From naked capitalism, February 1:
A Recent Artifact with Stories to Tell
By KLG, who has held research and academic positions in three US medical schools since 1995 and is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Associate Dean. He has performed and directed research on protein structure, function, and evolution; cell adhesion and motility; the mechanism of viral fusion proteins; and assembly of the vertebrate heart. He has served on national review panels of both public and private funding agencies, and his research and that of his students has been funded by the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and National Institutes of Health.
I cannot help myself. When I travel, I buy books. ‘Tis a sickness for which I have found no treatment, yet. Several years ago, I returned from a visit to London and the British Museum with A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010) by Neil MacGregor, who was then the museum director. The objects were chosen to “address as many aspects of human experience as proved practicable…and tell us about whole societies, not just the rich and the powerful within them.” These remarkable artifacts include an Olduvai Handaxe (#3, 1-1.2 million years old from Tanzania) and a Clovis Spear Point (#5, 11,000 BCE, Arizona) from a million years later. They are similar in shape and look simple, but they took great skill to make. Arrowheads and spear points that look outwardly similar were collected on the farms of my grandparents’ generation throughout Middle Georgia (and eventually dispersed, probably ending up in flea markets). Some were made of native stone, and some were trade goods from farther reaches of North America[1]. They were altogether full of wonder.
An Early Writing Tablet (#15, 3100 BCE) in clay from Southern Iraq presaged great things, as shown 2,500 years later by the Flood Tablet of Nineveh (#16, 700-600 BCE ) from Northern Iraq near Mosul, which is a “prequel” to The Great Flood of Noah. When the tablet was deciphered by one George Smith (1840-1876), an apprentice printer working near the British Museum who spent his spare time in the Museum’s tablet room, it quite naturally shook up the world of ancient history and Biblical scholarship:
demolish the house, and build a boat! Abandon wealth and seek survival. Spurn property, save life. Take on board all living things’ seed! The boat you will build, her dimensions shall be equal: her length and breadth shall be the same. Cover her with a roof, like the ocean below, and he will send you a rain of plenty.
This was written 400 years before the earliest surviving version of Great Flood of Noah in the sixth chapter of Genesis:
God said to Noah: An end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with wrongdoing through them; here, I am about to bring ruin upon them, along with the earth.
Make yourself an Ark of gofer wood…And this is how you make it: Three hundred cubits the length of the Ark, fifty cubits its breadth, and thirty cubits its height…As for me, here, I am about to bring on the Deluge, water upon the earth, to bring ruing upon all flesh that has rush of life in it, from under the heavens, all that is on earth will perish…and from all living-things, from all flesh, you are to bring two from all into the Ark, to remain alive with you…a male and female of each[2].
This tablet represents both an early form of narrative literature and evidence that there was a core event behind both versions of the Great Flood, the earliest found in the eleventh chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh dating to the third millennium BCE. This would have greatly disturbed Isaac Newton, who in addition to being enthralled with alchemy, was much interested in the Bible and Biblical chronology and its significance for the study of history. Such is the nature of the artifacts of human life.
Next, we have money in the form of a Gold Coin of Croesus (#25, minted in modern day Turkey, 550 BCE), Gold Coins of Abd al-Malik (#46, minted in Damascus, 696-697) from a millennium later, and Pieces of Eight (#80, minted in Potosà , Bolivia, 1573 – 1598)....
....MUCH MORE
