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I eagerly await the admission from mainstream historians that all these tons of rock were not carved by semi-nomadic hunter gatherers. The scope of the stonewo

I eagerly await the admission from mainstream historians that all these tons of rock were not carved by semi-nomadic hunter gatherers. The scope of the stonework is evidence of agriculture; it's obnoxiously obvious yet still fringe to say it.

throwyawayyyy 4y ago
Graeber spends a lot of time arguing against exactly this assumption in The Dawn of Everything. I.e. that agriculture must come before civilization. Pretty persuasively, IMHO.
- robonerd 4y ago
  I haven't read that book [yet], but I'll say that 'civilization' is not the same thing as carving up tons of rock. That you can form a civilization without agriculture doesn't surprise me. That a civilization could support megalithic stone carving endeavors without agriculture beggars belief. Besides these sites in Turkey, are there any places in the world where huge amount of rock was carved supposedly without agriculture to fuel the workers? The Stonehenge builders had agriculture, as did those who made the Easter Island statues. Agriculture built Egypt.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    I did not get the impression that the carvings at this site were anywhere near as large as StoneHenge, Easter island, or Giza: they mention a life-sized man statue, large pensis, and friezes. And if the site was occupied for hundreds of years, they could have been carved over time, spreading out the caloric requirements.
  - alophawen 4y ago
    You are clueless and should read that book instead of speaking out like this.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      I'll say what I like about anything I like. If the book is so great than those of you who've read it should be able to present the arguments from it. It sounds like it left all of you with an impression of having learned something, but unable to convey much of anything that you actually learned. Did you actually read that book?
  - I-M-S 4y ago
    You really should read the book to make informed takes on this topic
- qiskit 4y ago
  What other way was there to feed a city full of people? Certainly, you could have culture within a hunter-gatherer society, but not civilization. How could hunter-gatherers provide enough food to sustain a city? Unless we redefine civilization by removing cities/urban centers from its definition.
  - sdenton4 4y ago
    Go read the book! Even the idea of a hard binary between 'agricultural' and 'hunter gatherer' societies is put to the test, with evidence of civilizations that changed both locations and whole modes of culture and caloric intake seasonally.
  - stubish 4y ago
    IIRC there is evidence that Gobekli Tepe was not fully occupied year round, so more of a festival site or wintering ground. Maybe in the later stages it did have a more permanent population, and if so they could have been some of the first people to invent actual farming. This is around the time and place we think Einkorn was first domesticated, and a bunch of people growing it near a festival site to brew booze to supply a bunch of nomads when they come around to party makes a good narrative on how we transitioned from hunters to farmers.
    - ComputerGuru 4y ago
      Read TFA. They’re finding the towns with permanent abodes less than 50km away.
Bayart 4y ago
Obvious based on what ? Assumptions we make about history ? The idea that there's a linear, idempotent path of progress has been challenged for good reasons : discoveries such as these.
- robonerd 4y ago
  Based on experience with physical labor? Bang some rocks together for an afternoon, see how much progress you've made and take note of how tired it made you. Whig history has nothing to do with it.
  - biztos 4y ago
    Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would ancient sculptors necessarily have to work fast? Bang some rocks together for half an hour, come back later; you have a perceptually infinite supply of half-hours; eventually you'll get it done.
pvg 4y ago
The standard for these things is usually something like 'evidence' rather than 'obnoxiously obvious'.
- robonerd 4y ago
  The evidence is the stonework and the dietary requirements of doing that sort of labor.
  - pvg 4y ago
    These are claims, not evidence. Your claim appears to be you can't carve a big stone if you're a hunter gatherer although It's not clear why you think that.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      > although It's not clear why you think that. I think I've made that clear. Where else in the world has a hunter-gatherer lifestyle afforded the caloric surplus necessary to do this much manual labor?
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        Hunter gatherers didn’t exactly live in a state of deprivation. We also a lot of examples of cultures that didn’t farm building giant earth works, like those found at Poverty Point in Louisiana[1]. We know that a number of pre-Colombian societies shunned agriculture and developed quite complex societies like the people along the gulf coast, or the Coast Salish to name to areas of interest. Pre-agricultural forbears of the Iroquois were probably mining copper. Agriculture doesn’t seem to be necessary for organization or communal work. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_Point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_Point
      - ChrisLomont 4y ago
        Exactly how many calories does one need to do this? What is the cutoff? What papers are researchers are you building your claims on? How long can they work on such tasks? Maybe, if they build slowly, then one needs almost no "caloric surplus".... There's so many holes in such a wild and absolute claim that I don't see it as much of an argument against the experts that have built on previous knowledge and have published peer reviewed papers on this topic. Hence you need evidence.
stubish 4y ago
To this layperson, the narrative on Gobekli Tepe seemed fairly compelling. Here is a site situated at roughly the time and place grains first started being cultivated (per previous studies on ancient grains). A site where large amounts of meat was consumed, but animals not slaughtered on site. The animals where killed elsewhere and only the desirable bits transported there. And earthenware troughs believed to have been used to ferment beer. So a gathering site for nomadic hunter gatherers to gather at (festival? winter? just hang out?), at the point in time where we were starting to actually cultivate grains and stop being hunter gatherers and start being farmers. Other sites found dating later were definitely agricultural, with equipment for farming grains and animals and human remains showing the poor health associated with early agricultural settlements and the dense populations they allowed.
carapace 4y ago
I dunno, Coral Castle was built by one man, (likely (IMO) using the method rediscovered by Wally Wallington.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Wallington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Wallington

throwyawayyyy 4y ago

Graeber spends a lot of time arguing against exactly this assumption in The Dawn of Everything. I.e. that agriculture must come before civilization. Pretty persuasively, IMHO.

robonerd 4y ago
I haven't read that book [yet], but I'll say that 'civilization' is not the same thing as carving up tons of rock. That you can form a civilization without agriculture doesn't surprise me. That a civilization could support megalithic stone carving endeavors without agriculture beggars belief. Besides these sites in Turkey, are there any places in the world where huge amount of rock was carved supposedly without agriculture to fuel the workers? The Stonehenge builders had agriculture, as did those who made the Easter Island statues. Agriculture built Egypt.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  I did not get the impression that the carvings at this site were anywhere near as large as StoneHenge, Easter island, or Giza: they mention a life-sized man statue, large pensis, and friezes. And if the site was occupied for hundreds of years, they could have been carved over time, spreading out the caloric requirements.
- alophawen 4y ago
  You are clueless and should read that book instead of speaking out like this.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    I'll say what I like about anything I like. If the book is so great than those of you who've read it should be able to present the arguments from it. It sounds like it left all of you with an impression of having learned something, but unable to convey much of anything that you actually learned. Did you actually read that book?
- I-M-S 4y ago
  You really should read the book to make informed takes on this topic
qiskit 4y ago
What other way was there to feed a city full of people? Certainly, you could have culture within a hunter-gatherer society, but not civilization. How could hunter-gatherers provide enough food to sustain a city? Unless we redefine civilization by removing cities/urban centers from its definition.
- sdenton4 4y ago
  Go read the book! Even the idea of a hard binary between 'agricultural' and 'hunter gatherer' societies is put to the test, with evidence of civilizations that changed both locations and whole modes of culture and caloric intake seasonally.
- stubish 4y ago
  IIRC there is evidence that Gobekli Tepe was not fully occupied year round, so more of a festival site or wintering ground. Maybe in the later stages it did have a more permanent population, and if so they could have been some of the first people to invent actual farming. This is around the time and place we think Einkorn was first domesticated, and a bunch of people growing it near a festival site to brew booze to supply a bunch of nomads when they come around to party makes a good narrative on how we transitioned from hunters to farmers.
  - ComputerGuru 4y ago
    Read TFA. They’re finding the towns with permanent abodes less than 50km away.

Bayart 4y ago

Obvious based on what ? Assumptions we make about history ? The idea that there's a linear, idempotent path of progress has been challenged for good reasons : discoveries such as these.

robonerd 4y ago
Based on experience with physical labor? Bang some rocks together for an afternoon, see how much progress you've made and take note of how tired it made you. Whig history has nothing to do with it.
- biztos 4y ago
  Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would ancient sculptors necessarily have to work fast? Bang some rocks together for half an hour, come back later; you have a perceptually infinite supply of half-hours; eventually you'll get it done.

pvg 4y ago

The standard for these things is usually something like 'evidence' rather than 'obnoxiously obvious'.

robonerd 4y ago
The evidence is the stonework and the dietary requirements of doing that sort of labor.
- pvg 4y ago
  These are claims, not evidence. Your claim appears to be you can't carve a big stone if you're a hunter gatherer although It's not clear why you think that.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > although It's not clear why you think that. I think I've made that clear. Where else in the world has a hunter-gatherer lifestyle afforded the caloric surplus necessary to do this much manual labor?
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      Hunter gatherers didn’t exactly live in a state of deprivation. We also a lot of examples of cultures that didn’t farm building giant earth works, like those found at Poverty Point in Louisiana[1]. We know that a number of pre-Colombian societies shunned agriculture and developed quite complex societies like the people along the gulf coast, or the Coast Salish to name to areas of interest. Pre-agricultural forbears of the Iroquois were probably mining copper. Agriculture doesn’t seem to be necessary for organization or communal work. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_Point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_Point
    - ChrisLomont 4y ago
      Exactly how many calories does one need to do this? What is the cutoff? What papers are researchers are you building your claims on? How long can they work on such tasks? Maybe, if they build slowly, then one needs almost no "caloric surplus".... There's so many holes in such a wild and absolute claim that I don't see it as much of an argument against the experts that have built on previous knowledge and have published peer reviewed papers on this topic. Hence you need evidence.

stubish 4y ago

To this layperson, the narrative on Gobekli Tepe seemed fairly compelling. Here is a site situated at roughly the time and place grains first started being cultivated (per previous studies on ancient grains). A site where large amounts of meat was consumed, but animals not slaughtered on site. The animals where killed elsewhere and only the desirable bits transported there. And earthenware troughs believed to have been used to ferment beer. So a gathering site for nomadic hunter gatherers to gather at (festival? winter? just hang out?), at the point in time where we were starting to actually cultivate grains and stop being hunter gatherers and start being farmers. Other sites found dating later were definitely agricultural, with equipment for farming grains and animals and human remains showing the poor health associated with early agricultural settlements and the dense populations they allowed.

carapace 4y ago

I dunno, Coral Castle was built by one man, (likely (IMO) using the method rediscovered by Wally Wallington.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Wallington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Wallington