The foreman in 2008 and his sons offer me tea.
Before Gobekli Tepe became an internet sensation due to psuedo-archeologist Graham Hancock, I visited the site in 2008. That was 17 years ago. It was not a tourist site at the time, it was a working archeological dig. I was greeted by the foreman, and I asked if I could take photos. He said yes, and I did. Some of you might recall them. Here is what it looked like then, and here is a link to the photos:
Gobekli Tepe in 2008
Here is how awful it looks now:
Gobekli Tepe at present
That’s a lot of change. The Turkish government co-opted it for its own reasons and turned it into a Kurdish-region mega-tourist attraction in as a way of asserting some control, but also as a way of dishing out some money to keep the Kurds, at the very least, content. Gobekli Tepe has nothing to do with Turkish history. The site dates back to the Younger Dryas, or, the last Ice Age — it probably dates back further than that. The first interpretation was that it turned our idea of civilization on its head. It went like this: “Before Gobekli Tepe man built the city and then the temple. But at Gobekli they believed the temple came first.” I felt it a compelling reason and I’m a touch saddened it has been revised. But that is how empircal data works. This view has now been revised. Here is a shortish video discussing the dating issues. A key point he makes in his video is that there is real specialization in labor. A division in labor. Not a collection of hunter gathers but proto-civilization, if you will. If you really want to do a deep dive on this very important subject I cannot recommend Ancient Architects highly enough. This video and this video are a great place to begin. What ever you do, do not listen to Graham Hancock. He is full of shit. The bottom line is that Gobekli Tepe is only one site now considered a part of the Taş Tepeler civilization in the highlands of southern Anatolia. There are between 40-80 sites in a 250 square mile area in the highlands above the headwaters of the Balikh River and the Harran Plain–Turkey’s gateway to Mesopotamia–and where the Roman general Crassus died at the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC.
The battlefield of Carrhae, where Crassus died, smack in the middle of Turkish Mesopotamia.
That’s simply huge. And that there was lots of trial and error going on there about domesticating all kinds of things. Plus, pottery has been found and dated at one site to the pre-pottery neolithic! I recommend we rename the pretty pottery neolithic to something else, please?
Last thought, Slovenian political scientist Samo Burja has an absolutely compelling essay based on Gobekli Tepe and other archeological sites on how civilization might be very much older than we currently believe. He speculates there is a real possibility that in our lifetimes we might discover attempts at it close to 100,000 years old. Given what I have seen, I would not be surprised if he were very close to correct.
Give some of the videos a watch if your inclined in the speculation on our origins, like I am.
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Oakchair
psuedo-archeologist Graham Hancock
What ever you do, do not listen to Graham Hancock. He is full of shit.
—
I have no idea who Graham Hancock is and no idea what Gobekli Tepe is. Is it a tree? A Native American Tepee? I’ve no idea.
What I do know is that the use of ad hominem logical fallacies are outside the venue of curiosity about the world and the truth. They are a sign of narrative control. One inherent reason a ruling class doesn’t want people to listen to dissenters is because it encourages thinking and thinking is dangerous.
If the validity of a position is strong insults aren’t needed, the use of manipulation to convince people to never listen to another position is not needed. In a good faith intellectual discussion insults are needed when a position can’t stand on its own.
Imagine a society where dissent is discouraged and opinions are formed based on insults. Where refusing to listen to those who don’t share the adopted narrative is standard practice. Wait, that’s our society. How is that going anyways?
Sean Paul Kelley
@Oakchair: Graham Hancock beleives ancient aliens had something to do with the Tas Tepeler civililzation, and that is just for starters.
Outside of that one comment I Presented you with an archeological site that is challenging everything we thought we know, which seems to be the complaint you make of me. Sounds like you have a case of contempt prior to investigation. Learning about Gobekli Tepe is worth your time.
Mary Bennet
I was not aware that anyone paid attention to G. Hancock anymore. His books don’t even show up 2nd hand.
Thank you for the referral to Ancient Architects. I gather this Tas Tepler culture is thought to predate the foundation of Catal Huyuk?
Sean Paul Kelley
@Mary: yes, it predates Catal Hoyuk by several millenia, predating the agricultural revolution as well. It’s a truly revolutionary archeological complex surrounding the Turkish city of Şanliurfa.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Mary: Hancock had a whole series on Netflix that was just terrible rubbish about two years ago. He’s still skulking around. Joe Rogan likes him alot.
Joan
This was fascinating, thank you. I love the idea that humans were advanced in some places far earlier than we imagine. It feeds my pet theory that history moves line a sine wave rather than a rising line from an ignorant past to an enlightened future. I have never been to Turkey/Türkiye but I’ve had the great opportunity to investigate a museum containing a lot of artifacts from Ephesus and that was wonderful.
Hiero
I loved Graham Hancock’s fantasies, but alas, fantasies. It seems likes it’s good someone is doing that, but that guy really seems to have taken it too far.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Hiero: you know, fantasies, and historical speculation are not bad things. I don’t mind a little counterfactual in history books at times. His book on the Ark of the Convenant made me visit Ethiopia, a place I would never have gone to. But when you start talking about advanced civilizations and possibly aliens you lose me. I mean, we live in an infinite universe so there musst be infinite possibilities, but c’mon, the engineers from Alien helped us along? Puuuleeaze! 😉
Marc
Sean, you know Prof. John Hawkes? He is more into earlier hominins and DNA comparison. Fascinating stuff! https://www.johnhawks.net
somecomputerguy
According to David Graeber, here is why everyone should care about this; it explodes ‘stages of development’. Humans moved back and forth between ways of living routinely throughout our history.
Graeber describes continent-sized hospitality norms. Strangers were welcome, not dangerous.
It puts the lie to every deterministic model of ‘human nature’.
Particularly, Hobbesian and economic stories of ‘human nature’ and development are just made-up stories to serve an agenda.
Mark Level
While SPK’s takes have been pretty hit and miss for me, about 48% hits and 52% misses, this is on the hit list as valuable.
When I took anthropology as a 17 year old freshman in college it blew my mind, went on to do a lot of reading in the field over the years since. This is one area (among many) that Harper’s magazine covers pretty frequently and well, so I was aware of Gobekli Tepi and claims about it probably as far back as 15 years ago. I am glad that professionals are figuring out more and more.
I do believe, based on many well-sourced articles I have read not just there, that the story of modern”civilization” (& I’ll take Gandhi’s observation that “Western civilization sounds like a good idea”) is much older than claims that everything happened when hunter-gatherer tribes began farming in Mesopotamia c. 3,000 bce-ish.
A cyclical theory of history (incl. human history) makes more sense to me than a linear, “progressive” one, look at the straits we are in now!!
I very much appreciate the scientific skepticism that Charles Fort brought to the study of paranormal fields and ideas generally, and tend to buy the British published “Fortean Times” whenever I see it on a newsstand (far less often now than I did in Oakland) but the local Barnes & Noble stocks it.
I respect Oakchair’s take on things most of the time, and agree with his warning that ad hominem denunciation should also be taken with a grain (or more) of salt. It really depends a lot on the reliability of the party issuing them, of course.
One can have entirely different takes on the same person at different periods of their life, e.g. William Jennings Bryan was a great man when he was leading the early “populist” or “progressive” movements viz economics; he was a buffoonish clown by the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial. I could make the same point viz Christopher Hitchens as an early anti-Imperialist, then his lightning change to a genocidal, racist NeoCon after 9/11. (He introduced Salman Rushdie to fucking Paul Wolfowitz, who Rushdie called a nice man!! I felt a little less bad about the failed terrorist assassination attempt on Rushdie after hearing that.)
A big favorite of mine when I was about 20-21 was Weston LaBarre’s The Ghost Dance, a contrarian take on the spirituality of desperate, oppressed people. Much later I was reading some anarchist journal (Anarchy: AJoDA? 5th Estate? or another?) and he had a great piece on how infantile Americans were politically and how we were all doomed. Glad to see the guy kept his fight-the-powers, skeptical edge.
I can’t remember who the radical was to whom some young whelp said, “You’re sold out, old man!! Your time is done.” He replied, “I’ll be a revolutionary the day I die and you’re just a fart in a windstorm who’ll end up a boozhie.” (Paraphrased that best I could recall.)
There are certain thinkers and writers who are scrupulously careful and honest– I’d put Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, and Norm Finkelstein in that category. I’m sure there are some non-Jewish ones as well, but those guys come to mind immediately. They practice what Malcolm X warned his community about, “If you can’t tell the truth, you don’t even deserve freedom!” I’d be shocked if any of them ever led me wrong. It could happen, odds not high.
I’ll close by noting that some Amateurs are much smarter and proven right over time over their contemporary Professional rivals. I would cite the naturalist (among other things) Alexander Humboldt in that category, a long essay in the NYRB detailed that about 20 years ago. If you come to the game with love, that sometimes beats pursuing recognition or a paycheck. Telling real gold from fool’s gold is a skill one should work on all one’s days.
Mark Level
Alexander von Humbloldt. The mind dictates, the fingers resist or trick.
Jorge
The Kalambo Structure is about 500k years old. We’ve been settling and building stuff for a very long time.
It is a trace of a building, left behind as two pieces of wood connected by (I think) a mitre?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalambo_structure