3-year-old Israeli girl finds Canaanite scarab

[guy]

 

A 3-year-old Israeli girl has discovered an ancient Canaanite scarab while hiking with her family. (Scarabs are amulets and impression seals (shaped like scarab beetles) and were popular throughout ancient Egypt.)

The scarab is 3,800 years old and was found in Tel Azeka, which is mentioned in the Bible as the site of the battle between David and the Philistine giant, Goliath.

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/three-year-old-girl-finds-canaanite-seal-where-bible-says-david-battled-goliath/

Edited April 1 by guy

[indianasmith]

Amazing things are found in that ancient land almost every day.

[guidoLaMoto]

On 4/1/2025 at 7:44 PM, indianasmith said:

Amazing things are found in that ancient land almost every day.

...which means for us to find them so frequently, they must have been amazingly careless with their possessions. Surely only a small fraction of those items would survive to be found thousands of yrs later.....Maybe they lost so much because they hadn't yet invented the pocket for their togas?

We often blame the dryer for losing all those socks....Have we considered that maybe it was really the washer's fault?

I'm currently trying to invent a plastic detector so archeologists of the distant future will have a chance to find our lost artifacts.

 

 

[caesar novus]

2 hours ago, guidoLaMoto said:

for us to find them so frequently, they must have been amazingly careless with their possessions.

Downhill from an active archeo dig, with rare flood events; it seems like a natural concentrator. Reminds me of the ancient skeletons found in Kenya which were taken as proof of mankind's origin there. Actually it was no more likely to be an origin point than anywhere else within 1000 miles; it was just a natural preservation zone with deposition and periodic erosion. Now DNA evidence gives some nuance.

Edited April 3 by caesar novus

[guidoLaMoto]

Probabilities are still the major factor involved in finding artifacts- from the effect of any object's  durability to survive the years to the numbers of any particular object that existed....Future archeologists will find more Chevies than Ferraris and more Ferraris than Tiffany chandeliers....Biological specimens present particular problems. To become fossilized, the object must be buried rapidly to be separated from oxygen-- but the chances of eventually finding one still depends on the original population numbers- common species are found more often than uncommon ones.

[indianasmith]

Good point.  While iron may rust away, objects made of stone, pottery, and bronze will basically sit in the ground - especially in a dry climate - until they are found.  It's not that the ancients were careless with their possessions so much as people were there for a very long time, and everyone drops or discards stuff at some point.  Over time, large amounts of artifacts wind up in the soil.

Once it's there, it will stay there until someone finds it. 

[caesar novus]

On 4/3/2025 at 12:29 AM, caesar novus said:

Downhill from an active archeo dig, with rare flood events; it seems like a natural concentrator.

It looks to me maybe y'all skeptics to above did not take in the posted "times of israel" article and it's video on the unique properties of this tiny site. Or you were making plausible generalities for generic sites or vast areas in general. My observations had been:

1. The compactness of this site, dense with architecture. it might fit in footprint of a modern Walmart store and have had loads of artifacts, recently removed by archeologists.
2. The elevated nature of the site, which appears to comprise the upper half of a 500ish foot hill surrounded by undeveloped apron slope. The downhill foot of the apron was the discovery zone seen, I think, in the last second of their video.
3. The soil looks like classic impermeable dry zone stuff that promotes flash floods, which Israel did experience this winter. Hundred year floods may trap material ground off top of hill towards the foot.

[guidoLaMoto]

You're absolutely right about being most likely to find things concentrated at the narrow points of a funnel shaped field. This is why prospectors pan for gold in the streams rather than sifting thru random shovels full of dust on the mountainside.

My original comment was tongue in cheek....An order-of-magnitude estimate-- Suppose a village consisted of 200 people, half whom had amulets of which only 0.1% were lost each year over a 500 year existence of the village-- That's 50 amulets for archeologists to find today at that one site....and how many sites are there? It adds up fast.