Scientists Unlock the DNA of Ancient Barley Seeds from Masada

Analyzing 6,000-year-old barley seeds found in a cavern in Masada, scientists have found evidence for the theory that the grain—mentioned frequently in the Hebrew Bible—was domesticated from wild strains in the Jordan valley. Ilan Ben Zion writes:

[The] seeds . . . have become the oldest plant genome to be sequenced, an international team of researchers announced. . . . The arid climate and precipitous cliff [near where they were found] left the grains preserved for millennia. Ehud Weiss of Bar-Ilan University, one of the heads of the study, [explained] that whereas most ancient kernels are found charred and [thus] useless for DNA study, those excavated from the cave on Masada . . . “looked almost alive, almost fresh.” . . .

Radiocarbon dating determined the seeds were 6,000 years old, grown several millennia after humans residing in the Fertile Crescent first domesticated grains such as barley and wheat around 10,000 years ago.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Ancient Near East, Archaeology, History & Ideas, Masada, Science

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF