Over the last couple of decades, this 10k-15k ybp period has gotten a lot more interesting. Especially to us romantics, who always want origins to be more ancient and mysterious. The Natufian Culture now has a lot of sites. Everything from proof of a predominantly hunter gatherer diet to a full scale sedentary city, 9,000 year old Jericho. We even know they particularly enjoyed eating cat, and may have domesticated them for food.
Even more remarkable is the progress in southeastern Turkey. Gobleki Tepeh is a find on such a scale that it challenges archeologists to re-narrate the neolithic revolution. Many think that it reverses the old narrative: Agriculture lead to caloric surpluses, permanent settlements, cities, organised religions, kings, advanced art, complex mythology... Maybe an organised religion crowned the first god-kings, designated specialised societal roles, built temples, then cities, and invented agriculture to support them.
Near Gobleki Tepeh is Catal Huyuk, a residential "city" archeologically and temporally similar Jericho. It appears to have been built after Gobleki Tepeh, a more "ritualistic" site. Perhaps archeologists should be looking for ancient temple sites, predating Jericho.
Perhaps the Egyptian pattern is to be expected. First, giant ritualistic projects are undertaken. Politics appears to be simple, the king is a god. People do what he says. Complexity comes later. Maybe this is normal. Maybe modes of production follow from modes of culture, to put it in 19th century terms.
Egypt's old kingdom were the the great builders. Out of "nowhere" they suddenly take on massive works, million man-year projects. The middle & new kingdoms were more advanced politically, agriculturally, economically & militarily. But, the scale of ritualistic sites declined. They still had great temples, and fine art keeps progressing. Literature proliferates. Law advances. But, the amount of labour dedicated to pure ritual seems to peak near the "beginning."
It is a fascinating period. The middle east definitely has its roots here. Keep up the good work archeologists. We appreciate it, us spectators.
The most interesting thing about Göbekli Tepe the oldest megalith structure discovered, is that a study based on the drawings on the structure correlated with Younger Dryas period might explain why nothing was found about the ancient civilization that built it.
Hmm... Seems very speculative. I think you'd need some more evidence before concluding this is a calendar that you can interpret.
That said, the entire site is of interest to those interested in flood myths. It was an active site during the period when climactic disasters and floods were happening. Ice melted. Seas rose. The nearby black sea was expanding, and eventually spilled into the aegean. This is also (intriguingly) the date plato gave for atlantis' destruction.
I like ancient cultures too, the two I find interesting are:
In Egypt the dakhleh oasis has evidence of habitation for 200,000 years. I don't know if what's meant by habitation means it's always been human or generally hominid. But I think 200,000 years is quite recent for any hominids other than what we became to be around.
The other interesting thing is the situation of the San indigenous people of southern Africa region. They are supposedly a very old culture living in the area well over 100,000 years and even their DNA is unique compared to other African peoples. It's odd to think the Bantu, Zulu etc. are the "invaders" of the region, the new people in the area.
Something similar can be said about most of the natufian range. Sapien habitation predating the out of Africa^ dispersal, and therefore not our "line" if the theory is true.
There was also a neanderthal population that seems to have succeeded and older sapien population, which is unusual in the record.
It's very old people stomping grounds, for pretty much any definition of people. Pretty much anything from early homo erectus to early scholars has a token ancestor there.
I just read about Gobekli Tepe in Sapiens and was going to mention how fascinating it is that it challenges the agricultural revolution => religion narrative.
I like that story better, personally. The original narrative is kind of Malthusian. Find more calories, have more babies. Everything is about nutritional economics. Hari puts culture first. It just wasn't possible for everyone to get along in such a big group, untill it was figured out.
erm... IDK... AFAIK, YBP is used commonly in articles talking about this period. I guess having a 0 point 2018 years in the past is clunkier, and we're used to marking years with an acronym.
We use a lot more acronyms these days, generally. The better ones can be guessed from context. I personally don't mind the BC/AD, for iron age and later. It's actually convenient that year 0 corresponds roughly to the beginning of Rome's height.
I can see some value in it, BC dates are confusing but it's also just another year chosen as 0 based on a particular historical occurrence. The video makes a big deal of supposed inclusivity benefits of this change which is wearying
What would your preference be? Ybp is out. Holocene era is too hippy.. Personally, I would go with years before me but otherwise I'll take any convenient dating method including the year of some lord if it does the job.
AD/BC does the job ok for classical history and onwards. Now that "history" is extending back before the bronze age and even to these really early dates...we obviously need a new stamp.
Why is including values of our time bad, while honouring some 2018ya lord good?
>Why is including values of our time bad, while honouring some 2018ya lord good?
I didn't say that was bad, I just figured if you wanted to say 15k years ago you could say 15k years ago instead of making up another acronym, ago isn't a long word.
Also I don't necessarily think you have to date from the supposed birthdate of the Jesus Christ. But since we have, why not leave it as is? Why are we being subjected to CE and BCE? It would be quite a message-laden decision if some institutions had a policy of NOT referring to our numbers as Arabic numerals, for instance.
Over the last couple of decades, this 10k-15k ybp period has gotten a lot more interesting. Especially to us romantics, who always want origins to be more ancient and mysterious. The Natufian Culture now has a lot of sites. Everything from proof of a predominantly hunter gatherer diet to a full scale sedentary city, 9,000 year old Jericho. We even know they particularly enjoyed eating cat, and may have domesticated them for food.
Even more remarkable is the progress in southeastern Turkey. Gobleki Tepeh is a find on such a scale that it challenges archeologists to re-narrate the neolithic revolution. Many think that it reverses the old narrative: Agriculture lead to caloric surpluses, permanent settlements, cities, organised religions, kings, advanced art, complex mythology... Maybe an organised religion crowned the first god-kings, designated specialised societal roles, built temples, then cities, and invented agriculture to support them.
Near Gobleki Tepeh is Catal Huyuk, a residential "city" archeologically and temporally similar Jericho. It appears to have been built after Gobleki Tepeh, a more "ritualistic" site. Perhaps archeologists should be looking for ancient temple sites, predating Jericho.
Perhaps the Egyptian pattern is to be expected. First, giant ritualistic projects are undertaken. Politics appears to be simple, the king is a god. People do what he says. Complexity comes later. Maybe this is normal. Maybe modes of production follow from modes of culture, to put it in 19th century terms.
Egypt's old kingdom were the the great builders. Out of "nowhere" they suddenly take on massive works, million man-year projects. The middle & new kingdoms were more advanced politically, agriculturally, economically & militarily. But, the scale of ritualistic sites declined. They still had great temples, and fine art keeps progressing. Literature proliferates. Law advances. But, the amount of labour dedicated to pure ritual seems to peak near the "beginning."
It is a fascinating period. The middle east definitely has its roots here. Keep up the good work archeologists. We appreciate it, us spectators.