Month: March 2023

Categories
World History

The Magic of Faience

ceramic bowls

San Diego Culture

Mehrgahr Blooms

Faience Invented

Making Magic

The Magic of Faience

The Magic of Faience

In 5500 B.C., TGD and biblical history dates are approximating, but they haven’t connected yet.

San Diego Culture

Southern California was settled by people of the Encinitas culture. Grinding stones and shells suggest marine and farming activities. It would endure until 1000 B.C. in the San Diego area.

Mehrgahr Blooms

Mehrgahr (Pakistan) has entered its greatest age, which will last 2000 years! Pottery was in use. Faience has appeared, perhaps originally from the Near East in trade. Manufacturing has blossomed. Creativity is invested in new crafting techniques: both arts and manufacturing. Long-distance trade developed further.

Specific technologies included updraft and large pit kilns, and copper crucibles.

In the arts, faience beads were made, which may have represented money as well as useful beauty. We do not know that. But the later use of wampum in North America puts the idea in my mind.

The first “button” seals, manufactured from terracotta and bone, used geometric patterns.

Terracotta figures became more detailed. They were painted and wore a variety of ornaments and hairstyles.

Burials were different throughout the period. Two flexed burials covered with ochre occurred during the early period. The amount of burial goods diminished, eventually consisting only of ornaments, with more left in burials of females. (Strange in what is assumed to be a paternalistic culture!)

Faience Invented

Egypt was still between cultures, but the art of faience was practiced. Quite possibly, it arrived through trade. The Egyptians fell in love with it and greatly developed its manufacture. Egyptian faience is a ceramic art with a silica body and brightly colored glaze.

Do not confuse Egyptian faience with the Italian faience of the Middle Ages. That is a totally different product.

Making Magic

Egyptian faience was made of easily available ingredients:

Quartz: white quartz pebbles were easily found in the desert

Alkaline salts: plant ash or salts of evaporated salt-water

Lime: limestone

Metallic colorant, most popularly copper

The dry ingredients were mixed with water to create a paste that was then formed into the object. Immediately, the faience differed from the clay. It slumped while modeled. It was not flexible. It cracked instead of bending and could not hold its own weight.

That made faience difficult to work with except for small items such as beads, or flat items such as tiles or plates.

Larger items were made in molds or shaped around cores that burned away when fired. And what a fire! Faience required the kiln to be at 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  

The Magic of Faience

Any piece of finished faience has a core that is fragile and porous: quartz grains that seem powdered encased in a soda-line-silicate glass. This glass is transparent.

But looking through the glaze gives a magical effect. Light reflects off of the quartz in all directions. The result is seen as translucency with brightness in a variety of shimmering depths.

Faience became associated with magic. Religiously, the shimmer reminded Egyptians of sunshine rays and therefore the god Ra. The favored bright blue color made with copper was linked to fertility and rebirth.

It’s no surprise that faience, made of common materials, took its place beside precious stones and metals.

Everyone tried to have at least one shubati, ornament, or house god made of faience. Later, pharaohs used it liberally in pyramid ornamentation and grave goods.

Egyptian faience would maintain its importance for 4000 years.

Source Credit and Suggested Reading:

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/egfc/hd_egfc.htm#:~:text=Faience%20may%20have%20been%20developed,gleaming%20qualities%20of%20the%20sun.

Photo credit: Mathias Reding on Unsplash

Categories
World History

Atlatls, Personal Seals, and Temple Prototype

fire burning, seals

Cultural Overview

New Products in North America

A Culture in Mesopotamia!

Greek Megaron: Prototype of Classic Temples!

Atlatls, Personal Seals, and Temple Prototype

We’ve jumped time to 6100 B.C. (TGD).

Cultural Overview

Nothing new is happening in China, Greece, or Pakistan. In Egypt, the Faiyum culture is gone with nothing to replace it. Merngarh in Pakistan is expanding from its farming community, but there are no significant changes.

However, because of the rising seas at the close of the last ice period, Britain is now an island! Although trade will continue through navigation, the British will become a closed community, beginning their own traditions.

New Products in North America

In North America, all sites demonstrate a proliferation of tools, trade goods, and burial items. Columbia River sites in Oregon concentrated tool making on salmon fishing. In Utah the emphasis was on wool, leather, fur, and basketry.

The Great Basin sites, where people lived in caves or rock shelters, added the atlatl (a curved stick for hunting), smoking pipes, medicine bags and the deer-hoof rattles possibly used in the ceremonies, seashell ornaments, and bird-bone whistles.

A Culture in Mesopotamia!

But the best news is that Mesopotamia has awakened at last!

The Halaf culture, lasting one thousand years, was now first seen at Sakce Gözu, which is in Turkey near Syria. The most important site was located in what today is in the suburbs of Mosul, Iraq.

Halaf culture existed primarily in the valley of the Khabur River, although its beautiful pottery was found throughout Mesopotamia.

Bowls and plates are frequent finds. Nude female figures made of terracotta show traces of pigment as if clothes were painted on them. The earliest stamp seals known in the Near East began in the Halaf culture.

Greek Megaron: Prototype of Classic Temples!

It’s 5700 B.C. (TGD) in Sesclo of the Thessaly area of Greece. A new form of architecture has been developed. It’s called a “megaron house,” although later traditional megarons were not houses to live and sleep in, but were great halls for meetings, celebrations, and/or religious worship.

We don’t know the purpose of this oldest megaron. Maybe it was just the house of the most important or richest man.

It sits on the apex of the hill. (Where have we seen a structure on the highest place before?) Today, only the foundation remains, but we can learn much more from archaeological finds.

The megaron is surrounded by circular stone walls that separate it from the simple houses. It is rectangular and sits on an east-west axis. The foundation is stone. Finds indicate that the walls were brick and the roof was timber.

To enter, you walked through the porch, then the entrance to the main chamber. This chamber is almost square. It has a clay floor and a square clay hearth. On the northwest corner two oblong stone structures act as an area to prepare, serve, or assemble whatever is required. Three conical holes in the middle of the floor would have held the timbers that supported the roof.

Beyond the square room is the back room, possibly for storage. Later, a trapezoid area on the east would become a back porch.

Well! This is quite fancy for Greece! And the megaron is the prototype for the splendid temples of classic Greece.

Photo credit: Marinela Malcheva on Unsplash

Categories
World History

Welcome to Greece and Pakistan!

instrument tray on table

Welcome to Greece!

Welcome to 7000 B.C.!

Welcome to Pakistan!

Surprise!

Welcome to Greece and Pakistan!

It’s time to move on, both in location and history. But first, let’s recap what has been happening in Greece. It’s not much.

Welcome to Greece!

Greece was inhabited by hunter-gatherers like many other lands before the time of the flood. (A significant hiatus noted by archeologists in the geological layers probably relates to the flood.) Greece then was re-occupied.

Although there are several sites available, Franchthi Cave demonstrates occupation for all time periods prior to 3000 B.C. We’ll be using that site for our information.

The re-occupation continued until the first building of Göbekli Tepe. During this time, wild lentils, pistachios, and almonds were added to meat discoveries. The steppe ass continued to be the meat of choice. Land snails were popular on the menu.

At the very end of this period, red deer became the most popular meat. Bits of obsidian that have been traced to the island of Melos began to appear. Melos is 92 miles southeast. Apparently, these people possessed navigational skills.

After the appearance of the Egyptian Faiyum culture, the people of the Franchthi Cave learned to produce micro-flaked blades. Now, the diet is red deer supplemented with pig and small fish.

About the time the Swiderians moved on, the Greeks of the cave changed their diet from large animals to large fish, indicating more advanced seafaring. At this time the waters of the Mediterranean Sea had encroached upon the shoreline almost up to the cave.

The oldest burial is dated from the end of this period. A twenty-six year old man lays toward the entrance to the cave on a deposit of burned shell. Scattered bones indicate that this area was also used for cremation burials.

A five hundred year occupation hiatus occurs. Perhaps the cave was flooded and therefore unable to be occupied.

Then, for a considerable time, the cave indicates domestication of wheat, sheep, and goats. Obsidian is found more frequently. The few pots are small and could not be used for cooking.

Welcome to 7000 B.C.!

According to TGD (traditional geological dating), it’s 7000 B.C.: 1000 years since the Swiderians left Göbekli Tepe. The Faiyum culture is going strong.

Those living in the Franchthi Cave have progressed to Urfimis: pottery for serving, not cooking, decorated with geometric designs. (Where have we heard that before?) Small shell beads and amulets are common, as well as tools for making them.

For the first time, structures are built on the beach in front of the cave.

Within the cave, many more burials exist including numerous infant burials. One of them contained the grave goods of a small marble bowl and a broken ceramic vessel.

None of these Greek settlements have been dignified with the classification of a culture.

Welcome to Pakistan!

It’s much different in 7000 B.C. Pakistan.

A small farming village is settled at Mehrgarh. Surprisingly, it is not on a river.

However, it is located near Bolan Pass, one of the main routes connecting southern Afghanistan and the Indus Valley. Obviously, there is enough trade potential in this village and the Indus Valley to encourage treks through the treacherous mountains.

Mehrgarh was built as a base camp by semi-nomadic people. During this first period, which would last until 5500 B.C., the settlement was used to cultivate six-row barley, emmer wheat, jujubes, and dates. They domesticated sheep, goats, and cattle.

Mud-brick buildings contained four rooms. There was no pottery for cooking or serving. Tools were made of local copper. Grain was stored in granaries using large bitumen-lined baskets.

There is no evidence of government or religion. However many burials have been found complete with generous grave goods: baskets, stone and bone tools, and occasional animal sacrifices. Ornaments abound: beads, bangles, and pendants. These were made from sea shells, the precious stones of turquoise and lapis lazuli, limestone and sandstone, and polished copper. Simple figures of women and animals also appear. Male burials contain the majority of grave goods.

Surprise!

In this oldest area of Merhgarh, evidence was found of dentistry! A dozen molar crowns still in place have been found which were drilled while the person was alive.

With what? I don’t think copper tools would be strong enough to do that. No dental tools have been found. How did dentistry happen to develop here, in this remote place? Who was this first dentist?

Photo credit: Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Categories
World History

Elsewhere in the World….

globe

Between the Time of the Flood and Göbekli Tepe

During the Göbekli Tepe Era

After Göbekli Tepe

The First Merlins?

Elsewhere in the World….

Between the Time of the Flood and Göbekli Tepe

In the world prior to Göbekli Tepe, people spread out in small family communities for hunting, fishing, and gathering.

Europe

Remember those Reindeer People who migrated to France and Spain? They eventually migrated to Britain. The earliest tools were found on the Suffolk Coast. They shared Britain with mammoths, rhinos, and giant beavers.

It seems that humans disappeared during the last ice period. Britain was then recolonized.

Although southern Europe had a much better climate and sites of obsidian, there was no significant culture there.

The Americas

We have already talked about the Pre-Clovis Culture of the Eastern United States which was begun by the cultures that swept from northwestern Asia westward through Europe.

That same group of Reindeer People later swept eastward through Russia to enter Alaska by walking over the Bering Strait when it was frozen during the last ice period. They migrated throughout the western and southern United States.

As part of this migration, the Folsom Culture reigned in the Great Plains of the United States, as indicated by a unique leaf-shaped point. These people hunted an extinct form of bison as well as smaller animals. Later, these bison were killed more safely and efficiently by running entire herds over a cliff.

Later, the Clovis culture developed as defined by their invention of the Clovis point. Chipped from brittle stone such as jasper, chert, and obsidian, it was lance shaped and slicing sharp. It was four inches long, one-third of an inch thick, and fluted for attachment to a shaft. The chipping alternated on both faces. It has been found throughout the western United States and as far south as Venezuela.

The Clovis people were hunter-gatherers. They primarily hunted small mammals, but Clovis points have been found among mammoth ribs. It is thought that the Clovis people dared attack these dangerous animals because they were already dying and were easily found near water holes.

The Clovis point was the first invention made in America!

Asia and Africa

There were no significant cultures during this time period.

Summary

You can see that other than the invention of a tool here or a new weapon point there, no culture developed in the world between the time of the flood and Göbekli Tepe.

During the Göbekli Tepe Era

The Egyptian Faiyum Culture became the first culture to develop after the time of the flood. It inhabited the area of the Faiyum Oasis near Lake Qaroun, which is all that remains of an ancient inland sea. It is southwest of Giza. Communities grew from single tribes to several small tribes traveling together.

In the south central Mexican Valley of Tehuacán, people began to experiment with a grain called teosinte. This work eventually resulted in maize, or corn!

In Mesopotamia, wild cereals were now cultivated throughout this time period, but that did not mean a less mobile culture.

There were no significant advancements in Britain, China, India, or Greece.

After Göbekli Tepe

At the end of the Swiderian reign in Göbekli Tepe, kilns were once again built in Mesopotamia to fire pottery. Prehaps Swiderian magi were responsible for this.

The Faiyum people now depended on agriculture as well as hunting and gathering. Most of the settlements were permanent, not mobile. The people built reed huts with underground cellars for grain storage. Cattle, sheep, and goats were domesticated. Basket and pottery making developed.

Different tribes lived together permanently. During this time, tribal chieftains were endowed with the power to rule.

The First Merlins?

I often wonder if the Swiderians continued to absorb and teach knowledge. Were they the first magi, contributing to many cultures as itinerant wizards? Were they the first Merlins?

Is that why distant and disparate cultures often developed similar structures, cultural marks, and legends?

Photo credit: Arpit Rastogi on Unsplash