Göbekli Tepe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

by areoform • 5 years ago

139 59 5 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

proce55ing• 5 years ago

It took a bit to get used to the narrative style, but After the Ice was a good tour of early humanity.

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019997

mkl3• 5 years ago

Agreed, I highly recommend it. It's a thick book, but covers a lot of ground.

nkoren• 5 years ago

It looks like that book is from 2006, predating widespread recognition of Göbekli Tepe's significance. At the time, from my recollection, the mainstream view as that human culture at 10k BPE was nowhere near being able to produce the kind of social organisation that a complex like Göbekli Tepe would require. Was the book ahead of its time in recognising the potential for something like Göbekli Tepe? Or does it need a new edition, in light of what's been discovered?

nelsonmandela• 5 years ago

Is it true it is only partially excavated and the Turks refuse to remove any more soil?

Edit: This is a claim by Graham Hancock which I was just reminded of

robbiep5• 5 years ago

Graham Hancock is brilliant at muddying the waters (saying this as someone who used to read everything he put out - i was enthralled at the mystery of an ancient civilisation that gave birth to all the rest, but nothing over the last 30 years has been substantiated and he loves working the underdog/anti-consensus angle so in my opinion that’s his entire bent, he revels in casting aspersions on well established archeological convention) so I’m not too sure about that, this post suggests it’s still being excavated [0]

Interestingly, there have been some recent excavations that suggest there are some sites that may be even older [1]

[0] https://www.thetravel.com/gobekli-tepe-still-being-excavated... [1] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/ancient-site-older-than-gob...

sgt101• 5 years ago

>"and the Turks refuse to remove any more soil?"

I have no connection to this, but if I was in charge of a site like Gobekli Tepe I would absolutely shut down all work until I was absolutely sure that the people who were going to work on it were a) funded out of the kazzzoo, b) the best people in the world to do it, c) using methods that would not do damage and stop subsequent generations from squeezing more knoweldge than I could imagine from the site. I would want to know exactly what was being looked for and why before I allowed the smallest trowel to scoop the smallest bit of earth off it.

Why? Because if in three years someone popped up and told me that there were a slew of important questions that were now off the agenda because I permitted a world heritage site to be trashed I'd be quite upset frankly.

edmundsauto5• 5 years ago

This is a good and interesting point. It's not like it's decaying while buried - where is the urgency coming from?

starik36• 5 years ago

Great Turkish drama about it called The Gift is on Netflix.

bwanab• 5 years ago

Excellent drama series.

pieteradejong• 5 years ago

Graham Hancock talks about this on several of his Joe Rogan episodes.

phreeza• 5 years ago

Graham Hancock always gave me a strong pseudoscience vibe, do you think he should be taken seriously?

robbiep5• 5 years ago

He’s a great populariser of bullshit. Interesting theories but nothing over 30 years of building unsubstantiated theories out of thin threads of evidence that aren’t connected

simonh5• 5 years ago

Absolutely not. He's not Von Daniken crazy, but potentially more insidious. He's extremely careful to caveat and disguise his crazy under a legitimate looking veneer. His books are extensively annotated and referenced, he talks like a legitimate archaeologist and makes sure that the more outlandish and conspiracy theory ideas are there by implication rather than overt claims. He works very hard to make it difficult to dismiss him out of hand and to keep a seat at the legitimate debate table.

However he does make sure that the more out there crazy does get referenced and carefully avoids saying anything, or referencing any counter-evidence that would discredit them. So he avoids being categorised with the more extreme crazies, while assiduously making it clear he is their friend. After all, he needs to sell his books.

Having said that, his stuff as with Von Daniken really is a lot of fun. I occasionally check it out just to keep current on state of the art crazy. Just bear in mind there's a lot of flim-flam in there and he will avoid referencing any evidence that debunks his claims, no matter how much of it there is. You will not get the whole story from him. For example he will write a book on a topic from the point of view of say 20 years before the book's development and publication, and ignore any inconvenient research later than that, and probably also ignore some relevant research and counter-arguments from before that as well.

rapsey• 5 years ago

There are two episodes dedicated to him on the our fake history podcast. He thoroughly demolishes pretty much everything about his theories.

pps4• 5 years ago

https://astronomy.com/news/2020/09/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-f...

Hancock's ideas have helped fuel the surge of interest in Gobekli Tepe as an ancient observatory. But he has an even more fantastical claim about the vulture and other carvings on Pillar 43. He believes, again without evidence, that it's an ancient constellation diagram that shows the winter solstice against a backdrop of today’s modern sky.

fireattack• 5 years ago

Just saw someone mentioned Göbekli Tepe on Reddit in the same hour, lol. What a coincidence.

Kyro38• 5 years ago

me too ! Probably not a coincidence :)

user-the-name• 5 years ago

You have not noticed yet that a good fraction of posts on HN are just things someone saw in another HN or Reddit discussion, that they then reposted as a separate submission?

m00dy• 5 years ago

I visited this place when I was in Turkey. You can ask me anything through first person observer (FPO)

naringas• 5 years ago

does it look normal sized? I ask because I know from pictures and the internet that (for instance) Petra is not human sized

simonh5• 5 years ago

It doesn't look particularly outsized.

https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-to-mark-turkis...

But then how many cathedrals or major monuments are built to human scale? One of my favourite examples is from a temple to Ishtar in Syria:

https://romeartlover.tripod.com/Aindara5.jpg

Those footprints are about a metre long.

Melting_Harps4• 5 years ago

I visited this place when I was in Turkey.

I follow the work of Graham Hancock quite closely but how did the artwork appear to you? The need for the specialized tools to bore the holes or mae those 3d outward busts on stone are incredibly advanced and the accuracy of these depictions of animals and peoples seen on stone predates what most archaeologists place Agriculture at ~10,000 years ago, which coincidentally is also in this part of Turkey. Most tools from nomadic people before the advent of Agriculture were likely for hunting, and cutting meat or building fires and clothes, not precision based specialized tools so this site opens the door to the notion that very specialized tools being used prior to this period for ornamental or sacred purposes in Human History was already common practice.

Personally speaking, after having done agriculture myself, I think agriculture its closer to 20-30,000 years old and sites like this and the one in Indonesia re-enforce my hypothesis as you cannot make these monoliths without several generations of a very well refined work force that requires specialization and surpluses of food and water only possible due to a systematic application of horticulture and domestication of livestock.

What were your biggest takeaways, and how much would you say is still left to unearth?

It is my understanding most of it is still underground and other sites have yet to be even approved or greenlit for excavation due to political and warfare issues, was that still the case when you were there?

ncmncm4• 5 years ago

Everybody agrees that there is overwhelmingly more left underground there, and in nearby hills, than has been dug up. Nobody knows if any of it is older. The other stuff they dug up so far has turned out not to be.

The thing to know about Graham Hancock is that he is full of wacky ideas, but he is very careful to keep reports of his observations separate from his speculations. He is better at this than many scientists.

He is absolutely not a scientist, not trained as one, not acting like one. But he also absolutely never pretends to be one, so is no kind of pseudo-scientist. You can trust his observations implicitly, his speculations not at all. Very unlike archaeologists, he is happy to take note of what has no plausible explanation yet, and not pretend that the professionals have everything wrapped up. That, more than anything, is what infuriates the archaeologists who label him a pseudo-scientist. You are not supposed to talk about things they haven't a clue about, and especially things they have been, or are, obviously and aggresively wrong about.

The other thing about him is that he really goes places, and reports accurately what he finds, and takes excellent photographs, even of things archaeologists are still unsure and embarrassed about.

Could the bas relief carvings there represent constellations, as he guesses? Absolutely! The ones he thinks? Very probably not. Does Earth's rotational precession have anything at all to do with the timing of orbital/impact events? Absolutely not. Is the existence of Göbekli Tepe consistent with any narrative of pre-history promoted before it was found? Absolutely not. Has it been integrated into current narratives? No. Can it be? Yes, but with substantial pain; and the new narrative will end up needing to be revised again soon, which they hate.

Archaeological distaste for further work there can probably be explained, in some degree, by the expectation that further revelations will show that the pros have been even more wrong about our immediate pre-history than we now know. It will mainly yield further embarrassment.

At the time it was built, the Persian Gulf was largely dry land. Did people live there? Very probably; we would need to know why not, if not. Did they have to abandon settlements as the sea level rose? They would. Would there be legends about that? If not, that would be surprising. Did it happen suddenly? No.

Thing is, archaeology is not science. They do fieldwork, apply for grants, order lab work, and publish papers in journals, but are not allowed to make hypotheses that could be overturned. Their role is to tell stories about facts already unearthed.

Graham Hancock is happy to speculate about it all, and be wrong. For archaeologists, obvious speculation is forbidden, and being found to have speculated wrongly embarrassing. The easiest reaction to what he does is to label him a bad scientist so his observations can be safely ignored.

momo93• 5 years ago

been there. Amazing

gk12• 5 years ago

There are beautiful ruins all throughout Turkey, completely out in the open. You can walk through a park and find yourself stepping over ancient mosaics and columns, the kinds you'd find behind velvet ropes and glass partitions in Italy or Greece.

prepend• 5 years ago

One of my dreams is to walk the Lycean Way [0] where I’ve read that the remote trails have you camping among ruins. It seems amazing that there’s still so many ancient ruins just laying about and accessible to humans.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycian_Way

gk12• 5 years ago

That's a terrific trek. I've only done one small segment, Faralya to Fethiye, and enjoyed it so much I want to return to do the entire length... Some day.

jpcooper• 5 years ago

Termessos is one. An ancient Greek city up a mountain. Imagine an amphitheatre with a view in every direction. The burial site is open for you to climb around and over. It's near Antalya. Check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termessos

rendall• 5 years ago

Cesare Emiliani and Kurzegesagt make the case that we think of world civilization as much newer than it is, because our year count is now only to 2021. They argue for instead bumping our year by 10,000 to more truly reflect the age of our civilization, to 12,021, and (arbitrarily) commemorating Göbleki Tepe as its foundation

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/94EO...

https://youtu.be/czgOWmtGVGs (2016 or 12016)

Göbekli Tepe

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