[NEWS] Four links about science and the future: Caananites, iPod, birding, e-residency

[rfmcdonald]

• The New York Times is but one news source to observe the findings of archeologists and geneticists that the Canaanites were not slaughtered. Was the claimed Biblical genocide a matter of thwarted wish-fulfillment?


• At Wired, David Pierce mourns the standalone iPod, an innovative music-changing technology in its time now being phased out.


• Catherine McIntyre at MacLean's describes how birding is becoming hip among young urbanites, in Toronto and across Canada.


• Open Democracy looks at how Estonia is pioneering e-residency and virtual citizenship schemes.

Comments

[jsburbidge]

The Canaanite piece is not particularly surprising; it fits in with things like the continuity of English genes contradicting the narratives of expulsion of natives under Hengist and Horsa and their successors.

On the biblical narrative side, it's worth remembering that the Deuteronomistic narrative (which includes the Joshua narrative) dates to just before to just after the exile (with several recensions) and reflects the ideological concerns of that day. It's largely accepted among serious archaeologists and biblical scholars that the story of the Israelite conquest has little basis in the material record and probably bears only a tenuous relation to "what really happened".