Jeffrey H. Schwartz

"Petrie found that certain types of pottery were characteristic of a particular phase of the Bronze Age, whereas other styles were found only a phase of the Iron Age, or only during the Hellenistic or Greek periods."

"The Bodo skull and the Kaprina and Shanidar Neandertal skeletons raise the possibility that two distinct, non-spaiens species of Homo had had rituals and cultural practices that we have assumed are only within the capacity of members of our own species."

"The smaller the mammal, the more it is confined to smaller geographic areas. A small mammal is also more susceptible to subtle changes in climate and environment. ...On average, the absence or presence of smaller species provides more precise clues to past conditions in an area than does the information gained from study of the bone assemblages of the larger animals."

"Some... resistance also came from the belief that preserved historical writings could provide all anyone needed to know about the habits of past civilizations. ...According to the archeologists, this site was supposed to have had an uninterrupted sequence of Israelite occupation... These archeologists "knew" that there had been a continual occupation of people practicing full-blown Jewish orthodoxy based on their interpretation of the preserved written records. ...But, to the extreme surprise of the digs staff... one-third of the bones from the floor of the synagogue were pig. Anathema! ...directly beneath the floor of this synagogue... the first piece of bone I picked up was from the skull of a young human. Again, anathema! How could orthodox Jews build anything, much less a synagogue, over a human burial area? ...no reports on the site including my analyses have ever seen the light of day."

"Greeks and Romans alike engaged openly in a variety of sanctioned atrocities, including adult human sacrifice. ...according to ...Cicero, human sacrifice was not restricted to the western Phoenicians but was widely accepted among Mediterranean societies as a pious act that would please the gods."

"The sudden appearance of novelty is not, as Otto Schindewolf emphasized, an unusual aspect of the fossil record."

"He and John Grehan are the only two scientists on the whole planet who subscribe to this red-ape hypothesis. ...I think hes completely wrong on this hypothesis of his, but I have his books on my shelf."

"Becoming a rock does not ensure safety. ...The blasting of windblown sands, the pummeling of waves, the corrosive secretions of mosses and lichens, and even the steady rhythm of a stream can, in time, reduce a seemingly indestructible boulder to a grain of sand."

"If Walter Garstangs suggestion is correct, and chordates did arise from a tunicate-like form by retaining the chordate features of their larval stage of development into adulthood, then the first chordates must have been affected by a regulatory mutation that kept the Manx gene activated for a longer period of time."

"The corpses of water-dwelling animals often sink to the bottom and become covered with sediment. The sediment tends to protect the dead body and even at times retain an impression of its shape and external anatomical details. This environment then provides the means by which the bones of the skeleton are mineralized. ...most land animals die and fall to the ground, without any chance of a freak flood casting them into an environment more favorable to fossilization."

"The Phoenicians were the Canaanites. Thus Phoenicia... was invaded by the Israelites, who eventually pushed the Phoenicians to the coastal fringe. Subsequently, the Israelites borrowed various cultural elements from the Phoenicians, including the first alphabet. Some groups of Israelites even adopted the god Baal and, presumably, the practice of child sacrifice."

"The observation of reduction in complexity in many groups or organisms after a structure has emerged in a full-blown state makes sense in terms of homeobox genes."