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

[SimsStuart]

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: anyone 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.

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]

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”?

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

]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.

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.

Schmidt has engaged in some speculation regarding the belief systems of the groups that created Göbekli Tepe, based on comparisons with other shrines and settlements. He assumes shamanic practices and suggests that the T-shaped pillars may represent mythical creatures, perhaps ancestors, whereas he sees a fully articulated belief in gods only developing later in Mesopotamia, associated with extensive temples and palaces. This corresponds well with an ancient Sumerian belief that agriculture, animal husbandry and weaving had been brought to mankind from the sacred mountain Du-Ku, which was inhabited by Annuna—deities, very ancient gods without individual names. Klaus Schmidt identifies this story as an oriental primeval myth that preserves a partial memory of the emerging Neolithic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe#Interpretation_and_importance

"There's more time between Gobekli Tepe and the Sumerian clay tablets [etched in 3300 B.C.] than from Sumer to today," says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who is familiar with Schmidt's work. "Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility."

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html#ixzz1oMMtV36p

So please stop with the unfounded speculations.

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.

They found some human remains OUTSIDE of the enclosures, not inside.

No tombs or graves have been found, although it has been suggested that the site served as a center for a cult of the dead. This is because human remains have been found outside the perimeter of the site,

http://home.comcast.net/~cvn1813/history/ancient/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 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!

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 into Zoroasterism or not.

 

[SimsStuart]

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/Göbekli_Tepe#Interpretation_and_importance



Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html#ixzz1oMMtV36p

So please stop with the unfounded speculations.

They found some human remains OUTSIDE of the enclosures, not inside. http://home.comcast.net/~cvn1813/history/ancient/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.

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 into Zoroasterism or not.

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 perceived nature of hunter gatherer societies.

 

[apeiron]

There is a 2010 radio interview with Schmidt -

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/gobekli-tepe-history-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

We were humiliated by the realisation of how little there was we could give to the Bushmen. Almost everything seemed likely to make life more difficult for them by adding to the litter and weight of their daily round. They themselves had practically no possessions: a loin strap, a skin blanket and a leather satchel. There was nothing that they could not assemble in one minute, wrap up in their blankets and carry on their shoulders for a journey of a thousand miles. They had no sense of possession.

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).

...the food quest is so successful that half the time the people seem not to know what to do with themselves. On the other hand, movement is a condition of this success, more movement in some cases than others, but always enough to rapidly depreciate the satisfactions of property. Of the hunter it is truly said that his wealth is a burden. In his condition of life, goods can become "grievously oppressive", as Gusinde observes, and the more so the longer they are carried around. Certain food collectors do have canoes and a few have dog sleds, but most must carry themselves all the comforts they possess, and so only possesses what they can comfortably carry themselves. Or perhaps only what the women can carry: the men are often left free to reach to the sudden opportunity of the chase or the sudden necessity of defence. As Owen Lattimore wrote in a not too different context, "the pure nomad is the poor nomad". Mobility and property are in contradiction. That wealth quickly becomes more of an encumbrance than a good thing is apparent even to the outsider.

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

One outgrowth of this study centers on the importance of food storage. Building on the work of Testart (1982), I argue that the initial stages of the southern Levant NDT were linked to food storage. Pre-domesticated food storage served as an economic and nutritional foundation for the NDT several thousand years before domestication.

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]

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg441/scaled.php?server=441&filename=gobeklitepe.jpg&res=medium

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]

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?

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/prehistoric/cupules.htm#description

http://amkon.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=4413&d=1308867365

 

[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.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.