The Earliest Cult Centers in the World?: Göbekli Tepe and its Contemporaries
Wednesday, August 24, 2022 at 8 PM via Zoom

Jennifer Tobin

Since the time of their discovery in 1996, the ruins at Göbekli Tepe, near Şanlıurfa, Turkey, have generated heated discussions among archaeologists. Excavations have revealed a series of large, circular structures, whose two central T-shaped pillars supported wooden roofs. Other, smaller T-pillars were incorporated into the buildings’ stone walls. Carvings of animals adorned these pillars – birds, bulls, foxes, spiders, snakes, and scorpions – suggesting that cultic activities occurred here.

Remarkably, these buildings were constructed in the 10th millennium BCE, at a time when the builders had not yet adopted the arts of agriculture and animal husbandry. This presentation reviews the controversies surrounding the function of the buildings, as well as the circumstances of their construction and demolition. It will also demonstrate that Göbekli Tepe is not a unique phenomenon, by presenting a recently discovered contemporary site, Karahan Tepe.

Jennifer Tobin, Associate Professor Emerita, Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago

How to Access the Twice Monthly BAF/BASONOVA Zoom Lecture Series

If you wish to subscribe to the lecture series, please access the BASONOVA PayPal portal and use a credit card for an annual subscription ($35 per family). Go to: http://www.basonova.org/ membership-form.html

It is also possible to access the series one lecture at a time, for $7 per lecture. To reserve your single-lecture Zoom spot for this event, wait 10 days before the scheduled date and then go to: http://www.basonova.org/ next-lecture-reservation.html

Questions: info@basonova.org

Genetic Forensics and Ancient DNA
Wednesday, September 21, 2022, at the Bender JCC

Dr. Ellen Greytak
Director of Bioinformatics, Parabon NanoLabs

Advancements in the analysis of challenging DNA samples have led to groundbreaking new technologies that are revolutionizing forensic DNA analysis for law enforcement investigations and historians of ancient times.

Beyond identifying a known suspect in a database, we can now generate new leads for violent crimes by predicting the likely physical appearance of the suspect and connecting them to distant relatives in public genetic genealogy databases. These techniques have helped solve hundreds of cold cases in the last few years, many of which required analysis of tiny, highly degraded forensic DNA samples using genome sequencing.

Success on such samples has been driven by the incorporation of technological advancements from the field of ancient DNA analysis. As a demonstration of ancient and forensic DNA’s joint power, we applied our DNA phenotyping tools to ancient DNA data from Egyptian mummies.

This talk will discuss the challenges of forensic DNA, ancient DNA techniques that are helping drive success in forensic cases, and how these two fields contribute to one another to learn more about what happened decades ago in cold cases and thousands of years ago in human history.

Strong Inscriptional Confirmations of People in the Hebrew Bible
Wednesday, December 14, 2022, at 8 pm via Zoom

Lawrence Mykytiuk, Purdue University

How many people named in just the Five Books of Moses have been confirmed by historians?

Bible-era inscriptions confirm the historical reality of more than 55 persons in the entire twenty-four books Hebrew Bible (Tanach). Most of these inscriptions are from the lifetime of the people in the Bible.

Of 43 Hebrew monarchs in the Hebrew Bible, 16 have been confirmed: 45% of the kings of the northern kingdom of Israel and 30% of the kings of Judah. These confirmations are about 3/8 of the Bible’s Hebrew monarchs. Also confirmed have been 25 of approximately 160 Gentile monarchs in the Hebrew Bible or about 15%.

Finally, more than 14 royal officials, priests, and others have been confirmed as recorded in inscriptions; several more await publication. These persons are Hebrew, Assyrian, and Babylonian, plus Persian-empire governors who might not have been Persian. Examples illustrate the two ways researchers identify a biblical person in an inscription.

How to Access the Twice Monthly BAF/BASONOVA Zoom Lecture Series

If you wish to subscribe to the lecture series, please access the BASONOVA PayPal portal and use a credit card for an annual subscription ($35 per family). Go to: http://www.basonova.org/ membership-form.html

It is also possible to access the series one lecture at a time, for $7 per lecture. To reserve your single-lecture Zoom spot for this event, wait 10 days before the scheduled date and then go to: http://www.basonova.org/ next-lecture-reservation.html

Questions: info@basonova.org