M.J. Rose

“Gobekli Tepe is not the Garden of Eden: it is a temple IN Eden…”

This article makes a pretty solid case for the location of “the Garden of Eden”…it also makes a case for what Eden was really all about and why it disappeared…

The Garden of Eden come to life: Is Gobekli Tepe where the story began?

From DailyMail,

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?
By Tom Knox

“For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as ‘sacred’. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.

The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.

They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer’s day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he’d made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion – and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.

A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd’s find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones.

They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations.

As he puts it: ‘As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn’t walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.’

Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site’s importance. ‘Gobekli Tepe changes everything,’ says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University…”

Read more here.

There has been a lot of news recently about our ancestors – where they evolved and settled, and when – and these discoveries seem to imply that we are the verge of a new and exciting understanding about our origins…

In British Columbia, scientists have discovered a village site that is estimated to be three times as old as the Great Pyramid at Giza and among the most ancient human settlements in North America.

Read about it here.

But even more intense is the newly found evidence that Neanderthals — or another lost species — occupied what is now California some 130,000 years ago!

From the New York Times,

Humans Lived in North America 130,000 Years Ago, Study Claims

by Carl Zimmer (4/26/17)

“Prehistoric humans — perhaps Neanderthals or another lost species — occupied what is now California some 130,000 years ago, a team of scientists reported on Wednesday.

The bold and fiercely disputed claim, published in the journal Nature, is based on a study of mastodon bones discovered near San Diego. If the scientists are right, they would significantly alter our understanding of how humans spread around the planet.

The earliest widely accepted evidence of people in the Americas is less than 15,000 years old. Genetic studies strongly support the idea that those people were the ancestors of living Native Americans, arriving in North America from Asia.

If humans actually were in North America over 100,000 years earlier, they may not be related to any living group of people. Modern humans probably did not expand out of Africa until 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, recent genetic studies have shown…”

Read more here.

Dig up your post-apocalyptic survivalist manuals —

From the BBC,

There are diseases hidden in ice, and they are waking up

By Jasmin Fox-Skelly

Long-dormant bacteria and viruses, trapped in ice and permafrost for centuries, are reviving as Earth’s climate warms

“Throughout history, humans have existed side-by-side with bacteria and viruses. From the bubonic plague to smallpox, we have evolved to resist them, and in response they have developed new ways of infecting us.

We have had antibiotics for almost a century, ever since Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. In response, bacteria have responded by evolving antibiotic resistance. The battle is endless: because we spend so much time with pathogens, we sometimes develop a kind of natural stalemate.

However, what would happen if we were suddenly exposed to deadly bacteria and viruses that have been absent for thousands of years, or that we have never met before?

We may be about to find out. Climate change is melting permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years, and as the soils melt they are releasing ancient viruses and bacteria that, having lain dormant, are springing back to life…”

For the rest, click here.