The Old World is a reference to those parts of Earth known to Europeans before the voyages of Christopher Columbus; it includes Europe, Asia and Africa.
Here are the two paragraphs that interest me the most:
(my bolding)
To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.
The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."
This is key to our understanding about ancient man. God (or his version of divinity) came before society, not society before God.
Last edited by Ishtar on Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant.
This idea seems like a bit of a stretch. What is the mechanism of such communication? (I know....BOATS!!)
And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."
This makes a lot more sense. The idea of someone having a "sacred hill or mountain" has plenty of support in the record.[/quote]
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant.
This idea seems like a bit of a stretch. What is the mechanism of such communication? (I know....BOATS!!)
Most recent archaeological mutterings on Stonehenge will have it that hunter gatherers travelled there en masse from their permanent villages, and stayed there, for months at a stretch - setting up temporary villages of huts - to work on the henge, before returning to their homelands. They would then return for a few months again several years later. So it was a sort of pilgrimage undertaken every few years where the whole village would up sticks for the duration. In this way, it could have taken hundreds of years for Stonehenge to have been built.
If this was the pattern at Gobekli Tepe too, then people could have come from a lot further away. They also wouldn't have needed boats to get from Africa to Turkey - which isn't to say that they didn't use them.
Last edited by Ishtar on Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If you (I ?) take Genesis as literal, within one generation we went from hunter gather (not a hard life in a Paradise) to shepherding and gardening among the direct family.
But the strong influence of a “God” of some kind, and the need to please him, is indisputable in the story.
No matter the "social” surrounding.
Last edited by kbs2244 on Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Yes. This article, though, is dated January 2007, and the story's moved on quite a bit in nearly two years.Stonehenge must have been dated and redated and re-redated several times since then. (that was meant to sound sarcastic).
However, I like this bit.
"It is the richest - by that I mean the filthiest - site of this period known in Britain," Professor Parker Pearson told BBC News.
But they also agree in this article that the site was not lived in all year round.
The Sheffield University researcher thinks the settlement was probably not lived in all year round. Instead, he believes, Stonehenge and Durrington formed a religious complex used for funerary rituals.
He believes it drew Neolithic people from all over the region, who came for massive feasts in the midwinter, where prodigious quantities of food were consumed. The bones were then tossed on the floors of the houses.
"The rubbish isn't your average domestic debris. There's a lack of craft-working equipment for cleaning animal hides and no evidence for crop-processing," he said.
"The animal bones are being thrown away half-eaten. It's what we call a feasting assemblage. This is where they went to party - you could say it was the first free festival."
This bit is interesting:
Durrington has its own henge made of wood, which is strikingly similar in layout to Stonehenge. It was discovered in 1967 - long before any houses.
Both henges line up with events in the astronomical calendar - but not the same ones.
Stonehenge is aligned with the midwinter solstice sunset, while Durrington's timber circle is aligned with the midwinter solstice sunrise - they were complementary.
So I guess they would start the ceremonies at Durrington in the morning and then finish up at Stonehenge for the evening sunset rituals.
In looking for some larger context site views of Gobleki Tepe, came across this youtube clip in German. Last quarter shows a reconstructed virtual birdseye view that gives some context of the terrain and other nearby sites and more circles.
Min, I agree, why make such a statement regarding people coming from as far away as Africa unless you have found traceable and datable trade goods. Which if was the case, would be big news.
My hunch would be they had there own, perhaps similar rituals to attend to closer by. Club just isn't used to thinking of this level of sophistication this early. Too Bad.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Min, I agree, why make such a statement regarding people coming from as far away as Africa unless you have found traceable and datable trade goods. Which if was the case, would be big news.
I was interpreting that statement as some sort of Spring Break for hunter/gatherers.
"Whoo-Hooo break out the kegs and head for Gobleki Tepe to Paaaaarrrrtttttyyyyyy."
Just a little too "new-agey" for me, Woodrabbit.[/quote]
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
I don’t know Min.
One of the best cartoons I ever saw showed 2 salmon fighting their way up a waterfall.
One is saying to the other
“How do we know the girls are going to be worth this.”
Kb, when I started working one of the guys was an old Navy chief. He had a saying for us youngsters.
"Boys.....some is better than others but there's none bad."
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Whatever the carbon-dating eventually shows, Gobekli Tepe stands at the cusp of what is arguably the biggest social revolution in human history - the transformation of semi-nomadic hunters into settled farmers.
Archaeologists now know a great deal about the whens and wheres of the birth of agriculture.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
