# 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:** 9
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2019, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/161 "2019-06-14T00:40:58Z")
We don’t have a clue what the “Venus” figures were for? Tell me: If someone nowadays is producing depictions of naked women with exaggerated sexual characteristics, what are they for? And is there any reason that the purpose would be any different a few thousand years ago? People are people. ---
**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:** [June 14, 2019, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/162 "2019-06-14T04:50:42Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > If someone nowadays is producing depictions of naked women with exaggerated sexual characteristics, what are they for? Art? Porn? Advertising? Political statement? Religious Iconography? No one reason, is my point. > [@](#): > > And is there any reason that the purpose would be any different a few thousand years ago? You say this like you have one particular purpose in mind. Do you mean porn? Then say porn. What makes you think people millennia ago had the same thing for nudity we do? Art history shows us non-sexual nudity has been the norm at various periods, and not at others. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2019, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/163 "2019-06-14T12:52:01Z")
They obviously didn’t have the _same_ thing we do, because most people nowadays don’t find the Venus of Wilendorf shape sexy. But I’m sure they had some sort of porn. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2019, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/164 "2019-06-14T13:52:19Z")
The prehistoric Venus figurines are obviously religious icons, though the term “religious” applied to Paleolithic man may be ill-defined. The consistency of the statues’ shapes (as well as the careful workmanship) should make it clear they had some function beyond “porn.” :smack: I own a copy of _Language of the Goddesses_ by Marija Gimbutas herself. (I’d quote some relevant passages … but unfortunately my book collection is in such disarray that just finding the book would be a project! :mad: ) ---
**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:** [June 14, 2019, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/165 "2019-06-14T13:57:36Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m sure they had some sort of porn. Possibly. We don’t really have any unambiguous porn from before the Fertile Crescent civilizations, AFAIK. The mindset for it might be a result of civilization, for all we know. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2019, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/166 "2019-06-14T15:36:31Z")
Sorry for restarting the hijack. But… No. The figurine is FAT, not (or not just) pregnant. A thin pregnant woman has a distinctive shape; this figurine displays anatomically correct obesity. My point in bring up her shape was not to discuss purpose or porn, but to point out that the figure made by and for a nomadic group displays a level of obesity inconsistent with our modern concept of hunter-gatherer nomadic societies. This suggests that in some locales, before agricultural societies pushed HG to the less productive lands, it was possible that some HG societies were sufficiently sedentary and lived in sufficiently bountiful conditions, it appears, that some members of the group could become obese enough that it suggests they were limited in mobility. I can’t imagine a 300-lb woman living a nomadic lifestyle, but this suggests the artist had seen one close to that condition. (and she didn’t need feet, ha ha) ---
**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:** [June 14, 2019, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/167 "2019-06-14T16:05:38Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > some HG societies were sufficiently sedentary and lived in sufficiently bountiful conditions, it appears, that some members of the group could become obese enough that it suggests they were limited in mobility. I can’t imagine a 300-lb woman living a nomadic lifestyle, but this suggests the artist had seen one close to that condition. (and she didn’t need feet, ha ha) Steatopygian Khoisan women had no problem maintaining a nomadic lifestyle. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2019, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/168 "2019-06-14T16:24:25Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Steatopygian Khoisan women had no problem maintaining a nomadic lifestyle. No, she’s beyond steatopygian - she has full-bodied fatness up and down, including huge… tracts of land. The stomach overflows on the sides as large love handles; not a pregnancy characteristic. She even has fat rolls around the vulva. As I keep saying, this is too true-to-life to be fanciful - it appears to be based on reality. ---
**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:** [June 14, 2019, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/169 "2019-06-14T18:12:48Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I own a copy of _Language of the Goddesses_ by Marija Gimbutas herself. (I’d quote some relevant passages … but unfortunately my book collection is in such disarray that just finding the book would be a project! :mad: ) I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but Marija Gimbutas was discredited decades ago, and her ‘goddess’ theories are not, and have never been, accepted by serious scientists and academics. RationalWiki: [Goddess movement](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Goddess_movement) > [@](#): > > Much of the basis for the claims of an ancient matriarchy are based on the arguments put forth by the late archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (although Gimbutas herself preferred the term “matristic” to denote a sense of egalitarianism).[1] Gimbutas’ claims are recycled in many works of Goddess pseudo-scholarship, most famously Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade.[2] > > This hypothesis is widely regarded as crackpot within both “mainstream” and gender/feminist archaeology.[3] It relies on a specious interpretation of ancient “Venus” statuettes and figurines. One of the glaring problems with this is that the artifacts range greatly in their depictions – the “Venus of Willendorf,” pictured at right, is a famous example but not wholly typical. Positing a single religion and social structure on this basis would require a massively speculative hypothesis that much of the peoples of the Eurasian landmass shared either a unified or very similar social structure and religious ideology over a period of approximately 30,000 years from the Late Paleolithic to the Neolithic. Besides this tiny complication, there is also no reason to assume that all the figurines represented a goddess. For one, not all the figures are actually female – many are male figures and a number are ambiguous in terms of sex. > > The context that some of the figures were found in (e.g., trash pits) does not suggest that they were sacred items. In fact, there is no definitive consensus on how the various statuettes should be interpreted.[4] In addition, even if they were meant to represent goddesses, that doesn’t necessarily imply that these societies were matriarchal or matrifocal. The ancient Greeks and the Catholics produced many depictions of Athena and the Virgin Mary respectively, but neither came out of a matriarchal society. This interpretation also ignores the numerous depictions of animals, violence, and death in Neolithic-period art.[5] [Marija Gimbutas](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Marija_Gimbutas) > [@](#): > > Archeologists generally reject these claims of Gimbutas’ late work, and generally consider her claims to find evidence of a shared mother-goddess deity, common theologies, and elaborate complexes of cultural values among potsherds, decorative stone carvings, and faceless images to go far beyond the facts on the ground. Ian HodderWikipedia’s W.svg of Cambridge has said that “She looks at squiggles on a pot and says it’s a primeval egg or a snake, or she looks at female figurines and says they’re mother goddesses. I don’t really think there’s an awful lot of evidence to support that level of interpretation.” ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2019, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/170 "2019-06-14T20:40:08Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Multiple “Venus” figurines have been discovered, spanning a range of more than a thousand miles and more than 10,000 years. We have no idea what the motive for making them was, or even if it was a single tradition spanning a gigantic span of human history or if the idea was reinvented over and over. Anyone who claims to know what they were for is full of shit. I’m imagining someone stumbling onto a store of Smokey the Bear posters in the far distant future. They might well recognize it’s a bear wearing a hat but putting together that it means don’t start forest fires would be a bit of a stretch. ---
**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:** [June 14, 2019, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/171 "2019-06-14T22:52:06Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m imagining someone stumbling onto a store of Smokey the Bear posters in the far distant future. They might well recognize it’s a bear wearing a hat but putting together that it means don’t start forest fires would be a bit of a stretch. Further, stumbling on some Smokey the Bear posters in New York and a Clovis-age petroglyph of a bear in Washington State and assuming that both were made by the same culture for the same reason. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2019, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/172 "2019-06-15T02:34:31Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Further, stumbling on some Smokey the Bear posters in New York and a Clovis-age petroglyph of a bear in Washington State and assuming that both were made by the same culture for the same reason. Obvious some kind of Earth Bear God. Shovel as a symbol of crafting the mighty earthworks that date from that period. The hat must be a symbol of authority not unlike the Egyptian [Uraeus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uraeus). ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2019, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/173 "2019-06-15T08:07:43Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but Marija Gimbutas was discredited decades ago, and her ‘goddess’ theories are not, and have never been, accepted by serious scientists and academics. I’m not “invested” in all of Gimbutas’ theories — I can’t even be bothered to hunt down her book, which is somewhere within 20 yards of me as I type! — but IIUC she was also ridiculed for her Kurgan hypothesis of I-E origin which is now accepted by all right-minded thinkers. Of course, the details of Venus figurines will vary in time and space; the changes in material culture are dizzying and lead to several _dozens_ of named prehistoric cultures in Europe alone. But IMHO it is absurd to imagine these icons as universal porn, rather than some sort of “religious” motif. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is something I see all too often in the “soft” sciences. Julian Jaynes (who still has expert adherents today) went too far in some of his generalizations? “All his theories should therefore be rejected.” Even the revolutionary theories of SDMB’s own Lynne Kelly, acclaimed by top archaeologists, were described on this very board as “woo.” > [@](#): > > not … accepted by serious scientists and academics. Thanks at least for not inserting an “all” before the “serious.” In a previous debate on another topic I started naming PhD’s that took “my” side and indignant Dopers were outraged that I didn’t know “all” meant “most.” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2019, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/174 "2019-06-15T13:12:01Z")
I would say quite the opposite. We know that all humans, all over the world, make porn, and when modern humans create depictions of naked women, that’s usually why. On the other hand, while all human populations, all over the world, have religions, it’s mostly not the same religions, with the same symbols or objects of veneration. It would take extraordinary evidence to rule out the simple explanation of porn. ---
**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:** [June 15, 2019, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/175 "2019-06-15T13:39:36Z")
> [@](#): > > Even the revolutionary theories of SDMB’s own Lynne Kelly, acclaimed by top archaeologists, were described on this very board as “woo.” You mean the revolutionary theory that [del]set the scientific world on fire[/del] sank without a ripple? ---
**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:** [June 15, 2019, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/176 "2019-06-15T16:11:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > We know that all humans, all over the world, make porn, I’ve never seen Bushman porn. Is there pre-colonial Pacific Islander porn? > [@](#): > > and when modern humans create depictions of naked women, that’s usually why. There’s probably nearly as many art nudes as there are porn nudes. ---
**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:** [June 15, 2019, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/177 "2019-06-15T19:07:27Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > You mean the revolutionary theory that [del]set the scientific world on fire[/del] sank without a ripple? So your criticism is not that the theory isn’t plausible and reasonable (it has after all been peer-reviewed and published by Cambridge University Press), but rather that it isn’t sensational or earth-shattering enough for you? In that case, I suppose you can sneer at 99.9% of all scholarly books and papers. It is, however, an interesting theory. We know that similar memory techniques are currently used by several different indigenous cultures around the world. If they were also used in the past, they may explain certain features of paleolithic structures and artifacts. ---
**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:** [June 15, 2019, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/178 "2019-06-15T20:50:05Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > It is, however, an interesting theory. We know that similar memory techniques are currently used by several different indigenous cultures around the world. If they were also used in the past, they may explain certain features of paleolithic structures and artifacts. We know that several different cultures tell stories as a device to remember geography. We don’t know cultures that modify geography as a device to remember stories. The “theory” is pure loony-tunes. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/179 "2019-06-15T21:39:52Z")
When I first saw the Venus, my guess was “child’s doll”. But a friend who’s an amateur archeologist said the Venus figurines represent a huge amount of labor, and were thus probably too valuable to be a child’s play thing. So my next guess is porn. ---
**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:** [June 16, 2019, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508/180 "2019-06-16T07:51:19Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > We know that several different cultures tell stories as a device to remember geography. We don’t know cultures that modify geography as a device to remember stories. The “theory” is pure loony-tunes. No, this is not what Lynne Kelly is saying. My summary: 1. Many indigenous cultures preserve surprisingly large amounts of knowledge, despite having no written language: - The characteristics, and medicinal, food, and other uses of many hundreds of different species of plants and trees. (e.g the Hanunóo in the Philippines in the 19th century could name, describe, and explain 1,625 plant species.) - Hundreds of animal and marine species ditto, their defining chatracteristics, habitats, behaviour, life-cycles, hunting techniques, uses, etc. - Similarly the characteristics of insects. (e.g. North American Navajo have worked with ethnoentomologists to classify and describe over 700 species of insects.) - Medical knowledge of how to diagnose and treat numerous different illnesses and types of wounds. - Navigation and ‘maps’ to numerous locations, often over distances of hundreds or even thousands of miles. - Knowledge of currents, tides, and winds for cultures connected with sea. - History of tribes, often covering many centuries. - Treaties, agreements, borders with other tribes. - Detailed genealogies and family trees, often going back several centuries. - Stars and constellations (used for directional purposes as well as to tell time of night), lunar and solar cycles, seasonal variations. - Dates and places of regular large gatherings. - Notable historical natural events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, fires, comets. - What to do in rare events, such as serious droughts and floods that occur once in several generations, when normal food sources are not available. - Etc, etc. 1. All this knowledge is preserved by the use of memory techniques, which involve, but are not limited to: - Totem poles, memory boards, small shaped stone, wood, or leather objects of various kinds. - Abstract or representative paintings and designs. - Knotted chords. - Landscape features in ‘sacred’ spots, and ‘ritual’ journeys through a number of such landscape features. And particularly: - Songs. - Dances. - Mnemonic stories. - All of these may be used in combination or separately. e.g. > [@](#): > > John Bradley described this issue when writing about trying to learn an Australian Yanyuwa songline, a kujika: > > So much knowledge was being presented to me, at many levels and intricately interrelated. I was struggling to find words for much of the material as it was deeply encoded and dependent on other knowledge. There were many verses describing the myriad species – fish, sharks, birds and other animals and plants, whose names in Yanyuwa were so familiar to my informants that I had yet to identify in English. … > > I was amazed by the detail of this kujika, especially of the different species of sea turtles, their life cycle and habitats; it was a biology lesson in sung form. Lynne Kelly gives a large number of such examples, with citations to published papers. 4. In many cultures this body of knowledge is so large that it takes years of dedicated effort to learn. This results in a special caste of people whose function it is to preserve the knowledge, while most people only memorise a smaller amount of everyday knowledge. 1. It is a category mistake to think that the primary function of songs, dances, rituals, ritual objects and places, and the ‘priestly’ caste is religion and worship. A small part of it may indeed be religion and worship, but the great bulk of it is about preserving detailed knowledge and facts. 2. It is not a big leap to connect, say, the stone posts at Gobekli Tepe, with North American totem poles and other such objects in other cultures, and guess that they may have served a similar purpose. 3. Usually regular gatherings are held, which in Australia may involve thousands of people, to refresh and remember the songs, dances, etc. which encode the knowledge of the culture. These gatherings are held at places where knowledge is encoded in features of the landscape. 4. We can theorise that larger, more settled and sophisticated cultures may have created purpose-built ‘landscape objects’ such as stone circles and places like Gobekli Tepe for such gatherings. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508.md?page=10)