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[Merged] Gobekli Tepe


Harsh86_Patel

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The usual historian will tell you that civilizations develop over considerable periods of time,having successive levels of advancement stretched over large periods of time.This statement can be extrapolated to say that If we find a ancient civilization/ruins,it has to have evolved from a civilization/group which was less advance then the one that we found and had to exist before the advance civilization.So this brings a very nagging question to my head that why would hunter gatherers(as humans were supposed to be at the time of Gobekli Tepe creation) suddenly decide to quarry huge blocks of stone and arrange them in circles. Also how did they learn to carve reliefs on those pillars. And since there is no other site to predate Tepe (currently known to us) is it safe to assume that the Hunter gatherers decided almost overnight (talking in terms of advancement of human and human civilization) to build a awe inspiring Temple/?? site.

Was civilization (atleast architecture) gifted to us human in a terribly short period of time?

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maybe we got the timeline wrong.

Probably not. But the why is easily explained: There are no caves in the neighborhood to make a traditional cult place like Altamira or Lascaux. So they had to build one.

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Probably not. But the why is easily explained: There are no caves in the neighborhood to make a traditional cult place like Altamira or Lascaux. So they had to build one.

But apparently there is no evidence found yet that people were staying or residing in that structure ,unlike caves
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Probably not. But the why is easily explained: There are no caves in the neighborhood to make a traditional cult place like Altamira or Lascaux. So they had to build one.

we have been wrong about the human time line numerous times.
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But apparently there is no evidence found yet that people were staying or residing in that structure ,unlike caves

Where you are quite wrong concerning Altamira or Lascaux, thee is no evidence of prolonged settlement in either off them, but for centuries of use. And the only place where settlement was found was in the cave mouth, far away from the cult part of the cave.

Hunter gatherers, as a rule, did not lead a sedentary life.

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Where you are quite wrong concerning Altamira or Lascaux, thee is no evidence of prolonged settlement in either off them, but for centuries of use. And the only place where settlement was found was in the cave mouth, far away from the cult part of the cave.

Hunter gatherers, as a rule, did not lead a sedentary life.

So you are suggesting that when they build Gobekli Tepe they were doing it to supplement their cave?Couldn't they just find one somewhere else.Also how did they learn all that was required to build Tepe?
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So you are suggesting that when they build Gobekli Tepe they were doing it to supplement their cave?Couldn't they just find one somewhere else.Also how did they learn all that was required to build Tepe?

They went where they could find food. Follow the migrations of the paleolithic cultures and you will find an explanation.

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What i feel is that Gobekli Tepe was never a Residential Area like a cave.

But rather it was a religious and ceremonial structure.

Harsh, it is not a single construction.

It might have started from bare form structure that the Hunter gatherer community knew how to construct at their times.

As you are aware, Gobekli Tepe was buried periodically. (for what reasons it is never clear)

refer to this link for the dating of the layers.

Advances in culture means advances in technology. Their building methods advanced. The structure at each layer became more elaborate and sophisticated.

So, when you ask why and how a "hunter-gatherer Culture' did build Gobekli Tepe, i would ask you - Why did ancient Indians buied the temple, or ancient Christians build churches and basilicas?

Because they could and because they wanted to.

Religion is always a moving force for the masses.

When Ancient Humans started worship forces of natures as God and all, they built abodes to them, thinking the gods will reside there.

The religious place became the community's social communing centre too.

matters of law and commerce relating to the community were discussed there.

Certain Communities developed into the major centres. The ceremonial/religious centres of these major communities became the major religious centres and places oif pilgrimage.

And please note that a "Hunter-gather" culture wont stay Hunter-gather-ish.

No culture sprang into life as advanced. They would have started as Hunter-gatherers and would surely advance through into settled, governed and modern civilizations.

Likewise, do not consider that the people who built Gobekli Tepe would have stayed Hunting & gathering all the time till the last burial of Gobekli Tepe.

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Their stones did help us from heavenly bodies which had war with us ? The Bible say ' your war is not with flesh and blood , but with heavenly bodies . . ' These bodies / galaxies , stars , planets , astroieds , comets ,cosmic rays . . .

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This is an example of NOT-fringe:

Abstract:

Archaeologists have proposed that quite a number of structures dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B in southwest Asia were nondomestic ritual buildings, sometimes described specifically as temples or shrines, and these figure large in some interpretations of social change in the Near Eastern Neolithic. Yet the evidence supporting the identification of cult buildings is often equivocal or depends on ethnocentric distinctions between sacred and profane spaces. This paper explores the case of Göbekli Tepe, a large Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Turkey that its excavator claims consisted only of temples, to illustrate weaknesses in some kinds of claims about Neolithic sacred spaces and to explore some of the problems of identifying prehistoric ritual. Consideration of the evidence suggests the alternative hypothesis that the buildings at Göbekli Tepe may actually be houses, albeit ones that are rich in symbolic content.

http://www.jstor.org...=21101127584891

If the Göbekli structures were in fact unroofed, it surely follows they were not houses. Beginning with a structural examination of the pillars, Banning suggests they are placed and buttressed in a manner that would have supported overhead wooden beams, which in turn would have been thatched. There are several hints (ranging from grooves and notches to wood) that this may in fact have been the case, and Banning has sketched one possible layout:

post-18246-0-52986300-1344621599_thumb.j

(...)

While there is no doubt that Göbekli Tepe is an important site and that aspects of its structures were symbolically loaded, the claim that the site had no residential occupation is simply not credible.

Most likely, either the famous “temples” are actually houses or houses lie elsewhere on the site and are simply not represented or not yet identified in the excavated sample.

In short, there is no strong reason to assume that the people who used the buildings at GöbekliTepe, in any stratum, were not Neolithic villagers.

Ignoring even the possibility that some of the claimed shrines and temples at Neolithic sites may have been houses or other types of buildings, however, could distort our interpretations not only of Neolithic religion but of nonreligious aspects of the communities that inhabited or used those sites.

http://en.paperblog....the-holy-81564/

And don't forget to read the rest of the article on that blog (second link).

And is Göbekli Tepe unique?

No, it's similar in age and artifacts to Karahan Tepe and Nevali Çori.

http://www.springeri...34-011-0291-5-1

.

Edited by Abramelin
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Their stones did help us from heavenly bodies which had war with us ? The Bible say ' your war is not with flesh and blood , but with heavenly bodies . . ' These bodies / galaxies , stars , planets , astroieds , comets ,cosmic rays . . .

Please comment/post relevant to the topic. not some half completed unrelated sentences.

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What i feel is that Gobekli Tepe was never a Residential Area like a cave.

But rather it was a religious and ceremonial structure.

There are several cult caves that were never a residence, or if signs of human habitation are found they are well away from the cultic areas.

The real mystery of Gobeliki is whether it is the place where organized religion was created or whether it became necessary because of the recent discovery of organized religion.

Edited by questionmark
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... you don't build a temple , until there is a religion ? :)

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Was civilization (atleast architecture) gifted to us human in a terribly short period of time?

No.

Lets look at Stonehenge - although younger then Gobekli Tepe but more well known - it's not a spontaneous building, although it's got no existent predecessors there is enough evidence of "woodhenges" as well as previous stone constructions akin to the stones in Avebury.

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The usual historian will tell you that civilizations develop over considerable periods of time,having successive levels of advancement stretched over large periods of time.This statement can be extrapolated to say that If we find a ancient civilization/ruins,it has to have evolved from a civilization/group which was less advance then the one that we found and had to exist before the advance civilization.So this brings a very nagging question to my head that why would hunter gatherers(as humans were supposed to be at the time of Gobekli Tepe creation) suddenly decide to quarry huge blocks of stone and arrange them in circles. Also how did they learn to carve reliefs on those pillars. And since there is no other site to predate Tepe (currently known to us) is it safe to assume that the Hunter gatherers decided almost overnight (talking in terms of advancement of human and human civilization) to build a awe inspiring Temple/?? site.

Was civilization (atleast architecture) gifted to us human in a terribly short period of time?

"Why" is indeed the relevant question. While Göbekli Tepe certainly isn't the oldest of sites to show human activity, I would agree it is the oldest to show monumental effort for the sake of religion—whatever "religion" may have meant to the people who erected the site. We simply don't know. Right now Göbekli Tepe presents more questions than answers.

But the stone structures we see there certainly didn't go up over night. I believe the monuments we see there today are dated to the tenth millennium BCE, but I recall recently reading where archaeological evidence suggests activity at the site occurred well before then. In other words, Göbekli Tepe was a site a long time in the making. Who knows what might have been there before the current monuments? What "on-the-job training" did its people experience, in the crafting of stone monuments over long periods of time?

As to how they figured out how to carve the monuments, I don't think that's terribly mysterious. The people of that region would've been well familiar with stone-working in their day-to-day Neolithic lives. Granted, it would've been in the form of tools and projectile points, but that would've been the start of it. The monuments themselves are only limestone, as I recall, and limestone is easy to work with simple tools—be they copper or stone.

The carving of the monuments is not remarkable in and of itself. They are fairly crudely carved. Much more impressive is how and why groups of hunter-gatherers banded together, marshaled their resources, and worked together well enough to achieve what we see there. Clearly it was a site of great ritual importance to them. Sadly they lacked any form of writing and could not leave us any tangible understanding of their belief system, so we will never be able to fill in all of the blanks.

Hm, perhaps Göbekli Tepe is all that remains of Atlantis. Oh my, I shouldn't say such things. Now all of the Atlantis nuts are going to creep in. :lol:

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"Why" is indeed the relevant question. While Göbekli Tepe certainly isn't the oldest of sites to show human activity, I would agree it is the oldest to show monumental effort for the sake of religion—whatever "religion" may have meant to the people who erected the site. We simply don't know. Right now Göbekli Tepe presents more questions than answers.

But the stone structures we see there certainly didn't go up over night. I believe the monuments we see there today are dated to the tenth millennium BCE, but I recall recently reading where archaeological evidence suggests activity at the site occurred well before then. In other words, Göbekli Tepe was a site a long time in the making. Who knows what might have been there before the current monuments? What "on-the-job training" did its people experience, in the crafting of stone monuments over long periods of time?

As to how they figured out how to carve the monuments, I don't think that's terribly mysterious. The people of that region would've been well familiar with stone-working in their day-to-day Neolithic lives. Granted, it would've been in the form of tools and projectile points, but that would've been the start of it. The monuments themselves are only limestone, as I recall, and limestone is easy to work with simple tools—be they copper or stone.

The carving of the monuments is not remarkable in and of itself. They are fairly crudely carved. Much more impressive is how and why groups of hunter-gatherers banded together, marshaled their resources, and worked together well enough to achieve what we see there. Clearly it was a site of great ritual importance to them. Sadly they lacked any form of writing and could not leave us any tangible understanding of their belief system, so we will never be able to fill in all of the blanks.

Hm, perhaps Göbekli Tepe is all that remains of Atlantis. Oh my, I shouldn't say such things. Now all of the Atlantis nuts are going to creep in. :lol:

I find some huge gaps in the temple theory along with few other mysteries:

1.Basic assumption is that they had a religion which would require them to build temples.

2.At a time when finding food and shelter being a primary concern and a fight in itself why would people spend so much time building this complex,if not mainly for staying or shelter.

3.The carvings and and architecture is not remarkable only if you compare it with modern times.

4.We have to keep in our mind that we are talking about a time and people for whom the simplest things required to build anything was supposed to be a mystery or a monumental achievement.

5.Neatly arranged geometric designs are very difficult to compare to crude caves.The surprise about the complex reliefs being carved out of stone by a people who were only supposed to know how to carve crude spearpoints etc.

6.At the time of hunter gatherers what i would feel is that need would govern effort rather then wan't.

7.When i said overnight i was speaking in terms of progress of architecture in a relatively short span as people were not supposed to be building stone structures at that point of time.They were supposed to have started with wood huts or something not stone megaliths.

8.Then again why would the entire temple(if it was a temple) be back filled?

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No.

Lets look at Stonehenge - although younger then Gobekli Tepe but more well known - it's not a spontaneous building, although it's got no existent predecessors there is enough evidence of "woodhenges" as well as previous stone constructions akin to the stones in Avebury.

Yes exactly,the evidence you provide makes me wonder more,the natural way for architecture to have evolved would have been from wood to stone and not the other way round.So if we have a stone complex at Gobekli Tepe which predates 10000 BC then we can safely assume that people were building wooden structures much before that for quite sometime. And if people were building structures and shelters before 10000 BC then we can safely assume that quite a lot of the 'hunter-gatherer' population would have already given up their nomadic ways.Also this complex being a temple is a claim which adds more to the mystery as for evolution of any relegion which could lead to this ancient people to put a momentous effort to build such a complex suggests that civilization started quite some time before.

I believe saying that this is a site where the first hunter gatherers probably settled down for the first time and learned agriculture,is probably just trying to tenderize the find for main stream archaelogy.

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... you don't build a temple , until there is a religion ? :)

There are many reasons to build something. We suppose that it started out as temple, but it also could have been a hunter-gatherer university first.

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8.Then again why would the entire temple(if it was a temple) be back filled?

You always have to consider that no religion we know of has lasted as long as the one practiced in Gobeliki. When Gobeliki went obsolete (most probably because there was no future in hunting and gathering as a lifestyle, as the timeline would match) they did not abandon it but did what they did with their dead: bury it.

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I have the National Geographic mag that this picture is from, so I knew it existed, so here it is on the internet...

Pillars at the temple of Göbekli Tepe—11,600 years old and up to 18 feet tall—may represent priestly dancers at a gathering. Note the hands above the loincloth-draped belt on the figure in the foreground.

gobekli_01.jpg

http://www.bing.com/...904&FORM=IDFRIR

It shows a man on one of the stones, which imo belies that is is some kind of temple. Normally you just see the T shapes with animals.

He has an animal skin draped over his belt and you can see his hands and there is actually 2 of these statues next to each other.

Almost like they hold up the beam, or the sky.

Edited by The Puzzler
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I have the National Geographic mag that this picture is from, so I knew it existed, so here it is on the internet...

Pillars at the temple of Göbekli Tepe—11,600 years old and up to 18 feet tall—may represent priestly dancers at a gathering. Note the hands above the loincloth-draped belt on the figure in the foreground.

gobekli_01.jpg

http://www.bing.com/...904&FORM=IDFRIR

It shows a man on one of the stones, which imo belies that is is some kind of temple. Normally you just see the T shapes with animals.

He has an animal skin draped over his belt and you can see his hands and there is actually 2 of these statues next to each other.

Almost like they hold up the beam, or the sky.

Or it could be a guy grabbing a girl from behind doing you know what.................i don't see how this tells us that is was a temple.
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Lending more weight to the idea of the site being ritualistic ? ....this was also found at Gobekli post-86645-0-81699300-1344685275_thumb.j

food for thought? > post-86645-0-62790300-1344685477_thumb.j

nahhhhhhhhhh! lol

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Lending more weight to the idea of the site being ritualistic ? ....this was also found at Gobekli post-86645-0-81699300-1344685275_thumb.j

food for thought? > post-86645-0-62790300-1344685477_thumb.j

nahhhhhhhhhh! lol

Easter Island statues:

2lbe36b.jpg

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