[HN Gopher] A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was foun...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan
       Tepe
        
       Author : fatihpense
       Score  : 198 points
       Date   : 2025-10-07 02:43 UTC (7 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.trthaber.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.trthaber.com)
        
       | fatihpense wrote:
       | From the article: "The arm and hand reliefs on the T-shaped
       | pillars found in and around Gobekli Tepe have long reinforced the
       | idea that these stones symbolized humans. This new find at
       | Karahan Tepe, the first to feature a human face carved into a
       | T-shaped pillar, is considered a turning point in Neolithic
       | research."
        
       | k310 wrote:
       | I didn't get english. Just lucky?
       | 
       | https://www-trthaber-com.translate.goog/foto-galeri/karahant...
        
         | fatihpense wrote:
         | Thanks, I can't change the url now. Since it is just a gallery
         | with minimal information, I forgot to submit translated url.
        
           | altairprime wrote:
           | You can email the mods to change it if you like!
        
         | metalman wrote:
         | infiniscroll turkish archiology, which only seems right given
         | the 12k years of human building
        
       | dr_dshiv wrote:
       | Is that the oldest known carved megalithic stone statue of a
       | person?
        
         | AlotOfReading wrote:
         | Keyword "megalith". We have older carved statues. We have older
         | carved, stone statues. We have older, carved stone statues
         | depicting people, as well as statues from this same site that
         | are full body.
         | 
         | It's from basically the same period and culture as urfa man,
         | but at a site that's been initially dated a few hundred years
         | earlier and is generally understood to have been inhabited
         | first. It's contemporaneous with the famous T-pillars at
         | Gobekli Tepe. The important thing is that this is the first
         | T-pillar discovered with a human face, aside from the one with
         | just a human outline.
        
       | j-kent wrote:
       | Can I just say that it is fantastic that they have included so
       | many detailed pictures of the obelisk. How many times have you
       | visited an article about a discovery only to have no pictures in
       | the article.
        
         | infecto wrote:
         | My first exact same thoughts. Every time there is some
         | interesting discovery it's often with only a single photo or
         | none and a huge wall of text. Pictures speak louder than words
         | in this case.
         | 
         | I kept scrolling though multiple articles as they seem to have
         | a format type for these types of articles where its numbers a
         | small paragraph and a high quality photo. Simply love it.
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | I haven't opened the article yet, since I usually check the top
         | comments to see if it's worth the click, but my first thought
         | when clicking through to the comments was, "this damn article
         | better have pictures for once".
        
         | vidarh wrote:
         | I read this comment before clicking, and half expected it to be
         | sarcasm exactly because of how common that is
        
           | bugbuddy wrote:
           | I believe this site is actually Thai. Look at the intricate
           | carvings. The only people capable of such a feat that far
           | back in time were Thai people.
        
             | oliyoung wrote:
             | That's clearly Turkish, which would make sense for an
             | obelisk in an ancient site in Turkey, not Thailand
        
       | basfo wrote:
       | Great find! and I don't want to underestimate the discovery by
       | any means, but...
       | 
       | We humans are predisposed to see anthropomorphic shapes in
       | things. I understand why that could be interpreted as a face, but
       | at the same time, it could just be a random shape. It's just a
       | "T" shape. Sure, it could look like a nose and a pair of eyes,
       | but it could also just be... something.
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | The translated article provides some backing to the claim that
         | it's a face in a style that matches other finds in the area:
         | 
         |  _" The arm and hand reliefs on the T-shaped standing stones
         | found in Gobeklitepe and its surroundings have long
         | strengthened the idea that these stones symbolize humans. This
         | new find, which was unearthed in Karahantepe, is described as a
         | new turning point in Neolithic period research with the fact
         | that the human face was carved on a T-shaped standing stone for
         | the first time."_
         | 
         |  _" With its sharp lines, deep eye sockets and blunt nose, it
         | carries a style similar to the human statues found before in
         | Karahantepe."_
        
         | card_zero wrote:
         | Other stuff at Karahan Tepe has faces on:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahan_Tepe
         | 
         | And you can look at similar things from the Tas Tepeler sites
         | in general:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%C5%9F_Tepeler
         | 
         | The T-obelisk things, with their long skinny arms, do seem to
         | represent figures. I wonder why they have to be that stupid
         | oblong shape at all. Dual purpose as roof supports? Or just
         | tradition, tradition causes wacky things. Looking around the
         | various carvings from related sites, it's also evident that
         | they were greatly interested in penises.
        
           | shawn_w wrote:
           | >Looking around the various carvings from related sites, it's
           | also evident that they were greatly interested in penises.
           | 
           | Some things never change.
        
         | Bayart wrote:
         | > We humans are predisposed to see anthropomorphic shapes in
         | things.
         | 
         | This was sculpted by other modern humans.
        
       | dooglius wrote:
       | I wonder if it's possible to correct for the effects of time to
       | see what it originally looked like
        
         | AlotOfReading wrote:
         | Archaeologists generally aren't that computer-savvy. I haven't
         | seen any indications of paint residues on the pillars, but we
         | know that many of the statues in these enclosures were also
         | painted bright colors that would be missed by a digital
         | reconstruction.
        
           | card_zero wrote:
           | What pigments did they have 12 thousand years ago? Only
           | ochre, surely? So rusty red, dirty yellow, nothing else? (Oh,
           | soot black, too.) I'd be interested if there was anything
           | else.
           | 
           | I see the boar statue is painted inside its mouth ... with
           | red ochre.
        
             | AlotOfReading wrote:
             | The boar was painted with red inside the mouth, and
             | black/white on the hide. Black in the ancient Near East was
             | usually bitumen, though later groups like the Egyptians
             | would switch to manganese dioxide. White was plaster. They
             | also had yellow ochre.
        
               | card_zero wrote:
               | The boar's arms are long and skinny and curved, and kind
               | of loosely attached. This culture's art style had a
               | consistent theme of noodle-arms.
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | > Archaeologists generally aren't that computer-savvy.
           | 
           | Why throw interdisciplinary shade?
           | 
           | > I haven't seen any indications of paint residues on the
           | pillars, but we know that many of the statues in these
           | enclosures were also painted bright colors that would be
           | missed by a digital reconstruction.
           | 
           | Wouldn't a digital reconstruction just have whatever textures
           | were selected? If there's no indication of paint residues,
           | they can look for other clues of course. But, without any
           | other evidence, what's the alternative, right? Guessing would
           | be bad, don't want to mislead people.
        
             | AlotOfReading wrote:
             | It's not interdisciplinary. I'm an archaeologist, albeit
             | not practicing these days.                   Wouldn't a
             | digital reconstruction just have whatever textures were
             | selected?
             | 
             | Yes, but the point is that we don't know a lot of the
             | context around these layer III T-pillars to make informed
             | choices in depicting them. For clarification, I'm using the
             | GT stratigraphy because I haven't looked up the KT chart.
             | 
             | But just to highlight some knowledge gaps, it's usually not
             | clear what damage was caused during the backfill process,
             | what the exposure conditions for these pillars were during
             | their lifetimes (e.g. roof or not, though these earlier
             | rectangular rooms are generally agreed to have covered with
             | wooden beams), and even the dating is a bit suspect in this
             | area.
             | 
             | Plus, the relevant team may not even have a LIDAR scanner
             | to do that properly as that's fairly specialist equipment.
             | Etc.
             | 
             | Getting to the point where it's possible and reasonable
             | isn't easy.
        
       | daxfohl wrote:
       | It looks just like a giant PEZ dispenser.
        
         | mike978 wrote:
         | or petrified Minecraft villagers
        
       | mjd wrote:
       | That's impossible, the mirror wasn't invented until millennia
       | later, so there's no way the sculptor would have known what a
       | human face looked like.
       | 
       | They must think we're stupid.
        
         | simonh wrote:
         | We'll, that's me convinced.
        
           | butlike wrote:
           | And how!
        
         | sethammons wrote:
         | I don't get your joke
        
           | throwmeaway222 wrote:
           | I think he's making fun of historians that have really dumb
           | reasons for declaring human culture is one way or another
           | because of event X but it doesn't pass a sniff test. In this
           | example, mirrors don't need to exist because people can look
           | at other people (or more simply feel their own face). It was
           | a 40% funny joke.
        
             | djmips wrote:
             | don't forget water and maybe oiled polished obsidian?
        
         | Liquix wrote:
         | they have played us for absolute fools
        
       | MomsAVoxell wrote:
       | The Tepe sites are really fascinating. Every discovery leads to
       | so many more questions - how did they construct these sites, what
       | were they using some of the structures for, and so on.
       | 
       | At Karahan Tepe is the pit full of pillars, with the human-face
       | head on the outer rim .. whenever I see this pit, I get a picture
       | in my mind that the entire site was green and fertile, and this
       | pit was filled with water. It would be the ideal device to teach
       | kids to swim - and so on. It's such a fascinating human discovery
       | - the mind serious wanders.
       | 
       | I encourage anyone who is new to this subject to let the
       | imagination run wild. What kinds of people could create these
       | T-shaped pillars, carve them, use them in their building
       | construction .. and then some day, decide to cover it all up with
       | rubble and stone, to be buried for millennia and discovered by
       | some strange, future civilisation.
       | 
       | It makes me wonder what, 12,500 years from now, of our own crazy
       | civilisation might be unearthed, and strange new utility assigned
       | to their purposes ..
        
         | itopaloglu83 wrote:
         | To me, it looks like a festival ground, so I imagine people
         | coming from all directions and multiple nomad tents etc. around
         | it.
         | 
         | What makes me wonder is that why did these hills survive, and
         | why are we not finding similar things in north Africa and other
         | civilization cradles.
         | 
         | Maybe these were one off sites with limited use and were later
         | just left alone, while anything in Egypt had continuous
         | settlements so things just eroded over time, with the things
         | like pyramids as exceptions.
        
           | alephnerd wrote:
           | > why did these hills survive
           | 
           | Because it's low density arid scrubland that is primarily
           | inhabited by Kurdish and Turkish herders, and was a no-go
           | zone during the PKK Insurgency.
        
           | dismalaf wrote:
           | > north Africa
           | 
           | Possibly covered by the Sahara, or if we're talking along the
           | coast, underwater. Or covered by current settlements.
           | 
           | > other civilization cradles.
           | 
           | Because people still live there and built on top.
        
             | Tuna-Fish wrote:
             | The interesting places to find new archaeological sites are
             | places where we know there were lots of people nearby, and
             | where for some reason human habitation ceased and the sites
             | were preserved.
             | 
             | I hold some hope for new methods of underwater archaeology
             | to uncover sites on the southern coast of the Black Sea and
             | in the Persian Gulf. The latter especially because it was
             | vast, rich floodplain during the last glacial maximum, and
             | the oldest known true cities sprouted into existence on
             | it's northern shore pretty much instantly after it flooded.
             | I like to think that the oldest city ever built lies
             | submerged in mud and water somewhere in there, just waiting
             | to be found.
             | 
             | (Not that there would be necessarily much to find anymore,
             | they probably didn't build out of rock.)
        
             | engineer_22 wrote:
             | As I understand it, Tepe is local word for tel. Climate in
             | this region makes them easy to distinguish since not a lot
             | of plant cover making it easier to identify potential
             | sites? Fertile crescent floods. Nile floods. Unique
             | geography and climate in Turcep key to this?
        
           | AlotOfReading wrote:
           | We find similarly old structures across Eurasia, like the
           | epigravettian mammoth bone huts. The late PPNA when KT/GT
           | were seemingly built is when we find the first monumental,
           | stone structures that we know of. It's entirely possible that
           | ancient near east is where these kinds of things were first
           | built. There's reasons I can go into why that's thought to be
           | the case, but we can't rule out that there could be a
           | streetlight effect happening. The ANE is where we expect to
           | find this sort of early structure, and it's also one of the
           | most heavily studied areas alongside North America and
           | Europe. North Africa, particularly Tunisia where there's
           | already a number of known epipaleolithic sites, is
           | substantially less accessible for this kind of research.
           | 
           | To directly answer your question though, the Tas Tepler sites
           | survived because they were buried and the locations they're
           | in are pretty bad places for people to live today. They're
           | way up on hills around the urfa/harran plain where there's
           | outcroppings of the stone used to build them, but also
           | without water. People seemingly just carried water up the
           | hills from cisterns farther down. The locations of those
           | cisterns also suggest that there may be further sites we
           | haven't found, because some of them don't correspond to
           | anything we know of.
        
             | lumost wrote:
             | To what extent is our understanding of this period limited
             | by survivorship? Granite doesn't weather significantly, so
             | we see lots of metalithic stone structures with ambiguous
             | dating. The near east had significant changes in inland
             | climates so we find ancient cities that were not built over
             | there. Soft rock/mud Brick structures can survive in dry
             | climates - so we see evidence of the oldest civilizations
             | in deserts.
             | 
             | Colonial New England barely exists outside of active
             | preservation attempts.
        
               | AlotOfReading wrote:
               | Short answer: it's hard to fully say, but most people
               | believe that the holocene is a lower bound on this sort
               | of thing. I'll try to explain, but keep in mind that I'm
               | trying to massively simplify a huge field of open
               | questions.
               | 
               | The fundamental assumption underlying most archaeology is
               | that changes in material culture broadly reflect people
               | reacting to the world around them in intelligent ways.
               | Most archaeologists therefore believe that Pleistocene
               | people didn't build permanent structures out of stone
               | because nomadic or seminomadic lifestyles were more
               | optimal for the chaotic pleistocene environments
               | happening globally. There's a few people who disagree
               | with the universality of this idea, most famously the
               | authors of _Dawn of Everything_ who argue for a more
               | diverse family of lifeways in early humans, but that 's
               | just quibbling about the edges of this overall narrative
               | rather than rewriting it.
               | 
               | And we'd expect to have more evidence than we do if the
               | holocene boundary wasn't the effective start date for
               | this kind of structure. Cave environments are much more
               | stable, and it's where much of our evidence comes from.
               | Gobekli Tepe (GT) and other Tas Tepler sites are made
               | with local limestone, an extremely erosion-prone rock. We
               | have sites covered by existing urban cities like Jericho,
               | the earliest layers of which date from around the same
               | time as GT. We also have older structures, like the
               | epigravittean mammoth huts, and a fairly good idea of the
               | forager->farmer transition in the near east across the
               | natufian culture. GT is actually thought to be part of
               | that transition.
               | 
               | But yes, a lot of organic stuff from the pleistocene is
               | gone. Organics were probably the dominant form of
               | material used, so that leaves a huge gap we're still
               | struggling with. Not really sure where I'm going with
               | this, so I guess I'll stop here?
        
           | itsnowandnever wrote:
           | it was definitely a festival ground for (relatively) nearby
           | complex semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers to meet up
           | occasionally. I had a professor describe it as a pre-historic
           | UN where these clans would meet up and feast but I think
           | festival ground is an even better analogy
        
           | MomsAVoxell wrote:
           | >What makes me wonder is that why did these hills survive,
           | and why are we not finding similar things in north Africa and
           | other civilization cradles.
           | 
           | In my honest, personally informed opinion, there is much to
           | be said for ignorance of the subject - and I don't mean you
           | personally, just generally - at large - human cultures have a
           | very intractable level of mystery, among our languages and
           | human history, as a whole.
           | 
           | In anticipation of this fact, I personally invest myself in
           | certain mysteries. The Tepe civilisation is one - but the
           | things to be learned at Narwala Gabarnmang, are ..
           | personally, I admit .. astonishing.
           | 
           | We do in fact have tens of thousands of years of human
           | history to comprehend.
           | 
           | The issue is, we rapidly discard a lot of it in the rush to
           | preserve just a bit of it.
        
       | sethammons wrote:
       | These Tepe sites give credence to advanced civilization existing
       | before the last ice age. One example is the mostly dismissed
       | theory of water erosion at the base of the Sphinx, suggesting
       | older civilizations leading up to ancient Egypt. To my
       | understanding, it is mostly dismissed because archaeologists
       | found the idea of something older than the Sphinx to be not
       | possible. Tepe sites challenge this. Wild stuff.
        
         | pwillia7 wrote:
         | I got pretty into this alt archaeology stuff and eventually had
         | to move away from it.
         | 
         | I totally agree that the tepes challenge our timeline of when
         | humans made cities and whatnot, but so much of their arguments
         | is the perfect fit of stones or how flat stones are and saying
         | it _must_ be done by modern tools.
         | 
         | I think they have left out how much you can get done from a
         | construction standpoint when you have forced labor or no labor
         | rules like we have had for some time now all over the world and
         | especially in the West.
         | 
         | When I was first in Delhi and went to the Red Fort, I was
         | shocked when they said they built the whole thing 100s of years
         | ago in 9 years. Think about how long it would take us to build
         | something like this now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fort
         | 
         | So, I really want the ancient atlantis civ in the Sahara to be
         | true, but the guy's I've seen promoting this are too removed
         | from the scientific method to really be taken seriously.
         | 
         | This guy does some good debunking of a lot of the
         | Netflix/Youtube Alt Archaeology people --
         | https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773
        
           | ch4s3 wrote:
           | > challenge our timeline of when humans made cities
           | 
           | Do they? We know non-sedentary people in the Americas
           | sometimes built large mounds and extensive fish works.
        
             | pwillia7 wrote:
             | I think it pushed back when humans started building large
             | structures together a few 1000 years. Oddly, there is no
             | evidence of agriculture at Gobekli Tepe
             | 
             | https://www.reddit.com/r/Archaeology/comments/kxquwx/is_gob
             | l...
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | If it turns out to be earlier than we thought then the
               | climate may have been different. These sites could be the
               | swan song of a civilization in decay, or a group that had
               | an amicable diaspora and used these places for social
               | purposes.
               | 
               | I imagine a culture that realized the land couldn't
               | support them in concentrations, picked a spot to meet
               | every spring equinox to party and maybe make romantic
               | matches and then dissolved back into the surrounding
               | countryside.
               | 
               | Maybe this was their Burning Man.
               | 
               | Essentially someone had to figure out the civilized part
               | of civilization and the density part of civilization.
               | It's a chicken and egg problem, and who is to say they
               | did at the same time?
               | 
               | As GP mentioned, there were somewhat similar arrangements
               | in North America not so long after this time period.
        
           | ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
           | Not defending alt-archaeology, but there is a major
           | difference between precision of construction and volume of
           | construction.
        
           | acuozzo wrote:
           | > I got pretty into this alt archaeology stuff
           | 
           | Links?
        
             | pwillia7 wrote:
             | This guy has a whole netflix show if you're so inclined
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMHiLvirCb0
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | I only watched a little bit of his stuff before I
               | realized people thought he is a kook. But in small doses
               | some of this stuff can sound like sense.
               | 
               | The one that got me was a supposed foundation legend from
               | Sumer that a handful of strangers came and taught them
               | civilization.
               | 
               | The idea of a remnant people floating down a river to
               | escape some sort of societal collapse and then being
               | adopted into a new tribe for their usefulness has a
               | certain something as a hypothesis goes. It's the
               | "strangers" part that's a bit suspect since how would you
               | not meet neighbors like that. Unless the river was the
               | end of their journey and not the start.
        
             | baq wrote:
             | not OP but this guy is a fun read, heavy conspiracy vibes,
             | but never going full wacko:
             | https://theethicalskeptic.com/2023/02/02/karahan-tepe-and-
             | th... (that said there are more wacko and less wacko pieces
             | there, you have been warned)
        
           | card_zero wrote:
           | The Crystal Palace was built _and designed_ in 11 months,
           | 1850-1851. I 'm not sure what the key factors making this
           | possible were, but I suspect low wages and complete disregard
           | for worker safety figured.
        
             | itopaloglu83 wrote:
             | Yes, some of it is due to lack of safety etc. must I must
             | say the majority of it is the complete lack of competence
             | in modern times because it's now being built by normal
             | folks.
             | 
             | I assume it was a limited number of people how knew how to
             | make things and they kept roaming around setting new sites
             | etc. Similar to bridge engineers etc. most of what they
             | make just disappears in the background but they keep
             | building things that makes our modern life possible.
        
               | clickety_clack wrote:
               | It's not lack of competence. There is an unbelievable
               | weight of regulation in construction now. It would
               | probably take 2 years of planning consultation just to
               | get the idea approved. Then, each facet of the design
               | would have to be coordinated and iterated between several
               | different specialist teams and contractors, with the tree
               | of contractors increasing as each layer of design takes
               | shape. At the end, you also have the labor laws that
               | people are talking about here.
               | 
               | If we weren't too worried about things falling down and
               | killing people, or about damaging peoples conception of
               | the vibes in a city, we could have the kinds of
               | developer/architect/engineer/foreman outfits that used to
               | build this kind of thing.
        
           | clickety_clack wrote:
           | I also feel that people then were about as smart as we are
           | now, so they could have solved problems in inventive ways
           | they way we do now. Just because they didn't have an electric
           | stone flattener, it doesn't mean that stones cannot be made
           | flat in a fairly repeatable way.
        
           | itsnowandnever wrote:
           | just to nitpick: the Tepe sites definitely did not have
           | forced labor. they had no social hierarchy at all. hunter-
           | gatherers were fairly egalitarian.
           | 
           | definitely sedentary neolithic people had forced labor. all
           | the Sumerian legal texts that were some of the first writings
           | ever included legal definitions of slaves, for example. but
           | the pre-neolithic Anatolian people were nomadic animistic
           | people with no social hierarchy.
        
             | pwillia7 wrote:
             | Agree and good point -- do we know how long the Tepes took
             | to build?
        
               | itsnowandnever wrote:
               | as far as I'm aware, we have no idea other than that they
               | didn't do much at one time. we can only deduce little
               | modifications were done semi-regularly by the ancient
               | pre-historic version of open source contributors. they
               | had to lift 10+ ton limestone blocks and move them into
               | place. but there's ample evidence of them trying to lift
               | those blocks out of the quarry and failing, thus leaving
               | behind broken would-be pillars of limestone for 12,000
               | years. the best assumption is just that they had tons of
               | wild cereals and gazelle to munch on so these people were
               | able to work on this persistently over many generations.
               | they had no social hierarchy or need for labor at all, so
               | they had all the free time in the world to use stone age
               | tools to build structures that rivaled the greeks 9,000
               | years later
        
               | pwillia7 wrote:
               | Yeah I love the idea of ancient peoples living in
               | abundance, doing animism, showing up to party at the
               | giant ancient structure every season.
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QfsSfhaDVY
        
             | dimal wrote:
             | How are we so certain that they had no social hierarchy at
             | all? I thought that that was the main theory but that very
             | little is certain at this point.
        
               | itsnowandnever wrote:
               | mostly because all the bones of all the dead were mixed
               | in with all the others. implying no concept of "this guy
               | was THE guy in my lifetime". but they presumably still
               | had a meritocracy because while the bones were mixed in
               | with all others of all generations, not everyone would
               | have their bones were mixed in upon death. it was likely
               | only the craftsmen or shamans that achieved that honor.
               | but being honored is different from the "divinely
               | ordained" hierarchy of god-kings that came later.
        
         | triyambakam wrote:
         | I think it's really exciting. It seems like we always assume
         | technology advances linearly (even with valid counter
         | examples).
        
         | card_zero wrote:
         | Or a more boring theory about the sphinx is that it was
         | constructed at the orthodox time, around 2550 BC, and then
         | later on it rained sometimes. This would be mildly surprising,
         | as opposed to very surprising.
        
         | itsnowandnever wrote:
         | I wouldn't call these guys civilization. the Tepe sites are
         | more like an ancient UN for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers than
         | a settlement. they visited seasonally for a feast and then
         | left. the only evidence we have is that they were partying. but
         | they had no social organization at all
         | 
         | funnily enough, the lack of neolithic culture, social
         | hierarchy, or permanent sedentary lifestyle (all hallmarks of
         | "civilization") and all archeological evidence suggests they
         | were much healthier and more peaceful than neolithic humans.
         | that's why people link "Garden of Eden" mythology originating
         | in ancient Sumeria to the ancient peoples' observation that
         | people became "civilized" but at what cost since it made humans
         | less healthy, more violent, and presumably less happy due to
         | the novel concept of social inequality
        
           | gnatman wrote:
           | I find it hard to believe that these peoples had no social
           | organization at all, and even harder to believe that you
           | could state that with such conviction given how little we
           | know about these sites. I'm definitely curious though! Can
           | you share any links or reading recommendations?
        
             | itsnowandnever wrote:
             | I learned about it in school, I took some anthropology and
             | archeology electives. and what I was told was since there
             | were no defensive structures nor evidence of any security
             | apparatus at all (such as an army) there isn't any evidence
             | of a means to enforce a hierarchy
        
               | AlotOfReading wrote:
               | That sounds like a Childe-esque checklist. In general, we
               | wouldn't expect a strongly hierarchical social
               | organization in this time period, in upper mesopotamia.
               | That's more characteristic of lower Mesopotamian early
               | societies a few thousand years later when cities like
               | Eridu appeared. What we see in upper Mesopotamia is a
               | pretty strong continuity with PPN sites like GT all the
               | way through the Ubaid period, both in terms of
               | architecture and infant burials and they're thought to
               | reflect socially egalitarian societies. Many people
               | (myself included) consider upper and lower Mesopotamia
               | two largely separate cultural areas throughout the PPN
               | because they're so different and argue that the
               | traditional definitions derived from southern cities
               | (like Childe's) are inappropriate to apply to northern
               | urbanism.
        
         | fidotron wrote:
         | The sphinx weathering is odd but it's the Osireion that is a
         | total anomaly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osireion
         | 
         | You would have thought that in a world with curious
         | billionaires someone would pay for a ROV submersible to explore
         | that, I certainly would if I were one.
        
       | phendrenad2 wrote:
       | By "human face" they mean nose and eyebrow ridge clearly
       | indicating a face, and most likely human.
        
       | ge96 wrote:
       | The fools! Did they not check between the walls
        
       | stevage wrote:
       | > The face of the beprenese is located at the top of the Dikili
       | stone; its sharp lines, deep eye sockets and blunt shape nose,
       | and a similar style with human statues found in Karahantepe. This
       | discovery reveals not only the technical mastery of Neolithic
       | people, but also the way he expresses himself and the ability to
       | think abstractly.
       | 
       | I don't think we were in any doubt about the ability of people
       | 12,000 years ago to think abstractly.
        
       | begueradj wrote:
       | How a society which is supposed to be of the hunters gatherers
       | era raised such monuments and set up that site?
        
       | holoduke wrote:
       | 12000 years ago is long, but also not very long. Just a few 500
       | grandfather's ago. Amazing what we achieved in that short
       | timespan.
        
       | candlemas wrote:
       | Kind of looks like the Stonks guy meme.
        
       | stray wrote:
       | pez
        
       | chupchap wrote:
       | Yes, these are faces, but why do they look like pillars to me?
       | Ornamented and sculpted pillars are pretty common across
       | civilizations and I can imagine sloping tent like roof set up
       | that are held up by these pillars. How does one separate a pillar
       | and a obelisk?
        
       | codedokode wrote:
       | The age is pretty impressive, also I noticed that Firefox could
       | translate the article without issues using privacy-preserving
       | offline translation. Now nobody will know that I have read the
       | article!
        
       | pfdietz wrote:
       | It looks like a Carbot Animations character.
        
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