Ancient and Archaeology permalink
Göbleki Tepe.
This discussion has been closed.
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Message 1.Â
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Saturday, 9th April 2011
Mentioned on a French messageboard of history. I did some research.
In the Dutch wikipedia although the same or nearly, I found nevertheless more over the discussion hunter-gatherers or neolithic famers?
I translate from Dutch:
Newer publications put that in the Middle-East and Anatolia the Neolithicum in 10,900 BC was already fully implemented, what would mean that the sanctuary was built by the first Neolithic farmers. They were fed with cultivated grain. Experiments with grain upgrading (spelling? In Dutch: veredeling) can namely already been started at 20,000 BC.
Any comments from knowledgeable contributors as for instance a Lol Beeble?
As and aside:
When looking on the internet it was unbelievable in the English language pages how many mavericks and maverick sites there exist about the subject, going from New Garden of Eden till really esoteric balderdash.
I think it as nothing to do with English speaking people, but more that most of internet sites are in English, and even other language speaking goofball nuts are expressing their utterings in English.
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 2
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Saturday, 9th April 2011
Addendum to previous message.
And the right name is: GÖBEKLI TEPE.
Exuses for the mistake.
Cheers, Paul. -
Message 3
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 9th April 2011
Paul, this is an interview with Klaus Schmidt. unfortunately the interviewer isn't asking the most penetrating questions.
Schmidt makes an interesting point about the possible existence of further similar sites under the alluvial deposits in Mesopotamia.
As far as I am aware, the current understanding is that Gobleki Tepe is from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. There are epipaleolithic nutufian granaries for foraged grain from about 15000BC in the Levant and Anatolia and by the time of Gobleki Tepe there was some established cereal cultivation although the people were still predominately mobile hunter gatherers. I have heard it suggested that organising and feeding the large numbers of people needed to build these types of structures and who then attended the ceremonies performed there, may have been an early reason for sedentism.
ferval -
Message 4
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 10th April 2011
Re: Message 3.
Thank you very much for your reply, Ferval.
As I understand you you agree with the translation I made in my message 1 from the equivalent Dutch wikipedia, who said more than the English wikipedia?
Mentioned also the you tube of Klaus Schmidt in my message 1...
Did some research for what you mentioned in your second paragraph:
and as usual wikipedia is a good guide for a "first" read:
If I understood it well the first found granaries from collected grains are from approximativally 12,000BC? And not from 15,000BC as you suggest?
Many thanks again for introducing me into the Natufian period from which I had never heard.
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 5
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Sunday, 10th April 2011
Oops, I really should read my posts before pressing the button, it should be about 15000BP, not BC. Well spotted.
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Message 6
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Sunday, 17th April 2011
Paul and Ferval, only just spotted this message as I have been exploring the Kingdom of Hyrule. Yes it is an intriguing site. It does not exist in isolation as a year before the monumental structures were uncovered in 1994, a slightly younger site with similar architectural and stylistic patterns had been excavated at Nevali Cori and subsequent surveys have revealed other comparable sites such as Karahantepe, Sefertepe and Hamzantepe in the Sanliurfa region. Although they appear not to be as early or as large as Gobekli Tepe they do raise the importance of the long neglected Anatoloian plateau in terms of the of the development of agriculture, this despite Braidwood's work on Cayonu in the 1950s. The character map on my keyboard does not appear to be as sophisticated as Paul's as I cannot place any of the umlauts that one needs to write Turkish properly.
Sites like Jericho in the southern Levant had long suggested that sedentary behaviour pre-dated the domestication of various crops and livestock without necessarily providing adequate justification for this shift in behaviour. Gobekli Tepe may well indicate one of the mechanisms that motivated this shift was an increasing significance attached to aggregate sites. The prominence of vultures within the majority of the exposed monuments have prompted comparison with the mortuary practices of groups like the Parsees of India leading to suggestions that at least part of the sites significance lies in its role as a final resting place for ancestral remains of groups from widely dispersed communities. Such a view is supported by the recovery of human remains form the infill of niches within excavated enclosures. While commemoration of ancestors has been a powerful motivation behind the construction of many ceremonial sites it does presuppose that the association with mortuary rites pre-dates the actual construction of the site. However if a lot of emotional and industrial effort has been lavished on a particular location then people often want to be interred within them, consider internment within churches and cathedrals let alone the modern practice of scattering ashes on football pitches so it could be that the association with death was actually a later development. As it stands it would be difficult to establish just how wide the distribution of the communities that aggregated at the site might be.
As Ferval points out, the subsequent investment in effort to construct the series of complexes may well have lead to the first tentative steps towards a greater emphasis on selection of wild varieties of crops that would lead to the morphological changes associated with domestication. Evidence for the use of agriculture in association with similar constructions has been suggested by the survey of Karahentepe. It could be argued that the study of Early Neolithic sites sites on the Anatolian plateau support the idea that the much more intensively studied Southern Levant was actually peripheral to the formation of the domesticated package. The Southern Levant has received far more attention throughout much of the twentieth as in 1904 it was identified as natural habitat of the wild strain of Emmer wheat, regarded as the bedrock of Nile civilisation. By way of contrast the Northern Levant and Anatolian plateau appear to be home to a wider variety of the wild progenitors of what would be become the domesticated staples and one could argue play a much greater role in the consolidation and spread of the overall package, especially eastwards.
The trade in obsidian would seem to be a good proxy for the nature of the relationship between regions that existed in the late Mesolithic and Neolithic given that it continued to be an important resource despite the changing patterns of subsistence; there are only limited sources and each has a distinct chemical characteristic. Gobekli Tepe and the other Sanliurfa sites fall within the Eastern Anatolian obsidian network, with the stone coming form sites several hundred miles to the north that was linked with sites as far east as Ali Kosh on the Iranian plateau. In contrast Jericho derived its obsidian from sources in central Anatolia that appear to have been traded along the Mediterranean seaboard. -
Message 7
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 21st April 2011
Re: Message 6.
lol,
read immediately your reply but so busy the last days that I hadn't time to reply.
Thank you very much for this survey, interesting as every post from you.
Now nearing midnight overhere, I close my computer and will try to make some comments tomorrow.
Kind regards and with great esteem as ever,
Paul. -
Message 8
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Monday, 25th April 2011
What a fascinating topic and an excellent argument.
I have never been happy with the explanations presented to date about the development of agriculture but this seems very appealing. -
Message 9
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 25th April 2011
Re: Message 8.
Stanilic,
fascinating topic indeed.
If you understand French also about this site:
But there is more:
the whole mount Taurus civilizations or would-be civilizations predate Sumer.
The author of the former thread started a new thread about it, which had a wider and in depth response.
If I will have time again I will make a summary of the French threads together with a response to lol beeble.
But I have even no time for the moment to read the interesting long French thread and I owe still a long and sophisticated answer to Casseroleon on the History hub about the "great divergence".
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 10
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Monday, 25th April 2011
Merci Paul
My French is poor but reading this I have at least discovered the French for belly button.
I will have to take this a bit at a time...thanks for the link
Magnifique! -
Message 11
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Saturday, 25th June 2011
This actually got a mention on Radio 4 - Thursday I think - in the "God slot" - Thought for the day.
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Message 12
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 17th October 2011
Some news posted today by Esther on the French site about Göbleki Tepe and it is in English. Last message of the first URL I mentioned in the message I am responding to.
Cheers, Paul. -
Message 13
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Thursday, 20th October 2011
The answer to the question asked is `where is the water supply?'
This is the test for habitation. -
Message 14
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Friday, 21st October 2011
Stanilic,
first of all, when I mentioned the in depth thread in my message 9 it was wrongly not the second one but the first one. And it is there that Esther and Mitra are discussing the new Banning article.
They rightly ask about the water supply. But doing some research this evening and I will explain it also on the French site and that is my personal opinion but found in a suggestion in an article: the nature 12,000 years ago and the water supply in that region could be quite otherwise than today?
I suppose of some interest I found:
And there seems after all those years to be only a small part of the site to be unearthed.
And I was so lucky to find the full article of Banning, so we can judge by ourselves first hand:
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 15
Posted by stanilic (U2347429) on Sunday, 23rd October 2011
Paul
Given the nature of the current landscape we are going to have to presume that the climate has changed somewhat. Those Hittites and their motorised chariots causing global warming perhaps!
The argument that the same space or building could be used for habitation and ritual is strong to my mind. It is argued that this possibly appears in other contexts such as Yeavering. -
Message 16
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 23rd October 2011
Stanilic,
thanks for the reply. On the French messageboard Esther is making a summary of the article from Banning and trying to discuss it.
I had a quick look to the original article of Banning in the last URL that I provided in my previous message and Banning is also speaking about the water question. See also the message from Mitra on the French messageboard.
Banning is also thinking about how the ceiling of the discovered buildings could have been and he makes some suggestive drawings in his article. If you have time read it once, but it is quite a long article. And I having not so much time...
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 17
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Sunday, 23rd October 2011
Paul,
Thank you for posting that link.
Banning's article is quite long but the assertion he is making is relatively straightforward. He is not saying that the constructions are not temples but is questioning the set of assumptions that have labelled them as such and suggesting that other possibilities have not been explored.
He postulates that there is a tenancy to identify monumental and ornamented constructions as being areas set aside only for ritual use and that this is largely based on the more modern distinction between the sacred and the profane in life. One of the example he quotes is the initial interpretation of the buildings in Catalhoyuk as temples because of the embedded bulls' skulls and the wall paintings but these are now understood as being houses but which also were sites full of cosmological and ritual meaning.
He also raises the existence in anthropological contexts of communal dwellings such as long houses, often incorporating many symbolic features and embodying much of the inhabitants' belief systems, and suggests that this could have been another possible function. Another suggestion is the dwellings of shamans.
Since only a small proportion of the site has been excavated I think we'll need to wait a bit longer to come to any firmer conclusions.
ferval -
Message 18
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 24th October 2011
ferval,
thank you very much for the résumé of the article from Banning. And yes I think you are right that we will have to wait for further excavation for more enlightenment. If there will ever be a conclusion...
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 19
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 26th October 2011
ferval,
"Since only a small proportion of the site has been excavated I think we'll need to wait a bit longer to come to any firmer conclusions."
That's also the conclusion of Esther in further investigation on the French messageboard I mentioned. She also is a bit inclined not to the habitation as village (Banning) but more to the partly habitation of the "temples" (Schmidt). But as we, she is expecting the further excavation for any possible conclusions.
ferval, lol beeble, stanilic, in the newer discussion on the French board there are many URL's in English, so that you partly can follow the discussion even without knowing French.
Kind regards and with esteem to the three of you,
Paul. -
Message 20
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Sunday, 30th October 2011
Here's another article Paul, a bit superficial but perhaps there will be a better account later.
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Message 21
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 30th October 2011
Ferval,
thank you very much for the URL. Read it with interest.
Some URLs in English from the French thread I mentioned. As they appear chronological in the thread and without those already mentioned overhere.
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul.
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