The Leg of a "Goddess"
Another object he found was a funny-looking longish object, seen in the photo at right, which we pondered a bit. It looked like a leg, but we weren't sure. Then, we discovered the archaeological books on excavations in eastern and south central Turkey contained many, many examples of this same object. It is the leg of one of the well-known "mother-goddess" figurines so common to this earliest period. The sketches below, are of similar legs found in Hacilar.(AA, vol. VIII, p. 147). These have been found by the hundreds, not only in Turkey but in every early civilization in some form or another.
IRON
The most important object that he found was a small piece of metal which upon examination is seen to be 2 flat pieces of metal welded together. And it is iron. We will have it examined by electron microscope at a later date and will report on the results in a future issue.
This was his first investigation in the region and for now, we have no conclusions except that this site provides some very interesting evidence that dates it to the earliest time period. The tools are similar to those found in all the early sites throughout the region that are called "Neolithic". The "mother-goddess" is certainly one of the earliest types of figurines or idols found. But the baked brick is far larger than that found at other sites, even those dated to a
much later date. This indicates construction on a larger scale or people who were used to handling larger objects, such as the 36" sword blade we mentioned earlier that would be almost impossible to hold with one hand by people today. The presence of iron, not even considering the fact that it appears to be welded, would date it, according to secular archaeologist, to over 1,000 to 1,300 years later. This indicates that the knowledge of metallurgy was "advanced", declining among certain peoples when they were isolated into groups by language barriers. Combined with the evidences of metallurgy near Noah's home and the Araxes Valley (Ararat Plain), there can be no denial of the technical abilities of these earliest of peoples on the post-flood earth.
Plans for Continued Exploration in the Babel Region
While the site Ron examined is quite large, he feels that the "tell" he photographed from the plane is a better candidate for Babel based on its immense size. Locating and investigating this particular site will be the next order of business and we will keep you posted as things progress. But whether or not the tower itself can ever be identified, the facts already demonstrated through the archaeological research of others are enough to show the Biblical account to be accurate. The assumption of scholars and archaeologists has been that man progressed through various stages uniformly all over the world, even though they admit that in certain areas of the world today there are people who are termed "paleolithic" or "neolithic". Yet, in Turkey and the regions extending out around from it are evidences of people who appear "on the scene" with knowledge and abilities rivaling that of thousands of years later. All this in the land which contains people who speak over 50 different languages and dialects.
