Five Thousand-Year-Old Monument Unearthed in Israel

Blackwell Stith

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Jun 28, 2014
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Five Thousand-Year-Old Monument Unearthed in Israel



Archaeologists previously thought the structure was part of a city wall, but recent work indicates there is no city beside it and that the structure is a stand alone monument.

An Israeli researcher by the name of Ido Wachtel [http://www.abel-beth-maacah.org/index.php/staff/area-a/55-ido-wachtel#basic-details] discovered a crescent-shaped monument estimated to be 5,000-years old. If the dating is correct, this structure would be older than the Egyptian pyramids and certain parts of Stonehenge.

According to information published by LiveScience [http://www.livescience.com/47835-massive-5-000-year-old-stone-monument-revealed-in-israel.html], the crescent-shaped monument has a width of around 500,000 cubic feet (14,000 cubic meters) and its length is 492 feet (150 meters)- making it longer than an American football field. Located closest to the Israeli city of Safed (Tsfat), its design is believed to represent the shape of the Moon. Additionally, it was most likely an important landmark that helped to mark town borders and declare rights over natural resources by a local state or pastoral population.

In an email, the archaeologist said that the time it took to construct the structure is believed to be between 35,000 to 50,000 days. If the lower estimate is proven correct, a team of 200 ancient workers would have needed more than five months to build the monument. He also mentioned that an endeavor of this magnitude would have proven complicated for people who depended on their self-grown crops for their livelihood, since the majority of ancient people were required to dedicate most of the year working to grow food.

Wachtel also discovered an ancient town called Bet Yerah [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khirbet_Kerak] (Hebrew for "House of the Moon God") is only a day's walk from the lunar-crescent-shaped monument. Bet Yerah was a large town with a grid plan and defense system, and numerous artifacts in the area prove its native citizens dealt with the early kings of Egypt.

Source: Capital Wired [http://www.capitalwired.com/israel-dug-historic-approx-5000-years-old-crescent-stone-monument/22432/] via LiveScience

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Redlin5_v1legacy

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Aug 5, 2009
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That's... that's actually incredibly significant!

I'm intrigued about the society responsible for it and the reason said society constructed this now.
 

Thaluikhain

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"He also mentioned that an endeavor of this magnitude would have proven complicated for people who depended on their self-grown crops for their livelihood, since the majority of ancient people were required to dedicate most of the year working to grow food."

...

What? Surely, like the other big monuments, they'd do the work in the off seasons, when there wasn't much agriculture going on?
 

Khrowley

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Feb 4, 2012
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Anybody else getting an ancient horror monster movie vibe from this or has SyFy warped my brain?
 

Albino Boo

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Redlin5 said:
That's... that's actually incredibly significant!

I'm intrigued about the society responsible for it and the reason said society constructed this now.

Its not actually that significant, all over Israel and Syria there are mounds known as Tells. These Tells are built up by 1000s of years of human habitation and many of these settlements were abandoned at the end of the Bronze age around about 1100 BC. This just an excavation of one of them. The city of Damascus has been continually inhabited since the same time period. The city of Jericho is the same age but there are gaps when it was empty. In Iraq there are settlements,now empty, that are 1000s of years older. Mud brick huts built and inhabited by farmers before even the invention of pottery. They used leather stitched together for bowls and cups. As to who they were we will never be able to say. This is pre writing the only thing that we have to go on is building style and pottery style. The only thing that can be said is that pottery and architecture show an evolution and continuity into the Canaanite period. So its reasonable guess the builders were progenitors of the Canaanites.

Note the person standing for scale

The Gentleman said:
Still, fascinating stuff. How advanced are we talking about here? Stone tools? Perhaps even crude metal?
This era is known as the Chalcolithic after the greek word for copper. Its just on the border between Chalcolithic and the Bronze age. Basically its before the the use of tin to harden copper, they may well have known about bronze but tin is not found locally in the region and required large scale long distance trade routes which did not yet exist. As rough outline, there may have been 1 or 2 prestige pieces of bronze, the average tool was made of cooper but stone and bone tools were still in extensive use.
 

rosac

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Fake. We all know the world is in fact 2014 years old. Probably planted there by scientists.
 

Albino Boo

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james.sponge said:
It was probably build by aliens. There, mystery solved.
rosac said:
Fake. We all know the world is in fact 2014 years old. Probably planted there by scientists.
You are both wrong. It clearly was built by atheist dinosaurs as monument to veganism.
 

Daaaah Whoosh

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Jun 23, 2010
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An ancient moon-worshiping town that was lost to the ravages of time? Sounds like they should have praised the sun.
 

the7ofswords

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I'm wondering if this site was a monument to an early version of Bull El (Tôru El) who was associated with the crescent moon, which has a shape resembling bull horns when low on the horizon. The dates and location would fit.
 

gridsleep

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Sep 27, 2008
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"According to information published by LiveScience, the crescent-shaped monument has a monument about 500,000 cubic feet..."

I see something like this at least once a week in one of your articles. Don't you have an editor who proofs this stuff before it gets posted? It's as if nobody is reading their own stuff carefully just once before hitting the send button.
 

Nopraptor

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Jun 18, 2010
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actually the name Bet Yerah (which I would have spelt Beit Yareach but whatever) just means House of the Moon, no god in there... also this form of naming is quite common to the area, for example the modern day Beit Shemesh or House of the Sun
 

KaZuYa

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/satiremodeon So that's another civilisations bones that Israel is built on /satiremodeoff
 

Shinkicker444

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Daaaah Whoosh said:
An ancient moon-worshiping town that was lost to the ravages of time? Sounds like they should have praised the sun.
Moon worshipping town? Sounds like proof Sailor Moon is real, and this is all that remains of those ancient times. Mark my words they'll find a palace on the moon next!