HEZEKIAH'S TUNNELS CONTINUED

In a Groundbreaking new study Israeli geologist Aryeh shimron and Amos Frumkin mapped the geological and main features of Hezekiah's Tunnel.Their map provides important insights into how the tunnel was (and was not) constructed.  Shimron and Frumkin fojund no geological evidence of a continuous karst  (def below) channel along the length of the tunnel, as geologist Dan Giff had proposed.  Shimron and Frumkin found that nearly all of the natural fractures in the surround rock-the geological paths along which karstic channels form--not across, and not parallell to the line of the tunnel

The tunnel  could not have originally been a natural karstic channel because the necessary geological conditions simply were not present.  But how did the two teams meet

The Proof is in the Plaster.  The flow of water causes sediment to accumulate over time on the surface of Hezekiah's Tunnel.  Vertical core samples taken from the floor of the tunnel show that , although fine layers of sediment cover the plaster on the surface of the tunnel (which in some places was plastered over several times in antiquity) there was no such sedimentary buildup beneath the earliest level of plaster (see section of photo above)  demonstrating that water had not flowed over the surface in a natural karst stream before the plaster was laid after the excavation of the tunnel.

Sounds of pickaxes and echoes of voices coming through the rock must have caused a greal deal of confustion and misdirection  --false tunnels found near meeting point. Places where these misleading sounds caused the team to chisel away in the wrong direction

Finding the Right Path  Shimron and Frumkin believe that a third team wor
king on the surface pounded out acoustic signals on the bedrock to guide the underground work of the tunneling teams. Initially, the southern team planned to take a fairly direct route northeast from the Siloam Pool so they would intersect with the northern team as quickly as possible.  The norther team, however, began by excavating almost due west, a course the geologistbelieve was eighter a gross miscalculation in direction or a deliberate attemt to exten the tunnel to a well shaft in the heart of the city

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Both teams quickly realized, however , that the nearly 160 feet of bedrock and overburden in their respective areas made sound communication with the surface impossible, so they decided to adjust the tunnel's course.  Hezekiah's engineers directed the tunnelers to the shallower eastern slope of the city instead where the grinding signals of the surface team could be more easily heard.  Partial shafts in the bedrock may have aided in the sound communication.  From her the tunnelers followed the surface signals until they were finally within earshot of the other team's voices and pick axes, as described in the siloam Inscription.  On the plan at left areas in yellow have a shallow over burden and gradually progress to the deepest areas (shown in red) where it was impossible to hear the surface signals
                                                       

                                                                    KARST -DEFINITION

Pictured is one of the false tunnel.The reasons for the false tunnels confusion was caused  by  noises made by  pickaxes and echoes of voices through the rocks.

Due to subterranean drainage, there may be very limited surface water, even to the absence of all rivers and lakes. Many karst regions display distinctive surface features, with cenotes, sinkholes or dolines being the most common. However, distinctive karst surface features may be completely absent where the soluble rock is mantled, such as by glacial debris, or confined by a superimposed non-soluble rock strata. Some karst regions include thousands of caves, even though evidence of caves that are big enough for human exploration is not a required characteristic of karst.

Karst topography is characterized by subterranean limestone caverns, carved by groundwater. The geographer Jovan Cvijić (1865–1927) was born in western Serbia and studied widely in the Dinaric Kras region. His publication of Das Karstphänomen (1893) established that rock dissolution was the key process and that it created most types of dolines, "the diagnostic karst landforms". The Dinaric Kras thus became the type area for dissolutional landforms and aquifers; the regional name kras, Germanicised as "karst", is now applied to modern and paleo-dissolutional phenomena worldwide. Cvijić related the complex behaviour of karst aquifers to development of solutional conduit networks and linked it to a cycle of landform evolution. Cvijić defined two main types of karst area, holokarst, wholly developed, as in the Dinaric region along the eastern Adriatic and deeper inland in the Balkan Peninsula and merokarst, imperfectly developed with some karst forms, as in eastern Serbia. Cvijić is recognized as "the father of karst geomorphology".

The international community has settled on karst, the German name for Kras, a region in Slovenia partially extending into Italy, where it is called "Carso" and where the first scientific research of a karst topography was made. The name has an Indo-European origin (from karra meaning "stone"),^[3] and in antiquity it was called "Carusardius" in Latin. The Slovene form grast is attested since 1177, and the Croatiankras since 1230.^{[citation needed]}. "Krš" – "Krsh" meaning in Croatian and in Serbian "barren land" which is typical feature in the Northern Dinaric limestone mountains could also be an origin to the word Karst