10,000 year-old temple rewriting archaeology

www.newsweek.com...

"History in the Remaking: A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution. "

"The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: "Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

Schmidt's thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a "Neolithic revolution" 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialized labor, kings, writing, art, and—somewhere on the way to the airplane—organized religion. As far back as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, thinkers have argued that the social compact of cities came first, and only then the "high" religions with their great temples, a paradigm still taught in American high schools.

Originally posted by amaxa
www.newsweek.com...

"History in the Remaking: A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution. "

"The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: "Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

Schmidt's thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a "Neolithic revolution" 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialized labor, kings, writing, art, and—somewhere on the way to the airplane—organized religion. As far back as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, thinkers have argued that the social compact of cities came first, and only then the "high" religions with their great temples, a paradigm still taught in American high schools.

Wiki also has something about this place, and I like it already. It's amazing that we are digging up places and things that show society structured already well before animal husbandry and writing and other things. 11,000 years at least they say, that is great. This paragraph from the wiki article "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 Neolithic.[13] It is also apparent that the animal and other images give no indication of organized violence, i.e., there are no depictions of hunting raids or wounded animals, and the pillar carvings ignore game on which the society mainly subsisted, like deer, in favor of formidable creatures such as lions, snakes, spiders and scorpions.", shows that there's another connection to the Sumerians.

Remember the Noah flood with the ark that is in the Hebrew language and the bible. Well they took that story from Babylonian legends and the Babylonians took it from Sumerian legend and back then it was a legend. Maybe we are slowly figuring out why Western history tries to hide or ignore things like this in the media or MS sciences. They know it contradicts established data and research and if that is done, then they have to come up with another explanation of why organized construction and/or belief in deities and animal husbandry was already being accomplished well before accepted dates. Was their a Neolithic world alot more advanced than we thought, who knows.

en.wikipedia.org...

sweet i wonder why people bag on religion so much

Originally posted by dollarfist
sweet i wonder why people bag on religion so much

I don't think people would bag it if it was all love and peace.

Instead, it's, we kill you if you don't believe what we believe.

Originally posted by wookiee

Originally posted by dollarfist
sweet i wonder why people bag on religion so much

I don't think people would bag it if it was all love and peace.

Instead, it's, we kill you if you don't believe what we believe.

Not exactly. Whenever anybody believes in something, and then decides to join a lot of other people who believe the same thing, what they're basically saying is, "I'm right and you're wrong." and "I know the Truth, and because of that, I am a better person than you."

The implication is always there, and can't be avoided.

So if you don't believe what they believe, or believe something else entirely, you can see where there's going to be some friction, if not downright conflict. Nobody likes to have someone else tell them they are ignorant or wrong.

stupid double post.

time to change the batteries in the mouse.

[edit on 27-2-2010 by bigfatfurrytexan]

reply to post by amaxa



This site has been the fodder for countless assertions of high civilization in antiquity.

The assumption that religion drove man to civilization is quite a leap. I will be interested to read the thesis.

My question, i suppose, would therefore be, "What psychologial basis do we ascribe to assume that it was religion that drove them to civilization?" Is there a reversal of causation, possibly? Or, maybe they found religion AND built cities due to the same cause?

A whole new set of questions emerges. It will be very interesting to see what happens. It will also be interesting to see what kinds of snake oil Hawass concocts to bring attention back to Egypt? Maybe we will finally see something about what lies under Giza?

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
My question, i suppose, would therefore be, "What psychologial basis do we ascribe to assume that it was religion that drove them to civilization?" Is there a reversal of causation, possibly? Or, maybe they found religion AND built cities due to the same cause?

That's a good question, and I think it says something about the bias of the researchers. If you study "less civilized" areas, the idea that they would build a city to serve religion doesn't make much sense -- unless it's in the terms of "made a temple on a place sacred to many clans and had guardians (to prevent fighting? To make sure the place was undesecrated?)."

But the cities come out of a time when the Earth's climate was changing. People were staying closer to resources (and claiming them... like fishing areas). Suddenly they had to deal with groups of more than 20 families -- and deal with problems like garbage and sanitation and saving and increasing the food resources in an area.

I don't see religion sparking this. Hunger and the desire to trade, yes. "Because the wind told us"... no.

I don't see Hawass doing anything to bring attention back to Egypt. It's not like Egypt gets forgotten, y'know. It's the OTHER places that get forgotten!

[edit on 3-3-2010 by Byrd]