I have been fascinated with Göbekli Tepe since I first heard of it. I really do think we need to rethink our idea of civilization and that it likely stretches back (as loose groups) tens of thousands of years. However, the common definition of civilization as it stands does not include sites like these. Göbekli Tepe Is thought by archaeologists to be a a pre-Neolithic or early Neolithic and that it is more of a site where tribes, who were otherwise hunter gatherers, would meet for religious purposes. Jericho is another where we have an actual city that is thought to be made up of non farmers who were otherwise sedentary. This doesn’t meant that the article is wrong about farming being crucial to Göbekli Tepe but it does mean that archaeologists aren’t seeing all of the signs of a true civilization which they tend to care more about writing than farming per say.<p>I do think writing as we know it stretches back just not as an alphabet but more as tally marks and cave painting. A lot of information can be exchanged that way and we do have records of cultures going back >20,000 years using these.<p>I think if you went back a few tens of thousand years you would see culture that are a lot closer to civilization than we like to think. But again, they wouldn’t fit the current definition of civilization.
For the Göbekli Tepe site mentioned in the article you can use Google maps [0] and drop the little yellow man on some of the dots where pictures were taken. There's some panoramic pictures that show it much better than the article [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2234784,38.9216386,306m/data=!3m1!1e3" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2234784,38.9216386,306m/data...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2233037,38.9225345,3a,75y,180.16h,66.92t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipN4RnWxCpXOeb-xDj3aVbSbbEaE7K1_ULXCCN61!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipN4RnWxCpXOeb-xDj3aVbSbbEaE7K1_ULXCCN61%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya286.4572-ro0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2233037,38.9225345,3a,75y,18...</a>
Look up Dwarka city that’s submerged under water! Age old civilizations that knew city planning, rock cutting and other advanced technologies who knows.
“... with [these assumptions] in mind we can conclude...”<p>The exploration of what could have been is reminiscent of how an historian might piece together a narrative from available evidence. The historian, out of necessity, must fill in the blanks where there is no evidence, but also keep the narrative going.<p>I am not convinced the author made the case, but it is an interesting story.
Good overview and hypothesis that proposes pushing back the pastoral-agricultural transition to 20000 y before present. Long interludes that can be read quickly.
I wonder if there's a general principle when you can assume any scientific finding that makes currently alive humans seem special, will underestimate how non-special we are.<p>And if you can plot that against some metric does it asymptotically approach how special we really are?