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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

#71

Post by dimal »

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…

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.

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

#73

Post by itsnowandnever »

pwillia7 wrote: post #68
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…

Agree and good point -- do we know how long the Tepes took to build?

as far as I'm aware, we have no idea other than that they didn't do much at one time. we can only deduce little modifications were done semi-regularly by the ancient pre-historic version of open source contributors. they had to lift 10+ ton limestone blocks and move them into place. but there's ample evidence of them trying to lift those blocks out of the quarry and failing, thus leaving behind broken would-be pillars of limestone for 12,000 years. the best assumption is just that they had tons of wild cereals and gazelle to munch on so these people were able to work on this persistently over many generations. they had no social hierarchy or need for labor at all, so they had all the free time in the world to use stone age tools to build structures that rivaled the greeks 9,000 years later

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

#74

Post by engineer_22 »

dismalaf wrote: post #53
itopaloglu83 wrote: post #46

Earlier 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…

> north Africa Possibly covered by the Sahara, or if we're talking along the coast, underwater. Or covered by current settlements. > other civilization cradles. Because people still live there and built on top.

As I understand it, Tepe is local word for tel. Climate in this region makes them easy to distinguish since not a lot of plant cover making it easier to identify potential sites? Fertile crescent floods. Nile floods. Unique geography and climate in Turcep key to this?

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

#75

Post by itsnowandnever »

dimal wrote: post #71
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…

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 different from the "divinely ordained" hierarchy of god-kings that came later.

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

#76

Post by MomsAVoxell »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #46
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 jus…

>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.

In my honest, personally informed opinion, there is much to be said for ignorance of the subject - and I don't mean you personally, just generally - at large - human cultures have a very intractable level of mystery, among our languages and human history, as a whole.

In anticipation of this fact, I personally invest myself in certain mysteries. The Tepe civilisation is one - but the things to be learned at Narwala Gabarnmang, are .. personally, I admit .. astonishing.

We do in fact have tens of thousands of years of human history to comprehend.

The issue is, we rapidly discard a lot of it in the rush to preserve just a bit of it.

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

#77

Post by pwillia7 »

itsnowandnever wrote: post #73
pwillia7 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree and good point -- do we know how long the Tepes took to build?

as far as I'm aware, we have no idea other than that they didn't do much at one time. we can only deduce little modifications were done semi-regularly by the ancient pre-historic version of open source contributors. they had to lift 10+ ton limestone blocks and move them into place. but there's ample evidence of them trying to lift those blocks out of the quarry and failing, thus leaving behind broken would-be pillar…

Yeah I love the idea of ancient peoples living in abundance, doing animism, showing up to party at the giant ancient structure every season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QfsSfhaDVY

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

#78

Post by itsnowandnever »

gnatman wrote: post #69
itsnowandnever wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

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

#79

Post by bugbuddy »

vidarh wrote: post #25
j-kent wrote: post #8

Can I just say that it is fantastic that they have included so many detailed pictures of the obelisk. How many times have you visited an article about a discovery only to have no pictures in the article.

I read this comment before clicking, and half expected it to be sarcasm exactly because of how common that is

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