[HN Gopher] 12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed
___________________________________________________________________
12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed
Author : khole
Score : 362 points
Date : 2023-10-01 18:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arkeonews.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (arkeonews.net)
| ralusek wrote:
| Here's to another year of the word Gobeklitepe playing on repeat
| in my head.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| If you love Goebekli Tepe, you're gonna adore Narwala
| Gabarnmang, which is theorized to be the worlds first
| educational institute, and which has extraordinarily
| interesting ties to Goebekli Tepe, which is believed to be
| paying tribute to Narwala Gabarnmang with the T-shaped pillars
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung
|
| I avidly await all news related to these sites, its an
| immensely fascinating subject.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Go Becky Teppy
| dghughes wrote:
| What a crazy week for old things discovered this statue at
| Gobekli Tepe and the 400,000 year-old notched lumber beams in
| Zambia.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66846772
| silisili wrote:
| Wow, didn't see that Zambia one, that's big news to me.
|
| Question - how can they prove that someone in more recent times
| didn't notch more ancient wood?
| seneca wrote:
| As I understand it, in that case it is by dating the age of
| the materials the wood in question was buried in. The
| minerals are dated using luminescence dating. That tells you
| when those particles were last exposed to sunlight.
| facialwipe wrote:
| I don't trust any dating technique that requires the
| combustion of material.
| defrost wrote:
| Well, this dating relates to when quartz and|or feldspar
| crystal were last in strong sunlight .. it's not
| "combustion" as such.
|
| The changes wrought in the material by sun exposure and
| subsequent changes over time in the dark are strongly
| repeatable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescence_dating
| pests wrote:
| > Most luminescence dating methods rely on the assumption
| that the mineral grains were sufficiently "bleached" at
| the time of the event being dated. For example, in quartz
| a short daylight exposure in the range of 1-100 seconds
| before burial is sufficient to effectively "reset" the
| OSL dating clock
|
| Very interesting
| LeanderK wrote:
| > And the timber is much older than the earliest modern human -
| or Homo sapiens - fossils, which are about 315,000 years old.
|
| this is what astonished me. I somehow depicted our ancestors or
| relatives to be purely hunter/gatherers without the means (and
| will) to build complex wooden structures.
| jcpst wrote:
| > Scientists created models to show how overlapping logs could
| have been used
|
| I _love_ how in other words you could also say "played with
| lincoln logs" :)
| khole wrote:
| More info and photos: https://themindcircle.com/new-gobeklitepe-
| and-karahantepe-fi...
| waynecochran wrote:
| Two things: how is is dated? and was that NSFW 12000 years ago?
| [deleted]
| mkaic wrote:
| If you're interested in learning more about these incredible
| Turkish archaeological sites, I can't recommend the YouTube
| channel Miniminuteman [0] enough. Milo is extremely passionate
| about his field of study and makes highly entertaining and
| informative videos about archaeology and anthropology, including
| a recent series where he became the first real archaeologist ever
| to be allowed to film a documentary on-site at Karahantepe! [1]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EaKFKYPXVk
| throwaway290 wrote:
| He mentions that people back then lived around 35 years. I
| recall reading it's a mistaken interpretation of the average
| age, while many people died infants adults actually easily
| lived to 70+ yo. Is it true and he made the same mistake or am
| I thinking about a different period in history?
| softfalcon wrote:
| These statistics regularly make it sound like everyone was
| dying off around 30.
|
| In reality, it is due to infant mortality rates. Once you
| make it past a certain age (10-15 years) your life expectancy
| shoots up into the 40-60's easily. However, when you average
| the population out, those infant deaths tank the average life
| expectancy.
|
| I'm not surprised they glossed over this, most researchers
| do, because they don't want to go into infantile deaths,
| disease spread during child birth, still births, etc.
|
| Not only is it a complex topic, but it's fraught with
| political and religious ideology. When my history and
| anthropology professors started talking about it, certain
| folks of a particular religious bent almost immediately
| started trying to correct them about it.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| The guy in the video said "their lifespans would have only
| been around 35 years" which sounds not so much glossing
| over as being plain incorrect.
|
| I am annoyed by these slips every time because they make it
| seem as if we live so much longer since hunter-gatherer
| times... Modern medicine reduced early age mortality, sure,
| but funny enough it did not do much to increase max
| lifespan (and especially healthy lifespan).
| softfalcon wrote:
| Ah, yeah, that sounds like it was indeed just incorrect.
|
| To add to your comment about modern medicine. Keep in
| mind that when you isolate out infant mortality, you get
| an average life span of roughly 60-ish in ancient times.
|
| Present day mortality is closer to 85+ for the G7
| countries and 75+ for other fairly well developed
| countries. That's a 25 year increase! Given those
| statistics, I would say modern medicine is actually doing
| quite a bit to improve life expectancy into your golden
| years!
| pakitan wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer
|
| > Researchers Gurven and Kaplan have estimated that around
| 57% of hunter-gatherers reach the age of 15. Of those that
| reach 15 years of age, 64% continue to live to or past the
| age of 45. This places the life expectancy between 21 and 37
| years.[54] They further estimate that 70% of deaths are due
| to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths come from violence or
| accidents and 10% are due to degenerative diseases.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Karahan Tepe is not hunter gatherers, it's a permanent
| settlement.
|
| But even that aside, it is definitely not what the guy in
| video literally said, which is quote "their lifespans would
| have only been around 35 years", 5:22. By the way, I had to
| sit through 6 unskippable 10-second ads to tell you the
| timestamp (2 ads every time I scrub around).
|
| Edited for brevity
| edgyquant wrote:
| I don't think permanent settlement disqualifies a site
| from being hunter-gatherers. Jericho is a permanent
| settlement that predates agriculture
| coldpie wrote:
| > By the way, I had to sit through 6 unskippable
| 10-second ads to tell you the timestamp (2 ads every time
| I scrub around).
|
| Huh, does uBlock Origin not work for blocking ads on
| YouTube anymore?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I don't use extensions
| manonthewall wrote:
| I don't know if they -easily- lived up to 70, but it was
| possible to live to that age for sure :) . death rate of "at
| birth" and early years was far far higher than now. they
| certainly lived longer than 30-35 that I hear slung around
| though. If you lived to 15 or so you could easily live to
| 50-60. Although those early corpses almost always show
| infection by parasites and such and not so pretty healing
| from injuries.
| 6D794163636F756 wrote:
| I just found him on Friday and lost the weekend. I can
| definitely say that his passion is infectious and makes the
| topics far more interesting.
| softfalcon wrote:
| +1 for Miniminuteman! His shorts debunking flat-earther types
| is also incredibly entertaining.
| [deleted]
| jpsouth wrote:
| His shorts are hilarious too, he has some great mini-debunks of
| conspiracies.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| And a multi hour debunk of ancient apocalypse.
| seqizz wrote:
| You know there is already a conspiracy about its phallus [0]?
| Which might be broken for unknown reasons.
|
| [0]: https://arkeofili.com/karahantepede-bulunan-insan-
| heykelinin...
| rationalfaith wrote:
| [dead]
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I read the article and didn't see the 12,000 years (perhaps
| obscured by countless irrelevant ad overlays) and wondered how
| does one date stone, since carbon dating is irrelevant for
| something that didnt stop breathing and eating?
| appplication wrote:
| One way is to date the deposition of the sediment immediately
| surrounding the artifact. I don't know exactly how they do this
| but I recall reading this was the method for some older
| structures that made the front page a week or two ago.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| It makes me happy that it's possible that future humans might
| live again on an earth 12,000 years in the future which has
| cooled again after our civilisation has boiled the planet.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Pretty sure we haven't yet mastered planetary engineering, bro.
| "Boiling" a planet is many orders of magnitude bigger than our
| entire energy budget.
| usrusr wrote:
| Why would it cool in 12k years? We are loading the atmosphere
| with carbon sequestered over much longer periods. Some of which
| even happened in a phase of massive imbalance in the
| evolutionary "war" between plants and plant consumers: trees
| had found a way to _never rot_ (be consumed) which is rather
| tragic for incumbent biological systems but a crazy boost for
| carbon sequestering.
|
| The problem is not that we produce heat, the problem is that we
| change the balance point between energy influx from the sun and
| energy emission to space. That changed balance point will
| remain changed much, much longer than 12k years. If we don't
| have a technological miracle, humans 12k in the future will
| live in tiny habitable zones near the poles.
| hist_thw wrote:
| [dead]
| elesbao wrote:
| Dudes should bury that back. The exorcist taught us everything we
| needed about status with hard-ons.
| caprock wrote:
| The last couple of pictures, of the eyes and the bird, are really
| neat. Gobeklitepe continues to provide interesting results.
|
| It's kind of comforting and exciting that we have so much yet to
| uncover about the past.
| sakopov wrote:
| If I remember correctly only a small portion of the site was
| actually excavated mostly to preserve everything from erosion.
| detourdog wrote:
| I take great comfort in trying to figure out why these sites
| were buried. I believe the current understanding is that that
| were carefully covered with dirt contemporaneously with usage.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| There is a theory that they were not intentionally buried
| after all, but rather that the deposits were the result of
| geological processes .. apparently they've found arrowheads
| in the deposit layers that demonstrate that the filling
| material was deposited over hundreds, or even thousands, of
| years ..
| detourdog wrote:
| That makes a lot more sense to me. Do you have a source for
| more info. I think that would imply a social collapse that
| could no longer maintain their infrastructure.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Both the Miniminuteman and "The Prehistory Guys" channels
| on Youtube have featured more details on an analysis of
| the covering layers of Goebekli Tepe - you might want to
| check those channels out for more details.
| imchillyb wrote:
| It's almost comforting to know that 12,000 years ago humans were
| essentially sending random people dick-pics. All the passersby
| got a dirty little airdrop to the eye holes.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Graham Hancock has entered the chat
| blorpypig wrote:
| There is no overstating just how absolutely wrong in almost every
| dimension possible most of the posters on this site are. It's
| distilled ignorance mixed with the arrogance of an annoying 8
| year old.
|
| Hacker News is the worst "tech" site that exists.
| gt2 wrote:
| Please enlighten us! I'll be people would overlook the tone of
| your comment if you just said something constructive along with
| it (I hope you do).
| cratermoon wrote:
| I'm sensing an overabundance of pareidolia in this story.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > featuring a lifelike facial expression
|
| Notice that, although it was a completely alien culture in a very
| far away time, before agriculture and writing, we still know what
| a lifelike facial expression looks like.
|
| Many things vary from culture to culture. Facial expressions, at
| least many of them, are consistent across humanity. If someone
| stubs their toe or tastes something delicious, you'll know
| without words.
|
| Look up 'human universals' in anthropology, evolutionary
| psychology, and in other fields. Donald Brown (see below) gives
| some opinionated background here, including a literature review
| (of Brown's own writings, and more):
|
| https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/2017/06/25/human-unive...
|
| The seminal book is _Human Universals_ by Donald Brown:
|
| https://archive.org/details/humanuniversals0000brow/
|
| (I don't know how fully accepted it is; there seems to be at
| least some disupte over Brown's theories.)
| [deleted]
| verbify wrote:
| How many of these universals are shared with other mammals
| (especially apes)?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Some universals are certainly shared with other creatures,
| and it's not even restricted to mammals. From one article:
|
| _Take, for example, social facilitation or the notion that
| organisms tend to perform better on simple tasks in the
| presence of observers. Although disagreement about its innate
| origins exists (Do-Yeong and Junsu 2010), social facilitation
| has had supportive evidence in humans in a natural setting
| (Michaels et al. 1982), cockroaches (Zajonc et al. 1969), and
| macaques (Dindo et al. 2009)._
|
| (I don't know about facial expressions, though the fact that
| I don't know means little - I've just read a bit about it.)
|
| There are other universals among non-human species, not
| shared with us, such as 100+ discovered for chimpanzees.
|
| Source: Reza Ziai, "Cross-Cultural Universality". In Todd K
| Shackelford, Viviana A Weekes-Shackelford, eds. _Encyclopedia
| of Evolutionary Psychological Science_. Springer (2021)
| gumby wrote:
| I don't think any other species has the set of facial muscles
| humans do. Cats seem inscrutable because they have very few;
| dogs seem more understandable because they can move their
| eyebrows.
|
| I think the non-human animal with the most facial expressions
| is the chimpanzee, but even then it is much less expressive
| than a human in this regard.
|
| Various mammals have (non-facial) macroexpression somewhat
| similar to humans, such as excitement, curiosity and fear.
| Many non-mammals such as birds, fish, and some reptiles can
| express fear to some extent.
| Sharlin wrote:
| As other commenters said, cats are far from inscrutable.
| But a lot of their expressiveness comes from their tail and
| ears, two modalities that humans happen to lack.
| tanepiper wrote:
| As someone who spends a lot of time closely with dogs, and
| recently raised a little of 6 spaniels - dogs "talk" via
| their facial expressions and can make sounds beyond just
| barks.
|
| My pet theory is that women bonded with dogs first through
| an ability to have a mutual understanding with non-verbal
| communication, and we most likely observed them and could
| "talk" to them in their own ways - something that has been
| lost as we turned dogs from inter-species partners to
| enslaved commodities.
|
| We're slowly starting to rediscover it.
| justinclift wrote:
| That sounds weird. Do you think male humans don't
| communicate non-verbally?
| ido wrote:
| Why women specifically? Or did you mean humans?
| hnbad wrote:
| Probably extrapolating from the debunked pseudoscience of
| "women were gatherers, men were hunters", which fuels 90%
| of present evopsych nonsense.
|
| For those unaware: prehistorical "hunter-gatherer"
| societies likely did not have strong divisions of labor
| and there is no evidence to suggest such a universal
| division across gender lines. Quite the opposite,
| actually. Turns out when you hunt large mammals in a
| group, the statistical physical advantages men have don't
| really matter all that much and women in turn aren't
| inherently better at child rearing (which historically
| was a group activity shared by the entire tribe).
| someuser2345 wrote:
| > Turns out when you hunt large mammals in a group, the
| statistical physical advantages men have don't really
| matter all that much
|
| Even if women and men are equal in their hunting skill,
| it would still make evolutionary sense for women not to
| participate in the hunts. Hunting large mammals is
| dangerous, and men are more disposable than women. If a
| tribe loses most of its men, it can still survive since a
| single man can impregnate multiple women. Whereas if a
| tribe loses most of its women it is far more likely to
| die out.
| edgyquant wrote:
| That isn't debunked, how ridiculous. It's true not all
| men were hunters, but that doesn't mean that there was an
| equal share of women among the hunters. They travelled as
| a group and everyone gathered, but men went out to get
| the kill.
| gumby wrote:
| This is attested in the Neolithic records, I suppose?
| edgyquant wrote:
| Anyone making sweeping statements that applies to all of
| hunter gatherer society is almost certainly wrong about
| at least a few cultures. We're talking 1-3 million years
| worth of human society and cultural evolution.
| gumby wrote:
| Anthropological studies of (some of the few remaining)
| contemporary hunter-gatherer societies don't show the
| presumed division of labor (or several other presumptions
| either, like pervasive hinger, or the amount of time
| spent on food collection) written up by 19th century
| European naturalists.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I think we share a very similar disgust response to other
| primates primarily and some other mammals as well including
| dogs.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Fear and anger on the face of a human and a wolf are very
| similar. Include body language in general and the
| similarities expand. If a mammal drops its head, widens
| its eyes and its ears pull back (yes humans do that too),
| its time to look for escape, or a weapon.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't think cat faces are all that much less expressive
| than dog faces. They have a wide variety of facial
| expressions, including surprise, irritation/anger,
| happiness, playfulness, anxiety/fear, disgust, and so on -
| and that's not including at cat body language, especially
| tail movements.
|
| Our cat has perfected the guilt-tripping innocent stare.
| She stands beside her food bowl looking _almost_ blank.
| This somehow communicates a combination of infinite sadness
| and disappointment, blended with child-like hopefulness.
|
| It's very effective.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I suspect the most effective for pets is a perfect blank
| slate onto which the owner can project whatever they
| want.
| manonthewall wrote:
| have you ever owned and been inseparable from a pet? you
| absolutely can interpret their moods and you can find
| papers on it if you like, they do have expressions and
| body language. It may not be the same as humans
| necessarily but it is there if you care to research it.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Once you know cats (or probably any other advanced
| animal) you can read their emotions like a book. Lots of
| people don't know how to read cats though.
| sdiupIGPWEfh wrote:
| > Cats seem inscrutable because they have very few; dogs
| seem more understandable because they can move their
| eyebrows.
|
| What's wild is that we're apparently directly responsible
| for the eyebrow thing in dogs. As in we literally bred the
| feature into them.
|
| - https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1820653116
|
| - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/dogs-
| eyeb...
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/science/dogs-eyebrows-
| evo...
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Showing teeth, universally means aggression. In humans, it's
| for showing you are happy, or excited.
| pelorat wrote:
| That's not what I consider a "realistic human statue" ?
| didgetmaster wrote:
| 'Recognizable' seems much more appropriate than 'realistic' in
| this case.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Can you think of any artistic depiction of a human from that
| era that is more detailed? Humans in cave paintings are
| basically stick men.
| defrost wrote:
| Sash and tassel Gwion Gwion rock paintings are ~ 12,000 years
| old and pretty detailed for "shadow drawings" *.
|
| They're more than just stick figures, they detail ceremonial
| costumes quite well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwion_Gwion_rock_paintings
|
| * Dating the spectrum of paintings is broad.
| Experimental OSL dates from a wasp nest overlaying a tassel
| Gwion Gwion figure has given a Pleistocene date of 17,500 +-
| 1,800 years BP. The academic community generally accepts
| 5,000 BP for the end of the artistic style. If the date
| ranges are correct, this may demonstrate that the Gwion Gwion
| tradition was produced for many millennia.
| dwd wrote:
| Stick figure cave paintings are paleolithic graffiti. If you
| think artists find it hard to scratch a living these days,
| you're not going to find much support for following your
| passion when there is hunting, gathering and defending
| against predators to do.
|
| But if a sharman (assuming it is a statue for their deity)
| has the time, then there's no reason it couldn't be perfectly
| proportioned. It's not like hand-eye coordination has
| suddenly evolved; it would more be access to better tools
| than a piece of flint to bang on some softer rock.
| hnbad wrote:
| > If you think artists find it hard to scratch a living
| these days, you're not going to find much support for
| following your passion when there is hunting, gathering and
| defending against predators to do.
|
| You seem to seriously overestimate the average workload of
| prehistoric communities (or underestimating the average
| workload of present day individuals). Also I don't think
| the concept of making "a living" transfers to gift
| economies. Nor do you need to spend 16 hours a day every
| day "being an artist" to develop remarkable artistic skill.
| Strict division of labor is a fairly recent development
| that in its present form stems from industrialisation
| requiring work to be split into discrete processes to
| enable automation.
| ftxbro wrote:
| On hacker news everything is 0% or 100%.
| ta8645 wrote:
| I see you're playing the 100% end of that range, by claiming
| that "everything" conforms to your insight.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| That's what people looked like back then.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Weird that people don't understand evolution.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Me too. Why does the title claim realism when the article it
| points at doesn't? The article only claims a realistic facial
| expression.
| d1l wrote:
| In that time there is relatively little figurative art of
| humans. Rarely seen in cave painting, etc. The nearest would be
| the Venus figurines but they don't typically show facial
| features or internal anatomical details. It's a major major
| find bro.
| manonthewall wrote:
| I don't understand why it is so radical though. Even when I
| was a bored kid I could pick up a stick and whittle out a
| face not to far from what was in the article with a decently
| sharp knife and some time. Doesn't seem like a huge jump to
| do it in stone if the stone is easy enough to shape with a
| harder stone/mineral...
| nomel wrote:
| I suspect it's more a problem about longevity of the
| artifacts, rather than lack of talent or knowing one can pick
| up some mud and form a shape.
|
| They had very similar general intelligence and talents as us,
| at that time, and tens of thousand of years before. Today,
| it's not terribly hard to find artistic kids who can mold
| extremely good faces, ponies, or whatever else they choose,
| from a lump of play dough. I assume artistic people existed
| then too, with comparable talent and frequency, unless there
| was some catastrophic non-artist pruning that happened very
| very recently.
| d1l wrote:
| A statistical review would show that you are almost
| certainly quite incorrect.
|
| Also, the "they" you refer to is "us".
| Syntonicles wrote:
| I haven't seen much art from that era either and was pretty
| surprised to see the statue. However looking into it, I'm
| even more surprised to learn of the Venus of Brassempouy.
|
| I've heard that much of the ruins from Ancient Greeze were
| likely brightly colored and painted. I can't help but wonder
| if the Venus I mentioned had been painted as well. It's
| possible that they did have detailed faces, and that they
| simply weren't sculpted.
|
| I'm the furthest thing from an expert of course.
| tootie wrote:
| We're talking anthropology here, not art criticism. It's
| leagues more realistic than anything we've uncovered. Something
| like the bronze charioteer which is incredibly vivid and
| accurate is made nearly 10,000 years later than this one.
| Koshkin wrote:
| It has all the parts...
| dwd wrote:
| I maybe wasn't expecting Bernini level of realism, but
| "Augustus of Prima Porta" is around 2000 years old which
| greatly predates Renaissance tooling.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| This predates that statute by at least 7,000 years or more.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| It's kind of mind-blowing that we're three times closer to
| the Romans than the Romans themselves were to Gobekli Tepe.
| Gobekli Tepe is as much older than the pyramids, as the
| pyramids are themselves old.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| I beg to differ- how does that not look exactly like us
|
| https://i0.wp.com/themindcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/...
|
| From the better link someone posted below:
|
| https://themindcircle.com/new-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-fi...
| [deleted]
| INTPenis wrote:
| Yeah I was expecting something like a greek statue with very
| realistic human features, but I guess this is still astounding
| since other statues of the time are even less anthropomorphous.
| pavlov wrote:
| We have a fairly good idea of how sculpture evolved in the
| past 5,000 years or so. By 2500 BCE, the Egyptians had
| already mastered realistic sculpture:
|
| https://www.mfa.org/gallery/masterpieces-of-egyptian-
| sculptu...
|
| But this discovery is a whopping 7,500 years older. It would
| have been inconceivably ancient to the pyramid builders too.
| voldacar wrote:
| Those statues clearly show some development, but I wouldn't
| say the Egyptians had mastered realistic sculpture. There
| is clearly still some kouros-like stylized anatomy here,
| especially visible in the standing figures. Compare to http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polykleitos#/media/File:Doryph...
| Sharlin wrote:
| It's of course difficult to say how much of the perceived
| non-realism was simply about cultural aesthetic
| preferences with regard to style. Especially given that
| the statues that have survived are those with special
| cultural or religious significance.
| pavlov wrote:
| The non-realist aspects were definitely tied to cultural
| and religious signifiers.
|
| There's actually a fascinating case where Egyptian
| artists were briefly allowed to abandon the established
| style and adopted a quite different one during the so-
| called Amarna period:
|
| https://artsandculture.google.com/usergallery/amarna-
| period-...
|
| Much of the art became almost caricatures with elongated
| features, but there was simultaneously a realist tendency
| where portraits of royalty were suddenly allowed to have
| a likeness. The famous Nefertiti bust is from this era.
|
| It seems clear to me that the artists' skills was not the
| limitation, but the permitted range of expression was
| quite narrow until this rebel pharaoh unleashed the
| short-lived style revolution.
| z500 wrote:
| More like anatomically correct.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _That 's not what I consider a "realistic human statue" ?_
|
| the HN title is wrong, TFA says "realistic facial expression".
| Of course, it's neither a realistic facial expression, so all
| the comments are still valid. Carry on.
| quasarj wrote:
| And the face is fucking missing!!
| dinkblam wrote:
| better link with less and less offensive ads:
|
| https://arkeonews.net/new-discoveries-in-gobeklitepe-and-kar...
| amphitheatre wrote:
| Thank you. What a garbage website OP linked to...
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Better and more images though.
| dang wrote:
| OK, we changed to that from https://themindcircle.com/new-
| gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-fi.... Thanks!
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I wonder how long ago our ancestors forgot about this settlement
| and it was lost, and how many times it was rediscovered through
| the ages. I bet Homer knew of or had heard of some ancient sites
| that were either never memorialized in a poem, or poems never
| survived to modern times.
| Loughla wrote:
| It's honestly staggering to think about how much didn't survive
| because it was made of wood or clay. And the oral history of
| our species that is forever lost. Just staggering.
| OJFord wrote:
| I find it more staggering that anything survived (with a gap
| before being rediscovered). It's just funny to think about
| the set of circumstances that might lead to things being
| left, forgotten, and buried, isn't it?
| imchillyb wrote:
| It's even more staggering to think how much didn't survive
| due to conquerors, demolitions, fires, and intolerance.
| mcmoor wrote:
| Xenophon already writes about sites that are already old and
| forgotten by his time
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon)
| opportune wrote:
| There was 4x the amount of time between Gobekli Tepe and
| Xenophon as there was between Xenophon and right now
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| That's very interesting! I imagine a bunch of bored
| Victorians have already dug everything up and thoroughly
| wrecked the provenance of everything.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Yet more astonishing finds from the PPNA! Contemporaneous or even
| earlier than the Balikligol statues, but the piece and its
| expression is far beyond it. Each time I think I won't be
| surprised by another Turkish find and yet . .
|
| Looking at the oldest finds on a world map, I can't help
| wondering what sort of finds are in those areas less developed -
| or more wrought by internal violence - were those places to
| suddenly be easy to roam for archeologists. If Iran were as
| accessible as Germany, who knows what the equivalent of the
| Hohlenstein Lowenmensch would be? The events of the early 21st
| century (can and will) cast a long shadow in the scholarship.
| khole wrote:
| The recent excavations unearthed a painted wild boar statue, a
| human statue, and a vulture statue. All statues are new gateways
| to understanding pre-historic art and culture.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Not being snarky but the big deal is we're pushing back the
| line (read: year / era) dividing pre-history from history.
| These discoveries became history now, yes?
| biorach wrote:
| Nope.
|
| > Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period
| of human history between the first known use of stone tools
| by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of
| recorded history with the invention of writing systems.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory
|
| The big deal is that these art works are far more
| sophisticated that anything else we have seen so early.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| This is one common definition of the term history, but it's
| not a very good one and largely relegated to outdated
| encyclopedia entries rather than describing how
| professionals investigate history. It's very poor as a
| technical definition. For instance, does "history" in an
| area start when someone writes something, or does the
| writing have to survive to the present day? Does only one
| person need to write, or does it need to be socially
| widespread? Does it have to be full writing or does
| protowriting count? Do we have to be able to read the
| writing? Do partial readings count? These ambiguities
| weren't issues back when it was being used as a criterion
| for "civilization" ala childe, but that time has long since
| passed.
|
| Today, it's best to ignore all these difficult and largely
| unnecessary questions by simply using a descriptive
| definition where "history is the human past".
| hotnfresh wrote:
| IDK, seems fine, ambiguities and all. Not everything has
| to be, or can be, math or formal logic to be useful for
| communication.
| biorach wrote:
| look, you can quibble all you want about how the rest of
| the world is misusing a word, but at the end of the day
| you're in the minority here.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Not nope :)
|
| By definition recorded history - as recorded in this art
| work, which are artifacts of history - is being pushed
| back.
|
| The big deal is we over-estimated what we thought we knew
| about the past and that over-confidence is being humbled.
| And because of that the definition of pre-history needs to
| be updated.
| late2part wrote:
| Names don't constitute knowledge.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFIYKmos3-s&t=1s
| tonyvince7 wrote:
| Graham Hancock must be feeling vindicated
| Eumenes wrote:
| I liked this article headline: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-
| and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient...
| AlertGooble wrote:
| He's too caught up in the impact theory when, clearly, it's the
| sun.
| anon-3988 wrote:
| I feel like there's way too many discoveries of ancient
| civilization dated 10-15k years ago to not think that "some" of
| his ideas must have some truth to it.
|
| Obviously I understand that he might have exaggerated a lot of
| it.
| mvdwoord wrote:
| I visited a small archeological site on Corsica yesterday. This
| got us talking about this stuff which led to my gf asking to
| watch the gobekli tepe episode of ancient apocalypse last
| night.
|
| Just after, as I was checking hn, this article was dropped.
| Same thing went through my mind.
| gadders wrote:
| I don't know if he is yet, but it must at least be a bit of a
| point in his favour.
|
| I've no idea if his theory is true, but it would be _so_ cool
| if it was.
| sshaginyan wrote:
| I wouldn't trust anything out of Turkey.
| anon-3988 wrote:
| It always sounded strange to me when I learnt in high school that
| the "earliest" civilization had rock structures, ziggurats,
| temples and the like. It gives an impression that human suddenly
| that converged together at some point, decided to have priests
| and kings, and construct large structures for no practical
| worldly reason.
|
| Take the discovery of fire. It is not like some ape suddenly
| discovered fire and suddenly learnt how to cook. It probably took
| thousand of years of "consistently being able to create fire"
| before realizing that it can be used for cooking. The ability to
| create fire also implies that the prehistoric human was already
| able to think of risk/benefit. Since fire is obviously dangerous
| it leads me to think that they already have some sort of
| culture/philoshopy. Critical thinking cannot exist in a vacuum
| i.e. they have to had to used it for other purposes as well.
|
| This is obviously unscientific and extremely speculative, but I
| just think that these things cannot exist in a vacuum is all.
| potas wrote:
| What freaks me out is how the hands are depicted on the statue.
| It's eerily similar to the Moai statues of Easter Island [1]. I'm
| not sure what to make of it.
|
| [1]
| https://web.stanford.edu/~siegelr/easterisland/IMG_3485%20le...
| [deleted]
| derefr wrote:
| Is there some way that we could "scan the Earth" to find other
| long-buried sites like Gobeklitepe?
|
| Would it be possible to do something from imaging satellites --
| something akin to ground-penetrating radar / laser range-finding
| / ultrasound -- that might not be good enough for much, but which
| _would_ be "just good enough" to find any other gigantic cities
| with walls built of dense stone, hidden under 10-50ft of dirt or
| sand?
| Lukeas14 wrote:
| Yes they've been doing lidar scans throughout central america
| to detect ancient Mayan pyramids and cities that are hidden
| under foliage. They've identified thousands of structures but
| other factors have limited their ability to unearth them (# of
| archaeologists, funding, politics).
| derefr wrote:
| Yes, lidar is great and all for what it does, and will
| definitely find us many new sites; but lidar just detects
| structures that cause raised areas (i.e. plants growing up
| and over the structures) rather than detecting structures
| hidden _within_ a flat plane of fill-in medium like dirt
| /sand, the way Gobeklitepe was hidden. Lidar wouldn't have
| found Gobeklitepe.
| paganel wrote:
| > Is there some way that we could "scan the Earth" to find
| other long-buried sites like Gobeklitepe?
|
| The Brits had started a Lidar survey of most of their country a
| few years ago, I'd say 2015-2016, but I'm not sure if that
| information is entirely accurate and, if it is accurate, I'm
| not sure how far they have got with it (what if all the cuts
| made to spending money on stuff that is not seen as essential).
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/18/laser-
| surve...
|
| Browsable map:
| https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=TQ7237355141
| paganel wrote:
| Very cool, thanks for the links!
|
| I'm jealous in a positive way that the Brits have managed
| to do that. There was some talk about trying to emulate
| them when it comes to some archaeological sites here in
| Romania, but apart from a couple of tries/mappings nothing
| systematic has been implemented.
| [deleted]
| Sharlin wrote:
| GP radar _should_ work, as long as the artifacts are of a
| material sufficiently different from the earth on top of them
| for the interface to cause a radar echo. I've no idea what
| exactly counts as sufficiently different " though.
| pachico wrote:
| Honest question. How do young-earth creationists react to these
| news?
|
| We don't have many in Spain, despite being quite a religious
| country, and I'm always intrigued.
| svpk wrote:
| Generally young earth creationists don't believe modern dating
| methods are accurate. Explanations for why they wouldn't be
| accurate vary. But as an example, in my understanding carbon
| dating is based on a presumption that atmospheric ratios of
| stable and unstable carbon isotopes have remained constant over
| time. But how do we know that to be true?
|
| Generally the different kinds of dating methods are also
| calibrated against one another, so then you get a feedback loop
| of false conclusions verifying other false conclusions. And
| then of course you get various points of data that could
| contradict dating methods. One that was mentioned to me
| recently is that a plane was found buried under several hundred
| feet of ice. Presumably if it wasn't obviously an object from
| the last century it would have been dated to be much older. So
| goes the argument.
|
| Anyway, I'm not an expert on dating things or young earth
| creationism but the Tl;dr is that they don't believe the dating
| method used to claim it's 12,000 years old is accurate.
| waterheater wrote:
| svpk's comment aligns with my own understanding. Also, some
| young-earth creationists may say that God created the earth
| with age. If you ask them why God did that or where they find
| such information in the Bible, they'll either say it's part of
| God's plan or be silent.
|
| Another interesting place where young-earth creationists
| provide physical theories for biblical events is the Flood.
| Many ancient cultures have flood myths, some talk of a global
| deluge in the distant past, and few cultures attempt to derive
| a physical explanation for the massive flowing of water.
|
| Though less popular today, some young-earth creationists
| interested in physical explanations (who also almost always
| have some theories about the Flood) hypothesized the existence
| of a "vapor canopy", which served as the source of the flood
| waters. Essentially, the vapor canopy was a water shell which
| surrounded the earth. The floodwaters came when God caused the
| vapor canopy to collapse. Now, this hypothesis fails to
| withstand a small amount of physics inquiry; the earth's
| gravitational forces would naturally collapse the shell, and
| the water's shell would make the earth's surface too dark to
| sustain life. Yet, they're not bad people, just misguided.
|
| Since we're on this topic, there's one physical theory for a
| global deluge which is my personal favorite from a scientific
| standpoint. We know the earth has a crust and mantle. The crust
| is like a hard shell around the mantle, while the mantle acts
| like a viscous fluid. The mantle is thought to be magnetic [1].
| One interesting and obscure field of research is
| magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), or the study of the dynamics of
| magnetic fluids. The geodynamo effect [2] proposes that the
| earth's magnetic field arises from magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)
| effects in the mantle.
|
| Now, let's say the earth experiences a magnetic pole flip.
| Presumably, the earth's magnetic field will collapse for some
| period of time before returning in a reversed configuration. At
| some point during the flip, the field collapses completely.
| During that collapse, the MHD forces in the mantle are
| eliminated. The precise effects are unknown to us, but perhaps
| the crust then experiences a sudden rotational deceleration.
| Conservation of momentum says that the earth's oceans will
| slosh across the surface of the planet. Once the earth's
| magnetic field returns, the oceans gradually calm again, but
| much of the earth's surface has now been washed by a tsunami
| spanning all oceans.
|
| From a purely theoretical standpoint, I like the scientific
| plausibility of this theory to explain the deluge, particularly
| because there's no need for the magical invention of a water
| source. However, there's still issues, like the precise cause
| of the earth's magnetic pole flip. If the pole flip is caused
| by, say, the Sun, then we need to know why and if the Sun's own
| electromagnetic field induces the MHD forces in the mantle.
| (MHD forces cause magnetic fluids to flow, which, short of
| additional information, would imply the Sun may cause the earth
| to rotate via MHD, which, according to a quick web search, is
| not the scientifically-accepted rationale for the earth's
| rotation.)
|
| [1] https://www.geoengineer.org/news/magnetic-field-found-in-
| ear...
|
| [2]
| https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978AnRFM..10..435B/abstra...
| victor106 wrote:
| I am always curious to know how they determine the date of
| historical artifacts? Anyone here can throw some light?
| smilespray wrote:
| One technique is radiocarbon dating:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
|
| EDIT: For artefacts made entirely out of stone, you can date
| objects in the sediment around them to get an approximation.
| phero_cnstrcts wrote:
| But that only works for organic material. Not stone.
| tootie wrote:
| The article says there were traces of pigment that could be
| dated. There are other techniques related to the layers of
| sediment or other clues. I think with a site like this they
| don't need to date every object. If they can gather enough
| data points they know when the site was in use. It's
| technically possible that the statue stone is older and was
| brought to the site and we might never know, but it's just
| highly unlikely.
| hnfong wrote:
| I think the "highly unlikely" part is pure speculation.
|
| If the stone in TFA gets buried when _our_ civilization
| collapses, the stone would now probably date to 2020 AD
| instead of whatever it should have been.
| LennyWhiteJr wrote:
| There is organic matter buried in and around the site that
| can be used to date the point at which it was filled in.
| theduder99 wrote:
| whatever fits the agenda
| nimbius wrote:
| [flagged]
| kcplate wrote:
| Brilliant
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Could do worse.
| bluehorizon2 wrote:
| It feels like the significance of this is lost on many people.
|
| My understanding is that complex things like statues were not
| supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. I think it's supposed
| to be more like 6000 years ago. The fact that it has been carbon
| dated to 12,000 tears should means that we have to rewrite the
| theories on the start of human civilization.
|
| These statues needed to be carved out of tools and the
| educational techniques for carving it off stone and the social
| structure to support art were not supposed to exist at this time.
| This is pretty huge in terms of figuring out the birth of human
| civilization.
|
| And the fact that the same site also has these huge stone
| megaliths that also weren't supposed to be possible and were also
| dated to 12,000 years so just solidified the idea that our
| current theories are completely wrong.
| hnfong wrote:
| > My understanding is that complex things like statues were not
| supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. I think it's supposed
| to be more like 6000 years ago.
|
| Recently I keep wondering whether people have thought about
| this from a statistical perspective.
|
| Like, if I suddenly find a dead rat in my kitchen, what should
| I think about it? Should I consider that maybe I have had a
| pest problem for months or possibly years, or should I consider
| this as "we found evidence for rats existing in my house for at
| most one day"?
|
| It seems archeology takes the "evidence based" approach and
| refuses to calculate the expected probability of more stuff
| being discovered that's older/more impressive using the fact
| that we are discovering (mostly) random stuff buried in the
| ground.
|
| What are the chances that the stuff we dug up are not the
| pinnacle of human civilization back then, and merely an average
| object? If people 3000 years from now dug up a brick from a
| rural village, should they infer that we only know how to build
| brick houses and not skyscrapers? What are the chances of
| digging up remains of a skyscraper?
|
| I have so many burning questions lol
| stainablesteel wrote:
| this is a great analogy
|
| its why i love graham hancock and everything he talks about,
| its so exciting to think about the great achievements of all
| the human civilizations that have come about in the 200-300k
| years that humans have been around
| fecal_henge wrote:
| You could look at multiple points and try to generate a
| distribution of when this kind of activity happened. You
| might find that the number of points results in a pitifully
| poor confidence level in an expected probability though. Not
| enough rats and not enough kitchens.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Pretty big error bars on any estimations, with the low number
| of samples. But yeah, I wonder if anyone has tried to give a
| confidence interval for "tech level over time".
| bazoom42 wrote:
| There is no way to calculate that, since current finds are
| not random digs. Archeologist search where they have reasons
| to think something of interest can be found.
| tralarpa wrote:
| > I think it's supposed to be more like 6000 years ago
|
| There is also the Urfa man, dated 9000 BC:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urfa_Man
| mcphage wrote:
| > My understanding is that complex things like statues were not
| supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago.
|
| Your understanding is not correct.
|
| > The fact that it has been carbon dated to 12,000 tears should
| means that we have to rewrite the theories on the start of
| human civilization.
|
| It does not. Gobekli Tepe has in general, but I don't think
| this specific find does.
| beezlewax wrote:
| Do you need special tools to do this though? Or just one rock
| that's harder than the other one?
|
| That said I used to make "tools" out of sticks and rocks as a
| child playing outdoors. Why do we think people didn't have
| tools or the capacity to invent them 12000 years ago?
| asvitkine wrote:
| How does carbon dating work on a statue?
|
| Wouldn't it be dating the underlying material (i.e. the stone),
| which presumably predates the actual carving of the statue out
| of that material?
|
| Edit: I guess if it was buried, they date the organic material
| around it.
| p-e-w wrote:
| > How does carbon dating work on a statue?
|
| It doesn't, and the stone itself is typically hundreds of
| millions or even billions of years old.
|
| However, many ancient artifacts are found buried in the
| ground, and it is often possible to carbon-date organic
| material in the soil surrounding the artifact, which produces
| an estimate for when it was buried. This is typically
| combined with historians' estimates for when the culture that
| presumably produced the artifact flourished, though
| uncertainties of several millennia remain in some cases.
| tephra wrote:
| In some cases you can also use luminescence dating[0],
| which can tell you the last time a mineral was exposed to
| sunlight.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescence_dating
| defrost wrote:
| There's very little, if any, carbon in stone.
|
| They dated the charcoal in layers settled about the statue:
|
| https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2016/06/22/how-
| ol...
| softfalcon wrote:
| A common statement was brought up in my history classes:
|
| "humans of the past were often as resourceful, if not more
| resourceful than we are, they simply had less opportunities
| than we do today."
|
| If you put yourself in the place of your ancestors. Who you
| are, you could probably figure out a way to make a statue. It
| stands to reason that someone a bit smarter (or more motivated)
| than you or I could also figure it out without our modern day
| tools.
|
| Human ingenuity is astounding and I love the idea that past
| humanity was just us without iPhones.
| p-e-w wrote:
| > My understanding is that complex things like statues were not
| supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago.
|
| Huh? The Venus of Willendorf[1] is _twice as old,_ and to my
| eye displays a higher degree of artistry than the statue shown
| in the article. Several such Venus figurines have been found in
| central Europe.
|
| Compared to the intricacy of the Venus' limestone carving, the
| statue from the article looks downright crude. The idea that
| it's "not supposed to be possible" to make something like that
| 12,000 years BP is ridiculous, and I can't imagine where you
| might have got that impression. Yes, the new statue is life-
| size, while the Venus is a figurine, but that doesn't
| necessarily make it any more difficult to manufacture (possibly
| easier, in fact).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
| permo-w wrote:
| look, if you take the two things in isolation, then you may
| have a point. the Venus is certainly a more beautiful
| artistic piece
|
| but you're trying to argue that an 11cm tall figurine with no
| facial features is a civilisational achievement on par with a
| massive 'temple' complex full of metres-high sculptures,
| reliefs and symbols that would require significant societal
| organisation and advancement: protection, education, food
| surplus, likely division of labour. decades of work at least
|
| the Venus of Willendorf could indicate some of those things,
| but it equally could have just been made by one especially
| advanced human
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Nobody is arguing that. You are wildly fighting strawmen.
|
| But the claim that "complex things like statues" were "not
| possible" is clearly BS.
| edgyquant wrote:
| No it isn't, and a small figurine is specifically not a
| statue
| p-e-w wrote:
| > the Venus of Willendorf could indicate some of those
| things, but it equally could have just been made by one
| especially advanced human
|
| Hundreds of such figurines have survived to the present
| day, so _tens of thousands_ must have been produced. They
| used materials transported over 1000+ kilometers. Clearly,
| those were made by a large-scale network of artists
| learning from one another, part of a pan-European culture -
| not by a random genius doodling around, otherwise they
| wouldn 't be so similar to each other.
|
| It's also pretty obvious from looking at the figurine that
| this wasn't the artist's first work. They probably had to
| make hundreds such statuettes before achieving this level
| of detail, so they were likely at least part-time
| professionals.
| arp242 wrote:
| Venus of Willendorf is quite small, and not especially life-
| like, but similar large statues have been found in the area
| before, from around the same time (12kya ago). It's not even
| a unique find, and fits reasonably well(ish) in established
| chronology and progression (insofar that's possible for pre-
| history). Pretty much everything the previous poster said is
| wrong.
| runsWphotons wrote:
| its not as lifelike as i hoped when i opened. not a
| Michelangelo.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The Lescaux cave paintings from 17K YA are remarkable. A
| prehistoric Sistine:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qApjgI8Dbk8
| Fluorescence wrote:
| IMHO it's more interesting and a greater achievement than
| lifelike. To me it's an expression of fertile abundance
| that shows more intention, more imagination, more desire
| to communicate, more understanding of form and humanity
| than a straight depiction would.
| runsWphotons wrote:
| i think it looks like what you would make if you werent
| as skilled, didnt have the right rock, or the tools that
| were as good as later sculptures. but its still neat.
| boppo1 wrote:
| As an illustrator who has also done some non-negligible
| sculpting, this kind of stuff is so much easier than
| 'lifelike realism' that it's not even close.
| arp242 wrote:
| The problem is, how do you distinguish between "lacked
| the skills or tools to make a true life-like statue" and
| "intentionally made something more abstract"?
|
| When I played guitar I liked doing noisy high-distortion
| stuff because I could play bad guitar and still make it
| sound kind of okay (to my ears anyway).
|
| Not saying that everyone who plays this type of music is
| a bad guitar player, because many aren't, but some are.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| It reminds me of Oliver Sacks' excellent book _The Man
| Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat_.
|
| It contains descriptions of several real cases of brain
| damage, including someone who literally made the mistake
| in the title of the book. He could still see but was
| increasing struggling to synthesise understanding of
| objects from the lines and patterns, culminating in that
| particular confusion (as he was getting up to leave a
| consultation with Sacks, he tried to grab his wife to put
| on his head).
|
| This person was an amateur painter, and his paintings
| were getting increasingly abstract as his condition
| worsened. The funny thing is, critics would comment that
| his art was improving in subtly and insight. In reality,
| he was losing his grasp of object coherence.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| NAA, but I think what you're missing is that this Venus
| statue is something a single person can carve on their own
| time, anywhere.
|
| Carving a 2-ton statue in-place requires much better and
| larger tools, and some kind of social organization that
| values that activity and protects the site.
| maratc wrote:
| What I think you might be missing is that Venus could be a
| pet project of a single person, done in their free time over
| some period.
|
| The statues, especially in the context of the greater site,
| could not be made by one person -- many people should be
| working there for quite a long period of time, while
| physically staying in the place. Since they were working on
| the temple complex, (a) they could not be themselves
| participating in hunter-gathering activities (and we think
| human societies were engaged with that at the time); and (b)
| someone else should be providing them with the food, clothes,
| tools, and everything they need -- implying there was some
| sort of a social structure (aka civilization).
|
| This is what I think GP meant when saying "not supposed to be
| possible 12,000 years ago".
| thelittleone wrote:
| The artist had a vision to build a human like figurine and
| that one day, future beings would debate its origin on some
| magic communication system.
| p-e-w wrote:
| > The statues, especially in the context of the greater
| site, could not be made by one person
|
| Why not? Sculptors sometimes make dozens of sculptures per
| year, by themselves.
|
| > they could not be themselves participating in hunter-
| gathering activities
|
| Why not? Hunting and gathering doesn't occupy all of a
| person's time. I see no reason whatsoever to assume that
| those sculptures weren't created by part-time artists.
|
| > implying there was some sort of a social structure (aka
| civilization)
|
| Social structure exists even in apes, and is not at all
| synonymous with what the term "civilization" is usually
| taken to mean.
|
| As a sibling commenter has explained, there is nothing
| substantially new in this archeological find, and it fits
| well into our existing model of how people lived back then.
| Claims of an incoming paradigm shift triggered by this find
| lack any substance.
| maratc wrote:
| > Why not? Sculptors sometimes make dozens of sculptures
| per year, by themselves.
|
| Sculptors today are stationary and they depend on money
| (a mark of a civilization) and tools (same) and
| supermarkets (same) and demand for their work (economic
| surplus; same). Leonardo da Vinci, if he was a part of
| hunter-gatherer society (which is mobile), would neither
| be able to paint nor invent, for he would be busy with
| gathering (or growing, or hunting) his own food most of
| his time; he would also not have access to paper or
| canvas or colors or brushes.
|
| > I see no reason whatsoever to assume that those
| sculptures weren't created by part-time artists.
|
| As mentioned, hunter-gatherers are mobile at least part-
| time, because they go from where some food grows today,
| to where some other food roams tomorrow, to where yet
| other food swims the day after.
|
| > Social structure exists even in apes
|
| And bees, and ants; but not the kind that allows a big
| part of a society (capable adults) to engage in
| activities that are not directly related to gathering
| food, growing children, or fighting, but creating temples
| and art. A group of hunter-gatherers can provide for
| themselves, their children, and maybe their elders or
| sick (as long as these are mobile). They can even
| accommodate a leader or a shaman here and there; but not
| an apparently big group of able adults that do not hunt
| and do not gather and do not fight and do not move but
| rather sit in one place and build a temple and statues.
|
| > there is nothing substantially new in this
| archeological find
|
| Gobekli Tepe have completely changed our view of the
| development of the human societies, as we have previously
| believed the first civilization (Sumerians) to be as
| recent as 5,000-4,000 BCE (or 6-7 kya). This hints at a
| civilization twice as old as previously believed.
| Retric wrote:
| Hunter gatherer's had _a lot_ of free time. Based on
| studies of the last hunter gather groups, in reasonably
| fertile area they can spend ~15 hours per week on food
| and ~15-20 hours per week on domestic chores. That seems
| similar to us except we exclude tasks like commuting,
| grocery shopping, cooking, working out, cleaning dishes
| etc from what we consider 'work'. Thus resulting in a lot
| more time for hobbies and socializing.
|
| They move around, but would return to the same locations
| regularly thus potentially spending years in one location
| over their lifetime. Plenty of time to make dozens of
| life sized statues.
| [deleted]
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > In reasonably fertile area they can spend ~15 hours per
| week on food and ~15-20 hours per week on domestic
| chores.
|
| on what you base this one? (from what I remember this
| time would not be even to even produce clothes - unless
| it is for area of world where no clothing is needed?)
| Retric wrote:
| 1960's studies of the Bushmen one of the last remaining
| hunter gatherer groups had roughly that much time spent
| working. They really spent quite a lot of time working on
| hobbies and socializing.
|
| Processing animal skins is also a lot faster than
| weaving. Clothing is ~170,000 years old, weaving is very
| recent by comparison.
| nyrikki wrote:
| There is a very large difference not being able to
| produce clothes and not finding clothing that happens to
| be preserved.
|
| Currently the guesses are 40,000 to 3 million years ago.
|
| These people in this article are just as intelligent as
| modern humans.
| defrost wrote:
| There are rock art painting depicting details on
| ceremonial costumes that date back 18,000 years BP, so
| clothing goes back at least that far.
|
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37733157
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I fully agree with what you're saying, but I just want add
| something to your comment in case people might misinterpret
| this sentence:
|
| > _What I think you might be missing is that Venus could be
| a pet project of a single person, done in their free time
| over some period._
|
| Yes, _a single Venus figure_ is likely made by a single
| person. But the Venus of Willendorf is not unique. There
| are 200 over known "Venus figurines" from a period of
| 300,000 BC to 11,00 BC. So they were a wide-spread
| phenomenon indicating some form of shared socio-cultural
| connection among the early humans despite how far we were
| spread out and how much lower the population density was
| compared to now.
|
| This is of course tangential to the point you were making.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine
| Fluorescence wrote:
| Has the statue itself been dated? 12,000 yo is the estimated
| founding date of Gobekli Tepe not it's last use. Humans like to
| move things about go through many phases of inhabitation of a
| place.
|
| How is dating as a science faring in the replication crisis? It
| seems fraught with incentives for those involved. Discover
| something 2000 years old and no-one cares but 12,000 years old
| and you've got a TV career and a book deal.
| tomek_ycomb wrote:
| The incentives are that the person who discovered the
| previously oldest <12,000 island that defined their
| archeological site as the coolest site, tends to fight. That
| plus 3rd party dating and other solutions. Because sometimes
| there is not a lot to go off of for dating, I've also seen
| people complaining that samples aren't always shared. So it's
| not perfect for sure, but I'm noting there are still
| incentives in that system
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I don't even understand what are you on about. The same kind of
| statue up.to the holding of the genital has been found in the
| same area in 1993 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urfa_Man
|
| Not even talking of the fact that 25000 years before people
| were making incredible art at the grotte Chauvet or that around
| the same time, a 30cm statue was carved in Germany representing
| an anthropomorphised Lion ans
| blacklion wrote:
| It is very interesting, that you says about 6000 years ago. It
| is "calculated" (in the middle ages) age of The Great Flood.
|
| I've read some opinion, that modern European historians, even
| atheist ones, still "primed" by this number and it skews all
| our understanding of history and perception of archaeological
| finds. It is not some random number, but legacy of pre-
| Renaissance Biblical studies, haunting us to these modern
| times.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| What moderne European historians are you talking about?
|
| We know of cities 9000 years old.
| prvc wrote:
| It's roughly as complex and realistic as other artifacts that
| have already been discovered on the site.
| kcyb wrote:
| I think you might appreciate the book The Dawn of Everything by
| David Graeber and David Wengrow [1]. They dive into the
| archaeological record and argue precisely that: that the common
| story of how civilization developed is very wrong, and that
| complex societies existed before the rise of agriculture,
| longer than is usually assumed. These findings at Gobekli Tepe
| appear very much in line with their theory.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything
| xbmcuser wrote:
| It has been my pet theory that human civilizations had advanced
| a lot more before a some kind of extinction event pushed humans
| back to 1. Maybe not as technologically advanced as the current
| civilization but advanced in its own way.
| maebert wrote:
| It's an entertaining idea, however unfortunately easily
| proven wrong. The most striking argument against it (or any
| "Silurian" theory) is that any form of "civilization" in the
| strictest sense needs permanent settlements that require
| permanent agriculture, and hence fertilized soil. We should
| hence be able to find nitrogen rich layers of soil or
| sediment where prehistoric civilizations resided, but that's
| just not the case.
| edgyquant wrote:
| No one mentioned agriculture though, you're attacking a
| straw man.
| jl6 wrote:
| > not supposed to be possible
|
| Our knowledge of such ancient peoples is so limited and subject
| to so many filters, that we should hesitate to think of some
| achievements as impossible. It's just not that black & white.
| The general pattern of civilizational development could still
| be broadly correct, with this site just being a notable
| outlier.
| M4v3R wrote:
| > My understanding is that complex things like statues were not
| supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. I think it's supposed
| to be more like 6000 years ago
|
| I think your understanding was just incorrect. Here's a video
| [0] from Kurzgesagt that explains in a nutshell when the human
| civilisation started (spoiler: as far back as around 20,000
| years ago, but definitely the case 12,000 years ago, though the
| boundary is very fuzzy). But also note that even before a
| proper civilisation started to form people already made art.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWu29PRCUvQ
| unsubstantiated wrote:
| [dead]
| bazoom42 wrote:
| We know sculptures and cave-paintings much older than this,
| some made with great artistic skill, so clearly no archeologist
| would suggest art was "not possible" at this time. Still a
| significant find and very fascinating.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Not to mention, Narwala Gabarnmang pretty much blows every
| precept about the rise of humankind out of the water.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung
|
| The birthplace of masonry .. the worlds oldest, longest-
| running university .. its oldest (still functioning) commons
| ..
| defrost wrote:
| It's a stand out site, for sure.
|
| There are more photos than just the single one in the
| wikipedia link here:
|
| https://landscapeaustralia.com/articles/nawarla-gabarnmang/
| sgt101 wrote:
| >The birthplace of masonry .. the worlds oldest, longest-
| running university .. its oldest commons ..
|
| Pardon my ignorance - what separates this from other sites
| like Lascaux?
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Literally, 10's of thousands of years.
|
| Gabarnmang is older, and has been _continuously occupied_
| and in use, with only a break in occupation on the order
| of 50 years, last century, when it was "forgotten about"
| by the caretakers, in order to protect it ... only to be
| re-discovered recently (this century).
|
| It is a truly extraordinary site and I personally
| consider it the holiest of all human sites, ever. More
| holy than any other - in constant use as a school and
| commons, for 10's of thousands of years of human
| existence, containing an extraordinary collection of art,
| both ancient and contemporary ... probably one of the
| most important collections of human art, ever.
|
| If Australians had any decency they'd immediately sever
| ties with the British and make this site the seat of
| their new sovereign - its that powerful a record of human
| civilization, imho.
| TheGRS wrote:
| All those thoughts were going through my head as I was reading
| it, and I'm not like a history major or anything. Modern humans
| biologically have been around for a pretty long time so I've
| often wondered if civilizations existed where we simply haven't
| found their artifacts, maybe because they didn't produce or
| value them at the time.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Yup - if you are thinking about what the story was in about
| 1978...
|
| Since then there's been a big change from the idea cities were
| the only locus of culture and technology to a view that nomadic
| peoples were able to create significant ritual art, technical
| knowlege, and complex cultures. Of course the view from the
| 19th and early 20th C's was significantly informed by the need
| to justify all the genociding of nomadic peoples ("it's for
| their own good").
|
| The idea I've heard recently is that agriculture grew out of
| nomadic people encouraging the food plants that they would be
| looking for in a years time by planting selected seeds and then
| going off to the next area, over time this led to crops that
| were more and more adapted as food stuff and this then enabled
| settled agrarianism. Places like Gobeklitepe are thought to be
| the ritual centers of nomadic cultures doing this sort of per-
| agricultural precession. I have read (no expert) that are
| similar sights in the southern united states where (now
| genocided) nomadic people used to come together and conduct
| major rituals which required significant communal investment
| and co-ordination.
|
| Civilization with no cities... who'd have thought?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Clearly it's aliens who made them with laser tools /s
| mcpackieh wrote:
| There must be so much more underground in that region waiting to
| be discovered. For instance less than ten miles south is the town
| of Kisas, about which wikipedia says: _" It is built on top of an
| old archaeological mound (hoyuk) which has not been excavated
| because it lies completely under the town."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%B1sas,_Haliliye
| alephnerd wrote:
| And what may have been destroyed and will forever be forgotten.
|
| This region is only a couple miles north of Raqqa, which was an
| ISIS stronghold only a couple years ago, and they destroyed
| innumerable historical artifacts.
| nologic01 wrote:
| People seem to assume that realistic art is a sign of artistic
| "progress" and sophistication. But is it really so?
|
| People in prehistoric times must have been the most skilled stone
| carvers ever. This was the technology of the era. What they might
| have lacked in tooling they surely had in craftmanship and
| available time.
|
| Is it a case of not being able to carve something more realistic
| or not _interested_ in doing do?
|
| Maybe confronted with the later artistic fashion of emulating
| reality (started in Ancient Greece and ended in the early 20th
| century) they would retort:
|
| Why waste your time reproducing something that already exists?
| kiba wrote:
| Carved in what sense?
|
| Making art has more to do with how you think than how you
| coordinate your hands.
| avar wrote:
| > People in prehistoric times must have been the most skilled
| stone carvers ever.
|
| Look up CNC stone carving, the ancient have nothing on us.
| defrost wrote:
| Look up Kailasa Temple and show us a CNC equivalent one piece
| carving of that scale.
| dizhn wrote:
| In local media photographs of the statue is lacking a penis. I
| hope it's a photoshop job and not actual severing.
| an-allen wrote:
| I think whomever this statue represents, would get a cosmic kick
| out of people, 12000 years into the future, appreciating the
| majesty of his phallus.
| rokkitmensch wrote:
| Hopefully he'd also find it amusing that the press release
| absolutely refuses to mention what he's grinning about wiggling
| at the future.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It looks like it's saying that Death is a wanker.
|
| I wonder if it was deliberately humorous, which would add
| another dimension.
|
| I know that the Incas had statues that were basically hardcore
| pr0n. I'm not sure the reason. Probably fertility stuff.
| lazide wrote:
| Everyone likes porn, some are just ashamed of it? And
| apparently they weren't?
| PepperdineG wrote:
| It would be funny if it was the prehistoric equivalent of the
| city of Dog River putting up a sign saying "Wullerton Sucks!"
| It could for instance represent a foreigner with the statue
| saying certain foreigners are wankers.
| Loughla wrote:
| I feel like comedy is so cultural that there are a number of
| artifacts that are jokes, but we'll never, ever know.
|
| Like this thing - maybe it's mocking someone? Who knows.
| hnbad wrote:
| It's nearby a relief that is literally some guy stroking
| his cock with his other hand resting on his stomach. For
| all we know this was just the work of a very dedicated and
| very horny artist.
| tanepiper wrote:
| Archaeologist: "This amazing find represents us understanding
| early humans and their ties to the seasons and fertility"
|
| [8000 years earlier]
|
| "Man": "Yea, so Gary over there cut down my favourite Olive
| tree so I commissioned this huge statute of a dick to let him
| know how much I hate him"
| hnbad wrote:
| It's always funny to me how some people will go out of their
| way to avoid acknowledging that historical people may have
| liked sex or even been queer.
|
| My favorite example is that of two Roman men apparently
| living together as a household and having items with very
| graphic depictions of sexual acts between men. They were
| obviously two very heterosexual men (maybe brothers) and the
| depictions of men ravaging each other's buttocks were
| probably a fertility or sports thing.
|
| I may be wrong but I don't believe that the reason that
| bathroom stalls are frequently adorned with crude sketches of
| penises is "fertility stuff" either rather than just "lol
| dicks" and I don't think it's a stretch to extrapolate from
| this to prehistory.
|
| There's a very real possibility that this is just a 12,000
| year old "realistic human statue" of some bloke double-
| palming his stiffy (which according to the article is
| incidentally near a relief of another bloke presenting his
| stiffy one-handed with the other hand on his stomach). Yes, a
| two meters tall statue takes quite a bit of effort and
| suggests more than one person being involved in the process
| but that shouldn't be surprising.
| dsign wrote:
| :-)
|
| It is said[^1] that the God of the Jews ravaged Pompeii
| because of polarized views on the matter of sexuality. A
| bit later, they won the war for the heart of Western
| culture. So, yes, those bros had those statues and
| depictions for the sake of fertility and sports, and our
| modern occidental brains[^2] will keep glitching when told
| otherwise.
|
| [^1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haP5MoLyWGw
|
| [^2] In case you feel tempted to say those Western values
| have always been universal:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan
| solardev wrote:
| Seems like graphics have gotten a bit better since then
| kshacker wrote:
| CSS (Cosmetic Self-Care and Surgery) has come a long way over
| the millennia
| quasarj wrote:
| Am I high? The face is completely missing in the pictures, what
| is this nonsense about a "lifelike" facial expression?
|
| That's a lifelike penis, at least.
| burtonator wrote:
| Yeah... rock hard!
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