
What Came First: The Village or the Temple? Or, the Mystery of Göbekli Tepe - kaycebasques
https://bookworm.club/2018/09/sapiens/
======
hprotagonist
The thing that consistently blows my mind is that by the time we were getting
around to building things in the middle east, Aborigines in Australia had been
going back to the same hunting camp for 40,000 years.
[https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/first-discovery-
of-5...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/first-discovery-
of-50000-year-old-human-settlements-in-australian-interior/)

~~~
xg15
I remember having read something similar a while ago about a cave in France
which was used a sort of natural paint supply over a time of around 10,000
years.

Apart from how far back those things span, this also illustrates how
enormously the rate of change in culture and living conditions has
accellerated in our time.

Think about it: If you could time-travel back to somewhere within those 40,000
years, you might encounter a group of hunter-gatherers.

Their remote ancestors, as far back for them as ancient egypt is for us, were:
hunter-gatherers.

Their descendants in the distant future, as far away from them as Star Treck
is for us, will be: hunter-gatherers.

Compare this with our time life style and technology is radically different
than it was 200 years ago and at least technological innovation seems to be
accellerating even more.

~~~
irrational
Yet, as far as I understand, if you took an infant and brought it forward to
our time it could grow up to be a theoretical physics professor. That is, they
were no different than us. Why the stagnation for so long?

~~~
zaphod4prez
I notice that you use the word "stagnation" here, which definitely has a
negative subtext. Most people probably feel that same negativity towards the
thought of that long period of slow change / stability. I wonder, however,
whether that subtext is appropriate. Perhaps they were happy with their lives?
Maybe there were no changes because we'd reached an equilibrium, and people
were happy enough that no one did anything radical that would change their way
of life.

Or, to take a middle ground between those two stances, maybe, well, it was
just an equilibrium (sans value judgment about whether it was a 'good' one or
a 'bad' one). What's wrong with a system at equilibrium?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _What 's wrong with a system at equilibrium?_

Depends on how are you satisfied with the state of things. For me, things will
be wrong until we get rid of suffering, illness and death.

Still, I don't believe there ever was a real stagnation, or equilibrium.
Things were always changing, just for most of the recorded history, those
changes were very, very slow - unnoticeable to individuals living then. The
beginning of an exponential curve is almost flat.

~~~
stareatgoats
> For me, things will be wrong until we get rid of suffering, illness and
> death.

For me this doesn't make sense. I'm all for alleviating suffering, illness and
death but can't see how total freedom from those things would be possible, or
even desirable. I am aware that something called 'trans-humanism' exists, I'd
just be interested to hear if anyone could argue for such a stance with
reasonable integrity.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
Lets flip the desirability question. Imagine we invent fast space travel and
go out there and meet a smart alien species. Evolution for these aliens has
given them an extremely robust bodies and, say, ten million years ago these
aliens stopped dying or getting seriously ill. You say to them, "This is not
the way to live. Its a much better life if after 100 years every individual
self-destructs because XYZ?"

Can you fill that blank? I can't.

Edit: also read this
[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html](https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html)

~~~
canhascodez
That's a very seductive argument for the individual, but most species do have
a finite lifespan, and that in itself is actually an argument for its adaptive
benefit. Consider that genetic code could become dated or fragile over long
time periods: it's never going to be in the individual's benefit to die, but
it's much better in the long term for the species to be adaptable. It's not
entirely implausible, but I'm skeptical that this would change in the far
future.

~~~
TeMPOraL
We've escaped the reign of biological evolution millennia ago. Ever since
humans figured out how to learn and later write, we've been evolving society
and technology orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution could ever
hope to work. We are no longer bound by it. And given what's been done over
the past couple decades, we're about to take control of our own genetic future
as well. We will be able to repair, "update" and adapt our species' genetic
makeup as we see fit, and this might actually be a _prerequisite knowledge_ to
achieving life extension.

So no, I don't think this argument for species holds either.

~~~
canhascodez
It must be a prerequisite for this kind of hyperbole that the technology it
describes does not exist yet. Nothing is infinitely repairable or upgradeable,
and neither of those things are ever free.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Nothing is infinitely repairable or upgradeable, and neither of those
> things are ever free._

Well yes, there's heat death of the universe that we still have to contend
with :P. But beyond that, what you wrote is _not a problem_. The biology
itself works around it - it "repairs" by copying and checksumming, and does so
using energy. It's not perfect (this is what enables evolution), but it's
_perfectable_. We already know enough to realize that we can design systems
which allow for reducing the probability of incorrectable errors to
arbitrarily low amounts - that's practically infinite repairability. No one is
saying maintenance is ever going to become free.

~~~
canhascodez
You're focusing on the error rate, which is not actually the concern. You
could have a perfectly working VAX in front of you, and it would be
essentially a museum piece, because technology has moved on. Suggesting that
any physical process is perfectable is...subject to qualification and
requiring of strong evidence, shall we say. However, if true, it would still
be insufficient.

~~~
TeMPOraL
So what is the point? That we won't stay the same, because we'll want to be
better? If that's it, then great, that's the goal!

~~~
canhascodez
Better is not universal nor uniformly distributed, therefore evolution occurs,
therefore death has adaptive value even in otherwise ideal conditions, and
there is no reason to believe in truly ideal conditions even assuming
arbitrarily high technology.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't understand what you're trying to say. "Evolution" occurs, but we've
already freed ourselves from the grasp of biological evolution, and are
already employing a much more efficient and effective human-controlled
evolution. There is no need for death of individuals to play a part in this
any longer. Most of our adaptations can be freely removed and replaced without
harming their user.

~~~
canhascodez
> Most of our adaptations can be freely removed and replaced without harming
> their user.

Magic does not exist, even in the future.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Glasses, winter jackets, cars, guns, etc. are not magic. But they are
adaptations.

~~~
canhascodez
That's irrelevant. You're not going to "roll back" a brain replacement. Future
technology does not allow arbitrary reversible manipulations of molecules.
Creating new individuals is much less effort than rewriting old ones in any
case.

Death is an adaptation.
[http://www.necsi.edu/research/evoeco/programmed.pdf](http://www.necsi.edu/research/evoeco/programmed.pdf)

~~~
TeMPOraL
But I'm not talking about brain replacements. Just regular technology. My
point is that the evolution of collective human civilization is orders of
magnitude faster than biological evolution of individual humans, making the
latter irrelevant. The only "death" that happens in that faster evolution is
loss of mindshare, these days most often seen as failure on the market.

~~~
canhascodez
You do not get to hand-wave away the fact of evolution, regardless of the
level of technology. Populations change genetically over long periods of time,
because math, and the idea that gene editing will not occur in the future
(near or far) is not credible.

------
uyhh
Looking into the past is not straight forward. In India, the oldest temples
that can be found are all stone based structures. But that doesn't mean they
were the oldest temples built. There is lot of evidence that shows the
original proto temples were all wood based. And the full stone temple designs
came much much later. But wood doesn't last 10000 years so there is lots and
lots of guess work involved in recreating how society functioned back then.

------
Alex3917
The fact that Gobekli Tepe potentially overturns our understanding of the
invention of agriculture, or at the very least completely rewrites the
timeline is very interesting. Potentially even more interesting though, what's
the deal with all the handbags?:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvdrkSUVn70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvdrkSUVn70)

~~~
lovemenot
>> what's the deal with all the handbags?

What's the mystery? It wouldn't be surprising to see many representations of
spears in so many ancient cultures: there were hunters / warriors right?

Well there were gatherers too. Handbag is just a natural design for this
function.

~~~
Alex3917
> Handbag is just a natural design for this function.

As someone who has spent many thousands of hours foraging, I've got to
disagree on there. You wouldn't be able to fit even one meal for a single
person into a bag like that. Consider that a _kilogram_ of mushrooms is only
around 25 calories, and this bag probably wouldn't even fit that much. Clearly
they would have gotten most of their calories from meat, but even still a bag
like that wouldn't hold enough produce for even a modestly sized side of
vegetables.

~~~
batiudrami
A kilogram is closer to 250Cal/1000kJ but you're right - it's not even a meal
for one.

~~~
Alex3917
Ahh you're right, I think I just found a bad site for the first thing I
googled. I took a rough measurement though just by holding my arm in the same
position, the bag seems to be about 6 inches deep and 4 - 5 inches wide. So
maybe you could comfortably fit around 110 cubic inches of stuff in there,
which is around 7.5 cups. So lets be generous and call it ~125 calories, maybe
a little more if the carvings aren't properly to scale.

But keep in mind also that if you're hunting or foraging you're probably going
to need more than just 2,000 calories or whatever.

~~~
hutzlibu
"But keep in mind also that if you're hunting or foraging you're probably
going to need more than just 2,000 calories or whatever."

Yes, I guess thats why you don't go after mushrooms when you are hungry out
there. (unless you also have oil)

Like the other one said: you want berries, seeds, roots, bark (if you have
to), eggs, honey, .... whatever you find that gives you energy.

Mushrooms are a nice addition. Maybe also a medicin or alike, but never
something you can live from.

------
dpeck
Weren't quite a few major cities in Europe founded around monestaries? Seems
very reasonable to me that temple sites could be precursors to villages the
same way bountiful rivers and coastlines could be.

To vastly oversimplify: Religious/cultural sites become a center for
pilgrimage, festivals, etc. Those lead to people being around, those people
bring things with them that leads to trade, and eventually some people settle
in the area for various reasons and then you have a village.

~~~
waserwill
The assumption, as seen in the first set of bullet points, has been:
agriculture -> sedentary lifestyle -> large monuments. The discovery of
Gobekli Tepe suggests that (in at least some cases), large monuments came
first. This is unexpected because there was assumed to be (1) no reason for
such monuments before sedentary life (anthropological, i.e. the formation of
organised religions was supposed to coincide with the organisation of
hierarchies in sedentary life), and (2) not enough manpower to construct such
architecture (i.e. nomads wouldn't come together for months to build permanent
structures).

~~~
posterboy
Gobekli Tepe may be comparable to Stone Hench in time. That was not a
permanent settlement. I think this was not, as well. Seclusion and secrecy is
part of religion, so it wouldn't be reasonable to build amidst a sprawling
cohort anyway. If it was started as a central hub, the need was maybe not
originally religious but it would have been in a good position to be
cultivated religiously once the need became obvious.

~~~
waserwill
Indeed, it is not a permanent settlement. Suggestions as to its usage
generally agree that is was used for several months a year for centuries or
millenia, with gatherings of several groups. The monuments of Stonehenge were
built by pre-Celtic agriculturalists in Great Britain, not by per-agricultural
peoples. Questions remain: why would people aggregate where they did; how
would they sustain themselves in a semi-permanent settlement (months at a
time) without agricultural products? (Livestock had recently been domesticated
by this point, but need to be moved regularly to graze.)

The assumption of its being religious is simple: it isn't shelter, and it has
imagery resembling later depictions of religious figures in the region.
Religion here is a more general term to encompass the intersection of culture
and spirituality. Was it originally non-religious? If so, why aggregate for
months to build a structure, before trade was valuable or very necessary?

~~~
canhascodez
Isn't the concept of trade not being valuable sort of contradictory? Even
without the concept of individual ownership, the precondition would seem to
merely be that something is valued. Trade is not (remotely) unique to humans,
and I don't think it's possible that human society would ever have been
without it.

~~~
waserwill
I mean trade as an institution, not just sporadic interpersonal bartering and
sharing; more like merchants, trade routes, and the like. Exchange is not
unique to man; trade, as such, is.

Trade becomes more worthwhile when communities begin to specialise. When
people are nomadic, they cross many lands, and can simply find what they want
on the way (obsidian from the mountains, shells by the sea, berries, roots,
and game in forests). When people begin to stay in one place, long distance
travel for trade becomes more valuable. As soon as agriculture develops, we
discover that obsidian shards from deposits in the Caucasus are found
thousands of miles away in central Europe. You begin to have towns focusing on
a specific resource, or serving a trade route as goods and people criss-cross
the land (Jericho, among the earliest known cities, for example, was possibly
involved in the trade of salt; few things can grow in the soil near it).

~~~
canhascodez
Forgive me; I'm not really seeing what fundamental distinction you're trying
to draw between these two categories of activity.

~~~
waserwill
You cannot see the difference between two acquaintances exchanging goods and a
merchant loading his pack, traveling long distances to make profit from trade?

It is the same as between a spat and a war; gathering in a forest and farming.
It is in scale and in character, a different beast.

~~~
canhascodez
A difference in degree, not in kind.

------
virtualsue
Likewise, I had a brief conversation with the fascinating Dr Lewis Dartnell
where we discussed the origin of barley farming. Did our ancestors grow it for
food, and accidentally discover that you can also make beer with it, or did
the beer come first and bread second? I had assumed the former, but now that I
think about it...

~~~
xanthopan
i'd bet that proto-beer and proto-bread appeared around the same time, and
techniques were developed over generations to calibrate different recipes
until they resembled what we might recognize as "beer" and "bread" today.

------
pouta
Joe Rohan Experience has an amazing podcast that talks about this.

Here is the clip: [https://youtu.be/Nk3xdMkwMsE](https://youtu.be/Nk3xdMkwMsE)

~~~
throwaway8879
I did watch all the Graham Hancock stuff on JRE podcast, going back years.
Really fun stuff. I did get super turned off by the last one with Hancock and
the skeptic guy where Hancock can't control his temper. Randal Carson is fun
to listen to also.

Whether there's any scientific basis to Hancock's work, I'm not enough of an
expert to tell.

------
sakopov
I'm half Armenian and I learned about Gobekli Tepe under the name Portasar
from my father when i was a little kid. The only sources about the origin of
the word Portasar show up online in unofficial sources. I do not read or speak
Armenian so I cannot comment on the sources of Gobekli Tepe in Armenian
literature. However, one thing that is peculiar to me is that Gobekli Tepe is
located on the territory of ancient Armenian Mesopotamia [1]. Anybody else
know anything about this?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Mesopotamia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Mesopotamia)

~~~
jballanc
Armenians, as an ethnogenetic group, did not arise until around 3000 BCE.
Gobekli Tepe was abandoned by 7000 BCE, so there is no historical overlap.

------
hinkley
In addition to the common theories on GT, I think this could be anything from
an embodiment of a treaty to a family reunion site.

If you had a particularly robust tribe, you would in a few generations
outstrip the foraging capacity of your area. Nomadism helps but at some point
your group may have to split in two to expand your radius. If you split on bad
terms you might become rivals. But what if you split on good terms? You might
never see your cousins again unless you made an effort. Let’s meet on this
hilltop at the summer solstice every year. There will be too many of us to
forage or hunt, so bring food and the hunters will find something else to do
to fill the time.

We could wrestle. Or carve rocks or something. You know like grandpa Joe used
to do. Man I miss grandpa Joe. Too bad about the bear.

------
pdfernhout
Jane Jacobs said this decades ago -- cities (well, towns or trading places)
came before agriculture.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs)

------
8bitsrule
I'm dubious about the attachment of the label 'temple' to Gobekli. Perhaps,
instead, it was a _school_.

(Common as it is, calling _any_ ancient site a 'temple' without some pretty
substantial evidence ... could be very misleading.)

~~~
everdrive
Serious reply --- wouldn't the reverse be true? A school in ancient times
would more closely resemble a religious institution than anything like a
modern school?

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timmytwotime
Robert Schoch has some things to say about this too, and seems to back it up.

[https://www.robertschoch.com/sida.html](https://www.robertschoch.com/sida.html)

A bit of a stretch in this article but interesting.

------
prehistacct123
an upper paleolithic shakti shrine in india 11kya

[https://www.harappa.com/content/upper-paleolithic-shrine-
ind...](https://www.harappa.com/content/upper-paleolithic-shrine-india)

