We didn’t have civilization till we had cities, and we didn’t have cities till we had agriculture. So, a minimum of, goes a largely settle fored narrative in “huge history” — a narrative somewhat troubled by the discovery of ruins on Göbekli Tepe, or “Potbelly Hill,” in southeastern Turkey. Apparently inhabited from round 9500 to 8000 BC, the traditional settlement predates the Pyramids of Giza by close toly 8,000 years, and Stonehenge by about 6,000 years. Although it was as soon as believed to be a website used for ritual purposes solely, later analysis unearthed evidence that suggests it was host to a variety of activities we associate with city civilization, somewhat than what we usually consider hunter-gatherer websites. Does it quantity to reason sufficient to revise our very underneathstanding of the history of humanity?
“Like Stonehenge, Göbekli Tepe’s structure consists of circles of T‑formed limestone pillars, a lot of them featuring etchings of animals,” says YouTuber Joe Scott in the video above. These pillars are organized into enclosures, which together constitute a website that “features archaeological complexity that probably would have been too superior for hunter-gatherers.”
Klaus Schmidt, the archaeologist who led the excavations at Göbekli Tepe between 1996 and 2014, believed that it was “a sanctuary and perhaps a areaal pilgrimage center the place people gathered to pertype religious rites.” However since his loss of life, evidence of houses, a cistern, and grain-processing instruments has turned up, indicating “a fully fledged settlement with permanent occupation” nicely earlier than the arrival of farming. This discovering indicates that social and technological innovations associated with ‘civilization’ could have emerged lengthy earlier than the arrival of agriculture, cities, or domesticated animals — underneath conditions very different from what historians had previously assumed. However as to the reason it was all constructed within the first place, this new information has led to extra questions than solutions.
One lower than generally settle fored theory holds that Göbekli Tepe was an astronomical observatory, and perhaps additionally a memorial to a devastating comet strike that occurred 13,000 years in the past. Perhaps it was “a last-ditch effort by a hunter-gatherer society to hold on to their vanishing way of life because the world was transitioning to farming.” That might have been the primary large-scale technological revolution in human history, nevertheless it certainly wouldn’t be the final, and as we right here within the twenty-first century consider the ruins of Göbekli Tepe — most of which nonetheless have but to be excavated — we naturally discover ourselves supposeing concerning the long-term survival prospects of our personal civilization. However the more moderen discovery elsethe place in Turkey of other, even outdateder ruins with a distinctly city structure may additionally make us really feel that our lifestyle isn’t fairly as modern as we’d imagined.
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Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the ebook The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly referred to as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
