Here is more evidence of advanced people in the past. According to the archeologists, however, these stone carvings and the monumental stone obelisks and structures in this 11,000-year-old site were carved by hunter-gatherers. That is a big load of BS in my book, hunter-gatherers wouldn’t have the tools, resources, or spare time to carve stone on this scale. This is yet another example of modern man trying to reconcile evidence of previous civilization as created by primitive people.
A team of archaeologists working at the Göbeklitepe tumulus in the southeastern city of Şanlıurfa came across human figures without heads as well as reliefs of scorpions, snakes and wild birds on obelisks belonging to the Neolithic period, the head of the team announced on Monday.
Speaking at a press conference at the ancient city, excavation team leader Klaus Schmidt of the German Archeological Institute in Berlin stated that Göbeklitepe was an 11,000-year-old site of worship established by the hunter-gatherer people of the time.
He said excavations in Göbeklitepe brought to light the monumental architecture and the advanced symbolic world of the hunter groups that existed prior to the period of “transition to production.”
Yeah right, “transition to production”. You can’t have such structures without a skilled workforce that isn’t hunting and gathering to make ends meet. To try and claim that this evidence represents a transitional period is just an attempt to cram fact into assumption. Yet that’s what happens every time stuff like this is discovered.
I must beg to disagree. It takes tools and skills to carve stone. By definition, a hunter-gatherer society doesn’t have the resources to support a skilled caste. To see a massive stone carving and say, “civilized man did this” is less of a leap than to say “fur-clad tribesmen did this in their spare time away from subsistence hunting and gathering”.
Wait a minute, everyone knows that the Earth is only 6000 years old. /sarcasm
I’m wondering (because I don’t know), how much evidence of settlement is reasonable to find after 11,000 years? I’m thinking about an old indian site I found in the woods nearly 40 years ago. Today you would never know it was there.
Hunter-gatherers had tools and skills…..making pottery, sculptures, etc…and also areas they went to regularly…so an area with large artifacts is not out of the question.
To find massive stone structures that are still around 11,000 years later is a bigger endeavor than some carvings and pottery.
To make a stone obelisk you need:
Math
tools for measurement
tools that can cut stone cleanly
tools that can dress and polish stone
Tools to make the tools
a large labor force to move the obelisk into place
someone to provide food to said workforce
more than a few skilled laborers to coordinate and design the obelisk, statuary, and related massive stone structures
the people who taught aforementioned skilled laborers
someplace to safely keep all the tools and materials
someplace for the workers to live
Even if this were a place where hundreds of tribes congregated each season, how was the labor coordinated? Who kept rival tribes from warring on one another? Who wore the big hat? How did they quarry and move the stones? These are supposed to be hunter-gatherers, not gentlemen hunters who wandered around for the sport of it.
I think it gives fresh meaning to the power of dreams and our abilitiy to have them, after all, they may have lived 11k years ago but, they were/are us. More topically, I don’t know much on this subject but, I see lots of split hairs laying around this blog and I think the two opposing opinions have a few. One mans civilization may well be anothers line camp of wandering relatives. Reason says there is a possibility that larger groups of hunter-gathers could have been commanded in some manner that allowed them the time and will to create these artifacts before they starved ? Dunno, should be coolness to learn but, I ain’t got 50 years to wait for an answer !! I’m with Smartalix here.
The Turkish Daily News story at the linked site refers to “20 round or elliptical structures 30 meters in diameter” and to “the monumental architecture” of the site.
#1 says “Find a hearth. Find a foundation. Find a road. That’s civilization.” Seems to me elliptical structures 100 feet across should qualify under that standard. Am I missing something here?
Most hunter gatherer societies spent a lot less time actually hunting and gathering than you might think. At the time of colonial contact in Australia for example, it was observed that the Aborigines spent an average of only 4 hours per day obtaining food, leaving at least 10 waking hours per day for other activities. And Australia isn’t exactly the Garden of Eden.
In fact one explanation I’ve heard for the Aborigines’ complex spiritual and social system was to find a way to fill the void of having 10 hours / day with nothing useful to do (ie. to avoid boredom). Is it possible that other hunter gatherer societies had the same problem but spent their “spare time” in other ways (eg. by working out how to build stone circles / pyramids / UFO launch pads)?
Also keep in mind the long periods of time (in today’s terms) that these societies had to develop the necessary tools and techniques. The Australian Aborigines (to pick an extreme example) have had basically the same society and belief systems for at least 40,000 years – you’d have to assume at least a few Albert Einsteins would crop up in 160,000 generations…
#9
You hit the nail.
IMO, it’s arrogant/ignorant to think that humans just acted out of the instinct to fill the void in their stomach with something edible, until, lo and behold, they saw the light a couple of thousand years ago.
I think they had quite some time to think, explore and create. And they used it wisely.
Just imagine what mankind would be able to create today, without television and wars of religion.
I must admit though, that my first reaction was:
WOW, and just think many Christians believe the world was created only 6K years ago 😉
9,
I know that hunter-gatherers don’t spend all day foraging. The point is the level of resources available.
10,
That’s my point exactly. Humans just like us have been on this planet for tens of thousands of years, and it is arrogance to assume that they were all just hunter-gatherers until ~5,000 years ago.
So this means that we did fought the goa’uld in the past?
#12
I haven’t seen any STARGÅTE in the findings yet 😉
First, let me point out that by even writing these words – and others on this board – that I am proof-positive that people goof off when they should be doing more important things that put food on the table. But I seem to be inately commanded to express myself somehow.
I’d gladly fancy-carve rock instead but I don’t have the expertise to cut rock… like hunters do. Ancient hunters are well-known for their expertise in exquisitely shaping stone to precise dimensions including sharp points and edges capable of slicing through skin, hide and bone and for attachment to spears, arrows and axes. The technical term is flint knapping and it’s been around for 4 million years – and only given up relatively recently.
http://www.msu.edu/~doneycar/flint.html
http://www.flintknappingtools.com/
So is it such a leap that a hunting civilization might want to carve a diety that could influence their hunt? Or a Christmas present for their kid rather than go to Dinos-R-us?
Obviously these found relics exist so someone must have carved them. I don’t know the details of this archeological site but I would have to presume they were found in layers which included mainly hunting implements as well as organic materials capable of being carbon dated.
RBG
This is piece that is the standard art history or archeology text example of early stone carving.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
It dates to around 24K years ago. That would give point makers, later to become stone carvers, 11,000 years to make something similar to the subject piece above. On the issue of tools, all it takes to carve stone is stone. Consider the skill it takes to shape an arrow or spear point. Producing those items would require equal if not greater control over the material being worked than simplistic representational art. A consistent misconception about stone carving is that it’s all about “hammer and chisel”, or whatever the carving tools of the day might have been. The truth is sanding is as much of a part of the process. That requires only a piece of wood and of course, sand. The minimum materials list for the piece pictured would have been stone, wood and sand. The issue of measurement doesn’t require a numerical system either. Measurement in these early works was probably nothing more than talented eye-balling and using primitive rulers. For example, the first carved dragon-lion-dog thing was 7 sticks long, so let’s make the twin 7 sticks long. Not losing your measuring stick was the hard part.
Motivation is a little more of a fuzzy area. It is also the point where the bullshit carriers tend to launch their fighters. An often quoted comment about the Venus linked above is that she lacks a face because she is a representation of “Mother Earth”. Maybe, or maybe the artist had “jumbo fever”. Or maybe at one point she was perched on the end of a ceremonial staff and her proportions made more sense than say a scale model of Calista Flockhart. There is a fine line between deciding rather a point was used in making a large arrow or a small spear.
Opportunity is likewise hard to hypothesize about. There is a solid body of evidence that supports the idea that “to the victors, go the spoils” and one of the spoils, is the ruling class gets to sit on their ass and “direct”, make art or anything else they desire. Even without the element of free time gained vis-à-vis, just let the slave do it, there was likely downtime as mentioned in a previous comment. In colder climates there was a lot of that. It’s not likely a lack of opportunity would have been a barrier to producing sculpture. This also might explain how the problem of available material was solved. Don’t have a big heavy rock to carve? No problem, have those guys from the River Village People we captured last week roll one over.
It’s a big leap from chipped (not carved and polished) spearpoints and limestone statuettes to multiple 30-meter stone buildings and assorted Obelisks. Also, teams of workers, be they slaves or freemen, require logistics beyond that of a hunter-gatherer culture.
Once you have organization, you have a society. It is our cultural arrogance to assume those people were primitive simply because they lived in the distant past.
bah – we know from fossil record that the human species(as we define oursleves) are approx 65000 to 75000 yrs old – Its re-damn-diculous to believe that advanced civilization hasnt arised several times in that period – to believe otherwise is sheer idiocy.
PS – the definition of “advanced” is going to differ based on viewpoints.
I agree with your second point completely 16, earlier cultures probably had capacities and methods beyond which we give them credit. Insufficient data shouldn’t lead us to believe that hunter-gather cultures were specifically limited to hunting and gathering. The sub-systems that would be needed to maintain a large hunter-gather group would require specialized skills and those would evolve outside the primary h-g function, with their own evolutionary path. Functional skills are more often the foundation of cultures than the other way around. And at some point synergy happens and they further one another.
I agree with Smartalix. It’s arrogant to think there weren’t previous high cultures on this planet. I for one have always been dubious about UFO landings and showing us how to build the pyramids and such.(though I believe in UFO’s) This is one of those things that make me wish we were at least semi-immortal, because I want so badly to be around when it’s proven that we aren’t the first attempt at civilisation on Earth.
Now, having said that……I get to be the first(before Moss or Fusion say it) to say……..
Bush did it!!!!!
Below is a very interesting web site on the topic. I can now better understand Smartalix POV. Though the site presents arguments both ways.
My understanding is that this archaeological site pushes back the earliest boundaries of neolithic societies, which by definition included built-up villages and all that entails.
RBG
http://www.s8int.com/sophis27.html
“My second important question was the stage of production that these people had reached. I felt sure that they must have been an agricultural society, but Professor Schmidt smiled and assured me that they were certainly hunters and gatherers, who did not even know how to make pottery.
Since no pottery fragments had been discovered in the area at all, the latter had to be true, but I had profound doubts about this being a hunting and gathering culture.
I thought for instance of the pyramids of Egypt, whose construction had required large numbers of workers. The workers had to be fed, which required a system for the transportation and distribution of food, and order had to be maintained, which in turn meant soldiers and administrators.
In other words, the construction of a single pyramid presupposed an entire state system and sophisticated economic structure.”
Just like you couldn’t have a computer without a transistor? Yet the 1890 census was done with a relational database and punch cards.
it all depends on your definition of a computer. An abacus guided by a skilled mind is pretty impressive.
I disagree that these guys were hunter gatherers. My view is that they were a sophisticated consumer marketing culture and that the Lacoste trademark attorneys now have some defensive work to do.
Oh no! is Uncle Dave a flat earther? I feel so crushed now.
21. Smartalix:
Your first link I dismiss simply and immediately on the basis of a prominent link on its page to “The Daily Grail” – a site dedicated to fringe crappola – like crop circles and such.
The second link is a fellow who believes the pyramid-making Egyptians were actually a civilization far more advanced than present-day civilization gives credit. This based solely on the fact that they could cut stone with great precision.
eg: “This is why I believe that these artifacts that I have measured in Egypt, are the smoking gun that proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that a higher civilization than what we have been taught existed in ancient Egypt. The evidence is cut into the stone.”
None of the special precision tools required to support the above have ever been found. On the contrary:
http://www.peter-thomson.co.uk/ancients/stonecutting.html
“We have located many, if not all the quarries, and the quarry surfaces show that limestone was cut out with saws, and granite would normally be split out using wedges, but there is some evidence in the quarries of sawn granite faces…” We have huge granite boxes that show all stages in construction from rough cut blocks, to the polished finished article. Thus we have all the evidence that the ancients were able to work with solid granite and finish it to fine tolerances.”
I say, even if the ancient Egyptians did have super-double-secret tools for precision-cutting, just because they excelled at this skill doesn’t mean the rest of their civilization was equally advanced.
The last link is a small collection of anecdotal hooey: artifacts found where they shouldn’t be. Here is an example of one with the strongest “scientific” evidence:
The Coso Geode.
A fellow cuts open what looks to him like a geode (A crystaline rock) and finds inside what looks almost to be something that could work as a type of spark plug device – perhaps from some unnamed ancient civilization.
Here’s a nice debunking:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/coso.html
eg:
The fourth collector, Jeff Bartheld, Vice-President of the Spark Plug Collectors of America contacted Stromberg via postal mail on October 18, 1999, and also confirmed that the artifact was a 1920s Champion spark plug. To date, there has been no dissent in the spark plug collector community as to the origins of the Coso Artifact.
RBG