8 ms·

Carvings at Gobekli Tepe may be oldest calendar

150 points by cynicalpeace 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
timschmidt 2y ago
Dan at DeDunking has a great set of videos about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6U3NnmQPxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6U3NnmQPxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuWfzxy3fok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuWfzxy3fok
- gerdesj 2y ago
  Lovely, but what are your thoughts? I avoid YT out of habit and prefer to discuss stuff based on personal experience.
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    It's a big topic. I'm interested in the meltwater pulses following the last glacial maximum. I think something happened to cause those meltwater pulses. An impactor, or solar ejecta, or something similarly catastrophic. It's very interesting that those events seem to coincide with the earliest signs of human civilization. Global sealevels are still around 120m / 400ft higher than at the glacial maximum, and humans tend to build settlements at shorelines. Which suggests there is a lot of human history yet to be found on continental shelves worldwide. It seems an interesting avenue to potentially explain the gap between the appearance of biologically modern humans ~ 1m - 200,000 years ago and civilization ~10k years ago. I would not be surprised to find records somewhere of such a global catastrophe as seems to have happened.
    - soufron 2y ago
      Please note that they're not the "earliest" sign of civilization. For once - as mentioned in the article, you have the Lascaux signs for example. But if you consider that these signs are not sufficiently complex to represent a civilisation, dont forget that Gobekli Tepe was only discovered in 1963 and that excavation only begun in 1995. So there could easily be other sites of similar interest but more ancient history - not mentioning that David Graeber made a fair point of rememebering us that even important and powerful civilizations dont always leave big archeological traces. But of course, that's in point with your argument about sea levels.
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        The paintings at Lascaux are beautiful and sophisticated, granted. I suppose by "civilization" which could have many definitions, I meant farming and city building (a city being some group of dwellings larger than dunbar's number). There is also some compelling genetic evidence that rice may have been domesticated and re-feralized several times throughout history, which could push the farming date back much further, which would be amazing. It seems to me that the nature of evidence-based archeology is to always be pushing these numbers further back in time, which is to be expected.
        soufron 2y ago
        Well if you think that civilization equals cities and farming, then go grab "the dawn of everything", the last book of David Graeber :) I was quite amazed to realize that the Golden Horde was way more sophisticated and powerful than most other empires of its time, and still it did not had cities, nor farming, and left really few traces. And that was around 1300, not in prehistoric times. Also, if you're interested in the relation between farming and civilization but want an adverse position, go read "against the grain". It's also quite mind-opening.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        I'm not really looking to debate or defend assertions. Just mark interesting points in human technological development in a way that's visible in the archeological or genetic record.
        darby_nine 2y ago
        > I was quite amazed to realize that the Golden Horde was way more sophisticated and powerful than most other empires of its time, and still it did not had cities, nor farming, and left really few traces. This is a pretty common theme for steppe horsemen, right? You can link this to the fall of probably dozens of empires.
        jltsiren 2y ago
        Steppe nomads always had permanent settlements and agriculture. Often not by the nomads themselves, but the agricultural settlements were an integral part of their society. The Golden Horde had many cities in Europe and Central Asia, but those cities were usually on the peripheries of the empire rather than centers of power. In some sense, this was similar to the Early Medieval Europe, where kings often had itinerant courts rather than permanent capitals. You could also compare steppe empires to naval empires that were common in the Mediterranean. Both had vast expanses of low-value territory that enabled rapid travel. But the real value was in the surrounding agricultural land and cities.
    - darby_nine 2y ago
      > It's very interesting that those events seem to coincide with the earliest signs of human civilization. I think migration is a much easier argument to make than "civilization", especially when it gobekli tepi predates domesticated civilization by thousands of years, and cultivation of seeds began around twelve to fifteen thousand years before concrete evidence of settled civilization. Still, if you're determined to link migrations to a single disaster, look no further than the link between the Toba eruption and the introduction of humans to Australia for the first time around ~70kya.
      - EdwardDiego 2y ago
        Indeed, migration was often how humans survived climate change. Not such an option these days.
wjb3 2y ago
[DUPE] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41174729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41174729
gerdesj 2y ago
Calendar - the kalends is a Roman thing - the first day of a month. "In essence, their view is that Göbekli Tepe, for which the earliest date yet recorded is 9530 ± 215 BCE" Stonehenge is from around 3100BC, so this is around 5500 years older than Stonehenge. I personally think that the thought processes and notions are far, far older than either sets of evidence. However, evidence is king.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  It's not like there's just this one really old data point with huge gaps on either side. There's a strong record of changing mobility patterns throughout the epipaleolithic that leads into what we see later. Gobekli Tepe is just one of dozens of known sites with architectural remains from the PPNA/PPNB, albeit an especially impressive one.
  - mrangle 2y ago
    There is obviously a massive gap on one side at the least, especially given the complexity of GT. You seem to be strangely bothered by the subtlest implication that Gobekli Tepe lacks an obvious forbearer. Which I would truly love to see by the way, aside from handwaving, as the gap bothers me. An example of handwaving: once, on this forum, another user tried to make the case that cave paintings marked the transition to the high relief art of GT. In my opinion, its disingenuous to imply that there is any other known architecture that predicts Goblekli Tepe. I understand that there is an immense amount of excavation that needs to be done across countless sites from that period, but even a hypothetical architecturally parallel site from that period would not change the fact of the gap. You're incorrectly implying that Gobekli Tepe is merely an exceptional example within a wider category of architecture. That's not the case. As of now, it is the singular example.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      I'm not bothered by the implication, I just think it's incorrect. Let's talk details. Gobekli Tepe has 2 relevant cultural layers. Layer III is the older layer. It corresponds to fairly early dates in the PPNA and is associated with the larger T-stone enclosures. These dates correspond with similar structures at nearby Karahan Tepe, but we don't have many other excavations at this level in the immediate vicinity within the rest of the Tas Tepeler complex. Most of those correspond with the younger Layer II (PPNB) levels of Gobekli Tepe, but investigation of the area is slow and difficult. A general rule of the Tas Tepeler complex is that older stones are bigger and better carved. Karahan's oldest stones seem to be missing, so Gobekli Tepe's are the largest and most finely decorated of the finished stones we have left. Unfinished stones exist at both sites. If we head a little bit east from Tas Tepeler, there's another site called Kortik Tepe whose oldest layers correspond to GT Layer III. It shares the same round enclosures we see on the outskirts of GT (and most other anatolian/levant sites from this period). More closely related to GT is Jerf El Ahmar just over the border in Syria. The architectural layers of JEA slightly precede GT and share some of the same animal motifs and styles. Basically the same story applies to Tell Qaramel as well. We also have sites significantly earlier than GT like Mureybet. Gobekli Tepe is an important, early site, but it's not unique or isolated. It's clearly part of a much larger record of transition from the epipaleolithic to the larger neolithic and shares a lot of similarities with contemporaneous sites.
soufron 2y ago
Well at least it's thought-provoking in a way. I like the idea. And given that's it's not that hard to contest, it can lead to nice debates.
ljlolel 2y ago
Graham Hancock has been saying this for a while
- project2501a 2y ago
  He also said that it was a shopping bag, so it was a "gift from the Gods". /s Let's not bring up that questionable credentials dude here.
  - user3939382 2y ago
    I think it's worth bringing up someone who says something for a long time and then is proven correct.
    - digging 2y ago
      But was he saying it based on evidence or was it just something he wanted to be true? (Genuine question, I know nothing of the person.) Often someone believes something strongly against available evidence and is then "proven correct" - this doesn't show good reasoning or foresight, just the wishful thinking to pin one's hopes on an unlikely outcome. In those cases there is usually nothing to be learned from that person.
      - blacksqr 2y ago
        Without canonizing Hancock, it should be noted that he is and has always presented himself as a journalist; and he has been consistent in reporting the theories of scientists and researchers who have gone against the mainstream and had their careers damaged or destroyed, but have ultimately been proven right or at least shown that their ideas are resistant to facile dismissal. He is more in the line of an aggregator or curatorial journalist than someone who is simply dreaming things up on his own.
pmayrgundter 2y ago
Sweatman has a very thorough YouTube channel where he goes deep on this topic and carefully rebuts the criticism towards his ideas and the debate around the Younger Dryas Impact Hyptohesis https://www.youtube.com/@prehistorydecoded4454 https://www.youtube.com/@prehistorydecoded4454
- defrost 2y ago
  Sweatman, Martin: (2021) The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: review of the impact evidence' https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/209288439/The_Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis_MBS.pdf https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/209288439/The_Younger_Dry... Holliday et. al.: (2023) Comprehensive refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825223001915 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282522...
blacksqr 2y ago
There's a fascinating blog whose author theorizes that the signs of the zodiac originated as markers to track the seasons by noting the mating and birthing behaviors of local animals. The author explicates the meaning of the traditional signs and their variants across Eurasia by noting differences in climate and consequent timing and nature of animal behavior. Author claims that these relationships also explain the patterns of markings on the monuments at Gobekli Tepi. https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/zodiac.html https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/zodiac.html https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/02/pillar-43.html https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/02/pillar-43.ht...
sharpshadow 2y ago
Just finished reading it and it gives one a good state of the art introduction what’s going on there plus some interesting extras. I really like the idea that this story of the civilisation started there after the Younger Dryas impact.

150 points by cynicalpeace 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Dan at DeDunking has a great set of videos about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6U3NnmQPxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6U3NnmQPxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuWfzxy3fok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuWfzxy3fok

gerdesj 2y ago
Lovely, but what are your thoughts? I avoid YT out of habit and prefer to discuss stuff based on personal experience.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  It's a big topic. I'm interested in the meltwater pulses following the last glacial maximum. I think something happened to cause those meltwater pulses. An impactor, or solar ejecta, or something similarly catastrophic. It's very interesting that those events seem to coincide with the earliest signs of human civilization. Global sealevels are still around 120m / 400ft higher than at the glacial maximum, and humans tend to build settlements at shorelines. Which suggests there is a lot of human history yet to be found on continental shelves worldwide. It seems an interesting avenue to potentially explain the gap between the appearance of biologically modern humans ~ 1m - 200,000 years ago and civilization ~10k years ago. I would not be surprised to find records somewhere of such a global catastrophe as seems to have happened.
  - soufron 2y ago
    Please note that they're not the "earliest" sign of civilization. For once - as mentioned in the article, you have the Lascaux signs for example. But if you consider that these signs are not sufficiently complex to represent a civilisation, dont forget that Gobekli Tepe was only discovered in 1963 and that excavation only begun in 1995. So there could easily be other sites of similar interest but more ancient history - not mentioning that David Graeber made a fair point of rememebering us that even important and powerful civilizations dont always leave big archeological traces. But of course, that's in point with your argument about sea levels.
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      The paintings at Lascaux are beautiful and sophisticated, granted. I suppose by "civilization" which could have many definitions, I meant farming and city building (a city being some group of dwellings larger than dunbar's number). There is also some compelling genetic evidence that rice may have been domesticated and re-feralized several times throughout history, which could push the farming date back much further, which would be amazing. It seems to me that the nature of evidence-based archeology is to always be pushing these numbers further back in time, which is to be expected.
      - soufron 2y ago
        Well if you think that civilization equals cities and farming, then go grab "the dawn of everything", the last book of David Graeber :) I was quite amazed to realize that the Golden Horde was way more sophisticated and powerful than most other empires of its time, and still it did not had cities, nor farming, and left really few traces. And that was around 1300, not in prehistoric times. Also, if you're interested in the relation between farming and civilization but want an adverse position, go read "against the grain". It's also quite mind-opening.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        I'm not really looking to debate or defend assertions. Just mark interesting points in human technological development in a way that's visible in the archeological or genetic record.
        darby_nine 2y ago
        > I was quite amazed to realize that the Golden Horde was way more sophisticated and powerful than most other empires of its time, and still it did not had cities, nor farming, and left really few traces. This is a pretty common theme for steppe horsemen, right? You can link this to the fall of probably dozens of empires.
        jltsiren 2y ago
        Steppe nomads always had permanent settlements and agriculture. Often not by the nomads themselves, but the agricultural settlements were an integral part of their society. The Golden Horde had many cities in Europe and Central Asia, but those cities were usually on the peripheries of the empire rather than centers of power. In some sense, this was similar to the Early Medieval Europe, where kings often had itinerant courts rather than permanent capitals. You could also compare steppe empires to naval empires that were common in the Mediterranean. Both had vast expanses of low-value territory that enabled rapid travel. But the real value was in the surrounding agricultural land and cities.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    > It's very interesting that those events seem to coincide with the earliest signs of human civilization. I think migration is a much easier argument to make than "civilization", especially when it gobekli tepi predates domesticated civilization by thousands of years, and cultivation of seeds began around twelve to fifteen thousand years before concrete evidence of settled civilization. Still, if you're determined to link migrations to a single disaster, look no further than the link between the Toba eruption and the introduction of humans to Australia for the first time around ~70kya.
    - EdwardDiego 2y ago
      Indeed, migration was often how humans survived climate change. Not such an option these days.

wjb3 2y ago

[DUPE] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41174729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41174729

gerdesj 2y ago

Calendar - the kalends is a Roman thing - the first day of a month. "In essence, their view is that Göbekli Tepe, for which the earliest date yet recorded is 9530 ± 215 BCE" Stonehenge is from around 3100BC, so this is around 5500 years older than Stonehenge. I personally think that the thought processes and notions are far, far older than either sets of evidence. However, evidence is king.

AlotOfReading 2y ago
It's not like there's just this one really old data point with huge gaps on either side. There's a strong record of changing mobility patterns throughout the epipaleolithic that leads into what we see later. Gobekli Tepe is just one of dozens of known sites with architectural remains from the PPNA/PPNB, albeit an especially impressive one.
- mrangle 2y ago
  There is obviously a massive gap on one side at the least, especially given the complexity of GT. You seem to be strangely bothered by the subtlest implication that Gobekli Tepe lacks an obvious forbearer. Which I would truly love to see by the way, aside from handwaving, as the gap bothers me. An example of handwaving: once, on this forum, another user tried to make the case that cave paintings marked the transition to the high relief art of GT. In my opinion, its disingenuous to imply that there is any other known architecture that predicts Goblekli Tepe. I understand that there is an immense amount of excavation that needs to be done across countless sites from that period, but even a hypothetical architecturally parallel site from that period would not change the fact of the gap. You're incorrectly implying that Gobekli Tepe is merely an exceptional example within a wider category of architecture. That's not the case. As of now, it is the singular example.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    I'm not bothered by the implication, I just think it's incorrect. Let's talk details. Gobekli Tepe has 2 relevant cultural layers. Layer III is the older layer. It corresponds to fairly early dates in the PPNA and is associated with the larger T-stone enclosures. These dates correspond with similar structures at nearby Karahan Tepe, but we don't have many other excavations at this level in the immediate vicinity within the rest of the Tas Tepeler complex. Most of those correspond with the younger Layer II (PPNB) levels of Gobekli Tepe, but investigation of the area is slow and difficult. A general rule of the Tas Tepeler complex is that older stones are bigger and better carved. Karahan's oldest stones seem to be missing, so Gobekli Tepe's are the largest and most finely decorated of the finished stones we have left. Unfinished stones exist at both sites. If we head a little bit east from Tas Tepeler, there's another site called Kortik Tepe whose oldest layers correspond to GT Layer III. It shares the same round enclosures we see on the outskirts of GT (and most other anatolian/levant sites from this period). More closely related to GT is Jerf El Ahmar just over the border in Syria. The architectural layers of JEA slightly precede GT and share some of the same animal motifs and styles. Basically the same story applies to Tell Qaramel as well. We also have sites significantly earlier than GT like Mureybet. Gobekli Tepe is an important, early site, but it's not unique or isolated. It's clearly part of a much larger record of transition from the epipaleolithic to the larger neolithic and shares a lot of similarities with contemporaneous sites.

soufron 2y ago

Well at least it's thought-provoking in a way. I like the idea. And given that's it's not that hard to contest, it can lead to nice debates.

ljlolel 2y ago

Graham Hancock has been saying this for a while

project2501a 2y ago
He also said that it was a shopping bag, so it was a "gift from the Gods". /s Let's not bring up that questionable credentials dude here.
- user3939382 2y ago
  I think it's worth bringing up someone who says something for a long time and then is proven correct.
  - digging 2y ago
    But was he saying it based on evidence or was it just something he wanted to be true? (Genuine question, I know nothing of the person.) Often someone believes something strongly against available evidence and is then "proven correct" - this doesn't show good reasoning or foresight, just the wishful thinking to pin one's hopes on an unlikely outcome. In those cases there is usually nothing to be learned from that person.
    - blacksqr 2y ago
      Without canonizing Hancock, it should be noted that he is and has always presented himself as a journalist; and he has been consistent in reporting the theories of scientists and researchers who have gone against the mainstream and had their careers damaged or destroyed, but have ultimately been proven right or at least shown that their ideas are resistant to facile dismissal. He is more in the line of an aggregator or curatorial journalist than someone who is simply dreaming things up on his own.

pmayrgundter 2y ago

Sweatman has a very thorough YouTube channel where he goes deep on this topic and carefully rebuts the criticism towards his ideas and the debate around the Younger Dryas Impact Hyptohesis https://www.youtube.com/@prehistorydecoded4454 https://www.youtube.com/@prehistorydecoded4454

defrost 2y ago
Sweatman, Martin: (2021) The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: review of the impact evidence' https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/209288439/The_Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis_MBS.pdf https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/209288439/The_Younger_Dry... Holliday et. al.: (2023) Comprehensive refutation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825223001915 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282522...

blacksqr 2y ago

There's a fascinating blog whose author theorizes that the signs of the zodiac originated as markers to track the seasons by noting the mating and birthing behaviors of local animals. The author explicates the meaning of the traditional signs and their variants across Eurasia by noting differences in climate and consequent timing and nature of animal behavior. Author claims that these relationships also explain the patterns of markings on the monuments at Gobekli Tepi. https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/zodiac.html https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/zodiac.html https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/02/pillar-43.html https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/02/pillar-43.ht...

sharpshadow 2y ago

Just finished reading it and it gives one a good state of the art introduction what’s going on there plus some interesting extras. I really like the idea that this story of the civilisation started there after the Younger Dryas impact.