7 ms·

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? (2008)

99 points by Petiver 10y ago

throwawayIndian 10y ago
"Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization" Ha! It is hilarious to see west measure 'rise of civilization' against some dumb set of stones wedged by people who probably didn't know how to write. Plain fodder for insular minds. Civilizations in the middle east (such as the now broken Syria) and even Indo-Srilankan subcontinent have been known to have practiced and even have written transcripts of things like heat sensing weaponry, a "nuclear standoff" and an equivalent of what we call theory of atoms -- read about brahmastra or brahmand, for example, in Mahabharat[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata_(disambiguation)
- zepto 10y ago
  What would you measure it against?
  - throwawayIndian 10y ago
    How about a simple infographic timeline of estimated, claimed and measured history? Measure it along time and not some myopic view held by the west (or east).
- clock_tower 10y ago
  If we're going to argue that the Mahabharata is an account of nuclear war, we need to remember that it's extremely similar to the Irish Cattle Raid of Cooley. It's not an account of ancient Indian greatness; it's an account of the death of a previous civilization, which Proto-Indo-European-speaking peoples witnessed from the periphery, recording it in forms that became the garbled accounts surviving in India and Ireland.
  - throwawayIndian 10y ago
    > If we're going to argue that the Mahabharata is an account of nuclear war, we need to remember that it's extremely similar to the Irish Cattle Raid of Cooley. Correct! I would rather measure up 'rise of civilization' against both texts than a stupid set of stones with nothing written on them -- which at best seems like a partial rise of civilization. Hence, the hilarity.
- tarsinge 10y ago
  Could be a great start for a Civilization game cheat/conspiracy theory edition with secret techs like neolithic atomic bomb or ancient aliens spacecrafts
- civilian 10y ago
  We're not... comparing? We're trying to put every event in history into a context, to understand and track humanity's slow trajectory. This isn't about India vs. West (and you're getting downvoted because you're putting it in that context). This is about our earliest roots. For reference, Mahabharata is closer in history to the iPhone, than it is to building of Gobekli Tepe. https://www.quora.com/How-old-are-the-Mahabharata-and-Ramayana https://www.quora.com/How-old-are-the-Mahabharata-and-Ramaya...
- arca_vorago 10y ago
  "known to have practiced and even have written transcripts of things" While I agree with your disdain of the overly western attitude that "civilization" didn't arise until agriculture and other myopic views, I also think you should not be so quick to use their myopia to justify your own, and in that sense, I think your use of the word known is too strong. I think language and writing are a particularly strong indicator of "civilization", whatever the various definition. Now, the problem with the gathas you refer to is that they are supposedly the written version of an oral tradition that is much older, but like the hebrew torah, the veracity of how old that spoken tradition really is, is very much hard to verify and dubious. It is known that many of the spoken word traditions often claim to be older than they really are, for various reasons. The old avestan, which the first gathas were written in, only date to not much before 1000 BC. That doesn't inherently mean the claims of being more ancient are wrong, but it's something to take into consideration, and to be fair, indus-script, the proto-writing in the indus valley (including the proto-elamite) have been dated to ~3500 BC. The point is that I have heard these types of claims, mostly from Indians, that the veda's, etc, are simply the written traditions of 12k+ year old oral traditions, and I find such claims to not be backed up by evidence and are often used as some sort of national pride instead of based on the science. So be careful about wanting to have a claim to the oldest writing which offers some great insight into the ancient world when that isn't verified or verifiable. Because if you wanted to go there, the oldest proto-writings aren't from the indus valley civilization (including the only ~3000 BC sumerian/egyption), but from 7000 BC China, 6000 BC Central/SouthEastern Europe, and 6000 BC Greece, in the Jiahu, Vinca, and Dispillo respectively. So, to summarize, I am just as skeptical of stories about indus valley vedas actually knowing about nuclear war as I am about cannanite stories about the time of the angels who mated with man to produce giants (which they mostly stole from the sumerians anyway). Now, if you just want to talk about erected structural dating, thats a different discussion, which is still why Gobleke Tepe is so unique, because imagine that if the oldest proto-writing is in China around 7000 years ago, Tepe was built roughly twice as long ago as that (14000 BC)! That's why I really like the research on Gobleke Tepe. I have yet to see any really good sources on any older human structures than that. Now, my personal and unverifiable conjecture is that Gobleke Tepe was a temple, but not the kind imagined, and instead was a temple of death or temple of the underworld, but how I came to that conclusion is a story for another time.
- fit2rule 10y ago
  You wouldn't happen to be a fan of Stanislaw Szukalski, by any chance?
clock_tower 10y ago
The most impressive part of Gobekli Tepe is that the site was built by hunter-gatherers -- people with no granaries, no specialists, no taxes or central authorities. This was a very impressive display of community will, and reveals that hunter-gatherer societies were potentially capable of much greater accomplishments (while remaining hunter-gatherers) than we'd previously known of or imagined. I'm reminded of MFAC -- the Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization hypothesis -- which argues that Peruvian/Incan civilization began with fishing instead of agriculture: another of those things that supposedly can't happen. Granaries are very important, but perhaps less so than we think...
- throwawayIndian 10y ago
  > that the site was built by hunter-gatherers Hilarious, ha ha ha! And thus fodder continues… It's almost like the western linguists were there only yesterday: "people with no granaries, no specialists, no taxes or central authorities." :-)
  - vanderZwan 10y ago
    Regardless of your viewpoint, the way you express yourself makes you sound like one of those conspiracy theorists that pats other people on the shoulder saying "don't worry, you'll figure it out some day". Does not help with credibility at all.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- injvstice 10y ago
  What proof is there that they were hunter and gatherers (aside from an assumption based on timeline)? Isn't building an extensive permanent structure a signature of settled people?
  - vanderZwan 10y ago
    That it's the only permanent structure of its kind from that period, and that every other type of artefact from the era we have found so far is very different.
gkya 10y ago
I'm so proud of this as an edessene, and as a human. The assumption was that food civilised us, but Göbeklitepe says that civilisation came first, then we fed it.
netule 10y ago
Amazing article, but for all that's good and your own mental health, don't read the comments.
cr0sh 10y ago
I find a couple of the comments to that article posits something interesting - at least to think about: This site, according to the article, was built by carving these stones, erecting them, then covering them up - the repeating the process on top of the covering, ultimately leading to this "hill". The carvings are of "dangerous creatures". At the bottom of the pits, they found limestone floors (which in the article they speculate it might be a large hunter-gather cemetery). So - why all this effort? In the comments, a couple of people speculate (and that's all it is - pure speculation with no other reasoning) that this site is a large "do not disturb, do not dig here". These speculation go on to suggest that, much like today we are trying to come up with symbols and/or symbology to denote our burying sites of long-lived radioactive waste - that perhaps something of this nature was done by these ancient people. Again - pure speculation, with no facts or other understanding to back it up - but the idea is interesting: Is it biological in nature? Some kind of ancient foe entombed to keep it from killing these hunters? Maybe an ancient "natural nuclear reactor" site that killed people with radiation? Cthulhu? Whatever the truth is (and the truth will likely be very mundane) - the above could easily be interesting fodder for a science fiction or fantasy author!
- thanksforcoming 10y ago
  It's been a few years, but I remember learning about Gobekli Tepe in one of my humanities classes in college. The theory I learned is that it was a non-permanent gathering/ceremonial site (for what reason isn't exactly known), but this article neglects to mention one very interesting thing - there's trace evidence of beer at the site! Makes you wonder what grains were used for first, beer or bread... Also the role that alcohol plays in the rise of civilization. Would these people be warring or otherwise combatitive if they didn't gather every year to drink and feast? http://www.livescience.com/25855-stone-age-beer-brewery-discovered.html http://www.livescience.com/25855-stone-age-beer-brewery-disc...
  - wl 10y ago
    The world's oldest beer recipe, the Hymn to Ninkasi[0], uses the grain for bread ("bappir") first. The bread is then turned into beer. [0] http://www.piney.com/BabNinkasi.html http://www.piney.com/BabNinkasi.html
dalbasal 10y ago
Gobleki Tepeh is such a fascinating site. I love the way it both throws a spanner into historical understandings and alludes to them in interesting ways. It's not just before agriculture, it's just before agriculture, almost moments before. This is also the area where historians think it first happened. That leaves room for curious ideas like agriculture as a byproduct os civilization rather than the other way around. The next oldest settlements are newer, less ornate and well.. settlements. No one can even figure out what Gobleki Tepeh was. Doesn't seem to be buildings. The next oldest sites are the likes of Ain Ghazal & Jericho. These were proto-cities with dwellings. They come with some pretty weird ancient art, but at least we can imagine what these people were up to. They grew crops, lived in houses, buried dead, made statues. They fit into the narrative mould history. Megalithic outdoor sanctuary on a bronze age scale before known agriculture or settlements, at a time when people were supposed to be living in small bands? Beautiful mysteries.

99 points by Petiver 10y ago

"Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization" Ha! It is hilarious to see west measure 'rise of civilization' against some dumb set of stones wedged by people who probably didn't know how to write. Plain fodder for insular minds. Civilizations in the middle east (such as the now broken Syria) and even Indo-Srilankan subcontinent have been known to have practiced and even have written transcripts of things like heat sensing weaponry, a "nuclear standoff" and an equivalent of what we call theory of atoms -- read about brahmastra or brahmand, for example, in Mahabharat[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata_(disambiguation)

zepto 10y ago
What would you measure it against?
- throwawayIndian 10y ago
  How about a simple infographic timeline of estimated, claimed and measured history? Measure it along time and not some myopic view held by the west (or east).
clock_tower 10y ago
If we're going to argue that the Mahabharata is an account of nuclear war, we need to remember that it's extremely similar to the Irish Cattle Raid of Cooley. It's not an account of ancient Indian greatness; it's an account of the death of a previous civilization, which Proto-Indo-European-speaking peoples witnessed from the periphery, recording it in forms that became the garbled accounts surviving in India and Ireland.
- throwawayIndian 10y ago
  > If we're going to argue that the Mahabharata is an account of nuclear war, we need to remember that it's extremely similar to the Irish Cattle Raid of Cooley. Correct! I would rather measure up 'rise of civilization' against both texts than a stupid set of stones with nothing written on them -- which at best seems like a partial rise of civilization. Hence, the hilarity.
tarsinge 10y ago
Could be a great start for a Civilization game cheat/conspiracy theory edition with secret techs like neolithic atomic bomb or ancient aliens spacecrafts
civilian 10y ago
We're not... comparing? We're trying to put every event in history into a context, to understand and track humanity's slow trajectory. This isn't about India vs. West (and you're getting downvoted because you're putting it in that context). This is about our earliest roots. For reference, Mahabharata is closer in history to the iPhone, than it is to building of Gobekli Tepe. https://www.quora.com/How-old-are-the-Mahabharata-and-Ramayana https://www.quora.com/How-old-are-the-Mahabharata-and-Ramaya...
arca_vorago 10y ago
"known to have practiced and even have written transcripts of things" While I agree with your disdain of the overly western attitude that "civilization" didn't arise until agriculture and other myopic views, I also think you should not be so quick to use their myopia to justify your own, and in that sense, I think your use of the word known is too strong. I think language and writing are a particularly strong indicator of "civilization", whatever the various definition. Now, the problem with the gathas you refer to is that they are supposedly the written version of an oral tradition that is much older, but like the hebrew torah, the veracity of how old that spoken tradition really is, is very much hard to verify and dubious. It is known that many of the spoken word traditions often claim to be older than they really are, for various reasons. The old avestan, which the first gathas were written in, only date to not much before 1000 BC. That doesn't inherently mean the claims of being more ancient are wrong, but it's something to take into consideration, and to be fair, indus-script, the proto-writing in the indus valley (including the proto-elamite) have been dated to ~3500 BC. The point is that I have heard these types of claims, mostly from Indians, that the veda's, etc, are simply the written traditions of 12k+ year old oral traditions, and I find such claims to not be backed up by evidence and are often used as some sort of national pride instead of based on the science. So be careful about wanting to have a claim to the oldest writing which offers some great insight into the ancient world when that isn't verified or verifiable. Because if you wanted to go there, the oldest proto-writings aren't from the indus valley civilization (including the only ~3000 BC sumerian/egyption), but from 7000 BC China, 6000 BC Central/SouthEastern Europe, and 6000 BC Greece, in the Jiahu, Vinca, and Dispillo respectively. So, to summarize, I am just as skeptical of stories about indus valley vedas actually knowing about nuclear war as I am about cannanite stories about the time of the angels who mated with man to produce giants (which they mostly stole from the sumerians anyway). Now, if you just want to talk about erected structural dating, thats a different discussion, which is still why Gobleke Tepe is so unique, because imagine that if the oldest proto-writing is in China around 7000 years ago, Tepe was built roughly twice as long ago as that (14000 BC)! That's why I really like the research on Gobleke Tepe. I have yet to see any really good sources on any older human structures than that. Now, my personal and unverifiable conjecture is that Gobleke Tepe was a temple, but not the kind imagined, and instead was a temple of death or temple of the underworld, but how I came to that conclusion is a story for another time.
fit2rule 10y ago
You wouldn't happen to be a fan of Stanislaw Szukalski, by any chance?

clock_tower 10y ago

The most impressive part of Gobekli Tepe is that the site was built by hunter-gatherers -- people with no granaries, no specialists, no taxes or central authorities. This was a very impressive display of community will, and reveals that hunter-gatherer societies were potentially capable of much greater accomplishments (while remaining hunter-gatherers) than we'd previously known of or imagined. I'm reminded of MFAC -- the Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization hypothesis -- which argues that Peruvian/Incan civilization began with fishing instead of agriculture: another of those things that supposedly can't happen. Granaries are very important, but perhaps less so than we think...

throwawayIndian 10y ago
> that the site was built by hunter-gatherers Hilarious, ha ha ha! And thus fodder continues… It's almost like the western linguists were there only yesterday: "people with no granaries, no specialists, no taxes or central authorities." :-)
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  Regardless of your viewpoint, the way you express yourself makes you sound like one of those conspiracy theorists that pats other people on the shoulder saying "don't worry, you'll figure it out some day". Does not help with credibility at all.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
injvstice 10y ago
What proof is there that they were hunter and gatherers (aside from an assumption based on timeline)? Isn't building an extensive permanent structure a signature of settled people?
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  That it's the only permanent structure of its kind from that period, and that every other type of artefact from the era we have found so far is very different.

gkya 10y ago

I'm so proud of this as an edessene, and as a human. The assumption was that food civilised us, but Göbeklitepe says that civilisation came first, then we fed it.

netule 10y ago

Amazing article, but for all that's good and your own mental health, don't read the comments.

cr0sh 10y ago

I find a couple of the comments to that article posits something interesting - at least to think about: This site, according to the article, was built by carving these stones, erecting them, then covering them up - the repeating the process on top of the covering, ultimately leading to this "hill". The carvings are of "dangerous creatures". At the bottom of the pits, they found limestone floors (which in the article they speculate it might be a large hunter-gather cemetery). So - why all this effort? In the comments, a couple of people speculate (and that's all it is - pure speculation with no other reasoning) that this site is a large "do not disturb, do not dig here". These speculation go on to suggest that, much like today we are trying to come up with symbols and/or symbology to denote our burying sites of long-lived radioactive waste - that perhaps something of this nature was done by these ancient people. Again - pure speculation, with no facts or other understanding to back it up - but the idea is interesting: Is it biological in nature? Some kind of ancient foe entombed to keep it from killing these hunters? Maybe an ancient "natural nuclear reactor" site that killed people with radiation? Cthulhu? Whatever the truth is (and the truth will likely be very mundane) - the above could easily be interesting fodder for a science fiction or fantasy author!

thanksforcoming 10y ago
It's been a few years, but I remember learning about Gobekli Tepe in one of my humanities classes in college. The theory I learned is that it was a non-permanent gathering/ceremonial site (for what reason isn't exactly known), but this article neglects to mention one very interesting thing - there's trace evidence of beer at the site! Makes you wonder what grains were used for first, beer or bread... Also the role that alcohol plays in the rise of civilization. Would these people be warring or otherwise combatitive if they didn't gather every year to drink and feast? http://www.livescience.com/25855-stone-age-beer-brewery-discovered.html http://www.livescience.com/25855-stone-age-beer-brewery-disc...
- wl 10y ago
  The world's oldest beer recipe, the Hymn to Ninkasi[0], uses the grain for bread ("bappir") first. The bread is then turned into beer. [0] http://www.piney.com/BabNinkasi.html http://www.piney.com/BabNinkasi.html

dalbasal 10y ago

Gobleki Tepeh is such a fascinating site. I love the way it both throws a spanner into historical understandings and alludes to them in interesting ways. It's not just before agriculture, it's just before agriculture, almost moments before. This is also the area where historians think it first happened. That leaves room for curious ideas like agriculture as a byproduct os civilization rather than the other way around. The next oldest settlements are newer, less ornate and well.. settlements. No one can even figure out what Gobleki Tepeh was. Doesn't seem to be buildings. The next oldest sites are the likes of Ain Ghazal & Jericho. These were proto-cities with dwellings. They come with some pretty weird ancient art, but at least we can imagine what these people were up to. They grew crops, lived in houses, buried dead, made statues. They fit into the narrative mould history. Megalithic outdoor sanctuary on a bronze age scale before known agriculture or settlements, at a time when people were supposed to be living in small bands? Beautiful mysteries.