Archaeologists pinpoint the introduction of the domestic camel in Palestine
Archaeologists have established a more precise date for the introduction of camels to Palestine: the 9th century BCE. This reinforces what Bible scholars and archaeologists have already known for decades — that the Bible’s portrayal of camels as a common beast of burden around the time of Abraham (c. 18th century BCE by biblical chronology) is wildly anachronistic. Fred Clark rightfully castigates fundamentalist Christians for refusing to accept historical evidence and see what their own texts actually say.
Is That in the Bible? 
Isn’t this discovery just the ‘earliest known’ introduction of the camel? How can we be sure that camels weren’t in use before that but we have not as yet discovered their traces?
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I understand it’s because there should be evidence if there was earlier camel domestication. Archaeologists have found countless thousands of bones from other domesticated animals in the Levant and Egypt, but nothing from camels. There is no mention of domesticated camels in any text datable to earlier times either. So the extant evidence is heavily against Bronze Age Canaanites having domesticated camels.
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What about the references in this article?
http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2014/02/17/The-Date-of-Camel-Domestication-in-the-Ancient-Near-East.aspx#Article
And given the kind of environment we’re dealing with, and the antiquity of the period, I find the argument that we SHOULD have found certain remains highly dubious. Whatever we have found, is the result of a lucky confluence of weather and other environmental factors.
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It’s pretty scant evidence from what I see. A couple of hints at “possibilities”, a Mesopotamian carving found nowhere near the Levant, etc. Nothing at all to lend credence to the possibility that camels were widespread beasts of burden in Bronze Age Egypt and the Levant as portrayed in the Old Testament. The vague petroglyphs from Egypt don’t offer much either, since archaeologists still maintain that camels weren’t widespread there until Roman times most likely.
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This is interesting…but it really relies on some rather faulty logic in relation to expectations of what we might find.
I’ve offered a response here: http://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/camels-and-the-reliability-of-the-old-testament/
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