World's Oldest Temple Found in Turkey

[Ludovicus]

A German archaeologist by the name of Klaus Schmidt has claimed discovery in Turkey of the world's oldest temple. Called Gobekli Tepe, it predates Stonehenge by six thousand years, and Smithsonian magazine writes that "the find upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization:"

 

 

To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.

 

The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/09/w...c_n_142417.html

Edited November 9, 2008 by Ludovicus

[Ursus]

The current issue of Archaeology Magazine has a nice article on it.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, Amici

A German archaeologist by the name of Klaus Schmidt has claimed discovery in Turkey of the world's oldest temple. Called Gobekli Tepe, it predates Stonehenge by six thousand years, and Smithsonian magazine writes that "the find upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization:"

 

 

To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.

 

The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/09/w...c_n_142417.html

Edited December 1, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Guest gloria04]

According to a report on United Press International (UPI), the site was first identified in 1986, when a farmer found the edit field in Sanliurfa statue of the soil. Since then, archaeologists have revealed the basis of a temple built in the Neolithic carvings of pigs, foxes, snakes, yellow, and the man without a head. Harran University Archaeology Department officials have identified a culture that built the temple or a conviction.

 

 

 

History of Ephesus

Edited January 5, 2011 by gloria04