You missed a zero in that date. Furthermore, that page points out that even earlier pottery was found in somewhere in China going back to 20,000 BCE or so.
I do have to wonder if Göbekli Tepe was more the result of a personality cult rather than a religion.
As I said, the thing that surprises me is that contrary to our notion of hunter-gatherers living a nomadic subsistence existence, the Venus of Willendorf (like many similar) is a relatively accurate depiction of extreme obesity; the fat rolls are very accurately depicted, suggesting the artist had at least one model to work from life - and that implies the tribe likely did not habitually migrate decent distances - I can’t imagine someone looking like that and still walking several miles a day or more and doing heavy physical labour involved in food preparation from scratch. We can speculate the “how” or “why” of her appearance, but it is an interesting indication.
Very often the same thing.
What kind of definition of “civilization” are we using here?
Except it isn’t, though. For instance, even obese people usually have feet.
The kind that requires cities. like it says on the tin. Or the stannum, even.
What definition for “city” are we using here?
Are we *really *playing this fucking stupid game? What definition of “definition” are *you *using? And of “we”? And “using”? Where’s “here”? :rolleyes:
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.
No, a city is a *large * *settlement *where lots of people live. Size is the defining feature of a city - what contrasts the city with the town or hamlet. Even a layman should know this - even if English were not their first language - this isn’t some special archaeological term. To an archaeologist, though, other characteristics can include: permanence, urban planning, sanitation, trade, social stratification, non-agricultural specialization, provision of centralized commercial, religious and political functions for a larger hinterland, etc. The list isn’t exhaustive, nor is it prescriptive.
For one thing, there’s absolutely no sign anyone permanently lived at Göbekli Tepe - no hearths, no houses, no burials. It’s *not *a settlement.
I don’t think its an unreasonable question. I am sorry if that offends you. Georadar surveys show that the area currently being excavated is at most 25% of the full size of the site. All areas seem to show the same large stone pillar architecture.
Given the size and the overlap in time and location with the origin of wheat cultivation, I am curious as to how we can totally dismiss the notion that there were some kind of large permanent settlements involved or that some may have accreted around the complex. If not co-located then nearby. We don’t need to postulate anything the size or population density of the Cucuteni–Trypillia or similar fully agricultural culture.
A definition that contrasts a city with a town or hamlet seems pretty useless in this case, though, since I severely doubt there was any distinction made at that time. What I was more uncertain about was whether there exists some minimum size, or if “lots of people” is a relative term, since lots of people in the Ice Age is not necessarily a large number to us.
Thank you, that answers my question.
Exactly - more of the same, *not *houses.
There isn’t an overlap in origin, though. Wheat cultivation (not gathering of wild wheat) starts *after *the site is already in place.
We can dismiss the notion of *large *settlements because it’s *not *like they haven’t looked for them, and no evidence has turned up. Plus the subsistence pattern we do have evidence for is that of large-scale hunting, not agricultural settlements. 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.
Thank you for explaining terms as used by scientists.
Is agriculture considered a necessary condition for a settlement?
Does permanence refer to year-round habitation or to immobility of the shelter, or both? For example, if people live in the same tent at the same location for many years, is that a permanent habitat? Or, if people live in a stone hut for three weeks each year but elsewhere the rest of time, is that a permanent habitat?
Since there were no cities, it wasn’t a distinction they were in any position to make. But I’m confident the inhabitants of the first real cities like Uruk and Eridu did make the distinction. They knew which places had ziggurats and palaces, and which didn’t.
It’s *always *relative, but “tens of thousands” would be a good working standard anyway. Uruk would have had 50,000 people at its height.
No - you can look at Pacific North West American natives (people like the Haida, Tlingit, Coastal Salish etc.) to see settlements that didn’t have agriculture. Also the Natufiansettlements (including early Jericho).
If there’s a migration cycle that returns to the same locales, that would be only semi-permanent habitation, but still considered a settlement. But permanence requires year-round habitation, or close to it. At least, that’s what I was taught.
Yes.
No. If the “elsewhere” is one place where they spend all the rest of their time, *that *place would be permanent, 49 weeks is plenty, IMO. But in e.g. Alpine transhumanance, the pasture dwellings aren’t considered permanent dwellings, but the village bases are.
Ok, on one hand we have Ian Hodder | Department of Anthropology
*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.
Vs- Some poster on a message board who calls the professor & his ideas: "ignorant assumption… invalid assumption…archaeological ignoramus…utter ignorance of other complex HG cultures" :rolleyes: all without a single cite.
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?
Who to believe, who to believe…
Moderator Note
This is GQ. Dial it back.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Really? with only 5% of the area excavated, you can make this determination? Wow, why should they even bother to do any more digging? It’s true, as of this point, there’s none of the classic signs of full time settlement, as per Schmidt "*Schmidt’s team, however, found none of the telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits, and none of the clay fertility figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. *
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/#ypKCK6fuHR0GsLvY.99
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?
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.
More cites:
Göbekli Tepe is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of modern times, pushing back the origins of monumentality beyond the emergence of agriculture. We are pleased to present a summary of work in progress by the excavators of this remarkable site and their latest thoughts about its role and meaning. At the dawn of the Neolithic, hunter-gatherers congregating at Göbekli Tepe created social and ideological cohesion through the carving of decorated pillars, dancing, feasting—and, almost certainly, the drinking of beer made from fermented wild crops.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/661207
Archaeologists have proposed that quite a number of structures dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B in southwest Asia were nondomestic ritual buildings, sometimes described specifically as temples or shrines, and these figure large in some interpretations of social change in the Near Eastern Neolithic. Yet the evidence supporting the identification of cult buildings is often equivocal or depends on ethnocentric distinctions between sacred and profane spaces. This paper explores the case of Göbekli Tepe, a large Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Turkey that its excavator claims consisted only of temples, to illustrate weaknesses in some kinds of claims about Neolithic sacred spaces and to explore some of the problems of identifying prehistoric ritual. Consideration of the evidence suggests the alternative hypothesis that the buildings at Göbekli Tepe may actually be houses, albeit ones that are rich in symbolic content.
the buildings at Göbekli Tepe may actually be houses,