10,000 Grinding Stones Found at Göbekli Tepe: A Centre of Food Processing? | Ancient Architects
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2022
- The more you read and learn about the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the more you’re surprised about just how advanced post-Younger Dryas Hunter-Gatherer communities were in Ancient Anatolia.
These people were planning large projects and completing them to extremely high standards, which shows organisation within communities. But at Gobekli Tepe, there are still no signs of domesticated grains and so full-scale agriculture was still a future development.
Still, many commentators suggest Göbekli Tepe could not have been the work of mere hunter-gatherers, even though the evidence suggests otherwise. I believe we now need to stop thinking in a binary fashion, that there were Hunter-gatherers and then farmers. There is the grey area in between and Göbekli Tepe and many Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites fall into this. You could say that these people were like proto-farmers.
It is also now known that Göbekli Tepe was a permanent settlement, but more akin to a village, than a city, but there is still something very unusual about it. There are more domestic finds than anyone expected, far more than necessary and evidence may therefore suggest Göbekli Tepe was a centre for large-scale food processing 11-11,500 years ago.
Learn more by watching the video, and also find out more about what was being processed and what people were eating in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
A lot of the information in the video comes from the incredible website tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/ This weblog gives an insight into ongoing excavations and archaeological research at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey and is written and created by the archaeologists that work on the site.
Many of the photographs belong to the German Archaeological Institute and are credited to K. Schmidt, DAI, N. Becker, DAI, D. Johannes, DAI, I. Wagner, O. Dietrich and L. Dietrich. I have used these images as they are the only ones available and they are used for educational purposes only to encourage people to take an interest in the subject of their work. I would urge you to visit tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/ to read their findings in more detail and follow the outstanding work of the Gobekli Tepe experts.
All images are taken from the below sources and from Google Images for educational purposes only. Please subscribe to Ancient Architects, Like the video and please leave a comment below.
Sources:
Cereal processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey: journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
Wild Hunt website overview: wildhunt.org/2021/09/the-worl...
Last Stand of the Hunter-Gatherers: www.archaeology.org/issues/42...
Plant Food Processing Tools at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe by Laura Dietrich: www.archaeopress.com/Archaeop...
Tepe Telegrams weblog: tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/
Nature article: www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
Bread and porridge at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe: A new method to recognize products of cereal processing using quantitative functional analyses on grinding stones: www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Bread and Porridge at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, Turkey (Video): • Bread and Porridge at ...
Changing Medialities - Symbols of Neolithic Corporate Identities: www.researchgate.net/publicat...
#AncientArchitects #GobekliTepe #AncientAnatolia
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As a senior citizen on Social Security (US) I'm doing good to support myself in these inflationary times. But I do let the commercials play, so you get a few cents there. 🖖
Hey mate, just a thought. Is it possible the mass grain production was also used to make alcohol. Currently the oldest alcohol beverage was found to be in ancient China. But I cannot imaging that a people so well versed with grains and not have a working knowledge of fermentation
Why don’t you just go for Occam’s Razor? They were feeding the workers that were building the complex!
I think you are really onto something. Nice work, again. Next, see how some of the enclosures were giant fermentation chambers and we see that beer and man evolved together!! 🤤🍺🤪
There's a great book you should read, "The dawn of everything, a new history of humanity." By David Graeber and David Wengrow
“You know what really grinds my grains?” -Ancient Anatolians
Haha
How does this not have more likes lol
Appreciated that 😆🕊
😆
Lmao!! Good one bro😆
I really appreciate you following this magnificent discovery so closely. Thank You!
hmm I agree with general premise that farmers and hunter gatherers is not a hard and fast line, and that there is lots of grey area between them.
However, just because the grains resemble the wild type varieties much more than more modern "domestic varieties" does not mean they were not being farmed. If that is the main line of evidence being used it could be deeply flawed in many ways.
Early farmers would be using wild type grains cause that is what is available when you start.
the harvesting of both wild rice and acorns by indigenous peoples as examples here in north america. massive collection/processing of seasonal foods was common, ex. wild leeks, fiddle heads, or morel mushrooms in the spring.
Entire communities, or entire societies, would have all hands on deck harvesting and processing the readily available seasonal foods. After crossing a certain threshold you'd naturally develop large processing/storage/distribution sites.
@@redneckhippy2020 yes, and native americans definitely had those things(though much of their material was made of wood and skins that would not preserve well.)
But just as importantly east coast Native Americans DID practice agriculture. They grew Corn, Beans, Squash, and sunflowers.
North American natives are a great example of a community that still practiced a fair bit of hunting and gathering but ALSO farmed (if not in the same intensive way as European settlers.)
They also had some fairly large permanent and semi-permanent settlements, a few of which easily exceeded the "city" criteria of over 10,000 residents until the European diseases devastated the population.
I don't see how it's flawed... The grains obviously magically domesticated when they started farming them.
@@JD96893 Domestication doesn't happen magically, but is a result of cross breeding and selection of several varieties. It may sound strange to you but the people of that era were probably the greatest geneticist ever. It's also how they domesticated animals shortly after. You wouldn't have found a poodle back then, but they did start the proces of turning wild wolves into an animal they could "work" with. Through the same methode they gradually changed them into the wide varieties we have today. (Btw, I think they would be appalled if they could see what we have done to dogs.)
@@telebubba5527 I was being sarcastic because archeologist have a way of illogically disproving theories, but thanks for the interesting tid bit.
Excellent work!!! I had never heard about all the grinding stones that were found. I'm learning so much from your channel!
you want to learn something really interesting about your beginings, & history they dont tell you..viper tv, sumerian tablets. . praveen mohan. . brian foerster,peracus mummies. . the facts by how to hunt. . everything inside me. . for a few. keep you busy..religion didnt happen, till after jesus died, than man made it to control man. religion is bs.lies..
This is really excellent coverage. Göbekli Tepe is centered on a hilltop surrounded by farmland. Obviously, the farms are modern, but they could have been natural fields of grains or even proto-planted gardens.
the reason for beeing farmers, was beer. not the beer that we know today, but it was a earley version of it. so they made tye and wheat durable and consumeable . the egypts had beer too.
Food had to be very plentiful year round to do that level of work. Starving people don't cut rock, raise pillars. They spend their time trying to find their next meal.
I think it shows an organised people
@@AncientArchitects 100%
Beer......clearly these folks were advanced. They knew what goes well with BBQ & tons of food. Looking forward to more on this. Thanks.
"Wild ass were eaten"
sounds like a party
Lol
Best comment
A large industrial processing plant; supplying food to the surrounding areas and beyond. The implications of that would be totally and utterly amazing. Not to mention that our present history books would need to be discarded.
You really provide a very fine service to the public who appreciate archeology. Thank you Matt!
That Gobekli was a combination of agricultural culture and hunter gatherers fits the idea that an advanced culture in Sundaland was dispersed by the YD catastrophe and fled far up the Tigris as they could to establish a community to foster the local hunter gatherers. They taught them agricultural techniques as well as their religious concepts and our current civilization followed.
This is a fantastic job of reaping and processing data for your viewers, no grinding required. It has been one in a long series of thought-provoking videos on this site. Several things stand out. Firstly, our definition of "civilization" needs to be reworked. It comes from the word "civis" meaning city, and the people of these sites seem to be civilized by a number of measures, without living in cities. Second, they seem to have been highly specialized, some hunted [possibly different groups for different game], some gathered wild foodstuff, some ground grain, etc. This "division of labor" is a main characteristic of "civilized" communities. Third, if lime washes and terrazzo were used, there must have been grinding stones specifically for grinding that material [I doubt that eating grain ground by a stone used for grinding limestone would be easy, pleasant or tasty], and others for polishing stone. You've suggested and sometimes directly pointed out all of these things in a relatively short, but easily comprehended and fact-filled video. Kudos well deserved and awarded! 🏆🙏 🏆 🙏🏆🙏
This series of sites may not be the centre for this civilisation. An comparison would be the British empire where the civilisation was far reaching with distant locations having advance technology intertwined with local peoples and resources. As "maybe' Matt says, maybe Gobekli Tepe has manufacturing facility for mass production of flour using this local low cost labour, maybe 😉
If only we could go back in time. It would answer so many questions.
Yep
“The beer was bitter but drinkable”. Sounds like modern craft beers. 🍺
Anything to drink which did not give you cholera or parasites was A WELCOME BEVERAGE!
That "rock garden" is amazing, gives the impression of junk accumulated over years. A big scale operation make sense not only size but also in time.
But why did they place them in rows.....
@@stevelauda5435 Being organized eases up placing more junk. They had walking rows between junk ones. I have seen similar layouts in car junk places.
@@stevelauda5435 They weren’t found like that, they’ve been placed in rows by the archaeologists.
This place was the first "center for higher learning". It was a Neolithic college. People came here to learn and then take knowledge back to their home villages. Yes, there was domestic life. Just like there is in colleges today.
Maybe… but there are too many domestic objects for the amount of domestic houses and hence people… so it’s more like industrial scale food prep. But yes, maybe a centre of learning and innovation.
Could that hypocaust-system have been a system to dry food, or possibly smoke meat to preserve it, or some kind of malt processing place for brewing beer?
Adding to the idea of a food processing site ...perhaps you have defined why the site was abandoned. If the food was prepared for large crowds and became infected with a deadly bacteria would be a good reason to abandon it and cover it over with dirt leaving the grinding stones and bowls.
We underestimate the importance of food manufacturing in our modern society.
He makes a very good case. Proto farmers (grain gatherers) who used stone containers instead of pottery, and no doubt woven baskets. The purses engraved on the pillar reliefs might be for carrying ground grain. Note, each purse on the relief pillar has an animal associated with it. Like each enclosure has an animal associated with it. This creates a pattern of an animal associated with a particular village (both their marked enclosure and their marked transport purse)
If animals were used to carry grain and flour, then I expect the purses could be saddle bags for transporting to/from Golbekli Tepe. The best thing about cereal is it can be stored for use during lean months. (Ground penetrating radar might reveal a transportation network). Now I expect a road/path network to be found. There was a research article concluding in prehistory times a large animal was used for work of some sort (determined from the bone structure). As a practical matter to avoid starvation, a village would want to store a lot of grain in a well protected common storehouse in case robbers came to the village. Also local leaders would encourage villages to store grain in the central location to normalize unified cooperation and as a way to help consolidate their control over all the villages. Cooperation is critical for defense against foreign groups that could pose a threat.
Also what is the definition of gathering versus farming? Fertilizing a naturally occurring patch of wild grain and cereal? Watering it? Weeding it? Protecting it from grazing animals? Or it’s not farming until Planting the grain seeds? Or selectively planting seeds from the most productive plants? And it would be a no brainer to plant some more pistachio trees and any other type of food tree.
I like how using living history/archeology yields results many have never imagined. Using the stones to find what and how grinding was. Coarse or fine ground. And what it may have been used for. Fleshing out the ancient community.
These experiments are amazing. Real practical research.
@@AncientArchitects Speaking of practical research, analysis of ancient fecal matter in a deposit in North America had evidence of cannibalism. One has to wonder whether such finds have been made in Anatolia and what has been found.
I've wondered for a while if hunter-gatherers might have been nomadic in the warmer seasons, but lived together through the winter to ease the burdens of coping with cold weather (pooling body heat and the effects of fuel for heating fires. A seasonal center for processing combined food resources for storage fits well with the idea of a communal winter living space.
Like a communal hall made by Native Americans.
Very plausible theory. Winter traditionally being a time of crafting and processing. Summer is gathering time.
@@thetroll1247 yes we have great examples in the US and Canada of this kind of cultural behavior.
@@thetroll1247 There is no such thing as a "Native" American. The term was made up by politicians. ALL humans in the Americas were immigrants from East Asia (Siberia). DNA does not lie.
Build a brewery, make a living. Though wheat beer is a pretty low bar for beer. I guess if you haven't had better it still makes the lovers look better in the dark. 🙂
Always a treat learning new nuggets from you!
Thanks again ... Your time and effort are much appreciated
Fascinating video, man! You have a great perspective and great ideas. Thanks, Matt!
Nicely done! Straight forward and plausible thoughts! More info than I’ve ever heard before...
Thank you Matt for such and in depth and illuminating video. You/the Ancient Architects channel is my main source of information for this site and many other ancient archeological sites. You have started in me a hunger for more knowledge. I am hoping to go and visit the site in the next couple of years! So thank you so so much for all the inspiration and interest you’ve catalysed in me. Joe
The people were growing the wild varieties of grains, cereals, and legumes. Harvesting scythes were made of wood and bone, and containers were woven baskets...none of which survived the passage of time. Grain markers are found on stone bowels and grinding stones as noted.
About scythes: there are wonderful scythes, made by parthial cutting on the internal side of curved animal horns, and securing sharp flints in the slit, thus realizing a tool surprisingly similar in shape and use to the modern scythes, in Ankara Archeological museum, stone and bronze era sector.
I'm not convinced with your heating video but this episode was incredible.
Thank you very much for this video and all your other videos :)
You may be right, or you may be wrong, but you are always asking the right questions. Kudos!
Abhijit vartak - - good insight . Looking from different angle.
I feel you are on the right track. I also feel that there is a deep level of knowledge encoded into this site as a way of life and learning for its inhabitants. What this knowledge was and what they new would be extremely interesting. Thanks for your videos.
If only 5000 of the grinding stones were in use at any one time, that indicates 5000 families. Obviously they had agriculture. You cannot just gather that much wild grain, within walking distance of home.
According to some researchers there was likely up to thousands of years of middle phenomena. They did perhaps start by staying relatively close to the best wild grain spots, to watch and with time manipulate the growth by watering, weeding etc. Slowly the learned how to make them grow at new spots etc. It's a good video here on YT that says this. Don't remember exact title here and now, but he dates the start of the revolution very loosely to something like 22-18 000 - 14 000 (prob not accurate numbers). Believe he is a mainstream historian too.. I rearly see folks talk about how there must have been a huge period of some type of "proto agriculture." But surely it must have existed. Perhaps for thousands of years. Great video!
The site was utilized for about 1500 years. Unless one could demonstrate that all or most of the grinding stones were utilized in the same narrow tine frame, the math doesn't work out for anywhere near 5000 people being present.
I just love how people's brain works! It is amazing how from a few stones, so many different ideas can be introduced! I, personally, do not agree that these enclosers were simply barns. But hey, who knows.... maybe one day we will find out. :)
Thank you I think this could be one of your best videos of all time
The raised floor with water underneath is a refrigerator. I have seen the same design in Egypt and America.
In the similar taulas of Menorca abundant food storage evidences have been found. It is very plausible that the Gobekli Tepe, etc., buildings were for storage of processed and unprocessed grains for the agricultural populations of the villages down in the fertile plain. Possibly less rodents and fungi were present in those high colder and dry terrains, than down in the valley. A calendaric utility makes sense in this context of grain storage.
So much of the site remains uncovered that our perception of it's scope will likely grow in time. Thank you for your study and I look forward to frequent updates from you.
Couple of thoughts.
1 With that many grind stones, I find it hard to believe they were not farming.
2 The farming they could have been doing was with wild grains. Beginning the domestication of those grains.
Kinda makes sense that agriculture started by just... setting up camp where the wild grains were already growing. Next thing you know, you've got a cereal factory.
The absence of differences between the grains found in earliest Neolithic settlements and the grains of wild plants does not yet prove the complete absence of agriculture. These people may have practiced the type of farming adopted by many modern agrarians: They consume the entire crop without residue and take new seeds from the outside (in their case from specialized breeding farms). The inhabitants of Taş Tepeler could also consume all the crops they grew, and collect wild plant seeds for planting next season. In this case, we will see no difference between wild and human-grown plants.
What could be the reasons for this strange behavior? For example, religious: People might have thought that grains grown with the help of the gods and by following all the necessary rituals would bring them not only food but also grace. (Who but the gods can provide 10 times as much yield in a cultivated field as in a wild one?) Throwing the divine gifts back into the ground could be considered sacrilege.
the magic word is 'domestication'. For some reason it is assumed that harvesting natural grains is not 'farming'.
@@redneckhippy2020 The hypothetical situation I described is NOT domestication. Still it should be described as 'agriculture', if they loosened up the ground, removed weeds, and protected crops from trampling and eating by animals. The key point is creating an artificial biocoenosis (field with a monoculture) that cannot exist in nature without human support.
@@redneckhippy2020 Evewn if they domesticated wild grain, the grain would be the same as the wild one for several generations. So during the first 5 centuries or more you could not tell if it was domesticated wild grain or just wild grain.
And now.. millennia later, we're again planting spelt instead of wheat to some extent, because the wilder variety has more nutritional value.
@@ivojara Thank you for this important note, especially given that selection at that stage could only be spontaneous. However I've never seen a quantitative estimation of this process - I must missed something. I guess this time period is different for various species. Could you provide a link to the source of "5 centuries or more" for cereals, please.
I 💖 this! Great video, Matt!
Great work and thanks for sharing, especially the links. A very interesting hypothesis. Chris
Thank you for this wonderful presentation. I wanted to point out that on the vulture Stone up near the top there are what look like grain sheaves. If you look closely you can see grain heads carved in so there's no mistaking them. I noticed it about 5 years ago and now finally a few other people have mentioned it
Yes, they were at least gathering wild grain if not growing it. Thanks for the fine work!
Great video. Very educational. Thanks!
Thank you I appreciate the information you bring us.
Very nice video! Love the idea of animals representing different groups, like a mascot.
Yeah… it’s what the German archaeological institute archaeologists are thinking and it does make some sense. Def a possible interpretation
@@AncientArchitects well, I hate to keep mentioning the books but Jean M. Aul's Clan of the Cave Bear book series came up with that idea first as far as I know. Granted I read them some 35 years ago but I think her ideas, stories and research for very early human hunter gatherers was absolutely fantastic!
As always an interesting and compelling story, thanks mate!
I live for this shit. One day, technology will advance enough that it will become trivial for the average person to view our ancient history with accuracy and clarity, and I am envious of those people of the future and the glory they'll behold.
I know what you mean
I'm telling you we will just work it out and then the next global cataclysm will occur taking a few survivors back to square one! 😄 Murphy's law!
Incredible story. I appreciate the smallest details that are explained so thoroughly really good stuff. Thank You.
Are we looking at an ancient high civilization of megalithic builders that are survivors of cataclysms, how long would it take to rebuild a civilization!
Thank you for all your work!
Getting together for BBQ and beer, chatting, relaxing, checking out the females, a little singing and dancing... nothing's changed.
I always enjoy an AA vid, I don't always agree with everything but this hypothesis makes a lot sense to me. A massive Neolithic food bank where everyone contributed something and it was then distributed amongst the wider community. The evidence seems to back that idea up. Nice one Matt.
Participate and you don't have to worry about starving if you have a bad season. Makes sense. Easier to defend stores, too.
The lack of personal possessions, and human remains that should be buried for ancestor worship is also lacking. Especially in comparison with the grinding tools, there should be so much more. It makes sense. Good hypothesis! Thank you Matthew!
Burial is not universal.
Thank you for posting
Wow fantastic presentation. Well done. Wow l I can say. Thanks
Thanks for your videos.🤗🥰💯🙏
I agree with your analysis. Fascinating stuff, thanks.
Thanks for watching
in that area, according to some old papers, people had a summer camp in the mountains for hunting, and a winter camp for almonds, apricots etc. hunter-gatherers in name only as they moved 2x a year
Awesome 👍🏼 thank you, Matt
❤️⛰️❤️
Thanks Lynn
They figured out that certain food was only around at a certain time of year and so built a place to process and store it. They got tired of running out or having to supply those that didn't prepare and pretty much made it a community effort.
Marvellous information,thank you.
I love hearing news about Gobekli Tepe, especially when it's brought by Matt :P
At 0:38 there's those EXACT same handbags that every other civilization was carving on their walls!!! Crazy!!!
hi, Matt! an intriguing hypothesis. if the area was wetter back then, there could have been large areas of wild grains for them to gather. they are just grasses, after all. or, they could have been in the very early stages of agriculture. either way, they would have been "hunter-gatherers". we know they ate wild game and wild grains, built these structures, and lived nearby. for now, everything else is conjecture. the presence of so many grinding stones goes a long way in supporting this hypothesis. fascinating!
This was truly food for thought....
You called the donkey wild ass lmao
The most popular beer brand of Gobekli Tepe? "Another"! Ask for it by name 🍺!
"What are you drinking, friend?" "Another!"
Thank you for this channel
Thank you for watching the channel 😃
Amazing video. All those bowls!
Very interesting video.
Thank you!
I am breathless as this excavation progresses. And so recent, as these things go. I love to imagine this setting when it was in use and busy. Much the same landscape. 71122
This was great! Every year, Tas Teplar gives the world something new to ponder. It's gone from being the first temple, to the first grocery store and block party. Seriously though, the ancients were masters of the land they lived on. ✌️😺
Thank you Matt...very interesting...
Thank you!
If the people who lived there figured out how to mass produce food easily and that it could be traded with other tribes nearby. It would make sense that someone understood that they could get "rich" from trading the excess amounts of food and flours. It would also make sense that this sort of place would over time become a sorta like a stone age shopping center, maybe they also traded stuff they got in exchange for food. It would also make sense that they could gather work force and resources to build all this stuff, including the potential spa, which would be awesome for weary travelers coming from far away to trade there.
It's good to see a more sensible perspective rise to replace the earlier one where pre-agricultural implied a strictly hunting/gathering lifestyle. I think of how productive that fertile crescent must have been and how crucial those south facing watercourses draining down into the plains below must have been to what I can easily believer were vast herds of gazelles and other grazing animals following the annual cycle and the water sources on which they depended. Wonderful insights from the research on the kind of grinding stones and their likely use; making a good argument for fermentation as a way to preserve and of course make the grasses a potent social component beyond just food when inebriation becomes a kind of speaking to the gods. Thanks again for your bringing the latest research and your always insightful views. Cheers.
I *completely* agree about getting out of the binary thinking regarding hunter/gatherers and farmers. As an archaeology student, this is one of my big gripes. You'd think we'd be past this black and white thinking by now.
Yes especially as hunter gatherers were way back millennia ago. I'm pretty sure that by 10 000 years ago they'd have progressed somewhat!
@@PatchouliPenny they certainly would have. It's most likely people lived primarily in a hybrid manner of both hunting/foraging and cultivation/encouraging growth of plants in their natural environments in a permaculture-like fashion. In fact, we have evidence that this is exactly what many Native Americans were doing and they say that's how it was for ages and ages. I know for a fact that native people in my area were planting acorns and controlling fires to encourage new growth of the oak trees they relied upon. That's just one example but there's many more and a lot of what settlers thought was pristine forest was actually managed by the tribes. They just managed it in a way that flowed with nature, so it appeared to be untouched by man.
@@DianaAtena yes I know the study. It could be that they were doing something similar to what many Native Americans practice where they're trying to simulate wildfire because the truth is that wildfires are natural and good so long as they aren't too crazy.
The tribes here in California did prescribed burning for millennia, until white settlers threatened to kill them immediately and scalp them for doing it. It burns out all the underbrush and adds rich nutrients into the soil, encouraging healthy forest growth. This allows for more more sunlight to penetrate the forest because it's not so dense with trees. This can encourage a more diverse speciation of plants and trees to emerge, which would be very beneficial for the Neanderthals living there. That and they were living in the area during an interim between glacial periods, so it's likely they also needed firewood for warmth along with cooking.
If I had to venture a guess, I don't think it would be unreasonable to suggest they might have practiced management of forests with fire, used selective harvesting of trees for utility purposes, possibly even planting seeds along the way, and with the goal to diversify the forest.
Agree with all of the above. Pine forests in particular thrive with fire as it bursts the cones open releasing the seeds.
I've thought of two other possibilities for controlled burns. 1. Possibly to make charcoal that they discovered initially after lightning strike fires. They learned that it burned well and would be much easier to carry than wood. 2. They found some ready cooked birds eggs and other ready cooked animals. Nasty I know but it could just be how they discovered cooked meat and eggs taste better than raw. 😄 This is purely speculation on my part but it does seem possible.
@@PatchouliPenny yes, I'm totally with you on that line of thinking!
Gobekli Tepe was part of a massive brewery complex!
Maybe the location was selected because of the grains growing there? Meaning the people settled where the grain already was growing, possibly.
One thing that is becoming clearer is that there must have been some kind civilization prior to the last ice age. It's possible that that civilization survived in the underground cities of Cappadocia and then at the end of the last Ice age spread out again.
Best experimental archaeology project EVER! And I know much later dates brewing included underfloor heating. Carvings may be classifications of groups, like elks/moose lodges ❤
Many of us westerners are addicted to the idea that everything is binary. This research helps show that this is not true, and it is a much-needed update to this limited train of thought
Yes… a transition period in how humans prepared food could take centuries. And that doesn’t mean human engineering and innovation stands still. These societies evolved as the climate improved
Amazing how much we still have to learn about human history 10,000 plus years ago. The last 10years alot has changed of our understanding. I wonder where we will be in another 100 ?!
Makes sense. To do that kind of massive stone work there has to be lots of food to support the work. Just because the grain is wild doesn’t mean that those people were not doing things to encourage that grain to grow and become more plentiful. That is farming all the same .
nice video. I like your perspective
Fascinating! It would make sense if hunter/gatherers were able to harvest more than the needs of their family groups, and that they took the surplus to an area for processing and long term use. I wonder what the climate was like at that time? Were there harsh winters for example?
Some Indigenous American groups sheltered in more secure shelters in larger groups during winter months.
There is a fascinating channel on YT that covers aspects of life in antiquity. He recently had a video defining what makes a city or not. He does not rank Gobekli Tepe as a city for a number of reasons. In so doing, we gain a better idea of what people were doing at Gobekli Tepe.
Going back to Indigenous Americans, they were known to have gatherings at different times of the year, when smaller groups congregated. I wonder what would lead to a next step of forming a prehistoric convention center type thing with structures and massive food preparation?
I wonder too, if a reason Gobekli Tepe did not achieve city status was because too many people congregated for too long, making a lot of filth that was unpleasant? Eventually people did create cities for permanent living and many seem to have simply lived with sewage.
Just some ideas. I am still very much a student of antiquities.
Wild grains were what the first farmers raised. The grain didn't immediately transform into the DOMESTIC varieties just because someone intentionally planted it! It takes many years to create the new cultivars without the intent to!
Such an intriguing site .
Imagine tribes maintaining fields that were natural stands of wild grains that provided annual harvests in the fall. Can you imagine what the large herds of gazels grazing those fields in summer would do to the fall gathering harvests? Wherever rice is grown in Asia the locals do rat control when the crop is green, and feast upon the rats they kill. My friend told me about the strings of fried rats hanging in the street food stalls in the Philippines which he bought without knowing what that meat was. He said they were pretty tasty. I think I would have preferred the gazels in Anatolia.
Worth sayi f at the begiining some very basic facts, location (modern name) and when is was discovered, only takes then seconds. Thanks for a great video.
The "vast scale" of the grinding stones may indicate a vast period of time rather than a vast population at a limited period of time. So an assumption of an 'industrial scale' of grinding may be ascribed to an amount of labor that covered a whole lot of time rather than a whole lot of people.
This makes a million times more sense than that it was some kind of religious gathering spot for otherwise nomadic hunters.
Thank you.
A centralized food processing center makes sense. It would also make sense to double as a political and educational hub for the wide spread community. If humanity had nearly been reduced to zero via the YD event, whoever survived would need to re coalesce. Assuming a decent amount of knowledge carried through with some of the survivors of a cataclysm, it's not hard to see how such a seemingly contradictory settlement could have sprung up at such an ancient time.
Populations seem to have been ok in Anatolia. Big settlements like Kortik Tepe continued from before, during and after the younger dryas. These settlements, as well as Gusir Hoyuk and bonkulku Tarla - clearly the same culture as the Gobekli Tepe people - are conveniently not mentioned by various authors:
While watching this video, I wondered why multiple groups of local populations would all bring their harvests to one location, when they could do everything "at home". Granted, economies of scale with respect to preparation and brewing could be a significant factor, but doesn't strike me as enough. What if they all brought their own, local, grains and berries, and whatever to GT. They kept things in their own, marked, circular enclosures, and then TRADED raw and processed goods with each other. This strikes me as more compelling than gathering only to process the food. I imagine that for a few weeks each year, everyone would come to GT to process, trade, gossip, celebrate, find mates, ...
Yes exactly, like an early market town - they travel there with their goods/hunting/harvest, visit, trade, share knowledge and socialize.