Originally posted by Phage
When a stone was cut (or added to a wall) cannot be determined without using carbon dating of organic materials associated with them.

The archaeologists did find evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. And because those artifacts closely resemble others from nearby sites previously carbon-dated to about 9000 B.C., Schmidt and co-workers estimate that Gobekli Tepe's stone structures are the same age. Limited carbon dating undertaken by Schmidt at the site confirms this assessment.

The Hd samples are from charcoal in the lowest levels of the site and would date the active phase of occupation. The Ua samples come from pedogenic carbonate coatings on pillars and only indicate a time after the site was abandoned—the terminus ante quem. [4]

The "pottery" found there wasn't pottery at all.Here's a LINK that shows that the so-called "pottery" was simply sediment that had been cemented together through the natural workings of tube worms of various kinds on the ocean floor.

The Pleistocene (pronounced /ˈplaɪstəsiːn/) is the epoch from 2.588 million to 12 000 years BP covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations.

Each glacial advance tied up huge volumes of water in continental ice sheets 1500–3000 m thick, resulting in temporary sea level drops of 100 m or more over the entire surface of the Earth. During interglacial times, such as at present, drowned coastlines were common, mitigated by isostatic or other emergent motion of some regions.

THE FIRST INHABITANTS : Last May, the Australian National University released this photograph, taken in 1974, of the skeleton of a man from Lake Mungo, NSW which the university has now dated at between 56,000 and 68,000 years old. Previously, the remains had been dated at just 30,000 years old. REUTERS FILE PHOTO

Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) researchers have opened a window into the past by exposing ancient mangrove forests entombed beneath the Great Barrier Reef.

AIMS biologist Dr Dan Alongi said the expedition was surveying the impact of nutrients on coastal inshore areas when scientists unearthed mangrove forests in old river channels they believe may snake for 30 kilometres to the edge of the continental shelf.

Scientists have long theorised that sea level rose very gradually over several thousand years, but these remnant mangrove forests tell another story.

While it was previously known that relic river beds exist beneath the Great Barrier Reef, formed 9000 years ago when the sea level was lower than the continental shelf, their significance was never studied.

"When we took the first samples it was difficult to believe… we stood amazed wondering what exactly we were dealing with. We thought it was cyclone debris, but it was far too deep to be a modern event," said Dr Alongi.

AIMS researchers cored 1-2 metres of sediment and found remnant mangrove 70 centimetres below the surface of the present seafloor.

These core samples of mud are an evolutionary time frame. The evidence will help to establish the state of the reef and nutrient sediment information as it existed prior to human activity.

Dr Alongi said the mangroves were incredibly well preserved; a fact most likely attributed to the antibiotic properties in the concentrated tannins. "The cores still have the characteristic smell of tannins, that’s why we thought they were young.

"Within the cores were intact root systems and parts of trees including twigs and branches that radiocarbon dating put between 8550 and 8740 years of age.

"There’s such an abrupt change in core composition from mud-like substance to intact mangrove branches…from the modern to the ancient, that it suggests a large climate change happened," said Dr Alongi.

Migration was achieved during the closing stages of the Pleistocene, when sea levels were much lower than they are today. Repeated episodes of extended glaciation during the Pleistocene epoch, resulted in decreases of sea levels by more than 100 metres in Australasia. The continental coastline extended much further out into the Timor Sea, and Australia and New Guinea formed a single landmass (known as Sahul), connected by an extensive land bridge across the Arafura Sea, Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait. Nevertheless, the sea still presented a major obstacle so it is theorised that these ancestral people reached Australia by island hopping. Two routes have been proposed. One follows an island chain between Sulawesi and New Guinea and the other reaches North Western Australia via Timor.

The sharing of animal and plant species between Australia-New Guinea and nearby Indonesian islands is another consequence of the early land bridges, which closed when sea levels rose with the end of the last glacial period. The sea level stabilised to near its present levels about 6000 years ago, flooding the land bridge between Australia and New Guinea.