Afar Rift provides valuable information

Lavas from the Afar Depression in Ethiopia, where three tectonic plates are spreading apart, have given scientists a new insight into how ocean basins form.

Erta Ale lava lake in the Afar region

The Afar region is geologically unique, as it is the only place in the world where two continents are at the advanced stage of pulling away from each other. Geology tells us that when tectonic plates pull apart like this, the continental crusts usually gets thinner causing a depression to form between them. This often gets filled with a sea or, if the continents break apart altogether, a new ocean basin. By studying this so-called rifting process in the present, geologists hope to better understand how other ocean basins, like the North Atlantic, formed.

The Afar rift is home to numerous volcanoes and the magma the feeds these plays an important role in causing the crust to rift apart. UK and US researchers wanted to understand how and where the magma that causes the rifting in Afar is formed.

Read it all here.

Ethiopian DNA Study Ignores Significant Data

Ethiopians are described by representatives of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, one of the organizations involved in the study, as one of the most genetically diverse cultures in the world. By studying their DNA, the researchers detected mixing from some Ethiopians and non-Africans dating back to approximately 3,000 years ago.

“The origin and date of this genomic admixture, along with previous linguistic studies, is consistent with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who according to the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast book had a child with King Solomon from Israel and is mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur’an,” the Institute said in a press release.

As part of their work, which is detailed in the American Journal of Human Genetics, the scientists studied the DNA of more than 200 subjects from 10 Ethiopian and two neighboring African populations, Helen Briggs of BBC News reported on Thursday. Approximately one million genetic letters in each genome were analyzed in what is being called the largest Ethiopian-centered genetic investigation of its kind.

Read it all here.

I reserve skepticism about this study.  The oldest common ancestor of the subjects studied would have to date to at least 6000 years ago, about 3000 years before Solomon.

Further, we have no proof that the Queen of Sheba came from Ethiopia. She may have come from the kingdom of Sheba in Arabia.

Before the time of Solomon it is likely that Sheba controlled both sides of the mouth of the Red Sea. This is suggested by the archaeological and linguistic evidence connecting Sheba in Arabia to East African settlements.

The connection between Sheba and Jerusalem is evident in the time of Abraham. Melchizedek was the priest-king of Jerusalem and the son of Sheba. It appears that Solomon's sexual liaison with a royal daughter of the House of Sheba was intended to ease tensions after David had Sheba killed at Abel beth Maachah and to add the clout of the House of Sheba to Solomon's dynastic claims.


Related reading: Biblical Sheba and East African Settlements Linked; 7000 BC Horse Burial Linked to Sheba; Jebusites: Extant Biblical Tribe; Lamech Segment Analysis