12,000 year old megalith circles turn knowledge of ancient humans upside down

Not really, because what you base it on is a very narrow conception of how people regard the spirit world from interacting with the real world, and how "secular" power is considered as proofs of "sparks of divinity" in those individuals fortunate to have it.
For example, the hero cults in Hellenistic Greece and the imperial cults in Rome are highly interesting in these respects.
The historian Price has written an excellent, and still considered seminal, study on the Roman Imperial Cult in Asia minor, "Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor "
This book has university academic standard, and was used in my stint at studying history at oslo University.
Here's the Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Rituals-Power-...895326&sr=8-10

My main point of contention though, are what WORDS are appropriate in history, and which we should not use.
The couple "essential/inessential" is basically either rhetorically pointing at som "eternal essence" (and I do NOT think you intended that), OR, as a quantifying measure of relative weights.
But, quantification of the importance of different causes in history is highly suspect, or must be used with extreme caution, and we need a more modest idea besides:
To which extent our sources seem to indicate that analytically separate ideas were intertwined in some particular culture, or equivalently, how "separate" those ideas where.

(Judeo-)Christianity is quite unique in this degree of separatedness of the sacred and the secular, the normal picture seems to indicate a much stronger degree of intertwining.


BTW, Price* is quite adept in showing that in terms of quantification, LOCAL status competition for construction of imperial cults was probably more important than heavy-handed, centrally directed adoration policy from the Roman State.
It was the LOCAL magnates, in scurrying not just for (or even mainly for) imperial favour, but in order to be resplendent in the eyes of the local population by having a "closer tie" with the almost-divine, far-off Emperor through his temple construction in his honour..
More than enough sources indicate that the Emperors themselves were rather embarassed on the personal level at the prevalence of this religio-political "Greek" phenomenon, closely related to the city-state structure of Asia Minor.


*Whose main laudable effort in that work is to "de-Christianize" religion as such, in particular opposing the traditional view that worship of a living, or dead, person, was some sort of "debasement" of religion for "mere political" reasons. Rather, the mentality landscape, Price argues, between religious might and secular power should NOT be regarded in such a way that the clear distinction between "religion" and "politics" is to be assumed to have been felt as "natural" as it is for cultural Christians.

A gathering of the clans is an attractive model. You can imagine the men going off to do the sacred work, the women then left to gather grass seed to feed the group. Learning to collect, mill and bake wild wheat may have indeed been the key to it all. But if that was going on, then the evidence should be there as well.

The fact that what is being found is a lot of rock shaping flints and a lot of gazelle bones suggests a simpler scenario so far.

You could turn the story around I guess. As is said about the San bushmen, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle can leave people with a lot of time on their hands. So people might invent crazy religious projects like these circles as they want something "meaningful" to do. They had no cable TV in those days.

It's hard to say, but they did find piles of animal bones that show signs of having been butchered by humans. I would assume that the piles of bones would not have been from piles of dirt moved there. They have also done testing on the pillars, but the tests only show when they were buried. Carbonate layers only begin to form after the burial.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...20134/abstract

I think I'm familiar with the concept you're talking about but from a completely different source. The artist, George Catlin, observed and described the same thing being in play among the Mandan Indians, a tribe he lived with for a few months and whose culture he recored in both paintings and journal entries. For the Mandan everything was a matter of sacred power: if a guy was a better marksman with a bow and arrow it was because he had more sacred power, if he won more at gambling, same cause, if he bested someone in a trade of goods, same thing: more sacred power. There was no secular concept of skill, intelligence, acumen.

Catlin's own artistic abilities amazed the Indians and he was deferred to everywhere due to the perception he had a huge amount of sacred power. All the local magnates lined up to have their portrait painted.

In one band of Indians, though, he was disturbed to find out that a particular shaman was preaching against him, warning that he was evil and up to no good. He was perplexed at first, but then he figured out what was going on. He invited the shaman to sit and have his portrait painted, and suddenly the man's whole attitude changed. He suddenly announced he'd been wrong and that Catlin had completely good "sacred power", and was a good man.

I don't think it would be any different in Greek and Roman hero cults. Regardless of how any of those ancients might rationalize their purely political maneuvers as having a religious motivation, it doesn't mean we are misunderstanding them if we don't buy it as they would represent it. This isn't Judeo-Christian vs ancient pagan, it's modern secular psychology vs primitive.

The quantification of the importance of different causes in history happens. Many claim Caesar's Gallic campaigns were essentially self serving, intended to increase his status, in contradiction to his own characterization of them as necessary for the good of the empire. I think the whole point and advantage of retrospective analysis is to sort out what was most likely really going on from a third party, outside perspective, rather than to side with any participant on their own terms.

To that end I appreciate you linking to that book and I'll make an effort to get hold of it at some point. I think you'd love Catlin's book given your general interest in anthropology. It's called Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians. Two volumes, published by Dover.

I would be interested to find out the most recent possible date for the site. That is, if all the parameters were weighed in favor of the most recent date, what would that give us? Would it still predate any similar site by thousands of years?

Gobekli Tepe's final occupational horizon ends around 7000BC, the same time that Catal Huyuk first arose near Konya not very far away.

At Catal Huyuk there was a funerary ritual called excarnation. Excarnation involves laying out the body, usually in a circular stone tower called a Dakhma. Vultures were key part of this process.


Respectfully submitted,
Steve

A Tower of Silence or Dakhma (Persian: دخمه‎) is a circular, raised structure used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead.

I think dakhma is a ritual seen in Zoroastrian tradition . wiki link to it -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhma

I thought the final burial of the entire site was dated at 8,000 BC? That seems to be an accepted date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe#Dating
Lab-Number Date BP Cal BC Context
Ua-19561 8430 ± 80 7560–7370 enclosure C
Ua-19562 8960 ± 85 8280–7970 enclosure B
Hd-20025 9452 ± 73 9110–8620 Layer III
Hd-20036 9559 ± 53 9130–8800 Layer III

Catal Huyuk is thought to started up around 7500BC. It seems there could be some overlap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk

Respectfully,
Steve

I wish that everyone could watch the Nat Geo special, so we'd all be on the same page.

In Norway, we only learn about moose..

The secret order of the stone meessons.

But Gobekli Tepe predates dakhmas by thousands of years. So to suggest that the later Dakmahs have any rituals passed down by the inhabitants of Gobekli Tepe thousands of years earlier is rather unlikely. More probably they may have seen a ring structure and made some similar structures, but using their current religion.

I recently communicated with Dr Schmidt (he heads up the Gobekli Tepe excavation) on this topic of Dakhmas. Here is the email --