How a society which is supposed to be of the hunters gatherers era raised such monuments and set up that site?
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
#62The 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 jus…
it was definitely a festival ground for (relatively) nearby complex semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers to meet up occasionally. I had a professor describe it as a pre-historic UN where these clans would meet up and feast but I think festival ground is an even better analogy
Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe
#63Earlier 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…
> challenge our timeline of when humans made cities Do they? We know non-sedentary people in the Americas sometimes built large mounds and extensive fish works.
I think it pushed back when humans started building large structures together a few 1000 years. Oddly, there is no evidence of agriculture at Gobekli Tepe
https://www.reddit.com/r/Archaeology/comments/kxquwx/is_gobl...
Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe
#6412000 years ago is long, but also not very long. Just a few 500 grandfather's ago. Amazing what we achieved in that short timespan.
Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe
#65These 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…
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.
Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe
#66Great find! and I don’t want to underestimate the discovery by any means, but... We humans are predisposed to see anthropomorphic shapes in things. I understand why that could be interpreted as a face, but at the same time, it could just be a random shape. It’s just a “T” shape. Sure, it could look like a nose and a pair of eyes, but it could also just be... something.
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Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe
#67These 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.
The sphinx weathering is odd but it's the Osireion that is a total anomaly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osireion
You would have thought that in a world with curious billionaires someone would pay for a ROV submersible to explore that, I certainly would if I were one.
Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe
#68Earlier 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…
Agree and good point -- do we know how long the Tepes took to build?
Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe
#69These 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 wouldn't call these guys civilization. the Tepe sites are more like an ancient UN for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers than a settlement. they visited seasonally for a feast and then left. the only evidence we have is that they were partying. but they had no social organization at all funnily enough, the lack of neolithic culture, social hierarchy, or permanent sedentary lifestyle (all hallmarks of "civilization") and…
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?
Re: A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 jus…
We find similarly old structures across Eurasia, like the epigravettian mammoth bone huts. The late PPNA when KT/GT were seemingly built is when we find the first monumental, stone structures that we know of. It's entirely possible that ancient near east is where these kinds of things were first built. There's reasons I can go into why that's thought to be the case, but we can't rule out that there could be a streetl…
To what extent is our understanding of this period limited by survivorship? Granite doesn't weather significantly, so we see lots of metalithic stone structures with ambiguous dating. The near east had significant changes in inland climates so we find ancient cities that were not built over there. Soft rock/mud Brick structures can survive in dry climates - so we see evidence of the oldest civilizations in deserts.
Colonial New England barely exists outside of active preservation attempts.