National Geographic has an article about Göbekli Tepe (which I’ve previously posted about HERE)
In short, it’s a monumental ceremonial site in Turkey, built approximately 11,600 years ago. In contrast, the pyramids of Giza were built about 4570 years ago. A millenia before the pyramids were built, Göbekli Tepe was already older than recorded civilization is *today.*
The arguement being made at the Nat Geo article (and it’s not a new one) is that Göbekli Tepe was built before agriculture had been invented. It was a purely religious site with no signs of it being any sort of urban center. So people with no written language, no use of metals, probably no domesticated animals built this site *miles* away from a water source. Entirely irrational, and entirely human.
2 Responses to “Gods Before Grain”
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The idea doesn’t strike me as being very plausible. Constructing those stone pillars must have taken a number of people acting under a fair amount of organization to start with … in other words, what we call a “civilization.” Saying that building shrines led to the invention of civilization is like saying that building airports led to the invention of aircraft.
I suspect that we’ll someday discover that the origins of both agriculture and towns were much earlier than we’ve believed.
So people with no written language, no use of metals, probably no domesticated animals built this site *miles* away from a water source.
Perhaps the location is what’s important — might Göbekli Tepe have been constructed to commemorate some important event that occurred on that spot, while the people who built it lived (and worked and farmed) somewhere else?
Meteorite fall perhaps–or maybe the area was once more fertile, before agriculture destroyed it like the fertile crescent. Eden was no myth–but it was greed, not knowledge. The worst implement against the planet isn’t the drill head, but the plow–as we saw with the Dust Bowl.
Before modern farming methods, good acreage could turn to bad. This was set up the myth of Genesis, that and a dim memory of the Black Sea filling up…