The Garden of Eden - Origin of Agriculture - Found near Rashaya El-Wadi, Lebanon

[paygan]

Hello there!

My name's Paul and I'm on an important mission to show and share with the world the location of real Garden of Eden and cetnral site of the Agricultural (Neolithic) Revolution. I led the field walk there in November 2009 and saw the damage being inflicted and the urgent need for protection by getting World Heritage Site status, requiring public support and official investigation.

This location of the site was comprehensively mapped out by Christian O'Brien in his 1985 book, "The Genius of The Few" where he identified it through descriptions given in the earliest Nippur Tablets (The Barton Cylinder, etc), Atrahasis and The Book of Enoch, along with other mentions in the Bible, The Book of Jubilees, The Koran etc. The Sumerians were first recorded to have written about this site and called it "Kharsag".

Eden was located on Google Earth by Edmund Marriage, Director of The Patrick Foundation's Golden Age Project in 2006. He discovered a mile long Great Watercourse and other features in place as per O'Brien's map. I led the field walk recently in an initial survey which has provided the first video (unreleased) and photographic evidence of the site for peer review. Please see the maps for both Google Earth and Christian O'Brien's placement of the remains of structures at this REAL place identified as the starting point of the Neolithic (Agricultural) Revolution at around 9,500BC, soon after the end of the last glacial - The Younger Dryas.

"Kharsag" in the Sumerian Nippur Tablets means "head enclosure". Eden itself comes from the Sumerian word "Edin" meaning "plain" or "steppe". The entire Rashaya basin floods every 5-10 years with millions of cubic gallons of water, forming a huge lake that can still be partially seen on Google Earth from the last one in 2005-2006. We found out from the Lebanese Red Cross that they had put dye down a sinkhole near the Great Watercourse that drains the entire basin. The dye came out in the Hasbani. After seeing all this, I now strongly suspect that the people who built Kharsag's reservoir, dam and watercourse did so to control the Lebanese and Anti-Lebanese mountain run off waters and direct them out through the Wadi El-Neirab into the lowlands of "Eden", the area around and likely to the South of Kharsag, which links into the Jordan river and associated famous valley...

Professor Daniel Zohary advanced the suggestion that grain was first cultivated in one location and this should be an enticing suggestion for archaeologists to prove at this site. If there was such a massive originating site for the Neolithic Revolution, it might re-shape current theories substantially, regardless of any religious links involved in the locating of such a site. Steve Gagne also gives some great supporting evidence in his paper about early crop domestication in the Levant.

The centre of cultural diffusion at the time was the Garden of Eden, or Kharsag if you prefer - a bounded area in the mountains, sending out water and knowledge to the grassland/steppe area around, known as Eden.The Rashaya Basin is 8 miles North of Mount Hermon, 25 miles East of Damascus, near the town of Rashaya El-Wadi and village of Kfar Qooq.

The theories about Eden being a central site of the agricultural revolution between the Tigris and Euphrates are disproven archaeologically as this area would have been unsuitable for agriculture, which required the rainfall and mountain waters of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, not in Iraq or Bahrain... and that Sumerian civilization didn't move to Eridu, their first city until around 5,500BC. The starting point of the agricultural revolution which is currently best suggested c. 7,000 B.C by "Kurgan Hypothesis" and Colin Renfrew's "Anatolian Hypothesis", which anyone knowledgeable on finds may well speculate misses the facts by being too far north and up to 1,500 years too late.

Evidence that Anatolia is too North include the the development of agriculture at Jericho, cultivated crops are also found between 9,800 B.C and 8,400 B.C at Tell Aswad and starting at Tell Abu Hureyra, not very far to the North by 9,050BC. Cultivated figs were also dug up on the other side of Mount Hermon at Gilgal I, dated to 9,500-9,300 by Kislev et al not far from Kharsag / Eden. Perhaps the biggest problem with the Northern Theories are Dame Kathleen Kenyon's excavations of Jericho, which shows organised agriculture long before that date to the South of both Anatolia (Turkey) and Lebanon. Also of interest at Jericho is the 600 metre x 9 metre x 3 metre rock cut ditch radio-carbon dated prior to the current dating of agriculture. Tell Aswad also has revealed evidence of agriculture and was inhabited between c. 9,800-8,400 B.C.

The Great Watercourse in Eden / Kharsag looks to have been approximately the same specification - 9 metres deep by 3 metres wide and extends over a mile, the sinkhole section is shown below. I have added another image, as if you look carefully, you can see a rock cut bridge extending over this section, with a groove alligned to Mount Hermon, from which I speculate hung a giant Cedar sluice (water control) gate.

I've spent a lot of last year working on Wikipedia, figuring out where I stand academically on this. It's been a fierce battle with hardcore sceptics, armed with little peer reviewed material as ammunition. It has resulted in the creation of pages (often after massive heated debates you can read about in the discussions) on Kharsag, Christian O'Brien, George Aaron Barton and The Barton Cylinder - mankind's oldest written story, supposedly pre-dating even the Pyramid Texts.

There are various accounts of the Garden of Eden outside the Bible, including the Koran. The Nippur Tablets, including the Barton Cylinder are most important source documents describing the location of the Garden of Eden, and it's inhabitants, the first Sumerian Pantheon (An, Ninkharsag, Enlil & Enki). These were dug up in the foundations of the temple and library at Nippur by John Henry Haynes in 1898 and translated by George Aaron Barton. These are the oldest religious/story texts in the world, pre-dating the pyramid texts by at least half a century.

Another is the Slavonic Book of Enoch 2 produced around the 2nd century BC from materials with a much older tradition, discovered by Canon Charles and translated by his friend Dr Morfill, the Professor of Slavonic Studies at Oxford. It is from Morfill's work that we have the clearest accounts of the Garden of Eden. O’Brien added to Charles and Morfill’s translations.

Also we have an Akkadian work, Atra-hasis, Tablet 1 which was copied by a scribe called Ku-aya, in the reign of Ammi-saduqa about 1635 B.C., from non-existant, earlier material. It is indicated that Ku-aya translated an earlier Sumerian tablet into Akkadian. Translations of the Akkadian text have been made by Lambert and Millard, two Oxford scholars following in the footsteps of Canon Charles. Atra-hasis tells the story of a rebellion of the workers building the Great Watercourse in The Garden of Eden and of them surrounding Enlil's Great House in a mob with tools raised. It then tells the story of the Annunaki council creating "salaried man" and causing a massive rift in our development from utalitarian to capitalist objectives as a race. From this we get various legends of "fallen angels" and another metaphor for the Agricultural Revolution.

I'm looking to promote Eden / Kharsag and protect it for World Heritage, as I can see the benefits of archaeology catching up with religion and showing it's source as scientifically as possible.

What you can do to help? Well, do some reading and if you're interested and support the promotion of this knowledge. The Golden Age Project has some great information regarding The Kharsag Research Project. "The Genius of The Few" is the source book covering O'Brien's discovery of The Garden of Eden.

If anyone can assist to get a review of the above book into a major newspaper or peer reviewed journal - positive or negative - I can then go walkabout on Wikipedia again with a really big gun against the sceptics. If anyone wants the most amazing topic for a thesis, I cannot think of anything bigger than this. ;-)

Also, if anyone wants to visit, I have the contacts to help arrange a visit to the area in comparative safety and comfort. Qualified archaeologists, or students to investigate the Rashaya Basin South, funding for pollen core analysis, radio-carbon dating and geo-phys surveys surveys is required, along with further peer reviewable material and the attention of UNESCO and the Lebanese Ministry of Culture.

I like to imagine the time when that watercourse was flowing, the two great houses of life and knowledge were shining silver in the moonlight. Camp fires from the workers houses were dotted all around the slopes into the valley. People settling down for the first time and learning to cultivate plants and organise our race. When the ruins of the large irrigation system and dam we found were operational, it must have made it very lush and green back then with likely far more trees.

Let me know if you have any questions, can offer any assistance or want more photos to examine visit my edentourism website or The Golden Age Project (google it).

 

[Exiledoomsayer]

I'm alittle confused.
Are you claiming they found
1. the biblical eden.
2. a place aggriculture may have started which we poeticly call eden.
3. all of the above?

 

[mindlight]

And there was I thinking that Eden was in Cornwall!

 

[paygan]

Exiledoomslayer - you got it with 3) all of the above.

Well understood. My writing must be improving.

Mindlight - Sadly not, however the giant Cairns (from which we get 'Cairn'wall) are so precisely alligned to the surrounding stone circles on Bodmin Moor that thre is only a 0.0000001 probability of them having random, non-astronomical alignment. Far less than Stonehenge, which was calculated by Professor Hawkins to be only in the region of 0.0006.

Christian O'Brien discovered things like this that led him to Eden and to suggest that Bodmin Moor in Cornwall was an Astronomical Complex used to teach druidic astronomy. The people who built both Kharsag in Lebanon and Bodmin Moor's complex of stone circles and giant cairns in Cornwall were not so very different as you might think.

Tim Smit, the founder of The Eden Project in Cornwall did send me this lovely message expressing some interest last year - I really should get back to him, you've reminded me. Perhaps a true Cornish hero like him might be able to help. It would be really great to build something similar to our current Eden Project in Rashaya El-Wadi *dreams* :

Hi
I am fascinated but unable to offer financial support as archeology may bemy background but is outside The mission of the Eden trust. So... Sorry. Can only discuss interpretively. Not financially I know it is disappointing but can't be helped. Good luck.
Warmest regards
Tim

 

[Exiledoomsayer]

Exiledoomslayer - you got it with 3) all of the above.

Well understood. My writing must be improving.

Ah exellent that is what I thought most likely.

I can see how they might have tracked down the places where aggriculture might have arrisen. But I am not entirely sure why they believe that same area must also be eden?

Among other things I would have to wonder, what ever happend to the angel guarding it?

 

[laconicstudent]

Didn't God tell Adam that he would have to cultivate from the earth in the process of evicting him from the garden?

 

[paygan]

Among other things I would have to wonder, what ever happend to the angel guarding it?

It wasn't an angel with a flaming sword, it turned out to be cherubim! A troop carrier full of AK-47 armed military turned up, they could have been Hezbollah come to take us hostage or Military come to arrest us for spying for Israel, they turned out to be Druze with great English and parents in Westminster. We got on great and had a lot of smiles and understanding. Will post a picture of them waving us goodbye from the site of Eden's granary when my post count allows.

But I am not entirely sure why they believe that same area must also be eden?

The bio-archaeological evidence for the suitability of the Damascus to Red Sea rift valley for agriculture as against the Anatolian highlands, Zagros and Himalayas is very important.

A totally unique south facing site at around 3,000 feet (Hunza Valley must be twice this height and under the Great Younger Dryas ice field as was Lake Van at the early dates ! Snow melt ice dam breakage floods prevented early farming in both the Indus and Mesopotamian Valley's. There were not enough people until 5,500 BC to even begin to create the complex river based irrigation systems and great cities. You can see this in the chart showing the Holocene Climatic Optimums.

The argument for placing Kharsag at the northwestern bend of the Fertile Crescent was based on the requirements for a) high mountains with a substantial, but seasonal, rainfall; b) isolated, inter-montane, alluvial plains or basins; c) deep, and narrow, ravines; and d) a climate capable of sustaining the ecology described.

Look at all the items under Supporting Evidence (Kharsag Section) and have a look at the "Learning from History Part 10" as this should help on a number of key points particularly agricultural origins, with the head of the two rivers as the meeting place for the Divine Council (first Kharsag and later Baalbek - not Euphrates and Tigris -but the Orontes and Litanni), all the names for Mt Hermon, and the overall suitability of the site for snow melt irrigation for the first part of the year, and water storage for the remaining growing season. Winter storm water taken away when needed to the Wadi Nerab to avoid flooding problems.

To better understand why I keep referring to this location as "Kharsag" as well as "The Garden of Eden", I'm going to copy out the old Wikipedia page about some little known texts used to validate O'Brien's work - the Kharsag Epics here for you. The article was (marginally) deleted because they are not verifiable due to no peer reviews of the naming convention of the texts, despite my argument establishing them as notable (because notability is not temporal). The Barton Cylinder page on Wikipedia was created as a result, which I consider highly notable as it is man's earliest religious (=story) writing.

The Kharsag Epics is the name given by geologist Christian O'Brien to a series of epic poems from Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) and are among the earliest known works of literary writing. Some esoteric scholars believe that these texts originated as a series of legends and poems about the earliest mythological hero-gods including An, Enlil, Enki and Ninkharsag in a location called Kharsag.[1][2][3][4][5] The Epics are contained in Sumerian tablets recovered by Dr. John Henry Haynes during the University of Pennsylvania's excavations at Nippur in 1896-1898 and translated originally by George Aaron Barton.

Several of the epics were translated in 1918 by professor of Semitic languages and the history of religion George Aaron Barton under the title "Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions". They are dated considerably earlier than the Gudea Cylinders to at least the reign of Akkadian king Naram-Suen of Akkad (ca. 2190 – 2154 BC short chronology) and possibly as early as 2,500BC[8]. Barton originally dated them even earlier to 2704-2660BC according to Breasted's chronology.

The first Kharsag Epic, as translated by Christian O'Brien begins "At Kharsag, where Heaven and Earth met, the Heavenly Assembly, the Great Sons of Anu, descended - the many Wise Ones"[9][10].

The second Kharsag Epic, a reverse cut cuneiform cylinder, described by George Aaron Barton as "The oldest religious text from Babylonia" mentions Kharsag in the first line of the second verse - "The holy Tigris, the holy Euphrates, the holy sceptre of Enlil establish Kharsag"[11].

The Sumerian text of tablet 8383 (as translated above) amounts to 268 lines of cuneiform though 19 columns of inscription. Of these 268 lines (as numbered for translation purposes) 226 are transcribed in whole or in part, with 42 obliterated lines unresolved. Christian O'Brien explained that there are actually 320 lines of inscription on this cylinder. A further analysis of all columns in the 1980s resolved some of the previous partial-line results and moved many more into translation[12].

From columns I-VIII (1-, three hitherto uninterpreted addresses by Ninkharsag were now evident. From columns IX-XV (9-15) was information concerning Enlil's great house (the E-gal) at Kharsag. And, from columns XVI-XIX (16-19), were additional details concerning the 'sickness' with which Enlil and his brother Enki were stricken. By adding in the supplementary translations O'Brien brought the overall 320 lines to a point of 82.5% completion.

The stories revolve around the arrival of the Annunaki on Mount Hermon, their decision to settle in a nearby plain and establish a head enclosure (O'Brien translates Kharsag literally as "head enclosure") with reservoir, irrigation channels and agricultural buildings. Christian O'Brien's translations generally favoured less supernatural explanations, suggesting the epics were an agrarian, historical record of events and the establishment of agriculture at a historical location[13]. His index of the tablets, and their Museum numbers are listed below[14][15][16]:
Tablet one

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Number 14,005

The Arrival of the Anannage
Tablet two

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Number 8,383

The Decision to Settle
Tablet three

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Number 9,205

The Romance of Enlil and Ninlil
Tablet four

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Number 11,065

The Planning of the Cultivation
Tablet five

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Number 8,322

The Building of the Settlement
Tablet six

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Number 8,384

The Great House of Enlil
Tablet seven

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Number 8,310

The Cold Winter Storm
Tablet eight

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Number 8,317

The Thousand Year Storm
Tablet nine

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Museum Numbers 19,751, 2,204, 2,270 & 2,302

The Final Destruction

Kharsag is overwhelmed by flood water, destroying the dam, reservoir and disabling the great watercourse.

# ^ Full text of "Miscellaneous Babylonian inscriptions" Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions by George A. Barton, 1918, Yale University Press

All this can go back on Wikipedia, just as soon as it gets a peer review, positive or negative, to become verifiable.

To tie this to the Bible, you need to look into The Slavonic Book of Enoch. The author of the early chapters of the three-part book of Enoch, which are those with which we are primarily concerned, has been shown by Burkitt to have been a Jew who lived in northern Palestine, southwest of the Hermon Range, near to the headwaters of the Jordan River. This is the very area in which much of the action described here is stated to have taken place. We do not know the source of the original material but it can be said with some confidence that the Books of Enoch were produced around the second century B.C. from materials with a much older tradition. That Sumerian tablets did not have any part in this scenario can be assessed from the fact that they had been buried under the ravages of war for many centuries.

Despite these apparent limitations, Dr. R. H. Charles placed a great deal of value on the teachings of the Books of Enoch, stating:

Nearly all the writers of the New Testament were familiar with it, and were more or less influenced by it in thought and diction. It is quoted as a genuine production of Enoch by St. Jude, and as scripture by St. Barnabas. The authors of the Book of Jubilees, the Apocalypse of Baruch, 4 Ezra, laid it under contribution. With the earliest Fathers and Apologists it had all the weight of a canonical book. The citations of Enoch by the testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and by the Book of Jubilees, show that at the close of the second century B.C., and during the first century B.C., this book was regarded in certain circles as inspired. When we come down to the first century A.D., we find it recognised as scripture by St. Jude.

The main Book of Enoch contains an autobiographical account of the life of Enoch among the Elohim - in the area known as Eden which, as had already been suggested, can be identified from the text as the northwest corner of the Fertile Crescent, centred on Mount Hermon on the conjunctive borders of modern Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

Enoch has much to do with the "Watchers", a large group of craftsmen-teachers who arrived in Eden as reinforcements for the third order of Elohim.

Enoch VI:6 VB - And they were in all two hundred who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon...
This translation is taken from the Greek, but the Ethiopic text confirms it: And they descended on Ardis which is the summit of Mount Hermon.

Jared, the father of Enoch, was fifth in line of Patriarchs after Adam, and may have been born around 7,736 B.C.; the Watchers may have arrived about 7,570 B.C. - long after the original arrival in the Kharsag/Eden area by the original Annanage around 8,200 B.C

Didn't God tell Adam that he would have to cultivate from the earth in the process of evicting him from the garden?

This is an excellent metaphor for the Agricultural (Neolithic) Revolution.

I believe there is much truth in this story.

 

[Exiledoomsayer]

So just to be clear here.. The eden story is metaphor for the beginning of human civilization? Rather then an actual perfect garden put there by god?

The angel with the flaming sword was really a group of humans, while adam+eve where supposed to be the only humans?

I've skimmed through your post but I see nothing to sugjest that eden is at the same place agriculture started untill at the very end where you say adem cultivating the earth is a metaphor for starting agriculture. So the entire thing hinches on weither or not that was litteral or metaphor for that particular interpretation?

 

[paygan]

So just to be clear here.. The eden story is metaphor for the beginning of human civilization? Rather then an actual perfect garden put there by god?

Well, I'd argue it's both. "Civilization" is a tricky word to describe though, it takes many factors, features and stages a community has to go through to label it a "Civilization". Some archaeologists wouldn't say it started before Sumer in 5,500 B.C., many wouldn't label it that far back. The Bible was written long after 5,500 B.C. and has to describe the human journey and God's interaction with it. I therefore see the earlier Genesis stories as a semi-metaphorical composite of real events that are in esscence trying to show us how we got here and how we have interacted with God. Along with Eden / Kharsag, the development of the city states in Sumer in 5,500 B.C. would also likely have resembled a perfect garden put there by God.

The angel with the flaming sword was really a group of humans, while adam+eve where supposed to be the only humans?

The Authorised version reads "Cherubims", but the humans I met there were just a metaphor in MY story. Doubtless they stood for something similar in the Bible, it's God's word, so open to your interpretation, not mine. I don't doubt there is some truth in this story. The Bible is awash with great themes and metaphors for real events when you skim beneath the surface literacy.

So the entire thing hinches on weither or not that was litteral or metaphor for that particular interpretation?

This will always be open to suggestion. The entire thing hinges really on what a complete archaeological survey, geo-physical survey, pollen core analysis, radio-carbon dating and excavation reveal about this basin.

If it's an unprecedented large archaeological site showing signs of crop domestication and agriculture dating between 7,500 and 9,500 B.C. then we will have some pretty hard scientific facts for people to consider whether this is a likely candidate for the metaphor of the various sacred scriptures mentioned.

It would also tie up science and history with religion a bit and maybe stop them fighting so much!

 

[freezerman2000]

And here I thought it is located miles off the coast of modern day Iraq from where the Tigris and Euphrates empty in the Gulf (remember, that sea levels rose dramatically at the end of the last Ice Age). I can't remember the names of the two other rivers that once flowed there, but there is evidence of two "ghost rivers" that met the two existing rivers mentioned above, from opposite directions, at roughly the same place.

 

[Supreme]

It's probably in the Persian Gulf, near Iran.

 

[freezerman2000]

It's probably in the Persian Gulf, near Iran.

 

[Touma]

You have pictures of this? Send me a link to them. I'd very much like to investigate your claim, as it is completely outrageous. Prove me wrong, though. =)