That’s why all the great ancient cities were seaside harbours…
…oh, wait, no, they weren’t. Sumer, Memphis, Mohenjo-daro, Erlitou, Tiwanaku, Cahokia ,Teotihuacan - these were not coastal. Sure, some civilizations developed on the coasts - the Olmecs, the Moche, etc. But more often than not, civilizations start on rivers or lakes, a ways away from the coast. Yes, there’s great fishing on the more productive coasts, it’s wonderful for some HGs (look at early modern man in Southern Africa) but it doesn’t seem that overwhelmingly great for starting a civilization.
Possibly because a lot of Indian archaeology is viewed as strongly biased by nationalistpolitics and therefore sometimes lacking in scientific rigor. So peopleare a bit skeptical.
Miscommunications here I think. I’m not saying Gobekli Tepe was on a coast, I was saying it’s an anomaly…we have it because it was buried and forgotten for 8000 years. Since that usually doesn’t happen, I’m positing that this might be because such sites were scavenged thousands of years ago. The comparatively new Stonehenge, for instance, had been previously scavenged for materials, and while much is still there much is long gone. If that site were 5000 years older all of it might have been gone by now. Possible coastal sites, by comparison, that were flooded thousands of years ago could still potentially be mostly in tact, if they were made of stone (or, hell, in the Black Sea even wood might still be there at the lower depth…ships have been found almost completely intact despite thousands of years).
Yes, Gobekli Tepe was certainly a HG group…however, they came together in common cause to build a temple complex. I’d say that this should constitute an ice age ‘civilization’ since it had to have been a lot of small bands working together to do something like that. And if they could…well, who else did something similar? Is it the only one, or are there other things like that out there waiting to be discovered?
Your links are odd, but I get your point. Ok, that’s good to be skeptical. However, doesn’t seem to be a good reason not to do a survey, especially a survey from a 3rd party so to speak. I’m unsure why this hasn’t happened, and just saying people are skeptical of Indian archeology (which is odd, since it was an Indian geo-survey group that found the site, not Indian archeology) doesn’t seem to be a good reason not to at least check it out. Especially if they supposedly dredged up artifacts (from the Wiki I linked to earlier I get that there is controversy about that as well, but that doesn’t seem enough to not go look).
If it was anomalous, there’d be something off about it, but it fits very much in-and-of its time and place, and has several stages of development, as well as a clear lineage to later Anatolian culture . What you’re postulating are coastal settlements that not only were inundated, but also left no corresponding mark in subsequent cultures - no boat iconography, or seashore animals carved anywhere…
It’s anomalous because it was buried completely by the people who used it, instead of over time by natural forces. And no, I’m not positing that these speculative ice age proto-civilizations had no corresponding impact on later cultures, but that there is a long disconnect between when they were possibly wiped out and civilizations that came later that we do know about. If there were coastal civilizations that were hit by such a disaster it’s pretty easy to see how they might have collapsed completely. Of course, your point that there SHOULD be inland cities or towns that we haven’t found is a good one, and may shoot the whole thing down…it’s pretty unlikely that any civilization or even a proto-civilization would ONLY be on the coast without any other settlements. Well, except maybe in the case of the Black Sea…even if you had some inland settlements on streams near the lake, those would have been wiped out as well, so it’s possible that IF there was anything there it was destroyed so much that there were no follow on civilizations. There were some Mesoamerican civilizations that basically abandoned their cities and basically disappeared. In those cases follow on civilizations found the ruins of their cities, but had no idea who built them (I’m thinking Tenochtitlan or some of the Peruvian civilizations). If all their cities were flooded by not 20-30 meters but hundreds of meters of water then there would be nothing to find.
Two of them came up on my browser in some weird text mode. Not sure if it’s my filter or the link or what. Just odd…to me. YMMV.
Oh, totally agree. I was appalled when I read that they had dredged for stuff. :eek: But they weren’t archeologists, so they probably didn’t know better. Again, seems like it would be worth having some underwater archeologists check it out.
Sumer was coastal. Most of our records of them are bills of lading for sea-going trading ships. The coastline was a good fifty miles inland of its current position at that time, due to siltation. Sites of Sumerian culture have been found on various islands and coastal sites along the Gulf as far as Bahrain.
And they weren’t just trading with themselves. Mohenjo-Daro and Memphis might have been away from the coast, but they were connected by river to the coast. Ships were found buried near the Great Pyramid, for example.
Of course once arable land is needed, and especially if irrigation is needed, rivers come in handy.
No. I disagree. Its antecedents were littoral, sure, but the urbanised phase was firmly riparian.
You can see how a city can be on a major river and not actually be coastal, right?
I’m not saying Sumerian culture didn’t extend to the coasts (and its people originate there) - I’m saying the *civilization *part of it arose and flourished away from the coasts.
So, once civilization (large-scale agriculture, irrigation, etc) becomes a thing, the coasts are no longer “the best place to live”?
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So, once civilization (large-scale agriculture, irrigation, etc) becomes a thing, the coasts are no longer “the best place to live”?
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Well, I’d say two things to this. As they became larger they were able to (almost had to really) spread out more. A smaller, more concentrated proto-civilization would have been more vulnerable to a single large catastrophe wiping them out…and leaving less evidence that they were ever there, especially in the context of thousands of years before larger civilizations re-emerged that did leave an imprint. Secondly, a non-agricultural society might have been more dependent on, say, ocean access both for trade and for sustenance.
Of course, just because they are now under 20-30 meters of the ocean doesn’t rule out that they could have been further inland during the ice age and the river they were on has ALSO been swallowed up as well. We know there are ancient fossil rivers that are now under the sea…NASA has been able to show several of them, especially in the regions we are talking about (there are 2 or 3 IIRC under the Red Sea, for instance).
But that concentrated proto-civilization must have had more widespread antecedents, and we’d see evidence of that larger culture in the hinterlands - and we don’t. Nor do we see any contemporary evidence for such a culture. Not in the area around the Black Sea, not in the Levant. In both areas, there’s a clear progression from Paleolithic through Mesolithic/Epipaleolithic including Natufian, to the Neolithic, like the PPNA and the rise of settlements. It’s not like these were isolated small tribes, either - Levantine Natufian sites show a trade network stretching from at least Turkey to Egypt. So if there were actual *settlements *as near as the Black Sea, they would show up in the material culture. They don’t. It’s the same in the Balkans.
Harumph! Next you’ll be saying that there is no evidence that the Israelites didn’t wipe out the Canaanites just because there is no break in physical culture, which leads to the suggestion that the Exodus didn’t occur as described, which leads to dancing.
This is true of most scientists, making the creationists and AGW deniers look sillier. Nobody gets a Nobel for upholding the status quo.
And I wouldn’t look there. The “problem” with being an HG on the balmy coast of wherever is that life is TOO easy. Large groups are bad, but when it gets too crowded Earth has a LOT of coastline.
And expensive. Crew size is necessarily small, the crew itself needs special training and equipment before entering the site (no group of undergrads in cutoffs on Spring Break), there really can’t be the millimeter by millimeter unearthing with sharpened trowels because the ocean is constantly contaminating the dig–you really can’t do it “right.” A lot of it comes from treasure hunting, and some of the tools show it.
Well, the bible flood still remains a myth, it is clear that even if there is an understanding that after the last ice age a big chunk of territory was flooded then the tale was not needed. Animals then did not need to travel to the middle east to get to the ark and neolithic people that had already developed agriculture in Egypt did not miss much.
Of course, this attempt at making the bible be more than a good book of moral myths misses here that most serious scholars do point that the flood took place around 3000-2500 BC. Right when the Egyptians were already into Pharaohs and up to the Old Kingdom. One also has to point out that then Egyptians did not miss much too.
Here is a graph sea levels over the last 24,000 years.
Basically, sea levels were about 110 meters lower 15,000 years ago, just after the last glacial maximum. Northern latitudes were covered by glaciers, but as sea level was 360 feet lower, there would have been a LOT of dry land now well under water. Compare to this map, which projects a 100 meter rise from where we are now. That’s a lot of land and a lot of cities under deep water.
Between 15,000 and 14,000 years ago, sea levels rose 20 meters (@66 feet). They rose another 20 over the next 3,000 years, and then between 9,000 years ago and 8,000 years ago (6,000 BC), they rose another 60, to almost where we are now. So in that 1,000 years, the sea level rose almost 200 feet, flooding out and destroying any occupied lands. Now of course, this was the stone age, so we likely won’t find great cities 200 feet underwater, but it cannot be strictly correct to claim that everything that looks man made that deep is a natural formation.
And losing that much land over 1,000 years? Yeah, that would definitely spawn myths and legends of a great flood. Combined with earlier sea rises, yes, pretty much everywhere would have such stories until or unless their cultures and peoples were destroyed. Which of course, happened a lot.
