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Rock drawings of an ancient bird twice the size of an emu have been identified in an Aboriginal reserve in remote northern Australia and are being considered as the oldest art in the world. Rock art experts believe the paintings depict the Genyornis, a giant bird that allegedly went extinct 40,000 years ago. Any time scientists try to date things from thousands of years ago, however, they have to depend on assumptions that may or may not be correct.

Arnhem Land in Northern Territory is known for its ancient rock art. A wide variety of paintings on the sandstone rocks have survived for thousands of years, depicting ancient animals no longer around today. The area's painted menagerie includes a variety of extinct megafauna like the giant echidna and giant kangaroo, as well as the Tasmanian tiger. Now, archeologists believe they've found the painting of a Genyornis, a huge flightless bird with a distinctively rounded beak like a parrot. Those studying the red-ochre paintings assumed they were of emus – until they got to that beak.

"If you were to draw a Genyornis this is they way it would look," said Dr Peter Murray, an anthropologist and paleontologist retired from the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

"The details on this painting indicate that it was done by someone who knew that animal very well," archaeologist and rock art specialist Ben Gunn told Australian national broadcaster ABC. "Either the painting is 40,000 years old, which is when science thinks Genyornis disappeared, or alternatively, the Genyornis lived a lot longer than science has been able to establish."

Until now, the oldest ancient art in the world has been believed to be the spectacular rock art in the Chauvet Cave in southern France, radiocarbon dated to about 30,000 years ago.

While these paintings are no doubt very old, other scientists are not so quick to give them a 40,000 year date. For instance, the red ochre paint has preserved quite well for so great an age without having been protected inside a cave. Convenor of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations Robert Bednarik suggested that the painting is just 5000 years old and expressed doubt that it represented a Genyornis.

"I am not aware of any painting or even petroglyph (carving) of an animal anywhere in the world that is more than 10,000 years old located outside of caves.”

Gavin Prideaux, a megafauna expert with Flinders University in Adelaide noted that scientists still debate when exactly the Genyornis went extinct. Radiometric dating has not yet been done on the paintings, yet scientists expect it soon to give an absolute date to the rock art.

How Old Is It Really?
Archeologists and geologists use a variety of methods to determine the ages of items from rocks to bones to pottery shards. In this case, they've examined paintings of an animal that supposedly died out 40,000 years ago and therefore believe the paintings must be at least 40,000 years old.

Scientists can also turn to radiometric methods in order to get a more absolute age for an archeological site. While the Genyornis paintings have not been subjected to radiometric dating, the debate arises in the first place because the youngest fossils of Genyornis were dated to 40,000 years ago through radiometric dating methods.

Ancient items like rocks or bones or pottery shards or torch markings – or the rock they are found in – all contain certain chemical elements. By measuring the radioactive elements in an item as well as the daughter material those elements break down into, scientists believe they can measure the age of the item with a fair degree of accuracy.

The isotopes of certain elements, or nuclides, are unstable and they spontaneously break down at known decay rates.   The parent material is radioactive, and its final daughter product is stable. The time it takes for half of the atoms in a nuclide to break down into its daughter material is called its “half-life.” Perhaps the most well known dating method involves carbon-14, an isotope with six protons and eight neutrons that decays into nitrogen-14 through beta decay. By measuring the amount of parent material (carbon-14) in an item and comparing that to the amount of daughter material (nitrogen-14), scientists believe they can determine the age of anything containing carbon – up to a certain point. The half-life of C-14 is 5,730 years, and is considered to be useful for dating carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years in age. 

Many other radioactive isotopes can be used, depending on the ages scientists expect to get.  With its half life of 1.25 billion years, potassium-40's decay into argon is measured to determine the age of material believed to be 100,000 years old at the least and billions of years old at the most.  Uranium-lead with its half-life of 4.5 billions years is used for samples expected to be more than 1 million years old.  These are the best known methods, but others include iodine-xenon (I-Xe), lanthanum-barium (La-Ba), lutetium-hafnium (Lu-Hf), rhenium-osmium (Re-Os), and dozens more.

Assumptions?
Despite the geologist's great faith in radiometric dating, these methods involve a variety of assumptions. In order for the measurements taken to give an accurate date, the following all have to be true:

(1) the radioactive element being measured must decay at a constant rate and must have decayed at the same rate since the material being analyzed came into being;
(2) the material being analyzed cannot be contaminated by additional daughter product;
(3) the material cannot have already contained some of the end product when it was formed;
(4) parent element cannot have leached out of the sample material.

One way to double-check an age-date is to use a variety of different dating methods and see whether they give the same dates. Scientists often claim they have done just this and have gotten corroborating results.  Others have argued that these scientists throw out the unexpected results that do not "fit" and their conclusions are therefore faulty.

Another way to double-check the age dating methods is to do a large number of tests on samples from the same site and see whether the range of dates produced are fairly close to each other - or whether  they are widely disparate. Checking samples from sites where a date is already known from history can also shed light on the accuracy of various dating methods.

[To be continued next week, when we will examine studies that test the dependability of different radiometric dating methods...]

The images are familiar; listless, skeletal faces of starving adults and children; broken bones and burned flesh; forced labor in barren government prisons; entire families tortured, experimented on and publicly executed for the flimsiest of suspicions of disloyalty to the regime. Yet, these are not pictures from Auschwitz or Dachau 65 years ago. These are images that leak to the outside world from present-day North Korea, the domain of Kim Jung-Il.

One June 14, 2010, a number of human rights organizations issued a joint letter to the European Union urging a "comprehensive, strategic, persistent and well coordinated approach" toward promoting human rights to the North Korean government.  North Korea's reign of terror is well known around the world, yet it continues.

The North Korean Freedom Coalition reports that up to 300,000 people have fled North Korea to escape the starvation and absence of basic human rights. An estimated 200,000 more men, women and children are imprisoned in seven political prison and forced labor camps. Two million or more individuals are estimated to have died from lack of food since 1995, and one in five North Korean children under the age of five is said to suffer from malnourishment. When a government denies its people basic rights like food when that food has been offered by international rescue organizations, it is obvious that government has no respect for human life. One can imagine the personal and religious freedoms the people of North Korea are denied.

Four hundred thousand to one million people may have died in North Korea's forced labor prisons since 1972. Untold numbers have been tortured and interrogated over suspicions of holding Christian beliefs or having associated with Christians. Yet Christian insider organizations report that, based on former prisoners' stories of torture and confessions, as many as one in four North Koreans may hold to some sort of Christian belief system. They must conceal this belief from the government, neighbors, and families. In North Korea, even children are encouraged by their school teachers to turn over parents who express Western or Christian sympathies or are in any way disrespectful to the image of their "illustrious" leader.

North Korea's State Religion:
According to the CIA, in North Korea "autonomous religious activities now almost nonexistent; government-sponsored religious groups exist to provide illusion of religious freedom."

The DPRK official website lists two state-sponsored Protestant churches in North Korea's capital of Pyongyang.  Yet refugees and religious freedom organizations argue that these churches were built mainly as a showcase to appease international eyes. Free worship or gathering apart from the direct supervision of the government is absolutely forbidden. Possession of the Bible, or any literature resembling a Bible, is outlawed and can lead to immediate arrest and deportation to a prison camp. The sole theological seminary in the country, Pyongyang Divinity School, admits only 10 students every three years. This is Kim Jong-Il's idea of religious freedom.

North Koreans are required to worship Kim as a god.  He is to be the object of all their worship. Since the slightest questioning of authority or disrespect for Kim is considered unacceptable, true faith in a God or admiration of any government beyond Kim and his provision is intolerable. To admit that anyone or anything might be greater than the Dear Leader would weaken the power he wields over a tiny, densely-populated country almost devoid of natural resources.

It is because North Korea is so physically isolated - by ocean on two sides, with the heavily patrolled borders of estranged South Korea below and China above - the DRPK's giant, nuclear-equipped military and state-run travel services can control all the comings and goings of citizens, tourists, humanitarian groups and supplies. Kim Jong-Il ensures that food and supplies are doled out first to his family, officers, the military, the police, and any others who are labeled the "loyal" sector of the population. He makes sure those who pledge obeisance in all matters, casual and formal, are served and cared for first. For the sake of their own preservation and the protection of loved ones, sufficient numbers of North Koreans do not question authority or admit allegiance to a religion, God, or ideology that allows for personal responsibility, free will, and mercy.

New Tension with South Korea and China:
North Korea's foreign policy under the juche ideology, if it can be called foreign policy, has been a strategy of blaming all outsiders for past oppression, current international hostility and the DPRK's starvation and deprivation. North Korea has always had an aggressive no-outsiders policy toward its neighbors, and relations between North Korea, South Korea, and China have continually deteriorated.

Yet, the Chinese do not offer North Korean refugees any assistance. The Chinese police actively hunt down and return Korean refugees, viewing them as pariahs. Once returned, these refugees may be imprisoned and/or executed. Female refugees who do make it across the border into China have a 70 percent chance of being taken in and sold as brides or otherwise being used in human trafficking.

Recent reports coming from South Korean officials claim that they have forensic evidence which they say proves a North Korean vessel was responsible for the torpedoing and sinking a South Korean Naval ship in March, drawing harsh threats of retaliation from the South and appeals to the US and other international allies to intervene.

A Shift in Power:
Kim Jong-Il is believed to have suffered a stroke two years ago, and the world believes he is preparing to publicly infuse his power and image into his 27-year-old son, Kim Jong-Un, who is already a leader in the ruling Worker's Party. Earlier this month, Kim Jong-Il oversaw his sister's husband, Jang Song-thaek, being installed as Vice-Chairman of the National Defense Commission. On April 15, 2012, North Korea will celebrate the 100th birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the venerated, long-reigning father of both Kim Jong-Il and the current North Korean regime. The celebration will no doubt be a grand display of nationalistic fervor, and experts assume the event will provide a logical opportunity for Kim Jong-Il to present his son as successor to the throne.

What can we do?
We can urge our government and humanitarian aid groups to be vigilant for opportunities to make a political impact on North Korea and on the administration of one of the world's cruelest dictators. We can donate to groups that work to bring first-hand help to these suffering people. Most importantly of all, we can pray.

Few of us can imagine the isolation and horror that faces North Korea's Christians. For the sanctity of life, for those who share our longing for a loving, sovereign God, for those who cannot escape - and for those who have yet to realize they should - we cannot give in.

"...The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." - James 5:16

When we pray, we should rejoice and thank God that our prayers really do help our precious brother and sisters in chains. Spiritual chains can be broken in the lives of these dear people as we go to our knees. When we pray, they are comforted, protected, fed, healed. When we pray, things happen that promote the Gospel rather than hinder it. When we pray, the Spirit of God works those things behind the scenes that can make all the difference for these beloved people who follow Christ even in the most horrific circumstances.

"Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body." - Hebrews 13:3

There are twelve "minor" prophets that are yet to be really discovered by most Christians. (They are called "minor" simply because they are smaller - shorter, more terse, and concise.) Yet they contain some of the most fascinating and provocative prophecies you'll find anywhere in the Scriptures. Here's a glimpse of two of them.

Joel:
Joel is a short book (only three chapters, 73 verses) devoted almost entirely to the most climactic period in all Scripture: "The Day of the Lord," the final climax that we all anticipate. It's surprising that even students of prophecy seem to overlook this little gem. The very name Joel means, "Yahweh is God." As we learn to recognize that Revelation 9 - 19 has Israel as its primary focus, we should not be surprised that most of what we know about that period is from the Old Testament, and much of that from this fascinating little book.

The Day of the Lord:
The primary theme in the book of Joel is The Day of the Lord. It's an important book because it records Israel's place in God's program: from Babylon all the way through to the Millennium. Joel also has a lot to say about the Gentile nations and their collision course to Armageddon. Joel's second chapter reads like news camera footage of modern combat helicopters and troops in action! Except the cosmic effects are most terrifying:

"The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come." -Joel 2:10, 31

Peter also recognized that the astonishing events of Pentecost in Acts Chapter 2 were ushering in the preparation for the end times, and he quoted from Joel to make his point (Acts 2:15-21, quoting Joel 2:28-32). (However, the sun did not darken; the moon did not turn to blood; and the Lord didn't appear with wrath against the nations.) Peter knew well that the Day of the Lord had not come yet: he says so in 2 Pet 3:10. Pentecost was a fulfillment in miniature: Joel saw the end point of the whole process; Peter focused on the onset. This was a guarantee that God would complete the entirety: an inauguration; the firstfruits. (Notice: There is no reason to restrict Peter's statement about the gifts of the Spirit to one particular occasion. If the Spirit was given at Pentecost, and Joel described it to include the final Day of the Lord, there is no basis to exclude the gifts today - since we are certainly still between these two points of time!) Joel also includes some timely details of the climax:

"I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land." - Joel 3:2

"Scattered among the nations," we understand; but "parted my land"? That sure has implications for our current news headlines! (Zechariah 12:2, 3)

Amos:
People always ask me, where is the United States in prophecy? I usually point them to Amos (and Hosea). Amos was a sheepherder from Tekoa (6 miles south of Bethlehem) in the Southern Kingdom, but he was sent to carry the Lord's message to the Northern Kingdom (Israel). [Joel is quoted in Amos 1:2 (Joel 3:16, 18), which means his book was already in existence when Amos wrote.]

Jeroboam II (793-753 B.C.), 4th king of the Jehu dynasty, ruled in Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, which was experiencing a boom of prosperity from his father Joash/Jehoash (2 Kings 13:25; 14:11-15).  He would have a reign of 41 years (2 Kings 14:23). His military strength had prospered the Northern Kingdom: the Lebanon coastal plain had been retaken from Syria; Damascus itself was subjugated. He controlled pagan Moab to the southeast. Jeroboam II's father, Jehoash (Joash) had defeated Judah in war and Jeroboam II retained strength over the Southern Kingdom (Judah) to the south (2 Kings 14:11-14, 23-28). 

Thus, Jeroboam II's strategic position was ironclad: Syria was a buffer against Assyria to the east, Judah a buffer against Egypt to the south, and the Mediterranean to the west. They enjoyed peace and the power of conquest for over 41 years, with new markets and trade in every direction; a growing wealthy class with summer and winter homes; and, a BMW in every garage... From their point of view, "it was the best of times."

Idolatry:
However, Jeroboam I (931-910 BC) had instituted idolatry 150 years earlier at Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:26-33) (analogous to Aaron's golden calf 700 years earlier). From God's point of view, however, it was a time of idolatry, sexual immorality, violence, injustice and oppression of the poor. From God's point of view, "it was the worst of times." They did not welcome the uninvited prophet from the south. After a brief survey of the horizon of six surrounding heathen nations, and his own region of Judah, Amos then zeroes in on the Northern Kingdom with a message somewhat comparable to that of his contemporary, Hosea. He detailed God's indictment against the nation that had abandoned its heritage. Failing to heed Amos' warnings resulted in the destruction of the entire nation. Samaria, their capital, fell to their enemies the Assyrians in 722 B.C.

The parallel to the United States is most disturbing: even during this difficult time of oil spills and economic turmoil, we still have a tremendously high standard of living. We still can enjoy our summer cookouts and days at the beach. However, we have abandoned our heritage. We regard homosexuality as simply an alternative lifestyle. We change marriage partners like fashion statements. We murder babies that are socially inconvenient. Our entertainment industry celebrates violence, immorality, sexual aberrations of every imaginable kind, and every conceivable form of evil. We have become the primary exporters of everything God abhors! From God's point of view, "it is the worst of times." Amos' indictment and summons are very timely for us today.

Rather than pointing fingers at everybody else, though, the change needs to start at home with ourselves.   Are we honest in our work practices?  Do we lay down our lives for each other?  Are we looking at pornography and treating our spouses with selfishness, or do we love each other as Christ has loved us? Do we treat our kids as inconveniences or as precious children of God into whom we get the honor of pouring our lives?  Do we do those things we hate, that God hates?  Or, do we wake each morning and say, "I'm yours, Father.  Thank you so much for your great love for me.  Keep me in the crosshairs of Your will today for Your joy and glory."

Whether our circumstances look good or not, may our lives always be the "best of times" in the eyes of God.  And may we remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said, "I tremble for my country when I recall that God is just, and that His justice will not sleep forever."