Community | July 03, 2010 | 38 comments

Göbekli Tepe: Older Than Stonehenge, Pyramids, Anything

source: http://talkingskull.com/article/g%C3%B6bekli-tepe-older-than-stonehenge-pyramids-anything

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Billy_Tarter
When people think of ancient temples, they often think of Stonehenge, which most archaeologists agree was built about 5,000 years ago. But Stonehenge is actually trumped handily by a little-known site in modern-day Turkey called Göbekli Tepe, which is 11,500 years old. The site is composed of circular rings and T-shaped monoliths, many with carvings of animals on them.

Although Göbekli Tepe (which means “potbelly hill”) got a bit of press in 2008 when The Guardian and Smithsonian Magazine ran articles about its newly realized importance, it didn’t really receive the wider public acclaim and notice that it deserved. According to many archaeologists, this is one of the most exciting finds ever unearthed, a real game-changer in terms of our understanding of civilization, settlement, agriculture, and religion... Read more of this article: http://talkingskull.com/article/g%C3%B6bekli-tepe-older-than-stonehenge-pyramids...
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38 comments // Göbekli Tepe: Older Than Stonehenge, Pyramids, Anything

  • RubyVideo
    • +2
      RubyVideo  

    • This only goes to show that intellegent life has been on this planet for a very long time, longer then we may have thought before.

    • 1 year ago
  • UtopianSky
  • jubal
    • 0
      jubal  
    • UtopianSky:

      One of the Stargates was on the continent of Mu and the other was on Atlantis. Both continents are now gone when they were destroyed in the mother of all battles that sent mankind back to the stoneage...the descendants of these two continents settled in Central America, South America, Burma, India Egypt and Greece. That is why their mythologies are so similar, they have similarities in their linguistics, and more importantly they have similarities in their architecture and their textile weaving patterns and symbols.

    • 1 year ago
  • UtopianSky
  • csmonut
  • jubal
  • Armageddon_Now
  • dwb2585
  • artemis6
  • csmonut
    • +1
      csmonut  

    • The Earth is 4 billion years old. It's been habitable for humans for several hundred millions of years.
      Why is it impossible that all of this has not come before?
      Look at the human population today. We've barely begun and we have already put ourselves on the brink of extinction.

    • 1 year ago
  • jubal
    • +1
      jubal  
    • csmonut:

      According to Dr. Lee of the Falun Gong movement in China...humanity has gone 82 times around that merry-go-round in the past 2 million years.

    • 1 year ago
  • csmonut
  • tommic
    • +1
      tommic  
    • csmonut:

      Humans have not been around for hundreds of million of years, we did not co-exist with dinosaurs. You watch the flintstones way too much. It has been established the first signs of human like bipedal predesessors were apprx. 4 and ahalf million years ago on the plains of Africa. Better go back to school

    • 1 year ago
  • csmonut
  • tommic
    • +1
      tommic  
    • csmonut:

      Your still wrong the earth has not been habitable for humans for hundreds of millions of years. I hate to tell you you are wrong. 75 thousand years ago almost all life was wiped off the face of the earth due to super volcano. 65 million years ago a asteriod stuck earth killing almost every living thing except those tiny little mammels that lived underground and could survive for months and months. Now I won't respond to your idiocy any more.

    • 1 year ago
  • csmonut
  • EtVoila
  • Andrew_Douglas
  • cabinettags
    • +1
      cabinettags  

    • Great post Billy. I liked this a lot.

      But if I was understanding correctly, then I'm not sure the author is necessarily correct in his assumptions. It's a logical assumption that hunter/gatherers would be a bit busy to stop in one place long enough to accomplish something like that. But that doesn't necessarily have to be so. A small group, in an area rich in game, advanced only far enough where they can succeed in the hunt but not easily, could thrive in one area. Why not?

      Not to mention that they're assuming these folks were hunters/gathers based on what? How old they are? Who said they couldn't be agricultural just because they're older? Maybe the stuff they made wasn't so hot and none of it withstood the time.

      I know the article was saying that the old theories are out of the window. I enjoyed the read & topic; but that rhetoric stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

    • 1 year ago
  • versasrev
    • 0
      versasrev  
    • cabinettags:

      Actually there are many examples of hunter gatherers being stationary when the resources are plentiful enough. But even without that knowledge, it would still have been possible for a nomadic people to build an extensive complex over time/generations (with the most likely use for seasonal reasons). This doesn't really require a drastic changing of how we understand anything, besides the realm of popular misconception.

    • 1 year ago
  • Billy_Tarter
    • 0
      Billy_Tarter  
    • cabinettags:

      Hi cabinettags,

      I wouldn't characterize them as the author's assumptions... rather as archaeologist's general assumptions up to this point. I think Göbekli Tepe was created BEFORE it was generally assumed that humans started agriculture. Archaeologists have specific times that they understand people started farming (at all) and this new discovery changes all that.

    • 1 year ago
  • Billy_Tarter
  • cabinettags
    • +1
      cabinettags  
    • Billy_Tarter:

      Hi Billy,

      That's exactly the assumption I was questioning. How do we know there were no agricultural societies prior to then? I mean if we've not found any to date doesn't mean there are none - just means we haven't found them yet. Or so it seems to me.

      I'm impressed with the find. I'm also impressed where an assumption gravitates into something else. With so few facts to grab onto this far in the past you have to make assumptions in order to get a feel for how it was. But they're still just assumptions.

    • 1 year ago
  • Billy_Tarter
  • MajorMajorMajorMajor
    • 0
      MajorMajorMajorMajor  
    • cabinettags:

      "That's exactly the assumption I was questioning. How do we know there were no agricultural societies prior to then? I mean if we've not found any to date doesn't mean there are none - just means we haven't found them yet. Or so it seems to me."

      That's true, but you can't prove a negative. They've arrived at their estimates about the origin of agriculture because around that time is when things like knives and scythes for cutting wheat and other agricultural tools begin to appear. Before that it's just arrow heads and other hunting/gathering tools.

      It doesn't mean that somewhere there couldn't have been agriculture before that. Just that odds are against it.

    • 1 year ago
  • jubal
    • +2
      jubal  

    • Most of the evidence of the civilizations that existed over 30K years ago are under the oceans, seas, and lakes.

    • 1 year ago
  • jubal
  • csmonut
  • TypeMemeHere
  • Buddha2112
  • EtVoila
  • fun_size
  • idealist
  • ampersand
    • +3
      ampersand  

    • Great to know our hunter-gatherer ancestors had such fine taste in avant garde stone work.
      Is it possible we've all been on downhill slide since then?

    • 1 year ago
  • IWannaBeaDoctor
  • boothanew
  • robertstr
  • EmperorThan
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