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Apparently, new evidence discredits the idea that the site was built by hunter-gatherers: "New insights from several deep soundings excavated... have exposed t

Apparently, new evidence discredits the idea that the site was built by hunter-gatherers: "New insights from several deep soundings excavated... have exposed the weaknesses of the temple-narrative, meaning that a revision of the popular scientific view is now unavoidable (Fig. 1). Specifically, the latest observations relate to the existence of domestic buildings and the harvesting and distribution of rain-water at Göbekli Tepe." https://publications.dainst.org/journals/efb/article/view/2596/7095 https://publications.dainst.org/journals/efb/article/view/25...

kqr 4y ago
Note that the dichotomy between "hunter-gatherers" and "permanently settled" is a bit overstated. - There's some evidence that various people in history have been seasonally permanently settled, and foraging without a fixed home part of the year. - Other people settle for a few years and then move on, doing small-scale growing of crops when they are settled. - Yet others encourage wild growth of food crops, and generally move around and forage in a large area that has been lightly tended to in that manner. (Meaning they don't build homes that last for centuries, but they also permanently inhabit a large area.) - And in some societies, there are classes of people that are permanently settled but live in symbiosis with more mobile foragers, who live in the permanent settlements only a little at a time.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Yes, for example the Yanomamo hunters-gatherers in the Amazon basin stay in approximately one place for years or decades, in jungle clearings they build semi-permanent "shapoons", a structure from wood and leaves that obviously does not survive in the archeologic records (nothing survives in the Amazon; there is a lack of stone there and organic structures decompose soon), plus they cultivate a lot of plants locally. The concept of a hunter-gatherer roaming the endless steppe is romantic, but it does not seem to occur that much in known history.
ComputerGuru 4y ago
TFA itself talks about this, but not to disparage the hunter-gatherer aspect but rather to claim that there was an actual, ~permanently inhabited city here, that was still nevertheless pre-agrarian. That’s part of the mystery and importance of these sites: they upend what we thought we knew.

kqr 4y ago

Note that the dichotomy between "hunter-gatherers" and "permanently settled" is a bit overstated. - There's some evidence that various people in history have been seasonally permanently settled, and foraging without a fixed home part of the year. - Other people settle for a few years and then move on, doing small-scale growing of crops when they are settled. - Yet others encourage wild growth of food crops, and generally move around and forage in a large area that has been lightly tended to in that manner. (Meaning they don't build homes that last for centuries, but they also permanently inhabit a large area.) - And in some societies, there are classes of people that are permanently settled but live in symbiosis with more mobile foragers, who live in the permanent settlements only a little at a time.

inglor_cz 4y ago
Yes, for example the Yanomamo hunters-gatherers in the Amazon basin stay in approximately one place for years or decades, in jungle clearings they build semi-permanent "shapoons", a structure from wood and leaves that obviously does not survive in the archeologic records (nothing survives in the Amazon; there is a lack of stone there and organic structures decompose soon), plus they cultivate a lot of plants locally. The concept of a hunter-gatherer roaming the endless steppe is romantic, but it does not seem to occur that much in known history.

ComputerGuru 4y ago

TFA itself talks about this, but not to disparage the hunter-gatherer aspect but rather to claim that there was an actual, ~permanently inhabited city here, that was still nevertheless pre-agrarian. That’s part of the mystery and importance of these sites: they upend what we thought we knew.