re: Archaeologist Carbon-Date Camel Bones, Discover Major Discrepancy In Bible Story

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Using carbon-dating to determine the age of the oldest-known camel bones, the researchers determined that camels were first introduced to Israel around the 9th century BCE.

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The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament refers to camels as pack animals as early as the story of Abraham. Though there is no archaeological evidence of Abraham's life, many in the religious and scientific communities, including Chabad and the Associates For Biblical Research, cite the 20th century BCE as his time of birth. If the new evidence is correct, however, this suggests discrepancies between the Bible and human history as explained by science.

The researchers scoured ancient copper production sites in the Aravah Valley, where camel bones were only present in sites active in the last third of the 10 century and the 9th century BCE. Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef write in their report:

"[The camel bones] demonstrate a sudden appearance of camels at the site, following a major change in the organization of production in the entire region."

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So just because camel bones only appear at this one site in the Aravah Valley in the 10th and 9th century BCE, they conclude that no camels existed anywhere in all of Israel until that time? Well that's a bit of stretch.

I wonder if my poor dog that died when I was 10 and we buried in the back yard will be discovered by archeologists in a couple thousand years and hailed as proof that no dogs existed west of the Mississippi River until the late 20th century?