"Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are on the sinful kingdom, and I will
destroy it from the face of the earth; yet I will not utterly destroy the
house of Jacob, says the LORD" (Amos 9:8).
When the northern kingdom of Israel suffered destruction at the hands
of the Assyrians, its people found themselves forced into exile. Yet God
had promised they would survive to become some of the world's major powers
in the last days.
Where did they go from there? How can we find them?
Tracing the ancestry of ancient peoples is an extremely difficult task.
Archaeologists, historians and distinguished professors in famous universities
often differ on the interpretation of artifacts and historical documents.
This is because full knowledge of any ancient people's origins is almost
always clouded by the mists of time. This is especially true when written
records have vanished, been destroyed or never existed. Therefore, to determine
what happened to the ancient Israelites, we must carefully compare the
available historical and archaeological evidence to the history and prophecies
in the Bible.
Archaeologists and historical researchers have accumulated a substantial
base of information we can fit together as pieces of the historical puzzle.
The more pieces on the table, the easier it is to accurately connect the
information. By assembling enough parts we can obtain a reasonably good
picture of the past.
Key historical clues
Historians accept that most of the ancestors of today's Western democracies
once lived as nomadic tribes roaming the vast grassland plains of antiquity
known as the Eurasian steppes. One particular group of these migratory
peoples, identified as Scythians by the Greeks, suddenly appeared
on the Eurasian steppes about the same time the 10 tribes of Israel disappeared
from history. Is there a connection? Here are some of the more pertinent
facts and discoveries concerning the two peoples.
