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THE PERILS OF DATING BIBLICAL HISTORY

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The evening we saw the star we were farewelling dinner guests. We had walked them to the top of the driveway shrouded by turpentines and camelias and had just reached the street when Richard pointed out a white starlike object sitting low in the western sky.    Compared with Europe, Australia has very clear skies and when, a night or two later I emerged from the supermarket where the steps descend to the outdoor carpark, I stopped. There it was again, in the same position as we had earlier seen it, a star so large and so radiantly bright that it was impossible, once seen, to yank out the car keys, toss the shopping in the boot and drive thoughtlessly away. This beautiful celestial object was not, in fact, a star but the conjunction of two planets, Jupiter and Saturn that occurs about once every twenty years, in this case 2020. The one I saw was purported to be the best in 800 years (1) and it has been conjectured that such a conjunction produced the Star of Bethlehem that would date Je
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VINČA, Serbia - Europe's First Civilization

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    From 6000 BC Vinča, on the Danube River in Serbia, was the centre of a vast Neolithic settlement dedicated to farming, metallurgy, pigment production and trade. The early date in this particular region resulted from the spread of agriculture from its origins in the Fertile Crescent, through Cyprus, Anatolia and Greece, then north into the Balkans. Amber from the Baltic and obsidian from the Carpathian Mountains, both found at Vinča, are evidence of its broad trading sphere. This part of the Balkans was rich in copper, and Vinča became the first site of metallurgy in Europe. Later, it also produced bronze, although it is not known from where the tin was sourced. Such was Vinča's significance that during World War 2 the Nazis visited the archaeological site looking for an Aryan connection. Happily, there isn't one.   HOW TO GET THERE      Both Belgrade and Vinča are on the River Danube.  Take the #7
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The Dark Emu Debate. Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? by Sutton and Walshe

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Book review It took me twenty years of research to prove my birth mother’s ancestry from a village in north-west Croatia of less than a thousand people. Although I have the baptismal records of her mother, her grandfather, her great grandfather and multiple photos of her in that village, I am haunted by the absence of her own birth certificate. I’m worried that I’m not perfect. With this in mind, I chose not to read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe because my equanimity is not up to reading an alleged classic by an alleged Aboriginal who cannot prove his ancestry and doesn’t feel he needs to. My interest in reading Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? the book that debates its claims,   extends only so far as a morbid interest in human nature. Why should  Dark Emu, the  work that contradicts  200 years of scholarly observation,  attract national consensus?  Because the reading public rarely challenges the myths it is fed if those myths are agreeable and if a book is well written. To quote from Tr
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