BillD - that's a very human problem. We can all find it difficult, once we have a view or an understanding of something, to amend our view/understanding if new facts come into our consciousness. Depending on a variety of factors. including our psychology, we'll be more or perhaps less ready to release our grip on our old thought and integrate the new info. Especially if we have some sort of investment in our existing outlook.


   There is another problem. According to Trager's People's Chronology (1990,1992),there were two volcanic eruptions on Thera, close to each other in time.

   The one in 1520 BCE "destroyed all life on the island." The other, 1470 BCE, "is far more violent (than the first)...and emits poisonous vapours thatc destroy the Minoan civilization....". Aside from the obvious apparent contradiction of Trager's two statements (how come he doesn't say of the first that it destroyed the Minoans), we are still left with two eruptions.


   On another hand, this news is not thoroughly revelatory. Hellemans and Bunch's Timetable of Science(1988) asserts the explosion took place in 1628 or 1645 BCE, the 1628 date "according to tree-ring dates from the United States and Ireland".

And how intriguing that this latest scientific proof through carnon dating is not being accepted at once, for example by an Egyptologist, as reported in the Daily Telegraph. (Carnon dating? Don't know what I was thinking.)


johnontheSunsetCoast raises an interesting perennial for me. namely his reference to the Near East. I remember talk of that. If Lebanon,Israel, Saudi Arabia etc. is the Middle East, where WAS the Near East, and what, in terms of EAST do we call the Indian/Pakistan/Bangladesh etc. area, which isn't either Middle or Far East?




   Ivor