Gobekli Tepe - 11,000 years and counting

via Wikipedia

Still out gallivanting with my visitors, but something dropped into the ole inbox this past week that I thought you'd like to see.

In the 1960's, Gobekli Tepe was dismissed as a medieval cemetery. Thirty plus years later, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt believed otherwise. His 1995 dig revealed Gobekli Tepe as the world's oldest temple. It predates Stonehenge by about 6,000 years. (How many points should we give to the Cradle of Civilization?)

All this is really interesting, but the point which gave me pause is this:

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. Source: Smithsonian magazine
Go read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html#ixzz1ThEjrjZs and check out the interesting pictures too!


Here's a History Channel program about it.