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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

#41

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

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…

Not defending alt-archaeology, but there is a major difference between precision of construction and volume of construction.

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

#43

Post by card_zero »

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.

Or a more boring theory about the sphinx is that it was constructed at the orthodox time, around 2550 BC, and then later on it rained sometimes. This would be mildly surprising, as opposed to very surprising.

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

#44

Post by acuozzo »

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 got pretty into this alt archaeology stuff

Links?

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

#45

Post by card_zero »

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…

The Crystal Palace was built and designed in 11 months, 1850-1851. I'm not sure what the key factors making this possible were, but I suspect low wages and complete disregard for worker safety figured.

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

#46

Post by itopaloglu83 »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #31

The Tepe sites are really fascinating. Every discovery leads to so many more questions - how did they construct these sites, what were they using some of the structures for, and so on. At Karahan Tepe is the pit full of pillars, with the human-face head on the outer rim .. whenever I see this pit, I get a picture in my mind that the entire site was green and fertile, and this pit was filled with water. It would be th…

To me, it looks like a festival ground, so I imagine people coming from all directions and multiple nomad tents etc. around it.

What makes me wonder is that why did these hills survive, and why are we not finding similar things in north Africa and other civilization cradles.

Maybe these were one off sites with limited use and were later just left alone, while anything in Egypt had continuous settlements so things just eroded over time, with the things like pyramids as exceptions.

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

#48

Post by itopaloglu83 »

card_zero wrote: post #45
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…

The Crystal Palace was built and designed in 11 months, 1850-1851. I'm not sure what the key factors making this possible were, but I suspect low wages and complete disregard for worker safety figured.

Yes, some of it is due to lack of safety etc. must I must say the majority of it is the complete lack of competence in modern times because it’s now being built by normal folks.

I assume it was a limited number of people how knew how to make things and they kept roaming around setting new sites etc. Similar to bridge engineers etc. most of what they make just disappears in the background but they keep building things that makes our modern life possible.

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

#49

Post by AlotOfReading »

bee_rider wrote: post #35
AlotOfReading wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archaeologists generally aren't that computer-savvy. I haven't seen any indications of paint residues on the pillars, but we know that many of the statues in these enclosures were also painted bright colors that would be missed by a digital reconstruction.

> Archaeologists generally aren't that computer-savvy. Why throw interdisciplinary shade? > I haven't seen any indications of paint residues on the pillars, but we know that many of the statues in these enclosures were also painted bright colors that would be missed by a digital reconstruction. Wouldn’t a digital reconstruction just have whatever textures were selected? If there’s no indication of paint residues, the…

It's not interdisciplinary. I'm an archaeologist, albeit not practicing these days.

    Wouldn’t a digital reconstruction just have whatever textures were selected?
Yes, but the point is that we don't know a lot of the context around these layer III T-pillars to make informed choices in depicting them. For clarification, I'm using the GT stratigraphy because I haven't looked up the KT chart.

But just to highlight some knowledge gaps, it's usually not clear what damage was caused during the backfill process, what the exposure conditions for these pillars were during their lifetimes (e.g. roof or not, though these earlier rectangular rooms are generally agreed to have covered with wooden beams), and even the dating is a bit suspect in this area.

Plus, the relevant team may not even have a LIDAR scanner to do that properly as that's fairly specialist equipment. Etc.

Getting to the point where it's possible and reasonable isn't easy.

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

#50

Post by clickety_clack »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #48
card_zero wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Crystal Palace was built and designed in 11 months, 1850-1851. I'm not sure what the key factors making this possible were, but I suspect low wages and complete disregard for worker safety figured.

Yes, some of it is due to lack of safety etc. must I must say the majority of it is the complete lack of competence in modern times because it’s now being built by normal folks. I assume it was a limited number of people how knew how to make things and they kept roaming around setting new sites etc. Similar to bridge engineers etc. most of what they make just disappears in the background but they keep building things…

It’s not lack of competence. There is an unbelievable weight of regulation in construction now. It would probably take 2 years of planning consultation just to get the idea approved. Then, each facet of the design would have to be coordinated and iterated between several different specialist teams and contractors, with the tree of contractors increasing as each layer of design takes shape. At the end, you also have the labor laws that people are talking about here.

If we weren’t too worried about things falling down and killing people, or about damaging peoples conception of the vibes in a city, we could have the kinds of developer/architect/engineer/foreman outfits that used to build this kind of thing.

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