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

[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.com/science/archaeology/photos/gobekli-tepe/

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/354/cache/gobekli-full_35417_600x450.jpg

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/Nevalı_Çori
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/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text/2

Natufian villages ran into hard times around 10,800 B.C., when regional temperatures abruptly fell some 12°F, part of a mini ice age that lasted 1,200 years and created much drier conditions across the Fertile Crescent. With animal habitat and grain patches shrinking, a number of villages suddenly became too populous for the local food supply. Many people once again became wandering foragers, searching the landscape for remaining food sources.

Some settlements tried to adjust to the more arid conditions. The village of Abu Hureyra, in what is now northern Syria, seemingly tried to cultivate local stands of rye, perhaps replanting them. After examining rye grains from the site, Gordon Hillman of University College London and Andrew Moore of the Rochester Institute of Technology argued in 2000 that some were bigger than their wild equivalents—a possible sign of domestication, because cultivation inevitably increases qualities, such as fruit and seed size, that people find valuable. Bar-Yosef and some other researchers came to believe that nearby sites like Mureybet and Tell Qaramel also had had agriculture...

...The Natufian sites in the Levant suggested instead that settlement came first and that farming arose later, as a product of crisis.

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/

...these burials suggest cultural continuity in the region that stretches from the Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 18,000 cal BP) into the Neolithic some 10,000 years later. This continuity is even more striking as it extends over a period of massive social, technological, economic and ideological change. Before this discovery, it was possible to argue a cultural break between the mobile hunter-gatherer traditions of the Early/Middle Epipalaeolithic and the sedentary ‘socially-complex’ predecessors of Neolithic farmers. Now, the cultural linkage in mortuary practices between Early/Middle and Late Epipalaeolithic groups requires that we look to the full range of factors that drove the development of social change in the southern Levant, rather than attributing these developments to some kind of cultural or ideological break.

 

[zoobyshoe]

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/354/cache/gobekli-full_35417_600x450.jpg

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]

Looking at this I am suddenly surprised to realize there is no way into the center.

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]

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.

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

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]

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

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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

You're right! I didn't notice that blocking wall in the shadow.

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?

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]

This is a common misconception, but the notion that medievals thought the Earth was flat is a modern American myth. The anti-clerical Washington Irving, among others, perpetuated this myth as an attack on the "idiocy" of the organized religion.

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]

Assuming the models are more or less accurate, they show how 'un-geometric' these things were. The layout has a Hundertwasser feel to it, naive and childlike:

http://www.masterworksfineart.com/inventory/hundertwasser/

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.