It seems like it should be absolutely devastating to any narrative of history that doesn’t involve large, organized civilizations in, at the latest, 9,000 BC.
500 people is not a “large, organized” civilization. The town of Jericho is supposed to have had a population of 2-3,000 people around the same time. Calling it a “civilization” is aIso debatable. I really don’t see anything earth-shaking about this.
There seems to be a decent case for this theory
That’s evidence for the theory that the Younger Dryas were caused by an extraterrestrial impact, not for the theory of “true civilizations before 10,000 BC”.
500 people is not a “large, organized” civilization. The town of Jericho is supposed to have had a population of 2-3,000 people around the same time. Calling it a “civilization” is aIso debatable. I really don’t see anything earth-shaking about this.
I feel like you’re missing what makes this case interesting, that our best evidence makes it look like this happened before agriculture and animal husbandry, not after. 500 people is a lot of people to have in one place with only hunting and gathering.
Jericho came about three thousand years after Gobekli Tepe, if one takes the dating estimates at face value.
It is worth noting that even mainstream archaeologists who aren’t on board with the idea of mysterious ancient civilizations and impact extinctions think Gobekli Tepe is weird and not easily explicable. They assert that it would build by hunter-gatherers despite the fact that this contradicts their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish.
Yeah, but the thing is, I don’t see anything terribly important about facts which “contradict their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish” since I think their usual model should come with a large warning label “EPISTEMIC STATUS: UNCERTAIN”. If you have a collection of guesses based on sparse data, you should be prepared to revise these guesses when new data comes in.
It’s a big deal if you staked your academic career on one of those guesses; otherwise, not so much.
500 people is not a “large, organized” civilization. The town of Jericho is supposed to have had a population of 2-3,000 people around the same time.
True, but these are arguably a lot more like “large, organized civilizations” than “isolated bands of foragers”. What this suggests is that complex social organization may have been a fairly gradual development occurring over thousands of years, as opposed to a sudden shift resulting from the adoption of agriculture or animal herding. But this is a rather small and local “tweak” on the ‘prevailing interpretation’.
these are arguably a lot more like “large, organized civilizations” than “isolated bands of foragers”
It’s the “isolated” word that’s carrying most of the weight here and I don’t see any reason to consider the hunter-gatherer tribes of that age isolated.
Now, contemporary stone-age tribes are all very isolated, but that is clearly a selection effect. If you’re a forager tribe 10 kya, why wouldn’t you interact (sometimes cooperate, sometimes fight) with other similar tribes around you?
I’m not really in a position to contradict anybody on this topic, but I can’t seem to Google up any info about Jerico that supports that claim, unless you expand your window of “around that time” by a couple of thousand years. I am prepared to be wrong about this, and will keep looking. Regardless, I am still having a hard time imagining a supposedly pre-writing, pre-pottery, literally stone age civilization building something like Gobekli Tepe. In an admittedly naive framing, if you just look at Gobekli Tepe, it seems more extensive and sophisticated than anything we see for another 4000 years or so, when the Sumerians start building their cities.
As for the relevance of the link I posted, you’re right, I debated whether to include the link at all. I decided to include it because it does constitute evidence for a significant, environment-shifting celestial event occurring within that window of time.
Wikipedia says so, but doesn’t provide a supporting reference.
With respect to Gobeliki Tepe, keep in mind that it was not a town, that is, not where people lived. The best guess is that it was some sort of a spiritual/religious/temple kind of place.
But in any case, haven’t we’ve been doing “How could those savages have built THAT?!??” since XIX century England and Stonehenge..?
500 people is not a “large, organized” civilization. The town of Jericho is supposed to have had a population of 2-3,000 people around the same time. Calling it a “civilization” is aIso debatable. I really don’t see anything earth-shaking about this.
That’s evidence for the theory that the Younger Dryas were caused by an extraterrestrial impact, not for the theory of “true civilizations before 10,000 BC”.
I feel like you’re missing what makes this case interesting, that our best evidence makes it look like this happened before agriculture and animal husbandry, not after. 500 people is a lot of people to have in one place with only hunting and gathering.
Jericho came about three thousand years after Gobekli Tepe, if one takes the dating estimates at face value.
Not if they gather for a few weeks or so, and then disperse.
It is worth noting that even mainstream archaeologists who aren’t on board with the idea of mysterious ancient civilizations and impact extinctions think Gobekli Tepe is weird and not easily explicable. They assert that it would build by hunter-gatherers despite the fact that this contradicts their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish.
Yeah, but the thing is, I don’t see anything terribly important about facts which “contradict their usual model of what hunter-gatherers should be able to accomplish” since I think their usual model should come with a large warning label “EPISTEMIC STATUS: UNCERTAIN”. If you have a collection of guesses based on sparse data, you should be prepared to revise these guesses when new data comes in.
It’s a big deal if you staked your academic career on one of those guesses; otherwise, not so much.
True, but these are arguably a lot more like “large, organized civilizations” than “isolated bands of foragers”. What this suggests is that complex social organization may have been a fairly gradual development occurring over thousands of years, as opposed to a sudden shift resulting from the adoption of agriculture or animal herding. But this is a rather small and local “tweak” on the ‘prevailing interpretation’.
It’s the “isolated” word that’s carrying most of the weight here and I don’t see any reason to consider the hunter-gatherer tribes of that age isolated.
Now, contemporary stone-age tribes are all very isolated, but that is clearly a selection effect. If you’re a forager tribe 10 kya, why wouldn’t you interact (sometimes cooperate, sometimes fight) with other similar tribes around you?
I’m not really in a position to contradict anybody on this topic, but I can’t seem to Google up any info about Jerico that supports that claim, unless you expand your window of “around that time” by a couple of thousand years. I am prepared to be wrong about this, and will keep looking. Regardless, I am still having a hard time imagining a supposedly pre-writing, pre-pottery, literally stone age civilization building something like Gobekli Tepe. In an admittedly naive framing, if you just look at Gobekli Tepe, it seems more extensive and sophisticated than anything we see for another 4000 years or so, when the Sumerians start building their cities.
As for the relevance of the link I posted, you’re right, I debated whether to include the link at all. I decided to include it because it does constitute evidence for a significant, environment-shifting celestial event occurring within that window of time.
Wikipedia says so, but doesn’t provide a supporting reference.
With respect to Gobeliki Tepe, keep in mind that it was not a town, that is, not where people lived. The best guess is that it was some sort of a spiritual/religious/temple kind of place.
But in any case, haven’t we’ve been doing “How could those savages have built THAT?!??” since XIX century England and Stonehenge..?