78 ms·

Göbekli Tepe

139 points by areoform 6y ago

proce55ing 6y ago
It took a bit to get used to the narrative style, but After the Ice was a good tour of early humanity. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019997 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019997
- mkl 6y ago
  Agreed, I highly recommend it. It's a thick book, but covers a lot of ground.
  - nkoren 6y ago
    It looks like that book is from 2006, predating widespread recognition of Göbekli Tepe's significance. At the time, from my recollection, the mainstream view as that human culture at 10k BPE was nowhere near being able to produce the kind of social organisation that a complex like Göbekli Tepe would require. Was the book ahead of its time in recognising the potential for something like Göbekli Tepe? Or does it need a new edition, in light of what's been discovered?
    - pps 6y ago
      There is quite a lot about Göbekli Tepe and Jerf el Ahmar in chapter "Pictograms and Pillars". About the people who did it and how they made it. Not sure if something new was found since then. EDIT: Ok, there are definitely some new ideas https://astronomy.com/news/2020/09/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-astronomical-observatory https://astronomy.com/news/2020/09/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-f...
    - pastrami_panda 6y ago
      There's been several huge discoveries since 2006, especially in Turkey. I'm also interested if there's an up to date (or revised) book covering this topic.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Well, here are some quotes from it: "When standing on that hilltop late on an October afternoon in AD 2002 I truly felt that it had been at Göbekli and not Jericho that the history of the world had turned.", "Çatalhöyük turned out to be quite simply the most remarkable Neolithic settlement ever discovered – although that status must now be shared with, or perhaps even surrendered to, Göbekli Tepe." The book certainly makes its significance clear, and explains the unexpected early social organisation required.
nelsonmandela 6y ago
Is it true it is only partially excavated and the Turks refuse to remove any more soil? Edit: This is a claim by Graham Hancock which I was just reminded of
- robbiep 6y ago
  Graham Hancock is brilliant at muddying the waters (saying this as someone who used to read everything he put out - i was enthralled at the mystery of an ancient civilisation that gave birth to all the rest, but nothing over the last 30 years has been substantiated and he loves working the underdog/anti-consensus angle so in my opinion that’s his entire bent, he revels in casting aspersions on well established archeological convention) so I’m not too sure about that, this post suggests it’s still being excavated [0] Interestingly, there have been some recent excavations that suggest there are some sites that may be even older [1] [0] https://www.thetravel.com/gobekli-tepe-still-being-excavated/ https://www.thetravel.com/gobekli-tepe-still-being-excavated... [1] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/ancient-site-older-than-gobeklitepe-unearthed-in-turkey/1664156 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/ancient-site-older-than-gob...
- sgt101 6y ago
  >>"and the Turks refuse to remove any more soil?" I have no connection to this, but if I was in charge of a site like Gobekli Tepe I would absolutely shut down all work until I was absolutely sure that the people who were going to work on it were a) funded out of the kazzzoo, b) the best people in the world to do it, c) using methods that would not do damage and stop subsequent generations from squeezing more knoweldge than I could imagine from the site. I would want to know exactly what was being looked for and why before I allowed the smallest trowel to scoop the smallest bit of earth off it. Why? Because if in three years someone popped up and told me that there were a slew of important questions that were now off the agenda because I permitted a world heritage site to be trashed I'd be quite upset frankly.
  - edmundsauto 6y ago
    This is a good and interesting point. It's not like it's decaying while buried - where is the urgency coming from?
starik36 6y ago
Great Turkish drama about it called The Gift is on Netflix.
- bwanab 6y ago
  Excellent drama series.
pieteradejong 6y ago
Graham Hancock talks about this on several of his Joe Rogan episodes.
- phreeza 6y ago
  Graham Hancock always gave me a strong pseudoscience vibe, do you think he should be taken seriously?
  - robbiep 6y ago
    He’s a great populariser of bullshit. Interesting theories but nothing over 30 years of building unsubstantiated theories out of thin threads of evidence that aren’t connected
    - Melting_Harps 6y ago
      > He’s a great populariser of bullshit. Interesting theories but nothing over 30 years of building unsubstantiated theories out of thin threads of evidence that aren’t connected What about his work that led to the acceptance of the Younger Dryas period being a result of the asteroid impact, that was refuted in academia for so long that is now been proven with time? That revelation alone is worth more PhDs than most entire departments create in a decade!
      - robbiep 6y ago
        I’m not hugely familiar with his contributions to this, but if you throw 10,000 darts at a board, you get one bullseye. It doesn’t make you a genius. As another poster said, his theories are interesting (I spent several days as a teenager running through all sorts of measurements trying to work out the megalithic yard and see if door measurements/side measurements in other monuments could be related, and found it fascinating when in the sign and the seal/hiriam’s key the original of the megalithic yard was discovered), but the benal/fascinating realities of the unit of measurement are a long way from the phantasmagorical claims made in heaven’s mirror and fingerprints of the gods
fireattack 6y ago
Just saw someone mentioned Göbekli Tepe on Reddit in the same hour, lol. What a coincidence.
- Kyro38 6y ago
  me too ! Probably not a coincidence :)
- user-the-name 6y ago
  You have not noticed yet that a good fraction of posts on HN are just things someone saw in another HN or Reddit discussion, that they then reposted as a separate submission?
m00dy 6y ago
I visited this place when I was in Turkey. You can ask me anything through first person observer (FPO)
- naringas 6y ago
  does it look normal sized? I ask because I know from pictures and the internet that (for instance) Petra is not human sized
  - simonh 6y ago
    It doesn't look particularly outsized. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-to-mark-turkish-tourism-in-2019-140023 https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-to-mark-turkis... But then how many cathedrals or major monuments are built to human scale? One of my favourite examples is from a temple to Ishtar in Syria: https://romeartlover.tripod.com/Aindara5.jpg https://romeartlover.tripod.com/Aindara5.jpg Those footprints are about a metre long.
    - mkl 6y ago
      The last picture is now a useless "image hosted by tripod" placeholder. There is a picture here: https://www.alamy.com/ain-dara-iron-age-syrohittite-temple-footprints-1300-bc-740-bc-syria-photo-before-syrian-civil-war-image211451778.html https://www.alamy.com/ain-dara-iron-age-syrohittite-temple-f... (There is a huge amount of conspiracy nonsense coming up when I search for this stuff.)
      - ncmncm 6y ago
        Very obviously not actual footprints. But they do tell us something concrete about how the builders who carved them imagined their gods.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > I visited this place when I was in Turkey. I follow the work of Graham Hancock quite closely but how did the artwork appear to you? The need for the specialized tools to bore the holes or mae those 3d outward busts on stone are incredibly advanced and the accuracy of these depictions of animals and peoples seen on stone predates what most archaeologists place Agriculture at ~10,000 years ago, which coincidentally is also in this part of Turkey. Most tools from nomadic people before the advent of Agriculture were likely for hunting, and cutting meat or building fires and clothes, not precision based specialized tools so this site opens the door to the notion that very specialized tools being used prior to this period for ornamental or sacred purposes in Human History was already common practice. Personally speaking, after having done agriculture myself, I think agriculture its closer to 20-30,000 years old and sites like this and the one in Indonesia re-enforce my hypothesis as you cannot make these monoliths without several generations of a very well refined work force that requires specialization and surpluses of food and water only possible due to a systematic application of horticulture and domestication of livestock. What were your biggest takeaways, and how much would you say is still left to unearth? It is my understanding most of it is still underground and other sites have yet to be even approved or greenlit for excavation due to political and warfare issues, was that still the case when you were there?
momo93 6y ago
been there. Amazing
gk1 6y ago
There are beautiful ruins all throughout Turkey, completely out in the open. You can walk through a park and find yourself stepping over ancient mosaics and columns, the kinds you'd find behind velvet ropes and glass partitions in Italy or Greece.
- prepend 6y ago
  One of my dreams is to walk the Lycean Way [0] where I’ve read that the remote trails have you camping among ruins. It seems amazing that there’s still so many ancient ruins just laying about and accessible to humans. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycian_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycian_Way
  - gk1 6y ago
    That's a terrific trek. I've only done one small segment, Faralya to Fethiye, and enjoyed it so much I want to return to do the entire length... Some day.
- jpcooper 6y ago
  Termessos is one. An ancient Greek city up a mountain. Imagine an amphitheatre with a view in every direction. The burial site is open for you to climb around and over. It's near Antalya. Check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termessos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termessos
rendall 6y ago
Cesare Emiliani and Kurzegesagt make the case that we think of world civilization as much newer than it is, because our year count is now only to 2021. They argue for instead bumping our year by 10,000 to more truly reflect the age of our civilization, to 12,021, and (arbitrarily) commemorating Göbleki Tepe as its foundation https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/94EO00895 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/94EO... https://youtu.be/czgOWmtGVGs https://youtu.be/czgOWmtGVGs (2016 or 12016)

139 points by areoform 6y ago

It took a bit to get used to the narrative style, but After the Ice was a good tour of early humanity. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019997 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019997

mkl 6y ago
Agreed, I highly recommend it. It's a thick book, but covers a lot of ground.
- nkoren 6y ago
  It looks like that book is from 2006, predating widespread recognition of Göbekli Tepe's significance. At the time, from my recollection, the mainstream view as that human culture at 10k BPE was nowhere near being able to produce the kind of social organisation that a complex like Göbekli Tepe would require. Was the book ahead of its time in recognising the potential for something like Göbekli Tepe? Or does it need a new edition, in light of what's been discovered?
  - pps 6y ago
    There is quite a lot about Göbekli Tepe and Jerf el Ahmar in chapter "Pictograms and Pillars". About the people who did it and how they made it. Not sure if something new was found since then. EDIT: Ok, there are definitely some new ideas https://astronomy.com/news/2020/09/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-astronomical-observatory https://astronomy.com/news/2020/09/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-f...
  - pastrami_panda 6y ago
    There's been several huge discoveries since 2006, especially in Turkey. I'm also interested if there's an up to date (or revised) book covering this topic.
  - mkl 6y ago
    Well, here are some quotes from it: "When standing on that hilltop late on an October afternoon in AD 2002 I truly felt that it had been at Göbekli and not Jericho that the history of the world had turned.", "Çatalhöyük turned out to be quite simply the most remarkable Neolithic settlement ever discovered – although that status must now be shared with, or perhaps even surrendered to, Göbekli Tepe." The book certainly makes its significance clear, and explains the unexpected early social organisation required.

nelsonmandela 6y ago

Is it true it is only partially excavated and the Turks refuse to remove any more soil? Edit: This is a claim by Graham Hancock which I was just reminded of

robbiep 6y ago
Graham Hancock is brilliant at muddying the waters (saying this as someone who used to read everything he put out - i was enthralled at the mystery of an ancient civilisation that gave birth to all the rest, but nothing over the last 30 years has been substantiated and he loves working the underdog/anti-consensus angle so in my opinion that’s his entire bent, he revels in casting aspersions on well established archeological convention) so I’m not too sure about that, this post suggests it’s still being excavated [0] Interestingly, there have been some recent excavations that suggest there are some sites that may be even older [1] [0] https://www.thetravel.com/gobekli-tepe-still-being-excavated/ https://www.thetravel.com/gobekli-tepe-still-being-excavated... [1] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/ancient-site-older-than-gobeklitepe-unearthed-in-turkey/1664156 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/ancient-site-older-than-gob...
sgt101 6y ago
>>"and the Turks refuse to remove any more soil?" I have no connection to this, but if I was in charge of a site like Gobekli Tepe I would absolutely shut down all work until I was absolutely sure that the people who were going to work on it were a) funded out of the kazzzoo, b) the best people in the world to do it, c) using methods that would not do damage and stop subsequent generations from squeezing more knoweldge than I could imagine from the site. I would want to know exactly what was being looked for and why before I allowed the smallest trowel to scoop the smallest bit of earth off it. Why? Because if in three years someone popped up and told me that there were a slew of important questions that were now off the agenda because I permitted a world heritage site to be trashed I'd be quite upset frankly.
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  This is a good and interesting point. It's not like it's decaying while buried - where is the urgency coming from?

starik36 6y ago

Great Turkish drama about it called The Gift is on Netflix.

bwanab 6y ago
Excellent drama series.

pieteradejong 6y ago

Graham Hancock talks about this on several of his Joe Rogan episodes.

phreeza 6y ago
Graham Hancock always gave me a strong pseudoscience vibe, do you think he should be taken seriously?
- robbiep 6y ago
  He’s a great populariser of bullshit. Interesting theories but nothing over 30 years of building unsubstantiated theories out of thin threads of evidence that aren’t connected
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > He’s a great populariser of bullshit. Interesting theories but nothing over 30 years of building unsubstantiated theories out of thin threads of evidence that aren’t connected What about his work that led to the acceptance of the Younger Dryas period being a result of the asteroid impact, that was refuted in academia for so long that is now been proven with time? That revelation alone is worth more PhDs than most entire departments create in a decade!
    - robbiep 6y ago
      I’m not hugely familiar with his contributions to this, but if you throw 10,000 darts at a board, you get one bullseye. It doesn’t make you a genius. As another poster said, his theories are interesting (I spent several days as a teenager running through all sorts of measurements trying to work out the megalithic yard and see if door measurements/side measurements in other monuments could be related, and found it fascinating when in the sign and the seal/hiriam’s key the original of the megalithic yard was discovered), but the benal/fascinating realities of the unit of measurement are a long way from the phantasmagorical claims made in heaven’s mirror and fingerprints of the gods

fireattack 6y ago

Just saw someone mentioned Göbekli Tepe on Reddit in the same hour, lol. What a coincidence.

Kyro38 6y ago
me too ! Probably not a coincidence :)
user-the-name 6y ago
You have not noticed yet that a good fraction of posts on HN are just things someone saw in another HN or Reddit discussion, that they then reposted as a separate submission?

m00dy 6y ago

I visited this place when I was in Turkey. You can ask me anything through first person observer (FPO)

naringas 6y ago
does it look normal sized? I ask because I know from pictures and the internet that (for instance) Petra is not human sized
- simonh 6y ago
  It doesn't look particularly outsized. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-to-mark-turkish-tourism-in-2019-140023 https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-to-mark-turkis... But then how many cathedrals or major monuments are built to human scale? One of my favourite examples is from a temple to Ishtar in Syria: https://romeartlover.tripod.com/Aindara5.jpg https://romeartlover.tripod.com/Aindara5.jpg Those footprints are about a metre long.
  - mkl 6y ago
    The last picture is now a useless "image hosted by tripod" placeholder. There is a picture here: https://www.alamy.com/ain-dara-iron-age-syrohittite-temple-footprints-1300-bc-740-bc-syria-photo-before-syrian-civil-war-image211451778.html https://www.alamy.com/ain-dara-iron-age-syrohittite-temple-f... (There is a huge amount of conspiracy nonsense coming up when I search for this stuff.)
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      Very obviously not actual footprints. But they do tell us something concrete about how the builders who carved them imagined their gods.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> I visited this place when I was in Turkey. I follow the work of Graham Hancock quite closely but how did the artwork appear to you? The need for the specialized tools to bore the holes or mae those 3d outward busts on stone are incredibly advanced and the accuracy of these depictions of animals and peoples seen on stone predates what most archaeologists place Agriculture at ~10,000 years ago, which coincidentally is also in this part of Turkey. Most tools from nomadic people before the advent of Agriculture were likely for hunting, and cutting meat or building fires and clothes, not precision based specialized tools so this site opens the door to the notion that very specialized tools being used prior to this period for ornamental or sacred purposes in Human History was already common practice. Personally speaking, after having done agriculture myself, I think agriculture its closer to 20-30,000 years old and sites like this and the one in Indonesia re-enforce my hypothesis as you cannot make these monoliths without several generations of a very well refined work force that requires specialization and surpluses of food and water only possible due to a systematic application of horticulture and domestication of livestock. What were your biggest takeaways, and how much would you say is still left to unearth? It is my understanding most of it is still underground and other sites have yet to be even approved or greenlit for excavation due to political and warfare issues, was that still the case when you were there?

momo93 6y ago

been there. Amazing

gk1 6y ago

There are beautiful ruins all throughout Turkey, completely out in the open. You can walk through a park and find yourself stepping over ancient mosaics and columns, the kinds you'd find behind velvet ropes and glass partitions in Italy or Greece.

prepend 6y ago
One of my dreams is to walk the Lycean Way [0] where I’ve read that the remote trails have you camping among ruins. It seems amazing that there’s still so many ancient ruins just laying about and accessible to humans. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycian_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycian_Way
- gk1 6y ago
  That's a terrific trek. I've only done one small segment, Faralya to Fethiye, and enjoyed it so much I want to return to do the entire length... Some day.
jpcooper 6y ago
Termessos is one. An ancient Greek city up a mountain. Imagine an amphitheatre with a view in every direction. The burial site is open for you to climb around and over. It's near Antalya. Check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termessos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termessos

rendall 6y ago

Cesare Emiliani and Kurzegesagt make the case that we think of world civilization as much newer than it is, because our year count is now only to 2021. They argue for instead bumping our year by 10,000 to more truly reflect the age of our civilization, to 12,021, and (arbitrarily) commemorating Göbleki Tepe as its foundation https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/94EO00895 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/94EO... https://youtu.be/czgOWmtGVGs https://youtu.be/czgOWmtGVGs (2016 or 12016)