Miss Saudi Arabia

Mark Steyn brings us news of a camel beauty pageant in Saudi Arabia.

There she is, Miss Saudi Arabia:

Beauty season is in full swing and 30,000 camels have gathered for the second annual King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, the largest pageant in the Gulf.

Yes, indeed. One of the benefits of keeping all your womenfolk in head-to-toe body bags is that it frees up all the botox for your camel:

Twelve camels have been disqualified from Saudi Arabia's annual camel beauty contest after receiving botulinum toxin injections to make their pouts look more alluring.

On a much more serious note, Mark brings us the story of an English lad here.

Archaeologists pinpoint the date when domesticated camels arrived in Israel

Camels opened Israel up to the world beyond the vast deserts, researchers say, profoundly altering its economic and social history. However, this article in Phys.org indicates that camels were not domesticated in Israel for centuries after the Age of the Patriarchs. In addition to challenging the Bible's historicity, this anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes.

Now Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr. Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures have used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the moment when domesticated camels arrived in the southern Levant, pushing the estimate from the 12th to the 9th century BCE. The findings, published recently in the journal Tel Aviv, further emphasize the disagreements between Biblical texts and verifiable history, and define a turning point in Israel's engagement with the rest of the world.

Read more here.