Some Hebrew Were Troglodytes

 

A 19th century sketch of a cave dweller community in Tunisia. 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

For many thousands of years humans lived in caves or underground. The oldest known cave dwelling community was at the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. The earliest human habitation at that cave dates to around 2 million years ago. Researchers found simple stone tools, ash from cooking fires near the cave entrance, and rock engravings.

Archaeological evidence suggests that early humans may have inhabited the Denisova Cave in Siberia as early as 300,000 years ago.

A cave dwelling community called Homo naledi lived in South Africa around 250,000 years ago. They buried their dead in underground chambers, cook with fire, and used stone tools. The bones found in the Dinaledi Chamber show the full range of human physical features and represent the largest collection of homo bones found to date in Africa.

South Africa's Pinnacle Point and Diepkloof Rock Shelter show evidence of human occupation dating to 170,000 years ago.

The earliest inhabitants of the land of Canaan lived in the many caves which riddled the hills. They buried their dead in the caves. Fifteen individuals were buried in the Qafzeh Cave south of Nazareth. Two of the deceased were buried in red ocher powder, a symbolic blood covering. The remains date to approximately 100,000 years ago.

Over 100,000 years ago two groups of humans interacted in the area of Tinshemet Cave in what is today central Israel. It appears that they may have engaged in cultural exchanges.

Evidence of human habitation in the area of Bethlehem between 100,000-10,000 BC is well-attested along the north side of Wadi Khareitun where there are three caves: Iraq al-Ahmar, Umm Qal’a, and Umm Qatafa. These caves were homes in a wooded landscape overlooking a river. At Umm Qatafa archaeologists have found the earliest evidence of the domestic use of fire in Canaan.

The Greeks applied the term "troglodyte" to cave-dwelling peoples in northern Africa and along the Red Sea. Herodotus speaks of a cave-dwelling population in the Upper Nile who were hunted by the Garamantes. The term troglodyte comes from the Greek word troglos, meaning a cave or a hole in the earth, and the Greek verb duein, meaning "to enter".

Many biblical populations lived in caves and some, such as the Nabataeans, built entire cities inside rock shelters. Petra is an example.

Derinkuyu is the largest of 37 underground settlements in the Cappadocia region of Turkey

Some of the early Hebrew (4000-2000 BC) were cave dwellers. This is why the Horites are sometimes described as "troglodytes". Some have linked the word "Horite" to the Hebrew root for "hole," חוּר (chur), which is transliterated as "khoor". However, Horite is a reference to a moiety of the Hebrew ruler-priest caste. The Horite Hebrew were devotees of Horus. Horite or Ḥōrim (חורים) is a Horus name.

Genesis 36 speaks of the Horite Hebrew who lived in Edom, a region known for caves and mountain settlements. This mountainous region stretched between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. In some texts, it is identified as the land of Seir, the Horite.

The term "troglodye" describes some populations who lived in caves on both sides of the Nile River. Specifically, the term pertains to Hebrew funerary priests who served the royal families of the Nile Valley. These priests lived in chambers attached to the engineered rock tombs of the deceased. They were employed by the families to pray for the souls of their dead loved ones.

The "sem" priests conducted funeral services and presided over mortuary rituals. These were the embalmers who recited prayers to God Father (Ra/Re) and God Son (HR/Horus) while wrapping the mummies. Many of the prayers of the sem priests are found in ancient writings such as the Pyramid Tests (2400-2000 BC) and the Coffin Texts (2000 BC). These texts speak of the hope of bodily resurrection.

Related reading: Caves of the Nile Valley; The Hebrew Were a Caste; Ancient Words for Priests; Turkey’s Elaborate Underground Cities; Competition Between the Horites and the Sethites; Horite and Sethite Mounds

Symbols of Archaic Rock Shelters

Written language didn't suddenly appear. Thousands of years before the first writing systems, our rock-sheltered ancestors scrawled geometric signs on the walls of the homes.

Paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger has studied and codified these ancient markings and finds great uniformity, especially among the earliest symbols. Her findings suggest that graphic communication was widely used by archaic peoples.

Genevieve von Petzinger has been studying cave symbols in 200 caves and rock shelters. Some symbols date to 40,000 years ago. She has catalogued 32 symbols found in ancient caves all over Ice Age Europe. One set of five symbols – "II ^ III X II" – is especially common.

Many of these archaic symbols are also found among archaic peoples of Africa, Indonesia and Australia. The red dot and the red hand are among the oldest cave symbols. These are most often made with red ocher.

Many of the swirls, crosses, circles, crosshatches and open angle symbols found in France and Spain are found in far earlier rock shelters in Africa. For example, the open-angle symbol can be seen on engravings at Blombos cave in South Africa, where artifacts over 75,000 years have been found.

77,000 year old stone found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa

These 65,000 year old ostrich egg shells with geometric designs demonstrate symbolic communication among paleolithic peoples in Africa.

The markings on the Ostrich egg shells are very similar to the markings on this shell found on Java in the late 1800s appears. It was carved 500,000 years ago.

Some of the most significant geometric designs and symbols are the circle, the red dot, the X, groups of parallel lines, and a serpent image. Many of these symbols appear to represent a complex of related ideas that embody a cultural concept. This was true among Abraham's ancestors. The Y is an example. It represents a cluster of related ideas including:

the appointed ruler
the ruler's authority
the ruler's territory
the ruler's people
the ruler's resources such as his herds and water sources
the ruler's staff or knobstick
Vav

Early Hebrew		Middle Hebrew		Late Hebrew		Modern Hebrew

Other pre-Abrahamic symbols include V and T. The T represents the solar arc from east to west and the crossing from one side to another, as in crossing a river. It also is a symbol of blood in human form (ha'dam, adam, 'dam), represented by this later Nilotic symbol of T-yet (shown right).

Related reading: Early Written Signs; Oldest Confirmed Cave Art; Mining Blood; Rock Art in Sudan and Somalia; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y

El Castillo Rock Art in Perspective

Alice C. Linsley



The debate over whether the cave paintings in Spain and France were done by "modern humans" or "Neanderthals" has sprung up again. As usual, the media filters the data through a Darwinian sieve and the public is left in confusion.

The BBC news reports that the oldest cave painting is a red sphere at El Castillo. In fact there are many red spheres or dots on the walls at El Castillo.  The spherical motif is probably the oldest produced by humans and likely represents the sun, moon, stars and constellations. The image below could represent lunar phases. Compare the two images below.

Prehistoric antlar bone found in Southwest France

Other caves include the images of hands and animals. About 25 handprints, made by blowing red ochre dust over a hand pressed against the wall, date to about 37,300 years old. An image of a bison overlays the hands and was painted later. Other cave paintings include horses, though these were painted somewhat later.

The El Castillo cave paintings date to when human populations moved from Africa into Europe about 41,000 to 45,000 years ago. By comparison, the oldest known cave paintings at Gilf Kebir in the Sahara date to about 6000 BC.  Before the Sahara became arid, a sizeable community lived on this vast sandstone plateau near the Egyptian-Libyan border, about 400 miles from the Nile. When the climate changed, people migrated north into Europe and east to the Nile Valley.

Rock paintings in the Sudan, dating to 3000 BC have been exposed to the elements, unlike the paintings at El Castillo and France's Chauvet cave (32,000 and 37,000 years). The Sudan rock paintings indicate fishing, such as evidenced at the Khormusan sites of ancient Nubia (65,000 and 55,000 years) where an abundance of fish and wild game bones were found.

It is likely that humans were making such paintings in Africa, but the art has not survived or yet been discovered. The continuing discovery of African monuments such as Eredo and many ancient pyramids contributes to the picture of archaic human industry and imagination. The vertical sided ditches of Eredo go around the area for 100 miles and rise 70 feet. The recently discovered pyramids of Zinder (Niger) are believed to date to the time of the pyramids of Egypt.

Aboriginal rock art at Narwal Gabarnmang in northern Australia dates to 28,000 years old, but a stone axe found at the site is 35,000 years old. University of Southern Queensland archaeologist Bryce Barker says there is evidence that the cave had first been in human use about 45,000 years ago.

Narwal Gabarnmang rock shelter

Carolyn Moynihan, deputy editor of MercatorNet, has written:

"Exactly how humanity expressed itself is less important in the end than the fact that there is a human mind and soul behind the decorated tools or rock paintings. Writing about the bad press “cavemen” were getting nearly a century ago (in his 1921 short story, "The Grisly Folk," H G Wells had portrayed them as savage and barbaric creatures who deserved their fate of extinction) G K Chesterton observed that, deep as the explorer had to go to find the pictures of reindeer drawn on cave walls by ancient man, he would have to go a long way further to find a picture of man drawn by a reindeer."

Arguing about whether the El Castillo cave paintings were done by "modern humans" or Neanderthals is a waste of time and energy. Neanderthals were human and they bred with other human populations. The Neanderthal genome has been sequenced. Early comparisons indicate that humans and Neanderthals are practically identical at the protein level.


Related reading: 3000 BC Sudan Rock Paintings; Getting the Facts About Human Origins; DNA Studies and Ancient Rock Paintings of Horses