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Thanks for pointing this out, I was unclear. The era we call the "Neolithic" does indeed start a bit earlier, and the earliest layers of the site are within the

Thanks for pointing this out, I was unclear. The era we call the "Neolithic" does indeed start a bit earlier, and the earliest layers of the site are within the PPNA. Sometimes we use the term neolithic to refer to certain sets of economic and cultural modes, the so-called "Neolithic Package". The general thinking has been that the earliest layers and probably the site as a whole were not made by one of these groups. There's been a long-running argument that all of the elements of a really old, really bad concept called "civilization" require this so-called "neolithic package" to be invented. All the other known examples post-dated the earliest of these societies, and the (dumb) explanation was just that the ideas had diffused from more "sophisticated" societies. Gobekli Tepe was clear evidence against that.

garmaine 6y ago
It's also very region-specific. Because of the euro-centrism of these fields in their traditional naming schemes, the "Neolithic revolution" often refers to the invasion/migration of Neolithic peoples into better documented regions, in particular Western Europe. That happened after Göbekli Tepe. But if you ask "where did the Neolithic people come from" the answer is somewhere in central or western Asia. And presumably they developed their technology and society over thousands of years before taking the world by storm, so that puts Göbekli Tepe (potentially!) inside the bounds of the Neolithic peoples.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago
  Often words like "Neolithic" (like Iron Age) are no longer used by experts but they linger on.
riffraff 6y ago
thank you for the explanation!