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A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

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Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#181

Post by cutlilacs »

itsnowandnever wrote: post #78
gnatman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe that these peoples had no social organization at all, and even harder to believe that you could state that with such conviction given how little we know about these sites. I’m definitely curious though! Can you share any links or reading recommendations?

I learned about it in school, I took some anthropology and archeology electives. and what I was told was since there were no defensive structures nor evidence of any security apparatus at all (such as an army) there isn't any evidence of a means to enforce a hierarchy

Absence of evidence doesn't mean you can conclude that there was no hierarchy or social organization though. For that you would need evidence that there wasn't.

There seems to be an issue with how archeology is taught at schools, where these conclusions are stated as facts, or theories with a high amount of proof, when in reality, they have very little evidence supporting them.

Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#182

Post by itsnowandnever »

sethammons wrote: post #156
itsnowandnever wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just to nitpick: the Tepe sites definitely did not have forced labor. they had no social hierarchy at all. hunter-gatherers were fairly egalitarian. definitely sedentary neolithic people had forced labor. all the Sumerian legal texts that were some of the first writings ever included legal definitions of slaves, for example. but the pre-neolithic Anatolian people were nomadic animistic people with no social hierarchy…

> Slavery among American Indians was a complex institution that existed within various Indigenous cultures long before European contact. Unlike the European model focused on labor, Indigenous slavery often stemmed from war captives and was seen as a means of asserting power and honor over others. ( https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/slavery-american... ) It is absurd to claim "hunter-gatherers were fairly eg…

indigenous Americans did practice agriculture and were not hunter-gatherers. there were settled cities all across the Americas: Cusco, Tenochtitlan, Tikal, Cahokia. like cereals were the catalyst for the Neolithic revolution in Mesopotamia, the "three sisters" of squash, corn, beans were the catalyst of the Neolithic revolution in the Americas.

sedentary life and agriculture developed in the Americas around the same time it developed everywhere else in the world outside of the Near East (3000 BC). and this roughly correlates to the beginning of the Meghalayan geological age that continues today - which is when the ~10,000 year old original civilizations collapsed and Neolithic cultures became ubiquitous around the world and not just in Mesopotamia and the Yangtze river

Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#183

Post by leptons »

JrProgrammer wrote: post #143
leptons wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there were no video games, which I think is a huge source of brain-drain these days. I read somewhere once that people played more solitaire on Windows 95 per year than it took in man-hours to send people to the moon (something like that, I don't remember the original statistic). And that's just a shitty game on an old OS.

To me, blaming an activity which requires active participation for “brain-drain” is such a weird and quite dated thing. Take social media for example, these require no active participation other than moving your thumb up and down, and is in my opinion the real brain rot these days. People will always find a way to get their dopamine, be it video games, reading, watching stuff, etc. Don’t pick out a single thing and m…

Sure there are plenty of other frivolous and pointless pursuits that people engage in, like yourself making pointless comments on HN.

Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#184

Post by IAmBroom »

pwillia7 wrote: post #38
sethammons wrote: post #36

These Tepe sites give credence to advanced civilization existing before the last ice age. One example is the mostly dismissed theory of water erosion at the base of the Sphinx, suggesting older civilizations leading up to ancient Egypt. To my understanding, it is mostly dismissed because archaeologists found the idea of something older than the Sphinx to be not possible. Tepe sites challenge this. Wild stuff.

I got pretty into this alt archaeology stuff and eventually had to move away from it. I totally agree that the tepes challenge our timeline of when humans made cities and whatnot, but so much of their arguments is the perfect fit of stones or how flat stones are and saying it _must_ be done by modern tools. I think they have left out how much you can get done from a construction standpoint when you have forced labor…

> I think they have left out how much you can get done from a construction standpoint when you have forced labor

It's time to kill the "slaves built the pyramids" myth. "Aliens built the pyramids" has exactly the same amount of evidence.

Unless you're referring to wage-slaves, who definitely were the middle-management of the crews. We've found graves of Jewish construction bosses.

Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#185

Post by IAmBroom »

itsnowandnever wrote: post #65
pwillia7 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got pretty into this alt archaeology stuff and eventually had to move away from it. I totally agree that the tepes challenge our timeline of when humans made cities and whatnot, but so much of their arguments is the perfect fit of stones or how flat stones are and saying it _must_ be done by modern tools. I think they have left out how much you can get done from a construction standpoint when you have forced labor…

just to nitpick: the Tepe sites definitely did not have forced labor. they had no social hierarchy at all. hunter-gatherers were fairly egalitarian. definitely sedentary neolithic people had forced labor. all the Sumerian legal texts that were some of the first writings ever included legal definitions of slaves, for example. but the pre-neolithic Anatolian people were nomadic animistic people with no social hierarchy…

> the pre-neolithic Anatolian people were nomadic animistic people with no social hierarchy.

Citation required.

Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#186

Post by IAmBroom »

itsnowandnever wrote: post #75
dimal wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are we so certain that they had no social hierarchy at all? I thought that that was the main theory but that very little is certain at this point.

mostly because all the bones of all the dead were mixed in with all the others. implying no concept of "this guy was THE guy in my lifetime". but they presumably still had a meritocracy because while the bones were mixed in with all others of all generations, not everyone would have their bones were mixed in upon death. it was likely only the craftsmen or shamans that achieved that honor. but being honored is differe…

> mostly because all the bones of all the dead were mixed in with all the others.

To know that, we'd have to identify the bones of an important leader in a mass burial site.

We don't know that.

Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#187

Post by IAmBroom »

stevage wrote: post #54

> The face of the beprenese is located at the top of the Dikili stone; its sharp lines, deep eye sockets and blunt shape nose, and a similar style with human statues found in Karahantepe. This discovery reveals not only the technical mastery of Neolithic people, but also the way he expresses himself and the ability to think abstractly. I don't think we were in any doubt about the ability of people 12,000 years ago to…

Assuming, and having proof, are two different things.

Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#189

Post by sethammons »

itsnowandnever wrote: post #182
sethammons wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slavery among American Indians was a complex institution that existed within various Indigenous cultures long before European contact. Unlike the European model focused on labor, Indigenous slavery often stemmed from war captives and was seen as a means of asserting power and honor over others. ( https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/slavery-american... ) It is absurd to claim "hunter-gatherers were fairly eg…

indigenous Americans did practice agriculture and were not hunter-gatherers. there were settled cities all across the Americas: Cusco, Tenochtitlan, Tikal, Cahokia. like cereals were the catalyst for the Neolithic revolution in Mesopotamia, the "three sisters" of squash, corn, beans were the catalyst of the Neolithic revolution in the Americas. sedentary life and agriculture developed in the Americas around the same…

Several Pacific Northwest Coast tribes, including the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka’wakw, and Coast Salish were non-agricultural, complex hunter-gatherers who lived in permanent villages and maintained clear social hierarchies, including hereditary slavery. Their existence serves as a major counterpoint to the general claim that hunter-gatherer societies were universally egalitarian or lacked hierarchy.

While "sedentary life and agriculture developed in the Americas around the same time it developed everywhere else in the world," it was not the case for the coastal Salish and other tribes who lived on the resource abundant Pacific Northwest.

Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

#190

Post by [deleted] »

gerdesj wrote: post #104
biotinker wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Colonial New England barely exists outside of active preservation attempts. As someone who grew up there, this isn't really true. It's more that buildings have been upgraded/replaced over time by choice, resulting in a sparse patchwork of old buildings rather than large old cities. Places like the Wayside Inn[0] predate the country by a century, and have been "preserved" only because they have more-or-less continuo…

Some years back an aunt and uncle owned a cottage in Devon (near Exeter) with 1649 carved into the wall by the front door. Cottages like that had a simple timber frame and cob walls, which is only a slight improvement on wattle and daub! Cob is mud and straw and a few binding agents and traditionally: horse piss to act as an accelerant to aid setting or something. Floors are joist and boards. The roof is thatched, of…

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