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

zoobyshoe

Looking at this I am suddenly surprised to realize there is no way into the center. If you walk in through the very narrow entrance you are required to go left or right around a circle, or, into the completely mysterious dead end on the right, but there is no way into the center.

It doesn't look like people could even see into the center by standing on the lower part of the outer wall that juts out.

Dotini

I recall reading in at least two places that the inner rings, once encircled, were entered by a ladder from the roof - or open top, as it were.

Equally if not even more shocking to our modern sensibilities, I think most if not all the apartments at the later, full-bore city site of Catal Huyuk were entered in the same odd manner, from above. Like you, I am fascinated by this ancient culture, but not in any hurry to change places with them. There were working to a very strict plan. One with little thought for convenience, it would seem. Although the outer galleries of the rings might be decent places to store food.

Respectfully,
Steve

zoobyshoe

I'm going to suggest these are omnipresent based on the fact they are the elementary demonstration of man's ability to dominate stone. Primitive people must have felt incredibly empowered to realize they could change the shape of such a hard material just by pounding over and over on the same spot, and did it just to do it. Rationalizations and ceremonial purpose came later, no doubt. The road from cupule making to sculpture and stone shaping for architecture could have been short or long, but it's certainly obvious.

zoobyshoe

Now that you mention the ladder, I recall that the Hopi have a ceremonial structure that can only be entered the same way.

You're right that, once you step outside your own culture and times there's no telling what easily cured inconveniences other people take for granted and perpetuate with no thought of changing them.

Evo

Bizarre. if the drawing is accurate, it appears you can't really go right either as you are blocked where the first inner wall starts.

In the documentary they showed a portal in one side of an outer wall carved from a single stone block, so they had the knowledge and abilty to have entries. So this might mean that the inner completely walled section might be for storage of something that wouldn't allow a door?

zoobyshoe

You're right! I didn't notice that blocking wall in the shadow.
I can't make heads or tails of it: you have this long, dramatic entrance corridor, that was not any easier to build than any other part of it, but which seems to lead no where important.

eloheim

Sorry to keep a little off topic, but I always heard that sailors knew well the earth was curved because a ship coming over the horizon can be seen first by the tip of its sail, and then the rest comes up into view.

PhilDSP

That's an intriguing observation but isn't it very culturally conditioned? To me, it seems the introduction of geometry into art fairly well destroys the subtle aspects of art. Especially in music, geometry forces too much predictability and gives art a sterile, formal and inhuman, inorganic structure. Artistic masters often use pattern or small pieces of pattern combined in ways that are somehow integrated in a larger sense to produce masterpieces.