The archaeological news of the past week was the spectacular discovery of a prehistoric building in the Tel Aviv - Jaffa area (Ramat Aviv)..."on the northern bank of the Yarkon River, not far from the confluence with Nahal Ayalon."
To my luck, the Jewish Journal not only carried the story but also included a photograph of the site by Assaf Peretz / Israel Antiquities Authority which I include here (enlarged to 80% of the width of the posting) because of its importance - together with the original label:
Israel Antiquities Authority workers during the archaeological excavation of the oldest building ever found in Tel Aviv,
estimated to be 7,800-8,400 years old, Jan 10, 2010. (Assaf Peretz / Israel Antiquities Authority)
I have taken that photograph and simply traced the most prominent lines of the ground plan as follows:
Note that the large room in the foreground is strangely not square and that the entire design of the "building" is somewhat peculiar for such an allegedly ancient construction. As I have discovered, this prehistoric building is part of the megalithic survey of the Holy Land by astronomy in ancient days, a survey which I deciphered some years ago and posted to several locations, including my Ancient World Blog as follows:
As you can see, given the megalithic sites known at that time, the "dip" viz. "ladle" of the Big Dipper was missing. Ramat Aviv now fills that void, as Tel Aviv - Jaffa is located on the coast nearly halfway between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, exactly where we would expect this part of Ursa Major to be located.
In the astronomical context of my decipherment of the ancient megaliths of the Holy Land, this puts Tel Aviv - Jaffa at the location of the "Dip" of the Big Dipper.
The design of the archaeological find is a nice match for this part of Ursa Major. Note also that the large room in the foreground at Ramat Aviv also has a small megalith with marks which look like the "dip" of the Big Dipper and a "hearth" in the shape of the dip of the Big Dipper. This may be chance, but these artefacts should be investigated more carefully to make sure that I am not seeing things that are not there. In fact, it will be of interest to view the official archaeological plot of this ancient site.
And more yet. Tel Aviv is a modern city originally founded in the year 1909 as a neighbor to Jaffa (today a part of Tel Aviv). Jaffa is one of the world's oldest cities. The Wikipedia writes :
"Jaffa (Hebrew: יָפוֹ, About this sound Yāfō (help·info); Arabic: يَافَا, About this sound Yāfā (help·info); Latin: Joppe; also Japho, Joppa as transliteration from the greek "Ιόππη") is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world.[1] Jaffa is now part of Tel Aviv which is why the city's full name is Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel. The name of the city is supposed to be mentioned in the Egyptian sources and the Amarna Letters as Yapu. There are several legends about the origin of the name Jaffa. Some say it is named for Japheth, one of the sons of Noah, who built it after the Great Flood.[citation needed] The Hellenist tradition links the name to "Iopeia", which is Cassiopeia, the mother of Andromeda. Pliny the Elder associates the name with Jopa, the daughter of Aeolus, god of wind. The Arab geographer Al-Muqaddasi mentions it under the name Yaffa, which is used by Arabic speakers today."That the name is seen to have an astronomical context is remarkable in itself, and Cassiopeia would ordinarily be a hot contender for this location, if it were not for better information provided to us by Richard Hinckley Allen in his book Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning , where he writes at page 423 about Ursa Major (the Big Dipper):
"Hebrew observers called the constellation Dōbh; Phoenician, Dub; and Arabian, Al Dubb al Akbar, the Greater Bear, " Dubhelacbar with Bayer and Dub Alacber with Chilmead, " all of these perhaps adopted from Greece. Caesius cited the "Mohammedans' " Dubbe, Dubhe, and Dubon; and Robert Browning, in his Jochanan Hakkadosh, repeated these as Dob."What is now quite clear from the modern archaeological discovery at Tel Aviv /Jaffa
is that the name JAFFA Latin: JOPPE = DOBH, DUB, DUBB, DUBBE, DOB "Ursa Major".
DOBE in Indo-European e.g. Latvian means "hollow, cavity, hole, DIP", i.e. DIP in English.
In the ancient survey of the holy land, the city Jaffa thus arguably took its name from the "dip" in the constellation of the Great Bear.
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