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Gobekli has screwed everything up you heard me

#1 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 23 March 2010 - 12:15 AM

http://www.dailymail...arden-Eden.html (this news account is somewhat sensationalist, but it has purdy pictures and you can get the drift of the story)

So, I was in a waiting room today, and I happened upon a magazine, either time or newsweek, dont recall which... but I found an article on the paleolithic temple-maybe of Gobekli. They havent excavated the entire site, but what they have found is that THIS PLACE SHOULD NOT EXIST. Seriously, according to everything we know about everything, the Gobekli site predates agriculture, pottery, everything. The reason this struck me, and also seriosuly pissed me off, was that it harkens back to a debate between the entire forum, led by Civ and myself, against Deuacon. A feature of this was that he insisted that religion predated society, that buffalo wings predated chicken as it were.

Well, thats just what some scientists involved in this study are saying. According to the evidence they've gathered, they're claiming that this society and the eventual development of agriculture, etc, was formed around some kind of ancestor worship or religion involving ceremonial sky burials, and extraordinarily advanced temples that were later purposefully buried for some reason unknown circa 8000 bc, which for those keeping count is BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE HAD BEEN BUILT, EVER! The fact that they didnt find any remains to indicate a town in the area is the main thing bringing the researchers to speculate that this was purely a religious complex and that cities and towns grew around that basis.

I'm fairly sure they're wrong, but I'm still tremendously interested to find out just what this deal was all about. The carvings are quite impressive, as is the fact that they were done with only stone age tools.

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#2 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 23 March 2010 - 03:01 AM

Nah. Even if everything in this article were absolutely correct (including the claim that human sacrifice were derived from bona-fide fear of gods, and not from run-of-the-mill ethnic cleansing and property theft), then we have some kind of social activity and religion which predates the construction of the buildings. I think they're wrong, but if they're right they're only learning that communication, some kind of language, culture, civilization, all predate farming, btu not society itself. Religion cannot predate society, unless of course it is derived from some real deity or force, like the monolith in 2001. And I don't think that's how we got religion; I think we invented it.
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#3 User is offline   Madam Corvax Icon

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Posted 24 March 2010 - 07:42 AM

How interesting. There was a debate between entire forum and JM? Hm, must have been during my hiatus years and I missed it. Pity.

Anyway, I am with civ on this one - how could religion predate society? It cannot.

And as to nothing being built in the proximity of the site - think Easter Island. The fecking statues that confused Daeniken were hauled from quarries to remore locations for no other reason that the tirbal chiefs wanting to outdo their neighbours. Maybe the tribal chief around Gobekli at that time started competition whose stones had nicer carvings rather than who had more spotted goats. Who knows.

I am quite sure that the explanation to all that "mystery" will in the end prove to be as trivial and mundane as that of Easter Island. Naturally, both journalists and scientists involved want to make it "sensational" as much as possible, it ups their reading rate.
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#4 User is offline   Spoon Poetic Icon

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Posted 24 March 2010 - 09:56 PM

However, there is evidence that prehistoric man may have some prehistoric sort of afterlife beliefs. Burying bodies, burying tools and other artifacts with the bodies... Could be because of some belief in an afterlife, which by itself would be a kind of primitive religion. These things happened before society. There's very little reason to bury the dead, or especially to bury nice/useful/unique things with the dead, without some sort of belief that prompts doing that. I'm not saying it would be a full-out religion, with a hierarchy of deities, commandments, sacrifices, the whole nine yards. But I've got no problem with the idea that a sort of primitive religion-like thing, most likely unique and separately arrived at from clan to clan, could have predated society.

However, on a kind of different note, I do have a problem with the idea that this particular find was dated so far back. Not so much because of the idea that some sort of complex religion might have predated society or whatever, but because those are so friggin' complex that if the carbon dating is correct, it kind of throws the all of art history and anthropology out of whack. I mean if you've studied anything in these areas at all, you'll realize how crazy this is. If the carbon dating is accurate, it opens up SO many new possibilities, and pretty much means that our entire idea of what life was in 10,000 BC is wrong.

Which would be awesome and amazing and interesting. It's just that it's pretty far-fetched. SO much evidence up to this point has suggested that man in 10,000 BC was one way, and then ONE tiny piece of evidence makes a claim that is SO completely different...

I'm betting they find out that the carbon dating was inaccurate, or the article is, or something; and those things are really more around the time of Babylon or something.

Edit: Also, Madame C, the debate was between "the entire forum" and Deaucon, who also happened to be our beloved Cobnat as well as some other troll I can't remember. Jm was on the side of the majority.
And while there were debates with this person that did involve most of the forum members, I don't think the "religion predates society" one involved quite so many people...
Is that the one where the claim of wolves worshiping the moon was made?

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 24 March 2010 - 09:59 PM

I am writing about Jm in my signature because apparently it's an effective method of ignoring him.
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#5 User is offline   Madam Corvax Icon

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Posted 25 March 2010 - 04:44 AM

I see no contradiction here - it all depends on how we define society. In my understanding a group of prehistoric hunters-gatherers all dwelling in a cave must have some sort of society to survive.

And not understanding the world around it and being under constant threat form forces of nature, it is only natural that people turned into a system of beliefs which somehow gave substance and structure to the universe. IT was simply EASIER to survive with religion those days than without it.

And Spoon, if all the evidence bar one points in one direction and just a single one in completely another -then we must simply examine the evidence. As this disovery is relatively new, I also tend to believe that a mistake might have been made.

On the subject of disputes - yea, I do remember Cobnat and the supertroll Hannibal. Well, those were the days when people actually wanted to intelligently troll this forum. I cannot relly believe that so many pepple just dispersed or dropped off the face of the internet never to return here...
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#6 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 25 March 2010 - 11:58 PM

Civ - True enough, but organized religion, according to this structure, certainly predated the city/town and agriculture, which remains a terribly interesting revelation, if its true. The theory that agriculture sprang from religion and therefore the town as well is something that I'll need some convincing of.

MC - I don't know, I think Deuacon's assertion was that God happened to pop by and give human beings ethics and religion (ethics which were apparently meant to hold him back, only maybe not) The theory that the Gobekli site was meant to show off has a problem: there was no one to show off to. Humans were far dispersed and the nomadic hunter gatherer tribes would have been so small that every human in the area would have had to unite to create such a place as this which alone presents a multitude of problems like how they managed to do that while living by the very skin of their teeth.

Spoon- Whatever this religion was, it looks shamanistic and nature based, a simple religion focused on earthly matters. They probably prayed to the fox totem for cleverness, to the scorpion totem for not being stung by a scorpion, and so forth. And yeah, just like in the title, Gobekli really is throwing a lot of stuff out of whack, but every indication is that it is that old. The second oldest stone structure we know of is 1 or 2 thousand years younger. The lack of evidence coming from this time period is generally due to the fact that the further back we go, the less permanent things were, so the less evidence there will be in general. Our view of prehistoric society is informed generally by what we dont find. IE: If we dont find a stone axe head dating to before 8000 bc, we assume they did not exist before that time. The first stone axe head dating to 9000 BC will necessarily change this assumption, and it only takes one.

And as for everything we know about 10000 BC, it looked bloody awful, and apparently was full of CGI and historical innacuracies. LULz.

No I dont think quite everyone was involved in the do ethics restrict society debate, though your terse response in the opening of the festivities still makes me laugh to this day.

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#7 User is offline   Spoon Poetic Icon

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Posted 26 March 2010 - 12:21 AM

I don't actually remember what you are talking about... Which thread was that even in?

And yeah, finding stuff changes things. I get that. It's still just hard for me to believe this particular find. Just because it's a good deal more complex than finding a stone axe a thousand years older than the last one. This is complex abstract art, complex stoneworking, and it's thousands of years older than anything remotely similar on the art history timeline. It's hard to believe that we wouldn't have at least found some hints at this stuff being around at that time by now, but then suddenly this massive structure is found. This particular site just is so unrelated and unsimilar to every other find of the same time period.

So I'm curious to see how it all pans out. I mean if it's real, it's real, and I'll be intrigued. But I still just can't help but be skeptical. It's not like carbon dating hasn't been wrong in the past.
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#8 User is offline   Deucaon Icon

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Posted 26 March 2010 - 09:10 AM

My theory was that the fear of God (i.e. superstition) was what created morality and ethics and such. I suppose you can also add the fear of the unknown to the basis of that theory because I'm sure vivid dreams of their dead loved ones put the fear of God/unknown into at least some prehistoric cavemen. They'd be all like, "What? I just buried you yesterday! Take back your rock! Take it and leave me be!" or in caveman speech, "Ugh? Ugh ugh! Ugh ugh ugh! Ugh!"
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#9 User is offline   Gobbler Icon

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Posted 07 April 2010 - 07:43 AM

Try to explain your method of trolling to me some time, because I've been considering this lighthearted theory of yours and don't really see how it would serve as a good trigger for argument. Maybe I'm just missing a subtle hint.

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