title: Big 12 Conference

text: In addition to the national agreement, each Big 12 university maintained the right to sell its "third-tier" covering selected events per-season (including one football game, basketball games, and other events outside of those sports). The third-tier rights to the Texas Longhorns are held through a channel dedicated to the team — Longhorn Network — which is operated by ESPN. In 2019, ESPN announced that it would acquire the third-tier rights to all Big 12 teams through 2024-25 (excluding Oklahoma and Texas, which are still under long-term contracts with Bally Sports Oklahoma and Longhorn Network respectively), and place their content on its subscription streaming service ESPN+. ESPN also acquired exclusive rights to all future Big 12 football championship games, replacing the previous alternation between ESPN and Fox.


title: Philistines

text: The Philistines (; Koine Greek (LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, : "Phulistieím") were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when their polity, after having already been subjugated for centuries by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was finally destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. After becoming part of his empire and its successor, the Persian Empire, they lost their distinct ethnic identity and disappeared from the historical and archaeological record by the late 5th century BC. The Philistines are known for their biblical conflict with the Israelites. Though the primary source of information about the Philistines is the Hebrew Bible, they are first attested to in reliefs at the Temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu, in which they are called (accepted as cognate with Hebrew ); the parallel Assyrian term is , , or .


title: Philistines

text: The English term "Philistine" comes from Old French ; from Classical Latin ; from Late Greek ; ultimately from Hebrew "Pəlištî" (; plural "P'lishtim", ), meaning 'people of "P'lesheth" ()'; and there are cognates in Akkadian (aka Assyrian, Babylonian) and Egyptian ; the term "Palestine" has the same derivation. The native Philistine endonym, assuming they had one, is unknown.


title: Philistines

text: The Hebrew term occurs 286 times in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible (of which 152 times are in 1 Samuel). It also appears in the Samaritan Pentateuch. In the Greek version of the Bible, called Septuagint, the equivalent term "Phulistieím" ("Φυλιστιείμ") occurs 12 times, again in the Pentateuch.


title: Philistines

text: In secondary literature, "Philistia" is further mentioned in the Aramaic "Visions of Amram" (4Q543-7), which is dated "prior to Antiochus IV and the Hasmonean revolt," possibly to the time of High Priest of Israel Onias II; Jubilees 46:1-47:1 might have used "Amram" as a source.


title: Philistines

text: Outside of pre-Maccabean Israelite religious literature, evidence for the name and the origins of the Philistines is less abundant and less consistent. In the remainder of the Hebrew Bible, is attested at Qumran for 2 Samuel 5:17. In the Septuagint, however, 269 references instead use the term ('of another tribe').


title: Philistines

text: During the Late Bronze Age collapse, an apparent confederation of seafarers known as the Sea Peoples are recorded as attacking ancient Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean civilizations. While their exact origins are a mystery, and probably diverse, it is generally agreed that the Sea Peoples had origins in the greater Southern European area, including western Asia Minor, the Aegean, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Egypt, in particular, repelled numerous attempted invasions from the Sea Peoples, most famously at the Battle of the Delta, where the pharaoh Ramesses III defeated a massive invasion force which had already plundered Hattusa, Carchemish, Cyprus, and the Southern Levant. Egyptian sources name one of these implicated Sea Peoples as the "pwrꜣsꜣtj," generally transliterated as either "Peleset" or "Pulasti". Following the Sea Peoples' defeat, Ramesses III allegedly relocated a number of the "pwrꜣsꜣtj" to southern Canaan, as recorded in an inscription from his funerary temple in Medinet Habu, and the Great Harris Papyrus. Though archaeological investigation has been unable to correlate any such settlement existing during this time period, this, coupled with the name "Peleset/Pulasti" and the peoples' supposed Aegean origins, have led many scholars to identify the "pwrꜣsꜣtj" with the Philistines.


title: Philistines

text: Typically "Philistine" artifacts begin appearing in Canaan by the 12th century BCE. Pottery of Philistine origin has been found far outside of what would later become the core of Philistia, including at the majority of Iron Age I sites in the Jezreel Valley; however, because the quantity of said pottery finds are light, it is assumed that the Philistines' presence in these areas were not as strong as in their core territory, and that they probably were a minority which had assimilated into the native Canaanite population by the 10th century BCE.


title: Philistines

text: There is little evidence that the Sea Peoples forcefully injected themselves into the southern Levant, as many sites where Philistine material culture appears show nearly no signs of an intervening event marked by destruction. At Ashdod, only some ash was found in part of one area, but as David Ben-Shlomo, one of the site's excavators put it, "Sites like Ashdod display no evidence for destruction in the Early Iron Age levels." The original assumed destruction of Ashkelon was only a lens of ash uncovered in 1921, as all excavations have shown that no destruction took place ca. 1200 BCE. As the former lead excavator from Ashkelon stated, "The only clear conclusion that can be drawn is that there is no evidence of destruction." At Tell es-Safi/Gath, no evidence of a destruction has been uncovered in any area, as the cited evidence for a destruction were some pieces of restorable pottery uncovered on one floor. For Ekron, only a single storage building dating to ca. 1200 BCE was destroyed, and after this destruction, the local Canaanite inhabitants rebuilt the site. It was only after this Canaanite phase that Philistine pottery appeared at Ekron, though, most importantly, there was no destruction upon the arrival of the Philistine material culture and the transition was peaceful. The same can be said for Aphek where an Egyptian garrison was destroyed, likely in an act of warfare at the end of the 13th century, which was followed by a local Canaanite phase, which was then followed by the peaceful introduction of Philistine pottery. The lack of destruction by the Sea Peoples in the southern Levant should not be surprising as Canaan was never mentioned in any text describing the Sea Peoples as a target of destruction or attack by the Sea Peoples. Other sites such as Tell Keisan, Acco, Tell Abu Hawam, Tel Dor, Tel Mevorak, Tel Zeror, Tel Michal, Tel Gerisa, and Tel Batash, have no evidence of a destruction ca. 1200 BCE.


title: Philistines

text: By Iron Age II, the Philistines had formed an ethnic state centered around a pentapolis consisting of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza (generally known as Philistia). Whether or not historians are inclined to accept the historicity of the old canonical books of the Hebrew nation, their writers describe a series of conflicts between the Philistines and the Israelites during the period of the Judges, and, allegedly, the Philistines exercised lordship over Israel in the days of Saul and Samuel the prophet, forbidding the Israelites from making iron implements of war (). According to their chronicles, the Philistines were eventually subjugated by David (), before regaining independence in the wake of the United Monarchy's dissolution, after which there are only sparse references to them. The accuracy of these narratives is questioned by many scholars.


title: Philistines

text: The Philistines seemed to have generally retained their autonomy, barring a few periods of partial Israelite and Judahite suzerainty, up until the era of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the mid-8th century BC, Tiglath-Pileser III marched into the southern Levant, conquering Aram-Damascus, and occupying the remaining kingdoms in the area, including Philistia. Decades later, Egypt began agitating its neighbors to rebel against Assyrian occupation. A revolt in Israel was devastatingly crushed by 722 BC, resulting in the kingdom's total destruction. In 712 BC, a Philistine named Iamani ascended to the throne of Ashdod, and organized another failed uprising against Assyria with Egyptian aid. The Assyrian King Sargon II invaded Philistia, which effectively became annexed by Assyria, although the kings of the five cities, including Iamani, were allowed to remain on their thrones. In his annals concerning the campaign, Sargon II singled out his capture of Gath, in 711 BC. Ten years later, Egypt once again incited its neighbors to rebel against Assyria, resulting in Ashkelon, Ekron, Judah, and Sidon revolting against Sargon's son and successor, Sennacherib. Sennacherib squashed the revolt, and destroyed much of the cities in Phoenicia, Philistia, and Judah, though he was unable to capture the Judahite capital, Jerusalem. As punishment, the rebel nations paid tribute to Assyria, and Sennacherib's annals report that he exacted such tribute from the kings of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, and Ekron, but Gath is never mentioned, which may indicate that the city was actually destroyed by Sargon II.


title: Philistines

text: The Philistines disappear from written record following the conquest of the Levant by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II towards the end of the 7th century BC, when Ashkelon, Ekron and many other cities from the region were completely destroyed.


title: Philistines

text: In the Book of Genesis, the Philistines are said to descend from the Casluhites, an Egyptian people. However, according to rabbinic sources, these Philistines were different from those described in the Deuteronomistic history. Deuteronomist sources describe the "Five Lords of the Philistines" as based in five city-states of the southwestern Levant: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath, from Wadi Gaza in the south to the Yarqon River in the north. This description portrays them at one period of time as among the Kingdom of Israel's most dangerous enemies. In the Septuagint, the term (), which means simply "other nations", is used instead of "Philistines".


title: Philistines

text: With regard to descendants of Mizraim, the biblical progenitor of the Egyptians, the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 states in Hebrew: ""ve-et Patrusim ve-et Kasluhim asher yats'u mi-sham Plištim ve-et Kaftorim."" Literally, it says that those whom Mizraim begat included "the Pathrusim, Casluhim, out of whom came the Philistines, and the Caphtorim."


title: Philistines

text: There is some debate among interpreters as to whether this verse was originally intended to signify that the Philistines themselves were the offspring of the Casluhim or the Caphtorim. While the Casluhim or the Caphtorim origin was widely followed by some 19th-century biblical scholars, others such as Friedrich Schwally, Bernhard Stade, and Cornelis Tiele argued for a Semitic origin. Interestingly, the Caphtorites were considered to derive from Crete while Cashluhim derived from Cyrenaica, which was part of the province Crete and Cyrenaica in Roman times, which alludes to the similarities between them.


title: Philistines

text: The Torah does not record the Philistines as one of the nations to be displaced from Canaan. In Genesis 15:18-21, the Philistines are absent from the ten nations Abraham's descendants will displace as well as being absent from the list of nations Moses tells the people they will conquer, though the land in which they resided is included in the boundaries based on the locations of rivers described. In fact, the Philistines, through their Capthorite ancestors, were allowed to conquer the land from the Avvites. God also directed the Israelites away from the Philistines upon their Exodus from Egypt according to Exodus 13:17. In Genesis 21:22-17, Abraham agrees to a covenant of kindness with Abimelech, the Philistine king, and his descendants. Abraham's son Isaac deals with the Philistine king similarly, by concluding a treaty with them in chapter 26.


title: Philistines

text: Unlike most other ethnic groups in the Bible, the Philistines are almost always referred to without the definite article in the Torah.


title: Philistines

text: Rabbinic sources state that the Philistines of Genesis were different people from the Philistines of the Deuteronomistic history (the series of books from Joshua to 2 Kings). According to the Talmud ("Chullin 60b"), the Philistines of Genesis intermingled with the Avvites. This differentiation was also held by the authors of the Septuagint (LXX), who translated (rather than transliterated) its base text as "allophuloi" (, 'other nations') instead of "philistines" throughout the Books of Judges and Samuel.


title: Philistines

text: Throughout the Deuteronomistic history, Philistines are almost always referred to without the definite article, except on 11 occasions. On the basis of the LXX's regular translation into "allophyloi", Robert Drews states that the term "Philistines" means simply "non-Israelites of the Promised Land" when used in the context of Samson, Saul and David.


title: Philistines

text: Judges 13:1 tells that the Philistines dominated the Israelites in the times of Samson, who fought and killed over a thousand. According to 1 Samuel 5–6, they even captured the Ark of the Covenant for a few months.


title: Philistines

text: A few biblical texts, such as the Ark Narrative and stories reflecting the importance of Gath, seem to portray Late Iron I and Early Iron II memories. They are mentioned more than 250 times, the majority in the Deuteronomistic history, and are depicted as among the arch-enemies of the Israelites, a serious and recurring threat before being subdued by David.


title: Philistines

text: The Bible paints the Philistines as the main enemy of the Israelites (prior to the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Neo-Babylonian Empire) with a state of almost perpetual war between the two. The Philistine cities lost their independence to Assyria, and revolts in the following years were all crushed. They were subsequently absorbed into the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Achaemenid Empire, and disappeared as a distinct ethnic group by the late 5th century BC.


title: Philistines

text: Amos in 1:8 sets the Philistines / ἀλλοφύλοι at Ashdod and Ekron. In 9:7 God is quoted asserting that, as he brought Israel from Egypt, he also brought the Philistines from Caphtor. In the Greek this is, instead, bringing the ἀλλόφυλοι from Cappadocia.


title: Philistines

text: The Bible books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos and Zephaniah speak of the destruction of the Philistines.


title: Philistines

text: The following is a list of battles described in the Bible as having occurred between the Israelites and the Philistines:


title: Philistines

text: Several theories are given about the origins of the Philistines. The Hebrew Bible mentions in two places that they originate from a geographical region known as Caphtor (possibly Crete/Minoa), although the Hebrew chronicles also state that the Philistines were descended from Casluhim, one of the 7 sons of Ham's second son, Miṣrayim (). The Septuagint connects the Philistines to other biblical groups such as Caphtorim and the Cherethites and Pelethites, which have been identified with the island of Crete. This, among other things, has led to the modern theory of Philistines having an Aegean origin. In 2016, a large Philistine cemetery was discovered near Ashkelon, containing more than 150 dead buried in oval-shaped graves. A 2019 genetic study found that, while all three Ashkelon populations derive most of their ancestry from the local Semitic-speaking Levantine gene pool, the early Iron Age population was genetically distinct due to a European-related admixture; this genetic signal is no longer detectable in the later Iron Age population. According to the authors, the admixture was likely due to a "gene flow from a European-related gene pool" during the Bronze to Iron Age transition, which supports the theory that a migration event occurred. Philistine DNA shows similarities to that of ancient Cretans, but it is impossible to specify the exact place in Europe from where Philistines had migrated to Levant, due to limited number of ancient genomes available for study, "with 20 to 60 per cent similarity to DNA from ancient skeletons from Crete and Iberia and that from modern people living in Sardinia."


title: Philistines

text: Most scholars agree that the Philistines were of Greek origin, and that they came from Crete and the rest of the Aegean Islands or, more generally, from the area of modern-day Greece. This view is based largely upon the fact that archaeologists, when digging up strata dated to the Philistine time-period in the coastal plains and in adjacent areas, have found similarities in material culture (figurines, pottery, fire-stands, etc.) between Aegean-Greek culture and that of Philistine culture, suggesting that they were originally one and the same people. A minority, dissenting, claim that the similarities in material culture is only the result of acculturation, during their entire 575 years of existence among Canaanite (Phoenician), Israelite, and perhaps other seafaring peoples.


title: Philistines

text: Since 1846, scholars have connected the biblical Philistines with the Egyptian "" inscriptions. All five of these appear from 1150 BCE to 900 BCE just as archaeological references to "Kinaḫḫu", or "Ka-na-na" (Canaan), come to an end; and since 1873 comparisons were drawn between them and to the Aegean "Pelasgians." Archaeological research to date has been unable to corroborate a mass settlement of Philistines during the Ramesses III era.


title: Philistines

text: A "Walistina" is mentioned in Luwian texts already variantly spelled "Palistina". This implies dialectical variation, a phoneme ("f"?) inadequately described in the script, or both. Falistina was a kingdom somewhere on the Amuq plain, where the Amurru kingdom had held sway before it.


title: Philistines

text: In 2003, a statue of a king named Taita bearing inscriptions in Luwian was discovered during excavations conducted by German archaeologist Kay Kohlmeyer in the Citadel of Aleppo. The new readings of Anatolian hieroglyphs proposed by the Hittitologists Elisabeth Rieken and Ilya Yakubovich were conducive to the conclusion that the country ruled by Taita was called Palistin. This country extended in the 11th-10th centuries BCE from the Amouq Valley in the west to Aleppo in the east down to Mehardeh and Shaizar in the south.


title: Philistines

text: Due to the similarity between Palistin and Philistines, Hittitologist John David Hawkins (who translated the Aleppo inscriptions) hypothesizes a connection between the Syro-Hittite Palistin and the Philistines, as do archaeologists Benjamin Sass and Kay Kohlmeyer. Gershon Galil suggests that King David halted the Arameans' expansion into the Land of Israel on account of his alliance with the southern Philistine kings, as well as with Toi, king of Ḥamath, who is identified with Tai(ta) II, king of Palistin (the northern Sea Peoples).


title: Philistines

text: However, the relation between Palistin and the Philistines is much debated. Israeli professor Itamar Singer notes that there is nothing (besides the name) in the recently discovered archaeology that indicates an Aegean origin to Palistin; most of the discoveries at the Palistin capital Tell Tayinat indicate a Neo-Hittite state, including the names of the kings of Palistin. Singer proposes (based on archaeological finds) that a branch of the Philistines settled in Tell Tayinat and were replaced or assimilated by a new Luwian population who took the Palistin name.


title: Philistines

text: Allen Jones (1972 & 1975) suggests that the name "Philistine" represents a corruption of the Greek "phyle-histia" ('tribe of the hearth'), with the Ionic spelling of "hestia". Stephanos Vogazianos (1993) states that Jones "only answers problems by analogy and he mainly speculates" but notes that the root "phyle" may not at all be out of place. Regarding this theory, Israel Finkelstein & Nadav Na'aman (1994) note the hearth constructions which have been discovered at Tell Qasile and Ekron.


title: Philistines

text: According to Joshua 13:3 and 1 Samuel 6:17, the land of the Philistines (or Allophyloi), called Philistia, was a pentapolis in the southwestern Levant comprising the five city-states of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath, from Wadi Gaza in the south to the Yarqon River in the north, but with no fixed border to the east.


title: Philistines

text: Tell Qasile (a "port city") and Aphek were located on the northern frontier of Philistine territory, and Tell Qasile in particular may have been inhabited by both Philistine and non-Philistine people.


title: Philistines

text: The location of Gath is not entirely certain, although the site of Tell es-Safi, not far from Ekron, is currently the most favoured.


title: Philistines

text: The identity of the city of Ziklag, which according to the Bible marked the border between the Philistine and Israelite territory, remains uncertain.


title: Philistines

text: In the western part of the Jezreel Valley, 23 of the 26 Iron Age I sites (12th to 10th centuries BCE) yielded typical Philistine pottery. These sites include Tel Megiddo, Tel Yokneam, Tel Qiri, Afula, Tel Qashish, Be'er Tiveon, Hurvat Hazin, Tel Risim, Tel Re'ala, Hurvat Tzror, Tel Sham, Midrakh Oz and Tel Zariq. Scholars have attributed the presence of Philistine pottery in northern Israel to their role as mercenaries for the Egyptians during the Egyptian military administration of the land in the 12th century BCE. This presence may also indicate further expansion of the Philistines to the valley during the 11th century BCE, or their trade with the Israelites. There are biblical references to Philistines in the valley during the times of the Judges. The quantity of Philistine pottery within these sites is still quite small, showing that even if the Philistines did settle the valley, they were a minority that blended within the Canaanite population during the 12th century BCE. The Philistines seem to have been present in the southern valley during the 11th century, which may relate to the biblical account of their victory at the Battle of Gilboa.


title: Philistines

text: Since Edward Hincks and William Osburn Jr. in 1846, biblical scholars have connected the biblical Philistines with the Egyptian "Peleset" inscriptions; and since 1873, both have been connected with the Aegean "Pelasgians". The evidence for these connections is etymological and has been disputed.


title: Philistines

text: Based on the Peleset inscriptions, it has been suggested that the Casluhite Philistines formed part of the conjectured "Sea Peoples" who repeatedly attacked Egypt during the later Nineteenth Dynasty. Though they were eventually repulsed by Ramesses III, he finally resettled them, according to the theory, to rebuild the coastal towns in Canaan. Papyrus Harris I details the achievements of the reign (1186–1155 BC) of Ramesses III. In the brief description of the outcome of the battles in Year 8 is the description of the fate of some of the conjectured Sea Peoples. Ramesses claims that, having brought the prisoners to Egypt, he "settled them in strongholds, bound in my name. Numerous were their classes, hundreds of thousands strong. I taxed them all, in clothing and grain from the storehouses and granaries each year." Some scholars suggest it is likely that these "strongholds" were fortified towns in southern Canaan, which would eventually become the five cities (the Pentapolis) of the Philistines. Israel Finkelstein has suggested that there may be a period of 25–50 years after the sacking of these cities and their reoccupation by the Philistines. It is possible that at first, the Philistines were housed in Egypt; only subsequently late in the troubled end of the reign of Ramesses III would they have been allowed to settle Philistia.


title: Philistines

text: The "Peleset" appear in four different texts from the time of the New Kingdom. Two of these, the inscriptions at Medinet Habu and the Rhetorical Stela at Deir al-Medinah, are dated to the time of the reign of Ramesses III (1186–1155 BC). Another was composed in the period immediately following the death of Ramesses III (Papyrus Harris I). The fourth, the Onomasticon of Amenope, is dated to some time between the end of the 12th or early 11th century BC.


title: Philistines

text: The inscriptions at Medinet Habu consist of images depicting a coalition of Sea Peoples, among them the Peleset, who are said in the accompanying text to have been defeated by Ramesses III during his Year 8 campaign. In about 1175 BC, Egypt was threatened with a massive land and sea invasion by the "Sea Peoples," a coalition of foreign enemies which included the Tjeker, the Shekelesh, the Deyen, the Weshesh, the Teresh, the Sherden, and the "PRST". They were comprehensively defeated by Ramesses III, who fought them in "Djahy" (the eastern Mediterranean coast) and at "the mouths of the rivers" (the Nile Delta), recording his victories in a series of inscriptions in his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. Scholars have been unable to conclusively determine which images match what peoples described in the reliefs depicting two major battle scenes. A separate relief on one of the bases of the Osirid pillars with an accompanying hieroglyphic text clearly identifying the person depicted as a captive "Peleset" chief is of a bearded man without headdress. This has led to the interpretation that Ramesses III defeated the Sea Peoples, including Philistines, and settled their captives in fortresses in southern Canaan; another related theory suggests that Philistines invaded and settled the coastal plain for themselves. The soldiers were quite tall and clean-shaven. They wore breastplates and short kilts, and their superior weapons included chariots drawn by two horses. They carried small shields and fought with straight swords and spears.


title: Philistines

text: The Rhetorical Stela are less discussed, but are noteworthy in that they mention the "Peleset" together with a people called the "Teresh", who sailed "in the midst of the sea". The "Teresh" are thought to have originated from the Anatolian coast and their association with the "Peleset" in this inscription is seen as providing some information on the possible origin and identity of the Philistines.


title: Philistines

text: The Harris Papyrus, which was found in a tomb at Medinet Habu, also recalls Ramesses III's battles with the Sea Peoples, declaring that the "Peleset" were "reduced to ashes." The Papyrus Harris I, records how the defeated foe were brought in captivity to Egypt and settled in fortresses. The Harris papyrus can be interpreted in two ways: either the captives were settled in Egypt and the rest of the Philistines/Sea Peoples carved out a territory for themselves in Canaan, or else it was Ramesses himself who settled the Sea Peoples (mainly Philistines) in Canaan as mercenaries. Egyptian strongholds in Canaan are also mentioned, including a temple dedicated to Amun, which some scholars place in Gaza; however, the lack of detail indicating the precise location of these strongholds means that it is unknown what impact these had, if any, on Philistine settlement along the coast.


title: Philistines

text: The only mention in an Egyptian source of the Peleset in conjunction with any of the five cities that are said in the Bible to have made up the Philistine pentapolis comes in the Onomasticon of Amenope. The sequence in question has been translated as: "Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gaza, Assyria, Shubaru [...] "Sherden", "Tjekker", "Peleset", "Khurma" [...]" Scholars have advanced the possibility that the other Sea Peoples mentioned were connected to these cities in some way as well.


title: Philistines

text: Many scholars have interpreted the ceramic and technological evidence attested to by archaeology as being associated with the Philistine advent in the area as strongly suggestive that they formed part of a large scale immigration to southern Canaan, probably from Anatolia and Cyprus, in the 12th century BCE.


title: Philistines

text: The proposed connection between Mycenaean culture and Philistine culture was further documented by finds at the excavation of Ashdod, Ekron, Ashkelon, and more recently Gath, four of the five Philistine cities in Canaan. The fifth city is Gaza. Especially notable is the early Philistine pottery, a locally made version of the Aegean Mycenaean Late Helladic IIIC pottery, which is decorated in shades of brown and black. This later developed into the distinctive Philistine pottery of the Iron Age I, with black and red decorations on white slip known as Philistine Bichrome ware. Also of particular interest is a large, well-constructed building covering , discovered at Ekron. Its walls are broad, designed to support a second story, and its wide, elaborate entrance leads to a large hall, partly covered with a roof supported on a row of columns. In the floor of the hall is a circular hearth paved with pebbles, as is typical in Mycenaean megaron hall buildings; other unusual architectural features are paved benches and podiums. Among the finds are three small bronze wheels with eight spokes. Such wheels are known to have been used for portable cultic stands in the Aegean region during this period, and it is therefore assumed that this building served cultic functions. Further evidence concerns an inscription in Ekron to PYGN or PYTN, which some have suggested refers to "Potnia", the title given to an ancient Mycenaean goddess. Excavations in Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gath reveal dog and pig bones which show signs of having been butchered, implying that these animals were part of the residents' diet. Among other findings there are wineries where fermented wine was produced, as well as loom weights resembling those of Mycenaean sites in Greece.


title: Philistines

text: Further evidence of the Aegean origin of the initial Philistine settlers was provided by studying their burial practices in the so far only discovered Philistine cemetery, excavated at Ashkelon (see below).


title: Philistines

text: However, for many years scholars such as Gloria London, John Brug, Shlomo Bunimovitz, Helga Weippert, and Edward Noort, among others, have noted the "difficulty of associating pots with people", proposing alternative suggestions such as potters following their markets or technology transfer, and emphasize the continuities with the local world in the material remains of the coastal area identified with "Philistines", rather than the differences emerging from the presence of Cypriote and/or Aegean/ Mycenaean influences. The view is summed up in the idea that 'kings come and go, but cooking pots remain', suggesting that the foreign Aegean elements in the Philistine population may have been a minority.


title: Philistines

text: Material culture evidence, primarily pottery styles, indicates that the Philistines originally settled in a few sites in the south, such as Ashkelon, Ashdod and Ekron. It was not until several decades later, about 1150 BC, that they expanded into surrounding areas such as the Yarkon region to the north (the area of modern Jaffa, where there were Philistine farmsteads at Tel Gerisa and Aphek, and a larger settlement at Tel Qasile). Most scholars, therefore, believe that the settlement of the Philistines took place in two stages. In the first, dated to the reign of Ramesses III, they were limited to the coastal plain, the region of the Five Cities; in the second, dated to the collapse of Egyptian hegemony in southern Canaan, their influence spread inland beyond the coast. During the 10th to 7th centuries BC, the distinctiveness of the material culture appears to have been absorbed with that of surrounding peoples.


title: Philistines

text: The Leon Levy Expedition, consisting of archaeologists from Harvard University, Boston College, Wheaton College in Illinois and Troy University in Alabama, conducted a 30-year investigation of the burial practices of the Philistines, by excavating a Philistine cemetery containing more than 150 burials dating from the 11th to 8th century BCE Tel Ashkelon. In July 2016, the expedition finally announced the results of their excavation.


title: Philistines

text: Archaeological evidence, provided by architecture, burial arrangements, ceramics, and pottery fragments inscribed with non-Semitic writing, indicates that the Philistines were not native to Canaan. Most of the 150 dead were buried in oval-shaped graves, some were interred in ashlar chamber tombs, while there were 4 who were cremated. These burial arrangements were very common to the Aegean cultures, but not to the one indigenous to Canaan. Lawrence Stager of Harvard University believes that Philistines came to Canaan by ships before the Battle of the Delta circa 1175 BCE. DNA was extracted from the skeletons for archaeogenetic population analysis.


title: Philistines

text: The Leon Levy Expedition, which has been going on since 1985, helped break down some of the previous assumptions that the Philistines were uncultured people by having evidence of perfume near the bodies in order for the deceased to smell it in the afterlife.


title: Philistines

text: A study carried out on skeletons at Ashkelon in 2019 by an interdisciplinary team of scholars from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Leon Levy Expedition found that human remains at Ashkelon, associated with Philistines during the Iron Age, derived most of their ancestry from the local Levantine gene pool, but with a certain amount of Southern-European-related admixture. This confirms previous historic and archaeological records of a Southern-European migration event. The DNA suggests an influx of people of European heritage into Ashkelon in the twelfth century BC. The individuals' DNA shows similarities to that of ancient Cretans, but it is impossible to specify the exact place in Europe from where Philistines had migrated to Levant, due to limited number of ancient genomes available for study, "with 20 to 60 per cent similarity to DNA from ancient skeletons from Crete and Iberia and that from modern people living in Sardinia."


title: Philistines

text: After two centuries since their arrival, the Southern-European genetic markers were dwarfed by the local Levantine gene pool, suggesting intensive intermarriage, but the Philistine culture and peoplehood remained distinct from other local communities for six centuries.


title: Philistines

text: The finding fits with an understanding of the Philistines as an "entangled" or "transcultural" group consisting of peoples of various origins, said Aren Maeir, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. "While I fully agree that there was a significant component of non-Levantine origins among the Philistines in the early Iron Age," he said, "these foreign components were not of one origin, and, no less important, they mixed with local Levantine populations from the early Iron Age onward." Laura Mazow, an archaeologist at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., said the research paper supported the idea that there was some migration from the west. She added that the findings "support the picture that we see in the archaeological record of a complex, multicultural process that has been resistant to reconstruction by any single historical model."


title: Philistines

text: Modern archaeologists agree that the Philistines were different from their neighbors: their arrival on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the early 12th century B.C. is marked by pottery with close parallels to the ancient Greek world, the use of an Aegean —instead of a Semitic— script, and the consumption of pork. Nevertheless, Cretans were not too unfamiliar with the Levant, with connections being established since the Minoan era, as seen by their influence on Tel Kabri.


title: Philistines

text: The population of the area associated with Philistines is estimated to have been around 25,000 in the 12th century BC, rising to a peak of 30,000 in the 11th century BC. The Canaanite nature of the material culture and toponyms suggest that much of this population was indigenous, such that the migrant element would likely constitute less than half the total, and perhaps much less.


title: Philistines

text: Nothing is known for certain about the language of the Philistines. Pottery fragments from the period of around 1500–1000 BCE have been found bearing inscriptions in non-Semitic languages, including one in a Cypro-Minoan script. The Bible does not mention any language problems between the Israelites and the Philistines, as it does with other groups up to the Assyrian and Babylonian occupations. Later, Nehemiah 13:23-24 writing under the Achaemenids records that when Judean men intermarried women from Moab, Ammon and Philistine cities, half the offspring of Judean marriages with women from Ashdod could speak only their mother tongue, "Ašdōdīṯ", not Judean Hebrew ("Yehūdīṯ"); although by then this language might have been an Aramaic dialect. There is some limited evidence in favour of the assumption that the Philistines were originally Indo-European-speakers, either from Greece or Luwian speakers from the coast of Asia Minor, on the basis of some Philistine-related words found in the Bible not appearing to be related to other Semitic languages. Such theories suggest that the Semitic elements in the language were borrowed from their neighbours in the region. For example, the Philistine word for captain, "seren", may be related to the Greek word "tyrannos" (thought by linguists to have been borrowed by the Greeks from an Anatolian language, such as Luwian or Lydian). Although most Philistine names are Semitic (such as Ahimelech, Mitinti, Hanun, and Dagon) some of the Philistine names, such as Goliath, Achish, and Phicol, appear to be of non-Semitic origin, and Indo-European etymologies have been suggested. Recent finds of inscriptions written in Hieroglyphic Luwian in Palistin substantiate a connection between the language of the kingdom of Palistin and the Philistines of the southwestern Levant.


title: Philistines

text: The deities worshipped in the area were Baal, Astarte, Asherah, and Dagon, whose names or variations thereof had already appeared in the earlier attested Canaanite pantheon. Another name, attested on the Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription, is PT[-]YH, unique to the Philistine sphere and possibly representing a goddess in their pantheon, though an exact identity has been subject to scholarly debate. The Philistines may also have worshipped Qudshu and Anat.


title: Philistines

text: Although the Bible cites Dagon as the main Philistine god, there is a stark lack of any evidence which indicates the Philistines had any particular proclivity to the worship of Dagon. In fact, no evidence of Dagon worship whatsoever is discernable at Philistine sites, with even theophoric names invoking the deity being absent from the already limited corpus of known Philistine names. A further assessment of the Iron Age I finds worship of Dagon in any immediate Canaanite context, let alone one which is indisputably Philistine, as seemingly non-existent. Still, this does not imply that worship of Dagon was completely unheard of amongst the Philistines, and multiple mentions of a city in Assyrian, Phoenician, and Egyptian sources known as "Beth Dagon" may imply the god was venerated in at least some parts of Philistia.


title: Philistines

text: The most common material religious artefact finds from Philistine sites are goddess figurines/chairs, sometimes called "Ashdoda". This seems to imply a dominant female figure, which is consistent with Ancient Aegean religion.


title: Philistines

text: Cities excavated in the area attributed to Philistines give evidence of careful town planning, including industrial zones. The olive industry of Ekron alone includes about 200 olive oil installations. Engineers estimate that the city's production may have been more than 1,000 tons, 30 percent of Israel's present-day production.


title: Philistines

text: There is considerable evidence for a large industry in fermented drink. Finds include breweries, wineries, and retail shops marketing beer and wine. Beer mugs and wine kraters are among the most common pottery finds.


title: Philistines

text: The Philistines also seemed to be experienced metalworkers, as complex wares of gold, bronze, and iron, have been found at Philistine sites as early as the 12th century BC, as well as artisanal weaponry. Further evidence of the Philistine domination of the metallurgical market lies in the Hebrew Bible, which claims that the Israelites relied heavily on Philistine blacksmiths for iron tools and weapons, despite the near-constant state of war between the two groups.


title: Samantha Ruth Prabhu filmography

text: Samantha Ruth Prabhu is an Indian actress and model who has appeared predominantly in Telugu and Tamil films. She made her acting debut in 2010 with Gautham Vasudev Menon's Telugu romance film "Ye Maaya Chesave". The film fetched her the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut – South and a Nandi Award. In 2012, Samantha featured in live action Telugu-Tamil bilingual project "Eega". The film received positive reviews and was one of the highest-grossing Telugu films of the year, earning 1.15 billion globally. Her performance as a micro artist who runs a NGO and takes revenge for the murder of her lover earned her Filmfare Award for Best Telugu Actress.


title: Samantha Ruth Prabhu filmography

text: In the same year, she appeared in trilingual romantic drama "Neethaane En Ponvasantham" (2012). The film earned her praise from critics, and Samantha won her first Filmfare Award for Best Tamil Actress. Year 2012, became her most prolific award-winning year and she secured further recognition for Best Actress at the Vijay Awards, Santosham Film Awards and the CineMAA Awards.


title: Samantha Ruth Prabhu filmography

text: Between 2013 and 2015 Samantha has primarily opted to appear in the leading female roles in hero-centric Tamil as well as Telugu films, such as comedy family drama "Seethamma Vakitlo Sirimalle Chettu" (2013), action drama "Attarintiki Daredi" (2013), fantasy-drama "Manam" (2014), and action comedy "Rabhasa" (2014); and the Tamil-language action-drama "Anjaan" (2014), social action "Kaththi" (2014), and action-drama "10 Endrathukulla" (2014). This film, along with "Theri", "24" (both 2016) and "Mersal" (2017) earned her nominations for the Filmfare Award for Best Tamil Actress. Her work in the Telugu film "A Aa" (2016) won her a fourth Filmfare Award.


title: Samantha Ruth Prabhu filmography

text: Samantha made her OTT debut with the Amazon Prime Video web series, "The Family Man ( Season 2 )" in 2021, in which she played the role of the main antagonist Raji, a rebel leader from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. It brought her huge critical acclaim and critics and audiences heaped praise on her performance. It fetched her several awards, including an IFFM award. In 2021, Samantha is signed to star in "Arrangements of Love", a Philip John's directorial.


title: Samantha Ruth Prabhu filmography

text: Samantha is the recipient of several awards, including four Filmfare Awards South, one Filmfare OTT Award, two Andhra Pradesh State Nandi Awards, six South Indian International Movie Awards, three CineMAA Awards and one Indian Film Festival of Melbourne Awards.


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: Charisma Carpenter (born July 23, 1970) is an American actress. She played Cordelia Chase in the supernatural drama series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997–1999) and its spin-off series "Angel" (1999–2004). She also starred as Kyra in "Charmed" (2004), Kendall Casablancas in "Veronica Mars" (2005–2006), Rebecca Sewell in "The Lying Game" (2012–2013), and Lacy in "The Expendables" film series (2010–2012).


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: Carpenter was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, the daughter of Christine, a bird sanctuary worker, and Don Carpenter, a salesman. She is of Spanish (from her maternal grandfather), French, and German descent. Carpenter attended Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas; she was also a part of a song-and-dance troupe which performed in the Las Vegas Valley when she was nine years old.


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: When Carpenter was 15, her family moved to Rosarito Beach, Baja California, Mexico and then to San Diego, California. She attended Bonita Vista High School and Chula Vista School of the Creative and Performing Arts. After graduation, Carpenter traveled throughout Europe. When she returned to San Diego, she worked as a video store clerk, an aerobics instructor, and in property management. In 1991, she worked as a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers football team. In 1992, she moved to Los Angeles.


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: While swimming in San Diego in 1991, she and two male friends were attacked by Henry Hubbard Jr., a former San Diego police officer and serial rapist, who attempted to subdue them at gunpoint. During the struggle, both her friends and Hubbard were shot, forcing him to flee the scene; both friends survived the attack. Hubbard was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 56 years in prison for a series of rapes and robberies. Carpenter brought Hubbard's police-issue flashlight from the beach, which he had left at the scene, and the flashlight became a key piece of evidence used against him.


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: Carpenter was discovered by a commercial agent while waiting tables in Los Angeles to save money for her college education. This led to her role on theatrical productions and more than twenty commercials. She made her first television role in 1994 by appearing in an episode of "Baywatch". Shortly after that, she landed a starring role in the NBC short-lived teen drama/soap opera series "Malibu Shores".


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: In 1996, Carpenter auditioned for the title role in The WB supernatural drama series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" but instead was cast as Cordelia Chase, a snobby and popular high school student. After three seasons on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Carpenter was offered an even larger role as the same character on the spin-off series "Angel" alongside David Boreanaz. She played Cordelia Chase for four seasons on "Angel". Although her character leaves the series during "Angel"s fourth season, Carpenter returned for the 100th episode in the fifth and final season.


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: In 2004, Carpenter had a guest appearance in The WB fantasy drama series "Charmed" as a psychic demon named Kyra for three episodes and played a recurring role on NBC's "Miss Match", appearing in four episodes. She also had a recurring role as Kendall Casablancas in the UPN mystery drama series "Veronica Mars" for the 2005–06 season, appearing in 11 episodes. Carpenter guest-starred in the first-season finale of the ABC Family comedy-drama series "Greek" and reprised her role for two episodes of Season 2. According to TV Guide in September 2007, she was set to join the cast of "The Apprentice: Celebrity Edition", but instead she chose to do a guest appearance in the Fox comedy series "Back to You" as well as a two episode role on the short-lived series "Big Shots". Carpenter also had a guest appearance in an April 2009 episode of "" entitled "The Descent of Man".


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: On March 20, 2008, Paley Fest hosted a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" reunion. Carpenter attended the event alongside "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon, producers Marti Noxon and David Greenwalt, and other "Buffy" alumni including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon, James Marsters, Emma Caulfield, Amber Benson, Seth Green, and Michelle Trachtenberg.


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: Carpenter has starred in an assortment of made-for-TV and direct-to-video films including the sex comedy "What Boys Like", the horror film "Voodoo Moon", and the romantic comedies "See Jane Date" and "Relative Chaos" on ABC Family (the latter of which co-starred fellow Buffy alum Nicholas Brendon). She also appeared in the original films "Flirting with Danger" and "Cheaters' Club" (both 2006) both on Lifetime and the Syfy original film "House of Bones" broadcast in 2010, around the same time as her guest spot in "Legend of the Seeker".


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: In 2009, Carpenter starred in production company Red Sparrow's first film, "Psychosis", which was released on January 11, 2011. In August 2010, she had a supporting role in Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables". After the success of "The Expendables", Carpenter was cast in "Human Factor" and in the indie thriller "Crash Site". She appeared in an episode of the seventh season of "Supernatural" alongside "Buffy" co-star James Marsters. In 2012, Carpenter landed a recurring role as Rebecca Sewell in the first season of ABC Family drama series "The Lying Game". She was upgraded to a series regular for the second season. Later in the same year, she reprised her role as Lacy in "The Expendables 2".


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: On August 28, 2013, "Surviving Evil" (original working title: "I Survived Evil") debuted on Investigation Discovery, with Carpenter as host; in the premiere episode, Carpenter herself was featured as a crime survivor, revisiting the horrific attack she and two friends suffered at the hands of violent serial rapist and police officer Henry Hubbard Jr. on San Diego's Torrey Pines State Beach in 1991. She starred in the 2015 erotic film "Bound", alongside Morgan Obenreder, which received a lukewarm reception. She later led the television film "Mommy's Secret".


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: In February 2021, Carpenter spoke out against director Joss Whedon in support of Ray Fisher who also claimed to have experienced a toxic environment at the hands of the director.


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: Carpenter was named No. 31 on AskMen's Top 99 Most Desirable Women 2002 and No. 44 on their 2005 list. Despite this, Carpenter has stated she does not view herself as a sex symbol.


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: Carpenter appeared on the cover and in a ten-page nude pictorial of the June 2004 issue of "Playboy" magazine. When she was asked by "People" magazine in 2005 whether she would ever pose for "Playboy" again, she replied, "I don't know. I did "Playboy" for a very specific reason. Not only was it a good financial move, but it was about the place I was at in my life. I had just had my son and I'd gained 50 pounds during pregnancy. I wanted to get back to my old self. I wanted to feel desirable and sexy. So I thought, 'What if I went full throttle'?"


title: Charisma Carpenter

text: Carpenter married Damian Hardy on October 5, 2002, in her hometown of Las Vegas. In March 2003, Carpenter gave birth to a son, Donovan Charles Hardy. In late 2007, the couple separated and their divorce was finalized on July 8, 2008. Carpenter is Catholic.


title: Society

text: A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members. In the social sciences, a larger society often exhibits stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups.


title: Society

text: Societies construct patterns of behavior by deeming certain actions or concepts as acceptable or unacceptable. These patterns of behavior within a given society are known as societal norms. Societies, and their norms, undergo gradual and perpetual changes.


title: Society

text: Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would otherwise be difficult on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap. A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology, and also applied to distinctive subsections of a larger society.


title: Society

text: More broadly, and especially within structuralist thought, a society may be illustrated as an economic, social, industrial or cultural infrastructure, made up of, yet distinct from, a varied collection of individuals. In this regard society can mean the objective relationships people have with the material world and with other people, rather than "other people" beyond the individual and their familiar social environment.


title: Society

text: The term "society" came from the 12th century French "société" (meaning 'company'). This was in turn from the Latin word "", which in turn was derived from the noun "socius" ("comrade, friend, ally"; adjectival form "socialis") used to describe a bond or interaction between parties that are friendly, or at least civil. Without an article, the term can refer to the entirety of humanity (also: "society in general", "society at large", etc.), although those who are unfriendly or uncivil to the remainder of society in this sense may be deemed to be "antisocial". In the 1630s it was used in reference to "people bound by neighborhood and intercourse aware of living together in an ordered community". However, in the 18th century the Scottish economist, Adam Smith taught that a society "may subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility without any mutual love or affection, if only they refrain from doing injury to each other."


title: Society

text: Humans fall between presocial and eusocial in the spectrum of animal ethology. The great apes have always been more ("Bonobo", "Homo", "Pan") or less ("Gorilla", "Pongo") social animals. According to anthropologist Maurice Godelier, one critical novelty in society, in contrast to humanity's closest biological relatives (chimpanzees and bonobos), is the parental role assumed by the males, which supposedly would be absent in our nearest relatives for whom paternity is not generally determinable.


title: Society

text: Sociologist Peter L. Berger defines society as "...a human product, and nothing but a human product, that yet continuously acts ... upon its producer[s]." According to him, society was created by humans, but this creation turns back and creates or molds humans every day.


title: Society

text: Sociologist Gerhard Lenski differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication, and economy: (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3) advanced agricultural, (4) industrial, and (5) special (e.g. fishing societies or maritime societies). This is similar to the system earlier developed by anthropologists Morton H. Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman Service, an integration theorist, who have produced a system of classification for societies in all human cultures based on the evolution of social inequality and the role of the state. This system of classification contains four categories:


title: Society

text: Over time, some cultures have progressed toward more complex forms of organization and control. This cultural evolution has a profound effect on patterns of community. Hunter-gatherer tribes settled around seasonal food stocks to become agrarian villages. Villages grew to become towns and cities. Cities turned into city-states and nation-states.


title: Society

text: Societies are social groups that differ according to subsistence strategies, the ways that humans use technology to provide needs for themselves. Although humans have established many types of societies throughout history, anthropologists tend to classify different societies according to the degree to which different groups within a society have unequal access to advantages such as resources, prestige, or power. Virtually all societies have developed some degree of inequality among their people through the process of social stratification, the division of members of a society into levels with unequal wealth, prestige, or power. Sociologists place societies in three broad categories: pre-industrial, industrial, and postindustrial.


title: Society

text: In a pre-industrial society, food production, which is carried out through the use of human and animal labor, is the main economic activity. These societies can be subdivided according to their level of technology and their method of producing food. These subdivisions are hunting and gathering, pastoral, horticultural, and agricultural.


title: Society

text: The main form of food production in such societies is the daily collection of wild plants and the hunting of wild animals. Hunter-gatherers move around constantly in search of food. As a result, they do not build permanent villages or create a wide variety of artifacts, and usually only form small groups such as bands and tribes. However, some hunting and gathering societies in areas with abundant resources (such as the people of Tlingit in North America) lived in larger groups and formed complex hierarchical social structures such as chiefdom. The need for mobility also limits the size of these societies. Bands consist of 15 to 50 people related by kinship. Statuses within the tribe are relatively equal, and decisions are reached through general agreement. The ties that bind the tribe are more complex than those of the bands. Leadership is personal—charismatic—and used for special purposes only in tribal society. There are no political offices containing real power, and a chief is merely a person of influence. The family forms the main social unit, with most members being related by birth or marriage. The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins described hunter-gatherers as the "original affluent society" due to their extended leisure time: adults in foraging and horticultural societies work, on average, about 6.5 hours a day, whereas people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day.


title: Society

text: Pastoralism is a slightly more efficient form of subsistence. Rather than searching for food on a daily basis, members of a pastoral society rely on domesticated herd animals to meet their food needs. Pastoralists live a nomadic life, moving their herds from one pasture to another. Because their food supply is far more reliable, pastoral societies can support larger populations. Since there are food surpluses, fewer people are needed to produce food. As a result, the division of labor (the specialization by individuals or groups in the performance of specific economic activities) becomes more complex. For example, some people become craftworkers, producing tools, weapons, and jewelry, among other items of value. The production of goods encourages trade. This trade helps to create inequality, as some families acquire more goods than others do. These families often gain power through their increased wealth. The passing on of property from one generation to another helps to centralize wealth and power. Over time emerge hereditary chieftainships, the typical form of government in pastoral societies.


title: Society

text: Fruits and vegetables grown in garden plots that have been cleared from the jungle or forest provide the main source of food in a horticultural society. These societies have a level of technology and complexity similar to pastoral societies. Historians use the phrase Agricultural Revolution to refer to the technological changes that occurred as long as 10,000 years ago that led to cultivating crops and raising farm animals. Some horticultural groups use the slash-and-burn method to raise crops. The wild vegetation is cut and burned, and ashes are used as fertilizers. Horticulturists use human labor and simple tools to cultivate the land for one or more seasons. When the land becomes barren, horticulturists clear a new plot and leave the old plot to revert to its natural state. They may return to the original land several years later and begin the process again. By rotating their garden plots, horticulturists can stay in one area for a fairly long period of time. This allows them to build semipermanent or permanent villages. The size of a village's population depends on the amount of land available for farming; thus villages can range from as few as 30 people to as many as 2000.


title: Society

text: As with pastoral societies, surplus food leads to a more complex division of labor. Specialized roles in horticultural societies include craftspeople, shamans (religious leaders), and traders. This role specialization allows people to create a wide variety of artifacts. As in pastoral societies, surplus food can lead to inequalities in wealth and power within horticultural political systems, developed because of the settled nature of horticultural life.


title: Society

text: Agrarian societies use agricultural technological advances to cultivate crops over a large area. According to Lenski, the difference between horticultural and agrarian societies is the use of the plow. Increases in food supplies due to improved technology led to larger populations than in earlier communities. This meant a greater surplus, which resulted in towns that became centers of trade supporting various rulers, educators, craftspeople, merchants, and religious leaders who did not have to worry about locating nourishment.


title: Society

text: Greater degrees of social stratification appeared in agrarian societies. For example, women previously had higher social status because they shared labor more equally with men. In hunting and gathering societies, women even gathered more food than men. However, as food stores improved and women took on different roles in providing food for the family, men took an increasingly dominant role in society. As villages and towns expanded into neighboring areas, conflicts with other communities inevitably occurred. Farmers provided warriors with food in exchange for protection against invasion by enemies. A system of rulers with high social status also appeared. This nobility organized warriors to protect the society from invasion. In this way, the nobility managed to extract goods from "lesser" members of society.


title: Society

text: Between the 15th and 16th centuries, a new economic system emerged. Capitalism is marked by open competition in a free market, in which the means of production are privately owned. Europe's exploration of the Americas served as one impetus for the development of capitalism. The introduction of foreign metals, silks, and spices stimulated great commercial activity in European societies.


title: Society

text: Industrial societies rely heavily on machines powered by fuels for the production of goods. This produced further dramatic increases in efficiency. The increased efficiency of production of the industrial revolution produced an even greater surplus than before. Now the surplus was not just agricultural goods, but also manufactured goods. This larger surplus caused all of the changes discussed earlier in the domestication revolution to become even more pronounced.


title: Society

text: Once again, the population boomed. Increased productivity made more goods available to everyone. However, inequality became even greater than before. The breakup of agricultural-based societies caused many people to leave the land and seek employment in cities. This created a great surplus of labor and gave capitalists plenty of laborers who could be hired for extremely low wages.


title: Society

text: Post-industrial societies are societies dominated by information, services, and high technology more than the production of goods. Advanced industrial societies are now seeing a shift toward an increase in service sectors over manufacturing and production. The United States is the first country to have over half of its workforce employed in service industries. Service industries include government, research, education, health, sales, law, and banking.


title: Society

text: The division of humans into male and female gender roles has been marked culturally by a corresponding division of norms, practices, dress, behavior, rights, duties, privileges, status, and power. Cultural differences by gender have often been believed to have arisen naturally out of a division of reproductive labor; the biological fact that women give birth led to their further cultural responsibility for nurturing and caring for children. Gender roles have varied historically, and challenges to predominant gender norms have recurred in many societies.


title: Society

text: All human societies organize, recognize and classify types of social relationships based on relations between parents, children and other descendants (consanguinity), and relations through marriage (affinity). There is also a third type applied to godparents or adoptive children (fictive). These culturally defined relationships are referred to as kinship. In many societies, it is one of the most important social organizing principles and plays a role in transmitting status and inheritance. All societies have rules of incest taboo, according to which marriage between certain kinds of kin relations are prohibited and some also have rules of preferential marriage with certain kin relations.


title: Society

text: Human ethnic groups are a social category that identifies together as a group based on shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. These can be a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area. Ethnicity is separate from the concept of race, which is based on physical characteristics, although both are socially constructed. Assigning ethnicity to a certain population is complicated, as even within common ethnic designations there can be a diverse range of subgroups, and the makeup of these ethnic groups can change over time at both the collective and individual level.Also, there is no generally accepted definition of what constitutes an ethnic group. Ethnic groupings can play a powerful role in the social identity and solidarity of ethnopolitical units. This has been closely tied to the rise of the nation state as the predominant form of political organization in the 19th and 20th centuries.


title: Society

text: The early distribution of political power was determined by the availability of fresh water, fertile soil, and temperate climate of different locations. As farming populations gathered in larger and denser communities, interactions between these different groups increased. This led to the development of governance within and between the communities. As communities got bigger the need for some form of governance increased, as all large societies without a government have struggled to function. Humans have evolved the ability to change affiliation with various social groups relatively easily, including previously strong political alliances, if doing so is seen as providing personal advantages. This cognitive flexibility allows individual humans to change their political ideologies, with those with higher flexibility less likely to support authoritarian and nationalistic stances.


title: Society

text: Governments create laws and policies that affect the citizens that they govern. There have been multiple forms of government throughout human history, each having various means of obtaining power and the ability to exert diverse controls on the population. As of 2017, more than half of all national governments are democracies, with 13% being autocracies and 28% containing elements of both. Many countries have formed international political organizations and alliances, the largest being the United Nations with 193 member states.


title: Society

text: Trade, the voluntary exchange of goods and services, is seen as a characteristic that differentiates humans from other animals and has been cited as a practice that gave "Homo sapiens" a major advantage over other hominids. Evidence suggests early "H. sapiens" made use of long-distance trade routes to exchange goods and ideas, leading to cultural explosions and providing additional food sources when hunting was sparse, while such trade networks did not exist for the now extinct Neanderthals. Early trade likely involved materials for creating tools like obsidian. The first truly international trade routes were around the spice trade through the Roman and medieval periods.


title: Society

text: Early human economies were more likely to be based around gift giving instead of a bartering system. Early money consisted of commodities; the oldest being in the form of cattle and the most widely used being cowrie shells. Money has since evolved into governmental issued coins, paper and electronic money. Human study of economics is a social science that looks at how societies distribute scarce resources among different people. There are massive inequalities in the division of wealth among humans; the eight richest humans are worth the same monetary value as the poorest half of all the human population.


title: Society

text: Humans commit violence on other humans at a rate comparable to other primates, but kill adult humans at a high rate (with infanticide being more common among other animals). It is predicted that 2% of early "H. sapiens" would be killed, rising to 12% during the medieval period, before dropping to below 2% in modern times. There is great variation in violence between human populations with rates of homicide in societies that have legal systems and strong cultural attitudes against violence at about 0.01%.


title: Society

text: The willingness of humans to kill other members of their species en masse through organized conflict (i.e., war) has long been the subject of debate. One school of thought is that war evolved as a means to eliminate competitors, and has always been an innate human characteristic. Another suggests that war is a relatively recent phenomenon and appeared due to changing social conditions. While not settled, the current evidence suggests warlike predispositions only became common about 10,000 years ago, and in many places much more recently than that. War has had a high cost on human life; it is estimated that during the 20th century, between 167 million and 188 million people died as a result of war.


title: Society

text: The term "society" is currently used to cover both a number of political and scientific connotations as well as a variety of associations.


title: Society

text: The development of the Western world has brought with it the emerging concepts of Western culture, politics, and ideas, often referred to simply as "Western society". Geographically, it covers at the very least the countries of Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. It sometimes also includes Eastern Europe, South America, and Israel.


title: Society

text: The cultures and lifestyles of all of these stem from Western Europe. They all enjoy relatively strong economies and stable governments, allow freedom of religion, have chosen democracy as a form of governance, favor capitalism and international trade, are heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian values, and have some form of political and military alliance or cooperation.


title: Society

text: Although the concept of information society has been under discussion since the 1930s, in the modern world it is almost always applied to the manner in which information technologies have impacted society and culture. It, therefore, covers the effects of computers and telecommunications on the home, the workplace, schools, government, and various communities and organizations, as well as the emergence of new social forms in cyberspace.


title: Society

text: One of the European Union's areas of interest is the information society. Here policies are directed towards promoting an open and competitive digital economy, research into information and communication technologies, as well as their application to improve social inclusion, public services, and quality of life.


title: Society

text: The International Telecommunication Union's World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva and Tunis (2003 and 2005) has led to a number of policy and application areas where action is envisaged.


title: Society

text: As the access to electronic information resources increased at the beginning of the 21st century, special attention was extended from the information society to the knowledge society. An analysis by the Irish government stated, "The capacity to manipulate, store and transmit large quantities of information cheaply has increased at a staggering rate over recent years. The digitisation of information and the associated pervasiveness of the Internet are facilitating a new intensity in the application of knowledge to economic activity, to the extent that it has become the predominant factor in the creation of wealth. As much as 70 to 80 percent of economic growth is now said to be due to new and better knowledge."


title: Richard Griffiths

text: Richard Thomas Griffiths (31 July 1947 – 28 March 2013) was an English actor of film, television, and stage. For his performance in the stage play "The History Boys", Griffiths won a Tony Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award. For the 2006 film adaptation, Griffiths was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: He played Vernon Dursley in the "Harry Potter" films (2001-2010) and Great Uncle Matthew Brown "Gum" in the BBC film "Ballet Shoes" (2007). He also portrayed Uncle Monty in "Withnail and I" (1987), and Henry Crabbe in "Pie in the Sky" (1994–1997). Earlier in his career, he had supporting roles in such critically acclaimed films as "Chariots of Fire" (1981), "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981), "Gandhi" (1982), and "" (1991). In his later career he appeared in "Sleepy Hollow" (1999), "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (2005), "" (2011) and in Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" (2011).


title: Richard Griffiths

text: Richard Thomas Griffiths was born in Thornaby-on-Tees, North Riding of Yorkshire, to Jane (née Denmark, 1923–1969) and Thomas Griffiths (1915–1976). His father was a steelworker who also fought in pubs for money, while his mother's occupation was described as "bagger". He had an elder sister and two elder brothers, all of whom died in infancy before he was born. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: As a boy he was so skinny that he was given radiation therapy on his pituitary gland when he was eight years old. This permanently slowed his metabolism, making him struggle with obesity for the rest of his life.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: His parents were both deaf and he became fluent in British Sign Language at an early age. During his childhood he attempted to run away from home many times. He dropped out of Our Lady & St Bede School in Stockton-on-Tees at the age of 15 and worked as a porter for Littlewoods for a while but his boss eventually persuaded him to go back to school. He decided to attend a drama class at Stockton & Billingham College. He continued his education in drama at Manchester Polytechnic School of Theatre (now Manchester School of Theatre) at the same time as Bernard Hill.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: After graduating, Griffiths won a contract on BBC Radio with their Radio Drama Company. He also worked in small theatres, sometimes acting and sometimes managing. He built up an early reputation as a Shakespearean clown with portrayals of Pompey in "Measure for Measure" and Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with the Royal Shakespeare Company and went on to play the Kings in "Love's Labour's Lost" and in "Henry VIII". He eventually settled in Manchester and began to get lead roles in plays. From there, he began to appear on television and then got his big break in film in "It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet" (1976). By the early 1980s, he was selected for the lead role in "Bird of Prey", an early computer-conspiracy thriller. His character Henry Jay was reprised in "Bird of Prey 2" (1984). In 1981, he also gave a memorable performance as Chilean secret police victim William Beausire in an edition of the BBC "Prisoners of Conscience" series. Griffiths went on to supporting roles in a number of major films, including "The French Lieutenant's Woman", "Chariots of Fire" and "Gandhi". On stage, in 1985–1986, he performed the role of Verdi in Julian Mitchell's "After Aida", in Wales and at the Old Vic Theatre in London. He appeared in "The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends".


title: Richard Griffiths

text: Griffiths' film roles were in both contemporary and period pieces, such as "Gorky Park" (1983), "Withnail and I" (1987), "King Ralph" (1991), "" (1991), "Guarding Tess" (1994) and "Sleepy Hollow" (1999). Later, he was seen as Harry Potter's bitter uncle Vernon Dursley in the "Harry Potter" series, appearing in five of the eight films: "Philosopher's Stone", "Chamber of Secrets", "Prisoner of Azkaban", "Order of the Phoenix" and "Deathly Hallows – Part 1".


title: Richard Griffiths

text: He appeared as Inspector Henry Crabbe, disillusioned policeman and pie chef extraordinaire, in "Pie in the Sky", a role which was created for him. He also made an extended appearance in the 2005 version of Charles Dickens' "Bleak House". In 2004, he originated the role of Hector (the teacher) in Alan Bennett's play "The History Boys", directed by Nicholas Hytner, winning the 2005 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor. During the play's United States run, he added a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Tony Award. He reprised his role in the film version, which was released in October 2006. In 2007 he starred in "Ballet Shoes" with his "Harry Potter" co-stars Emma Watson and Gemma Jones.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: Together with his "Harry Potter" co-star Daniel Radcliffe, he appeared in a stage revival of Peter Shaffer's "Equus" at the Gielgud Theatre in London and later from October 2008 in a short run of the play at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway, which ended in February 2009. Later, in 2009, he replaced Michael Gambon as W. H. Auden prior to the premiere of "The Habit of Art" at the National Theatre, once again directed by Hytner.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: Griffiths was considered for the part of The Doctor in "Doctor Who", following Tom Baker's departure in 1981, but was unavailable. He was strongly considered once again to take on the role of the Eighth Doctor, had the series continued past 1989. He performed in adaptations of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", providing the voice for Slartibartfast for the radio adaptation of "Life, the Universe and Everything" and playing the Vogon Jeltz in the film version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". He appeared in "Bedtime Stories" with Adam Sandler and as a special guest in "".


title: Richard Griffiths

text: In 2005 he asked a member of the audience to leave a performance of "Heroes" after her phone rang three times. This interruption of a performance because of audience distraction happened three times in his career.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: Griffiths appeared as George II in Disney's "". He appeared in the first episode of the television series "Episodes" as Julian Bullard. In April 2012, Griffiths starred, with Danny DeVito, in a revival of the Neil Simon play "The Sunshine Boys". The show previewed at the Savoy Theatre from 27 April 2012, opening on 17 May and playing a limited 12-week season until 28 July.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: Griffiths met Heather Gibson in 1973 and they married in 1980. They had no children. Griffiths was awarded an honorary degree from Teesside University in 2006 and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.


title: Richard Griffiths

text: Griffiths died aged 65 at University Hospital Coventry on 28 March 2013 after he had complications following heart surgery.


title: Nazca Lines

text: The Nazca Lines are a group of geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving differently colored dirt exposed. There are two major phases of the Nazca lines, Paracas phase, from 400 to 200 BCE, and Nazca phase, from 200 BCE to 500 CE. In the years leading up to 2020, between 80 and 100 new figures had been found with the use of drones, and archaeologists believe that there are more to be found.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Most lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. The individual figurative geoglyph designs measure between across. The combined length of all the lines is more than , and the group covers an area of about . The lines are typically deep. They were made by removing the top layer of reddish-brown iron oxide-coated pebbles to reveal a yellow-grey subsoil. The width of the lines varies considerably, but more than half are slightly more than wide. In some places they may be only wide, and in others reach wide.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Some of the Nazca lines form shapes that are best seen from the air (at around ), although they are also visible from the surrounding foothills and other high places. The shapes are usually made from one continuous line. The largest ones are about long. Because of its isolation and the dry, windless, stable climate of the plateau, the lines have mostly been preserved naturally. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs. As of 2012, the lines are said to have been deteriorating because of an influx of squatters inhabiting the lands.


title: Nazca Lines

text: The figures vary in complexity. Hundreds are simple lines and geometric shapes; more than 70 are zoomorphic designs, including a hummingbird, spider, fish, condor, heron, monkey, lizard, dog, cat, and a human. Other shapes include trees and flowers. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general, they ascribe religious significance to them. They were designated in 1994 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


title: Nazca Lines

text: The high, arid plateau stretches more than between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana, approximately south of Lima. The main PE-1S Panamericana Sur runs parallel to it. The main concentration of designs is in a rectangle, south of the hamlet of San Miguel de la Pascana. In this area, the most notable geoglyphs are visible.


title: Nazca Lines

text: The first published mention of the Nazca Lines was by Pedro Cieza de León in his book of 1553, and he described them as trail markers.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Although the lines were partially visible from nearby hills, the first to report them in the twentieth century were Peruvian military and civilian pilots. In 1927 Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejía Xesspe spotted them while he was hiking through the foothills. He discussed them at a conference in Lima in 1939.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Paul Kosok, an American historian from Long Island University in New York, is credited as the first scholar to study the Nazca Lines in depth. While in Peru in 1940–41 to study ancient irrigation systems, he flew over the lines and realized that one was in the shape of a bird. Another chance observation helped him see how lines converged on the horizon at the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. He began to study how the lines might have been created, as well as to try to determine their purpose. He was joined by archaeologist Richard P. Schaedel from the United States, and Maria Reiche, a German mathematician and archaeologist from Lima, to try to determine the purpose of the Nazca Lines. They proposed that the figures were designed as astronomical markers on the horizon to show where the sun and other celestial bodies rose on significant dates. Archaeologists, historians, and mathematicians have all tried to determine the purpose of the lines.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Determining how they were made has been easier than determining why they were made. Scholars have theorized that the Nazca people could have used simple tools and surveying equipment to construct the lines. Archaeological surveys have found wooden stakes in the ground at the end of some lines, which supports this theory. One such stake was carbon-dated and was the basis for establishing the age of the design complex.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Joe Nickell, an American investigator of the paranormal, religious artifacts, and folk mysteries, reproduced the figures in the early twenty-first century by using the same tools and technology that would have been available to the Nazca people. In so doing, he refuted the 1969 hypothesis of Erich von Däniken, who suggested that "ancient astronauts" had constructed these works. "Scientific American" characterized Nickell's work as "remarkable in its exactness" when compared to the existing lines. With careful planning and simple technologies, Nickell proved that a small team of people could recreate even the largest figures within days, without any aerial assistance.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Most of the lines are formed on the ground by a shallow trench, with a depth between . Such trenches were made by removing for a portion of the design, the reddish-brown, iron oxide-coated pebbles that cover the surface of the Nazca Desert. When this gravel is removed, the light-colored clay earth exposed in the bottom of the trench contrasts sharply in color and tone with the surrounding land surface, producing visible lines. This sub-layer contains high amounts of lime. With moisture from morning mist, it hardens to form a protective layer that shields the lines from winds, thereby preventing erosion.


title: Nazca Lines

text: The Nazca used this technique to "draw" several hundred simple, but huge, curvilinear animal and human figures. In total, the earthwork project is huge and complex: the area encompassing the lines is nearly , and the largest figures can span nearly 370 m (1,200 ft). Some figures have been measured: the hummingbird is long, the condor is , the monkey is , and the spider is . The very dry, windless, and constant climate of the Nazca region has preserved the lines well. This desert is one of the driest on Earth and maintains a temperature near year round. The lack of wind has helped keep the lines uncovered and visible.


title: Nazca Lines

text: The discovery of two new small figures was announced in early 2011 by a Japanese team from Yamagata University. One of these resembles a human head and is dated to the early period of Nazca culture or earlier. The other, undated, is an animal. The team has been conducting fieldwork there since 2006, and by 2012 has found approximately 100 new geoglyphs. In March 2012, the university announced that it would open a new research center at the site in September 2012, related to a longterm project to study the area for the next 15 years.


title: Nazca Lines

text: A June 2019 article in "Smithsonian" magazine describes recent work by a multi-disciplinary team of Japanese researchers who identified/re-identified some of the birds depicted. They note that birds are the animals most frequently depicted in the Nazca geoglyphs. The team believes that some of the bird images that previous researchers assumed to be indigenous species more closely resemble exotic birds found in non-desert habitats. They speculated that "The reason exotic birds were depicted in the geoglyphs instead of indigenous birds is closely related to the purpose of the etching process."


title: Nazca Lines

text: The discovery of 143 new geoglyphs on the Nazca Pampa and in the surrounding area was announced in 2019 by Yamagata University and IBM Japan. One of these was found by using machine learning-based methods.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Lines forming the shape of a cat were discovered on a hill in 2020. The figure is on a steep slope prone to erosion, explaining why it had not previously been discovered until archaeologists carefully studied the image. Drones are revealing sites for further research.


title: Nazca Lines

text: The number of known Nazca geoglyphs amounted to 358 in 2022. Drones now are being used to assist the anthropologists researching the area and are expected to enable them to discover many more.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Anthropologists, ethnologists, and archaeologists have studied the ancient Nazca culture to try to determine the purpose of the lines and figures. One hypothesis is that the Nazca people created them to be seen by deities in the sky.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Paul Kosok and Maria Reiche advanced a purpose related to astronomy and cosmology, as has been common in monuments of other ancient cultures: the lines were intended to act as a kind of observatory, to point to the places on the distant horizon where the sun and other celestial bodies rose or set at the solstices. Many prehistoric indigenous cultures in the Americas and elsewhere constructed earthworks that combined such astronomical sighting with their religious cosmology, as did the late Mississippian culture at Cahokia and other sites in present-day United States. Another example is Stonehenge in England. Newgrange in Ireland has tombs that are oriented to admit light at the winter solstice.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, experts in archaeoastronomy, concluded in 1990 that the evidence was insufficient to support such an astronomical explanation.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Maria Reiche asserted that some or all of the figures represented constellations. By 1998, Phyllis B. Pitluga, a protégé of Reiche and senior astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, had concluded that the animal figures were "representations of heavenly shapes." According to "The New York Times", Pitluga "contends they are not shapes of constellations, but of what might be called "counter constellations", the irregularly-shaped dark patches within the twinkling expanse of the Milky Way." Anthony Aveni criticized her work for failing to account for all the details.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Alberto Rossell Castro (1977) proposed a multi-functional interpretation of the geoglyphs. He classified them into three groups: the first appeared to be tracks connected to irrigation and field division, the second are lines that are axes connected with mounds and cairns, and the third was linked to astronomical interpretations.


title: Nazca Lines

text: In 1985, archaeologist Johan Reinhard published archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data demonstrating that worship of mountains and other water sources predominated in Nazca religion and economy from ancient to recent times. He theorized that the lines and figures were part of religious practices involving the worship of deities associated with the availability of water, which directly related to the success and productivity of crops. He interpreted the lines as sacred paths leading to places where these deities could be worshiped. The figures were symbols representing animals and objects meant to invoke the aid of the deities in supplying water. The precise meanings of many of the individual geoglyphs remain unknown.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Henri Stierlin, a Swiss art historian specializing in Egypt and the Middle East, published a book in 1983 linking the Nazca Lines to the production of ancient textiles that archeologists have found wrapping mummies of the Paracas culture. He contended that the people may have used the lines and trapezes as giant, primitive looms to fabricate the extremely long strings and wide pieces of textiles typical of the area. According to his theory, the figurative patterns (smaller and less common) were meant only for ritualistic purposes. This theory is not widely accepted, although scholars have noted similarities in patterns between the textiles and the Nazca Lines. They interpret these similarities as arising from the common culture.


title: Nazca Lines

text: The first systematic field study of the geoglyphs was made by Markus Reindel and Johny Cuadrado Island. Since 1996, they have documented and excavated more than 650 sites. They compared the iconography of the lines to ceramics of the cultures. As archeologists, they believe that the figurative motifs of geoglyphs can be dated to having been made between 600 and 200 BCE.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Based on the results of geophysical investigations and the observation of geological faults, David Johnson argued that some geoglyphs followed the paths of aquifers from which aqueducts (or "puquios") collected water.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Nicola Masini and Giuseppe Orefici have conducted research in Pampa de Atarco, about 10 km (6 mi) south of Pampa de Nasca, which they believe reveals a spatial, functional and religious relationship between these geoglyphs and the temples of Cahuachi. In particular, using remote sensing techniques (from satellite to drone based remote sensing), they investigated and found "five groups of geoglyphs, each of them characterized by a specific motif and shape, and associated with a distinct function." They identified a ceremonial one, characterized by meandering motifs. Another is related to calendrical purpose, as proved by the presence of radial centers aligned along the directions of winter solstice and equinox sunset. As have earlier scholars, the two Italians believe that the geoglyphs were the venues of events linked to the agriculture calendar. These also served to strengthen social cohesion among various groups of pilgrims, sharing common ancestors and religious beliefs.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Other theories were that the geometric lines could indicate water flow or irrigation schemes, or be a part of rituals to "summon" water. The spiders, birds, and plants may be fertility symbols. It also has been theorized that the lines could act as an astronomical calendar.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Phyllis Pitluga, senior astronomer at the Adler Planetarium and a protégé of Reiche, performed computer-aided studies of star alignments. She asserted the giant spider figure is an anamorphic diagram of the constellation Orion. She further suggested that three of the straight lines leading to the figure were used to track the changing declinations of the three stars of Orion's Belt. In a critique of her analysis, Dr. Anthony F. Aveni noted she did not account for the other 12 lines of the figure.


title: Nazca Lines

text: I really had trouble finding good evidence to back up what she contended. Pitluga never laid out the criteria for selecting the lines she chose to measure, nor did she pay much attention to the archaeological data Clarkson and Silverman had unearthed. Her case did little justice to other information about the coastal cultures, save applying, with subtle contortions, Urton's representations of constellations from the highlands. As historian Jacquetta Hawkes might ask: was she getting the pampa she desired?


title: Nazca Lines

text: Swiss writer Erich von Däniken was fascinated by Nazca and was also a strong believer in extraterrestrial visitations. Von Daniken writes about his beliefs about archaeological sites such as the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, and Easter Island, and how they are connected to extraterrestrials. He often explains the origins of religions as reactions of ancient people when they came in contact with an alien race. Von Daniken published a best-selling book titled "Chariots of the Gods?" in 1968. In this book he describes his theory that these mysterious lines were used as landing sites for UFOs. He theorized that the shapes and lines were made by aliens and were created to help steer their spaceships, as well as work as landing pads. Von Daniken claimed the patterns at this site looked very similar to a modern airport and used this as evidence that proved that aliens used this area as a landing place for their spaceships. Däniken claimed that the Nazca lines site reflected visits by astronauts from other worlds, who became the creators of ancient civilizations. According to Von Däniken, Sanskrit literature describes a story in which an aircraft landed on Earth, and the local people watched in amazement as "human-like beings with golden, shimmering skins" walked, mined for metals and then flew away in their ship. These ancient astronauts supposedly soon returned where they built landing tracks and then eventually left forever. The amazed Native Americans then considered Nazca a place of pilgrimage and generations of their people built more figures and runways as an invitation for gods to return, but they never did. Another of Erich von Däniken's theories about the Nazca was that figures that were found on Nazca clay vessels, which he assumed to be astronauts, were "flying gods" that were visiting from other worlds. He trashes and rebukes scientists who have studied Nazca, their research using radiocarbon tests to date the figures, their analyses of ceramic shards at the various sites, and also their careful dissections of Native American religious beliefs.


title: Nazca Lines

text: At the time of Erich von Däniken's publishing of "Chariots of the Gods?", scientists and archeologists such as Maria Reiche declared that his ideas were absurd and should be discarded. These scientists and archeologists also were able to prove that these lines could have been made using simple tools that would have been available to the people at the time they were created. Erich von Däniken's books "Arrival of the Gods" and "Chariots of the Gods?" were considered to not have any intellectual credibility or literary merit. Before Von Daniken's work other authors had presented ideas of extraterrestrial contact with ancient humans, but he failed to credit these authors, even when making the same claims and also using identical or similar evidence. Nevertheless, Von Däniken's books drew in thousands of visitors and believers to the site.


title: Nazca Lines

text: Conservationists who seek to preserve the Nazca Lines are concerned about threats of pollution and erosion caused by deforestation in the region.