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

SimsStuart

I will site the sources of my verbatim facts in the future. An excellent standard, I think. Please clarify something for me --why do you find it unlikely that beliefs can span thousands of years? Many historians argue that oral traditions are just as, if not more reliable than written traditions. If you disagree with this assertion, then I can site several sources who make compelling arguments for the consistency of oral traditions over enormous periods of time. The Jewish tradition maintained its oral traditions from the time of Abraham to the time they were finally written down, a span of at least 2,000 years.

zoobyshoe

I spent some time earlier in the thread asserting this wasn't true, and that the opposite was true: these are not well designed structures at all and were erected in defiance of basic engineering and aesthetic principles. The slabs are not stable structures and have to be propped upright somehow. They're top heavy, which is aesthetically uncomfortable, and very bad for practical reasons: any one of them could have been toppled over by a single person.

At the same time each slab seems to embody the same form or formula, they are all different sizes. There was no effort made to maintain the important kind of consistency that makes Stonehenge, for example, what it is. Joining them into a single architectural entity requires all kinds of jury-rigging as a result. The makers didn't even seem to know how to generate a circle on which to arrange them. It's all 'freehand'. The design behind it is comparable to what an untrained 8 - 10 year old might produce.

The animal renderings, though, are much more advanced. The artists seem to be shooting for realism without quite knowing how to achieve it, as opposed to shooting for a characteristic style with its own aesthetics. The animal renderings seem, therefore, to be the important thing to these people. They don't have a larger concept of composition, design, or structural integrity yet. No geometry/math/measuring system. They sculpt a pretty good animal, but they certainly couldn't have designed Stonehenge or a pyramid, much less a Roman Aqueduct. While these aren't piles of stones by any means, they aren't what I'd call "engineering". Trial and error, jury-rigging, it looks to me to be.

This is the mystery to me: how could they have been such hard workers without also being smart workers? What held so many to such labor for so long in the absence of any motivational feeling they were aware of, and employing, Nature's deeper structural secrets?

Your suggestion they were dedicated exposure sites for the dead would fit the bill completely just on the principle we know that what you do with the dead was, and still is, a pivotal issue in many cultures, including those that don't/didn't otherwise have much in the way of civilization.

This question occurs to me: if you put a dead body out in that part of the world in a place far from water, what animals are attracted? Are those the same animals depicted on the slabs? I have no idea, but it might be worth investigating.

Evo

We don't know of any beliefs tied to Gobekli Tepe. We do know that the creation and/or meaning of ancient megaliths and monuments such as the Pyramids, the Spynx, Stonehenge, etc... were completey lost in a relatively shorter span of time. And they weren't buried out of site.

So stop trying to impose some religion that formed thousand of years later in another part of the world onto these structures.

SimsStuart

Ok, I think I see part of the problem. You are mistaken on several of the facts -- “Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster (also known as Zarathustra, in Avestan) and was formerly among the world's largest religions. It was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Greater Iran.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism) Now, how does Iran, located just east of the Fertile Crescent (the location of Gobekli Tepe), qualify in your mind as “another part of the world”? Furthermore, I am not imposing religion on Gobekli Tepe. It is always productive to look for continuities in history, and the similarities between these structures and Dakhmas is blatant –there circular formation, for one, and the fact that the people buried them after a period of time, just like in Zoroastric traditions. It does not take a stretch of the imagination to speculate that these early structures might well have been the beginning of the belief system that later became Zoroastrianism. You have previously dismissed the fact that the archeologist who is excavating the site, Dr. Schmidt, personally responded to me and indicated that he also believed the structures were Neolithic Dakhmas. “Highly Probable”, were his exact words. Obviously to your mind this is not credible information. I can understand that. And you still have not addressed the fact that you have repeatedly stated that there were no human remains found at G.T. This is just incorrect. The NatGeo special spent ten minutes talking about how the Neolithic people disinterred the dead buried at Gobekli Tepe and removed their skulls for some unknown purpose. It is impossible to have an intelligent, productive discussion when we disagree on the fundamental facts. So where am I going wrong? Please, if any of the facts I have stated here are incorrect please let me know. We are all here to learn, correct?

thorium1010

A site dated 11000 bc is nowhere close to rise of Zoroastrianism (even if it is 2000 bc). I think you have to temper some of your assumptions, First of all we have a ancient site which might have been used for rituals at best for some sort of sacrifice (considering animal bones ). Was there any other kind of ritual such as one you are referring to is unclear. unless other similar sites available to confirm the ritualistic practice it is hard to come to all that conclusion from one site.

SimsStuart

I am using the term “highly organized structures” in relation to any earlier known human architecture. Compared to the Egyptian pyramids they are certainly remedial. Compared to mud-brick dwellings they are a huge leap forward. The size of the structures is significant I think, as well as the coordination to not only shape the limestone, but to get that many people to move those large stone obelisks up to the top of that hill. This is the oldest hard evidence for that level of organized, long range, abstract thinking demonstrated by Neolithic people. And in defense of those poor primitive men and women of so long ago, the structures DID survive being buried for 12,000 years, and then survived the excavation process with the obelisks still upright. Well done, I say!

Evo

From the perspective at the time, what constituted the "known world" for them.

He seems to be humoring you because he has stated he believes Sumerian myths may be a descendant, although it's believed by scholars to be highly unlikely that any later known religion came from GT.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6...and_importance

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...#ixzz1oMMtV36p

So please stop with the unfounded speculations.

They found some human remains OUTSIDE of the enclosures, not inside. http://home.comcast.net/~cvn1813/his...t/gobekli.html

Check it out for yourself, the only human bones found inside were skattered among the layers of backfill.

This thread is not for speculation about the unknown.

zoobyshoe

I agree that what they did achieve, as opposed to what they didn't, is of extreme interest, but it's important not to characterize them as "highly organized structures" just because they are the result of highly organized endeavors. They were created to embody or illustrate a concept that had nothing whatever to do with engineering and the engineering is, as a result, completely haphazard. To the extent you are just pointing at the high degree of social organization behind them you're completely right and the construction of these things might well represent a pivot point in history for that.

I think my question about the animals deserves a thought. If it were an exposure site, depicting the animals that gathered to the dead might be a statement about the continuation of life from one form to the next. I don't have any idea if that ties in to Zoroasterism or not.

SimsStuart

You make a salient point. It is the organizational level that is more significant here. And as to the Zoroastrinistic practices that correlate to the animal carvings, I have not come across anything in my research. You can search for yourself. It is actually quite interesting-- http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/sbe0411.htm But almost every ancient culture demonstrated some form of animal worship, from the native American Indians to the ancient Egyptians. I would say it is likely the meaning of those carvings probably lies more in line with some form of nature worship.

Evo

Ok, we can now return to the purpose of the thread, to discuss a finding of this scale in a time that we previously thought impossible due to the percieved nature of hunter gatherer societies.

apeiron

There is a 2010 radio interview with Schmidt - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8DOjnZu8H4

His working hypothesis is that Gobekli Tepe is a ritual centre possibly for a region of some 100s of kilometres. At 24 mins he mentions there are 10 other settlements (actual villages) being exclavated in the region from this period. He thinks the whole Turkey/Iraq/Syria Upper Mesopotamia area is undergoing a crystalisation to a new more settled, higher density, hunter-gatherer lifestyle, transitional to agriculture.

That would explain the economics of the enclosure building. Hunter gatherer settlements that existed to cure, preserve and store wild food would be a first step.

Schmidt says there may be many more villages and perhaps ritual sites. He says much would have been covered by alluvial sediment in Mesopotamia if they had existed. So the transition could have been widespread and connected.

If this bears out, it does add another useful chapter to the human story, another distinct stage to talk about.

Other details from the interview.

Schmidt says Cyprus was being colonised at this time, which would have required ships not just rafts - so again, large scale construction.

At Gobekli Tepe, there is no evidence it was an astrolab.

The orientation is on a prominent ridge looking back towards the plains (taking a hunter-gathererly interest in the herds of gazelle that may have made this a good hunting ground, especially if teams of 100s combined in massed annual drives?).

Ground radar reveals 20 enclosures, 4 of which have been dug, and perhaps another 4 will be dug, it taking at least another 20 years to get "good answers".

Schmidt still favours a burial connection, saying the bones could be behind the walls which they have not dug. (14 mins)

The enclosures may have been roofed - seems no concrete evidence but the limestone would have needed protection from winter rains to be in such good condition.

So a semi-coherent picture is coming together of a transitional hunter gatherer stage of first enduring villages perhaps (could be just winter camps) that most likely, in my view, would have been based on innovations around food preservation and storage.

Maybe Gobekli Tepe got built to occupy the lads while the gazelle jerky was drying in the summer sun? Whatever, monuments raise questions about economics rather than cognition.

What is also fascinating is the way Gobekli Tepe is being latched onto for the back-projection of modern mythology/religion. All the talk about finding the Garden of Eden, or speculation that the animals on the pillars are representations of Noah's Ark.

Like this link to a History channel clip - http://humansarefree.com/2011/10/gob...y-channel.html

I'd forgotten how strong the "forgotten golden era of civilisation" meme still is in popular culture, and how Schmidt indeed will be batting off the crackpots.

apeiron

The classic Sahlins paper emphasises how food storage would have indeed involved quite a psychological shift in cultural terms. It may seem an obvious thing to do from our perspective, but not necessarily for a hunter gatherer.

The Original Affluent Society -by Marshall Sahlins
http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html

Storing food and getting settled are alien concepts to hunter-gatherers, so archaeology would be seeking some new constraint that forced people into quite a different economic mentality (a constraint such as demographic or environmental change).

Sahlins was of course making a point about the modern consumer society (and so was projecting a meme to some extent).

On the food storage hypothesis in particular, there is this book chapter review for instance.

Demography and Storage Systems During the Southern Levantine Neolithic Demographic Transition - Ian Kuijt
http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/Demography.pdf

There are some good images of dwellings from this time period on p297. Kuijt suggests a big step up in sophistication of construction at 9.5-10.5 kya in the Levant.

Dotini

I have a question regarding this image, please. What do readers think about those three objects, the ones that look like containers with curved handles, carved across the top of the pillar? Can they be identified?

I have been scouring images of Mesopotamian bas reliefs for similar objects, and I keep coming up with "buckets" or "baskets", always shown in the hands of deities, kings or culture heroes. They are sometimes described as holding water, or balm. Do you suppose they could represent a food storage container - or dare I ask, a seed container?

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

apeiron

There looks to be an animal associated with each "basket" - perhaps a gosling, squirrel and then something indistinct. The "baskets" are also set against a geometric field which could represent bound sheaves...or anything.

There is one vulture and a bunch of different birds by the look of it. Odd the way the birds are seated, a little human like. And then the wild creatures - scorpion, snake, some wolf-like face - are in the section below. It seems to be telling a whole story.

This is another one that seems to suggest the same idea. The world outside with all its angry beasts, then the "head" piece of the T pillar representing perhaps the separate world of the enclosure with its humans as seated birds - spirits waiting to fly? Or not, as the case may be.



I find this portal rather curious. If it is a doorway, why the bar across it?.

The existence of the portals is another reason to think the enclosures were roofed of course.

Also note the cupules - the circular indentations - that ring the doorway. The same thing marks the top of many pillars too. They are a lot of extra work and must have significance. More curiously, they are a very widespread and far more ancient feature of prehistoric art.

So probably invented many times (rather than representing any continuous tradition), but still really baffling to the modern eye. They are an illustration of how quickly we get stuck as soon as we stray from the obvious stuff like "that's a dangerous boar".

For cupules, see http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/preh...tm#description

Evo

Thanks for the excellent posts that have kept this thread on topic despite the hijack.

apeiron

And here is a Nat Geo artist impression, which if accurate, does suggest a considerable human effort was involved. And an intricate purpose. (Also now rather less likely to be roofed from this recreation.)

It may not be inspired by mathematics, but it was definitely inspired by some elaborate system of thought.

From http://science.nationalgeographic.co.../gobekli-tepe/



Also it appears this particular culture was more widespread. Similar pillars are being found elsewhere such as Nevalı Çori and Karahan Tepe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neval%C4%B1_%C3%87ori
http://www.exoriente.org/docs/00019.pdf - (see p6 for pix of pillars there)

These other sites appear to be dated to around 10 kya, rather than 12 kya. So either the traditions at Gobekli Tepe lasted a very long time, or all these sites share a closer date.

Hmm. The questions keep coming.

The Nat Geo article mentions another possibly important factor - the mini ice age in the region that may have disrupted things.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/20...pe/mann-text/2

Of course, it is controversial that the Levant was actually getting going with agriculture at all during the Younger Dryas. But some do argue that the neolithic was already happening in Gobekli Tepe's time.

So again, there is a lot of "context" to consider when interpreting Gobekli Tepe. Someone should write a book about it.

apeiron

This is an interesting 2011 paper that argues for considerable cultural continuity in the fertile crescent. And so against Gobekli Tepe representing some great breakthrough.

The usual battle between the lumpers and splitters then. But it does seem that the way the dead were treated lasts maybe 8000 years.

The paper reports on complex burial practices appearing circa 16 kya, including secondary skull removal and burying with animals.

A Unique Human-Fox Burial from a Pre-Natufian Cemetery in the Levant (Jordan)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3027631/