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August 18, 2021

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Amazing stuff indeed, lj!

Definitely puts Stonehenge in the shade. Thousands of years earlier, and with figures carved into the uprights. The fact that the stones are a third the size of those at Stonehenge pales in light of the fact that 8 tons is still, pardon the term, monumental.

what is striking to me here is that it looks like a settled and persistent community prior to agriculture. which seems unexpected given prevailing theories about the neolithic revolution.

thanks for this lj, I love stories like this.

I thought this was interesting:

Rather than a centuries-long building project inspiring the transition to farming, Clare and others now think Gobekli Tepe was an attempt by hunter-gatherers clinging to their vanishing lifestyle as the world changed around them. Evidence from the surrounding region shows people at other sites were experimenting with domesticated animals and plants – a trend the people of "Belly Hill" might have been resisting.

The caves as Lascaux predate Gobekli Tepe by 6-7000 years IIRC and is representative of what seems to have been a fairly static culture of cave painters running from central France to Northern Spain (and maybe beyond). AFAIK, there are no major archeological footprints in Europe/Middle East between the Cave Painters (my name, nothing official) and Gobelki Tepe, which is itself an amazing, seemingly one-off. I would be delighted to be corrected about other footprints I've overlooked.

Standing stones, beginning, or so I surmise, with Gobekli Tepe, seem to have been a widespread thing for thousands of years. We came across one on Majorica some time back, all by itself.

If you get a chance, look up the Tumuli at Bougon. Very interesting stuff. Dig deep enough (dig deep enough, get it?) and there is a lot of cross over between the stone building technique at Bougon and at Stonehenge.

There is actually a theory linking Lascaux and Gobekli Tepe

https://www.athensjournals.gr/history/2019-5-1-1-Sweatman.pdf

It's subject to a lot of criticism and Sweatman is a reader in chemical engineering rather than archeology. Though I did think of you when I read this in Sweatman's pdf

We use the scientific method to arrive at this conclusion. The basis of all empirical science is the statistical analysis of measurements combined with logical deduction. Our measurements for precession of the equinoxes are made using an established and accurate software, Stellarium, able to predict the positions of stars and their constellations in earlier epochs. These measurements are compared with calibrated radiocarbon dating measurements of the age of European cave art. Through this comparison of predicted and measured dates, we verify our scientific hypothesis to an extraordinary level of statistical confidence, far surpassing the usual demands for publication of scientific results. Therefore, in a scientific sense, we prove our hypothesis is correct. Essentially, our statistical result is so strong that, unless a significant flaw in our methodology is found, it would be irrational to doubt our hypothesis. It follows that any proposition about these artworks that is inconsistent with our hypothesis can automatically be rejected – it is almost certainly wrong, since our hypothesis is almost certainly correct

As a chemical engineer he should be well aware of the limits of any modelling. Since I qualify as one too*, I can speak with some authority on that.

*speak about lowered standards ;-)

lj @06.43: LOL

That's hilarious. And anyone who disagrees with that assessment is almost certainly wrong, since I'm almost certainly correct. It's science.

I've heard of Sweatman before, in this video, which looks at the Gobekli Tepi claims from a critical perspective.

Sweatman himself makes an...extensive appearance in the comments. He definitely rings some crackpot alarms there too.

The 'World of Antiquity' channel is pretty good though.

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