Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization By Andrew Curry But, Peters and Schmidt say, Gobekli Tepe's builders were on the verge of a major change in how they lived, thanks to an environment that held the raw materials for farming. "They had wild sheep, wild grains that could be domesticated—and the people with the potential to do it," Schmidt says. In fact, research at other sites in the region has shown that within 1,000 years of Gobekli Tepe's construction, settlers had corralled sheep, cattle and pigs. And, at a prehistoric village just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat; radiocarbon dating indicates agriculture developed there around 10,500 years ago, or just five centuries after Gobekli Tepe's construction. To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies. The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies." Now seen as early evidence of prehistoric worship, the hilltop site was previously shunned by researchers as nothing more than a medieval cemetery.
Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization
But, Peters and Schmidt say, Gobekli Tepe's builders were on the verge of a major change in how they lived, thanks to an environment that held the raw materials for farming. "They had wild sheep, wild grains that could be domesticated—and the people with the potential to do it," Schmidt says. In fact, research at other sites in the region has shown that within 1,000 years of Gobekli Tepe's construction, settlers had corralled sheep, cattle and pigs. And, at a prehistoric village just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat; radiocarbon dating indicates agriculture developed there around 10,500 years ago, or just five centuries after Gobekli Tepe's construction.
To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.
The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."
Now seen as early evidence of prehistoric worship, the hilltop site was previously shunned by researchers as nothing more than a medieval cemetery.
Cass
De oppresso liber. A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life wrote a blank check Made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life." That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.-- click to go to site
>>This site is amazing and is completely in line with how I believed civiliation began. People have fought the idea time and time again, but I think this is really good evidence of how civilization as we almost know it began. There are simply too many commonalities with later peoples and religions to ignore the theory that this site, Gobekli Tepe, provides. The 1-acre exploration represents only 5% of the site! Look at the slide show as well.<<
I can agree with this but the last paragraph seems a bit contradictory.
>>The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."<<
The author says that there had to be some sort of organization to feed and support the builders, but that agriculture came later. But his evidence for that is that they haven't found agriculture traces until 500 years after the temple was built. That terrain isn't very good for hunter-gathering, so why isn't this just as much evidence that these people DID have agriculture and semi-domestic animals but we haven't found the traces yet? How else do you feed and house the workers?It seems to me this is at least as likely the discovery that building temples and having crops and animals is older than we ever knew. Which is just as great a discovery in my mind as what they are claiming.
Mike
>>The genetic evidence is good for one theory but not another? Why did I know you'd fight this?<<
But I'm not. They are saying the temples came first, the settlements later, and much earlier than we knew. Makes sense, we know there were temples or whatever the menhirs and monoliths and standing stones and henges were supposed to be. As you say, it's a huge site, we've only looked at a small part so far.
>>Did you read all 3 pages and look at the pictures? It was a hunter's paradise 11,000 years ago. The climate has changed. Where is the evidence for any agriculture? No tools, no carbonized grain, no permanent structures, no ground scars. They found they needed such as they continued meeting and building. I think it was a high sight that hunters met to trade goods and eventually they began offering to their Gods, all animistic predators. The Mother Goddess wasn't found there, this was a man's place of meeting.<<
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't at least some agriculture start as nomadic people planting a crop and moving on, coming back later to harvest it? It wasn't all settlements first, in fact settlements would almost have to come after they had a dependable food supply.
>>That's the point. They did it little by little until it outgrew their hunting abilities ot provide for food, and they settled nearby, in Ur.<<
Or some intermediate place.
>>It would be fine if there were evidence of crops and agriculture, but there wasn't.<<
All I was trying to say was that putting the temples before the settlements is a new idea, and they have proof of that. But the agriculture thing is more of an assumption based on what they haven't found in an admittedly early stage of their excavation. As I read it, they made a couple of very good discoveries, that buildings and the organization to make them came before settlements, and that it came a lot further back in time than we knew. As you pointed out, this could even be the original source of what became Ur. But the suggestion that agriculture also come later is more of an assumption than anything they've proven.
>>Agricultural wheat mutated 10500 years ago, this site was 11000+ years old. There is no evidence of organized agriculture in the first stages of construction, and the area was full of game. These were hunter/gatherers, not settled people. There's no evidence of agriculture for at least 500 more years, that's solid genetic evidence, so they were building and hunting at the same time. That indicates that the hunter gatherer tribes functioned as cohesive units before agriculture came along, not after. It make perfect common sense.<<
Okay, I can agree with nearly all of that.
>>As HG groups moved around, they frequented areas were the pre-genetic changes took place, and a pre-wheat type grain grew. By collecting and threshing in the area, the released/leftover seed stayed in place and regrew. It was pre-agriculture. It was like knowing where the animals were migrating to.<<
Okay, you are defining agriculture as applying to crops after they'd been adapted in some way to being crops at all.
>>What immediate place? Afur was the closest place that was permanently settled because it was near a river. This temple had no irrigation source.<<
No idea. Just suggesting they might have moved in small steps.
>>Tribal people couldn't possibly be organized enough to see what they needed to develop in order to keep worshipping their Gods in the same location. Yes, it's a new theory, that some have bandied about, including myself, that you disagreed with from the beginning.<<
If your talking about what "civilized" and "civilization" mean, yes I disagree that this was one. It's the first of its kind, the earliest precursor to a civilization that we know of, and highly admirable for that. And very interesting for all the above reasons, particularly its age.
>>If there is no pottery, no scars in the earth from organized fields, and no permanent settlements with cook pits and burnt grain, that is proof. Absence of proof is a result in science, if it's not there, then what did they do? There was no agriculture when they began building the temple.<<
Using the definition of agriculture you used above, I agree.
>>I'm not defining anything. I'm saying what happens. What you know as agriculture- rowed, cropped fields, didn't exist. They were just meadows, and regrew, like the animals went to the same places, eg the migration of elk in Yellowstone to Jackson.<<
That IS defining it. And a good distinction too, one that I hadn't been aware of.
>>They had to have water so either someone had to bring it to them. That requires organization, yet there were no permanent settlements. So it initiated civilization.<<
I agree, it certainly seems to.
>>I didn't say it was civilization, I said it initialized civilization. Big difference.<<
True, I'd have said it differently, but you're correct.
>>You have to follow the science and lose the definition, or adjust it.<<
You defined it, differently than I'd thought it was, and I see what you mean now. Already adjusted. (g)
>>You need to read up on early agriculture and how it got established, how fields were sewn and harvested. Rowed crops and modern agriculture didn't show up until machinery did.<<
Are you counting plows as machinery? When did rowed crops come in? I've sorta assumed that was quite a while back, since we had draft animals long ago, but you're the ag expert.
>>Huh? You agreed?<<
Sure, if agriculture isn't just tossing a few seeds down and coming back a few months later to harvest, then those guys were building temples before they had agriculture.
There were wooden plowshares in the Middle Ages in Europe, pulled by oxen or people if oxen were not available. The stick plow was long obsolete.
