Gobekli Tepe what does it mean for the human time line? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14693920
Gobekli Tepe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

dated to the 10th millennium BCE.

this site is not just a hunter gatherer burial mound, it is an intricate temple complex with huge megaliths. It would require civilization level organization to build. Does this site mean we have to stop talking about Sumer as the cradle of civilization? What does it mean for our historical accounting?
#14693924
Gobekli Type is a fascinating case study in early megalithic civilization, one I am only vaguely familiar with from Graham Hancock - Joe Rogan podcasts. I would be profoundly grateful to hear input from field specialists on the details of the excavation and it's specific significance for our understanding of Neolithic cultures.
#14693928
this site is not just a hunter gatherer burial mound, it is an intricate temple complex with huge megaliths.

Indeed. It's an awe-inspiring achievement.

It would require civilization level organization to build. Does this site mean we have to stop talking about Sumer as the cradle of civilization? What does it mean for our historical accounting?

There is no evidence of animal husbandry or agriculture in Gobekli Tepe; it was clearly built by hunter-gatherers. In fact, it was probably abandoned and then back-filled precisely because of the transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural mode of life. It no longer held the same cultural or spiritual meaning that it once did. However, it was too sacred (and therefore potentially dangerous) a site just to be abandoned to the elements or destroyed. The local inhabitants therefore went to great exertions to backfill the site, thereby symbolically returning it to the Earth (and incidentally preserving it for us to excavate).

So no, I don't think that this changes the timeline of civilisation. The people who built this site were hunter-gatherers and did not live in cities. And there is no evidence of any other monumental building at the same location during the same time period - just this 'temple'. In that respect, it's rather like the later Stonehenge in Britain - an example of pre-civilisational monumental architecture.
#14693933
In the Mesolithic era (about 20,000 to 9,500 BC), Anatolian farmers first emerged in history and they subsequently expanded in all directions from Europe and South Asia. The Göbekli Tepe site may be associated with Chalcolithic Anatolians who belonged to haplogroup L1a (Lazaridis et al. 2016). L1a, which is common in India and Pakistan (15%), also appears at low frequencies (2-4%) in the Northern part of the Middle East, where the Göbekli Tepe site is located. "The genetic structure of the world’s first farmers" was just published online last week. It concludes that the early farmers of mainland Europe were descended from a population related to Neolithic northwestern Anatolians, which is consistent with an Anatolian origin of farming in Europe.

Image

During subsequent millennia, the early farmer populations of the Near East expanded in all directions and mixed, as we can only model populations of the Chalcolithic and subsequent Bronze Age as having ancestry from two or more sources. The Chalcolithic people of western Iran can be modelled as a mixture of the Neolithic people of western Iran, the Levant, and Caucasus Hunter Gatherers (CHG), consistent with their position in the PCA (Fig. 1b). Admixture from populations related to the Chalcolithic people of western Iran had a wide impact, consistent with contributing ~44% of the ancestry of Levantine Bronze Age populations in the south and ~33% of the ancestry of the Chalcolithic northwest Anatolians in the west. Our analysis show that the ancient populations of the Chalcolithic Iran, Chalcolithic Armenia, Bronze Age Armenia and Chalcolithic Anatolia were all composed of the same ancestral components, albeit in slightly different proportions (Fig. 4b; Supplementary Information, section 7).
http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/earl ... 1.full.pdf
Last edited by ThirdTerm on 21 Jun 2016 23:20, edited 3 times in total.
#14693937
I've actually used the site in World History courses before.

Most of what we figure(d) happened in the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic goes back to V. Gordon Childe.

He was the one that came up with the conception of an Agricultural Revolution and an Urban Revolution. The general thought was that the development of agriculture led to the development of almost everything else, including well well organized religions, monolithic architecture, and set holy places.

Gobekli Tepe challenges some of those assertions. As Potemkin pointed out, all indication is that it was built before the Agricultural Revolution, which doesn't fit well with the specifics that Childe pushed.

This being said, I don't think that it in any way breaks Childe's general argument though. History isn't considerate enough to be so neat and orderly once specifics are taken into account.

When does the Modern Era begin? Most historians will reflexively say it was the French Revolution.

...Which had no bearing in anyway whatsoever outside the Atlantic world.

Speaking of the Atlantic world, preceding the French Revolution was the American Revolution, and concurrent with both was the Haitian Revolution which was arguably a more dramatic change.

The Americans in their revolution largely based their notions and world view in orientation to the English Civil War, which was well before either event.

The English Civil War was the consolidation of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, which was unevenly applied in Europe for centuries and stemmed from an attempt to find an original form of Christianity...and on and on. We can see this as a general progression, but it happened differently in Germany (which didn't exist), Poland, Russia, Africa, the Middle East, and everywhere else.

Because there are deviation from the general narrative in just defining, "modern," doesn't mean that the French Revolution isn't a good general "rule of thumb," to place a conception of modernism. Just as I don't think it would be fair to say that a deviation of architecture and religion in Turkey necessarily means that we have to completely disregard Childe.

...Though it certainly complicates it (which is, in the end, a good thing).
#14694188
Potemkin wrote:Indeed. It's an awe-inspiring achievement.


There is no evidence of animal husbandry or agriculture in Gobekli Tepe; it was clearly built by hunter-gatherers. In fact, it was probably abandoned and then back-filled precisely because of the transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural mode of life. It no longer held the same cultural or spiritual meaning that it once did. However, it was too sacred (and therefore potentially dangerous) a site just to be abandoned to the elements or destroyed. The local inhabitants therefore went to great exertions to backfill the site, thereby symbolically returning it to the Earth (and incidentally preserving it for us to excavate).

So no, I don't think that this changes the timeline of civilisation. The people who built this site were hunter-gatherers and did not live in cities. And there is no evidence of any other monumental building at the same location during the same time period - just this 'temple'. In that respect, it's rather like the later Stonehenge in Britain - an example of pre-civilisational monumental architecture.


With all due respect to claim hunter gatherers built this site is dubious. Hunter Gatherers by nature do not have stores of resources capable of sustaining such works. You would need organization, you would need infrastructure to provide workers with food, and other vital needs. Who was out hunting and gathering while this was being built? Your position is rather absurd.
#14694199
Oxymoron wrote:Hunter Gatherers by nature do not have stores of resources capable of sustaining such works.

We are talking about only 200 pillars over a few millennia. I am sure that a small tribe can produce and move one pillar in just a few weeks, only working on their "free time".

I think the only condition is that they were sedentary or periodically spent a few weeks at this place.
#14694207
You don't have to call it as Gobekli Tepe. It is probably one of random names given to places like this. Doesn't this site has an original name?

It probably did, but nobody knows what the fuck it was. Writing hadn't been invented yet, Istanbuller.
#14694212
Potemkin wrote:It probably did, but nobody knows what the fuck it was. Writing hadn't been invented yet, Istanbuller.

Yes, i forgot tha fact that they couldn't write something meaningful at that time.

Gokbekli Tepe: Bellied Hill. I get disappointed when i see stupid names are given to historical places. I would expect people to take this issue seriously.
#14694213
Harmattan wrote:We are talking about only 200 pillars over a few millennia. I am sure that a small tribe can produce and move one pillar in just a few weeks, only working on their "free time".

I think the only condition is that they were sedentary or periodically spent a few weeks at this place.


A few pillars? I think you are underestimating the extent and magnitude of this site.
#14694225
A few pillars? I think you are underestimating the extent and magnitude of this site.

And I think you are underestimating how long it took to build, Oxy. Just like Stonehenge, it was gradually constructed over centuries and even millennia. They didn't throw this thing up overnight.
#14694228
Potemkin wrote:And I think you are underestimating how long it took to build, Oxy. Just like Stonehenge, it was gradually constructed over centuries and even millennia. They didn't throw this thing up overnight.


No not overnight,, but centuries and even millennia? That is a very strong opinion without to much in terms of facts to back it up. Why is it so hard for people to accept that the current historical record is way wrong?

We know that Jericho was settled thousands of years before Sumeria existed. We know the Sphinx complex is much older then the "accepted" timeline based on erosion evidence.

We have similar megalithic structures built all across the world, at a time when humans were supposedly small groups of hunters. So are you saying the same small group of hunters built them all? Or are you saying they were part of a larger group of hunter clans that were spread out through most of Eurasia?
#14694259
@Oxymoron
The archeologists uncovered 200 pillars, this is a fact. And one or two millennia seem to separate the first and latter phases, this is another fact. This is something that could have been achieved by a small tribe over a single man's life and has been completed over a lot more time. This is a plausible speculation. I think you underestimate what a few men can do over enough years.

Now the vague similitudes between this site and others are indeed interesting. Maybe some burial or religious traditions could have been preserved (even through different religions, just like Christianism adopted pagan dates), or maybe there is something in big phallic rocks that deeply attracts us.
#14694582
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:If the Wikipedia page is accurate, the blocks weigh up to 20 tons, and had to be moved at least 100m. That requires quite a lot of planning and cooperation - making a wooden sled? Ropes? It's a huge step up if they didn't do significant stone quarrying, transporting and building already.


Shhhh don't say that it will upset the current accepted theory of history...... man first step to recovery is acceptance, many of these so called historians are still far away from that.
#14694598
10,000 BCE does not make it any older than Jericho. And Jericho had walls and residences indicating civilization. I have seen the dig at Jericho and walked it.

So now we find a hill top construction vaguely resembling "cyclopean" -- rocks stacked up which are not masoned -- up a steep hill a goodly distance away from water and crops.

It could have been religious. Ancient farmers at the dawn of the agricultural age tended to be very superstitious.

It could possibly have been an acropolis of some kind too. Mycenae is the best example of a high and remote acropolis. Everything had to be brought up to it with donkeys -- water & food & wine.

Turkey/Anatolia has always had a lot of fascinating ruins in it from the ancient Hittites. This could be Hittite or pre-Hittite.

Does it change anything? No.

It's just yet another really old dig. Same as Jericho.
#14694682
yiostheoy wrote:10,000 BCE does not make it any older than Jericho. And Jericho had walls and residences indicating civilization. I have seen the dig at Jericho and walked it.

So now we find a hill top construction vaguely resembling "cyclopean" -- rocks stacked up which are not masoned -- up a steep hill a goodly distance away from water and crops.

It could have been religious. Ancient farmers at the dawn of the agricultural age tended to be very superstitious.

It could possibly have been an acropolis of some kind too. Mycenae is the best example of a high and remote acropolis. Everything had to be brought up to it with donkeys -- water & food & wine.

Turkey/Anatolia has always had a lot of fascinating ruins in it from the ancient Hittites. This could be Hittite or pre-Hittite.

Does it change anything? No.

It's just yet another really old dig. Same as Jericho.


It changes our historical timeline, that is pretty significant.

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