Month: January 2026

I wrote this quite some time ago and never published it.  I just stumbled on it now.  I’ve forgotten most of this stuff, but I still think it is pretty cool.

Our biology professor was explaining today how the towering redwoods evolved from plant scum. First they had to learn to stand upright, then they had to develop a waterproof skin that has pores, and they had to learn to reproduce without water…  “Plants are smart!”

The complex fluid transportation system in plants is quite remarkable.  A plant actually has two systems that operate in parallel yet are interconnected. One system is dedicated to water transportation and the other to sap.  Amazingly the water piping system allows a tree to move between 200-500 litres of water per day without expending any energy! Even our largest man made pumps which consume a great deal of fuel cannot produce the pressure necessary to move water up the trunk of a 350′ redwood yet it does so without using any energy.

On a warm day and with plenty of moisture in the soil, small valves on the bottom of the leaves open up to take in the CO2 needed for photosynthesis.  The open valves also allow outside air to suck water out of the leaves (water always tries to go to where there is none) which in turn draws water up the stem. However, if it is warm and the roots are dry, the valves will stay closed so as to preserve water.  How does the tree know whether its roots are dry or not? It has a sensory system that sends signals via little messenger molecules to the cell valve operators. The valves open and close in response to light, moisture, temperature, and CO2 pressure.

The water pipe itself is stiffened with lignin, a fiber that works like rebar in cement. This tough material is what gives wood its strength.

But that is just the water piping system. There is another parallel piping system that moves the precious life giving sap of plants. The plant has gone to a lot of work to create the sap and so no wastage is allowed!  The piping system is broken down into segments, like the segments in a shaft of bamboo. However the dividers between every segment are full of holes like the end of a potato masher (hence the name ‘sieve plate’). If ever, a segment is damaged, the holes in the sieve plate quickly block up so that the sap is preserved.  What is more, the cells that make up the sap transportation system have the capability to heal and regrow themselves!

Unlike the water transportation system, the plant requires energy to transport the sap through the plant, but it works very efficiently.  Parallel to the pipe that transports the sap is a smaller pipe that has T’s that connect into each segment. This parallel piping system has tiny bi-directional pumps connected into each segment of the main pipe that actively loads or unloads sap as necessary.

These pipes allow a plant to take light from the sun and nutrients from the soil to create the stuff of life-sap-and then transport it from the tiny veins in the leaf all the way to the roots. All of these complex life systems are coded for in a tiny seed.

Plants are very smart.

As western societies embrace one form of Pantheism or another, it has become a commonplace for mind and emotions to be ascribed to Nature, sometimes in jest, but not really.

See also: Ode to a Turnip

The project began with a poster-size timeline that I made to carry with me while leading tours in Israel. The poster was useful for showing what period we were in as we visited various sites in the Holy Land. While leading those tours it struck me that it would be useful to have this timeline online somewhere and actually take time to walk people through it before they came on the tour. Thus work began with a developer an online timeline. We have been working on it now for almost eight years!

After several early tests it soon became apparent that computer screens generally don’t have enough real estate to display a proper timeline. It seemed possible, however, to build one that allowed the user to zoom into the timeline to find more information—like Google Maps. Numerous attempts were made in this direction. The first version was too heavy to run on mobile. We ended up scrapping this version and starting again with another codebase. This version worked better but we still had issues with the timeline skipping and centering when zooming, and it was still heavy. Managing multiple layers of data in a zoomable timeline also proved problematic. After the third try, and five years later, we finally had something that worked smoothly and fast.

We also began to add more functionality to the site such as a database of references and a method for attributing images; we built a quiz module and course outline from scratch; and we added the ability to upload and view high resolution images of museum artifacts.

While entering data into the timeline, I tried to walk a fine line between creating a timeline which I believed to be accurate without departing too far from consensus. I thought it might be possible for the Bronze Age. However, as work progressed on the project, I found that I was working with two timelines: one you are likely to find on Wikipedia or Chat GPT, and another which I think makes better sense of the data, especially as it relates to the Early Dynastic I and II in Mesopotamia and the Ghassulian in the Levant. It became necessary at that point to add the ability to display multiple timelines. These are a work in progress. There is still a lot of work to be done in this area!

Click to view timeline

Although I set out to write a broad historical overview of the ancient world, I ended up writing a more in-depth study of the Early Bronze period. There was too much good content to skip over and too many interesting questions I wished to address. The Early Bronze Age is a pivotal period; it is when many important technologies came on the scene; and it is the logical launching point for an investigation of earlier periods.

The natural next step is to expand the timeline to encompass the Stone Ages. However, there are not many resources to pull from for these early periods that do not have C14 dating, thermoluminescence dating, or some other geological clock as their primary dating method, and are not wedded to a methodologically naturalistic interpretation of the evidence. (I discuss the problems with C14 dating in the Early Bronze course. These problems only increase with age.) I hope to address the stone ages at some point. To this end I will begin to add collections of artifacts for these periods. But I do not plan to go any further than that this year.

My focus this year will be on events, artifacts, and places which touch on the book of Isaiah. I need a break from the bronze and stone ages. I have a number of partially completed writeups which I will also continue to publish. (My most recent are The Amman Citadel and The Silver Scrolls). These writeups can be found under Collections>Entries. Other short-term goals for the project include the addition of historical data to the timeline for Armenia, Iran, India, and China, and the addition of a new course The Three Orders, the first section of which is mostly written but needs a lot of editing.

I did not intend to write a New Years resolution, but there it is. May God bless you and yours in the year to come! And may the Lord have mercy un us!