neolithic origin for domestic cattle in Europe. Researchers
calculate that the time at which the Tuscan and the Near Eastern
cattle were part of the same population was 6,400 to 1,600 years
ago, implying that the Etruscans, or the people who became them, set
sail sometime in this
period. (Minotaurs and sacred bulls: here is another element to
trace.) As well as
cattle, DNA from European goats and pigs tells the same story of
Levantine beginnings.
Megalithic temple remains of 4400-5800 years ago on Malta held
carved representations of all these animals. They
seem to be part of the Neolithic "travel kit". Tucked
away in secret places were actual bones and horns that might still
hold ancient DNA. There
are also living goats and cattle believed to be descended straight
from the Neolithic species.
Along with their livestock and traditions, the early settlers
brought their crop plants. Pollens in sediment cores indicate that
olives and nettles were introduced, at least in Malta, at the same
time as people. Carbon-dateable seeds of bread wheat and barley
were lifted from the floors of an excavated temple site by Dr. Trump
himself. These grains
are the very staples that started it all in the fertile crescent of
Mesopotamia. They show
up in the Aegean in the same Neolithic context.
Then
there are the spirals, the polished "axe-head" amulets and the
"Fiddle Idols", certain commonalities in architecture and burial
customs, the profuse use of red ochre and obsidian; and then there is the Mother Goddess/Fertility imagery, (the
identification of which is the most heated topic in Mediterranean
archaeology.)
The
list goes on and the reports pile up -- with
one more remarkable observation from Malta:
We
have indicators that the cultural identity (worship and belief
system) that were part of the source culture did not radically
change for a very long time. The
substratum was still recognized by descendants from the Motherland
after 2000 years.
Flash back to 900 BC. Phoenician
merchants are setting up a colony in Malta. They
are Levantine Canaanites: descended from the same original families
that produced the Mediterraneans who left Anatolia thousands of
years earlier. The first
thing these Phoenicians desire to do is set up a shrine to their
deities, Lady Astarte being the head of a trinity at that time. On
a hill near the harbor where their ships rest is a megalithic
temple, still largely intact, abandoned some 1500 years earlier. Do
they re-quarry the stones and remake this site to their own tastes?
No. They recognize it. They honor the existing shrine and
incorporate it into an expansion in their typical design "... by
assimilation to the local tradition of the Prehistoric."[v]
It
is suggested that the Phoenicians perceived the prehistoric temple
in exactly the same way modern Christians see the Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem or the 4th-century Christian catacombs.
Old
reports and photos indicate the presence in Maltese temple sites of
certain emblems that were typical to the Phoenician religion. Described
by scholars: "... the similarities are striking and the differences
are much the same as those we should find between a village church
and a great cathedral."[vi] But
these emblems that are being ascribed to the Phoenicians were
possessed by the original settlers of ca. 3,800 BC. Cultic
objects that are labeled typically Semitic (possibly even as early
as Babylonian), show up again in the Minoans, at Delphi, in Roman
colonies as far as Africa. Yet
here they are in Malta before any of those societies came into
being.
Now
a team of engineers at Exeter are claiming that stone ball bearings
might have been used in the construction of Stonehenge.[vii] They
hit on this theory after examining mysterious stone balls found near
a similar monument in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Stone
balls are collected around most of the megalithic temples back over
on Malta. Some can still be seen in place under the huge slabs they
once pivoted into position.
Is it possible that even the traditions of megalithic building were
shared through generations, grounded in a common original
methodology? Is this the link between Europe's most enigmatic
sites of antiquity?
Another tantalizing coincidence . . .
A more complete picture awaits continuing and careful data
collection and analysis. This can best be realized through
multi-disciplinary research and a synthesis drawn from a diversity
of sources and resources worldwide. Therefore, archaeological
and genetic research can only be part of the equation. As
such, we may be looking at the tip of the iceberg. For more about ancient Malta, visit www.OTSF.org.
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