The pillars, at least 200 in total, were raised into sockets and linked by walls of rough stone. Each is a unique work of sculpture, carved with images from the world of dangerous carnivores and poisonous reptiles, as well as game species, waterfowl, and small scavengers. Animal forms project from the rock in varying depths of relief: some hover coyly on the surface, others emerge boldly into three dimensions. These often nightmarish creatures follow divergent orientations, some marching to the horizon, others working their way down into the earth. In places, the pillar itself becomes a sort of standing body, with human-like limbs and clothing.
The above passage is from The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by the now-late David Graeber and the not-late David Wengrow. It's a thick book, with a lot going on in the endnotes as well. I'm not taking the book as gospel, but it's chock full of interesting stuff and brings up some interesting questions about how humanity's social organization came to be what it is.
Göbekli Tepe really is an eye-opening site, as well. This is when people were still using flint tools, or something very like them. And they managed to erect a collection of pillars like this? It almost looks like a postmodern art installation, but the animal world must have been very immediate to its builders. Graeber and Wengrow note that the population around this site shows no signs of being agricultural. Whatever lifestyle they had, it didn't dim their imagination.
2 comments:
The book by David Graeber and David Wengrow sounds much more realistic in its conclusions than the old hunter gatherers transformed into agriculturalists all at once. Human beings have been around in our present form for at least one hundred and fifty thousand years and nobody knows for sure what our ancestors were doing all that time.
The mystery of Gobekli Tepe has fascinated me since news of it first came out in the late 90s. Its age as determined by radio carbon dating (which can only be done by dating undisturbed organic material) was a stunning discovery since it proved older by about seven thousand years than Stonehenge. It's been suggested certain symbols carved onto the faces of pillars at the site were made to track time and mark the changes of seasons by recording observations of the sun, moon and stars through a luni-solar calendar system. Moreover, the study reasoned that the markings also record the date when comet fragments impacted the Earth almost 13,000 years ago - or 10,850 BC.
Graham Hancock's theory is that there is evidence of an earlier advanced civilization that was almost totally destroyed in that cataclysm. Sea levels did rise by about four hundred feet after the last Ice Age so it's likely much was submerged. Yet evidence can be seen in megalithic architecture throughout the world - old kingdom Egypt, Baalbek in Lebanon, Puma Punku in Bolivia, and Sacsayhuaman in Peru among others. That some members of that group survived to pass on their knowledge doesn't seem all that unlikely to me. It's no surprise that mainstream archeologists hate Graham Hancock but he makes a good case and I always have enjoyed a good mystery.
That is a big part of their premise, i.e. that it's not that at some point in the past everyone was a hunter gatherer and a few generations after that agriculture had been born. Whether to concentrate on farming or foraging is a decision that each populace makes for itself, based on local conditions and their previous experience. If a people doesn't practice agriculture you can't assume that they've never conceived of it. Graeber and Wengrow also challenge the idea that agriculture is the cause of social inequality.
Yeah, Gobekli Tepe is a wonder. As it happens a lot of key discoveries about early humanity have been made in modern day Turkey. The tribe that carved it must have had very skilled artisans, despite the general belief that advanced skills like that only came much later, with specialization. They must have also been keen observers of the skies.
It's an interesting idea about the builders of megalithic architecture sticking around after their own society's collapse and advising later builders. Or maybe by that point you'd just be dealing with the maintenance people of the older works, but they'd still be worht talking to. It's good for mainstream archaeologists--and in a number of fields--to be exposed to ideas from outside of their circle.
Post a Comment