Through the radiocarbon method, the end of Layer III can be fixed at about 9000 BCE (see above) but it is believed that the elevated location may have functioned as a spiritual center by 11,000 BCE or even earlier, essentially at the very end of the Pleistocene.
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The surviving structures, then, not only predate pottery, metallurgy, and the invention of writing or the wheel, they were built before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, i.e., the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry around 9000 BCE. But the construction of Göbekli Tepe implies organization of an advanced order not hitherto associated with Paleolithic, PPNA, or PPNB societies. Archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the heavy pillars from local quarries and move them 100–500 meters (330–1,640 ft) to the site. The pillars weigh 10–20 metric tons (10–20 long tons; 11–22 short tons), with one still in the quarry weighing 50 tons.
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At present Göbekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. It remains unknown how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and compensated or fed in the conditions of pre-sedentary society.
I admit I am not a student of history or anthropology, but finding Gobekli Tepe seems like discovering a working grandfather clock in orbit around Saturn. 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.
Which the prevailing interpretation does not permit. It appears that rather than throwing all the old interpretations out the window, mainstream archaeological establishment has decided that those 20 ton stones were being hewn, transported and placed by … hunter-gatherers. Teams of 500 hunter-gatherers, I guess?
I’m going to come clean and admit that I’ve been listening to the Joe Rogan podcast, and specifically to his guests who subscribe to the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. The idea here is that humanity had started forming true civilizations before 10,000 BC, and a comet impact or airburst over one of the ice sheets caused a huge fireball and flood that led to mass extinctions and the annihilation of civilization. There seems to be a decent case for this theory, but as an uneducated bystander, I can’t tell from the outside if I’m looking at crackpots who are cherry-picking evidence, or trailblazing iconoclasts who are at the forefront of the reinvention of a new paradigm.
I admit that I Want To Believe, and that makes it hard to reason objectively, particularly in what may be an epistemically hostile environment where charlatans (or academic holdouts) may or may not be trying to manipulate what evidence makes it to the layman investigator.
Overall, this seems like an interesting field test for rationalist skills.
Archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the heavy pillars from local quarries and move them
I wouldn’t take this claim for granted, perhaps I can contact one of these archaeologists, to check how they reached their estimate?
There’s not many pixels in this source but it explains a concept for low manpower block moving using simple tools probably available to pre-farming civilizations.
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..?
The idea here is that humanity had started forming true civilizations before 10,000 BC, and a comet impact or airburst over one of the ice sheets caused a huge fireball and flood that led to mass extinctions and the annihilation of civilization
There’s no mystery about what caused the quaternary mass extinction—humans reached the Americas and wiped out the ecologically naive megafauna.
If I remember correctly, it showed up in Sapiens. One suspicion is that a bunch of tribes used it as their periodic meeting ground, and that it led to the invention of agriculture in the region because of the frequent human visitation.
This seems plausible to me, especially if it’s constructed bit by bit over many years. (How they would do the quarrying in the first place seems weirdest in my model.)
I think it’s just a simple case of “Flint hard, limestone soft, scratch the limestone with the flint point, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...”
I wonder at which point the stone-cutting tools stopped being stone themselves.. Bronze is probably too soft and even early iron might have been too soft and too expensive to use for stone-cutting.
Have you heard of Gobekli Tepe?
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I admit I am not a student of history or anthropology, but finding Gobekli Tepe seems like discovering a working grandfather clock in orbit around Saturn. 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.
Which the prevailing interpretation does not permit. It appears that rather than throwing all the old interpretations out the window, mainstream archaeological establishment has decided that those 20 ton stones were being hewn, transported and placed by … hunter-gatherers. Teams of 500 hunter-gatherers, I guess?
I’m going to come clean and admit that I’ve been listening to the Joe Rogan podcast, and specifically to his guests who subscribe to the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. The idea here is that humanity had started forming true civilizations before 10,000 BC, and a comet impact or airburst over one of the ice sheets caused a huge fireball and flood that led to mass extinctions and the annihilation of civilization. There seems to be a decent case for this theory, but as an uneducated bystander, I can’t tell from the outside if I’m looking at crackpots who are cherry-picking evidence, or trailblazing iconoclasts who are at the forefront of the reinvention of a new paradigm.
I admit that I Want To Believe, and that makes it hard to reason objectively, particularly in what may be an epistemically hostile environment where charlatans (or academic holdouts) may or may not be trying to manipulate what evidence makes it to the layman investigator.
Overall, this seems like an interesting field test for rationalist skills.
I wouldn’t take this claim for granted, perhaps I can contact one of these archaeologists, to check how they reached their estimate?
There’s not many pixels in this source but it explains a concept for low manpower block moving using simple tools probably available to pre-farming civilizations.
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..?
There’s no mystery about what caused the quaternary mass extinction—humans reached the Americas and wiped out the ecologically naive megafauna.
If I remember correctly, it showed up in Sapiens. One suspicion is that a bunch of tribes used it as their periodic meeting ground, and that it led to the invention of agriculture in the region because of the frequent human visitation.
This seems plausible to me, especially if it’s constructed bit by bit over many years. (How they would do the quarrying in the first place seems weirdest in my model.)
I think it’s just a simple case of “Flint hard, limestone soft, scratch the limestone with the flint point, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...”
I wonder at which point the stone-cutting tools stopped being stone themselves.. Bronze is probably too soft and even early iron might have been too soft and too expensive to use for stone-cutting.