This helps confirm what many scholars have been saying, that what is now called Turkey is actually Judea and Samaria, the ancient homeland of the Jewish people.
I guess it’s unrelated to this particular find but is Turkey now the place where civilization first started or Gobekli Tepe and the other similar sites are not considered civilizations at this point?
I think you need evidence of a system of government, agriculture, culture, laws to dispense justice predictably and a writing system to track and record aspects of the above. Hence we can have Egyptian, Indus, etc., but not prehistoric civilizations. The human organizations just didn’t have enough progress to be considered civilized. Thats not to say they were not advanced vis a vis their other contemporaries but rather didn’t meet certain milestones that mark a civilization.
Doesn't civilization just literally mean a system of living together in a city? There doesn't need to be any written record of how they did it does there, just evidence that they did?
What counts as a city? Anyway, we're talking about a concept involving family resemblances rather than an airtight set of sufficient-and-necessary conditions.
There isn’t really a settled definition of “civilization” but usually one of the requirements is developing some kind of writing system without outside influence. As far as we know the people at Gobekli Tepe did not have one.
Granted you can also argue the same about Incans and to some extent Mesoamericans, so it’s kind of debatable.
One of the definitions of civilisation is the building of substantial permanent settlements. Gobekli Tepe does qualify in that sense, as does Chatal Hoyuk. Gobekli Tepe features notable sculptures too.
The parent is just failing to explain a more fully developed concept called the "urban revolution", which classically has 10 characteristics of which writing is one and not all of which need to be present [0].
This entire discussion stems from the fact that the word "civilization" is essentially defined to fit the societies people already consider civilizations. There are technologically, politically, and socially complex societies that aren't "civilizations". My recommendation is to avoid the word entirely. Trying to use it scientifically leads to confusion.
Probably depends on definitions but there are cave paintings in France 20,000 years older and contemporary with sites in Australia. There are also much simpler Fertile Crescent sites that are older but not much more then holes in the ground.
The second half of this blog post is a very good summary of a bunch of really interesting human origin stuff that the left has been denying and now has to finally admit (in an Atlantic article).
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/preposterous-...
> It has been exceptionally well preserved because it was reused as a Roman-era paving stone on a colonnaded street
The sculpture is very 3-dimensional. I don't get how it made a good paving stone, or how being used as a paving stone didn't end up conflicting with the "well preserved" part more.
The back side of it looks pretty flat - perhaps it was buried face down, in two pieces. The Romans were pretty crafty about re-using things.
Besides which, ever been to/seen the streets of Pompeii? Flat, level surfaces for road construction only seemed important to the Romans as a side quest. They would fill the gaps with stone and mortar - perhaps that is the case here.
Türkiye has expressed the desire that their exonym be uniform. The United Nations has complied in their policies and materials. The United States switched for diplomatic contexts, but in terms of mapping and geography, decided to retain the traditional English spelling.
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[ 0.31 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadThe classic checklist definition is: cities, writing, centralized state, agriculture, social stratification with rulers.
Granted you can also argue the same about Incans and to some extent Mesoamericans, so it’s kind of debatable.
This entire discussion stems from the fact that the word "civilization" is essentially defined to fit the societies people already consider civilizations. There are technologically, politically, and socially complex societies that aren't "civilizations". My recommendation is to avoid the word entirely. Trying to use it scientifically leads to confusion.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_revolution
Requirement for a writing system is an arbitrary condition. A lot of civilizations, especially in that region, have strong oral traditions.
Also would a knotted thread record keeping system count as writing?
The sculpture is very 3-dimensional. I don't get how it made a good paving stone, or how being used as a paving stone didn't end up conflicting with the "well preserved" part more.
So maybe it was about one of those parts and the lower one looks like it could be a decent paving stone.
Besides which, ever been to/seen the streets of Pompeii? Flat, level surfaces for road construction only seemed important to the Romans as a side quest. They would fill the gaps with stone and mortar - perhaps that is the case here.
Didn’t the country rename / rebrand to Türkiye?
They don't have authority over a language, however, so English-speakers continue to spell it as they see fit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey#Presidential_ci...
Türkiye has expressed the desire that their exonym be uniform. The United Nations has complied in their policies and materials. The United States switched for diplomatic contexts, but in terms of mapping and geography, decided to retain the traditional English spelling.