> But I do definitely know this: some time in 8000 BC the creators of Gobekli Tepe buried their great structures under tons of rubble. They entombed it. We can speculate why. Did they feel guilt? Did they need to propitiate an angry God? Or just want to hide it?’ Klaus was also fairly sure on one other thing. ‘Gobekli Tepe is unique.’
I think it'd be rather hard for a hunter gatherer society to realistically cover such a large area under tons of rubble. It makes me wonder if this covering with rubble is somehow related to the Black Sea deluge hypothesis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis]:
> "In 1997, William Ryan, Walter Pitman, Petko Dimitrov, and their colleagues first published the Black Sea deluge hypothesis. They proposed that a catastrophic inflow of Mediterranean seawater into the Black Sea freshwater lake occurred around 7600 years ago, c. 5600 BCE .
> As proposed, the Early Holocene Black Sea flood scenario describes events that would have profoundly affected prehistoric settlement in eastern Europe and adjacent parts of Asia and possibly was the basis of oral history concerning Noah's flood. Some archaeologists support this theory as an explanation for the lack of Neolithic sites in northern Turkey. In 2003, Ryan and coauthors revised the dating of the early Holocene flood to 8800 years ago, c. 6800 BCE."
I think there's a poetic feel to it (which makes me wholly question it); the start of agriculture, Babylon, The Garden of Eden, Noah's ark, all wrapped in one, discovered by a shepherd in the hills and filled with penises.
It's worth noting that Karahan Tepe, Gobekli Tepe, and most of the other PPN-A/B sites in Southern Anatolia are on top of hills and mountains at fairly high elevations. They're not really candidates for any sort of flood event.
As for the poetic feel, the term of art is a 'just-so story'.
Just for wonder's sake. Do you think it could be possible for a system of underground waterways to basically be pushed uphill by a natural dam breaking and the pressure of the Mediterranean sea forcing the water to sort of gush uphill?
> "In the Estonian village of Tuhala, there is a well that starts spouting water after a heavy downpour. The well happens to be placed just over an underground river. After rain water floods the river, water pressure builds to the point that it shoots up out of the well, sometimes up to half a meter high. This continues for a few days. During this time, more than 100 liters of water can flow out every second."
Kipling has a book of "just so" stories that I enjoyed as a child. I'm sure I'd find most of it more cringe as an adult. I think you're correct though that it fits the poster's usage.
The force of water capable of pushing such a large amount of rubble would have bulldozed the entire structure and there would be practically nothing left. Simply look at the pillars[0] that are being excavated, there is no way they could have survived such a force. The builders of this complex would have no technical problems with burying them, filling in a hole is much easier than carving and erecting hundreds of stone blocks, pillars and structures.
> it'd be rather hard for a hunter gatherer society to realistically cover such a large area under tons of rubble
We should be careful about underestimating the capabilities of predecessor cultures. We don't even know to what extent these sites were hunter-gatherer societies, right? Isn't a good part of its significance that it's pushing the clock back on our assumptions?
Some years ago someone posted here on Hacker News some article about a bronze-age battle that had more corpses (archeologists found the battle when they stumbled into the corpses, some even still holding swords and all) than expected, the amount of corpses suggest the calculations of the world population at the time was wrong.
> We should be careful about underestimating the capabilities of predecessor cultures
This is surely true, however allowing oneself to imagine and dream, especially when not in a position of authority in the matter can't be that bad, can it? I'm wholly open to any and all possibilities and rebuttals.
> We don't even know to what extent these sites were hunter-gatherer societies, right?
I think the article mentions this is a theory they have.
> Isn't a good part of its significance that it's pushing the clock back on our assumptions?
It is! I hope I'm not detracting from it by entertaining a wild thought.
In this 6-mo-old video [0], Marvin Sweatman reports that Gobekli was indeed a settlement, not just a 'temple' (bodies have been found buried under floors), that the original dating is now being re-evaluated, and there's a theory that the 'rubble fill' came from buildings built around it in later times.
Bodies haven't been found at gobekli tepe, only some cranial bone fragments in the fill. They did attempt to date them, but there wasn't enough remaining collagen.
Do you have access to a recent source spelling out that "haven't been found" ? I don't, but Sweatman has visited the site in the past year, is a well-known student of the site and may know someone who knows.
The skull fragments were found many years ago. Sweatman is very careful about science. 'Level II enclosures' are houses, and he says that in one 'they have found a burial with three bodies'. You'll need to take that up with him
Thanks for making me double-check. I was going to link [1], which was published June 2017, but was not aware of the burials found in Nov. of that same year. I assumed he was simply confusing it with similar sites that have long been known to have subfloor burials. In my defense they seemingly haven't published the burial in any papers that I can find, only in-person lectures that I'm not in the habit of attending anymore. Still, my mistake.
I think it'd be rather hard for a hunter gatherer society to realistically cover such a large area under tons of rubble
People didn't think hunter gatherer societies were able to build such structures and complexes in general. It seems a lot less likely that the Mediterranean flooded an area that far from the Black Sea that also happens to be 700m above sea level.
>> But I do definitely know this: some time in 8000 BC the creators of Gobekli Tepe buried their great structures under tons of rubble. They entombed it. We can speculate why. Did they feel guilt? Did they need to propitiate an angry God? Or just want to hide it?’ Klaus was also fairly sure on one other thing. ‘Gobekli Tepe is unique.’
> I think it'd be rather hard for a hunter gatherer society to realistically cover such a large area under tons of rubble.
I'd also be interested in knowing how they know the creators of Gobekli Tepe where the ones who buried it. Maybe their neighbors didn't like them, or maybe it was their now-farming descendants moving the temple to somewhere better suited to growing their crops. These sort of sites tend to have several generations of societies using them, often hostile to the previous cultures (eg. the vandalism of Egyptian temples by their later occupants).
I think it'd be rather hard for a hunter gatherer society to realistically cover such a large area under tons of rubble. It makes me wonder if this covering with rubble is somehow related to the Black Sea deluge hypothesis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis]:
> "In 1997, William Ryan, Walter Pitman, Petko Dimitrov, and their colleagues first published the Black Sea deluge hypothesis. They proposed that a catastrophic inflow of Mediterranean seawater into the Black Sea freshwater lake occurred around 7600 years ago, c. 5600 BCE .
> As proposed, the Early Holocene Black Sea flood scenario describes events that would have profoundly affected prehistoric settlement in eastern Europe and adjacent parts of Asia and possibly was the basis of oral history concerning Noah's flood. Some archaeologists support this theory as an explanation for the lack of Neolithic sites in northern Turkey. In 2003, Ryan and coauthors revised the dating of the early Holocene flood to 8800 years ago, c. 6800 BCE."
I think there's a poetic feel to it (which makes me wholly question it); the start of agriculture, Babylon, The Garden of Eden, Noah's ark, all wrapped in one, discovered by a shepherd in the hills and filled with penises.