Cool archaeological find
 

Check this out. It's amazing what's buried out there.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,452365,00.html

Stone Age Temple May Be Birthplace of Civilization
Friday, November 14, 2008

It's more than twice as old as the Pyramids, or even the written word. When it was built, saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths still roamed, and the Ice Age had just ended.

The elaborate temple at Gobelki Tepe in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, is staggeringly ancient: 11,500 years old, from a time just before humans learned to farm grains and domesticate animals.

According to the German archaeologist in charge of excavations at the site, it might be the birthplace of agriculture, of organized religion — of civilization itself.

"This is the first human-built holy place," Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute says in the November issue of Smithsonian magazine.

Schmidt and his colleagues say no evidence of permanent settlement has been found at the site, although there are remains of butchered animals and edible plants.

However, all of the bones are from wild animals, and all the vegetation from wild plants. That means the massive structure was built by a hunter-gatherer society, not a settled agricultural one.

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Massive amounts of manpower would have been needed to build the site, a logistical problem that may have spurred the builders to begin planting grain and herding wild sheep, Schmidt thinks.

Wild grain ancestral to modern wheat grows nearby, and the site itself is just outside the city of Sanliurfa, known as Edessa to the Crusaders — and which locals say is the Biblical city of Ur, birthplace of Abraham. The Euphrates flows eighty miles to the west, putting Gobelki Tepe smack in the middle of the Fertile Crescent.

"This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," Stanford archaeologist Ian Hodder tells Smithsonian magazine. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."

hmmm. interesting. guess we can blame those bastards on our current problems.

:p

Oh, great, another Skip Towne thread.

I find it very interesting that humans were building massive monuments before we had agriculture or animal husbandry. I will have to think on that for a bit because at first look that doesn't seem like it makes sense.

I was expecting something you found in your backyard. Instead I guess this "birthplace of civilization" crap? You're losing it Rain Man.

Good article. When i first read it, i thought it would be in Iraq somewhere. But geographically it makes sense the location.

The famed garden of Eden, perhaps?

erm. except it's not a garden, but a temple.

Here is a link to the original 2006 article: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/1410,f...tory-in-turkey

Unless they find something that allows humans to pass through a portal to distant planets, well, then, f(ck it.

um i dunno wtf u think ur doin but the earf is only 6,000 years old

It seems to me that there is more knowledge about our ancestors of 100,000 years ago than of 10,000 years ago. Am I wrong, or is there a Neanderthal media bias?

How many people even know the names of their great grandparents?

Here's a fun little video about it:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TZ0ViMVxKZA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I figured it was Te'o's girlfriend

She's shown in bas relief at the 02:37 mark.

Now thats a bump

I didn't want to Q.

I thought I read about an underwater city off the coast of India that would have dated to around this time. Ultimately it slipped under the sea as the ocean's rose after the ice age ended.

they think this area was manually buried under 20' of sand 10,000 years ago?

That's one of the theories. As a means of preservation or memorialisation perhaps.

Wha? You never saw Stargate? it was real, yeaha.

Oh and date fail on my part..Is Chiefaroo even still here?

I lived it.

Woah. They found this again?

Yes but now they're saying it's only 4 years or so old...because it was found in 08 they had to redate everything from that point forward. :D

I'll bet they found some pretty cool 4 year old dig tools this time.

Hey, now. Rain Man didn't include a cool little video.

Look buddy, you can just take yourself over to Buck's cute little kitty cat cam thread or try to find Teo's girlfriend if you want. There's Science going on in here.

I want the africa kill cam

I was kind of hoping that the kittens would have to survive an attack by jackals, but nothing yet.

They just found a city in Africa that is about 200,000 years old.

you guys are slipping
http://troll.me/images/ancient-alien...was-aliens.jpg

Link?

Interesting stuff, for those into this stuff you should check out America Unearthed, i watched it for the first time last night.

Pretty cool story, the found a big rock in an arizona cave with anglo-saxon runes on it that were an ode to an englishman from the 1100's, looong before Columbus supposedly discovered the new world.

They think his body is buried there, and ground penetrating radar seems to confirm it, but they werent able to dig there for the show due to the lengthy permit process in arizona.

That would be some pretty wild news, englishmen in arizona some 500 years before any known discovery of america.

I think we've been sold a bill of goods with Columbus, hell they've got viking artifacts up in minnesota and wisconsin.

Oh, yeah. I absolutely agree that the "Columbus discovered America" myth is pure bullshit. I'm stunned that Anglo-Saxon runes would be found on a stone in Arizona. That's an incredible journey from the Northern East coast of the continent. I would see why it would be worthy of documenting at the time.

Yeah, link? I'd like to read about this.

Wow.

Is that a credible show? That seems almost too fantastic to believe.

I agree on the Columbus thing, and I think it's well documented that Vikings were wandering around long before him. But Anglo-Saxon stuff in Arizona would be quite the discovery, and the bigger question I would have about it is the lack of documentation in England if they had people wandering around that far west.

Here you go: my court reporter shared these links a while back...

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/20...si-photography

http://s.ngm.com/2011/06/gobekli-tep...illars-615.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

I found a website that discusses it, but the site looks shoddy at best. Here's another (questionable site) that I haven't dug through yet: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread918475/pg1

I think he was referring to the 200,000 year old African structure/civilization.

If it helps, there are alien and ancient gods conspiracists referring to the site/people as "Annunaki." It's really, really hard to dig through the goofy shit in order to find useful info.

Oh, so it was an alien city. That's more feasible. I thought it was a human city. My bad.

those were the guys that proved the world is flat /the pope

Sure.

It seems that every other week we're pulling artifacts out older than -5,000 years old.

I'm not ready to push ET into the equation but I think we were greatly evolved at some point and then disintegrated back down for whatever reason...

This is bogus. What they found in Arizona was a hoax.

Was it PR for the John Carter movie?

That would not surprise me in the least. Our world is littered with remnants of the rises and falls of various civilizations.

And the remains they leave are much more sensible, eco-friendly, and longer lasting than anything we've built today.

I guess that wouldnt be so surprising, but it did have some top archaeologists fooled.

Is this information something you might have a link to?

Here's the episode, I haven't watched it yet:


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kcJF9XIDI8A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It takes a lot of work to **** up a planet.