# Gobekli Tepe: What do we really know? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 30, 2018, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508 "2018-08-30T06:54:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/61 "2018-08-31T17:42:51Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > A new concept has already been developed and is now widely accepted among scientists and professionals. It simply hasn’t filtered through to the general public yet. > > See the [article](https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/) I posted above. > > (Skip to Part 4 of the article if you’re not interested in how this relates to theories of inequality and ideas of primitive ‘innocence’ presented in some pop-sci bestsellers.) You missed my point, but that’s OK because I have a new theory. Drawing conclusions about events in the distance past based on little to no evidence is not a good idea and it’s remotely possible that just maybe many such conclusions will be overturned each time new evidence is discovered. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/62 "2018-08-31T18:34:27Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > I do have to wonder if Göbekli Tepe was more the result of a personality cult rather than a religion. > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Very often the same thing. Yes, but the distinction is that the cult dies with the founder, or at most with his immediate successor, if that person is also charismatic. I’m wondering if these monuments could have been built during one person’s life and then abandoned. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/63 "2018-08-31T18:41:48Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You missed my point, but that’s OK because I have a new theory. Drawing conclusions about events in the distance past based on little to no evidence is not a good idea and it’s remotely possible that just maybe many such conclusions will be overturned each time new evidence is discovered. Actually there is a large amount of clear and consistent evidence. It’s the nature of science that any theory may be overturned when new evidence comes along. At the moment this theory is accepted by most scientists and experts in prehistory, whether you happen to like it or not. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/64 "2018-08-31T19:09:43Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Actually there is a large amount of clear and consistent evidence. > > It’s the nature of science that any theory may be overturned when new evidence comes along. At the moment this theory is accepted by most scientists and experts in prehistory, whether you happen to like it or not. It’s a speculative theory. Interesting for discussion, hardly anything to draw broad conclusions from. Mostly what these finds do is set back the date for the ‘earliest’ events, they don’t tell us much else clearly. We’ve seen the dates, purpose, builders, and source of stone for Stonehenge change repeatedly. We glean a few useful facts about the particular site discovered but it doesn’t tell us much about the life of humans elsewhere at that time. Their could have been large civilizations of permanently settled people at the same time who relied on wood and mud and the evidence will never be found. This is a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing and no readily identifiable edge pieces. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/65 "2018-08-31T20:01:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Tell me Mr Dibble, what University are you a professor of archeology at? How many works published? How many years spent digging in that area? I don’t need \*any \*of that to know that thinking hunter-gatherers were considered incapable of complex construction at the time Göbekli Tepe was being excavated is ignorance, no matter who makes it. But hey, cool argument from authority, though. > [@DrDeth](#): > > Really? with only 5% of the area excavated, you can make this determination? Not me, the teams there saying they’ve found no sign. > [@](#): > > But you already dismissed this man and Professor Hodders as\* “Ignorant assumption… invalid assumption…archaeological ignoramus…utter ignorance of other complex HG cultures”\* so why rely upon other conclusions they made? Because I’m happy to believe they’re absolutely \*stellar \*field archaeologists while not being all that great at the anthropology interpretation part of it. As evidenced by their seeming ignorance of other sedentary HG cultures. > [@](#): > > Sure, from the evidence so far, it doesn’t appear to be a 'city", the people apparently lived nearby in villages and also came for long distance to perhaps worship. But with only 5% excavated it is perhaps too early to make sweeping conclusions that no one lived there. Gosh, it’s almost like I said something similar … > [@MrDibble](#): > > I’m not saying that future finds won’t turn up \*some \*houses. But it won’t be a city. Even Çatalhöyük was not a city. > [@DrDeth](#): > > **the buildings at Göbekli Tepe may actually be houses,** …which would overturn the idea of them being a temple complex, which would mean…suddenly religion doesn’t precede settlement, which would mean…suddenly everything\* isn’t \*changed? 😕 And if they were houses, they’d have all the other stuff houses had - the hearths, the trash pits, the burials. They don’t. But what they _do have, are the characteristics of other roughly contemporaneous PPNA/B non-domestic buildings that are associated with easily-identifiable houses_, like the cultic complex at [Nevalı Çori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neval%C4%B1_%C3%87ori) or the 3 cult buildings at Çayönü. We know what \*their \*houses looked like. We know what \*their \*cult buildings looked like. The buildings at Göbekli Tepe look like their cult buildings, not their houses. You expect us to believe they \*started off \*living in buildings exactly like the temples, then later moved to living in simpler houses? And they built their later temples to look like their old houses because…? Nostalgia? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/66 "2018-08-31T20:27:05Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Yes, but the distinction is that the cult dies with the founder, or at most with his immediate successor, if that person is also charismatic. I’m wondering if these monuments could have been built during one person’s life and then abandoned. No. From the NatGeo article I linked earlier: > [@The NatGeo article I linked earlier](#): > > For reasons yet unknown, the rings at Göbekli Tepe seem to have regularly lost their power, or at least their charm. Every few decades people buried the pillars and put up new stones—a second, smaller ring, inside the first. Sometimes, later, they installed a third. Then the whole assemblage would be filled in with debris, and an entirely new circle created nearby. The site may have been built, filled in, and built again for centuries. > > Bewilderingly, the people at Göbekli Tepe got steadily worse at temple building. The earliest rings are the biggest and most sophisticated, technically and artistically. As time went by, the pillars became smaller, simpler, and were mounted with less and less care. Finally the effort seems to have petered out altogether by 8200 B.C. This also destroys the argument that it was a city because it is big. It is like finding a landfill and thinking “Boy, that must have been a big party!”. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/67 "2018-08-31T20:56:11Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I don’t need \*any \*of that to know that thinking hunter-gatherers were considered incapable of complex construction at the time Göbekli Tepe was being excavated is ignorance, no matter who makes it. But hey, cool argument from authority, though. Argument from authority? Cites? Facts? That’s\* exactly\* what General Questions is. I still want your reply, what makes you think you know better than : Ian Hodder Professor Dunlevie Family Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences Ph.D. Cambridge, 1974 Among his publications are: Symbols in Action (Cambridge 1982), Reading the Past (Cambridge 1986), The Domestication of Europe (Oxford 1990), The Archaeological Process (Oxford 1999). Catalhoyuk: The Leopard’s Tale (Thames and Hudson 2006), and Entangled. An archaeology of the relationhips between humans and things (Wiley and Blackwell, 2012). Professor Hodder has been conducting the excavation of the 9,000 year-old Neolithic site of Catalhoyuk in central Turkey since 1993. A Stanford Professor, PhD from Cambridge, with at least four major books published in the field, who has been actually out there digging in Turkey for 15 years. What’s your qualifications? Where are your cites? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/68 "2018-08-31T22:01:38Z")
Another point about GT site is - no article really mentions the origin of the stones. Did they find chunks of stone lying about and dress them? Did they actually quarry them from the local bedrock, (\*Meet the modern stone age family…\*♫) have the tech to split 15-foot chunks out of solid rock? Were they dragged a long distance? Also fascinating -they “filled in” the circles? Even back in Roman times (or later) the area beside the Jerusalem Temple was filled in using stone arches since that was cheaper than hauling the equivalent amount of rubble from elsewhere. Filling in one of those circles must have been a fairly hefty amount of work. The problem with large gatherings in the pre-agricultural times means that attendees either stripped the neighbourhood bare in no time, or had to carry in significant amounts of food or travel mighty far for their next feast. the excavations of GT specifically mention no settlement found, but a LOT of animal bones. IMHO - IANAArchaeologist - a defining factor for “city” is a large settlement of relative permanence. Permanent occupation gave the incentive to build more permanent structures. Seasonal structures would need significant cleaning and repairs each year - at a certain point, too large or complex a building is not worth it. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/69 "2018-08-31T22:35:30Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Another point about GT site is - no article really mentions the origin of the stones. Did they find chunks of stone lying about and dress them? Did they actually quarry them from the local bedrock, (\*Meet the modern stone age family…\*♫) have the tech to split 15-foot chunks out of solid rock? Were they dragged a long distance? > . They did find quarries nearby.iirc ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/70 "2018-08-31T23:18:39Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > The status of whether Göbekli Tepe is a city or not is apparently important. So what do archeologists consider to be a city? > > In my layman’s view, a city is simply a small area where lots of people are living. Göbekli Tepe would seem to qualify, but I guess not. Please fight ignorance here. City and town are pretty interchangeable. In the UK, ‘City’ is a status granted by the monarch and there are examples of small cities (Ely) and large towns (Northampton). In other parts of the world, towns title themselves as cities to give themselves more status. I guess you go from hamlet to village to town. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2018, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/71 "2018-08-31T23:38:35Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > City and town are pretty interchangeable. In the UK, ‘City’ is a status granted by the monarch and there are examples of small cities (Ely) and large towns (Northampton). How does that work? Assuming we in the USA were still with you guys, does Levy, Arkansas (cesspool of the world, armpit of the South) write a Letter to Elizabeth II and request to become a city instead of a town? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2018, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/72 "2018-09-01T01:19:54Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Another point about GT site is - no article really mentions the origin of the stones. Did they find chunks of stone lying about and dress them? Did they actually quarry them from the local bedrock, (Meet the modern stone age family…♫) have the tech to split 15-foot chunks out of solid rock? Were they dragged a long distance? The area is made of limestone. From the _NatGeo_ article: > [@The NatGeo article](#): > > Amazingly, the temple’s builders were able to cut, shape, and transport 16-ton stones hundreds of feet despite having no wheels or beasts of burden. From the _Smithsonan_ article: > [@The Smithsonian article](#): > > Even without metal chisels or hammers, prehistoric masons wielding flint tools could have chipped away at softer limestone outcrops, shaping them into pillars on the spot before carrying them a few hundred yards to the summit and lifting them upright. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2018, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/73 "2018-09-01T03:51:27Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > How does that work? Assuming we in the USA were still with you guys, does Levy, Arkansas (cesspool of the world, armpit of the South) write a Letter to Elizabeth II and request to become a city instead of a town? Currently, in the U.S. each state has its own regulations for and definitions of what makes cities, towns, and villages. They are formally incorporated by state law. (Which is why a city attorney is its corporation counsel.) (And why areas outside these boundaries are called unincorporated districts.) These definitions have exactly nothing in common with the way archaeologists use the terms. They are arbitrary and there are 50 of them. I’m assuming that each nation has its own set of equally arbitrary definitions and rules. Think of “city” as a scientific term that lives in a different world from the common meaning, similar to theory, paradigm, chaos, and countless others. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2018, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/74 "2018-09-01T06:31:45Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > What’s your qualifications? I merely have undergrad arcaeology. Not that that matters. > [@](#): > > Where are your cites? I’ve referenced 3 HG cultures in this thread, any of which would give the lie to the naive idea that HGs were just small roaming bands incapable of building anything monumental. Do you \*really \*need cites for the existence of any of them, or what they were capable of? One of them was right in the Levant, even. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2018, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/75 "2018-09-01T06:52:56Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > City and town are pretty interchangeable. Not to archaeologists, urban planners or anthropologists - and while there’s a continuum, even in common parlance there’s generally a [differentiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_hierarchy)to be made. In the UK, it \*used \*to be that a city had a cathedral, a town didn’t. That’s why small Ely is a city. That went by the wayside, though, and just royal proclamation was all that counted. But that definition isn’t really useful in the Levant, now is it? Archaeologists usually use some variant of Childe’s 10 criteria, : [ol] [li]increased settlement size, [/li][li]concentration of wealth, [/li][li]large-scale public works, [/li][li]writing, [/li][li]representational art, [/li][li]knowledge of science and engineering, [/li][li]foreign trade, [/li][li]full-time specialists in nonsubsistence activities, [/li][li]class-stratified society,[/li][li]political organization based on residence rather than kinship.[/li][/ol] That’s overlain nowadays with the functional definition concept, where cities are defined in terms of the services they provide hinterlands, as not all archaeological cities meet all Childe’s criteria. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/76 "2018-09-01T19:03:54Z")
Well, I am convinced that there was nothing around that could qualify as a city by either than definition or having tens of thousands of people. It would be highly out of context with everything we know about the period and there would have been a lot of evidence still. I don’t really believe any line of cultural descent to Sumer and the other Mesopotamian civilizations is probable, besides the most fundamental. The intervening time period is way too long. I am not convinced we can state with any certainty that there was no group who lived permanently at or near the site. A small group of permanent specialists does not seem a reach. We have excavated too little of the site to be certain, and presumably started excavations at the most visible remains. Also, Göbekli Tepe is situated on a hill with views of every direction. Any humans would most likely have settled near a water source. Permanent residence does not man stone houses. I think archeologists would have to be marvelously lucky to find the remains of a small permanent camp near a river or similar water source that may possibly have flooded occasionally over eleven thousand years of climate variety. Also under ten thousand years of debris. I am quite unconvinced that Göbekli Tepe wasn’t closely involved in the origins of agriculture. It is too on the nose in location and time. I’d expect any small permanent resident group may have had periods when they needed to rely on other food sources than hunting, and after a few cases of that may have made it a permanent practice. There is no evidence that the buildings didn’t come first though. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2018, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/77 "2018-09-01T22:16:39Z")
So anyway, I was doing some reading around, and came across a [National Geographic article](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2011/06/gobeki-tepe/)on the site. And towards the end of the piece, Klaus Schmidt the archeologist in charge of the work, says he is not at all certain they have reached the bottom layer! So… it could be even older? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2018, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/78 "2018-09-02T05:21:52Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Not that that matters.I’ve referenced 3 HG cultures in this thread, any of which would give the lie to the naive idea that HGs were just small roaming bands incapable of building anything monumental. Do you \*really \*need cites for the existence of any of them, or what they were capable of? One of them was right in the Levant, even. What has that to do with my cites? Do anyone disagree with the Stanford Professor? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2018, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/79 "2018-09-02T06:04:23Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > What has that to do with my cites? Do anyone disagree with the Stanford Professor? It’s kinda difficult to disagree with questions, speculation, and opinions. Got any actual science backing your position? Or is appeal to authority your only case? ---
**Author:** ![ataraxy22](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ataraxy22/32/307_2.png) [@ataraxy22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ataraxy22)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/80 "2018-09-02T06:08:13Z")
I’m 104 years old. I remember in my youth when this was a happening place. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508.md?page=5)