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Apr. 26th, 2008 12:19 amhttp://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav041708a.shtml - 12,000 year old 'temple' complex found in Turkey near Syrian border.
paragraphs 4-6
Compared to Stonehenge, Britain’s most famous prehistoric site, they are humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.
Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers.
"Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture", says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It’s elaborate, it’s complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."
-> pictures! I'd love to see pictures of the carvings!!
-> pre-Ag
and the oldest part of Carrowmore complex in Ireland is also thought to be Mesolithic. Why wouldn't hunter-gatherers ever create built temples? People were painting in caves at least 30,000 years ago, but not every one is located by a suitable cave, or might find suitable sites of importance to them that aren't caves... esp if they were already living in villages like he says these people were. Even when people don't live in villages they tend to move in a cyclical way and keep coming back to the same places each year.
I keep wondering at the assertion I keep stumbling into that astronomical interest only came about with agriculture. In all that time people have been out wandering around looking at the sky - without lots of lights obscuring it, without tv distracting people from looking...
wouldn't you think it obvious that people would look at the sky enough to figure out a lot about it, long before agriculture? What else were people doing for at least half-a-million years, and likely longer?
paragraphs 4-6
Compared to Stonehenge, Britain’s most famous prehistoric site, they are humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.
Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers.
"Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture", says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It’s elaborate, it’s complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."
-> pictures! I'd love to see pictures of the carvings!!
-> pre-Ag
and the oldest part of Carrowmore complex in Ireland is also thought to be Mesolithic. Why wouldn't hunter-gatherers ever create built temples? People were painting in caves at least 30,000 years ago, but not every one is located by a suitable cave, or might find suitable sites of importance to them that aren't caves... esp if they were already living in villages like he says these people were. Even when people don't live in villages they tend to move in a cyclical way and keep coming back to the same places each year.
I keep wondering at the assertion I keep stumbling into that astronomical interest only came about with agriculture. In all that time people have been out wandering around looking at the sky - without lots of lights obscuring it, without tv distracting people from looking...
wouldn't you think it obvious that people would look at the sky enough to figure out a lot about it, long before agriculture? What else were people doing for at least half-a-million years, and likely longer?
